Podcasts about exchange commission

Rick Chess, attorney, real estate strategist, capital-raising expert, and trusted advisor, is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners navigate complex decisions that can dramatically impact enterprise value and long-term success. Throughout a career spanning more than five decades, Rick has raised over $100 million for multiple organizations, guided companies through acquisitions, governance challenges, and strategic growth, and helped owners prepare for successful exits. We explore The Capital Raising Framework — Focus on Individuals, Not “the Market”; Be Ready to Sell; Start With Who You Know; Connect on Emotion; and Find a Problem to Solve. Rick explains why raising capital is ultimately about understanding people, not pitching ideas, why investors care more about their needs than your opportunity, and how trust-based relationships create opportunities that compound over time. He also shares lessons from raising capital, building influential networks, serving on boards, and helping entrepreneurs avoid costly mistakes when pursuing funding, growth, and exit strategies. — How to be a Trusted Advisor with Rick Chess  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Rick Chess, who is a real estate and exit strategist. He helps business and real estate owners, and the trusted advisors who guide them, turn complex decisions into strategic moves that grow enterprise value and maximize sale outcomes. Rick, welcome to the show.  Thank you. Appreciate it, Steve.  Well, it’s great to have you. And I’m going to ask you my favorite question, which I always ask: What is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice?  When you go back in my career, 50-some years, where I’ve been most happy is either growing an organization. That can be a community, that can be a business, it can be an association. And then, at some point, individuals in that association want to move on, whether that’s to retire, to go someplace else, or whatever. And I find that in that world, there are certain things where they might have a Steve Preda who helps them with how to manage day to day. But they get to certain big issues that they’ve never done before, and maybe they’ll never do again. That’s where I like to come in because I know I’m critically important to them. So you’re a trusted advisor. You like to grapple with the big challenges people have in their lives, whether it’s a big real estate transaction, getting ready for an exit, an acquisition, or something like that.  Yeah.  Yeah.  So, I mean, the things that would be—for instance, most folks, if they’re talking about real estate, they have some idea how to fix a toilet. They have some idea how to buy a property. But when they get to a certain point, it’s like, “We need to raise $10,000. We need to raise $100 million,” whatever the amount is, because there’s either a great opportunity or they want to keep moving upward. And they have, again, a Steve Preda who can help them through the process. How they get that capital often is what trips people up. So that’s where I kind of first got into this.  I was an acquisition guy. I knew how to spend other people’s money, but I didn’t know at that time how to raise the money. And I’ve done it several times. I’ve raised $100 million for three different companies. And like everything in life, like with Summit, there is a process that you go through. And I love doing it. I just love doing that kind of stuff.  Okay. So when you are doing capital raising, fundraising, M&A deals, or real estate transactions, is there a framework that has helped you, that you figured out along the way? And think about something that is three to five steps. Maybe it’s a mental model of how you look at things, or maybe it’s a process. How would you describe that framework that you have, or that has helped you, so that the listeners would also benefit from it?  The listeners are best served if they step back from their preconceived notions of, A, how they think capital is attracted, because they usually are wrong. And they step back from how wonderful they are. And those two things are difficult. Because the reality is, no one is waiting to give you money. That’s foolish. You’ve got to sell the concept like you have to sell everything else. And what you sell is not what you think is wonderful. It’s what the market is going to think is wonderful. It’s like with any other product you’re making. “Hey, I made this great widget.” And the population looks at it and says, “I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I don’t know what it does.”  And depending on whether you’re trying to raise $100,000 from friends and family or $100 million on Wall Street, you look at who it is that you know. Because people that you know might at least return your phone call. So if you don’t know Bill Gates, thinking that you’re going to go to Bill Gates and get a billion dollars is, well, stup*d. But if you’re just trying to raise money from friends and family, and you have an aunt who lives three states away that you don’t see very often, and she has some money, okay, then you start with who you know. So, for instance, thinking about one of the many ways that you can raise money, there’s something called intrastate. And it is something that’s allowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. If all of your money is raised within your own state, there are certain allowances for that.  But if you do one transaction outside the state, it all collapses. So like everything else on the business side, where there are certain rules that you can’t violate without getting into trouble, it’s the same thing when raising money. And I get so many people saying, “I’m going to list this on Wall Street, and I’m going to make…” It’s like, “No, you don’t. You better be prepared. If you’re going to list something on Wall Street, you’d better have $25 million that you can risk just to get it out there. And nine times out of ten you’re going to fail.” Not because there’s anything wrong with you.  It’s just that if you’re going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with a pair of Keds, a T-shirt, and some shorts, you’re not prepared to climb that mountain. It’s no different when raising capital. And also think about when you were a kid. At a certain age, your parents let you cross the street to see your buddy. Then ten years later, they’ll let you get in the car and drive, but you’ve got to get home by midnight. It’s the same thing with raising money. And there aren’t a lot of folks who have done what I’ve done. So talking to your local lawyer or accountant—who may be wonderful people—but if they’ve never raised money, they’re not the people to talk to.  One of the ways people get taken advantage of on a regular basis is they’ll go to a securities attorney. The securities attorney will charge them $100,000 and write this great offering document, and no one ever gives them a penny. Because lawyers generally have no clue what’s happening in the marketplace. I own my own securities broker-dealer. I’ve also raised money for three different companies. It’s not easy. But like having read your book, Steve, if you follow certain paths, there’s at least a chance for success. Same thing here. Fascinating. So what I’m taking away in terms of a framework: Be aware that people are not out there waiting to give you money. You have to sell them. So that’s the first step. The second one is: start with who you know. Don’t start on Wall Street. Start with the people you know, where you have some trust, the people you understand, and where you have a chance to get there. And then look at some special circumstance that’s going to give you a leg up. For example—  Absolutely. Again, this is coming right out of your book on the business side. You create a widget. So what? But you create a widget that solves a problem. Ah. Then you have something. So it’s the same thing. When you get over onto the money-raising side, it’s: who do you know? Where do they live? How much money do they have? How do I approach them? But then, in the end, it’s not what’s in it for you, it’s what’s in it for them. And for them, if it’s friends and family, your mama may give you some money because she thinks you’re cute.  Your aunt might give you some money because she’s related to your mama. But at some point, you’re going to people who really have a checkbook. They have money in the checkbook. They’re not going to give this up just because you’re cute or you have a great idea. You’re either going to get them because you have something they’ve never heard of, or you have something that really feels like it could solve one of their needs. And their needs are not always what you think. Some people think, “Well, what they need is high cash flow.” What if they don’t need cash flow, but they’re really interested in a cure for cancer?  What if you think, “Well, it’s really going to go up in value”? Well, they have all the money they need. They’re not looking for that. But is this something that is going to allow their nephew to come work for you? Yeah. When you start thinking that you know what other people are thinking, that’s when you’re going to fail. When you can step back and just ask them, “Well, what’s important to you?” If you can’t have a conversation, one, you’re never going to date anybody, and you’re never going to raise any money.  And don’t be slick. You can be slick for three sentences, and at that point they’re going to reject everything you say thereafter. So don’t talk about how much money you’re going to make and all the rest of it. No. Talk about them. Talk about them. Talk about them. Your document should talk about them. Your questions should talk about them. Now, does that mean there are certain people who won’t put money into your deal? Yes, because it doesn’t fit. If you sell high-heeled shoes and a runner comes in, they’re generally not going to buy your high-heeled shoes. They’re not going to invest money in high-heeled shoes.  But if that high-heeled shoe actually is a running shoe, and you can break off the heel and then… I mean, I don’t know. You could come up with something there. And the folks that say no are sometimes your biggest advocates. What? The folks that… Yes. Because you’ve been able to get into their head, and they’ve shaken it around, and they’ve looked at it and said, “No, that’s probably not right for me. I’m not into high-heeled shoes, but I have a friend.” If you’ve done a sincere job, a thoughtful job, you’ve really asked them questions, and you’ve connected on an emotional level, they’ll open the next door. And that’s what it’s about. It’s often a lot of the same things that you teach people about how to sell their company. It’s how they sell—  Rick, this is fascinating. So how do you connect with people on an emotional level? What’s the trick there?  First thing is: why are they going to take a meeting with you? Why they take a meeting with you answers almost everything that we’ve just asked. If they’re taking a meeting with you because you’re related, okay, that’s the emotional connection. If they take a meeting with you because some friend of yours called them and said, “This is a great way to make money,” that’s another reason. If you found them in an article in the paper—yes, there are things called newspapers. They print them. There are words in them. And there’s somebody in there who has shown an interest in something you do.  Then you’re talking to them about that interest. You want to try to avoid cold calls. Really, it’s a waste of your time and a waste of their time. It’s a random thing. It’s like asking every girl who walks by in college, “Do you want to go out on a date?” Sometimes it works. You get slapped a lot, get arrested, and what have you. There’s this thing called the internet, Steve. And what shocks me is how few people—not just my age, but young pups—say, “Well, that’s for watching YouTube videos.” No.  Through the internet, you have so much information. So maybe I can’t find anything about Johnny Jones, but his kids are on there and what sports they play. Huh. Okay, so I used to do judo. I did three years of judo in high school. If somebody’s doing karate or whatever, I have an opening. I have something to talk about. Now, it’s great if what you have to talk about then connects to something else that they want. It’s a linking process of connecting various things together. It’s what I did… I told you I was a member of the General Assembly in Pennsylvania way back in the ’70s.  And I learned there that if I could get people talking about themselves, or their next-door neighbor, or some relative… What’s funny is people are much more likely to tell you about somebody else. So when I go into a company—this is just a side note—when I’m doing due diligence and I really want to know their financial condition, I’m not going to get it from the CFO. I’m going to get it from somebody over in property management. Why? Because the property management person knows not to tell me anything secret about property management, but they’ll talk about finances all the time. And it’s the same thing. If I’m in a family and I want to know about Daddy, I talk to the daughter.  If I want to know about a neighbor, I talk to a neighbor. I can go to the post office. Everything you ever need to position yourself to sell is out there waiting for you. But you’ve got to get out of your head what you think the market is about and start thinking about individuals within the market. And accept that when I’ve raised money, 70% to 80% of the people I call on don’t do a deal with me. But of that 70%, half of them lead me to somebody else. And I keep up with them. They become my support group. They become my unofficial advisors. Because I’m a decent guy, they want me to succeed. And once they know I’m not bugging them anymore, I say, “Hey, you told me I should go talk to such-and-such.  Here’s what I heard.” And then the network just expands. And occasionally, that person who said no has somebody new come into their life and says, “You need to go talk to Rick Chess.” And sometimes the next time I’m raising money, their situation is different. So the person who told me no originally has seen me work the market and close the deal. It’s amazing how attractive an opportunity is once you can’t put any more money into it. And so you let them know, “I know it wasn’t the right time for you to come into my deal, but we did buy this company. We’ve doubled their…” Whatever it is. You continue to work with them. If somebody is willing to give you time on the phone, on Zoom, at a coffee shop, or wherever, they’re your friend for life. They don’t know that yet, but you’re going to make them your friend for life. It’s the old six degrees of separation—the Kevin Bacon game.  Everybody’s related to somebody somewhere. And it’s what makes this fun for me. You were talking before about growing an exit. I love the process of putting together the network and feeding the network. There are people I’ve known for 50 years that I still talk with.  You’re very good at connecting people and making them look good with other people that you connect them to. It’s very gratifying. So this is a long game, right? Absolutely.  It’s a long game because you’re being decent. You listen to people. You find something that helps them. You learn what they need, what is the itch that needs to be scratched, and then you connect people who can help them scratch that itch. And then they will reciprocate, and it becomes a self-perpetuating process.  Well, I mean, an example is the work that I do in North Carolina with a family that owns 44 hotels. A woman who was my CPA left the CPA firm and became the family officer for a large family here in Richmond. A friend of hers who does advisory work with family offices was giving up on a client. So she told my friend, who used to be a CPA. She introduced me to them and said, “Would you be willing to serve on the board of a private company?” I said, “Well, do they pay?” I used to be on the board of a public company, and after a certain age, you’re not attractive anymore.  After a certain age, they want you off the board because the institutions say, “We want a mix on the board. So I got introduced to these people, and I’ve had a great time. Members of the family have hired me for other work, and it just goes on and on. But I’ve learned that you’ve got to pay it forward. So I have students of mine from VCU who I’ve helped place in jobs. I keep up with them. I give them ideas. And they’re often shocked to find that I’m still in touch with them. I’m not asking them for anything. I’m just saying, “Look, I paid it forward to you. Now it’s your turn to pay it forward to somebody else.” And some of them are doing it. Some of them haven’t caught on yet.  But it is the circle of life, and it’s all tied together. And there are skills you have that I don’t have. There are skills I have that you don’t have. We both have folks that work with business brokers because they have a different drive. But it’s also self-selecting. There are a lot of people you’ve met that you don’t do business with. There are a lot of people I’ve met that I don’t do business with. If you’re going to get into raising money, doing governance, or doing exit planning, whatever it may be, one of the most important things is saying no. Or, “No, I don’t want to work with this person.” You can always be friendly with them. Yeah. But I try to fire a client every month. Somebody that just doesn’t fit for me ethically. Yeah. Or I don’t think there’s anything more I can do for them.  I pass off legal work to other attorneys in Virginia. I’m the chair of the Real Property Section of the state bar. There are 1,550 attorneys. I have plenty of attorneys that I can pass things on to, and they’re happy to get the business, and I’m happy. I’ve got somebody that I’ve referred that’s happy that I’ve referred them. My biggest challenge, my wife would say, my son would say, is that I’m a squirrel chaser. Something new and interesting comes along, and I want to get involved with it. And I’ve wasted so much time. So I’m working with this hotel group down in North Carolina. The last time I had worked with a hotel company was 30 years earlier. Two owners couldn’t agree on a direction.  I worked with them for six months. We made a decision. It was great work. I learned a lot about hotels. But I then went 30 years without applying the same skills. And that’s one thing that, with age, I’ve realized. I am better off saying: “I’ll help you with capital, I’ll help you with governance, and when you’re ready, I’ll help you exit.” That’s it.  Yeah.  If it’s not one of those three, I’ll talk about it.  Yeah.  I’ll listen to you. You don’t want to engage me.  Yeah. I mean, people want deep expertise. They don’t want generalists. They want someone who knows what they’re talking about and who can link them to other resources who also know what they’re talking about. And in today’s age, I think this is becoming more important again. Because of the internet, there was a disintermediation going on, but now there is a reintermediation, I believe. Because there’s so much noise out there, you don’t know what is true and what is fake. AI is creating a lot of fake stuff.  The only people you can really trust are the people who are in front of you, or someone recommends them whom you trust. It’s a transparency thing. So I think what you’re doing is very valuable. It’s going to become even more valuable. And knowledge is ubiquitous. You can ask ChatGPT, and it will give you an answer. But how do you get the trust? How do you get the emotion? How do you get the relationships? That’s all human stuff. And if you still have that, then you’ve got what is valuable.  Well, I have a friend of mine who wrote a book, and he wrote it as a fable. What I love about it is that I know the true story behind the fable. And what comes across in every single chapter is that, with that trust, people who were afraid took a step. And often that is the hardest thing. So I go to the gym six days a week, and the gym is hard. Getting in the car to drive there is the hard part. Once I’m there, I’m around friends, I work hard, I sweat, I get better. Getting in that car and driving down the drive…  So in your fable, in your book, and in most of where I’ve had success, I would love to say it was because I was brilliant. Eh, sometimes I will say I was brilliant. But let me give you an example. United Dominion Realty Trust, now based in Denver and originally based here in Richmond, has been around for 35 years. It was one of the original five REITs in the country—real estate investment trusts. I came in as acquisitions director. They hadn’t closed a deal in a year. I closed three in the first three months. I grew the firm tenfold in 10 years, and I had great people. Buddy Scott as an analyst. Catherine Surface as an attorney.  But what I did was look at it and say, “Does anybody know what we’re trying to buy?” Because they had no acquisition criteria. So I wrote a one-page acquisition criteria document and put it out to everybody who had ever submitted a deal. Oh, and we weren’t responding to the submissions. So a submission would come in, they would look at it and say, “Okay, that doesn’t work.” But they never told anybody no. So one of my rules was that anything that came in would get a response within 48 hours.  And it should be specific. “We don’t like this because of the city.” “We don’t like this because of the roof.” Something specific, because I knew they’d pay attention. And by responding within 48 hours, we went from struggling to get submissions to doubling our submissions within a year. Because people were like, “Oh, we know what they want. We know they will respond.” And then—and this probably sounds outrageous—we celebrated. We put out a newsletter every month. This is back when you mailed things, so we’re going way back into the dinosaur era. But anytime a broker brought us something that we bought, we would do a full-page spread on the broker. We were marketing him or her.  People loved us. And they would tell others about us. So owners would know that if they came to us, we’d make a fair offer and we’d move on. So I would love to say that’s because I was a great attorney. I would love to say that’s because I was insightful. It was just like, “Well, damn, this is obvious.” And reading some of your stuff, I’ve seen you point that out to people time and time again.  You give me too much credit. But yeah, I mean, if you’re there, they say that if you work hard for 25 years, you can become an overnight success. So yeah, it does get obvious when you’ve been studying it long and hard. Well, listen, Rick, that’s been wonderful. So what is your final thought for an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur or founder who’s coming up? Maybe he’s in real estate. Maybe he’s trying to be successful. What’s the most important mindset for an entrepreneur to become successful?  Well, I mean, you’ve got to know something. I mean, you either need to really know construction, or you’ve got to really know how to lease a space. If you’re going into it like they do on HDTV, like, “Oh, we’re going to find this property and it’s going to be…” You’re going to fail. So get good at something. Accept the fact that you’re not going to be good at everything. Find people who fill in the spots where you aren’t good. In the old days, you might have had to hire them. In today’s world, there are fractional CFOs.  And then when you get down to picking your experts—your attorneys, your accountants, the people that cost you real money—ask them a simple question: When was the last time they did whatever it is that you’re trying to do? Not when was the last time they prepared a securities document. When was the last time they prepared a securities document that succeeded? And that’ll knock out two-thirds of them right there.  Love it. That’s fantastic. Well, if you’re listening to this and you want to be successful in business, or you have a business and maybe you’re getting close to retirement and want to figure out how to transition it, how to exit right, and how to structure it… Or maybe you have a family company and you’re trying to put together a board, and you need someone who really understands governance. Or if you’re trying to do a transaction, a merger, or an acquisition, and you need a trusted advisor who will connect you to the right people and help you make it happen, then call Rick Chess. Rick Chess is here in Richmond. He is on LinkedIn. And you have a website as well, Rick, right?  Yep, yep.  What’s your domain?  It’s chesslawfirm.com.  Chesslawfirm.com. So you can go there, and Rick is going to respond because he always does within 24 hours, or 48 hours max, and he’ll help you. So Rick, thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom with us. And if you’re listening to this and you like this show, please follow us on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Give us a review, and make sure you listen to every episode because we have very exciting entrepreneurs and subject matter experts sharing their knowledge. So thank you for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Rick's LinkedIn Rick's website

