From the Big Short to Tariffs: Steve Eisman on Trade Wars and Globalization
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only has 11% of its GDP coming from exports. That is the lowest number probably on planet Earth. China officially is a 20%. But that doesn't include all this stuff that they ship to Vietnam and Cambodia that eventually makes its way here. So China, and this just a guess is probably at least 30%. Europe,

Every country in Europe is in excess of 30%, with the exception of Germany, which is over 40%.

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of, like it says in the opening, man, the show that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, we got something special, something special for you guys, because obviously there's a lot going on.

in the world today. And we wanted to kind of, I'm sick of scrolling through social media and seeing all of these pocket economists that, you know, class of Wednesday that know exactly what's going on in the world because they happen to vote one way or another. And I decided to maybe bring you some good information today. So what I did was I went out and we scored a Wall Street legend. I mean, this is a guy.

who saw it coming when nobody else did. You may know him as the real-life inspiration for Steve Carell's character in The Big Short, and he famously bet against Wall Street in the 2008 housing crash and won massive. But he's more than that. He's a brutally honest guy in finance that calls it like he is, whether it's good or bad. And today we're going to talk about the good and bad of terrorists. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. This is Steve Eisman. Steve, how are you?

Pretty good a little poorer but a little poor today Well, thanks so much for taking time out of your day And I'm sure you've been busy commenting on all that's happening in the world today And I do want to talk later a little bit about your experience with the big short But obviously let's talk about the news of the day starting out. So Let's jump right into it. What is your perspective on what's going on where we're gonna land? I think

to use a term that probably no one has applied to this, what we have is a theological problem. And what I mean by that is everybody like you, like me in the markets went to college and we all at least took econ 101 and econ 101, they taught you that free trade is good. Tariffs are bad. Trade wars are terrible. And think about economics is it's very persuasive because there's a lot of math.

There are a lot of graphs. There are a lot of tables. And all that math, tables and graphs can't be wrong because they have all that math, graphs and tables. And, you know, everybody walks out of, you know, when you walked out of Econ 101, you thought, you know, I really learned something. So we have been living in a world of economics now for a long time. And I think part of the problem is you have to go back to the 90s. In the 90s, President Clinton sold...

He sold NAFTA and China entering the WTO with two arguments. And those arguments were, this will increase GDP and it will create a lot of jobs.

And he was 100 percent right about the former. And he was terribly wrong about the latter. You know, if you have after the movie, I got a great speaking gig and I've made speeches all over this country. And, you know, let's say I go to university in the middle of Indiana or something. You drive from the airport through towns that have been obliterated.

literally obliterated. I mean, half of mainstream is closed. No new home has been built in a generation. And you have to remember the GDP is just an aggregate number, but it doesn't tell you that maybe half the country has suffered terribly from what, from what happened. So I think what president Trump is trying to do, and I have, I have to say great sympathy for this is he's trying to right a wrong because in the, after the nineties, uh,

We allowed our manufacturing base to go overseas, okay. But we didn't retrain our people. We left them, we said, "It's your problem. You go deal." - Go learn to code. Go learn to code, I think was the- - Go learn to code at age 50. - Yeah, there you go. - So I think what he's trying to do is two things. He's trying to level the trading playing field because we are the only ones who seem to play fair. We've had very low tariffs, very low barriers. Everybody else has tariffs and barriers.

And he's also trying to bring a lot of jobs back to the United States. And, you know, you could think about President Trump, whatever you want. Some people like him. Some people hate him. But one thing that I find admirable, regardless of what whether you agree with his policies or not, he's one of the few politicians in our lifetimes who actually does what he says he's going to do. And nobody believed this tariff stuff because it's so against what everybody learned in college. They didn't take it seriously. He's just fulfilling his

his campaign promise. Now, the people who voted for President Trump, his biggest followers, are not big investors in the market. They're the ones who live in these towns. So I think there's a reset about what's happening, and it's extremely jarring because he's not playing by the playbook that everybody learned in college. That's part of it. What I think is also clear is that this is going to take time. And thankfully,

and I really mean this, thankfully, the United States is in the best position in the world to deal with this. Well, I know that a lot of naysayers say, well, why wouldn't he not negotiate before? Oh, that's ridiculous. Well, I think the best quote I saw was a Kissinger quote who said, you negotiate once the tanks are rolling. Exactly. The tariffs on the tanks. Yeah, you have to show power. You have to show power prior to anything happening. Right.

