Our 2026 Predictions

Fast-thinking, and smooth-drink-in.

The views and opinions shared on the better with bourbon podcasts are our own and those of our guests. Nothing we discussed should be taken as financial, legal, business, or gambling advice.

“Don't make investment, business, or betting decisions based on our conversations, as you should always talk to a qualified professional.”

Completely jacked, where in glittery eyeliner, big eyelashes, lipstick, and glitter all over his body, he looks at Jamie and I guess I get you boys, something, you know, really deep voice, because Jamie's like, "Yeah, I guess I'll do my lights!"

Yeah, I guess, sorry, man, we stopped serving beer an hour ago. He's a problem, I'll take too hard again! I'm kidding, I guess that's a two bottles of water, you can tell the fun fellow guys.

Anyway, so, welcome to Better with Bourbon. Today is January 28th, 26th of year by Lord, we're in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and this is our episode number two, Bradley. What are we doing tonight? Well, we're going to be drinking some bourbon for sure. Like that, yeah, right off to get get go, we're not waiting for a good reason. Last time in the edits at 2.40 in the morning, I think our bourbon tasting got cut out, and thanks, thank you to our guest last time Dave Broshis and Skypoint Rainy brought two bottles of the Angel's Empty, which lets us talk about the Angel's Empty a little bit, yeah, we probably should, so, we probably drink more bourbon than we should, which is how you end up with a podcast called "Better with Barron."

Because every time we just sit down and talk about anything, we typically have a bourbon, the Angel's Empty is definitely one that we will not say no to, and one of the things that I think I like about it is these guys were the first or one of the first to take whiskey that's American style out of American oak, and then rebarrel it in a different, different type of wood for two, three years to add the flavor.

“And if I'm not mistaken, I believe that these guys used very finished, important wine barrels, yeah, so everybody's doing that now, and I believe that these guys were one of the first to do that, and didn't make a big deal about it, right?”

It's just in little letters down here, but everybody else puts a whole separate package together with it, but it's a great bourbon, I mean, it is great bourbon, good for anything.

It is, if you watched the bourbon barometer last time, you saw, as the show went on, it went down. There was no hard hiccups in the meantime, but we did have some comments from viewers, we appreciate very much saying, hey, we noticed the level of bourbon dropping as you guys want, so, but there were some other comments that you wanted to pull out. Now, we love the negative comments. In fact, our outtakes this past week got over 150,000 views on Facebook alone, completely, but the negative comments I think are always the best, you know, after watching our show, the one was, that's exactly why I quit drinking.

“And, you know, we're here to help. So, you know, if we can help anybody out on that matter, we understand another comment was, and there's an alcohol shortage ever.”

Yeah, a lot of drinking, I guess, short, is not alcohol. Right, so, so definitely want to thank both sets of commenters for your engagement with our little property here. Those that are offering praise and love, thanks for listening and watching and those that are. And, we've, we've read every comment and we've gotten so much, whether it's a text, a direct message, a comment on our one of our social media feeds. Everyone is meaningful and thank you so much. First episode, we've jumped up into the top, you know, as of airing on this episode, we were number 26 on Apple Podcast and climbing quickly on Spotify. So, I'm going to just go to pat us on the back. It's pretty big achievement for a guy that doesn't have a Facebook page.

So, you know, it's a huge achievement. You did your hair tonight. Yeah, I mean, it's short to you and everything, everything. It's because our topics are topics are hot, give, give them a sniff of what we're doing. What's really hot is that dress periods weren't tonight, you know, that's got the room steaming. You know, when we first got here, I didn't know if you guys noticed, but it's a little cooler than it was last week. Initially, I thought it was the weather outside, but then I realized it wasn't Dave Browsha's talking for five hours in our studio. So, that quickly came to mind. Thank you, Dave, for the day we were here.

So, so topics tonight. We got kind of a variety show. We're going to do a little bit of business in tech segment one. We're going to walk through a topic that is near and dear to our hearts.

We're going to talk through kind of the AI economy, the data center economy, and stories that have come to lightly that are, you know, maybe pointing out some some cracks and chunks in the armor around financing for these endeavors. This is something that you know, Brad writes about, I kind of work in this world from points of point. So, we're going to have a little bit of detail on what's going on with a handful of companies in video Microsoft, open AI and core weave. And then we're going to change, we're going to change speed a little bit.

“Totally going to change speed. We're going to dig into why Gen Z especially is drinking less. Yeah, alcohol consumption has bottomed here in the United States. This obviously is a mystery to us. No clue why or how something like this could happen.”

So we're going to talk about it. See if we can figure it out and understand it. And then third, we're going to leave you with something that's kind of fun. We're going to go through

to some random questions and make some predictions for 2026 around sports, business, the market and the like and crypto. Yeah, crypto. Yeah, all the bugs. So are the big stuff. So we can come back next year and review it. The next year will instead of 26 when we would like to or six. All right. I'm going to have a podcast. Another recording we'll get back to remember what we said. That's exactly right. So we're going to we're going to dig in after we take a little bit of a break. Thank you for joining us here on episode two. We're going to get into it here in a minute. Cheers.

“In a world increasingly governed by algorithms. What happens to the soul?”

AI and God can the two co-exist is a bold and timely book that explores faith, agency and ethics in the age of artificial intelligence. Drawing from scripture, legal insight and philosophical depth, Bradley J. Martino confronts one of the most urgent questions of our time. And divine sovereignty survives synthetic systems from biometric ideas and neural implants to digital litages and algorithmic control. This book examines how emerging technologies may reshape worship, identity and freedom itself with piercing clarity and prophetic imagination.

Martino challenges readers to discern the difference between convenience and compliance between code and covenant, whether you're a technologist, theologian or simply a seeker in a digital age, AI and God can the two co exist. offers a roadmap for spiritual resilience and ethical stewardship. It's not just a book, it's a call to awaken available on Amazon. Story number one tonight, as we previewed, we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on with AI economy and data centers. No matter where you live in the country, I'm sure that you see plenty of press and stories about data development or their press.

Yeah, about the pace of development around the need for data centers, the need for compute, which means just computational ability and how that's going to push the economy forward here over the next several years. There's a bunch of key players in this space that have been driving what has been a remarkable kind of moonshot for these companies from really kind of mid 2023 through the current day. The reason a lot of this started mid 2023 is because we had an interest rate situation, remember 2022 interest rate started going up with a lot of inflation.

When that curve started to come down, we were able to cut rates a few times. It kick started a bunch of what some call speculative investing, what others would call necessary investment in technology infrastructure data infrastructure power infrastructure that has driven a whole new class of company up into the right on the charts.

“We talked a little bit about it, but very specifically, but do you think it was just because of the interest rates?”

I mean, I think it was also just the way the GPUs were coming on. With the GPU power coming on in the capability and the need for bigger computational space, I mean literally space.

As small as these chips are, but as powerful as they are and as demanding as AI has now evolved into.

Yeah, you make a good point, you're right, and economic movement like this can't result from just lower interest rates. Those that timing needs to be met with innovation and the ability for capital to find its way into the business and if they have the right leaders there you have the vision you're 100%.

That was the perfect kind of crossroads or merge of two things coming together. So we're going to talk about why from here to this point, the GPU thing, the technology advantage, the spread and the need for AI and the data center to support it has been the drive. I think from here forward, a lot of that's going to change for reasons that we're going to get into. So let's start. So back in September 2025, two of the major firms that are involved in this kind of moon shot open AI and video open AI is run by a guy.

I'm a small man who founded, you know, this AI, LLM, right, that's what open AI does, they own and have invented chatGPT, Sam Altman initially partnered up with Elon Musk to start this thing, Elon was a founding investor. And they started essentially very deep research on what's called large language models that allow for. The computer to start to understand your preferences and this is the thinking behind all AI and I'm sure many of you have played with AI at some point if you haven't, you got to do it.

“What you need to have these large language models, both one be invented, right, and two be leveraged by companies to do anything in the business world, you have to have two kind of two key component, three key components.”

You're going to have a really powerful chip, right, and that's what Nvidia makes, Nvidia is run by a company, a guy named Jensen Wong who is a, you know, a brilliant thinker and luminary in the space.

