Google Is Fooling Everyone

Today on the Joseph Carlson show, this

is not something you see every day.

Google is seeking $80 billion for an AI

buildout. They're actually raising

capital through selling shares delution.

This is incredible. This is one of the

biggest equity raises I've ever seen

from a publicly traded company. In fact,

it may be the biggest ever. And we're

going to be going over all of it. A lot

of people have this news wrong. There

are tons of tweets that are giving

analysis and takes on it and hot takes

on what Google's doing. Many people say

that this is a time to be bearish, that

what we should be doing is being scared

of what Google's doing now. And I don't

believe that's the case. In fact, this

is one of the most strategic moves that

Google has ever done. And we'll be going

into all of it this episode. Now, of

course, we have a lot of other news to

get into. For example, Tom Lee recently

went on to CNBC and he upped the ante.

He said that the stock market may go on

to the biggest run that we've ever seen

over the next couple of years. We also

have news that two YouTubers are turning

the box office upside down. We have two

YouTubers that just made the movie The

Back Rooms and Obsession, and both of

them are massive hits at the box office.

In fact, there's now Variety and

different magazines saying that

YouTubers are taking over Hollywood.

What does this mean? We'll be looking at

this as well. And then finally, we get

to the fail of the week, which in this

case is Andrew Left, the infamous

shortseller. He's taken contrarian

positions on many companies. He was

found guilty of scheming to manipulate

stock market via media campaigns. This

short seller, Andrew left, will very

likely face jail time and a lot of it up

to 25 years based on this conviction.

But what did he do? Was it so bad? We'll

be going over the whole case in this

fail of the week. Now, just a quick

mention. If you haven't tried out

qualum.com, give it a try. We're always

adding new things. Qualrum, of course,

is the stock analysis website. It's this

one that I constantly use because, well,

I created it and I own it and I think

it's really easy to use. It just

displays all the fundamentals of a

company in beautiful visual format. It

has an advanced chart builder. It's

super easy to use. You can mix and match

metrics and add any of them that you

want at any time. It has a full earnings

week calendar. You can click in and

learn about any company's upcoming

earnings. And the newest addition in

Qualrum is Qualrum Studio, which allows

you to click in and see in-depth video

research on different companies. This is

a whole Netflix-like library for

investors. For example, I just recently

did an entire episode on Door Dash. This

is an hour-ong deep dive on this company

as well as other ones like my top stock

picks. This goes over 10 different ones

that we do analysis on. Uh we have a

recent video here about saving. A lot of

people thought this one was so good that

I should make it a public episode. So,

I've been considering that. There's

literally dozens of videos you get

access to and new ones added every

single week. And that's all included in

the single membership. So, you can try

it out now risk-f free at qual.com. Now,

to kick things off, we have to jump into

what I believe is some of the biggest

news that we've seen all year. This is

massive and it's actually unprecedented.

We have a company the size of Google,

the balance sheet of Google, the

financial strength of Google that

doesn't have enough money. And in fact,

they don't have enough money to the

extent that they're going to the equity

markets. They're going to delution to be

able to raise money. The Wall Street

Journal says that Google's seeking $80

billion for an AI buildout. From the

Google press release themselves, this is

from Google themselves. They say

Alphabet announces a proposed $80

billion equity capital raise to expand

AI infrastructure and compute. Now to

put this in simple terms, this means

that Google is willing to dilute the

shareholder to issue more shares worth

$80 billion so that they can transfer

those shares into cash and to be able to

use that $80 billion for compute and

infrastructure and whatever they want.

They have to dilute the shareholder to

be able to get this cash. And

immediately this raises a lot of

questions. For example, Google is one of

the most profitable and largest

companies in the world. Typically when

we see companies that are diluting

shareholders, you think of a much

smaller, less profitable company, one

that hasn't reached its operating

leverage and its scale and its profits.

Those are typically the ones that are

diluting shareholders. But Google is

neither small nor unprofitable. Google

is massive and highly profitable. In

fact, Google is one of the most

profitable companies on planet Earth. To

illustrate this, we can take a look at

Google's net income. This really shows

off how much money this company produces

every single quarter and every single

year. If we look at the net income on a

trailing 12-month basis, this is what it

looks like. It's up to 160 billion. Now,

part of this is because of a one-time

investment recognition. If we even

normalize from that, Google still makes

on a normalized basis over 130 billion

per year.

130 billion every year in net income.