You knew he was gonna flex a little bit and get this done. Now, I think that of a lot of the people that are making the most noise, who is the most susceptible to fall first

in this show of power for the United States? Which countries do you think get in line the fastest? Ah, okay. So let me quote some statistics. Okay, perfect. The internet is a great thing for research, as we know. Depends on who's talking. I got these statistics in 10 seconds. Okay. So the United States...

only has 11% of its GDP coming from exports. That is the lowest number probably on planet Earth. China officially is at 20%, but that doesn't include all this stuff that they ship to Vietnam and Cambodia that eventually makes its way here. So China, and this is just a guess, is probably at least 30%. Europe, every country in Europe is in excess of 30%, with the exception of Germany, which is over 40%.

Mexico and Canada are each 35% of their GDP comes from exports and is the kicker. 25 points of that 35% comes here, exports to the United States. So if we were, if we are working under the assumption and believe me, it's a big assumption that everyone is going to act rationally.

Everybody would come to the United States cap in hand and say, OK, listen, all the all the stuff that we've been doing, jiggering the trade in our favor games up. Let's try and negotiate as good a deal as we can. That says everybody's rational.

Now, everybody's not necessarily rational. You know, politicians want to get reelected. They might be a posture. They could have that they might be afraid that if they if they cut any deal with President Trump, they're not going to get reelected. So I can't handicap that. I can only say that if they're rational, deals will be worked out. I do know because I have a very good friend who runs a hotel in D.C. The hotels apparently in D.C. are filled with ambassadors from all over the world. Let's talk to negotiate.

So I thought that was pretty nice information that I got this weekend. But I don't know how it's going to play out. My guess is most countries will cut a deal. It may take a few months to cut those deals, but most countries will cut those deals. China may not cut a deal. China may say, you know, this is just a form of war and we'll deal. That I can't handicap at all.

Yeah. I think it's – of all of them out there, the Chinese are probably the hardest to predict what they will do of everybody, I would say. Completely. I think Mexico and Canada have to just resolve this as quickly as possible because they're going to feel it quickly and miserably. Like I said, 25% of your GDP is exports to the United States. You're not exactly holding a lot of cards. You can't swallow that. Yeah.

My next question is, today, I guess it was Apple and Nike announced they're already starting to increase prices based on the tariffs. So, is there any way their supply chains are already being interrupted based on inventory on hands to do this? Or do you see these major corporations never wasting a good crisis to try and increase profits? What do you see happening there?

I think they're probably increasing their prices because they have to, because these tariffs are very punitive for them. Do you think it's happened this quick, though? Do you think it's happened this quick? That I don't know. I can't answer that question. I don't have enough information to know that one way or the other. I think Nike and Apple are going to have...

Look, you can't rejigger your supply chain from Vietnam and China to the United States overnight. It doesn't work that way. You know, factories, unfortunately, can't be built overnight. That's just not how it happens. So does that mean that there are going to be higher prices for certain goods in the near term? Probably. You know, this is not going to be a seamless transition.

well let me ask you this one of the seemingly like you said the towns that were decimated uh by nafta by the auto you know industry moving to mexico all of these things happening how how feasible do you see how feasible do you think it is for the united states to really move mass manufacturing back to the states how feasible is that that's a great question i think it's feasible it's going to take time i think one of the things that will i'm guessing will help

is, you know, right now in Congress, they're hornswoggling about taxes. And I think one of the things that will be proposed is if you build a factory in the United States, and I think it'll be backdated to the beginning of the year. So if you build a factory in the United States, you get 100% write-off.