But you also have to have power, okay, powers really important, we're going to talk a little bit about power and you've heard some of this, if you've seen stories about data centers going up in your area. And that story was a comment about how power rates are likely to go up and we're using water and there's going to be a degradation of kind of the services and towns because of this movement. The third thing you need is the actual data center, right, so you need land, you need power, and you need compute, right, chips.

Today I, in the video, announced the partnership back in September 25, where they agreed for Nvidia to invest $100 billion in to open AI to fund their commercial buildout. And in return, the understanding was open AI because they need three things, they need power, they need facilities and they need chips would turn back around and use some of that money to buy in videos GPUs, which are, there's kind of two classes. The chips set now is the H-100 pretty soon, they're going to be rolling out the black well, these things are changing the nature of computing any comment you want to have.

Well, they are, I mean, we've, they've gone to the H-100's 200's, I, every year they're coming out with a more powerful, more efficient chip, which is important, given the power usage, given initially the water usage, now with the cooling loops in place that they're liquid cooling loops that they're putting in place.

Fresh water is not so critical as it was, still significant, but many regards are just passing that buck up strain to the power plant.

So, you know, it's not as efficient as a evaporative cooling used to be in the traditional sense, but yes, the chips are, I've been the big driver, open AI, I think an interesting fact about open AI, do you know what it, same old one salary is every year? No, zero, he refuses to take a salary, it's good, he's got the same salary we have.

“Yes, so I think he's making a little bit more.”

With that, but now he's, you know, and I don't think it's altruistic, I think he's just showing that he's in it for the right reasons. And I'm sure he has equity, or if he doesn't have equity, you know, God bless him, but he is investing in other companies. As we mentioned last week, the Greenland and the rich minerals that are underneath there, so he's, I think he's one of those investors in that company. And a couple other very high tech companies that are kind of spreading and spreading out of it.

So, well, that's exactly where we're going next. Altman and open AI, specifically, need for this environment of free flowing capital, free flowing liquidity and mutual investment and other tech leaders to happen in order for them to fund this build out.

“So, the idea here is that, and this is important, we need to say, in video gives open AI money.”

They invest in the company, and then open AI turns back around and buys and videos stuff. Okay, that concept is called circular financing, where you come back to in a minute. But that deal kicked off a flurry of announcements by open AI.

And again, this is just last year, third, fourth quarter.

Open AI did a deal for six gigawatts worth of computing power with chip manufacturer AMD. They did a 10 gigawatts cloud deal with Oracle, which is a massive cloud provider. The historic leader in the database space, they've been around forever. And then they did another deal for custom chips that are going to be with broad time, broad time to the blue communications chips. They don't do the compute, don't train the LLMs, but help with the movement of that data center.

So it begs the question, well, shit, can open AI afford this?

“Do they make enough money to come $1.5 trillion on a pocket?”

Being the market nerd that I've reclaimed to be sometimes. I decided to sit down and say, well, how much money is open AI making? And I was a little bit shocked to find, in 2023, open AI has first year they reported revenue.

They did about $2 billion in revenue.

They're a public company, so we don't get to the penny reports like, like, public companies, they're private. They did about $2 billion in revenue, but they lost $2 billion in debt. Okay, in 2024, revenue jumped up about $3x, it jumped up to about $6 billion. So that's great growth, $300 per cent year every year, but they lost $5 billion. Okay, so I went lost one from $3 billion to $5 billion.

2025, same thing, revenue jumps from six to 13, so they grow better than 100 per cent again. Everybody's really pleased with this, but the loss on that $13 billion in revenue is now $8 to $9 billion. So, well, we did a 2026. Sam Holtman has been taking some hits in the press for his reporting that run rate for 2026. Run rate is essentially taking your revenue for a 12 month period, not necessarily a calendar year.

It's going to be about $20 billion, but at the same time,

“opening has going to lose $17 billion on their 20 billion revenue, right?”

So this raises some really interesting questions because every time these announcements come out that open AI is doing a deal with companies like Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, Microsoft, AMD, whoever they're doing deal with, the market shoots up in the air and a really large percentage of the NASDAQ, the type of NASDAQ index, our foundries that build chips, memory stocks that use different types of chips to do memory, semi-conductor equipment companies that make this semi, all of this stuff is related to the semis and AI and data centers,

and they just keep going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up. When you're talking about the semis, are we still talking about tech? I'm not even going to make a comment on that. Yeah, I'm just going to keep going around. I might be the bourbon talk, and I'm just sitting here listening.

All right, so these are a lot of deals, right?

“And questions start to emerge about, you know, are the people making these deals doing their due diligence?”

How is opening AI going to come up with this money? Do they have a revenue run rate to support this? And it's not necessarily because they're doing bad, they're doing great. They're running 100% year over year, but we're talking about really, really large numbers, and increasing amounts of financing that needs to come into allow these plans to, you know, to keep growing.

So, as questions about financial terms started to get assessed, in Q4 of last year, a lot of these high-flying tech companies really started to take it on the chin. Market turns south a little bit, you know, there was some negativity after this 250%, you know, three year run. And a lot of these smaller companies, not the majors, guys who supply chip manufacturers and semiconductors, maybe we don't know the names of dropped 50 to 70% in Q4 really quickly.

And the concern is really a situation where a scenario emerges where open AI or some other player in the same situation, some high-growth, low-capital company, who's got a groundbreaking technology, but not enough money to do what they need to with it, are they becoming too big to fail financially, okay? So, we hit on that a little bit in the first episode, because as I mentioned, Microsoft owns 27 or 28% of open AI. Well, that's a really great comment. We have a graphic that we're going to put up here in the edit,

that's going to show some of the nature of these things, right? And Microsoft's a major player in this, their name's going to come up again. We okay, bearing on time. Okay. So, I'll thank being there too. So, I mean, there are two major tech financial, well-healed players, massive war chest. They've got tons and tons of money. And I'll just interject with, to me, it's kind of like the Amazon model all over again.

It's not making money for all these years. It's going into the infrastructure, it's going into the build out.

But we know it's going to be good because the usage, the adoption, is amazing.

So, it's worth their losses. And we're talking 17 billion dollars in loss here and there. That sounds like a lot of money, but these companies are now being valued close to a trillion dollars. So, if you put it in those terms, it's almost like putting the new, what used to be the billion-dollar threshold, versus the million-dollar threshold, is now the billion-dollar versus the trillion-dollar threshold. And so, 17 billion maybe isn't quite that much.

But I'm going to let you continue down your nerdy stats because I really think it's important to hear.

Okay, so when we come back, we're going to take a break. When we come back, I'm going to school Bradley on the difference between market cap and revenue. Okay, and that's where we're going to continue this story. We're going to talk a little bit about open AI, then we're going to talk a little bit about core weave.

We're going to get into Microsoft. We're going to deal a little more drinking. We're back in the second.

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The algorithmic state, no jobs, no money, little freedom available now on Amazon. Alright, we're back talking, open AI and Nvidia circular financing. Brad just made a comment about how big these companies are by market cap. Make sure you throw up the graphic for this piece that I've provided. The graphic that you're seeing here is a display of the market cap of a lot of the companies that are playing in this space, okay.

Again, the concern is that even open AI, even though it's small on that graphic, right, is nowhere near the size of Nvidia or Microsoft. These are behemoths, nowhere near the size of Oracle.

They are growing rapidly in terms of market cap even though they only make $20 billion in revenue.

Okay, so and they're also the new kit on the block, exactly. When you talk about Microsoft, Google, they've been around for in the tech space, at least since the last tech bubble.

“So I think that's the differentiator, but they are rapidly forming up the gene.”

Okay, so here's the potential problem. When we think about the fact that Nvidia and Microsoft and Oracle and a number of these other companies are all funding open AI, which is one company. The public companies on the graphic that we displayed, or we're showing you right now, they make up about 17% of the total value of the S&P 500. Okay, so when I start to hear that the top handful of companies are becoming reliant or potentially, maybe not reliant, but continually using each other as sources of capital,

where my mind takes me is back to the global financial crisis in 2008, because when we think about the banks then, there were really like two banks that had a really serious problem. Okay, and those two banks had those problems, but they did business with the next 10-12 banks all in the same way. So their problems were inherited by those next 10-12, and then the customers of those next 10-12 had problems. And it's a cascading effect associated with lack of liquidity. So when we talk about the difference between revenue, which is actually money, somebody pays you, and market cap, which is a valuation, an opinion of what you're going to be worth at some point in the future.