The Tom Dupree Show  |  Podcast Show Notes The Nike Cautionary Tale: What Happens When Leadership Loses Touch With Its Customers The Tom Dupree Show  |  Dupree Financial Group  |  dupreefinancial.com  |  859-233-0400 Episode Description Nike spent decades building one of the most recognized brands on the planet — the Swoosh, the Air Jordan, high-heat basketball shoes that consumers lined up for, and a presence in every major sporting goods retailer in the world. Then, in 2020, the company handed its future to a CEO who believed physical retail was a dying model, and what followed became a study in how quickly a great company can lose its way. Tom Dupree and analyst Michael Dawahare walk through the full arc of Nike’s rise and decline — from its origins in performance athletics to a stock that traded at $180 and has since fallen to around $44. They examine the strategic decisions that caused the damage, the board failures that let it compound, and what retirement investors can take directly from the story. “You cannot put your own lenses on the lenses of your customer — you have to ask how they see the world, not how you see it.” Topics Covered • How Nike’s origins in performance athletics shaped the brand — and why that foundation was eventually abandoned • The 2020 appointment of CEO John Donahoe and the pivot toward a direct-to-consumer distribution model • Why walking away from wholesale partners like Foot Locker and specialty running stores was a catastrophic miscalculation • How competitors — HOKA, On Cloud, New Balance, ASICS, and Brooks — filled the shelf space Nike gave away • The role of groupthink and board failure in allowing the strategy to continue long after warning signs appeared • The Jordan Brand challenge: what happens when a generational endorsement ages out with no succession plan • Nike’s attempted course correction, the arrival of new CEO Elliott Hill, and why recovery is proving harder than expected • The parallel between Nike’s story and retirement portfolio management: proven strategy, fundamentals, and the danger of chasing new models Key Takeaways • Know what your portfolio is actually built on. The moment Nike shifted focus from technical performance products, competitors filled the gap. The same risk applies when an investment strategy drifts from its core principles. • Never surrender your shelf space. Giving up distribution — or abandoning a proven income strategy during volatility — is almost impossible to reverse. Re-entry is rarely seamless. • Leadership bias is one of the most expensive mistakes in business. Donahoe was an outstanding digital executive who ran a physical consumer company through a digital lens. Bias in a CEO — or a portfolio manager — costs real money. • Boards exist to prevent catastrophic decisions. Most don’t. Nike’s board approved a strategy that effectively fired its wholesale customer base. Institutional oversight is only as good as the willingness to ask uncomfortable questions. • Consumer loyalty, once transferred, is remarkably sticky. Runners who switched to HOKA or On Cloud did not come back. When a customer finds something they prefer, you may have lost them for good. • Recovery takes far longer than the damage itself. Nearly two years into Elliott Hill’s tenure, Nike still cannot get traction. A few years of bad decisions can take a decade to undo — in business and in retirement portfolios. • Proven strategies deserve skepticism about replacement, not abandonment. When a new model sounds compelling, always ask: What is the process? Has it been tested? And who benefits when you believe in it? About The Tom Dupree Show The Tom Dupree Show is hosted by Tom Dupree, founder of Dupree Financial Group and a 47-year veteran of the investment business. Each episode covers the financial topics that matter most to retirees and those approaching retirement — in plain English, without the Wall Street spin. Dupree Financial Group is a fee-only, fiduciary Registered Investment Advisory firm based in Lexington, Kentucky. The firm manages separately managed accounts focused on income-generating, dividend-paying portfolios — no products sold, no commissions, no conflicts of interest. Past episodes are available at dupreefinancial.com under the Radio tab. Schedule a Complimentary Portfolio Review If you’re not sure whether your portfolio is built on the same principles Nike abandoned — proven strategy, staying close to what works, and never losing sight of the fundamentals — we’ll take a look. No charge. No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what you own and whether it’s working for you. Call: 859-233-0400  |  Visit: dupreefinancial.com Dupree Financial Group is a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information presented on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Please consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions. The post Nike’s Fall: Leadership Lessons for Retirement Investors appeared first on Dupree Financial.

Are you ready for the next grizzly bear?—not the animal, but a major market downturn. He discusses the history of market corrections, bear markets, and the rare but devastating grizzly bear markets, illustrating why it's crucial to evaluate your portfolio's risk level during strong market conditions—not during times of crisis. Whether you're approaching retirement or still in your wealth-building years, this episode will prompt you to reconsider your risk tolerance, portfolio diversification, and readiness for inevitable market storms.Outline of This Episode[03:34] Importance of communicating about conflict before it arises [06:27] Discussing market downturns and returns[10:16] Understanding Market Corrections[11:31] S&P 500 correction frequency[16:51] Assessing portfolio risk levels[18:01] Understanding risk and portfolio deviations[24:03] Preparing for market downturns[25:11] Preparing for market downturnsThe Importance of Talking About Risk—Before the DownturnMuch like in relationships, it's best to address potential conflicts before they arise; investors address risk before markets turn volatile. Re-evaluating your comfort with risk and your portfolio's construction when things are calm puts you in the driver's seat. Waiting until a downturn hits can leave you reactionary and vulnerable to poor decisions—like panic selling when it hurts the most.Understanding Corrections, Bear Markets, and Grizzly Bear MarketsI break market volatility into three categories:1. Corrections – The Baby BearA correction is a market drop of at least 10% from its recent high. While the news can make a big fuss about corrections, they are common and, historically, have historically recovered relatively quickly. The S&P 500 has seen 28 corrections since 1969—that's about one every two years. The best move during a correction is strategic rebalancing, not panic.2. Bear Markets – The BearBear markets are drops of 20% or more. Since 1969, they've happened eight times—about once every seven years. Bear markets are more serious than corrections and can be emotionally challenging, but they're still a normal part of the investing cycle. If you're lying awake at night during a bear market, it probably means your portfolio risk wasn't suited to your comfort level before the downturn.3. Grizzly Bear Markets – The Real ThreatA grizzly bear market is a severe drop of 30% or more, and these are rare but devastating. Since 1969, only three have occurred: during the oil and stagflation crisis of the ‘70s, the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, and the 2008 financial crisis. These markets can take years to recover—some up to 91 months for a portfolio invested solely in the S&P 500.Diversification and RebalancingWhat separates those who weather grizzly bear markets from those who don't? Preparation and portfolio construction. A diversified 60% stocks/40% bonds portfolio has historically fared much better during grizzly bear markets—experiencing smaller drawdowns and much faster recovery times than a pure stock portfolio. By owning more than one asset class and maintaining an “airbag” of bonds and cash, retirees can draw on their safer reserves during downturns, giving stocks time to recover.The Questions Every Investor Should Be AskingIf you're living off your investments, in or near retirement, now is the time to ask:Is my plan set up for the next grizzly bear?Can I withstand a major downturn?Do I have the right mix of stocks, bonds, and cash?Has my advisor “back-tested” my plan against worst-case scenarios?Grizzly bear markets, though rare, are inevitable over a long investing life. The pain is real—but so are the solutions. Assess your risk now, diversify, prepare your cash and bond airbags, and ensure your plan has been rigorously tested for rough times. Addressing risk in your portfolio now leaves you sleeping soundly—no matter what the market throws your way.Connect With Scott WellensSchedule a discovery call with ScottSend a message to ScottVisit Fortress Planning GroupConnect with Scott on LinkedInFollow Scott on TwitterFortress Planning Group on FacebookSubscribe to Best In WealthAudio Production and Show Notes byPODCAST FAST TRACKhttps://www.podcastfasttrack.comPodcast Disclaimer:The Best In Wealth Podcast is hosted by Scott Wellens. Scott Wellens is the principal at Fortress Planning Group. Fortress Planning Group is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with securities laws and regulations. Fortress Planning Group does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through the Best In Wealth Podcast. The information provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, investment or legal advice.