I think they're going to. That's pretty wild. Yeah, it is. It is. But don't you think that some of the reason that manufacturing left in the first place was organized labor in this country just put such a chokehold on manufacturing, making the cost of labor so expensive that it forced this? Or was it really just about corporate bottom line? Some combination of both. But unions are much weaker at this point. Do you think they're going to have to make concessions to get manufacturing back?

I think companies will probably choose states that don't have strong unions, is my guess. So if I had to take a guess, which states do I think are going to benefit the most? You'll see them in the South and the Midwest, outside of union strongholds. That's just a guess. I know. It's so funny to think that all of this kind of comes down to a handful of people acting rationally as they should. There's just no guarantee that that's happening. That's part of the problem with economics, is when you peel it back...

you realize that one of the major assumptions about economics is that people act rationally. And one thing I know from watching my screens every single day on terms of stocks is the last thing people do on most days is act rationally. They act emotionally. What do you think the best case scenario is for timeline for this to somewhat get resolved? And the worst case scenario is, what would you say? The best case scenario, I think, is two to three months. Two to three months. Yeah.

That's pretty quick when you think about it. That is quick. Yeah, that's fast. And the worst case scenario is a full-blown trade war. How far, so if it goes two to three months, do you think your average American is going to experience pain? Will we have time to experience pain there? Are you someone who tries to drive while distracted by your phone? Someone who props it on the steering wheel or peeks down at it for a glance or just scrolls and scrolls?

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You're the smartest guy in the room. That is way above my pay grade. You know what? In your defense, that's how you maintain the reputation as one of the smartest guys in the room is you don't talk about things you don't necessarily know. I actually was. I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. All right. Well, as a sharp investor, right? As someone that invests, obviously you're a Wall Street legend. As somebody that is a sharp investor, how are you looking to take this situation and make it a positive for investors? Yeah.

So what I would say to people right now is this is not the time to be a hero. You know, first of all, any analysis, you know, on my own podcast, The Eisen Playbook, I had my old partners on last week, which we just posted. And we were talking about, you know, if we were all still together running our hedge fund, what would we do?

And I think we all concluded that we would not press shorts. We would just take the book down on both sides. We would just de-risk and we would sit and wait. And the reason is that when, you know, in normal times, there are a lot of different variables that move markets and move stocks. And right now, that whole world is out the window. There's one variable that matters, and his name is President Donald Trump. And that means volatility.

So what I would say to people is if you feel, if you, if, if you're literally having a conniption fit every single day, you can't sleep and Lord knows you need to sleep, sell some things in your portfolio, you know, sell positions that are not your favorite positions, you know, maybe even on your, some of your favorite positions sell a little, you'll feel better and, and wait, just wait. You don't have to, you don't have to,

be there for the first uptick if things get resolved. Because if things get resolved, it'll be upticked for a very long time. You know, the downside risk here from a 10, I mean, I think the risk of a trade war is less than 50%. How much less than 50%? I don't know yet. But that's not infinitesimal.

So if there's a full-blown trade war, the market would go considerably lower. I can't handicap for you right now. If everybody settles except for China, would we still consider that a trade war? No, I would not consider that a trade war. China becomes an outlier to the problem. An outlier to the problem. I think that's dealable. That can be dealt with. Okay. All right, fair. Because I think it seems like everybody puts so much emphasis on China's reaction to what happens here. Yeah.

Well, they certainly did that on Friday. Yeah. Yeah, they did. But down 10% was their market down 10% of Friday. Which was sort of weird. I mean, what did you expect? Did you actually seriously think that China was not going to retaliate at all? Of course they were going to retaliate. They had to. Yeah. They had to save face. Yeah.

Well, let's get back to the retail investors here because obviously when traditionally speaking, when the market falls like this, the money runs to bonds, which then drop the yields on bonds. And for what I do, obviously real estate, we're so intimately tied to that 10-year treasury bond, which fell under 4%, but then bounced yesterday back over 4%, which I thought was really strange. What's your thought there?