Google's operating cash flow was 174

billion in the trailing 12 months. That

puts them as one of, if not the most

profitable company in the world. They'll

probably be beat by only Nvidia this

year. So Google is massively, massively

profitable. Like this is a company that

makes the money that nations do. It it

is an insane level of profitability yet

they don't have enough money and that

again is a headscratcher. Why does

Google need to raise money? Now the

reactions to this were equally perplexed

and in many cases a lot of people were

concerned about Google. We have people

like this Gary Marcus on X saying why

things will eventually fall apart.

Everybody, even Google, seems to be

treating AI as if it were some kind of

winner take all competition like web

search was in which Google can take over

95%. But everybody is building

essentially the same technological

solutions and essentially the same data.

So there is no mode. He continues on

showing how Google is overspending and

they're not going to have good returns.

We have other people on Twitter sharing

these tweets of of skepticism and shock.

We have liquidity here saying that

Google is raising $80 billion in equity

a week before SpaceX is trying to raise

75 billion a few months before Anthropic

and OpenAI are trying to raise 100

billion from investors. And you're

laughing. This is a cataclysmic exit

liquidity avalanche. And then he has the

meme of the big short of him Michael

Bomb in this saying that it's a bubble.

Jerry Capital saying Google equity raise

summarized and it's a a meme of the

joker burning cash. And there's more and

more of that. Twitter and X are full of

people that are completely shocked at

this. People that are saying that this

is the end of Google. It's the beginning

of the end. It's a bubble and everything

is going to come crumbling down. But as

I've done many times in the past, and it

will come as no surprise to you, I am

once again going to defend Google. No, I

do not believe that Google is lighting

money on fire. No, I do not believe that

this is the beginning of some big bubble

that's going to burst. And no, I do not

believe that Google's spending hundreds

of billions of dollars to build an

undiversified nomote business. All of

that is wrong. What's going on here

actually makes Google a much better

investment. And I'll be going over why.

Now, first of all, to look at my

position with Google, I think is

important. I have here in the passive

income portfolio, which I made it so you

can just see all the holdings here. So,

this is the passive income portfolio,

and I have a position in Google here.

It's a $130,000 position with 65,000 of

that being in the green. So, this one's

up over 136%. So, Google in just that

one portfolio is already a fairly large

position, but that's not the only place

that I hold it. I also have the story

fund and I have another large position

in Google here. $85,000 worth and 57,000

of that is gains. This one's up 382%.

So, when I look at this combined,

Google's around a 16% position. It is

fairly large. It's around a4 million

dollar position with over half of it

being gains. And I've held this company

for years and I've consistently defended

Google over and over again. And I

believe this is another case worthy of

defending Google for a few different

reasons. First of all, we can actually

look at what Google's doing here. They

are raising $80 billion in equity

capital to expand AI infrastructure. So,

they're basically diluting shareholders

to make it so that they have more cash

to invest in AI. And right off the bat,

that tells me a couple things. One of

them is that Google's belief in AI is

absolute. It is without question. They

don't just simply have a suspicion. They

don't simply have some speculation that

AI is a real thing. No, they believe it

100%. They're 100% convinced. So, if you

have any type of speculation or any type

of question that AI is going to have

attractive returns and it's going to

have demand, Google's already a bit

ahead of you. It's no longer a question

in their mind. They have a million data

points at their business, maybe a

billion data points. Of course, they

have search, they have Gemini, and then

they have their massive cloud business

that they have tons of enterprise

clients. And every single data point

they have, their entire business is

telling them they need more capacity.

They need more compute. They cannot

fulfill on all of the projects they're

trying to do across their vast empire

without the capacity. So, to them, this

is not a speculative bet. It's not

something that they're rolling the dice

on. Sundar Pachai did not wake up and

say, "You know what? It seems kind of

risky, but I think I'm just going to

roll the dice, invest $80 billion into

AI, and hope things turn out well."

That's not what's going on here. They

already know. They already have the

answer. What they're signaling to

investors here is that Google is

absolutely certain of AI demand without

any question. There is no way Google

would be putting this much capital at

this scale and this size without that

absolute certainty. And this isn't

something that was decided overnight

either. Google has for a long time

period their management has said and

signaled over and over again that right

now their biggest concern by far is the

unprecedented demand for compute

capacity. And the biggest concern for

Sundar Pachchai is not being able to

fulfill that compute capacity. He's

repeatedly mentioned this. In fact,

Sunder Pachai said just in February of

this year, quote, "What keeps us up at

night, we've been at this AI first

trajectory for over a decade." Pchai

said, pointing to years of investment in

custom chips like tensor processing

units, the TPUs. He went on to mention

that this current momentum in this

demand presents a unique challenge.

