Insider Trading Allegations and Market Corruption

Support for the show comes from VCX, the public ticker for private tech. The U.S. stock market started history's greatest wave of wealth creation. From factory workers in Detroit to farmers in Omaha, anyone could own a piece of the great American companies. But today, our most innovative companies are staying private longer, which means everyday Americans are missing out until now. Introducing VCX, a public ticker for private tech. Visit get VCX.com for more info. That's getvcx.com. Carefully consider the investment materials before investing, including objectives, risk, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorshi p support for the show comes from public.com. You've got your core holdings, some high conviction picks, maybe even a few strategic options at play. So why not switch the investment platform built for those who take it seriously. Go to public.com slash provg and earn an uncapped one percent bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash profg, paid for by public investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal, brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities. Options and bonds and a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Complete disclosures available at Public.com slash disclos ures. Once upon a mundane morning, Barb's Day got busy without warning. A realtor in need of an open house sign. No, fifty of them. And designed before nine. My head hurts. Any mighty tools to help with this plight? Aha! Barb made her move. She opened Kenva and got in the groove. Both creating canvas sheets, create fifty signs fit for suburban streets. Done in a quick, all complete. Sweet. Now imagine what your dreams can become when you put imagination to work at canva.com. Today's number, 19 billion. That's how many dollars it will cost to renovate New York's new JFK airport. That makes it one of the most expensive US reconstruction projects since Kylie Jenner. Money markets matter. If money is evil, then that building is hell. Show goes on! Sell! Sell ! Welcome to Prof D Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is March 25th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vit als. The SP and the Dow declined marginally as investors looked for clarity on negotiations with Iran. Meanwhile, the Trump administration deployed more troops to the Middle East and oil resumed its climb. And finally the Nasdaq dropped as software stocks took yet another dive, more on that l ater. Okay, what else is happening? The Strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of global energy exports, has now been effectively closed for 25 days, and the ripple effects are being felt across the globe. Fertilizer prices are up 25% since the war began. Gas is up 30%. Diesel is up 40%. Meanwhile, shipping disruptions are raising global freight costs and extending delivery times. War risk insurance premiums for vessels have increased by about 50%, and oil tanker shipping costs have exploded by as much as 200%. So, here to break down what all of this means for global supply chains, we're joined by Ryan Peterson, CEO of Flexport, one of the world's leading freight and logistics platforms. Ryan, I always love having you on whenever something is happening with supply chains because you're one of the few people who is actually in this business and you're seeing what is happening on the ground. I have been reading about what is happening to prices, specifically diesel prices. I've been seeing what's happening to diesel prices and fuel, and I've been seeing that this is just exploding prices for all forms of freight. Basically anything that ships anything. I'd just be interested to hear what you're seeing on the ground right now. Yeah, hey great. Thanks for having me on. Um especially we're seeing it in an air freight market, uh which obviously is very jet fuel driven, but also the Middle Eastern air carriers, I think Emirates and Qatar and Etihad, and I guess Saudiya, which is the Saudi one, they represent eighteen percent of all air cargo capacity in the world. Emirates is the world's biggest airline, I think. And Dubai's the biggest air cargo airport in the world. So it's just a huge and those have basically been taken offline. They started to eke their way back up. I didn't see the latest uh today, but um they were trying to bring flights back and then the you know new attacks at the airport they've they've more or less um ramped that way way down so it's basically Asia to Europe, the air cargo prices are double. In fact, we have Flexport have built this service to ship going from Asia to Europe. We ship in cargo across the Pacific Ocean, bringing it to LAX and then flying it to Europe from Los Angeles, which is not suboptimal to say the least, but saving people money by doing that way and getting it there. The alternative, actually, the biggest impact on ocean freight is the Persian Gulf is not that big of a deal from a container shipping standpoint. The bigger story, obviously, by far is oil. You mentioned fertilizer, some of these other um downstream uh kind of things that come off of the uh petroleum products. But uh the bigger story from container shipping is the red sea which had we have not been using container ships have effectively not been going through the red sea since december of twenty twenty three with the Houthi attacks, these terrorist attacks in the Red Sea. And in February, the