Gary Gensler, former Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, says SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO is part of a new era of mega-IPOs, raising questions about valuation, governance and what future AI debuts could look like. He also warns AI models could create a financial stability event and discusses the regulatory fight over prediction markets. He speaks with host Kailey Leinz.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would happen if you stepped away from your shop for three months? Would the business continue to run, or would everything come to a halt?In this episode, Matt Di Francesco explores the difference between being an operator and being an owner, why owner dependency can limit business value, and how reducing your day-to-day involvement can create more freedom, growth, and transferability. Learn practical strategies to build a business that works for you, not because of you.Matt also talks about:(01:17) Why being the best technician can actually hurt your business value(02:17) The difference between working in your business and growing your business(03:24) How to uncover the hidden risks of an owner-centric business(05:06) Why asking "Who, not How" can transform your business(06:20) How reducing owner dependency creates more freedom and cash flow(07:12) Why buyers pay higher multiples for businesses that run without the ownerConnect With Matt DiFrancesco:matt@highliftfin.com(814)201-5855LinkedIn: Matt DiFrancescoLinkedIn: High Lift FinancialFacebook: High Lift Financial Instagram: @high_lift_financialYouTube: @highliftfinancialDisclaimer:All information is obtained from sources deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. No tax or legal advice is given nor intended. Content provided herein or on our website should not be construed as an offer for investment advice or for securities, insurance, or other investment products. Investments involve the risk of loss and are not guaranteed. Consult a qualified legal, tax, accounting, or financial professional before implementing any investments or strategies discussed here.High Lift Financial is a DBA for DiFrancesco Financial Concierge, LLC.  Investment advisory services are provided through Cornerstone Planning Group, LLC, an independent advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Days after ChatGPT launched, Intercom called it an “iPhone moment" and bet a $300 million ARR business that AI was the future of customer service. On this episode of Onward, Ben talks with Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer of Fin (formerly Intercom), about the pivot to AI customer service: why the decision was easier than you might think, why the culture change was brutal, and how the bet ended up strengthening the legacy business instead of killing it. Since Fundrise runs its own investor relations program on Fin, the episode doubles as a customer interview. They get into AI's effect on knowledge work, the risk of letting an agent write to a database, Claude Code as "magic," and why Paul calls himself a "delusional optimist" about what comes next.— For a deeper dive into these insights and more, be sure to listen to the full episode of the Onward podcast.Have questions or feedback about this episode? Drop us a note at Onward@Fundrise.com.Onward is hosted by Ben Miller, Co-Founder and CEO of Fundrise. Podcast production by The Podcast Consultant. Music by Seaplane Armada.About Fundrise:With over 2 million users, Fundrise is America's largest direct-to-investor alternative asset investment platform. Since 2012, our mission has been to build a better financial system by empowering the individual. We make it easier and more efficient than ever for anyone to invest in institutional-quality private alternative assets — all at the touch of a button.Please see fundrise.com/oc for more information on all of the Fundrise-sponsored investment funds and products, including each fund's offering document(s).Want to see the specific assets that make up and power Fundrise portfolios? Check out our active and past projects at www.fundrise.com/assets.More Info & DisclaimersThere are no guarantees investment holdings of the Fundrise Innovation Fund (the "Fund") will be successful.Investing in the Fund is speculative and involves substantial risks. You should purchase shares of the Fund only if you can afford a complete loss of your investment. Nothing in this material should be construed as tax advice, an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security.Past performance does not guarantee future results. Current and future holdings are subject to risk, and returns of one portfolio company are not indicative of an investment in the Fund. For Fund performance and the most recent schedule of investments, visit GetVCX.com. The Fund's annual and semi-annual reports (Form N-CSR), quarterly portfolio holdings (Form N-PORT), and other periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission are available on EDGAR at sec.gov and at GetVCX.com.The Innovation Fund is publicly registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 as a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company.The Fund's portfolio will be concentrated in securities issued by technology companies and other investments that provide economic exposure to technology companies and as such, it may be subject to more risks than if it were broadly diversified across additional sectors and industries of the economy. Certain technology companies may face special risks that their products or services may not prove to be commercially successful. Technology companies are also strongly affected by worldwide scientific or technological developments, and as a result, their products may rapidly become obsolete.The Fund's investments in companies involved in, or exposed to, artificial intelligence-related businesses may be negatively impacted because of, among other things, limited product lines, markets, financial resources and/or personnel; intense competition and potentially rapid product obsolescence these companies may face; loss or impairment of intellectual property rights; and the inability to successfully develop products or services even after spending significant amount of resources.The Fund's investment in private company securities, whether made directly or indirectly (e.g., through derivatives or private pooled investment vehicles) are generally illiquid. Because private company securities are thinly traded, such securities may display especially volatile or erratic price movements, sometimes in response to relatively small changes in investor supply or demand or other market conditions.

House votes down an extension of the foreign spying power called FISA Sect. 702 a day before it is set to expire, with many Democrats upset at President Trump naming FHFA Director Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence; after the vote, President Trump nominates Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to be the next permanent DNI; Just hours after President Trump says the U.S. would strike Iran 'very hard tonight,' he calls off the bombing, claiming a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran; Secretary of State Marco Rubio signs a sports diplomacy partnership with UFC CEO Dana White; Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announces indictments against three people in Ohio for conspiring to smuggle unaccompanied minors across the U.S. border; Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), Oversight Committee ranking member, accuses Vice President JD Vance of leading a 'cover-up' of the Jeffrey Epstein files after news reports about the  Vice President's role in White House Situation Room meetings; First Lady Melania Trump promotes savings accounts for children in the foster care system; New York politicians talk about the NBA Knicks being one game closer to a championship and the World Cup soccer tournament getting underway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alex Thorn talks with Anthony Pompliano (ProCap) about ProCap's acquisition of Sylvia, an AI CFO, how AI-generated research could upend Wall Street, Bitcoin treasury companies building operating businesses, the CLARITY Act and the stablecoin yield fight, whether February's wick below $60K was the bottom, and Pomp's case for asset inflation alongside consumer deflation. Alex also talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about Bitcoin's relative strength versus sliding equities, Iran tail risks, the AI trade unwinding, megacap equity raises ahead of the SpaceX IPO, and gold's technical breakdown. Past performance is not indicative of future results.   Participants, along with Galaxy Digital, hold a financial interest in Anchorage Digital and Bitcoin (BTC). Galaxy regularly engages in buying and selling BTC, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy also provides services to vehicles that invest in BTC.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy's service fees may increase accordingly. The valuation in this communication is based on technical, fundamental, and market analysis and not on any formal valuation method. For more information, please refer to Galaxy's public filings and statements. Cryptocurrencies, including BTC, are inherently volatile and risky and ultimate market movements may not align with this statement.   For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at www.sec.gov. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, June 10, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Panuwat