It's an important distinction to bring, okay? So this, yeah, yeah, I just English the 2008, what I see here going on in 2008 it was all real sticker. And it was very much so very lack of equity driven loans. They were, they were lending out money at little to no if not above value, because the rates, the rates were favorable, the prices in homes were going up. And then we had a market crash and real estate across the board, but real estate is not a new technology. So it's the oldest, you know, one of the oldest investments that's been around since, you know, investing in the stock market has been around.

“So I think the distinguishing factor there is AI is a new emerging technology that these companies now have the infrastructure capabilities, they now have the power capabilities, but they don't.”

Well, they don't, they don't, they don't, not yet, but they, but they're on the cusp of doing it, and there's a lot of shovels in the ground right now all over the world, not just here in the United States, that are going to build it this out. Interesting, we're going to talk about the power need here, but this idea of a whole ecosystem of companies that are kind of friends, kind of competitors, all trying to sell product services capabilities into the corporate America, becoming reliance on each other.

Because in, in the big short, they do a lot of discussion around this dude named Michael Burrie, who was played by Christian bail. Michael Burrie is now a legend in the investing world, because he had a hedge fund called Sion Capital, which is interesting, because he, as in real life, had one eye. He was a really unique individual, one eye, one class eye, very odd kind of behavioral dude doesn't do real well in social setting, he could, yeah, he could have benefited from Burman, but I don't think he did a lot of drag.

Well, that's too bad because he could just, I won ice cube just like us too.

But this guy, this guy, Burrie is a legend, and the reason I bring him up here is because just a few weeks ago, another company named, CoreWeve. He came on the scene in a very similar kind of scenario as we just talked about with OpenAI, where they are a very high growth, what's called hyperscaler, and you've heard the term hyperscaler, what that means is they own and operate data centers. And they, much like OpenAI, have this massive build-out need, and they like OpenAI, are growing really quickly, but they don't have anywhere near the revenue that is necessary to allow them access to the capital that they need to build out over the next, you know, we're kind of looking at 2030 is that that line, that's, those are the dates that we're talking about the other.

This is interesting, CoreWeve is one of two super hot hyperscalers that have come public just, you know, in the last two years.

Their European competitor is called Nibbius, right, and these are like the Coke Pepsi, the Ford Chevy, you know, battle that's going to be going on in this space.

“You can maybe call it the Arney Jack battle that will endure through kind of this phase in history in the markets, right?”

I love it, that's kind of how it's dug a worrying back and forth. Exactly, and they're both just like OpenAI, even though they do something a little bit different, they need massive amounts of capital. So who are CoreWeve's customers? Okay, so CoreWeve's customers include OpenAI, right, and what's the relationship there? OpenAI has all of these Nvidia chips, right, that they use to allow CoreWeve to train. Okay, and what they're doing specifically is CoreWeve is providing the compute environment that OpenAI uses to train their large language model.

Okay, so super high-end, super strategic, super valuable. CoreWeve's other customers, a major customer, biggest customer, Microsoft, Microsoft makes up about 60% of their revenue, but these guys also serve Facebook, meta, IBM, US Department of Energy, all of this is around training, super high-end specialized models to do super advanced computing and a future.

“So CoreWeve is a really important company. So CoreWeve has this expansion goal, okay, and this is really important.”

Yeah, I almost feel like you're making your case before I even get the book in my case, so when you're stuck, you got that right, Mitch. Well, I just, I need to see in your pick, but I'm calling you right now, and that's ridiculous, you've taken up 15 minutes of briefing time, I want the same. Okay, so CoreWeve has this growth goal, right, they just up your last year, they want to build out five gigawatts of data center capacity by 2030.

So what, that's a gigawatts, I don't know, we hear these terms a lot, but the billion, I thought to myself, you know, whatever's just a number where they have now.

Well, right now they have about 0.85 gigawatts, okay, so they have 85% of one megawatt, okay. No, I said it wrong. Yeah, they have 0.85 gigawatts, 85% of one gigawatts, so 850 megawatts now, so they get a grow by over 5x to hit their grow, go by 2030.

“What's a gigawatts? You know, what is a gigawatts? I mean, that's how we measure power, gigawatts is the biggest unit, right, it's a thousand megawatts, right.”

Five gigawatts, what they're trying to build out is enough electric power to do a couple things. I look this up, thank you, open AI, chat GPT for helping me with this research. Five gigawatts is enough to power every single single, single family household in the state of Georgia, all at the same time. And power, the whole state, all the same time. Five gigawatts is enough energy capacity to address the needs of both Chicago and Los Angeles at the same time. And thank you to each and every one of you for paying for it for all the big tech.

A nuclear reactor, a standard nuclear reactor, if it were going to be commissioned and deployed today, a modern nuclear reactor creates about one gigawatts of power.

It's going to be like the sun is the only answer, right. So this company wants to build out five gigawatts, five nuclear reactors worth a power.

Last stat, I just think this is massive. When we think about how much energy is used in our country, at peak demand time in the summer, when everybody's driving, running their air conditioning, when you're doing your hair, when I'm doing my hair, it's exactly right. Total energy demand in the U.S. in the middle of the summer is about 125, 130 gigawatts, okay. So we're talking about 4% of the total energy capacity in the United States, these guys want to build out in the next few years. Can they afford it? Same question we asked with OpenAI. Can these guys afford it?

Okay.

We've spent $13 billion building this kind of stuff out in 2025 last year. For 2026, they're total, for 2026 through 2030.

So this period we're talking about next four years, their total capex needs are estimated to be about $175 billion in addition to 10 billion dollars of debt that they've already taken on. So these guys need to find a way to come up with or push out the materials, but address $185 billion in total capital capacity by 2030. So how much did they make? Okay. Again, same question.

“Just on the cap as I think it's important to note that, you know, our current administration has said the AI race.”

And it's not just amongst ourselves, it's against China, it's against India, Europe, even though some of them are our allies, it's the AI race to make sure we have the compute in the necessary compute part. And as you mentioned, Coreweave is supplying that infrastructure for some of the biggest names in the industry. So when you ask where are they going to get it? If it's a national security issue that our political and our Trump administration has put down the gauntlet on, I really feel not only are the other big tech companies going to make sure that they bolster it up and it happens, because they're not in the business of building all the infrastructure.

They're in the business of doing the cloud work, they're in the business of doing the software. You know, and now that the AI and all the enterprise work that they're doing with the gendic work.

“So I really think if there's a need, even though they only take an on 10 billion, that's going to be a very easy check to get it.”

Whether it's through, whether it's through the political arena, whether it's through influenced from the political arena into the tech arena. And I think we've seen it so far, so I'm probably only helping make your case for the stockpick of the year, but go ahead. Well, there's a lot of, it's a lot of naval gazing there. There's, here's the reality core we've, and I say my neighborhood. Yeah, right, yeah, right, yeah, we have to cut that one part, but that right core we've, here's the reality just like open AI core we've.

They're free cash flow, what's left for investors at the end of the year is 20 billion dollars, so they're pretty similar to what's going on with.

Open AI, they are growing like crazy, they're doing really well, but they need so much more money than they make. There are some questions about where this is going to come from in spite of all the things that you just said, which a lot of people believe. Core we've going to be short between about a hundred billion at the low end and a hundred and forty billion at the high end, okay. So people who have already invested in them are the smartest investors in the world, these are the companies that manage our own retirements, the fidelitys, the van guards, the black stones,

management, there's a super sharp hedge fund that help them raise money, these are the smartest people on Wall Street, so when, when when. Core we've came out and said, hey, we're going to do a deal with in video pretty similar to what open AI did. You know, last year, what a big deal, about six, seven billion dollars came out just earlier this week said, hey, we're going to do another deal that is exactly the same thing for another two billion dollars.

“People started to say, well, wait a second, why do they keep going back to the well so frequently? Like, is everything actually okay there? And there's been a couple of small kind of spas outs that have been sued, right?”

Remember, this started in October of 25 and there was a little bit of reaction and when it did, when chat GPT and open AI were going through this, there were some people that started asking questions. Our friend, Michael Burrie wrote some public comments, it was very well-publicized, a very famous short seller named Jim Chanos, who's made billions and billions of dollars betting on companies going down, made some public comments. So whether it's politically expedient, whether they're just talking their book at the moment, they might not fully agree with you at least in the moment.