carriers, three of them had just started to return service via the Suez Canal, and they immediately pulled out for too much. It was too risky. So that actually the big impact here is it was about to get a lot better. Like supply chains were about to sort of normalize and now we've gone back um to going around the tip of Africa. So that's gonna add right right now. It's increased the price of ocean freight about fifty percent. Um so and that's a much longer transit time going around. So we've got oil prices going up, which means that it's more expensive to fuel all of these vessels and all of these uh uh aircraft carriers, basically anything that carries anything. We've got the fact that it's almost impossible for any of these ships to go through the Strait of Hormuz and now you're also pointing out that we've got these issues with the Red Sea. So multiple different issues here. Um, how difficult is it right now to be in the supply chain business compared to other times in history. I think, for example, maybe COVID, as an example, where it was obviously like a real supply chain problem. Like how bad is it out there? I I think it obviously depends very much on what you're trying to do. Like if you're trying ship to the Middle East, it's a disaster. I mean, you can't get into the Persian Gulf. There's no container ships going through. If you like, I think oil and gas, I think we're seeing about three ships went out yesterday. Normally it's over a hundred. Uh, so it's a huge reduction in in that supply chain. Um if you're on a global basis, like the ocean freight story here is a pretty small scale. If COVID was at eight out of ten and the Red Sea disruption has been like a six out of ten. This container shipping story of the Strait and Four moves is only like a three. It's it's because yes, and I'm not saying it's only a three for the global economy. I just mean for container shipping is uh specifically. For the global economy, this is what probably the worst thing in in our lifetime if they can't get it resolved soon. Um b because how energy is upstream of everything and more importantly food, the the fertilizer production coming out of that region. Um, and it's planting season, so it's a very bad timing for the world's uh agricultural supply chains. Um, but it's the Persian Gulf from a container shipping standpoint is a cul-de-sac. You don't need to go in there unless you're delivering to there. Yep. Um and there's only the the stat that we're s looking at is zero point six percent of the world's container ships are currently stuck inside the strait. So it's not a you know it's kind of a rounding error. It's not a big deal for container shipping. Now fuel prices have gone up eighty-seven percent for ocean uh bunker fuel, the the fuel that powers the ship. So that's you know, there's definitely it's an energy story is what I would say rather than a container shipping story. Ultimately that energy story is going to affect people like you, right? I mean, if it's more expensive to get the fuel to put the fuel in the ship or to put the fuel in the aircraft to go somewhere, is that not also an issue on your end or is it less of an issue? Yeah, it is. It is. As I said, the prices have gone up about 50%. And the United Airlines CEO said earlier this week or end of last week, he said that this was their model was their modeling this the the jet fuel price increases is gonna cost them eleven billion dollars. Wow. And he said that in their best year ever at United they made five billion in profit. Uh which tells you they're gonna the model basically says they have to increase plane ticket prices by 30% to just to pay the fuel. So just to give you a sense of like how this is upstream of everything else. Um, and that's really everything. I mean, this we don't think about it, but plastic is all made from petroleum products, like huge percent pharmaceuticals and healthcare, cosmetics, consumer goods, paint, you know, it's in everything. And the US will be okay relative uh to other markets because we're self-sufficient in energy and fuel. Um you're gonna see a lot of markets, a lot of countries where they it's not about prices, it's like actual shortages. Like you can't get stuff at any price. And yeah, of course the price will go parabolic at that point. But um that's that's that's the real danger that I think the economy is facing right now. And hopefully, I mean we take it for granted that supply chains and modern civilization actually just like it's all built on a foundation of kind of peaceful coexistence here that it Yeah, g give us a sense of how this could trickle down to the consumer because it seems like w all that we're really seeing right now, if you're paying for for gas at the pump, you're immediately feeling this right now. You're immediately seeing how this is impacting your life. But I think the thing that is probably less understood is how the disruptions in the supply chain could also affect your life in some way. It could translate to the price increases in I don't know what. So but paint us a picture of how this could translate for consumers. The one that we narrowly avoided is on the West Coast. So California shut down all or most of its refineries um in a in an effort to go green. But of course we still pr we still consume a lot of oil in California, a lot of oil-based petroleum, gasoline, whatever. And um and so we've been importing refined oil pro refined petroleum from Korea and other Asian