Quote, "The top question is definitely

around capacity." Pachai said all

constraints bet on power, land, supply

chain constraints. How do you ramp up to

meet this extraordinary demand for this

moment? He says that we got our

investments right for a long time and

we've done it all in a way of driving

efficiencies and doing it in a world in

a worldclass way. Google has been in the

right place at the right time over and

over again. Look at their investments

that they did in Whimo. Were those

poorly illustrated investments? No, they

did quite well. Look at their

investments that they did in artificial

intelligence and models. Chachbt got the

release first, but Google had been

working at that for a long period of

time and now Gemini is one of the top

used models. Look at their investments

in TPUs. Google is decades ahead of that

and comparison to companies like

Microsoft. Another present investment

for Google. Sundar Pachai has been on

top of this for a long period of time.

And right now he feels like the

unprecedented demand in AI is their

single biggest constraint. It is the

single biggest thing preventing them

from winning this entire race, from

consolidating an enormous amount of AI

demand under Google. Now, you may

question whether or not Sundar Pachai is

right. What if this is just a bet that

they're getting wrong? But in Google's

mind, what they're seeing right now as

they're running their business is that

they have all of the tools, they have

the TPUs, they have the best models,

they have the cyber security, they have

all the infrastructure, they have all

the distribution, but they do not have

the compute capacity. And Google's in a

situation where they're turning away

great customers, saying, "You know what?

We can't take your money because we

don't have enough capacity to fulfill

your demand. They are turning away

enterprise clients because they can't

provide enough capacity." Can you

imagine how frustrating it is as a

business to sit there with all all this

planning that you've done, all this

research, owning the best models, having

the TPUs, having everything already

baked to this point. It is ready to go.

But then you don't have the physical

infrastructure to be able to back up the

unprecedented demand. That must be

incredibly frustrating. It is giving

away a massive advantage that you've

built for decades. Senator Pachai does

not want to do that. He believes it's

critical not to do that. So they are

building and they're building fast.

Google is wanting to build faster than

Meta. They're wanting to build as fast

as Amazon in this AI demand. And to do

this, they need to raise a lot of cash.

And that brings us to the next big

question. A lot of people are looking at

this saying, "Well, if Google makes so

much money, $170 billion in operating

income, over $130 billion in net income,

why can't they just afford to do this

themselves?" And there's a couple

reasons why. First of all, they outline

this in this segment here called

investing in a balanced way. AI is

driving an expansionary moment for

Alphabet. The company is experiencing

strong demand for its AI solutions and

services from enterprises and consumers

at levels that are exceeding the

company's available supply. By scaling

its investment, the company seeks to

expand its foundational infrastructure

infrastructure to support the

significant growth opportunity ahead.

During its Q1206 earnings call, Alphabet

announced that its 2026 capital

expenditures are expected to exceed 180

to 190 billion and that it expects in

2027 capital expenditures to

significantly increase from 2026.

Now, let's just look at these numbers

here. Yes, Google makes like $170

billion in operating income. It's a lot

of money, but the number that they said

they're going to spend this year is 180

to 190 billion. That's more than what

Google makes. They're spending that in

2026 alone. Then they mention in 2027

they expect this number to go up

significantly. They literally say

significantly. We don't know what that

is, but it's going to be a lot higher.

These numbers, by the way, in and of

themselves are already way higher than

analysts expected. Analysts were

expecting numbers that were in the range

of 130 billion and they're already at

180 to 190. And they're saying that this

number is going to go way higher in

2027. Google makes a lot of money, $170

billion, but they don't make 200 billion

per year. They don't make $250 billion.

So Google quite literally cannot afford

upfront to pay for all of these

investments. They have to get money in

other places. And when a big company

like Google's raising money, there's two

ways to raise it. You have the debt

markets and you have the equity markets.

And we can look at what Google has done.

Google has already tapped the debt

markets. They've already tapped it dry.