In this episode of Why Invest?, host Luke Hyde‑Smith is joined by David Zervos, Chief Market Strategist at Jefferies, to explore what is driving today's equity markets and the resilience of the global economy. David explains why recent shocks have done little to derail market momentum, reflecting a strength in economic fundamentals and the role of capital in driving growth. They discuss how advances in technology and AI are boosting productivity and reshaping labour dynamics, while also raising longer-term social and political questions. The conversation also looks at the key risks ahead and how investors can navigate this environment. If you would like further information about anything discussed in this episode, please do get in touch: whyinvest@w1m.com.This podcast is issued by W1M Wealth Management Limited which is authorised and regulated by both by the Financial Conduct Authority of 12 Endeavour Square, London E20 1JN, with firm reference number 120776 and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of 100 F Street, NE Washington, DC 20549, with firm reference number 801-63787. Registered in England and Wales, Company Number 02080604.The information provided in this podcast is for information purposes only and W1M Wealth Management Limited does not accept liability for any loss or damage which may arise directly or indirectly out of use or reliance by the client, or anyone else, on the information contained in this recording. This podcast should be used as a guide only is based on our current views of markets and is subject to change.The information provided does not constitute advice and it should not be relied on as such. It should not be considered a solicitation to buy or an offer to sell a security. It does not take into account any investor's particular wealth management or investment objectives, strategies, tax status or investment horizon.All materials have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There is no representation or warranty as to the current accuracy of, nor liability for, decisions based on such information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we talk about initial public offerings, Anthropic, and investment flywheels.We also discuss AI, financial entanglements, and backstops.Recommended Book: Superconvergence by Jamie MetzlTranscriptAn initial public offering, or IPO, is what happens when a private company goes public and starts selling shares of itself, occasionally to just institutional investors like banks and sovereign wealth funds, but usually also to retail investors, which means normal people who buy stocks as part of their investment strategy.Often private companies go this route, go public, because it's one of the primary ways of gleaning new, oftentimes large inflows of money, and that money can then be used for investments in assets for the company, but it also allows employees who have shares in the company as part of their compensation to cash out, to get paid possibly a huge bonus for all their efforts, and it's often a means by which executives garner huge paydays for themselves, because they can now sell their accumulated shares, or borrow against them, or because they have something in their contract that says they get x amount of bonus money or new shares if they take the company public, or achieve a certain valuation goal—and going public is a good way to do that.This is also one of the primary ways investors in a company, whether that's a bunch of smaller seed investors or big-name venture capitalists, to get their money back; the 10 or 100x-ing of their investment, getting ten or 100-times the money they put into the company, generally happens through an IPO, because it can balloon the valuation of that company, and it gives them a more conventional and reliable way of getting money back for their shares: they can just sell those shares on the open market.So an IPO allows a private company to make shares of itself available to others, on scale. And the ‘initial' part of initial public offering points at the early days of the process, during which the baseline price of a share of stock is established.A fairly arcane and complex process has emerged around this, and it's an entire industry at this point, with some institutions specializing in taking companies public, helping them get as high an initial price on that stock as possible. They also help them leap all sorts of regulatory hurdles set by the Securities and Exchange Commission, if they're going public on a US exchange, at least, other bodies handle such things in other countries, and these going-public entities, called underwriters, which are usually investment banks, also typically have their own stake in the matter, earning compensation through a fee called a ‘gross spread,' which is the difference between a discounted rate on the stock and what the stock is sold for on the open market on that first day it's available.What I'd like to talk about today is a wave of very closely watched unusual, impending IPOs that are coming later this year, and one of them in particular that looks to be even more unusual than the rest.—SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are three of the largest companies in human history; on paper, at least.And that's an important caveat. Market valuation for private companies is generally determined by how much investors are willing to spend on a percentage ownership of the company. So if you start a lemonade stand and I offer to buy 1/10th of that lemonade stand from you for $100, that implies, using this logic, that your lemonade stand has a valuation of $1000; 10 times that $100 that I offered to pay you.Such valuations are also informed by independent analyses from outside experts and institutions. SpaceX, for instance, pre-IPO, is estimated to be worth somewhere between $780 billion and nearly $2 trillion, depending on who you listen to, based on their assets, their potential future earnings, and any advantages they might have in the markets in which they operate.AI company Anthropic is estimated to be worth something like $965 billion, based on a May 2026 series H funding round, through which it raised $65 billion; based on that funding round, the calculations were done, and just shy of a trillion dollars is what the math says the company is worth, though some outside analyses say it's worth a bit less than that, while others suggest it's maybe closer to $1.4 trillion.OpenAI, a direct competitor of Anthropic, is valued at about $100 billion less than Anthropic based on its most recent $122 billion funding round, but again, analyses put the company's actual value, what people and investors would pay for it on the open market, all over the place.Each of these companies have different variables acting upon them heading into a period in which it's expected that all three will IPO.OpenAI kicked off the current AI race, for instance, but it's burning money at an incredible rate, and has yet to make a profit, losing billions per year, and will probably continue to lose billions each year for a while into the future.Anthropic, on the other hand, offers a similar product as OpenAI, but is projected to post its first quarterly operating profit of just over half a billion dollars in Q2 2026, making it one of the first frontier-model-making AI companies to make a profit, as most of these companies are investing so heavily in research and infrastructure like data centers that they're still in heavy cash-burn mode.SpaceX is distinct from these other two also high-flying, cash-burning tech companies in part because of its colorful and controversial owner, Elon Musk, and in part because it's a rocket launch company that also sells internet services beamed down to earth from satellites, and until recently, most of its reliable income has come from that single offering, selling internet access. But it also recently had X, formerly called Twitter, a social network, and an AI company meant to compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic, called xAI, folded into it.So it's now a multifaceted company with several edgy, but somewhat mature and difficult to compete with offerings, most of which make no money, but all of which in theory at least kinda sorta orient around AI and other sci-fi goods and services.The surge in interest and investment in AI over the past several years led to a pivot for most of Musk's companies, and that led to the merging of the smaller xAI and X into SpaceX, which was the only really profitable company of that trio of companies, and that merging, until just recently, made SpaceX unprofitable, as well.Because of the unprofitability and relative unpopularity of xAI's offerings, like the controversy-ridden Grok chatbot, SpaceX has recently taken to leasing out its data centers to competitors, like Anthropic and Google, each of which are paying around a billion dollars a month to use some of SpaceX's data center capacity, which xAI hasn't needed, because of the unpopularity of Grok, for their own AI services. That, in turn, has suddenly made SpaceX a little bit profitable, which is important for reasons I'll get into momentarily.This portion of the US-based AI industry is kind of a tangle in many ways, all of these companies competing, but also intersecting and overlapping, often investing in each other and in the infrastructure that underpins them, while also being invested in by those same infrastructural entities. And these three companies' IPOs are being seen as something of a weathervane, their success or failure, and the degree to which they succeed or fail hinting at the direction of this industry, and whether or not this is a financial bubble that will soon, or eventually, pop.There are hints that those at the top of these companies are attempting to hedge their bets, in case their IPOs don't do what they need them to do, or don't do what they need them to do at the right magnitude.Sam Altman, OpenAI's also fairly controversy-ridden CEO, has been very close with US President Trump, and has reportedly been holding meetings about the possibility of the US government taking a significant stake in OpenAI, and maybe other AI companies as well. The idea here is that US funds, so taxpayer dollars, would be invested in these companies, and that would tie the companies more closely to the US government, which could be beneficial if these companies then increase in value, making the US government a profit on that investment. This would be beneficial for the companies, in turn, because they would basically be backstopped by the US government; the US would be more likely to help them stay solvent to avoid losing that invested capital, with its regulations and laws related to AI, but it would also make these companies too big and too important to fail, giving them a lot of leeway in how they behave and compete, or fail to, from that point forward. And if they do still fail, the US taxpayer would be paying for a significant portion of that loss while those in charge, investors and the higher-ups of these companies, would walk away with a bunch of money.SpaceX is taking another approach to IPO bet-hedging, by asking top US stock indices, like the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500, which track top stocks, ‘top' designated by value, but also other metrics, usually related to stability and profitability, to ignore some of those other metrics and allow SpaceX entrance into their indices more rapidly than would typically be allowed.These indices are meant, in part, to help protect investors from volatility. High-flying startups might surge at the beginning, immediately after their IPO, but then fizzle out when it becomes clear their fundamentals aren't good, and they're not actually a solid investment, long-term.What SpaceX wants is to be allowed into this club of valuable, long-term profitable and stable companies, because it is big and flashy and might have the largest IPO in history. And if these indices don't want to be left out of all that, the argument goes, they should allow SpaceX into their club, regardless of those long-time rules of admittance.Nasdaq, which runs the exchange where SpaceX will be listed, agreed to a rules change in May of 2026 that will allow large private companies, like SpaceX, that go public on their exchange, fast entry onto the Nasdaq 100 list.This change of rules was made exclusively for SpaceX, and it could have a significant impact on the company's IPO, because many index funds and exchange-traded funds, ETFs, track the Nasdaq 100, which means they balance their portfolio based on what's in the Nasdaq 100, keeping things relatively or absolutely proportionate to that fund.That means because of this change, a lot of everyday, passive investors, who have their retirement funds and pension plans and even their personal portfolios in index funds and ETFs that track the Nasdaq 100 will automatically end up holding some or a lot of SpaceX stock, despite it being an untested, new, currently unprofitable company. Some of these funds are automatically managed and will just buy SpaceX because that's what they're programmed to do, and others are managed by humans, but because they've promised their customers to keep their funds aligned with the market, more money going into SpaceX means they'll be inclined to join the club and buy a bunch of SpaceX, as well. And because of how this works, the more funds buying SpaceX stock, the more funds will be required or inclined to buy; it's a sort of stock flywheel.That exposes all these investors to more volatility of the kind they maybe hoped to avoid by tracking this index, which isn't supposed to be volatile. But SpaceX's Musk was able to demand this change because, again, this is looking to be the biggest IPO in history, the company valued at $1.77 trillion dollars after the IPO. As a result, he can demand these sorts of things, and typically be listened to.Some other stock market indices have also said they would allow quick entrance to their lists for SpaceX and possibly OpenAI and Anthropic, as well.The S&P 500, however, after assessing the possibility of quick entry, has rejected the idea, saying it won't bend its rules, no matter how big these three IPOs are looking to be. That means folks with money in S&P 500-tracking funds will be protected from that initial volatility.That said those recent deals SpaceX made with Anthropic and Google nudged them into profitability, and if they can maintain that profitability for a year, post-IPO, then they'll be able to enter the S&P 500. And because Google's parent company Alphabet is a significant investor in SpaceX, they've already made money, on paper, on the deal they made with SpaceX for that datacenter capacity, paying out less than they're making back in valuation.So that tangle of relationships is likely to continue to enrich those in charge of these companies, and those who hold a bunch of shares of their stock, but it's also likely to get more of these massive, but volatile companies into ostensibly less-volatile indices, faster, which could have repercussions for the one-third of private US wealth that is currently invested in the stock market.Show Noteshttps://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/ipo.asphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offeringhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-05/spacex-s-75-billion-ipo-draws-more-orders-than-shares-availablehttps://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-needs-the-cultish-support-of-everyday-investors-to-pull-off-the-massive-spacex-ipo-08e7ea49https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/spacexs-ipo-dream-runs-into-wall-streets-oldest-test-chart-of-the-day-114542191.htmlhttps://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/tech-download-anthropic-ipo-ai-valuations.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/technology/spacex-indexes-401k.htmlhttps://nypost.com/2026/06/04/business/one-third-of-americans-wealth-is-now-tied-to-the-stock-market-a-record-high/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/sp-500-blocks-fast-spacex-entry-wont-waive-rule-for-unprofitable-ai-firms/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/we-pissed-off-a-lot-of-people-giant-data-center-plan-cut-50-amid-protests/https://www.notus.org/technology/trump-ai-stake-openaihttps://techcrunch.com/2026/06/05/google-will-pay-spacex-920m-per-month-for-compute/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has kicked off the process of selling its shares on public markets by submitting a confidential filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The AI startup is looking to capitalise on its dominant position on the AI chatbot market in order to boost its financing needs. Also in this edition: Chinese exports continued to grow in May in spite of the war in Iran. Plus a new report suggests another retirement age hike in France.

The AI Build-Out Is Real — And It’s Reshaping How We Invest for Retirement THE TOM DUPREE SHOW  |  PODCAST SHOW NOTES The AI Build-Out Is Real — And It's Reshaping How We Invest for Retirement The Tom Dupree Show  |  Dupree Financial Group  |  dupreefinancial.com  |  859-233-0400  |  Air Date: June 6, 2026 Episode Description Something significant is happening in the markets, and it goes well beyond the daily headlines. On this episode of The Tom Dupree Show, host Tom Dupree sits down with in-house analysts James Dupree and Michael Dawahare to examine the accelerating AI infrastructure build-out — and what it actually means for investors who are at or approaching retirement. The conversation covers the bottleneck stocks driving extraordinary gains in data centers and memory chips, Canada's surprise $1 trillion infrastructure pivot, and why software companies like Snowflake and ServiceNow are proving that AI complements rather than kills their business models. The team also addresses the ongoing Iran conflict, what oil futures markets are signaling, and why the sequence of returns — not average returns — is the number that retirement investors should be watching most closely. “Markets don't drift up — conviction is what moves them higher. Right now, the conviction is building around AI infrastructure, and the fundamentals are finally starting to catch up with the story.” Topics Covered AI infrastructure bull case — why the fundamentals are finally catching up with the story Micron, data centers, and the bottleneck theme — the stocks supplying scarce components for the AI build-out Jensen Huang's public endorsement of Marvell Technology — what a declaration like that signals to institutional investors Agentic AI explained — what it means for your phone, your business, and your portfolio Canada's $1 trillion infrastructure pivot — global validation of the AI build-out thesis from an unlikely source Software stocks proving their staying power — how ServiceNow and Snowflake are showing AI and software can coexist How AI is already driving revenue gains — consumer companies reporting explosive results from targeted AI marketing The Iran conflict and oil futures — what prediction markets and WTI pricing are signaling about resolution Sequence-of-returns risk in retirement — why when your portfolio loses matters more than how much it earns on average Dupree Financial Group's in-house research approach — knowing what you own and why, not just riding an index Key Takeaways The AI build-out thesis is getting real-world validation.  PMI data hit a four-year high this week, suggesting genuine economic activity is accelerating alongside AI infrastructure investment — not just market narrative. Bottleneck stocks carry both opportunity and serious risk.  Companies supplying scarce components for data centers have posted extraordinary gains, but volatility cuts both ways. Position sizing and portfolio context matter. Software isn't dead — it's adapting.  Snowflake and ServiceNow are reporting earnings that prove their platforms work alongside AI tools, not against them. Productivity gains, not replacement, is the emerging story. Global capital is aligning behind AI infrastructure.  Canada's sharp $1 trillion policy reversal covering energy, data centers, and defense adds significant international weight to the same thesis driving U.S. markets. How AI gets monetized is still being figured out.  Business-to-business subscriptions and API-based usage models are the most likely path forward, but valuations remain stretched until earnings consistently catch up. Sequence-of-returns risk is retirement's hidden danger.  A portfolio drop in year one of withdrawals — even if markets recover later — can permanently reduce the income your portfolio generates. Dividend-focused portfolios are built to absorb that risk. In-house research is how you truly know what you own.  Dupree Financial Group's analysts study these sectors every day so clients hold positions they understand — not just exposure to the broadest index available. The Iran situation is complex, but markets are pricing in a resolution.  Oil futures for July through September are trading in the $70–$80 range, suggesting the futures market expects the conflict to ease — though the IRGC's fractured structure makes certainty impossible. About The Tom Dupree Show The Tom Dupree Show is hosted by Tom Dupree, founder of Dupree Financial Group and a 47-year veteran of the investment business. Each episode covers the financial topics that matter most to retirees and those approaching retirement — in plain English, without the Wall Street spin. Dupree Financial Group is a fee-only, fiduciary Registered Investment Advisory firm based in Lexington, Kentucky. The firm manages separately managed accounts focused on income-generating, dividend-paying portfolios — no products sold, no commissions, no conflicts of interest. Past episodes are available at  dupreefinancial.com  under the Radio tab. Schedule a Complimentary Portfolio Review If you're not sure whether your retirement portfolio is built to generate income through market turbulence — or if you're just riding an index fund hoping for the best — we'll take a look. No charge. No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what you own and whether it's working for you. Call:  859-233-0400   |   Visit:  dupreefinancial.com Dupree Financial Group is a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information presented on The Tom Dupree Show is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Please consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions. The post AI Infrastructure Stocks & Your Retirement Portfolio appeared first on Dupree Financial.