markets because we shut down the refineries in California. Well, those markets are now out of crude to process because they're getting their crude from the Middle East. Um and so there the the president had to last week suspend waive at a temporary provision, but waived the Jones Act. And the Jones Act is what prevents the reason that they have to get c re refined petroleum from Asia is because under the Jones Act, which is a hundred-year-old law, if you want to move um oil by ship from Texas to California, it has to be on a US-made tanker uh with a US crew, citizen, American citizens as the crew, and those don't exist. So it's not possible for American that we don't have it, California is not connected to the Texas energy market. And they actually did it not to save California, but to save Alaska, because Anchorage is the world's, I said Dubai's the biggest cargo airport. Dubai, uh Anchorage is right up there. It's it's a massively important air cargo market because you can't fly of a a 747 loaded with cargo can't make it from Asia to the United States without refueling. They all stop in Anchorage to refuel. And so Anchorage isn't, and if they they were about to not have any jet fuel if they hadn't waived this, the Jones Act. So there's these things that are, you know, we just kind of take for granted. Yeah, of course you can get jet fuel at the airport, but it's very interconnected now. And actually, um should've looked this up before I came on. I don't know how long they actually can suspend the Jones Act for, but it's not permanent. They it's an act of Congress. The president has some emergency powers, but it's not a permanent waiver of that. So we'll see how that plays out. When when I think about the global supply chain at this point, it feels like we've had these immense shocks. I mean, first it was COVID and suddenly everyone realized, okay, supply chains matter and I think that's when you became honestly you really burst into the scene in that moment because everyone was like oh my gosh we need to understand this stuff then we see obviously what what's happened in the Middle East and what and how that's disrupted the Red Sea, as you mentioned, something that's less talked about, also tariffs and what that has done to the supply chain. And now here we are again with this war in Iran. I guess my question to you, do you think that this is a temporary shock that we will kind of move through uh over the maybe short to medium term, or have supply chains just structurally become more difficult? Is this kind of issue something that's here to stay? It's a right question. Um I think there's a there's a let's hope that it's temporary. Uh you got a plan is if it's not though. And there we we really take this for granted. I mean, it didn't used to be like this. It used to be worse. Uh before World War II, if you wanted to do trade anywhere, you sort of count countries just traded with their own colonies and like you most remember like, you know, before during the British Empire and and and prior and centuries prior, like if you wanted to do trade, you put a bunch of cannons on your on your merchant ship and you sailed around the world ready to blast anybody, you know, and it was like way worse. Um and we got to the world order that we have today after World War II with the US Navy basically providing protection and freedom of navigation and saying, hey, no, you know, you can say anyone can sail anywhere uh US Navy will protect the sea lanes and you could you know open up trade um and and so that's why this is so such a fundamental challenge the Red Sea first and now uh and now the Persian Gulf, because it's a challenge to that global order. It's like, is the US Navy capable of opening the Strait of Hormuz? And we we've already seen they're not capable of opening the Red Sea. They tried, they sent the carrier task force and the Yemen, you know, small group of rebels in Yemen uh prevailed and have continued the to made it so that the container ships have to go around. Um so it's it's a massive question for globalization, the way that our economies are structured, our companies are all built around these globalized supply chains. And I think people need to start thinking about plan B of more regional supply chains that are not as exposed. Um countries need to think hard about their who their strategic partners are. More countries are gonna arm up and create, you know, have to invest in their own navies. Probably see this from Japan, starting see a lot of European companies start to European countries I should say start to um build up military force for the first time, saying maybe we can't count on just America to defend us and and there's a realize there's a lot of bad guys in the world and you can't just sit around and expect that everything's gonna be fine. It's a really interesting point. I guess I'm wondering as the CEO of one of the biggest companies that that works exactly in this space, what does that mean for you? Like how do you change your strategy in a world where you can't take globalization and free and unfettered trade for granted, and you do have to start thinking about geopolitics, about violence, about war,. I mean if we're talking about cannons on ships and you're saying that Europe needs to think about that again for the first time since before the war, before the the World War I or World War II, like what does that mean for you? Yeah. Um you know and and it it actually going through