In terms of debt issuance over the last

year, Alphabet has raised $85 billion of

debt across six major currencies and

markets, bringing its total debt balance

to over hundred billion. So the people

saying, why doesn't Google just raise

more debt? Why are they diluting

shareholders? They already have. They've

raised $85 billion of debt in just the

past 12 months. If they went ahead and

raised another $80 billion, they would

have $180 billion of debt, which is a

lot of debt, even for a company the size

of Google. That's a lot of debt. And

unfortunately, when you do that, it

makes your balance sheet, your debt

rating go down. They don't want to raise

that much debt. They don't want to pay

that much interest. Furthermore, there's

a lot of analysts looking at this and

banking analysts saying that the debt

markets in general are somewhat tapped.

Like it's a lot harder to get debt right

now than it was previously cuz lenders

are being a lot more strict with their

terms. So Google got debt already. They

got $80 billion of it. While the debt

markets were good, now that the debt

markets are sour, they're turning to the

equity markets. And this is another

thing that Google's doing in an

incredibly intelligent way. They're

getting ahead of the equity markets. And

by that I mean that Google is now

raising $80 billion of equity with

Delilution right before SpaceX goes for

their IPO. And wouldn't you know SpaceX

IPO, the 5% that they're wanting to

raise from the public is around $75

billion. So Google's saying, "Hey

SpaceX, before you get to market and get

all that juicy money from all the public

investors, we're going to get there

first. We're going to dry up that

liquidity before you have access to it.

We're also going to get there before the

anthropic IPO and before the OpenAI IPO.

Google's going to be first to the equity

markets, not last. This means that

Google has the advantage. They're

beating all these massive companies

looking for public money before they get

there. And Google will likely be able to

raise this money easily again because

investors aren't already putting money

into SpaceX, into OpenAI, and into

Anthropic. What Google's actually doing

here is more of a preemptive strike.

They are going for the equity markets

before they have been tapped by all

these other major AI companies like the

SpaceX, like the OpenAI, like the

Anthropic. We know that these companies

are going to be doing staggering level

of IPOs, raising hundreds of billions of

dollars in aggregate. There is a finite

amount of capital available to invest in

AI companies. Google knows this. They

know that if they wait too long, they'll

be the last in line trying to raise

capital from a market that doesn't have

a lot more capital to give. They will be

sucking all the oxygen out of the room

for these other IPOs. Not only helping

Google, but damaging their competition

and their ability to fund these

competitive threats in the process. See,

what Google's doing is not only

advantaging themselves, but they're

disadvantaging these other companies

hoping to raise capital as well. They're

making it more difficult by sucking away

all the available capital before they

even have a chance. This is a double

whammy. It is a preemptive strategic

strike at their competitors. Google is

saying that we are going to invest

endlessly in AI. We are going to make it

so that open AI and anthropic struggle

to gain any level of profitability and

pricing power. We're going to build out

a massive moat because Google has

something that these other companies do

not have. See, Google is not just a

commodity reseller of AI. They're not a

company that just spun up some servers

and created a server farm and is

reselling AI. Google is a vertically

integrated enterprise of AI features

from the security to the distribution to

the TPUs to every part of this. They

have the entire layer as well as Google

has many ways to benefit from this

personally. So Google can soak up all

this capital build out this massive moat

with artificial intelligence

distribution. They can infuse it in all

the features throughout all of their

business at the same time making it so

that they have a highly differentiated

product. At the same time, they are

sucking up both institutional and retail

money in the process. This is both a

defensive and offensive move by Sunundar

Pachai. When you really think about what

they're doing here, it is strategically

brilliant. It's something that you would

have to plan for, but Google seems to

have already done this and they're

executing it well. Google already knows

that they have a massive lead in this

category. They know that all they have

to do to protect their lead and protect

their moat is keep momentum going. Keep

the ball rolling. Keep this snowball

getting bigger and bigger and definitely

don't let it crumble to pieces because

you don't have capacity. That'd be a

very stupid reason to give up the lead.

And Google knows this. They say that

their AI momentum is picking up pace.

Alphabet's planned investment will

support its business momentum, including

Alphabet's revenue growing 22%

year-over-year to $ 110 billion in Q1.

That's over 110 billion in a single

3-month period. Google search and other

revenue grew by 19%. Cloud revenue grew

63% year-over-year in Q1 with backlogs

nearly doubling quarter over-arter to

more than 460 billion with approximately

50% expected to be recognized as revenue

over the next 24 months. Google's

subscriptions Google reached 350 million

paid subscriptions with Q1 2026

representing the company's strongest

quarter ever for consumer AI plans.