THE TOM DUPREE SHOW  |  PODCAST SHOW NOTES I’m 55 and Behind on Retirement — Here’s What You Can Actually Do About It The Tom Dupree Show  |  Dupree Financial Group  |  dupreefinancial.com  |  859-233-0400 Episode Description Turning 55 can trigger some hard questions about retirement — not regrets about the past, but real concerns about the present. Tom Dupree and Lead Advisor Mike Johnson tackle one of the most common questions they hear from new clients: What do you actually do when you feel behind? This episode lays out a practical, honest framework for evaluating where you stand, calculating how much income your portfolio needs to produce, and identifying the specific actions that can still make a real difference in the next ten years. The conversation covers the math behind 401(k) catch-up contributions, the income gap calculation that determines whether your retirement plan actually works, why your expenses matter more than your portfolio balance, and the critical difference between volatility as a friend during accumulation versus a threat during withdrawals. Real client examples ground the discussion — including retirees who thrived on $400,000 and others who struggled with far more. The episode closes with a clear message for anyone in their mid-50s who has been putting off this conversation: the opportunity is still real, the tools are available, and it starts with one step. At 55, you might feel like you’re late getting started — but you still have a lot of opportunity to build real wealth and retire the way that you want. Topics Covered The income gap: How to calculate the difference between your fixed income sources and what you’ll actually need to spend in retirement 401(k) catch-up contributions: The 2026 limits for savers over 50, including the super catch-up provision for ages 60–63 Real accumulation scenarios: What maxing out a 401(k) at a 6% return actually produces over 10 years — for one earner and two Expenses as the key variable: Why what you spend in retirement matters more than how much you’ve saved Wealth vs. riches: Why clients with $400,000 sometimes retire better than those with $2 million Sequence-of-returns risk: How early losses in retirement can permanently damage a portfolio — and why income investing helps avoid that trap The wealth paradox: Why taking on more risk when you’re close to your target number can do more harm than good Social Security strategy: Age 62 vs. full retirement age vs. 70 — and how to think about spousal benefits and break-even timing In-service rollovers: How to start building an income-producing portfolio while you’re still working and contributing How to prepare for your first meeting: What to bring, what to expect, and how the planning conversation actually works Key Takeaways Your expenses determine everything. The question isn’t how much you’ve saved — it’s whether what you have can cover the gap between your fixed income and your actual spending. Get clear on your expenses before anything else. Age 55 is still a strong position. You’re likely near peak earnings, kids may be off the payroll, and 401(k) catch-up rules let you contribute up to $32,500 a year — or $35,750 between ages 60 and 63. Ten years of disciplined saving can still produce meaningful income. Don’t ignore the employer match. Contributing at least enough to capture your employer’s match is a 100% guaranteed return from day one. There is no simpler, more powerful first move. Volatility is your friend while you’re accumulating — not when you’re withdrawing. During your working years, market swings let you buy more at lower prices. In retirement, a bad year early can force you to sell assets at the worst possible time. That’s the sequence-of-returns risk that ends retirement plans. Income portfolios solve a problem, growth portfolios don’t. When your portfolio pays you dividends and income, you don’t have to sell holdings to fund your lifestyle during down markets. That changes the entire risk equation. The wealth paradox: more isn’t always better if it requires more risk. If you already have the number that funds the retirement you want, adding risk for more upside isn’t rational — the downside threatens the entire plan, while the upside is just gravy. Social Security is a strategic asset, not just a check. Delaying from 62 to 70 can dramatically increase your lifetime benefit. The break-even point is roughly age 82, and a spousal benefit strategy can add another layer of optimization. You can start building income while you’re still working. An in-service rollover at age 59½ lets you move funds from your 401(k) into an IRA where they can be invested for income — so the income engine is already running when you retire. About The Tom Dupree Show The Tom Dupree Show is hosted by Tom Dupree, founder of Dupree Financial Group and a 47-year veteran of the investment business. Each episode covers the financial topics that matter most to retirees and those approaching retirement — in plain English, without the Wall Street spin. Dupree Financial Group is a fee-only, fiduciary Registered Investment Advisory firm based in Lexington, Kentucky. The firm manages separately managed accounts focused on income-generating, dividend-paying portfolios — no products sold, no commissions, no conflicts of interest. Past episodes are available at dupreefinancial.com under the Radio tab. Schedule a Complimentary Portfolio Review If you’re not sure whether your current savings and investments can actually close the gap between what you’ll have and what you’ll need in retirement, we’ll take a look. No charge. No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what you own and whether it’s working for you. Call:  859-233-0400   |   Visit:  dupreefinancial.com REGULATORY DISCLAIMER Dupree Financial Group is a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information presented on this program is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Listeners should consult with a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions. The post I’m 55 and Behind on Retirement — Here’s What You Can Actually Do About It appeared first on Dupree Financial.

Project 2025 began as a 900 page manual, but over the past year it has started to feel less like a blueprint and more like a live script for American government. According to the Heritage Foundation, which leads the effort, the “Mandate for Leadership” is meant to prepare the next conservative administration to, in its words, “dismantle the administrative state” and restore what it calls constitutional government. In practice, that means a sweeping reimagining of how federal agencies work, who controls them, and what rights they protect. At the center is a quiet but profound bureaucratic revolution. The plan urges a president to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees into an expanded version of “Schedule F,” making it far easier to fire civil servants in policy roles and replace them with political loyalists. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Project 2025 also recommends ending the independent status of watchdog agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, bringing them under direct presidential control. Supporters describe this as accountability; critics call it a path to one person rule inside the executive branch. The stakes become clearer when listeners zoom in on specific policy goals. The American Civil Liberties Union explains that Project 2025 calls for reviving the 19th century Comstock Act to block abortion medication and equipment from being sent through the mail, effectively creating a nationwide ban regardless of state law. The ACLU notes proposals to roll back nondiscrimination protections and to, as it puts it, “mandate discrimination against LGBTQ people by the federal government,” including excluding transgender Americans from military service. Economic and safety net programs are also in the crosshairs. Democracy Forward's “People's Guide to Project 2025” highlights proposals to cut overtime protections for an estimated 4.3 million workers, limit food assistance that more than 40 million people rely on each month, and even eliminate Head Start, the early education program that serves over a million children each year. The guide warns that authors of the plan claim much of this could be done without new laws from Congress, relying instead on aggressive executive action. Environmental policy is another major front. A report from the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment describes Project 2025 as a “radical overhaul” of climate and energy governance, calling for dismantling key climate initiatives, weakening the Environmental Protection Agency's authority, and prioritizing fossil fuel development over renewable energy. Supporters see all this as a long overdue correction. Heritage frames Project 2025 as a way to “advance positive change for America,” arguing that unelected bureaucrats have usurped power from elected leaders. Civil rights groups, environmental lawyers, and democracy advocates respond that the project amounts to what the ACLU calls “a roadmap for how to replace the rule of law with right wing ideals,” with profound implications for reproductive freedom, civil rights, and the balance of power in Washington. In the coming months, the key questions will be how far a president is willing to go in adopting this playbook, how courts respond, and whether Congress chooses to reinforce or resist these changes. For now, Project 2025 stands as a test of how much a modern White House can remake the machinery of government in just a few years. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to come back next week for more. Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3Qs For more check out http://www.quietplease.ai

This Day in Legal History: Congress Repeals the Gold ClauseOn this day in 1933, Congress passed the Joint Resolution that voided the gold clauses written into nearly every long-term contract and bond obligation in the United States, both public and private. The resolution declared that any provision purporting to require payment “in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency” was “against public policy,” and that obligations could be discharged dollar for dollar in whatever legal tender currency was in force at the time of payment. It was a remarkable act of legislative power: a one-paragraph statute that rewrote the payment terms of millions of existing contracts overnight, in the middle of the Great Depression, to make Franklin Roosevelt's recent abandonment of the gold standard actually stick. The Supreme Court took up the inevitable challenge two years later in the Gold Clause Cases — Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio, Nortz v. United States, and Perry v. United States — and in February 1935 it upheld the resolution as applied to private contracts by a 5-4 vote, while telling the United States, in Perry, that it had violated its own contractual word in repudiating gold-payment promises on government bonds, but that the bondholder had suffered no compensable injury. The doctrinal residue of that compromise is still with us: Congress can use its monetary powers to alter private contract terms retroactively when monetary policy requires it, the rule that has quietly underwritten every major monetary intervention since, from Bretton Woods to the post-2008 emergency lending programs. June 5 is not a day most lawyers mark on the calendar, but the resolution Congress passed on this date is one of the cleanest examples in American law of a legislature using its enumerated powers to dissolve a contract term that had been considered, until that moment, untouchable.The Supreme Court on Thursday handed Hikma Pharmaceuticals — and the entire generic drug industry — a 9-0 win in a case that had been hanging over the so-called “skinny label” pathway for years. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing for a unanimous Court in Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Amarin Pharma, Inc., held that Amarin, the maker of the brand-name fish-oil drug Vascepa, had not plausibly alleged that Hikma actively induced infringement of Amarin's patents covering a still-patented cardiovascular use of the drug. The skinny label is a feature of Hatch-Waxman generic-drug law that lets a generic manufacturer copy only the unpatented uses of a brand drug by literally carving the patented uses out of its FDA-approved label, which is supposed to let cheaper generics reach the market for the unpatented indications even while patents on other indications are still in force. Brand companies have been trying for years to sue around that carve-out under the active inducement statute, 35 U.S.C. § 271(b), by pointing to generic press releases, marketing language, or website descriptions and arguing that doctors could read those statements as encouragement to prescribe the generic for the still-patented use. The Federal Circuit had bought a version of that argument and revived Amarin's case. The Supreme Court rejected that approach, and the test that Justice Jackson articulated is meaningful: the question is not how doctors might interpret what a generic manufacturer said, but whether the manufacturer itself actively encouraged the infringing use. Neutral statements that could be read as instructions to infringe do not count. The practical effect is to shore up the skinny label pathway and make it harder for brand companies to weaponize induced infringement against generic competition. The decision was originally framed as a pharmaceutical-industry case, but its inducement standard will reach across patent law generally and into every industry where § 271(b) gets litigated.It's unanimous: SCOTUS agrees with Hikma in ‘skinny label' case vs. Amarin | Fierce PharmaAlso unanimous on Thursday: the Supreme Court in Sripetch v. SEC held that the Securities and Exchange Commission can obtain disgorgement of a wrongdoer's ill-gotten gains without having to prove that any individual investor lost money. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a 9-0 Court, which is itself a small surprise given the Court's recent pattern of skepticism toward broad SEC remedial powers. The case came out of a penny-stock pump-and-dump scheme that Ongkaruck Sripetch ran across some 20 small companies — buy shares quietly, promote them aggressively, sell into the bubble — and the SEC won an order requiring him to disgorge roughly $3 million. Sripetch's argument on appeal was that disgorgement is supposed to be tied to investor harm, that the SEC had not shown specific pecuniary losses traceable to him, and that the order was therefore not the kind of equitable relief the Court approved in its 2020 Liu v. SEC decision. The Court disagreed, on traditional equity principles: disgorgement, the Court explained, is measured by the defendant's unjust gain, not the plaintiff's quantified loss, and equity has always been willing to strip a wrongdoer of profit even when the victim cannot mathematically prove harm. The practical importance for the SEC is enormous — the agency reports collecting roughly $1.4 billion in disgorgement in fiscal 2025 alone, and a contrary ruling would have forced the SEC into an evidentiary burden that pump-and-dump and insider-trading cases are notoriously bad at supplying. The opinion is also a reminder that the Court's recent administrative-state skepticism is not all in one direction: when the question is grounded in old equity doctrine, the same justices who narrowed SEC adjudication in Jarkesy are willing to leave the agency's remedial toolkit intact.US Supreme Court Backs SEC in Fight Over ‘Disgorgement' Power | US NewsThe third and most constitutionally significant of Thursday's rulings was FCC v. AT&T, in which the Supreme Court upheld 8-1 the Federal Communications Commission's longstanding practice of imposing forfeiture penalties on regulated carriers through its own in-house process, without first giving the carrier a jury trial. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority, with Justice Clarence Thomas the lone dissenter. The case grew out of the FCC's headline-making fines against AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint for selling access to real-time customer location data to third parties without consent — fines that ran nearly $200 million across the four carriers, with AT&T's portion at $57 million and Verizon's at $46.9 million. The carriers challenged the fines on Seventh Amendment grounds, arguing that the Court's 2024 decision in SEC v. Jarkesy — which struck down the SEC's in-house adjudication of securities-fraud penalties as a violation of the jury-trial right — should reach FCC forfeitures too. The Court said no, on a structural distinction that matters: an FCC forfeiture order is not self-executing. The FCC cannot collect on its own. If a carrier refuses to pay, the matter is referred to the Justice Department, which then has to file a civil action in federal district court — a proceeding in which the carrier is entitled to a full jury trial and the government has to prove the violation de novo, with no deference to the FCC's findings. That collection-stage jury trial, Roberts wrote, is enough to satisfy the Seventh Amendment, even though the agency itself first issues the penalty. Justice Thomas's dissent argued the in-house process is no less coercive than the SEC adjudication the Court rejected in Jarkesy and would have extended Jarkesy here. The practical takeaway: agency in-house penalty proceedings survive after Jarkesy if there is a real, downstream jury-trial backstop. Expect every regulator with a similar two-step enforcement structure to point to this opinion the next time someone tries to push Jarkesy further.Court rules against cell service providers over right to jury trial in FCC proceedings | SCOTUSblog This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Alex talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about the state of the Bitcoin market, his expected length and depth of its drawdown, and what it takes for BTC to find its footing. Alex also airs an interview with James Seyffart (Bloomberg Intelligence) about growing institutional adoption, Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin ETF, JPM's new big presence, and a growing market of niche sector and “hot sauce” ETFs. Past performance is not indicative of future results.   Participants, along with Galaxy Digital, hold a financial interest in Anchorage Digital and Bitcoin (BTC). Galaxy regularly engages in buying and selling BTC, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy also provides services to vehicles that invest in BTC.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy's service fees may increase accordingly. The valuation in this communication is based on technical, fundamental, and market analysis and not on any formal valuation method. For more information, please refer to Galaxy's public filings and statements. Cryptocurrencies, including BTC, are inherently volatile and risky and ultimate market movements may not align with this statement.   For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at www.sec.gov. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