the Red Sea, like the one ocean carrier that was providing service last couple of years was CMA because the French Navy was providing escorts to their to the French container shipping line. So you're starting you are starting to see a little bit of that. Wow. Yeah, it's of course it's not good. Like we want to live in a world of open free trade. Like our mission is to make global trade easy for everybody. So uh these things make it harder. We found and and you wanna be in a g growing market. Like every entrepreneur wants to be in a growing market. You we like to say uh you know, we like to think like oh the market our market is so big. It is, it's mi it's vast. And so flexboard can be successful even if the market shrinks. But we've already learned like, man, it's way better if your market's growing and you don't have to fight. It doesn't have to be such a knife fight for every, you know, incremental customer. Um so yeah, it's bad for business. We have found ways to stand out. Um, you know, and technology becomes a big piece of this puzzle of like our visibility tech has been more important than ever for helping people figure out where's my stuff, when is it gonna arrive, what container ships are having to be rerouted, where are these containers getting dropped? Like some of the core value props that Flexboard offers are like actually more valuable and more differentiated in that environment. Same on the tariff front, like we build all this tech to help companies manage their tariffs and figure out how much do they owe. Because it used to be simple to calculate, but now you need to know on what date did this custom this did this container clear customs. Tariff rate on one day is way different than it was a week earlier or a week later. Um and uh what refund am I going to get? And how do I help people get refunds from tariffs now that the Supreme Court kind of uh overturned the tariffs? So we've seen we we've seen that we can definitely stand out with tech in this volatility and and turn it to our advantage. That said, like, you know, I'd much rather have a growing market where everything's Goldilocks. It's very interesting. Okay, Ryan Peterson C,EO of Flexport. Ryan, really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, my pleas ure. After the break, round two of the SASPOCalypse hits the markets. And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter Simply Put at simplyput.profgmedia. com Once upon a dismal day, Bob's ice cream van looked gloomy and gray. Although he had big ambitions, his socials lacked creative vision. That bad. Maybe vampid epitaph? I have an idea. Bob launched Canva and got into gear. Create the video in the vampire team and make it the funniest amen. It went viral. Bob's business, a revival. Now, imagine what your dreams can become when you put imagination to work at canva. com. It's the family and friends event at Shopper's Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, March 31st and Wednesday, April 1st. Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupon . Where is Teredevil. Alright. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I've deliberated. We're gonna take this city back over Medicaid in an all-new season, now streaming, only on Disney Plus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with that. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil, born again, now stre am We're back with Prof G Market s. Anthropic is yet again moving markets. On Monday night, the company released a new Clawed co-work feature which allows its AI model to autonomously access apps, navigate browsers, and edit files. This news immediately spooked the markets. Major software companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Palantir all ended the day in the red. As a whole, the IGV software ETF closed down roughly 4%. It's now off more than 30% from its peak last fall. Here to break down what is happening in software. We are speaking with Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson. Gil, this is the SAS Pocalypse part two. Probably less intense than the first one, but it is striking that we're seeing the same thing, a new AI tool released by the same company. Uh and again, investors are very concerned about this. What do you make of the new tool from Anthropic? And are you as concerned as other investors appear to be. So computer use by AI is actually a really big milestone. So it is a big leap forward for the capabilities for artificial intelligence within the workplace, within the business context. And these days, as has been the case for the last few months, the market is associating good for AI with bad for software. That's where we probably diverge in our opinion. So we do think it's a very big deal for AI. It's very good for AI. But to um take from that that uh it's really bad for software is probably uh a little too much. Now, mind you, there are software companies that are particularly exposed to this. UiPath is is the most one, you can see their stock decline the most dramatically today because UiPath has the last generation of automated computer use, which is robotic process automation. Think of it as macros in Excel for anything on your desktop. And that used pre-AI technology. So now the fact that AI can do that and use your computer without you it interfering is a big leap forward and it's a really big problem for companies like that. To say that it's a big problem for all other software companies goes back