Okay, what happened?

So it's gotten so big and well, they could buy it long, if they thought it was going up, it's going down.

So I mean, this is what makes a market, right? Well, it absolutely makes a market and makes a great debate as to whether or not that's going to happen or not. That is, it is and here's what, okay, so people, so those guys when they came out, Burrie and Chanos, one of the things that they immediately pointed to was say, like, look, we've seen this movie before and they weren't talking about the big short, they were talking about what happened with a tech bus back in 1999, 2001 when we were young, whipper snappers, you were probably still in law school then?

“Yes, and I remember very well because I got Burnt on one of the biggest tech companies of the time thinking that I was getting in at the exact right time.”

And I was getting on the exact right time right down that black time and the ski slope right down to the bottom, so it was a good lesson learned early on, but I do think there's some distinguishing factors here this time around because that was just very internet driven. And the internet is just a vehicle, not really an emerging technology, you know, I mean the internet's got faster and that's the only thing where it's gotten better, whereas the AI world in the computing world, the quantum world that's, you know, slowly coming in behind it, not even slowly, it's coming in behind it pretty quickly now that they're, you know, some China, especially is way ahead of that where we're at, I think there's, again, I will differentiate factors that are here.

That we're not back in 1999 or 2000.

“Okay, so some people have made this distinction before and I think you're, I think you're good in calling it out.”

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It's not just a book, it's a call to awaken available on Amazon. So Bradley was telling us about the difference between the internet build-out and what's going on today in the data center world, and there are some really important points to bring up here, not to belabor this, but when they were building out the internet, they were building for the hopeful filling future demand. When you were building the wire-line internet and laying dark fiber, people weren't using it because they didn't know what to use it for, not just laying it, but bearing it into the ocean.

That's super expensive. The great thing about the internet build-out was after this giant bust, all of that infrastructure was still there and it got used and it now is the backbone of the economy that we live in today. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it did now, it took ten years, it took ten years, and famously Cisco systems, which was the poster child for this sort of large aspect of the day.

Cisco systems was the first company to ever say through its customers. Now keep in mind, this is when the internet was being built out.

So companies were coming to Cisco and saying, hey, we need to get online, we need to move our business onto the web, what do we need? And they said, well, you need some routers and some switches, you need to connect to the internet.

So the one difference I'm going to say is the demand today seems to be ramping much higher than the demand. Then we didn't know what the internet was in those days. There were companies, remember, PSI net, I worked right across the street in McLean, Virginia, from a company called PSI net. There's some random telco company. They had a really high market cap, no revenue. And what do they do? They went about the naming rights for the Baltimore Ravens.

“For one year and I think it was by week six of that year, they were already out of business. PSI net was done. There was no more PSI net.”

So that's the sort of PSI went way down.

So that's the kind of silly kind of financial figuring that some of this stuff can be built around, right? And Cisco, just in 2025, just finally made its way back to its peak from

2000. It took, it took 25 years for that stock. So fully round trip from where it started, before it started, the circular financing garbage. So now where it is 25 years. So here's the Cisco and fuck all the investors that took it in the chin on the way, and I was one of them. Hold call. That's right. I don't know if we're going to let it go. So there is some historic kind of precedent for questioning these sorts of financing arrangements.

“And I'm not going to suggest that Microsoft or NVIDIA, which are the two biggest companies in the world.”

And between the two of them, I should probably do some math on this probably have enough cash to rival the US treasury at certain points in the year. They probably don't. It's not a lot of cash. So there's no question that there is enough cash in the IT infrastructure ecosystem to fund these things.

But we only talked about two companies that between now and 2030 both need an excess of a hundred billion dollars.

There are 20, 30, 40 other companies that are fighting for those investment dollars from investors far smaller than Videl fidelity and Vanguard. Okay, but I will say this in talking with some of the folks in the private equity worlds in the venture world. AI infrastructure has become a very sweet spot even for not the soft banks. I'm going down the pecking order of the bigger investment companies.

“I think the capital is out there. And if it isn't out there in the equity world or the venture capital world or the pure world through the Microsoft's, you know, the Googles, the apples.”

I do think it's out there through the government and that's the taxpayer. So it is too big to fail. The government's so far behind it and it's in with three almost a three, four years left to go in Trump's term. That's in attorney right now in the AI infrastructure in AI world. No question. So I do see that being popped up and that might be the bigger differentiator compared to the internet when we're talking about the internet and the tech boom back in the world. In the tech boom back in 1999 and 2000 because I don't know if there was as much political backing as there is right now.

It's good point. Yeah, really good point. That's for sure. It's for sure. It definitely seems like there are more eyes on this build out than there were that we were kids then and of course we were interested in figuring out what the internet was. And in the end, the AI and large language models have immediately become part of everybody's life. You know, and I definitely recognize the distinction. Let me let me end this and tie up this very detailed conversation one point and then I'll get a reaction from you and then we'll move on talk about.

I haven't seen you do such a thorough report since your fourth grade. And that was on press. Here's a big point. Microsoft is a company that has been named in this a couple of times. They were the biggest, the biggest circle in our graphic that we showed. They're the biggest player in this space. They do business with all of these companies and everybody does business with Microsoft.

Here's something that a company like CoreWave probably should pay a little bit of attention to and I'm sure they probably are.

Just this week when CoreWave announced this second $2 billion follow on deal with Microsoft that raised some eyebrows on the same day on the same day and this isn't an accident.

Microsoft announced that they are going to start developing their own set of chips.

And the idea, I've seen that way.

Yeah, the idea that Microsoft's going to do this is they aren't going to roll this out. They have a couple of very large data centers already in production that they're using to run their business now. One is in Iowa, the other one's in Arizona. They have plans to not only roll out this Mia chip, but deploy it into their own data centers in 26 and 27. Okay, so this is a really big deal because everybody's trying to sell their chips into data centers that they want Microsoft to use.

“And Microsoft is saying, like, yeah, of course, we're going to, you know, we're going to rent data centers space from other people, but what's the reason they have to do it?”

Because they're managing risk. Yeah, well, but they are managing risk is Nvidia's chips are in such high demand even when Trump said. The video you can't sell the China anymore in China. You can't find a video at least the new chips. I think you back down in that and you went to the older chips and they can get those. You know, you'll be behind in the AI race if you get those supposedly. So yeah, when we get the black walls, we'll send them the H100. That's right. Yeah, right, right, right. Well, I think this is interesting and you make a good point.

You're, you're the case you're making is that the capacity demands are going to be so massive that Microsoft has to do as many deals as they can and guarantee as much capacity in addition to building out their own capabilities, right. And I think we see it. And it's not in your case today tonight today, but it's the same thing that Elon Musk is doing. Exactly. You know, he's hedging his bets, you know, because he entered into a deal with the video. He got as many chips from them as they would give him or capable of giving him, built his colossus. That's right.

But then he also had to make a deal with, is it Samsung? I think he made, he kind of deal with Samsung.

I mean, what the, maybe he will come back and do any loan.

What the loan episode may fact check that, but yeah, he also hedged his bets. And I know I think he also announced in the last few months that he's getting into the chip business. So the chip business is very hot. And that's a pun on words. It's not like Tony's fire back.

Exactly. Just like the fire, just like Perry's cameras. Okay. Well, Perry's stockings. Yeah. So this has, this has been aluminum. And I learned a lot putting this stuff together. And it's, it's fun talking about this, because you think you know about this stuff.

You know, you, you, you shoot off your mouth at the bar, which, you know, we do all the damn time. No idea whether what we're saying is right. We're actually digging in half the percent. You know the key is just pretend you know what you're talking about. Right. Just say it with conviction for everybody's going to ask you about it. Then walk away.

It's like, it's like, well, they said, just, fine, give me two honey can. He delivered that loan with great conviction. Okay. And he got to honey. He got to that's exactly right.

Who's the huge James O'Connect. Okay. Let's move on.

Moving on to our second topic tonight.

Second topic tonight. I'm going to introduce it. And then turn it over to Bradley. Right. We're going to do it that way.

Oh, well, yeah. I think you can start off. I mean, okay. So I like the fact that you brought these topics up because you're actually participating now in the, in the, in the back part of the, in doing homework.

Yeah, right. Once the last time we did homework. Well, you've run this business.