We’re celebrating our 100th anniversary! This week, we break down the latest developments in trade talks, examine the military operation in Iran, and discuss key housing and crypto bills working their way through Congress. Join Stifel Chief Washington Policy Strategist Brian Gardner and co-host Neil Shapiro for this milestone episode! This material is prepared by the Washington Policy Strategy Group of Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated (“Stifel”). This material is for informational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any security or instrument or to participate in any trading strategy discussed herein. The information contained is taken from sources believed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed by Stifel as to accuracy or completeness. The opinions expressed are those of the Washington Policy Strategy Group and may differ from those of other departments that produce similar material and are current as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance. Stifel does not provide accounting, tax, or legal advice and clients are advised to consult with their accounting, tax, or legal advisors prior to making any investment decision. Additional information is available upon request. Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated is a broker-dealer registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and is a member SIPC & NYSE. ©2026 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Business and finance news from the Asia-Pacific. Asian stocks fell alongside US equity-index futures as the AI-fueled rally that powered global equities to record highs lost momentum after a weak forecast from Broadcom. Asian losses followed a pullback on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 snapped a nine-day winning streak as renewed US-Iran clashes damped risk appetite. Some relief emerged early Thursday after the US announced a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, helping Brent crude halt a three-day rally. For more on the markets, we speak to Paul Dobson, Bloomberg's Executive Editor for Asia Markets. Plus - SpaceX is seeking to raise $75 billion in an initial public offering that would be the biggest of all time, as Elon Musk's rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company targets a historic debut that could clear a path for more mega-listings. The Starbase, Texas-based company plans to market about 555.6 million shares for $135 each, according to its filing Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. At that price, SpaceX would have a market value of almost $1.77 trillion based on the outstanding shares in the filing. Bloomberg TV hosts Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn spoke to Sylvia Jablonski, CIO at Defiance ETF's.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gary Gensler, former Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, discusses regulating massive IPOs as we look ahead to SpaceX and Anthropic to debut. He speaks with host Romaine Bostick. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This conversation is sponsored by Tema ETFs. We're joined by Yuri Khodjamirian, CIO of Tema, to talk about a space economy that is starting to look a lot more investable than it did even a few years ago. Launch costs have collapsed, Starlink helped prove the commercial case, governments are treating space as strategic infrastructure, and funds like Tema's $NASA are now trying to bring that opportunity into public markets.Hosted by:Nicholas FNS: https://twitter.com/NicholasFNSUnusual Whales: https://twitter.com/unusual_whalesThis Pod is not financial advice. Unusual Whales Inc. is not registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) or any state securities regulatory authority. The stock market is risky, and any trade or investment is expected to have some, or total, loss. Please do research before any trade. Do not use this information for financial decisions or for investing. You should consult your legal or tax professional regarding your specific situation.Unusual Social Media:Discord: https://discord.com/invite/unusualwhalesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/unusualwhalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/unusualwhales/Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/unusual_whales/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unusual_whalesTwitter: https://twitter.com/unusual_whalesYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/unusualwhales/Merch: https://unusual-whales.creator-spring.com/**Disclaimer:Any content referenced in the video or on Unusual Whales are not intended to provide legal, tax, investment or insurance advice. Unusual Whales Inc. is not registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) or any state securities regulatory authority.NOTE: Unusual Whales is not responsible for any promotion or #ad. It does not verify the authenticity of the promotion or partnership, nor the merits of the individual promotion. Unusual Whales does not necessarily endorse or condone any one promotion. Unusual Whales does not advocate for any sponsor. Please do your own diligence and research before following any one promoted post. Do not consider a promotion of a post an advocacy for the sponsor of the post.

Anthropic, the firm behind AI assistant Claude, submitted a confidential filing to go public with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The firm, valued at close to a trillion dollars, could make its market debut by the end of the year as it sees a surge in interest for its range of AI products. Also in this edition: as France welcomes new data centre investments, we see what's driving that interest and what impact it could have on local communities. 

Claude maker Anthropic has confidentially filed initial paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission, taking a step toward a potential initial public offering that could reportedly come as early as late 2026. The filing sets neither a share count nor a price.  The move arrives just days after the company closed a $65 billion round that valued it at $965 billion—eclipsing rival OpenAI and cementing its status as the most valuable startup in artificial intelligence. Anthropic's most recent round nearly tripled its valuation of $380 billion in roughly three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alex Thorn talks with Scott Shay, co-founder of Signature Bank and N3XT (a new Wyoming bank), about what happened in 2023, how the banking system actually works, and what the future of banking looks like. Alex also talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about the Strait of Hormuz, risk markets, and a bearish case for bitcoin. Participants, along with Galaxy Digital, hold a financial interest in Bitcoin (BTC). Galaxy regularly engages in buying and selling BTC, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy also provides services to vehicles that invest in BTC.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy's service fees may increase accordingly. The valuation in this communication is based on technical, fundamental, and market analysis and not on any formal valuation method. For more information, please refer to Galaxy's public filings and statements. Cryptocurrencies, including BTC, are inherently volatile and risky and ultimate market movements may not align with this statement. For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at www.sec.gov. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

What happens when business owners realize they no longer know who they are outside of their company? In this episode, Matt Di Francesco explores the emotional side of exiting a business and why so many owners struggle to let go. From fear of the unknown to losing a sense of identity, Matt breaks down why many business owners regret selling within the first year.Whether you are planning an exit, preparing for retirement, or trying to avoid burnout, this episode offers practical insights to help you create a vision for life beyond the business and transition on your terms.Matt also talks about:(00:49) Why many owners sabotage their own business sale(02:35) The reason 75% of business owners regret selling(03:54) Why passionate shop owners stay connected to the industry after exiting(05:29) How owner-based planning creates purpose and prevents burnout(06:34) Why building a long-term vision changes how you grow your businessConnect With Matt DiFrancesco:matt@highliftfin.com(814)201-5855LinkedIn: Matt DiFrancescoLinkedIn: High Lift FinancialFacebook: High Lift Financial Instagram: @high_lift_financialYouTube: @highliftfinancialDisclaimer:All information is obtained from sources deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. No tax or legal advice is given nor intended. Content provided herein or on our website should not be construed as an offer for investment advice or for securities, insurance, or other investment products. Investments involve the risk of loss and are not guaranteed. Consult a qualified legal, tax, accounting, or financial professional before implementing any investments or strategies discussed here.High Lift Financial is a DBA for DiFrancesco Financial Concierge, LLC.  Investment advisory services are provided through Cornerstone Planning Group, LLC, an independent advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In this episode of The Get Down: Beyond Bitcoin, host Cleve Mesidor sits down with two-term SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce—affectionately known as "Crypto Mom" and "Crypto's Architect"—for an engaging conversation.As Commissioner Peirce prepares to conclude her impactful tenure at the SEC later this year, she shares her unique origin story, vision for a digital asset regulatory framework, and insights regarding inter-agency harmonization between the SEC and CFTC.Commissioner Peirce is not just a champion of crypto, she also holds the industry accountable and advances sound guidance to build a stable industry. This captivating discussion covers a variety of timely topics, including tokenization opportunities for smaller players, as well as advice for the crypto industry about how best to continue to advance crypto rulemaking going forward.Interview with SEC Commissioner Hester M. PeirceCommissioner Peirce discusses her regulatory journey since 2018, impending departure from the Commission, and enduring optimism for the transformative nature of the technology.Crypto Origin Story: How early conversations with Jerry Brito sparked an interest in blockchain technology before joining the SEC during pivotal market shifts.Regulatory Harmonization: A deep dive into harmonization efforts with the CFTC, building on previous work with former Commissioner Brian Quintenz to develop a coordinated strategy.Advice to Industry: Why builders should focus on solving real-world consumer/investor problems and build commercially viable products.Life After SEC: Plans to transition into teaching, while cheering on sound regulation from the sidelines.Memorable Milestones: Reflections and why meeting conviction-driven builders during market lows remains her favorite part of the job.Next Gen Crypto: Reflecting on how Gen Z will integrate blockchain technology, and a call to use crypto as a tool for societal unity rather than divisiveness.About SEC Commissioner PeirceHester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.Commissioner Peirce leads the SEC Crypto Task Force, which seeks to provide clarity on the application of the federal securities laws to the crypto asset market and to recommend practical policy measures that aim to foster innovation and protect investors.Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC's Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor's degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.Links from the episodeCONNECT WITH COMMISSIONER HESTER PEIRCE:Website: www.sec.govCONNECT WITH BUTTERSCOTCH MEDIA:Website: butterscotch.mediaSubscribe to Chews Tipsheet: butterscotch.media/subscribeFollow us on X: @butterscotch360 CONNECT WITH BUTTERSCOTCH MEDIA:Website: butterscotch.mediaFinTech TV Network: https://fintech.tv/category/the-get-down-podcast-series/Subscribe to Chews Tipsheet: butterscotch.media/subscribeFollow us on X: @butterscotch360

What some see as a victory for "free speech," the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped a controversial “gag rule” that barred defendants who settled SEC cases from publicly defending themselves. Thomas Powell, senior strategist at the Founders Office, has been one of the rules' most vocal critics—even while legally restricted from challenging the allegations against him.Finally able to speak out, Powell and his attorney, Peggy Little of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, join FOX Business Network's Lydia Hu. They break down how Powell was "muzzled" by the SEC, the damage it did to his life, and what this massive rule change means for American businesses moving forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What some see as a victory for "free speech," the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped a controversial “gag rule” that barred defendants who settled SEC cases from publicly defending themselves. Thomas Powell, senior strategist at the Founders Office, has been one of the rules' most vocal critics—even while legally restricted from challenging the allegations against him.Finally able to speak out, Powell and his attorney, Peggy Little of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, join FOX Business Network's Lydia Hu. They break down how Powell was "muzzled" by the SEC, the damage it did to his life, and what this massive rule change means for American businesses moving forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What some see as a victory for "free speech," the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped a controversial “gag rule” that barred defendants who settled SEC cases from publicly defending themselves. Thomas Powell, senior strategist at the Founders Office, has been one of the rules' most vocal critics—even while legally restricted from challenging the allegations against him.Finally able to speak out, Powell and his attorney, Peggy Little of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, join FOX Business Network's Lydia Hu. They break down how Powell was "muzzled" by the SEC, the damage it did to his life, and what this massive rule change means for American businesses moving forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if the biggest barrier to a longer life isn't science, but the economic incentives of corporations? In this episode of Onward, Ben sits down with Celine Halioua, founder and CEO of Loyal — the biotech company on track to earn the first-ever FDA approval for a drug whose only purpose is to extend lifespan. The catch: they're starting with dogs.Celine walks Ben through why the U.S. healthcare system is structurally incapable of building preventative medicine, why each dog-owner relationship is a "micro single-payer health care system," and how a quiet 2019 change to FDA regulation was the one-to-one cause of Loyal existing at all. ("If this pathway didn't exist, Loyal wouldn't exist. October 2019, I incorporated.")From there, the conversation widens. Celine lays out the Tesla-style master plan — save the dogs, save the world — that uses dog-drug revenue to fund human longevity work, escaping the discipline of biotech VC entirely. Ben presses her on AI in drug development (she's skeptical it will change clinical trials anytime soon), public-market short-termism, and the kind of scenario planning that prepares a company for what nobody saw coming.—For a deeper dive into these insights and more, be sure to listen to the full episode of the Onward podcast.Have questions or feedback about this episode? Drop us a note at Onward@Fundrise.com. Onward is hosted by Ben Miller, co-founder and CEO of Fundrise. Podcast production by The Podcast Consultant. Music by Seaplane Armada. About FundriseWith over 2 million users, Fundrise is America's largest direct-to-investor alternative asset investment platform. Since 2012, our mission has been to build a better financial system by empowering the individual. We make it easier and more efficient than ever for anyone to invest in institutional-quality private alternative assets — all at the touch of a button. Please see fundrise.com/oc for more information on all of the Fundrise-sponsored investment funds and products, including each fund's offering document(s). Want to see the specific assets that make up and power Fundrise portfolios? Check out our active and past projects at www.fundrise.com/assets.More Info & DisclaimersThere are no guarantees investment holdings of the Fundrise Innovation Fund (the “Fund”) will be successful.Investing in the Fund is speculative and involves substantial risks. You should purchase shares of the Fund only if you can afford a complete loss of your investment. Nothing in this material should be construed as tax advice, an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Current and future holdings are subject to risk, and returns of one portfolio company are not indicative of an investment in the Fund. For Fund performance and the most recent schedule of investments, visit GetVCX.com. The Fund's annual and semi-annual reports (Form N-CSR), quarterly portfolio holdings (Form N-PORT), and other periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission are available on EDGAR at sec.gov and at GetVCX.com. The Innovation Fund is publicly registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 as a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company.The Fund's portfolio will be concentrated in securities issued by technology companies and other investments that provide economic exposure to technology companies and as such, it may be subject to more risks than if it were broadly diversified across additional sectors and industries of the economy. Certain technology companies may face special risks that their products or services may not prove to be commercially successful. Technology companies are also strongly affected by worldwide scientific or technological developments, and as a result, their products may rapidly become obsolete.The Fund's investments in companies involved in, or exposed to, artificial intelligence-related businesses may be negatively impacted because of, among other things, limited product lines, markets, financial resources and/or personnel; intense competition and potentially rapid product obsolescence these companies may face; loss or impairment of intellectual property rights; and the inability to successfully develop products or services even after spending significant amount of resources.The Fund's investment in private company securities, whether made directly or indirectly (e.g., through derivatives or private pooled investment vehicles) are generally illiquid. Because private company securities are thinly traded, such securities may display especially volatile or erratic price movements, sometimes in response to relatively small changes in investor supply or demand or other market conditions.