to the same debate that's being had for the last three to six months around software. And it is our opinion that uh winners in software will continue to win and companies that are vulnerable, uh, a disruption is always a bigger deal for. Walk us through what Anthropic has actually released here. Like we had that first uh slate of new tools like Clo Claude Co-Work. Um, and that was that was what roiled the markets the first time. And now we're seeing this new development. Like, what is so striking about what they have announced here and how does it differ from the first round? Yeah, so computer use is literally what it sounds like, which is to say you can now ask an agent to do things on your desktop or your laptop that previously only you were able to do. So not just interact with a single piece of software or write a little bit of code. Rather, press buttons on your screen to start an application, to make progress an application, to make choices within an application, jump to another application and move information to that one. So the possibilities are endless because it's really anything that you could do on your computer, you can now ask an agent to do for you. That is a leap forward from just having automated tasks happening in your applications. For instance, um you can now use if you're away from home but you have cloud installed on your phone, you can now instruct your home computer to execute tasks from your phone because cloud can now control your desktop. That is actually a pretty big leap forward in AI. And again, I want to put this in context. This is a milestone towards AGI. Right. This is something that a year ago we thought may or may not happen, and now it's happened. One thing that's not totally clear to me, we've have seen this before in the form of this AI agent that went viral recently called OpenClaw. And it was very exciting to a lot of people. A lot of people were using it. And it was doing the things that we're describing. It was this agent going in and just executing tasks once you tell it what to execute. It'll go in and clear inbox and send emails and manage a calendar, etc. So we've seen it before and we know that it's possible, but now Anthropic is jumping on and, they're releasing the same tools of their own. And that seems to spark a very different reaction from investors. Why is that? If we knew that this was possible, or at least that it was in the pipeline, why is it suddenly so rattling to investors now? No, no, it's a good point. The open cloud's open source. It was a little bit of a lab experiment. It didn't have any guardrails. It it was it was actually quite dangerous because it was open source so you you probably read about many instances where it did things that were highly unpredictable and and uh counterproductive to the user and and now we're talking about something else. Now we're talking about an actual product from an actual frontier lab that is uh much better secured, much more under control, and and shows that you can actually use this in a workplace. I don't think a lot of companies would install open claw, but there's many companies that already have other instances of Claude and other uses of Claude that this is now a natural extension for. So it does take it to another level. Yeah. Just going back to your point that you know some some software companies might get hurt, but not all of them. And it appears that we're sort of again throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. But l I mean just to go through some names here, like Adobe got got hurt, uh ServiceNow, Palantir, Microsoft uh got clobbered on this news. What are the companies that you believe are actually insulated from the concerns here? And are there perhaps any software companies that might actually benefit from this right now? So it So uh security software, yeah, uh infrastructure software like um Snowflake, Datadog, Microsoft are probably more uh benefiting from any growth in AI because you need infrastructure in order to deliver AI. And so those are more insulated and more positively impacted by AI. Then there's a whole range of companies that are probably more secure, companies that control uh a large part of the enterprise data schema, how data is organized. And so then you're talking about your palantiers, your service nows, even your sales force and Adobe and Oracle to some extent. Those are a little safer. The ones that have been uh have had the most concerned, and probably justifiably so are companies that deliver um either uh customer center software or again, workflow software. Those are the companies that that are most exposed, your NICE, your 5-9, your UI path, those are the companies that are most at risk. And this just uh exacerbates the risk. But but again, the reaction is is so strong that you have to step back and say, we are going to be using software. Humans are going to be using software for a very long time. And as long as that's the case, you need the same software, even if agents will be using the software as well. It's it the analogy to me is a lot like the internet. Just because ChatGPT can go shopping for me online doesn't mean I don't also want to go shopping on these human websites as well. I think the same thing is going to happen for software, at least for the foreseeable future, where there's both a human and an agent user, which means the software still has a lot of value. In fact, I'd argue to some extent even more value. You mentioned