Google now has over 8.5 million

developers building new experiences with

its models monthly and its first-party

model API are processing 19 billion

tokens per minute. A six time increase

year-over-year. The metrics are

staggering. And these aren't the only

ones. When you actually look at what's

going on with Google, like when you

literally just visually look at it, it

literally looks fake how much demand

they have. Their demand is outscaling

their revenue growth. it's outscaling

what they're able to provide at an

unprecedented pace. And that's why they

need more cash today. I think it's good

to just take a minute and simply think

about what's going on. Instead of

looking at the headlines and becoming

concerned that they're selling shares

and it's a lot of money, I really want

to just take a step back and consider

for a minute simply what's going on.

Google believes that there is an

investment they can make that is so

good, it's so good that they need to

literally dilute shares of their own

company to raise equity to make this

investment. That's how good it is. And

that's an investment that's so good that

they've already raised $80 billion by

going to the debt markets. And that's an

investment that's so good that they've

already spent all of their operating

cash flow and their net income. All

their discretionary money is being spent

on this investment. That's what Google's

doing here. So, in terms of whether or

not they believe this investment is

worthwhile, that shows you where they

stand. They're willing to do whatever it

takes to make this investment and make

sure they continue to lead in AI. And I

have full reason to believe them. Like

we highlighted, every metric for Google

is already showing that this is paying

off. Buffett once talked about the ideal

business. He described what he believed

was the perfect business. And this is

what he described. This is a

hypothetical of Buffett's ideal

business.

>> Sure, it's a good question. The the

ideal business

is one that earns very high returns on

capital and can keep using lots of

capital at those high returns. I mean,

that becomes a compounding machine.

>> So, those are both important

ingredients. It's not enough just to

have high returns, but you have to have

high returns with a lot of capital

invested. And that's where you get the

compounding machine. So if you have your

choice, if you could put a $100 million

into a business that earns 20% on that

capital, say 20 million, ideally it

would be able to earn 20% on 120 million

the following year and 144 million the

following year and so on that you could

keep redeploying capital at these same

returns over time. But there are very

very very few businesses like that. the

really unfortunately the good businesses

you know take a Coca-Cola or seas candy

they don't require much capital and

incremental capital doesn't produce

anything like the returns that this

fundamental return that's produced by

some great intangible Google

historically was one of these companies

that earned so much more money than they

could adequately reinvest. So what did

Google do during that time period? Well,

they just bought back shares. They just

returned it back to the shareholder.

They said, "Hey, look, we have these

profitable businesses. We generate way

more cash than we need to adequately

reinvest back in our business. So, we're

going to just return all this extra back

to you, the shareholder." And they did

that for a long period of time. Google

was a cash flow generative, highly

profitable, cash returning business for

years and years and years. But then

something happened which made the

equation flip. Google has a unique

opportunity to invest enormous amounts

of capital today at what they believe

with high conviction will be very

attractive returns for their

shareholders. Now again, Google's not

just racing out looking for investments.

They're not just racing out throwing

money left and right willy-nilly hoping

that it turns out well. This is

something that just happened. It was

fate. It was fortune. It was a lot of

preparation and building out the TPUs

and building out the AI models. But

having this massive influx of AI demand

was also just a part of fate and Google

is wellprepared to take advantage of it.

They're now saying once we finally found

something that's in our wheelhouse that

we know very well that we don't have to

look outside of our business to earn

high returns. We're not just doing

acquisitions. We're not buying some

random company with very low prospects.

This is something that happened that's a

one-time thing. The AI influx is a

dynamic change in the market. We have a

huge advantage here and a huge

opportunity to invest increasing amounts

of capital and get very attractive

returns. This is the ideal business that

Bergkshire is looking at. And funny

enough, even though Warren Buffett said

that years ago, now they're investing

$10 billion in this ideal business.

Bergkshire obviously believes that the

money that they're investing today will

have attractive returns. And I believe

that Google's intuition here and the

management conviction is correct. They

are likely to have incredibly high

barriers to entry for their AI

solutions. Although companies can spin

up server racks, there's very few that

have the entire stack like Google. They

have the TPUs, that have the security,

that have the distribution. Google's

also a very uniquely positioned company

to have the billions of users in

distribution natively to integrate all

of this computational power within their

services. They're already giving you

previews of what they can do already

just with their basic applications like

how AI's integrated into YouTube. It's

integrated into your documents, into

Drive, into PDF viewing, all of this

type of stuff. But there's far more that

they can go. There's far more runway. So

Google is in a position to have a

massive capital barrier mode. They're in

a position to get all this capital

before their competitors with XAI,

before their competitors with Anthropic

or with OpenAI have access to this

capital. They're in a position to build

out an incredibly powerful full stack AI

solution. Google is a very uniquely

positioned company to benefit from this.

