Christopher Verrone is a partner of Strategas, a leading institutional brokerage firm focused on providing macro research, capital market and corporate advisory services, and financial solutions to institutional investors and corporate executives worldwide. 

Today's podcast is a masterclass in understanding what's going on in the markets right now. 

Christopher tells us about his firm's approach of discovering what the market is telling us about the macro, as opposed to the other way around. 

He tells us how the disconnect between what the market is telling us and how consumers are behaving can be interpreted, explains why the current state of affairs doesn’t have the hallmarks of a signature bottom, and talks about why, when that bottom comes, it’s unlikely to be V-shaped. 

He goes on to remind us that leading companies in one decade rarely remain leaders in the next and talks about why energy went into this apparent bear market as a leader and will emerge from it as one too.

We're incredibly fortunate to talk to Whitney Tilson and get his take on yet another eventful week in the markets. As always, the former hedge fund manager and current investment newsletter publisher gives us plenty to chew on, just as he does to 140,000 avid readers of his daily takes on market movers and shakers.  

Sign up for Whitney’s free newsletter here. 

In our talk with Whitney, we get into the spectacle of Elon Musk using Twitter to attack Twitter while attempting to acquire Twitter. The latest twist in the tale is Elon's apparent attempt to re-price the deal, citing a need for data to support the platform's claim that less than 5% of Twitter users are fake or spam accounts. 

While his Empire Financial Research colleague Enrique Abeyta talked about the prospect of Twitter suing Elon should he derail the deal, Whitney floats an even more costly and consequential outcome to the drama—Twitter deciding to de-platform him.   

Whitney talks about the likelihood of the market finding its bottom late last week. He explains why he's turning bullish on Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Netflix, and why when everyone and their mother is using a product like Whatsapp or Venmo, they are good buys explaining that a sustainable financial model can be hammered out at a later date. 

It's a particularly great week to be talking about what's going on in the markets with 25-year stock market warrior Enrique Abeyta. Hour by hour, Enrique chews up Twitter with an array of unfiltered perspectives on the economic forces shaping our world. Do yourself a favor and follow @enriqueabeyta if you don't already. 

One of the former hedge fund manager's current day gigs is writing newsletters for Whitney Tilson's Empire Financial Research. Another is co-hosting Hard Money's Million Dollar podcast, in which Enrique is tasked with helping turn his co-host's 10,000 dollar stake into a cool million. It's highly entertaining and well worth checking out.  

In the early hours of this Friday, the 13th, Elon Musk took to Twitter to announce that his bid to acquire the aforementioned social media platform was on hold, pending details surrounding the percentage of users that are actually spam or fake accounts. Enrique describes how this possible attempt to strengthen his negotiating position could cost him big should he break the deal and get sued by Twitter. 

Front here, Enrique segues seamlessly from Twitter's undulating stock price to other tech stocks that have been hit hard of late and could see a pronounced bounce back. He also drops some tantalizing tidbits regarding a SPAC stock he's particularly jazzed about.

Henry Elder is portfolio manager for all of Wave Financial's decentralized finance investment products and manages $250 million in stable coin and crypto-asset investment strategies. 

That means he’s perfectly placed to explain the crypto story that everyone's talking about—the implosion of crypto coin Terra Luna and the $41 billion that got vaporized overnight. 

Henry does a masterful job of setting the scene that led up to this crypto crisis. He lays out what stable coins are, explains the difference between collateralized stable coins and algorithmic stable coins like UST, and describes the relationship between UST and Luna. 

Henry then takes us through the crisis that developed in the past week and how a paradoxical announcement by the Luna Foundation Guard—think of it as centra bank to UST—broke the stable coin's peg to the dollar. 

We talk about how won and lost in the crisis' wake, how Luna's collapse is reflected in the pricing of bitcoin and Ethereum, and the prospect of a comeback for Luna. We then zoom out and talk about the timing of this crisis, coming as it does during a recession, a war in Europe, and a lull in enthusiasm for crypto generally. Henry tells us why he remains bullish on crypto generally and describes how the US can establish dollar dominance in crypto via US dollar-pegged stable coins.

Ryan and Prometheus' Lead Product Manager Jeff Brines talk about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter—the way the news is moving the market and dividing public opinion. 

In a lively, wide-ranging chat, they talk about the uniqueness of the world's richest person acquiring the social media platform the world's brightest minds choose to share their thoughts, providing—as Emmet Peppers deftly puts it—the cheat codes for life.  

They discuss Musk's superhuman ability to attract talent, whether the outcry around the acquisition holds up to scrutiny, and theorize on why Tesla's share price dropped 12%—or two Twitters—on the news. 

Ryan and Jeff also kick around the common perception of Elon. Specifically, how much of it doesn't jibe with his actions or lifestyle. They also touch upon what a privately held Twitter could look like and how a genuinely great mind may set about unlocking its value.

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Today, we’re talking with Good Soil Investment Management’s Emmet Peppers—a Tesla expert and enthusiast. On Wednesday of this week, Tesla reported first-quarter earnings for 2022 and beat analysts’ expectations on the top and bottom lines.

Emmet has owned Tesla since 2010. Back then it had a market cap of $2.5 billion. It’s now well over trillion.

We talk with him about how Tesla blew estimates out of the water and managed to post a greater than sevenfold increase in profit despite supply chain issues. We discuss the advent of robo-taxis, and self-driving cars, and how people need to stop thinking about Tesla as just a car manufacturer. And of course we couldn’t talk about Elon Musk without touching on his plans for Twitter.

Today we're talking with Blue Duck Capital Partners Founder Alex Beinfield about some truly seismic things going on with a couple of tech companies that many of us use daily—Netflix and Twitter. 

Twitter is in the crosshairs of one Elon Musk. Alex has been long on Twitter and explains what Elon might be thinking, laying out several ways this modern melodrama may play out, including a rationale for intentionally triggering a poison pill.  

On Tuesday, Netflix announced that they had a lousy Q1 and expected a worse Q2. The price tanked by around a third. Alex was short on Netflix but covered his shorts just before the announcement. He tells us why he made that choice, what the dip could mean for other streaming services and the effects of Nexflix's plans to crack down on password sharing and introduce ads.