The SEC's proposal to allow optional semiannual reporting could significantly reshape public company reporting obligations and investor communications. SEC Division of Corporation Finance Director Jim Moloney joins the podcast to discuss what the proposal would change, why the SEC is considering the shift now, and the potential implications for companies, investors, and the public markets. For more on the SEC's proposal, read our In brief, SEC proposes optional semiannual reporting framework. Hear more from Jim Moloney on the Material Matters podcast episode, Director Jim Moloney: Let the Free Markets be Free, where he discusses the future of SEC disclosure rules, public company reporting requirements, and the growing need to modernize decades-old regulatory frameworks. About our guests  Jim Moloney is the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Before returning to the SEC, he spent 25 years at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, where he co-chaired the firm's securities regulation and corporate governance practice and advised clients on corporate governance matters, disclosure rules, mergers & acquisitions, tender offers, proxy contests, and going-private transactions, among other areas.  John Vanosdall is a partner in PwC's National Office focused on digital assets, revenue, and compensation arrangements. John previously served as both a Deputy Chief Accountant and Professional Accounting Fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant at the SEC. Prior to re-joining the National Office, he served as the firm's Accounting Advisory Leader. John has over 20 years of experience and has served some of the firm's largest clients as a client service partner.  About our guest host  Kyle Moffatt is PwC's Professional Practice leader, leading a team responsible for working with standard setters and regulators as well as delivering brand-defining thought leadership and educational materials. He also consults with engagement teams and audit clients on SEC reporting matters. Before PwC, Kyle spent almost 20 years with the SEC, most recently as Chief Accountant and Disclosure Program Director in the Division of Corporation Finance.  Transcripts available upon request for individuals who may need a disability-related accommodation. Please send requests to us_podcast@pwc.com.Did you enjoy this episode? Text us your thoughts and be sure to include the episode name.

Alex Thorn talks with Nathan McCauley, CEO of Anchorage, about Anchorage winning crypto's first national bank charter and how they spent years fighting the very regulator that granted it. Now the OCC lane is reopening, competitors are piling in, and CEO Nathan McCauley explains what it means for crypto's next phase. Alex also speaks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about markets. Participants, along with Galaxy Digital, hold a financial interest in Anchorage Digital and Bitcoin (BTC). Galaxy regularly engages in buying and selling BTC, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy also provides services to vehicles that invest in BTC.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy's service fees may increase accordingly. The valuation in this communication is based on technical, fundamental, and market analysis and not on any formal valuation method. For more information, please refer to Galaxy's public filings and statements. Cryptocurrencies, including BTC, are inherently volatile and risky and ultimate market movements may not align with this statement. For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at www.sec.gov. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Elon Musk's SpaceX confirmed in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it will take the company public, a multi-trillion-dollar move that could potentially turn Musk into the world's first trillionaire. Spacex's IPO valuation could reach between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion, according to multiple reports, which would best the previous all-time IPO valuation record of $1.7 trillion set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business and finance news from the Asia-Pacific.Nvidia Corp. aims to rely less on giant data center operators and predicts other businesses and governments will become a bigger source of revenue for its chips and computing products to support artificial intelligence ambitions. The company faces growing competition from chipmakers trying to carve out a piece of the AI computing business, and major buyers of Nvidia's technology are developing their own in-house components. In other news, SpaceX filed publicly for what stands to be the largest-ever initial public offering, revealing billions in losses and the super-voting share plan allowing Elon Musk to keep the company under his control. The rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence giant is giving the billionaire the power to outvote anyone else, and promising him outsize rewards, including as many as 1 billion shares, if he can pull it off, according to a filing Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. To break it all down, we spoke to Daniel Newman, CEO of the Futurum Group. Plus - In a last-minute reversal, Samsung Electronics Co. reached a tentative deal with its labor union, averting a potentially crippling strike that had been scheduled to start Thursday at the world's largest memory chipmaker. The South Korean company said in a statement late Wednesday that "labor and management have reached a tentative agreement on wages and the collective bargaining agreement." The company's union also confirmed suspension of plans for a strike that had been planned for May 21 to June 7. Samsung's stock rose about 5% in pre-market trading on Nextrade. Bloomberg TV hosts Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn spoke to Tom Kang, Director at Counterpoint Research. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The battle lines are being drawn over new proposed maps that could shift the path to power in Congress. In the latest episode of Potomac Perspective, co-hosts Brian Gardner and Neil Shapiro have the latest on redistricting efforts. Also discussed: Did President Trump’s trip to China produce more sizzle than steak? Will the United States step up military action in Iran? What’s the future for legislation around crypto market structure and housing affordability? This material is prepared by the Washington Policy Strategy Group of Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated (“Stifel”). This material is for informational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any security or instrument or to participate in any trading strategy discussed herein. The information contained is taken from sources believed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed by Stifel as to accuracy or completeness. The opinions expressed are those of the Washington Policy Strategy Group and may differ from those of other departments that produce similar material and are current as of the date of this publication and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance. Stifel does not provide accounting, tax, or legal advice and clients are advised to consult with their accounting, tax, or legal advisors prior to making any investment decision. Additional information is available upon request. Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated is a broker-dealer registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and is a member SIPC & NYSE. ©2026See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Details of SpaceX's IPO are expected to be made public this week as it accelerates plans for a stock debut that will likely make CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, but one analyst warned that trading may be volatile as the stock faces “substantial” downside risks. SpaceX, which filed confidential initial public offering registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission in April, will likely make public its paperwork—offering insight into the firm's operations and finances—this week as it plans for a June 12 debut on the Nasdaq, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Some have expressed concerns about SpaceX's stock listing, including PitchBook analyst Franco Granda, who wrote in March that SpaceX may act like Tesla's stock “on steroids,” suggesting trading volatility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alex Thorn talks with Robinhood's General Manager of Crypto Johann Kerbrat on the sidelines of Consensus 2026. Johann and Alex talk about the growth of crypto activity on the platform, their plans for tokenized securities, and the convergence of traditional markets and crypto. For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at ⁠www.sec.gov⁠. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Did you know 60% of individual stocks are net wealth destroyers? In Part Two, Patti and Eric break down what really causes major market drops, the odds of losing money over time, and four smart strategies for managing a concentrated stock position. Key Financial, Inc. is a federally registered investment advisor with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Securities offered through Osaic Wealth, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Key Financial Inc. Osaic Wealth is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Osaic Wealth. Patricia Brennan and Osaic Wealth, Inc. do not offer tax advice or tax servies. Please consult your tax specialist for individual advice. We make no specific comments or recommendations on any tax related details. "One Hundred Years in the U.S. Stock Markets" (March 2026, also on SSRN) Looking at 29,754 common stocks listed on U.S. public markets over 100 years (1926–2025), the study found that long-term investors in nearly 60% of stocks incurred wealth reductions

What happens when family relationships collide with business ownership?In this episode, Matt Di Francesco unpacks the emotional side of family business succession and explains why many transitions fail long before the paperwork is signed. From the “dinner table dilemma” to tension between business-active and non-business-active family members, Matt explores the real challenges that can derail a transition.Whether you are preparing to transition your business to the next generation, planning your retirement, or trying to protect both your company and your family relationships, this episode delivers practical insights to help you transition on your terms while preserving family unity. Matt also talks about:(01:27) The hidden family dynamics that can derail a business transition(02:20) Why letting go of your business identity is so difficult(03:02) Separating family and business for a smoother transition(05:35) Three keys to a successful family business transitionConnect With Matt DiFrancesco:matt@highliftfin.com(814)201-5855LinkedIn: Matt DiFrancescoLinkedIn: High Lift FinancialFacebook: High Lift Financial Instagram: @high_lift_financialYouTube: @highliftfinancialDisclaimer:All information is obtained from sources deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. No tax or legal advice is given nor intended. Content provided herein or on our website should not be construed as an offer for investment advice or for securities, insurance, or other investment products. Investments involve the risk of loss and are not guaranteed. Consult a qualified legal, tax, accounting, or financial professional before implementing any investments or strategies discussed here.High Lift Financial is a DBA for DiFrancesco Financial Concierge, LLC.  Investment advisory services are provided through Cornerstone Planning Group, LLC, an independent advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Alex Thorn talks with Matt Corallo, Bitcoin developer at Spiral, about debates over Bitcoin's development path, node implementations, and pathways and possibilities for mitigating the impact of a potential future cryptographically relevant quantum computer. Matt first contributed to Bitcoin Core in 2011 and today focuses on building tools for Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Alex also talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about rising inflation expectations, the new Fed chair, and tricky macro conditions. Participants, along with Galaxy Digital, hold a financial interest in Bitcoin (BTC). Galaxy regularly engages in buying and selling BTC, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy also provides services to vehicles that invest in BTC.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy's service fees may increase accordingly. The valuation in this communication is based on technical, fundamental, and market analysis and not on any formal valuation method. For more information, please refer to Galaxy's public filings and statements. Cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ZEC, are inherently volatile and risky and ultimate market movements may not align with this statement.   For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at www.sec.gov. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Landon Zinda, Counsel to the Chairman and Senior Advisor for the Crypto Task Force at the Securities and Exchange Commission, sat down with us at the Solana Policy Institute's Summit to discuss the SEC's guidance on crypto securities, crypto wallets, tokenization, the Clarity Act, and more. Brought to you by

-TikTok announced that an ad-free option will roll out to UK users over the coming months, available to anyone with an account who is 18 or older. The monthly subscription will cost £4 ($5.40) per month. -The big change is that Samsung is adding support for Google Gemini, which has several important implications. By combining Samsung's existing on-device object recognition with Google's cloud-based models, the total number of identifiable foods is increasing from just over 100 items to more than 2,000. -Lime, which is officially known as Neutron Holdings, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, after teasing ambitions of going public back in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Marcia Dawood is the author of Do Good While Doing Well, TEDx speaker, Podcast host, and an early-stage investor who serves on the Securities and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. She is a venture partner with Mindshift Capital and the chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association (ACA), a global professional society for angel investors. She is also an associate producer on the award-winning documentary Show Her the Money. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!   Connect with Marcia Dawood:Website: www.marciadawood.com X: https://twitter.com/MarciaDawood Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marciadawood/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciadawood/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcia.dawood *E - explicit language may be used in this podcast.