I actually didn't understand that move other than people were trying to buy stocks and so they were selling bonds. Otherwise, it made no sense to me. I would just pass if things stay hairy for a while, yields will go back down. Okay. Because obviously for what we want to do, and this is where your kind of crossover of knowledge becomes so interesting to me. How do you think this affects the real estate market? Where are we going from here?

Well, if we're talking about residential real estate, as we all know, the residential real estate market is locked right now. And it's locked because of COVID. And the reason why it's locked because of COVID is that everybody with a pulse refinanced their mortgage 3%. And today, if you take out a mortgage...

I mean, what's the latest rate? Six, six and a half? No. Well, that's the thing. With the bond yield going down on Friday, we got to six and a half, but as soon as it came back, we bounced back up to six, seven, five. Okay. So call it six, seven, five. Yeah. So one thing I learned very early in school is that six, seven, five is more than three. In fact, it's more than twice as much.

Yeah. And mathematically, that's a problem. My guess is rates would have to go mortgage rates would have to go below six.

to get the more to get the residential market unlock unlock it my magic number for that is five five um i think when it hits five five there's an onslaught of pent-up demand for people that needed to do something that wouldn't you know you're not gonna swallow seven from three but you'll swallow five five especially if the pain in your current living situation is great enough right you'll you'll swallow that and make them i mean if your kids are climbing the walls and they got no place to sleep

You're going to, you're going to not to five, five. So with this going on, if you had to look back at the housing market now, is this a bet you would make for it or against it going into the spring, which is traditionally our busiest time? I think there's just so many variables. I wouldn't be making any bets right at this point. It's just too hard. Too many variables. It's all, it's all down to one variable. It's one variable. It's all one variable. Mark is a very, very difficult, you know, if you go back to oh eight, uh,

The variable was the balance sheets of the large banks and what I need. Everybody was trying to do detective work on, on what, what they had. It turned out they had a lot of bad stuff. And that was, that was a bad variable. Today, the variable is the president of the United States and I'm not an, I'm, and he hasn't called me. I can't give you any insights. Yeah. He fired me on television once, but he hasn't called me recently either. So there you go. You know, I,

I get kind of what he's trying to do. And I understand that could go very quickly. So how long do you think if there's no, you think that if there can't be movement here, let's say it's a stalemate and we really start to sting here. Do you think knowing what you know about him, I'm seeing what you've seen that he starts to back off this. No way. He's all in on this. This is all. He's been his presidency on this. This is it. This is it. You can't, you can't put all your chips into the poker table and then say,

Sorry, I take them back. Then you look like a fool. Is there one of the players that's out there that we're currently negotiating with? You think if they fall, all of them fall?

because like the eu i think pretty strongly came to the table this week if i'm not mistaken yeah but it's going to take time i really do think they're all going to come to the table i think they don't have a choice do you think this is the most important our consumer is by far the most important entity in terms of economics in the world you have to be here you can't you can't be mercedes-benz and not sell cars in the united states of america the company doesn't function

So, like I said, I feel pretty good that people will be rational enough that they'll try and work out as good a deal as they can. That's going to take time. This is complicated. I mean, you're talking about tariff, VAT.

And any other kind of regulatory restriction stuff that I don't really even know enough about. I just know it exists. Yeah. Well, I mean, they flat prohibit, you know, Ford Motor Company from selling their cars in certain parts of the world. Right. Yet we import cars from here. We import everybody. Everybody's trading cars here. Yeah. It makes no sense. Yeah.

Let's talk about the big short. Let's talk about that for a little bit. So let's go back in time. Obviously, that was I lived through that. I've been in this business a long time. Las Vegas was ground zero for the financial crisis.

And I have my good scenes of the movie in Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. And accurate scenes. I mean, literally every stripper in this town on three houses just kind of out was, I wouldn't know anything about that. Well, I have a question. Let's talk about the semantics of the movie first, before we talk about the actual situation. So what is it like when you're sitting there and they're like, okay, Steve Carell's going to play you. What's that like? Well, it's actually a bit more complicated than that. So more and more amusing. Yeah.