“I mean, I honestly, I wasn't very good at doing homework on my head.”

I had homework. I was really more a kind of show up in a wing it. Yeah. That's what we're doing. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, let's go. Okay. So let's, let's change, let's change change change, change direction here. I'm going to start with the quote as somebody that I respect very much.

And then Frank Sinatra, he said, I feel sorry for people who don't drink. Because when they wake up in the morning, is the best they're going to feel all day. Right. It's not the way I live my life.

I like to get, I like to start low and go high. Right. But the topic here is really around the idea that, that alcohol can assumption in the United States has absolutely plummeted. And by a lot of measures is at an all-time low in our country's history.

Well, if there is no standing to me, I don't understand this. Yeah.

“And if you, if you want to shift from the focus of what may be a bubble,”

I think the alcohol, at least the hard alcohol world in the beer world too, is facing a bubble. The, the hard liquor world is a little more, is sensing it a little bit more. I think they're down 20%.

You don't compare it to just a few years ago. So, and a lot that has to do with Gen Z. And, and the, and the Gen Z generation compared to the millennials is, is just drinking less. And we can attribute to better awareness, health.

We can contribute to socialization. You know what, what we get together is socialization kind of drives us because in Indiana, there's not a lot of places to go that doesn't have a bar or a sign in front of it. So, socialization drives it in, in the younger generations,

They're, they're socializing over the greatest thing that they are in.

“And that ever created, and that's, that's the digital world.”

Yeah. So, they're, they're socializing on that. So, a lot of great stats here. Let me, let me just fill in our, our viewers in case they are not up on this. Because this was as price to me, I had no idea when, when our, our good friend

Mark has shared this data with us. For adult drinkers, 2026, signal day, a structural shift. In the U.S., self-reported drinking has hit the lowest level since records began in 1939, only about 54% of adults now report that they consume alcohol versus 62% reported themselves as drinkers as recently as 2023.

So, we've lost a, a really large number of drinkers just over these last few years. That's really interesting to me. That's adults, right? What's most interesting to me is we can keep stats during the time when alcohol was illegal. That's right.

That's really good.

Started keeping these stats in 1939.

When it prohibition them? Yeah, I don't know that, right? I would say it's pretty close to there. It's interesting to send you to war, you can drink again. No, that's, that's really insightful.

Okay, so teen teen drinking. This is, this is something I have to cite. I get a site stats that I read and refer to you. I'm just going to give you the, because I don't, I have no children. I don't know anything about teen drinking since I turned 20 and that was 30 years ago.

Kids don't binge drink anymore, right? Which is defined by five drinks in a sitting. Reportedly only 1% of eighth grader.

“Yeah, five five drinks in a sitting, which I guess we're already binge drinking, right?”

Well, I call this binge drinking way better with bourbon. 1% of eighth graders and only 2% of tenth graders. 9% of high school seniors, right? Reports drinking. This is nearly a 50% drop from, from just the last decade.

And those stats are provided by a responsibility.org. Thank you for your service. Well, and I think it's a sociological study because I really believe if you look back in our day. You know, we didn't have internet. We didn't have phones.

Our time was spent in the fields or in the forest with a keg or a case. And that was the socialization. That was the book drove us together. Our Facebook was a keg in a field. It was.

Otherwise we didn't connect with our friends. Whereas now, why don't I have to get out of my chair or in my comfort in my bedroom. I can connect with all my friends in one place. And so, and I think there's been a, and you can say maybe it's calling it. Maybe it's a result of it, and it can argue both ways.

Vaping vaping is coming on for the scene. Big time. Yeah. And it's digital. It's disposable.

And it's also kind of sexy in that Gen Z in now. 20% of almost 20% of Gen Zs are vaping. Only 5% are smoking. I think that's another effect. Because now a recreational marijuana is legal.

You don't have to try to find your, your buddy, the groundskeeper to get, get, get that. Do it again. More cars back. Yeah. That's right.

There's another stat for you. And this kind of supports would Bradley just said. The number who do not drink at all. The college kid doesn't drink apparently half of them. I'm sorry.

68%. It's going to be 68%. Recorded no alcohol consumption in the past year compared to just 34% of decade ago. That's from that's from campus safety magazine. Thank you for your help.

But I can test having kids in that age group that that is the trend. Yeah. Yeah. Well, why? There was, I read about this thing.

But what was this, this piece they said? It's digital awareness with everybody having a phone and social media being so important. The kids, as I read, are concerned about looking buffoonish on their, on their socials. Right, not make sense. I mean, I guess if we had people falling around.

Is there a health thing you think that's driving this? I, you know, I in my research.

I like, you know, because I always say it's the last 10 years you're shaving off.

It's not these. And it's usually those that, you know, when you're in hospice and in the nursing home, and nobody's coming around to visit you anymore. And you got change your own diaper. [laughter]

I think that's a dark humor. [laughter] Yeah. Well, is it health?

“I mean, I think with the rise of, you know, the obvious themes, right?”

Make America healthy again, right? Everybody's concerned about their social well being and state of mind and anxiety. And it's obvious that coming off of the experience that we had over the last, you know, let's call it five years specifically 2021, 22. We have some stats here about, you know, some of the knock-on effects of this, you know,

people really started paying attention to their mental health and well being. We, I have some friends who decided they were going to stop drinking.

And they're, they're back off the wagon again, so we can hang out.

“But there are some real positives that I think we should report on associated with this”

generational decline. Number one, I'm probably, you know, surface level. DUI arrests have totally dropped from 2015 to today.

2015, we had over a million nationwide DUI address, I'm sorry, arrests.

2025, we're tracking, you know, 800 and some thousand, that's projected. But roughly an 18% decrease in DUI arrests. My question and I thought immediately was, could that be the result of right-sharing apps? I think it's a great point because it's a lot easier to get arrested. It really is a lot easier to get right.

You know, it's not just one right-sharing app, now you have multiple litter out there. And now you have self-driving taxis, they're hitting a lot of the major metropolitan areas. Again, AI driven, totally, totally. Second, DUI arrests are down. And fatalities are lower, and this is probably the big, you know, the big old star.

2015 baseline, we had 10,000, 280 people die in a DUI-related fatality, right?

That peaked actually in 2021.

This is kind of alarming. What from 10,000 sub-adults in 2025 to 13,600, which is a, that's a 32% increase in 2021.

“Because I think as we could all remember, maybe some of us don't remember.”

We were all doing a lot of drink. We were all doing a lot of drink. We were all doing a lot of drink. Right? So that has thankfully declined tremendously.

And early data for 2025, we don't have the full-year data in yet. Says that we had 12,000, 400 fatalities in 2023, which was also high year. But that's going to drop really significantly here in the 2025. Probably the best news is that kids under 21 have been the biggest success of all. In 1982, we had 5,215 kids die because of drunk driving.

That is from 5,200, some odd, to 1,300 are believed to be this year. So that's the bigger question. 70% drop. When is the teenage insurance rates actually going to drop? It's interesting question. It's a really interesting question. Because when I read, when I was doing some research on this, one of the proof points that I found, I thought it was ridiculous. I'm going to have to read it to you.

This was one of the positive knock-on effects of people drinking less as reported by a company that I've never heard of,

but they are called a Vidian Health. A Vidian Health says that alcohol use has estimated to cost employers up to get ready. $5,100 per employee per year in combined healthcare claims and lost productivity costs. That to me, so I was fucking bonkers. Sorry about the language.

That math ain't checking out. That math ain't math in for me. We aren't explicitly rated. Maybe they're directionally right, but there's no way that drinking going down is saving employers $5,000 a head. I don't see anything. Right.

Maybe the insurance cost productivity costs. Well, and I think that, again, the generation that isn't drinking is also the less social, in person socializing generation. Typically, that has been where business got done. It's in person.

Right. Or the old-aldy adage is on the golf course. Yeah, right. On the golf course, usually meant a couple of tauties at the turn or a tauty at the end. And that's when everybody loosened up, you're feeling good.

You get to know this person over a four hour period or longer if you're playing with a couple of slow and bad players. And you understand you have a drink. After you make friends, you make friends. At that time, you're cutting a deal that's not in the office. So that whole structure is changing them. It is.

“And you know, when I think about this, what's dry, what's maybe driving this, what's the thing nobody's talking about?”

You know, I was just like, it's the GLP ones. If 20% of American households have somebody taking a GLP one, what does a GLP one do? It tricks your brain into believing that it's had enough food. And they're experimenting this, it's clearly happened. I know some people have to do.

A lot of people taking GLP ones for weight have just lost interest in drinking. Yeah. And rightfully so because they're, they're, they're pleasure senses because of the GLP ones. Yeah. That's going down.

It's remarkable to me. That trend ain't going to change anytime soon.

So it seems like they're, they're, they're tweaked into the, the big pharmaceutical companies that just released this.

And it wasn't necessarily meant as a weight loss drunk to begin with. But they've now are tweaking the micro introduces. They're tweaking the, uh, as they get more and more get data as, you know, comes out. That's what I do like no one noticed. Anyway, um, so yeah, this is, um, this is fun.

Yeah, I, I, I just, I, I just, I don't know. I just, I get in general. Yeah, I just, I get in general. You kind of said that under the breath, but I don't know if there's, uh, I don't know if there's much more to say on this. It just goes there is.

It doesn't make any sense of being. It's been making headlines last couple weeks. It's not going to affect our behavior. No. And then alcohol is down. Yeah.

So we're here to help. We opened with a quote by Frank Sinatra, a quote with a quote in this segment from a body of mine who says, "All the time can't drink all day if you're not so breakfast." We'll be right back. What happens when work disappears when money dissolves.

And when freedom becomes something you earn, not something you're born with. A new kind of power is rising, not a government, not a corporation, but the algorithm. In the algorithmic state, no jobs, no money, little freedom, Amazon best selling author. Bradley J. Martinowe reveals the world we're stepping into. A world where your reputation is computed, your opportunities are filtered.

And your identity is shaped by systems that know you better than you know yourself. This is not science fiction. This is the operating manual of the future forming around us right now.

“If you want to understand the forces that will define power, belonging and freedom in the decades ahead, start here.”

The algorithmic state, no jobs, no money, little freedom, available now on Amazon. Okay, we're back. We're going to do something totally silly and fun. One of the podcasts I love, I really like, is called the Fallen Podcast. Pretty popular.

Similar themes to what we're doing, those guys just have way more money than we do. One of the things that they do every year is they do a predictions episode, which I think is fun. They talk about us works of stuff. So we're going to do our own version of that and cover some fun stuff. We're going to start with sports.

So I put these questions together last night. Brad has them. I don't know if he's listening to them or if he's read through them. But we're going to bounce around a little bit. They're going to be kind of fun stuff.

So number one, Bradley, Olympics are starting at pretty soon. Yeah. Right. Kind of jackfruit. Love the Olympics.

Okay, last one of the Olympics was 20.2 Beijing. Okay.

“The question number one is who wins more medals in this year's winter games?”

The USA or our new arch nemesis Canada. What happened in Beijing was this?

The United States came away third in the order of merit for total medals.

They had 25, nine of which were gold. Okay. Third place. Canada had 26 medals. So one more than we had, but only four of them were gold.

They finished 11th. What do you think, Brad? Well, yeah. I mean, we're going to take the Canadians down. Yeah.

Draw them in their own maple syrup. All right. It's going to be a question. I think the bigger question is how much fun are the Olympic dorms going to be if they're not drinking?

Everybody's going to be tied back to the previous segment. Yeah, totally. That's funny. Yeah.

“I mean, I think there's going to be less pregnancies.”

And less great athletes coming out of this little big center. Yeah, you know what?

You always should probably auction off.

If somebody should auction off a trip to just go stay in the Olympic dorms with the athletes. Maybe the second week of the Olympics would be like after everybody is kind of competed already. You got a bunch of people just hanging out deep. You know, if they're relaxed, everybody's celebrating. Where do you envision that actually taking place?

I don't know. But I would, I would enter the bathroom bedroom. Where are all the Olympics in the state? That's actually a pretty good question. Where?

Ask, yeah. We should have, that's where we're going to look at. Well, that's asking. Yeah. We should have probably done this research.

Yeah. I didn't even have never been occurred to me. I just said they're happening in the United States pair. I mean, well. Relax.

And we're here. We're in the Olympics this year. The 26 winter Olympics are being held in Italy across the cities of Milan. Oh, you need to damp heads up. Oh, sure.

Okay. So there we go. We should go. We should go. We should go.

We should go. We should go. We should go. We should go. We should go.

And you know what?

There's a lot of wine there.

Okay.

“So did you pick, uh, are we going to, are we going to, are we going to take the, we're going to take it over the Canadians?”

They had, they, they'd be just by one last year. But we were much higher because we had more gold. Yeah. I mean, we're not performing. You think they're going to come back with budgets.

And we know how silver is rising so fast. You know, that might be the more valuable. [laughter] That's fine. Yeah, right.

Man, value of a silver medal is a lot higher than our estimates. Exactly. I have no say on that. I don't know. I think the whole non drinking throws a whole horseshoe into it.

You know, if these athletes want to be superior at what they need to know how to drink. Get up. Wake up the next morning. Have fun the night before and get rid of all the nerves. Okay, here's my prediction.

I think this is our 250th anniversary. This is a lot of patriotism. Both directions going on in the country. I think the US athletes are going to go over there. And slight.

And I think that, uh, we might not be in Norway. But I'm just going to go on a limb and say, I think we're going to fit a second to Norway in the total medal count. We're going to take out a jar of it. We're going to be China's Sweden Netherlands.

We're going to take, we'll be in all this guys. Okay. Number two. We're moving on. You're going back to what happened last time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Moving on. This is, this is easy. Okay.

Let's move on. Do the Steelers make the playoffs in 2026? Oh, Mike McCarthy. What? First of all, I'm a foreign raised initially, at least.

Wisconsin. So, you know, tacker fan. He came from Wisconsin. Pittsburgh guy went to Wisconsin. One, the Super Bowl with Aaron Rogers.

“I think, at least, we have a chance to flip the script.”

I don't know what's going to happen.

So quickly in 2026, where we make the Super Bowl, but the Steelers are always solid.

Super Bowl. We're just talking about playoffs, Mitchell. All right. We're going to make the playoffs. Okay.

Well, let's talk about the playoffs. Yeah. Definitely. We made the playoffs. This year.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So, uh, scarred and damaged over this whole thing that I am having trouble.

I, did we hire Mike McCarthy? I wouldn't even know where. I can't even pay attention. I didn't even watch the second half of those games last week because I just don't. No, I just don't.

Okay. I don't care. There was a lot of games. I was here. No, my heart turned it off.

Yeah, my heart hurts. Yeah. I'm still mourning the breakup. Right. Coach T.

Yeah. Well, that's, he was a long standing, I mean, 19 years. 20 years. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot.

I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot.

I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot.

I'm not sure if I can get a shot. I'm not sure if I can get a shot. If he maintains this current pace, he's expected to pass 1800 points later this year, okay? Which would make him only the fifth player in history to do that.

The other four, I mean, really crazy. Gratsky, Yager, Messier, and Gordia. Okay. Pretty good team. So he's 57 points here today.

He's 16th in the league and score it. Okay. He's at at least 90 points in each of the last three years. So does Sid keep the current pace. Maybe make a 100 points.

Does he reach 1800? Do you think he does it goes out? The boy is a glory. What do you think? I think he's a yes.

Yeah, and obviously this is one where we have to go back to the last question. Canada, it's going to be hard to root for team USA in hockey, which Sidney played his last his last. I think he likes on the other side. Man, that emotionally, that's tough for me.

It is. I mean, we're torn here. Coming out of the woods. Yeah.

“So I, you know, I think he's going to do it.”

Brad thinks he's going to do it. Let's move on. Okay. Super easy one. Number three on sports.

Pats are sea hocks. Sea hocks are given four and a half. 45 and a half over under when I checked it yesterday. Let me guess if you're in a group or since you live in Seattle for a while. I don't.

I don't have any. I don't have any way emotionally or intellectually to support anything that comes out of state of Massachusetts. You know, just the accent. But accent by itself, I still, you know, Tom Brady's doing better. I'm not going to say I like listening to him.

But he's not as obnoxious as he was. He started. I'd like to see what he thinks of this. Actually. The last house.

The last house. Yeah. He's. Well, if you can only get better at being an announcer. Just like his replacement quarterback has and getting to the Super Bowl,

which is the most amazing being 23 years old and being back in the Super Bowl.

And those big shoes. I mean, they're the biggest to go to shoes. You got to fill. Okay. So Patrick C. Hawks.

I'm thinking. I think that's. Yeah. I'm going to see Hawks for sure. Yeah.

And it's not that I want to win. I can. I'm like you. I don't care who it's. I think.

Patriots. Okay. Just on a terrace on a record. That's good. Okay.

Another. Okay. This is. This is. I'll tell you what.

If the Patriots don't win, I'll wear a dress for the next record. You're wearing one right now. It's not going to be anything. Yeah. Okay.

Here we go. Number four. Sports is the topic. How many hole in ones get paid out this year in the 2026. Cedric Tiger Memorial Hole in one club at Indiana Country Club.

Last year we had zero after having five in 2024. How many hole in ones get paid this year at ICC? Cedric Tiger. Dear friend, the master in the hole in one. Nearly departed.

Three hole in one. Two in one. Yeah. Yeah. The next year he put it on his personal financial statement that he was getting one.

I don't know. He was, you know, he was very optimistic.

And that optimism always drove those hole in ones.

But I would say this. I don't think we go dry again. Yeah. That's weird. I said, I'm playing this year.

So the thing. I said two. Two. Two. I like one and a half.

I'm going to be controversial. And all we says to them. Yeah. It's so hard to believe. What's like the sticks lean in it.

Right. Yeah. That's going to be there. It's going to be. So that would be a really thought.

So I've never had a hole in one. I've never had a hole in one. I've never had a hole in one. I've never had a hole in one. Yeah.

No. Yeah. I've come real close. You got the drinking gene genes, didn't you? It's right.

Yeah. We call them. We call them. I've got the less valuable of the one. Right.

So yeah. How many of you hit? Three. Three. And someday the video of your last is going to make it on this show.

What a remarkable. Brad want. How much would you win? Three. Grant.

No. It was the very first hole in one of the center tiger hole in one club. Okay. And I want 5,250, 250, 200. And you spent.

How much on the party?

“The role in the whole one club is that you need to buy.”

Everybody drinks. There's no rule about a band at a boss. No. But food. It's just how we roll.

That's how I roll. Okay. So I want 250, 200. I spent 78, 100. There we had a great time.

And I'm cheering for you to hit at least one that you're going to do. So maybe there's going to be at least two. There she is. There she is. There's a lot of help with trust.

Here's a lot of the match point. Really? Yeah. You weren't here. Two and a five.

Yeah. Number 11. Let. Wow. Not only that, but that I've very number 10.

So I had a two two on the scorecard. Wow. Wow. That's really saying something. Now that you.

Less than one percent of golf or so I've ever had a two.

I've never had a two two.

Wow. They say it helped with trust is one and six million. It's like that George Carlin joke. Yeah. Right.

Number 10. But yeah. I have five. Two. Yeah.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. Everything.

Okay. Okay. So we made some predictions. What do we say? We said two.

Okay. Three. I'm going to go. Three. I'm going to be optimistic.

I feel like the golf course is going to be in great condition. Oh sure. Because of the snow we went through. We do live with the secret gem of golf courses here in India. Our greens are by far.

And I'm digressing a little bit. They are by far. Be best greens. When we get better at the video production part, we'll get some pictures and video off of us being out there.

“Because it's it's honestly it's it's what resulted in that.”

Said we not started playing golf. We wouldn't have drank. We didn't drink. We would talk about business. We didn't talk about business.

Never would have dripped this up.

Okay. And if I didn't drink, I wouldn't play golf. Yeah. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. I just don't like the game that much. I do like the people. There are three whole ones. Okay.

So. Okay. So that was sports. Let's move on to. Okay.

These are quick. These are going to be quick. Quick answers. And we're coming home. Okay.

Quick. No commentary. I just want answers. Yeah. Three questions.

Last year's government shut down lasted 43 days. Okay. I'm sorry. Politics is the topic. Last year's government shut down lasted 43 days.

Long history surpassing the 35 day government shut down from 2018-2019. How long? Well, the next government shut down to be. Well, here's a way to take into account. By the way, like we just started next week.

It probably is. So in our politicians are getting so old. The number of bathroom breaks. They have to go in between negotiations. This is going to take it definitely into 82.

Okay. 82 days. 82 days. Okay. So.

Wow. Okay. So that's the. Basically the remainder of. Will be well in the second quarter.

That would there be a lot of economic ramifications. Okay. It will be gone. Okay. I'm going to go the opposite.

I'm going to say this is going to be a loud. Ugly shut down that will last about a week. Okay. Yeah. I think the.

I still love the midterm.

“I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more.”

I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more.

I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more.

I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more.

“I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more.”

I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I think the midterm is going to be a little bit more. I'm just going to say no. I don't know if they have authority.

They're going to have to find a legal basis for it. The midterm is my. The midterm is my and certainly politics plays a role. If we like somebody in there that's going to change the law then yeah. But we're talking about some brain quarts specifically.

Right. And we're talking about some quarts. So they have to go based on the laws. They're on the books at the time. So if the president has a viable basis for that.

They're going to have to have the. And knowing the Trump team of lawyers. They're very good at what they do. Otherwise they wouldn't have advised them to do it the first place. I don't think it gets over term.

Yeah. The distinction here is whether we're looking at tariffs as a tool of trade or a tax. And that's the distinction between the two. I'm sure the Supreme Court will figure it out.

They can always tie a national security.

Yeah. I want to come back and cover that another day. Number three. Do the dams take the midterm? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I'm going to hold out hope here.

I'm naturally anti-consensus. I mean, I've voted both ways multiple times. Yeah. You dress. You act.

The cracks like a duck. It looks like a duck. You have me going. Well, I bought a rod grudler. There's so many people who call themselves Democrats that he has to call me and says,

What do the lives think about this? I'm the most liberal person you know, which is this saying something.

“Well, I think it's in fact a comment because you are the most well-traveled in most of that.”

I'm not that liberal people. Okay. Business. Here we go. Politics.

We're going through that quickly. Okay. Business. S&P 500 is roughly 7,000 right now. Up about 2% year to date.

Might have picked up another percent today. We'll be flat. Whatever. Up about 2%. Last three years returns have been this.

In 2023, we return 26%, 20, 24, we return 25%, 25, we return 18%. Because we had a little bit of a dip in the fourth quarter for the reasons that we just discussed at length. What are we going to do by 2026? What is 7,000 a day? Where's the S&P going to be at the end of 2026?

Well, a lot of us driven my tech.

And I think it's back to our first conversation as to what's going on.

And I don't envision it being a bubble. There may be some setbacks. And emotionally tied to the market just because the big investors in the market just feel it has to be. And they will it into it. I don't think it is there financially or.

Materialistically. So I will say it's in. I've got it wrong. I got it wrong last year. I got another market.

About two years ago. So you're probably asking the wrong person. You probably asked the guys to let us. But I got it. I really think.

It surprised me to this this point. And I don't see anything being any different. In fact, I would dig my heels in and say it's actually better. In four to five. Okay.

So do you going to throw a number out of 7,000 a day? What do you want to say? We're going to throw them from here. Give me a percentage. Okay.

So I'm going to say this year. How we know is high is the 18 to 20. Yeah, it was 18 last year, 25 years ago. Yeah, it's not going to be quite that high. But I do think it's going to be the double.

Okay, standard 10, 12 percent.

Yeah. Yeah. For Brad Marno. I know that's not a bad guess. I mean, we need to start the moderate a little bit.

I like that kind of 15. 80 percent per similar year this year. Last. I think we're going to have a big. Big correction here in the middle.

The exactly the same as we had this year. But I think we have to. Okay. So it's going to be the. The time when all those hedge funders guys go out on the golf course and they forget that they're actually trading stocks for a moment and have a couple of burdens.

Okay. Easy one. What's the biggest risk to the market this year? 2026. I think it's the political landscape right now.

I think right now, the biggest risk to the market is all of the ice disruptions that are going on. People dying. People being disruptive. And I don't want to be get political, but when people are dying over. Things that don't need to be.

Okay. I'm going to cut this off. I get it. That's that I'm going to take the other side. Yeah.

“I think that's what's going to disrupt the market because because it's going to.”

It's going to cause the midterm to change and that's what's going to disrupt the market by the end of year. I don't think that. But if that does change and as deep in the night or I think all three of us agree that the Democrats win the midterms, it's not their political best interest to cause any downturn in the market either.

I just don't. Yeah.

I don't think they'll do it.

Interesting. I don't see politics as being the biggest issue. I'll back up. And I said it before. I do think because of this, then it's going to cause this extraordinary.

Break on coming up with a balance. Agreed. Her balance budget. And that's going to have an effect on the overall market. Sure.

I'm just going to say a disagree. And if the market falls this year, it's going to be because of. Floations and global currencies specifically. The end.

Rising and rates and drawing money away from. It's all there's trying to find a way to the US. So the episode. Is that going to drive the US dollar? No, it's the opposite.

Yeah.

“So when that happens, no, what's that going to do to crypto?”

Yeah. I think crypto honestly. I actually think that with gold, silver, platinum, the metals. You know, being in space right now. Crypto has seems to have found a floor here in the last couple of weeks.

Even though that floor is one where it's bouncing. It's rapidly. I actually.

But it's got a heartbeat.

So, you know, what I would say. I like crypto right. Yeah. I do too. I think it's found its space.

I think with the administration. And, and it's a bipartisan act right now. That they're going to come up with this crypto legislation very soon. That's going to mainstream crypto. It's not going to be that alternative.

Dark force. It's now moving into the big. It's moving into Wall Street. Yeah. The modernization of our financial infrastructure is going to have.

So smart contracts and everything related to the blockchain kind of have the center of it. And that evolution needs to happen. One crypto. What do you like it? I mean, I'm middle with.

I'm a. I'm a. A bug was her. Miller like kind of guy. I'm just going to stick with the.

Stick with the. The I.B.I.T. and the ETH. A. Take a wrong. I like.

I like C.R. C.R. Yes. And I'll tell you why. Because it's.

It is the most.

It's coming from a legal perspective.

It is the most. Regulated. The crypto work across the globe. You look again. Like.

Like in the AI world. It's very regulated. It's very fragmented. And there's different laws. I go into place.

Crypto.com has made sure. To file all the necessary. Regulation file. Foundings. I go into place.

That they're not going to misstep. Like a few others have. And they cost the whole platform.

“And because of that, they don't have over 100 million.”

Users. The Trump administration just said they're going to. Be a big supporter. Of CRO through there. Maybe not through the administration, but through the Trump companies, I guess.

In creating a. A treasury of CRO. So I like CRO. Is that a stable. Well, it.

It is the. CRO is the coin of crypto.com. And it's what they incentivize everybody. And now you can bet sports on there. He's not dollar back home.

It's not dollar back home. Yeah. So it is a true crypto. And they've come a long way. In the regulation side.

They come a long way. In the security side. And they now have sports on there. Betting. They have.

ETS coming on there. They have all these other. You know. Cal. She probably markets.

And they're all incentivized by CRO. Yeah. This is one I have to take your work for on it. I'm. I was late for the party here.

But I do like. And this is coming from my son.

“Him and I are both got into this a few years ago.”

So I have a self interest. I have a full transparency. But I do believe. That since this made its way into the headlines this year. And now that it has stabilized.

And we do fear that the markets are going to shift a little bit. Where's the money going to go? Well. There's a. If we have a liquidity crunch.

Because dollars. The institutional dollars. Not retail dollars. The institutional dollars are going to find their way. To hire yielding Asian assets.

That's going to hit crypto. Cryptos. The fastest horse. One things are running great. And when there is a.

A lack of liquidity in the marketplace. They're the ones that feel it. The most. They have in the. And.

Prior. Times. But now with. Even Jamie Diamond. It was anti Bitcoin.

That they're going to adopt. Crypto. Yeah. And with the regulations coming on place. To where now all the majors are looking at.

Crypto. You're not putting the institutions into the market. Where that was just. The the off players. That were the.

The guys in the golf course. The guys that we're talking. And the techie. You know, conferences that wanted something different. That was mainstream.

It's actually doing exactly the opposite of what they wanted to do. Yeah. Right. You know, it's funny. And now gold and silver are playing the role that crypto was exactly.

In vision play 20 years ago. Right. We flip the coin on it. It's always different. But it's always.

So that's why I think.

For a significant upside.

And the crypto worker. Okay. So.

“I had this question on top performing asset for the year.”

We'll be. You like CRO. I do. Yeah. I'm not really sure what I'm going to say this year.

But on this point forward. From this point forward. Yeah. It's. It's a really tough one.

I have some stocks that I like. But, you know, I could. I don't want to talk back to you. You do. What's it?

I do. So as big as you are in core weave. The other major component that has been driven by this AI infrastructure. Boom. Is the memory chips.

Oh, yeah. Micro. Yeah. Well, that's a good one. But Samsung is the biggest.

And I like Samsung right now. It's $65. No kidding. So yeah.

I'd say that's a name I never look at.

Never, ever, ever. But should. Good. Okay. Similarly.

Let's jump to. Tell me Bradley. In 2026.

“What will the biggest corporate merger buy out or take over be for the year?”

Who's going to buy who? I haven't thought about that. Okay. You want me to answer. I thought a little about that.

Yeah. I want to. Why don't you answer that person when give me a second. Okay. I think that somebody like the JP more.

One of the big major money center banks is going to buy one of the big major crypto-based asset managers. And I really like Galaxy digital, which is run by Michael Nova Grats, who, and this is an asset management firm. It's essentially like a fidelity or a fimco for crypto assets, right? They don't mind. They manage assets.

Yeah. They manage foreign territory for talking about. Right?

So, you know, talking about a merger between a crypto and one of the majors.

That's right. And so, if that's going to happen, I really think, given the synergies and the partnerships that have happened. I also see CRO Crypto.com merging with Trump. Trump, the Trump companies, because they just announced a power company. I think they're going to have to.

We're going to get the Donald on here to talk about it. We do Donald Jr. that is. Okay. I would be sure. I never met the Donald.

But I did participate in the IPO of his vodka company way back in the day when I was at UBS. We took Trump vodka. Public, we were initial shareholders participating in the IPO. Company was a company called Drinks America. When are we going to take your drink?

Well, we lost money to deal. No, I'm talking about your drink. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're talking about talking about the hot tea.

Yeah. Yeah. We're talking about the hot tea. Yeah. In the blueberry tea.

Exactly. Yeah. We'll do actually. We could do one of those. We'd have one of those.

That might be the next biggest one. If I could, you know, blueberry tea is really good. But you're a solid shit. Okay. Let's see.

One more question. And then we're done. I guess that's all we got, Bradley. Is that it? That's what we got.

You have no more questions. Well, I was going to have to get a couple more sports questions.

“But I think my question is, how high is the hair really going to get this year?”

Oh, man. Well, you know, I mean, it is staying compact. Is it because of the weather outside? It hasn't gotten above. Yeah.

It's fine. I mean, did you just walk out? It just collapsed. I just, it froze to my head. It's so old here.

That's so bad. I called you to heat my eyes. I said, no, Mr. Freeze. Mr. Freeze. I would talk to freeze from the one in the.

Well, this information. This guy knows something. My girl, Michelle, my business partner. She has daughters that do this anime stuff. She's a teenager, type of, and they said that I look like this thing.

They call this guy called Sugarwarra. I don't know. I looked it up. I thought it was a compliment. Yeah.

I did look in cartoon character. Well, yeah. Call me Japanese anime character. No, no, no, no, no. He's anyway.

Guys, thanks for everything. Thanks for sticking with us. This is episode two. The episode two and episode three has something very special coming. A dear friend, but also the expert in the NIL space,

which is a hot issue right now with sports. He has negotiating more on behalf of all the NIL collectives for all the universities across the United States. He's a dear friend from law school. He's a dear friend of us and the burbing clubs.

Because it is one of our homeies going way back. I have a connection with this guy that I didn't even know about until I met you. We'll talk about it next week. We will. Small world.

Yeah, small world anyway. Looking really looking forward to that conversation. And I all next week or whatever. Is it next week? It is nice.

Yeah, look over there. Hey, everything's better with Barb. Everything's better with Barb. Thanks, Mitchell. Just like and subscribe.

Say that right. Cheers. This has been The Better With Bourbon Podcasts with Brad Martinowe and Deacon Palmer. New episodes drop weekly.

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