So, as far as I'm concerned, I'm staying

in Google. Now, moving on, let's get to

some news. Here we have Tom Lee recently

going on to CNBC and explaining why he

believes that the next three years will

be the best years for investors in the

stock market. Let's go ahead and listen

to his reasoning.

>> Well, I think a couple things are coming

together, Joe, um that are going to

really support a few things that may

only happen like once in our lifetime.

One is I think this the US economic

growth rate is actually starting to step

up. Um you know in other words we could

grow at 4%. And for a you know a mature

largest economy in the world to start to

accelerate growth that that's pretty um

astounding. Um the second is the US is

one of the biggest exporters of the most

important tool in the next 10-15 years

which is AI products and that means we

are a net essentially exporter of a

highv value product and there's so much

capital I think misallocated today

because so much of it is held in private

alternatives but it's going to move into

the public market. So I do think that

plus the demographic tailwind of

millennials and Gen Z uh adding to the

workforce but then also beginning to

inherit generational wealth. I think

that is going to set up for after 2026

perhaps you know like you know over the

next 2 years some of the biggest gains

of the stock market in our lifetime.

>> So Tom Lee points out a couple important

things here. One of which I completely

agree with which is the United States

has become a massive exporter of AI

which if you look at historically why

the US has done so well if you just look

at the US economy and the stock market

and why it's really thrived a lot of it

has been software the United States has

been a massive exporter of software

services which are high margin very

profitable consistently build services

now we have the SAS apocalypse software

stocks are going down software is the

old news. But then we have the new

thing. The new shiny thing, of course,

is AI. In this case, AI is a very real

product offering enormous amounts of

value. It's so powerful that it's

literally disrupting many software

companies. And which country is

investing by far the most into

artificial intelligence? Well, the

United States is. It's not even close.

And then the last thing that he points

out, which I again agree with, is there

is going to be a lot of generational

wealth, a lot of pass down wealth that

should spur economic growth. I believe

that younger demographics spend money in

different ways. They spend on different

services than older demographics. So,

you're going to see a lot of boom. And I

believe a lot of stock market companies

do well as a result of that. So, even

though this seems a little bit

far-fetched to have the best years of

our life ahead, it also doesn't seem

impossible. With what's going on with AI

today, the massive influx investment in

capital, I believe that there is a

chance we'll have incredibly good gains

in the stock market over the next three

years. and I think it's a great time to

stay invested. Now, next we get to news

of what's going on in Hollywood. This is

something that I I think a lot of people

are overlooking. This is a dynamic

change happening to movie making and it

specifically has to do with YouTube.

YouTubers seem to be taking over the box

office, especially over the past week.

AMC had its best month ever, the most

traffic ever had in history. Cinemark

also did exceptionally well. These movie

theaters are pulling in the mass amounts

of people to see movies. But it's not

for the new Mandalorian movie. It's for

movies that YouTubers are making.

Backroom is a horror film. $10 million

is what they spent to produce this film.

Open to an extraordinary 81 million.

Smashing records for distributor A24.

And Obsession, a horror film made on a

budget of 750,000,

gross 26.4 million in its third week

after release, a 10% jump from the

previous weekend, and crossed $100

million domestically. So again, this

movie Obsession, it cost $750,000

to make and they're now grossing well

over $und00 million. Now, I saw

Obsession the first weekend that it came

out. I was looking at movies to watch.

I'm not a huge horror fan, but I'll I'll

watch them if they look interesting

enough. And this one had an intriguing

premise. I saw a couple of the

commercials and I'm like looking at this

Wish Gone Bad. And then I looked at the

ratings on it. And notice right here,

this is Rotten Tomatoes. Now, I get it.

The critics can be wrong sometimes. The

users can be wrong sometimes as well.