So I think in the fall of 2014, Michael Lewis called me because the rights to his book were sold right after he published it, which is something like 2010. And then nothing happened. So I figured that is never going to happen. So then in 2014, I think it was like October, he called me and he said that the movie was going to get made.

And Adam McKay, who had been, who was this writer, et cetera, had written the script and was going to direct and was going to call me. And I go, yeah, sure, Michael. Nice talking to you. And sure enough, a week later, I get a phone call from Adam McKay.

and it was kind of a funny conversation. He says to me, you know, he's written this script. He's going to be in New York. He wanted to come have dinner with me. And I said, sure. And then he says, he said, you know, we're trying to cast it. And at this point, it's quite possible that Brad Pitt's going to play you. And I said, I said, listen, let me just interject here. I said, the only thing that Brad Pitt and I have in common is really good hair. And that's it.

And I do have very good hair, I have to say. But that was all we had come. And there's a chance your wife loves you both. And there is a chance that my wife will leave me for the guy who's going to buy me. Yes.

So then it turned out that he couldn't do it. He had scheduling conflict. He took a much smaller role in the movie, and then Steve Carell played me. And I met him like twice. That was it. That was that. So the scene in that movie, I think probably your character's most famous scene, and I think it was based on a real event, is when Ryan Gosling's talking about you coming to Vegas to the Mortgage Bankers Convention, and you raise your hand and ask a question. It was Venetian.

Did that really walk us through the real scenario of what that, so a, that really happened. It was a little bit different in that the way the movie depicted it, it was like a massive meeting and it was actually not a massive meeting. It was a medium sized meeting that was hosted by option one, which back then was the subprime mortgage lender that was owned by H and R block. And I was sitting in, in, in the audience with my partner, Danny Moses and,

And the scene about where he goes, zero probability. I did that because I was that obnoxious and rude back then. And as soon as I say it, my phone rings and I look at it and it's my wife. And I turned it in and I go, I got to take this. I got to get out of here. And I picked up my wife and I walked out. And that is what happened.

By the way, Danny literally crawled like under the chair. Oh, I can imagine he would have. I can imagine he would have. When that was going on, let's talk about the moment in that moment when you saw that potentially happening. What did you see in the markets at the time that you thought this might become something? And has there been any parallel since in the real estate market?

So let me go back a little bit because I have a very, very long history with the subprime mortgage industry. In fact, I was a sell side analyst at Oppenheimer in the 90s and I cover a whole bunch of different financial services companies.

One of the subsectors that I covered was Generation One, I like to call it, 1.0 subprime mortgages. You know, companies like if you're like the money store. Remember Phil Rizzuto for the money? Oh, sure. Yeah. So that was one of the companies that I covered. I was run by a guy who was the son of the founder. I think his name was Mark Turtletow. And in 1998, for various, very complicated reasons, most of the sector pretty much went bankrupt. Yeah.

And I lived that. And that was a very searing experience for me. And the irony was that across the hall for me was Henry Blodgett.

who was a young analyst at Oppenheimer. And he was getting on the call talking about how the internet was going to take over the world. And this is a direct quote, dynastic levels of wealth were being, were going to be created. It's one of the greatest predictions in history. Dynastic levels. Dynastic levels of wealth were going to be created. And he was right from the internet. He said this in 1998. And, um,

So here is Henry Blodgett talking about dynastic levels of wealth. And I have a subsector that went to dust. So after I left Oppenheimer, I went to a hedge fund. And then in 2000, and I started at Frontpoint in 2004. But in 2002, Subprime Mortgage 2.0 went public. And the funny thing about Subprime Mortgage 2.0 was that it was run by the same CEOs who ran 1.0. They just changed the names. So as early as 2002,

I said to myself, I've seen this play. It's a play in three acts. People don't change. It's a play in three acts. Act three is going to be a tragedy. I'm just going to be there when it happens. When that will be, I don't know. Now, what I didn't foresee in 2002, that the industry would literally be 10 times bigger in 2006 than it was in 1998. I think in 2002, the subprime mortgage industry originated like 50 billion.