Alex Thorn talks with Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Kraken, about the evolution of crypto exchanges, regulatory landscapes, and blockchain technology. Alex also talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) about markets. Participants, along with Galaxy, hold a financial interest in Bitcoin (BTC). Galaxy regularly engages in buying and selling BTC, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy also provides services to vehicles that invest in BTC.  If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy's service fees may increase accordingly. The valuation in this communication is based on technical, fundamental, and market analysis and not on any formal valuation method. For more information, please refer to Galaxy's public filings and statements. Cryptocurrencies, including BTC, are inherently volatile and risky and ultimate market movements may not align with this statement.   For additional risks related to digital assets, please refer to the risk factors contained in filings Galaxy Digital Inc. makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) from time to time, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, available at www.sec.gov. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. ++ Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/research/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Good overall earnings season – still going strong Economic reports show a mixed picture – but still good enough Semi-annual earnings report option gaining steam Saying goodbye to Spirit Airlines Markets PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm-Up - Good overall earnings season - still going strong - Economic reports show a mixed picture - but still good enough - Semi-annual earnings report option gaining steam - Saying goodbye to Spirit Airlines - EGGS - Breaking News! Markets - Are markets riding tariff refund wave? - Oil shoots up then slips back after Iran tensions rise and fall - New Highs - NAZ100 powering ahead - Huge Capex and OBBBA NEED A NEW CTP - CMG (last time was 2017) Ship Sailing - Seems that under the protection of the USA - a Maersk ship passed through the Strait - But how many can they do a day like this? - Oil down after a huge spike yesterday due to IRAN striking UAE Big Shakeup - US transportation stocks plunged after Amazon announced expanded logistics offerings that will turn it into a major competitor for parcel carriers and air freight companies. - The move is a threat not just to other couriers' grasp on e-commerce, but potentially to more profitable areas such as healthcare, which UPS and FedEx have made a central part of their strategies. - Amazon will offer freight, distribution and fulfillment, and parcel shipping to standalone customers, and its announcement "could be a watershed moment for North American freight transportation companies," according to Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker. - FedEx Corp. shares fell 9.1% in their worst day in more than a year, while rival United Parcel Service Inc. dropped more than 10%. -- Logistics firms Forward Air Corp. and GXO Logistics Inc. suffered double-digit declines. Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., among other truckers, slid almost 7%. --- FYI - Did you know... last year there was a total of 23.9 BILLION packages shipped in the US. 25% was delivered by Amazon, Fed and UPS delivered a third. Off the Hook - Chump Change - Elon Musk agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he cheated Twitter shareholders by failing to properly disclose his growing stake in the social media company. - An Elon Musk revocable trust would pay the penalty to end the SEC's lawsuit, which is still subject to court approval, and Musk didn't admit to the regulator's allegations. - The SEC said the deal would be the largest penalty the agency has levied against an entity or individual for allegedly failing to file a beneficial ownership report on time, but Musk's attorney called it a “small fine”. - Musk didn't admit to the regulator's allegations, according to a filing on Monday. This could be something... - Sonos Inc. shares climbed after reporting revenue that jumped 8% and said that it is filing for tariff refunds totaling $40 million. - The company reported second quarter revenue of $282 million, up 8% year over year, and strong growth in international markets. - Sonos is forecasting adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization between $20 million and $48 million for the current quarter - Are markets riding higher also on the tariff refunds? ---- The US government is paying back up to $166 billion in revenue it collected through sweeping global tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court in February, with the first payments set to go out on May 11. AND - General Motors raised its 2026 guidance after significantly beating Wall Street's first-quarter earnings expectations following a roughly $500 million benefit from the U.S. Supreme Court decision to terminate and refund certain levies AKA - tariffs. OPEC? - In an unexpected announcement - The United Arab Emirates will exit OPEC on May 1, in a major blow to the cartel that coordinates production among many of the world's largest oil producers, particularly those in the Middle East. - OPEC+ to raise June output quotas by 188,000 bpd - Most members cannot meet targets due to Hormuz closure - Quota increase removes UAE share after it left OPEC+ and OPEC (so just a make-up) - Meanwhile, they cannot meet the iutput as no place to put the oil.... --- This all looks and sounds good but there is no substance. ---- Saudi Arabia produces 10 million barrels a day (Biggest in OPEC). USA produces 13 Million .... Spirit Airlines - Goodbye - shutdown Saturday night at 3PM - The administration had floated a last-ditch bailout that would have given the federal government a controlling stake in the airline, but the proposal stalled amid resistance from key creditors, whose approval would have been required for the deal to go through. - Meanwhile, most ticket holders will get refunds. --- Already Jetblue and others are looking to fill the void by offering more flights from airports that Spirit serviced. -- Takes a low cost alternative off the market and potentially will be a negative for consumers - less competition - WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DID NOT WANT BY BLOCKING JETBLUE MERGER JC - are you listening?? - Duolingo beats Q1 revenue estimates, driven by 21% growth in paid subscribers - CFO Gillian Munson says investments target long-term user retention - Duolingo aims for 100 million daily active users by 2028 - Guided a bit lower and a strategy shift toward prioritizing user experience and long-term retention over near-term monetization, as it invests in product quality and engagement to build a larger base of paying subscribers. (DUMB?) - Share down 8% CHIPS - Samsung Electronics reported an over eightfold increase in first-quarter operating profits on Thursday, hitting a new record and beating analysts' estimates on the explosive growth of its chip business. -  Revenue: 133.9 trillion Korean won ($89.96 billion) vs. 132.69 trillion won expected - Operating profit: 57.2 trillion won vs. 55.28 trillion won expected - The South Korean technology giant's quarterly profit climbed more than 750% from a year earlier to a fresh record. - The company also posted record revenue, up about 70% year over year. AMD Reports Conf Call: AMD paired strong current-quarter execution with a more ambitious long-term AI and server CPU outlook. The biggest positives were the stronger EPYC trajectory, rising confidence in MI450/Helios demand, and the upgraded server CPU TAM view. - The company now sees the server CPU TAM growing more than 35% annually to over $120 billion by 2030, up from its prior long-term view. - The main caution points were second-half PC and Gaming demand pressure from higher memory and component costs. - Margins 55% - Stock up 15% AH Apple Chips Deal? - Apple Inc. has held exploratory discussions with Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. about producing main processors for its devices in the US, as a secondary option beyond Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. - The discussions with Intel and Samsung are preliminary and have not resulted in any orders, with Apple having concerns about using non-TSMC technology. - Apple is considering additional suppliers due to supply-chain disruptions, including recent shortages driven by the build-out of AI data centers and higher demand for Macs, with CEO Tim Cook saying the company has less flexibility in the supply chain than normal. - Discussions - yet Intel up 14% on the  news (after a 100% run in April) Flashback - 2 weeks - Remember when OpenAi came out with some news that they missed revenue and user growth goals? - Took down tech for a day a couple of weeks ago.... Tech earnings - Overall tech earnings were solid. - Bbig takeaway is that the group (MAG7) are still spending a buttload on expansion into AI etc. Capex $$$$ - Meta was hit on theor outlook (which is why they came back and announced further layoffs) AI Layoffs - Recall - "AI will not take jobs" - More announced this week - Coinbase today - How long until the robots take over? - Recent Announcements AI Job Cuts EGGS - Consumption of eggs is associated with a lower risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease for those 65 years and older, according to researchers at Loma Linda University Health - Eating one egg per day for at least five days a week reduces risk of Alzheimer's by up to 27%, researchers found. --- More: Eggs are known to be a source of key nutrients that support brain health. Sabaté said. Eggs provide choline, a precursor to acetylcholine and phosphatidylcholine, both of which are critical for memory and synaptic function, the study stated. Eggs also contain lutein and zeaxanthin—carotenoids that accumulate in brain tissue and are associated with improved cognitive performance and reduced oxidative stress. Eggs also contain key omega-3 fatty acids, and yolks are particularly rich in phospholipids, which constitute nearly 30% of total egg lipids and are essential for neurotransmitter receptor function. LIV Losing Saudi Arabia - LIV Golf will lose its financial backing from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund after the 2026 season, the fund announced Thursday. - "PIF has made the decision to fund LIV Golf only for the remainder of the 2026 season," a representative for the PIF, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told ABC News on Thursday. - "The substantial investment required by LIV Golf over a longer term is no longer consistent with the current phase of PIF's investment strategy," the statement continued. "This decision has been made in light of PIF's investment priorities and current macro dynamics. - Looking for Private Equity to step in Cars - The Beijing Auto Show that opened to the public this week is a showcase for how hypercompetition in China has driven new car prices in the world's largest car market to ?a fraction of the level of the next-largest market, the U.S. - In China, there are more than 200 battery-powered models, including hybrids, for sale at less than the equivalent of $25,000, according to DCar, an information and trading platform. - Plenty at the $10k - $12k level Death Squads - Friday, The White house announced plans to add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation as alternative methods of executing people convicted of the gravest federal crimes - Only THREE federal executions in the last 50 years Weekly Picks Ideas Worst Stocks this Year Worst Stocks   Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? THE WINNER OF THE CLOSEST TO THE PIN for NETGEAR   Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt!     FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS   See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcastRUDY RUDY RUDYThe story of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger—the undersized dreamer who defied the odds and earned his moment on the field at University of Notre Dame. Thanks to the iconic film Rudy, it's become one of the most celebrated underdog stories in sports history.But how much of it is actually true?In this episode, the boys break down Rudy in a classic “History vs. Hollywood” format—separating fact from fiction and digging into what really happened behind the scenes. From his path into Notre Dame to his time on the scout team, they explore what the movie got right… and what it clearly didn't.They also get into one of the most famous moments in the film—the emotional jersey scene—and why former players like Joe Montana have said it never actually happened. Was Rudy really carried by his teammates, or did Hollywood turn a small moment into something much bigger?And just when you think the story ends with triumph, there's a twist most people don't know. Years later, Rudy found himself facing charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a stock-related case—adding a whole new layer to the legacy.It's an inspiring story… just not exactly the one you were told.

This episode of the Unusual Whales Podcast was recorded live on April 30th, 2026. Nicholas is joined by the CEO and co-founder of Teamshares, Michael Brown, to discuss one of the biggest and least talked-about shifts in the U.S. economy: the wave of small business ownership transitions as millions of owners head toward retirement. So today we're digging into what this wave really looks like and what may get missed in the bullish version of the story.*This episode is brought to you by Teamshares, but that does not imply a direct endorsement of the company. Nothing in this interview should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any security, and you should always do your own research or confer with your financial advisor before making investment decisions in any company.Hosted by:Nicholas FNS: https://twitter.com/NicholasFNSUnusual Whales: https://twitter.com/unusual_whalesThis Pod is not financial advice. Unusual Whales Inc. is not registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) or any state securities regulatory authority. The stock market is risky, and any trade or investment is expected to have some, or total, loss. Please do research before any trade. Do not use this information for financial decisions or for investing. You should consult your legal or tax professional regarding your specific situation.Unusual Social Media:Discord: https://discord.com/invite/unusualwhalesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/unusualwhalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/unusualwhales/Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/unusual_whales/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unusual_whalesTwitter: https://twitter.com/unusual_whalesYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/unusualwhales/Merch: https://unusual-whales.creator-spring.com/**Disclaimer:Any content referenced in the video or on Unusual Whales are not intended to provide legal, tax, investment or insurance advice. Unusual Whales Inc. is not registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) or any state securities regulatory authority.NOTE: Unusual Whales is not responsible for any promotion or #ad. It does not verify the authenticity of the promotion or partnership, nor the merits of the individual promotion. Unusual Whales does not necessarily endorse or condone any one promotion. Unusual Whales does not advocate for any sponsor. Please do your own diligence and research before following any one promoted post. Do not consider a promotion of a post an advocacy for the sponsor of the post.

Steven Mnuchin, founder of Liberty Strategic Capital and former US Treasury Secretary, says he supports the proposal released by the Securities and Exchange Commission that will allow US companies to choose to report earnings semiannually. Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, Mnuchin also comments on the economic impact of AI, the conflict in Iran, the federal budget deficit and Federal Reserve monetary policy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode of the Unusual Whales Pod was recorded Live on April 29th, 2026.Panel:Joseph Wang https://twitter.com/FedGuy12Jonny Matthews https://x.com/super_macroMarko Bjegovic https://x.com/MBjegovicHosted by:Nicholas FNS: https://twitter.com/NicholasFNSUnusual Whales: https://twitter.com/unusual_whalesThis Pod is not financial advice. Unusual Whales Inc. is not registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) or any state securities regulatory authority. The stock market is risky, and any trade or investment is expected to have some, or total, loss. Please do research before any trade. Do not use this information for financial decisions or for investing. You should consult your legal or tax professional regarding your specific situation.Unusual Social Media:Discord: https://discord.com/invite/unusualwhalesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/unusualwhalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/unusualwhales/Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/unusual_whales/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unusual_whalesTwitter: https://twitter.com/unusual_whalesYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/unusualwhales/Merch: https://unusual-whales.creator-spring.com/**Disclaimer:Any content referenced in the video or on Unusual Whales are not intended to provide legal, tax, investment or insurance advice. Unusual Whales Inc. is not registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) or any state securities regulatory authority. Nothing on Unusual Whales should be construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any security by Unusual Whales or any third party. Certain investment planning tools available on Unusual Whales may provide general investment education based on your input.

Get your tickets to our L.A. live show here! In 2019, influencer Tai Lopez made a pitch to his social media followers: by buying up distressed retail brands like Radio Shack and Pier 1 out of bankruptcy, they could all get rich. But as WSJ's Suzanne Kapner reports, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Lopez of running a “Ponzi-like scheme” through his company, Retail Ecommerce Ventures. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening/Viewing: - Influencer Arielle Charnas's Fashion Fail - How a Miami Couple Used Empty Mansions to Pocket Millions Sign up for WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices