The Rich Man, Angry Man, Degenerate Man Economy Hits All-Time Highs

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Good afternoon everyone…

Just a quick note to say the cycling shoes above in today’s DSTNC ad are incredible. I love Q36.5 gear (not inexpensive), and the shoes are the best I have worn. I have pedaled enough miles to know the difference. You can buy them here and use PANIC15 for a great discount.

Onward…

I am late…I know. I am getting used to Coronado work and ‘porch’ life. Yes, it is fantastic, but my schedule for posting daily will just be more random daily hours.

What a week it has been in the world of markets and investing.

It was an insane week for my themes of ‘Rich man, angry man, degenerate man economy’. You can read all my posts over the last year right here as I have thought through how I want to invest in the years ahead. I created a public stock index that tracks this theme for me and you can follow along here. It is up 60 percent in the last 12 months!

The biggest degenerate news of the year hit today as the SEC approved the FIRST leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF. Lord knows the retail crowd needs this because leverage and futures is so easy to manage. Bitcoin loves the news and is trading over $31,000. Thanks Gary Genzzzler.

Elsewhere on the degenerate side, The Draftkings ($DKNG) founder and CEO went to Twitter and asked how the company could improve. I guess you should never ask Twitter a question you do not know the answer to, because the comments are ‘lit!. It turns out the ‘degenerate’ man/woman is unhappy with the product. I have no idea who has the best gambling app and products because I am not the customer, but I do know from my research in the space that we are in the EARLY days of this sports betting contagion.

In other ‘degenerate’ news Robinhood ($HOOD) announced the acquisition of a credit card for $100 million and 24 hour trading on a bunch of stocks. I was a seed investor in Robinhood as readers here know and I am still waiting for 100 features that matter to me more than these two, but I guess I am not the market/customer. I guess I am saying that a next batch of Robinhood/Schwab/ competitors could show up with lean cap tables post this bear market and attack in different ways. We are investors in Alpaca which would be the company to power these and has been. I can tell you there are hundreds if not thousands of founders still after this market.

In the angry economy, we may have reached peak anger and stupidity at once (for the moment) with one event…the looming cage fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Two assholes do not make one nice guy. I tweeted that I would donate $100,000 if the cage fight happens on Mars. May they punch each other to smithereens.

In the ‘rich man’ economy nothing says peak wealth management than A16z starting their own wealth management business. They have been working on this theme the past few years. Should RIA’s everywhere be frightened of the new competition? Yes and no. Back in January 2021, A16z penned the famous fintech piece ‘Every Company Will be A Fintech Company’. That did not ring ‘the top’ but was pretty close as the fintech market has taken the biggest beating in the world of ‘tech’.

My partner Matt and I have been investing in wealthtech for many years - Secfi, Seeds, Lumida and FREC to name a few - so we have long been bullish on wealth management. I have personally invested in a couple of RIA’s as well. The governments around the world have printed money endlessly the past 15 years so the business of ‘money’ and ‘money management’ is going to be a huge growth trend. Add to that the great ‘wealth transfer’ that has begun and you can understand why A16z is adding wealth management as a business. Back in 2006 I was telling Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures to do this for his firm. Fred loved the idea but said he did not want to be in that business. So, here we are 17 years later and look to a lot more venture capital and private equity firms to do the same.

I pinged a bunch of my favorite RIA people for comment. My two fave responses…

‘Everyone jumping in…maybe we should sell’

and

‘Venture capitalists randomly, starting RIAs is like dentists opening restaurants. “I like to eat!” ‘

The plot thickens. Have a great rest of Friday.