But when you have a 96% critic and a 94%

user, that's a pretty good consensus

that this is likely a a very well done

movie. And it was. Obsession was one of

the best horror movies I've seen in a

long time. It was original. And even

though it was created for $750,000,

there's no way that I thought this movie

would be made for that cheap. It looked

good. It looked very good. In fact, I

would say that this movie looked better

aesthetically than many movies shot for

like a hundred million dollars. I don't

know how they did it. The lighting, the

ambiance, the acting, just everything

looked really upclass for a movie made

for less than a million dollars. Now,

the incredible part of this is that this

movie that again costs less than a

million dollars to film, is actually

doing better than The Mandalorian and

Grou, a Star Wars spin-off with a $165

million price tag. That one came in

third after the two YouTubers films. It

tumbled 70% in its second week and its

opening weekend it was the lowest ever

for a Star Wars film under Disney. So

look what's going on right now. The

company that has Star Wars, one of the

biggest pieces of IP ever. Like it seems

like bulletproof IP just came out with

their new movie, which is a new one in a

long time, The Mandalorian and Grou.

They spent hundreds of millions of

dollars to make it and they're being

outplayed and outmatched. They're being

beat in the box office by two YouTubers

movies that are both created for less

than $10 million. One of them created

for less than 1 million. That is an

insane underdog story. So I believe this

is the time that Hollywood will wake up.

They will use this as a shocking way of

now turning to YouTubers original

stories, lowerbudget films that feel

very good because they're led by

storytelling, acting, and character

development. They're not led by CGI and

AI explosions. These movies were

entertaining because of the story they

told, because of the pacing, because of

how they were directed. So, I believe

we're going to see a lot more of this.

Hollywood is going to be turning to

YouTubers to make more of these movies,

and I'm all for it. Now, moving on, we

get to the fail of the week. In this

case, it is Andrew Left of Citron

Research. He has been found guilty from

scheming for scheming to manipulate the

stock market via media campaigns. Andrew

Left used his TV appearances to disguise

his intentions, manipulate the stock

market, and pat his pockets, said First

Assistant United States Attorney. So,

the government goes after Andrew Left.

They catch him and they say that you've

been really bad at manipulating the

stock market. That's illegal. So, we're

going to throw you in jail. And at first

glance, you may just look at this and

think, "What did he do that was so bad?

Did he just pump his stocks? Was he just

bearish on different companies and

that's why they're throwing him in

jail?" That's not really what's going

on. What Andrew actually did was much

worse. One of these examples is very

damning. In 2018, Andrew Left wrote a

portfolio manager about Nvidia Corp. He

said, quote, "Do you want to make some

fast money? Put together a thesis of why

Nvidia is oversold. We can destroy it.

Just read the analyst note from this

past quarter and assemble your best

ideas." Later that morning, Left took

financial positions in Nvidia, including

a short-dated call options that expired

3 days later. left them promoted Nvidia

as a favorable investment to Citron's

Twitter account, stating, "Cit buys

Nvidia. This is the first time in two

years the stock has an appealing

riskreward to investors. We see 165

before we see 120." Despite his

representation that he expected Nvidia

share price to rise to 165, less than 2

hours after announcing Citron buys

Nvidia, left sold all his pre-weeted

positions. Nvidia was trading within a

range of 150 to 151 and he sold for a

profit of $960,000.

So Andrew left says Citron's buying

Nvidia and I have a price target that's

like $20 higher and I'm very bullish on

it. It's not going to go down. And then

within 2 hours of that announcement, he

cashes in on short-term options for a

million dollar gain and it's completely

out of the position. That is textbook

market manipulation. He had no intention

of keeping Nvidia and riding it up to

his price target. He was just trying to

bump the stock up so he could

immediately exit and sell into the

liquidity that the market was providing.

And Andrew Left repeatedly did stuff

like this. He would take short positions

and he would say that the stock is going

to go down, but then immediately after

releasing that news that he believes the

stock was going to go down, he would

immediately close those positions for a

quick gain. And he wouldn't tell people

that he had exited those positions. This

is exactly the type of behavior that is

short-term manipulation. Andrew Left was

fine making money from his followers at

their expense. He was fine trading

against them, having them buy into the

liquidity of a position he was selling.

So, he'd make money for himself at the

expense of his followers. So, this is an

unfortunate case for Andrew Left. It

shows that even when you can make a lot

of money in the short term, the $20

million or so that Andrew Left has made

is just not worth it. Manipulating the

stock market, trading against your

followers is just not worth it. It's a

bad game to play. It's completely

dishonest. And even though the

government isn't perfect at applying

these rules equally, they are going

after these people doing this. And I

think that overall that's a good thing.

That's it for this episode. See you in

the next one.