And in 2006, it originated $500 billion. Well, didn't Clinton also incentivize banks to do this? There's some policy that was made? Was it him that did that? It doesn't ring a bell. Okay. They didn't need an incentive. They made tons of money without any government incentives. Fair, fair.

So I was waiting. You know, when you're waiting for something to happen, you look for evidence that it will happen. And what I saw was that in 2000, by the summer of 2006,

We had access to Moody's securitization data. All the securitizations report all their credit data every single month. And by late spring, early summer 2006, it was very clear to us that something was wrong, that delinquency levels in these new pools were going bad very, very rapidly. And that's when we started to investigate. Are you someone who tries to drive while distracted by your phone? Someone who props it on the steering wheel or peeks down at it for a glance?

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the, um, shorting subprime paper. And that, then there's that scene where Ryan Gosling shows up in our office that happened. That was, that was a guy named with the Jenga tower. Yeah. All that stuff happened. I mean, it's a great, it was a great way to definitely talk about what was going to happen there. Do you see any, any parallels between that time and any of the mark, any of the real estate markets since?

I actually don't. Yeah. The first thing I would say is I don't think a subprime mortgage has been made in the United States since 2008. At least not that I'm aware of.

And the other thing that I would say is that, you know, after Dodd-Frank was passed, a new position in the Fed was created called Vice Chair of Financial Supervision. And that's a fancy name for chief bank regulator of the United States. I mean, it's a crazy thing to say that the United States never had a chief bank regulator until 2011. Right.

And that position was occupied by Fed Governor Daniel Turullo, who's truly one of the unsung heroes of the last 15 years because he really did an amazing job. He de-risked the banks. He de-levered the banks. So, you know, I worry about a lot of things. I don't worry about the health of the U.S. financial system anymore. You know, the reason I asked that, it was kind of a loaded question. I figured you were going to say no because being in the business that we're in, in real estate, you

You're constantly talking to people that are pocket prognostic. I'm just waiting for the market to crash. It's not going to happen again because I try to explain to people equity doesn't go to foreclosure. Somebody steps in to take that. Somebody comes in to save that deal way before it hits foreclosure. Equity never goes to the steps. For some reason, people still in the residential world can't buy that. I don't get it.

So let me ask you this. If you were somebody right now, and again, self-serving for me, you're a great understander of the markets. Would you hold off on buying anything right now? Or what would you do? I mean, I'm talking about- I can only tell you what I'm doing. Okay, perfect. I sold a few things that I didn't have great confidence in, and I'm sitting on my hands.

So where do you think all this cash is? Because there's a lot of investors doing the same thing. Are there just absolute war chests being built up by hedge funds? Hedge funds, I guarantee you, have de-risked and they're waiting. And so there's a lot of cash on the sidelines. But that cash is not going to get deployed until there's clarity.

They're sure. All right. Well, I want to ask about one more thing that has nothing to do with anything you might know about, but I just want to give an opinion, which is this. Now, in the last couple of weeks, it seems like Elon Musk and the Doge department wants to take aim at our elected officials for how does somebody that makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year become worth tens of millions of dollars? It's a good question. And, uh,

Is that something that you feel needs to be looked into? Where are you with politicians that somehow become overnight millionaires in the stock market and they're the best traders on the street? Well, do I think it should be investigated? Sure. Any type of corruption should be investigated. Do I think that's going to move markets? I don't think that's going to move markets. No. Do you think that...

What do you think, how much would our government change if we took the ability to trade out of our legislator's hands? I don't know. I honestly don't know. That's a good question. I've actually thought about it. I'll think about it. I'll get back to you. See, this is the podcast that makes you think, Steve. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm going to think about that one. Which is good. Let me ask you this, because with the rise of AI, I just talked to Ari Meisel not too long ago, and we were talking about AI, and I actually asked him if

Do you think maybe there's some thinking within the White House about bringing manufacturing back to this country where AI is replacing low-level workers at just an alarming rate? Do you think they're trying to bring manufacturing back in anticipation of having sort of a job shortage? I don't think so. I mean, it certainly may give them more impetus, but I think Trump has been thinking about this for a very long time, way before there was AI.

