All In Podcast Episode 160 Recap and Notes January 5 2024

January 5 2024

• Friedberg bought radiation suits for his family and dogs
• Predictions!
• Biggest Political Winner
  • Sacks
    • Vladimir Putin - turned it around in 2023, stabilized his economy, gained upper hand militarily in Ukraine, will consolidate gains in Ukraine, US media’s stalemate narrative will be exposed as a lie, Russia will win the war - he will become more influential throughout the global south - he will be seen as a conquering hero
      • Argentina said they will not join BRICS (Javier Milei is very pro american, pro Israel) - might be a one-off or a trend, TBD
      • West made Putin a victor by plunging into a war without knowing what we were doing
      • The global south will use Russia as a proxy to reject American authority (see Fiona Hill article)
    • Last year said Asian American candidates will win Affirmative Action ruling - got it right
    • Big mistake by Biden to antagonize Saudis but see how Putin was welcomed royally
  • Friedberg
    • Independent political party
      • 1992 Ross Perot got 19-20% of the vote
      • This year to be seen how RFK Jr will do
    • Last year said Saudi - got it right
  • Chamath
    • Independent centrists - this election will start the breakdown of the 2 party system
    • Last year - spread trade long Nikki Haley, short DeSantis - won
  • Jason
    • Dark horse presidential candidate
    • Last year said Trump would get indicted, etc - kinda got it right
• Biggest Political Loser
  • Chamath
    • This year - Kochs and whoever they back
    • Last year - Desantis - got it right
  • Jason
    • Netanyahu
    • Last year - Desantis - got it right
  • Sacks
    • Collective West
      • made huge bet to pressure and challenge Putin - crapped out
      • Now Israel invasion of Gaza doesn’t seem to be going well - Admiral Kirby basically admitted as much
      • Europe is suffering economically - shakeups will happen
    • Ukraine is suffering - 10M people have left the country, 20M people left and half are pensioners, 0.5M died 😟
    • Last year - California - went from $76B surplus in 2022 to $68B in 2023 - got it right
  • Friedberg
    • Ukraine issue and US won’t have resources to commit to Ukraine and it won’t be able to join NATO
    • Last year - IMF would step in for countries - didn’t pan out much
• Biggest Business Winner
  • Jason
    • Folks who have training data
      • New business model can come about - federate your account with NYT, etc to do ChatGPT on top of it
    • Last year - laid off tech workers and startups
  • Friedberg
    • Commodities businesses - big boom will come back in 2024 - people sold down inventory and it will be built back - cash will come back, stockpiles will go up
    • Last year - Open AI - got it right - highest market cap gain
  • Sacks
    • Anduril for its Roadrunner product announced last year - drone disruptor, for drone defense
      • Jason wants to join Anduril board after buying upto 2% of its shares
    • Last year - America’s natural gas - got it right - hit new records
  • Chamath
    • Bootstrapped startup or profitable startup - best will be bootstrapped/profitable startup - we are underestimating how cheap it will be to copy an existing business in 2024 - copilots, cost of compute, cost of energy all going down 10x - so can create companies for very cheap in a matter of months
    • Last year - Relativity Space
• Biggest Business Loser
  • Chamath
    • Peak valuations of professional sports
      • Examples from last year
        • LIV tour vs PGA
        • Saudi Arabia just bought a bunch of players
        • NIL in NCAA - college players are making millions to be in college
        • Meaningful uptick in churn from streamers
    • Last year - google search
  • Sacks
    • German economy
      • Loss of cheap russian gas has hit their industrial
        • (Someone blew up the nordstream pipeline)
      • Car industry has been massively impacted by a sudden glut of cheap cars from China
    • Last year - consumer
  • Friedberg
    • Vertical SaaS - copilots will make things so much more customizable - companies can build their own stuff at low cost
    • Last year - Later stage startups, B, C, D series
  • Jason
    • Smartphones - even Apple is finding it hard to keep people buying it
    • Last year - white collar workers without hard skills