the point that a year ago we said that w this might not be possible, or it was very much just a concept in the ether. Uh having covered the the tech sector for a number of ye ars w what are your reflections on what we're seeing here in terms of this technological transformation? Like in what sense have the rules of your game changed? And how has this changed your perception of technology in general? The rate of change has become exponential. If if this technology disruption used to be um happen over time, over months, over years, then disruption now is happening over weeks and days. The level of progress being made is incredible. And it's for a variety of reasons. One is that we're putting so much capital into this. So all those hundreds of billions of dollars in data center spend are making it possible for us to run these models that are increasing, that their quality is going up so substantially every year that they are able to accomplish things that we wouldn't have imagined. If you, if you showed somebody four years ago, what these models are doing, they would have called it AGI. We have now become desensitized to it because the rate of change is so fast, but we are so far past the Turing test. We blew past the Turing test a while ago. And again, in the mindset of five years ago, the Turing test was artificial intelligence, was AGI. And now we're just blowing past that and doing things that we never imagined that we'd be able to do. So the rate of change has become exponential, which makes my life a lot more interesting. All right, Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson. Gil, thank you very much. Thank you . Okay, let's talk about insider trading, specifically in relation to Iran. First, a review of the fac ts. On Sunday morning, about 15 minutes before Trump announced he was engaging in talks with Iran, we saw gigantic spikes in trading volumes across multiple different markets. So in the oil markets, at around 6:50 a.m., more than half a billion dollars in oil futures changed hands. This is an unusually large number for such a short amount of time. Over in the stock market, we saw similar moves. Roughly one and a half billion dollars worth of SP futures were purchased again at around 6:50 a.m. We also saw similar things in the prediction markets. One user made nearly $1 million betting on the war with 93% accuracy, and multiple traders have now been flagged for making what appeared to be insider trades, which leaves us with two conclusions. Either a handful of individuals are getting extraordinarily lucky with their extraordinarily large and well-timed bets, or a handful of individuals knew something and they decided to trade on it in the belief that one, they'd get very rich, which they did, and two, that they wouldn't be punished, which they probably won't. Now, if we agree that the second option is more likely, that they knew something probably because of a connection to the president, then the next question becomes: isn't that illegal? Shouldn't they be in jail ? And the answer to that question is a resounding yes. If someone knew what Trump was going to do ahead of time, then that is material non-public information that meets the SEC's definition of what constitutes illegal insider trading. But, and here is the most important part: the SEC, under this administration, has very little interest in prosecuting and investigating cases of insider trading. In fact, last year, SEC enforcement actions declined by about 30% after Trump had taken office. It also settled only $800 million worth of cases, which is the lowest number ever in which we've seen an administration change. And here is the kick er. Last week, the SEC's enforcement director resign ed. Why? Because she was reportedly clashing with her bosses over her attempts to investigate cases involving, wait for it, the Trump famil y. In other words, not only have our markets been compromised, but our regulators have been compromised as well. Criminal activity and financial fraud can now run completely unfettered because there is now no one left to punish it. Not the SEC, not the FBI, and And certainly not the president who seems to be involved in these activities, which means that there's nothing much that you or I could do here. I mean, I can talk about it on this podcast. I can keep looking at the markets and I can keep trying to understand what's happening here, but beyond detecting that it happened, there is literally nothing else we can do. And there is nothing to disincentivize this behavior. We don't know who they are. We don't know what they know. We don't know who they've bribed or with whom they've spoken. We really don't know anything. And so not to be overly dramatic here, but this is the moment where democracy does have to play a role. This is the kind of thing where you actually have no choice but to use your vote. You have to get rid of these people if you want to see any justice whatsoever. This is the most corrupt administration of all time. There is no question about it, and people are increasingly agreeing on that point. But if we don't do anything about this, well then let's just be realistic. This is only going to get wor se. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Paston, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams, our research team is Dan Shallan, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio, and our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomor row.