So even in your industry, how is AI trading? How is AI changing what you guys do? It helps research. It helps. I mean, the access to information, you know, you ask AI a question, you know, if you want to find out, you know, certain information that was more difficult to research in the past, you

Boom, you get an answer now. Is it making your job harder because the speed of information is so much faster? There I would say no. I think I'm going to say something a little radical. Information is overrated. And let me explain what I mean by that. You know, people think.

you know, when they talk about what my partners and I did in 2007 and 2008, that somehow we had access to information that other people did not have. And that actually is not true. You know, the most important, the apps, I mean, there was a lot of different types of information. It was anecdotal information that we did a lot of. But the most important information out there was the securitization data that came out every single month. And all you had to do to get that information was pay Moody's about $15,000 a year.

I think that's what we paid. Whatever it was. But you know what? The entire fixed income world had that information. They just didn't understand how to look at it. No, no. They understood how to look at it better than we did because they've been doing that for years. We just interpreted it differently. They had made money for so long in this paper that they came up with all these psychological excuses. Well, yeah, that is bad, but it'll get better.

And so my view is that information is important, but it's the interpretation of the information that's even more important. Well, you know, it's funny because I was just talking about this with somebody else. We were talking about how Wharton has become, which don't get me wrong, I'm not a Wharton grad, but we're talking about how Wharton has become this school for great operators. And more CEOs come out of Harvard than come out of Wharton. And I said, why do you think that is? And they said, because I think Wharton's school of business is very linear thinking.

It's very, this, this must equal this. Whereas they felt that Harvard had taught more open mindedness in a way to interpret the data. It's because this person was saying there's science in the numbers, there's science in the math, but there's also got to be art and nuance to the interpretation, which is what makes big moves in the market, big moves in business.

Is that something that you guys would say? I have nothing great to say about the University of Pennsylvania, by the way. Because I went there and I got a lot of problems with the school. I was not aware there was a war between you and the University of Pennsylvania when we started that question. That's public knowledge. I was not aware. Is it public knowledge? It's public information, yeah. All right.

Well, chat dbt did not return that for us. They hear war. So you might need to update your model to that, but now I'm going to go look it up. I'm going to go find it. You should look it up. I'm going to do that. Well, Steve, thanks so much. If they want to find you, if they want to connect more with you, how do they find you? Just go to the eyes and playbook.com. That's our podcast website. We'll have, we'll soon have another website, which will be broader. It'll be steveisman.com, but it's not up yet. And I'll be dropping a podcast pretty much once a week.

Perfect. We look forward to listening to that. And let me ask you one more question before we go on. Sure. Because I think this is one of the biggest problems with the world right now. And I want to know your process for this. How do you, how do you decide where you get your information?

Because there's so much of it out there. How do you decide this person's qualified, not qualified? This is a good source. That's a bad source. I mean, I'll tell you what I read and then, and then I'll tell you how, what I focus on. I read the newspapers every single morning. You know, I come in, I turn on my Bloomberg and I look at the news. And then what I do is I read a lot of sell side research. And what I have found over the years is that, um,

And there are exceptions to this. But generally speaking, the boutique firms, you know, little firms that most people haven't heard of, you know, not the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley's of the world. They're good analysts there, too, tend to produce research. It's a lot. Sometimes you could say unbiased, but I would say deeper dives into what's happening. And I tend to learn a lot more from those people.

Cool. All right. Well, thanks so much. All right, guys, man, I hope that helped you today. And you actually have some information when you're sitting around the dining table with your mother who knows more about it than you do. You have some quality information from the man that probably knows more than all of us. But remember, man, I think if anything else, be careful where you get your information, because if you just start repeating something that's nonsense, it makes you look like nonsensical as well. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

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