• Biggest Business Deal of 2024
  • Jason
    • Tiktok goes public
    • Last year - Amazon getting into healthcare
  • Chamath
    • Starlink will go public (same as last year)
    • Last year - Starlink goes public
  • Sacks
    • Whatever the Fed decides to do to replace/extend BTFP (bank term funding program)
    • Last year - deal between Putin and Xi - got it right
  • Friedberg
    • Petro Yuan trade
    • Rights holders getting Gen AI deals - new version of zazzle kinda thing
    • Last year - Petro Yuan trade
• Most contrarian belief
  • Jason
    • Apple doing GenAI
    • Last year - american exceptionalism
  • Chamath
    • Enterprise value of OpenAI goes down (a secular industry wide trend)
      • This AI-AWS thing is too slow
    • Last year - inflation wont fall that much - got it wrong
  • Sacks
    • Soft landing gets very bumpy
    • Last year - end of bromance between Biden and Zelenskyy - got it right
      • Politico had article about how administration wants to distance itself from the conflict
  • Friedberg
    • Increased probability that a nuclear weapon will be used in conflict
      • Turkey might not be the best ally to the West anymore - might see first fracturing of NATO
    • Last year - beginning of the end of USD as reserve currency
• Best Performing Asset
  • Chamath
    • Spread trade - public software index (short will private late stage mostly saas companies)
    • Last year - cash and front end of yield curve - did well
  • Jason
    • Consumer comfort services - doordash, airbnb, uber (talking his book)
    • Last year - seed stage investing
  • Sacks
    • Energy stocks - so much risk of conflict breaking out - people aren’t looking at what’s happening between Venezuela and Guyana - former is trying to steal latter’s offshore oil assets - Ethiopia and Eritrea or Egypt conflicts potentially - or US conflict with Iran - etc - oil prices could go up
    • Last year - t bills
  • Friedberg
    • Uranium ETF
    • Last year - semiconductor and capital equipment - up 60% so did well
• Worst Performing Asset
  • Jason
    • LLM startups
    • Last year - energy - right
  • Chamath
    • Probably late stage private mostly saas companies
    • Last year - tech, energy, junk debt - right
  • Sacks
    • Bet against Magnificent 7 - S&P 493 will catch up a little - whatever goes up will come down - they went up based on AI promise - so why won’t others also go up?
    • Last year - office hours in SF - right
  • Friedberg
    • Vertical SaaS (and long low cost, low code companies) - AI and low code tools are very deflationary - SaaS business model was a temporary phenomenon - engineer arbitrage - software companies have a long way to go down - they have been high margin -
    • Last year - consumer credit - right
• Most anticipated trend
  • Jason
    • Efficiency due to AI advances and outsourcing
    • Last year - austerity
  • Chamath
    • Most important year for Bitcoin that has ever existed
      • Days away from a series of ETFs - Bitcoin will now cross the chasm and see mainstream adoption - parents and grandparents will buy it
    • Last year - austerity
  • Friedberg
    • Software engineered bio products because of AI
    • Last year - cell gene therapy becoming more mainstream - steady pace - sickle cell product came out
  • Sacks
    • AI breakthroughs becoming more mainstream
    • Last year - Trump’s influence on GOP waning - got it wrong (predicted it coz of how red wave became red puddle and candidates he supported failed) - all the lawsuits have galvanized the base to support him
• Most anticipated Media
  • Jason
    • Yung Spielburg new album, Gladiator 2, Netflix’s 3 body problem
    • Last year - Oppenheimer
  • Chamath
    • Mr Beast added a 100M subscribers on YouTube in 2023 - so looking forward to his videos
    • Last year - Dune 2 (delayed)
  • Friedberg
    • AI generated news
    • Last year - Generative AI based media
  • Sacks
    • The Founders - by Jimmy Soni - Sacks and friend working with Drake’s company to make this a TV show or something
      • (also Gladiator 2, House of the Dragon Season 2)
    • Last year - Oppenheimer
• Emotional condition heading into 2024
  • Sacks - feels level but world will be turbulent
  • Jason - exhilarated, enthusiastic, creative
  • Chamath - cautious and pensive
  • Friedberg - excited about work, nervous about world
    • Republicans might force some budget cuts