Chicken Jockey, Gentleminions, Dimon, Topsy-Turvy Week

🧻 The Tech equivalent of paper towels during the Pandemic - In an effort to “beat the [covid] tariffs”, Apple reportedly airlifted 600 tons of, or about 1.5 million, iPhones from India to the US on chartered flights. If this sounds like a heist movie, it gets better; Apple lobbied the Indian airport authorities to cut down customs from six hours from a usual thirty hours at Chennai International Airport in southern India to speed up the airlift. Apple made a prudent decision as customers have been bulk buying and hoarding iPhones for fear the prices might jump with the new tariffs.

🐔 CHICKEN JOCKEY - Somehow a meme of Jason Mamoa in a boxing ring fighting a baby Frankenstein on top of a chicken, colloquially known as the Chicken Jockey, saved Hollywood and cinema forever. The Minecraft movie raked in $163 million in its opening weekend, despite absolutely abysmal reviews. It edged out the Mario movie to claim top opening weekend of any video game adaptation to movie ever. The Chicken Jockey propelled it towards the crown by offering teenage boys even greater reason to see the movie. During the scene of Mamoa fighting the beast, teenage boys have been freaking out, throwing popcorn, and playing the pool game chicken in the theaters. Anyways, this was just an excuse for me to bring up something I found hilarious this week.

👠 Versace, Versace, Medusa head on me like I'm 'Luminati - Prada must have been listening to Drake & Migos because the fashion brand announced a deal to buy the Italian fashion brand Versace for a cool $1.4 billion. Rumor has it, Prada was looking at buying Gucci until they saw House of Gucci.

Thank God the market closes on weekends. This week was bumpier than Bryson Dechambeau's opening round of the Masters.

What happened?

In last week’s newsletter, we wrote about the infamous “Rose Garden” speech announcing reciprocal tariffs. If you want to read more about those, we post our newsletters to our site. This week, true to form, President Trump put a pause on the massive reciprocal tariffs for 90 days for any country that isn’t named China. If you were named China, he added additional tariffs on top of the already steep tariffs imposed, bringing the total tariffs from 104% to 125%. In response to the retreat, Trump said there was a rush of countries looking to make a deal with the US, and the pause gives them time to do so. The increase for China was because China unveiled retaliatory tariffs against the US. Do I blame China? Not sure, no comment, but I will say this, the US isn’t exactly staying above board. Vice President JD Vance mocked China last week saying, “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture. That is not a recipe for economic prosperity. It’s not a recipe for low prices, and it’s not a recipe for good jobs in the United States of America.” For a country that prides itself on respect, maybe publicly mocking them isn’t the best thing to do if we are serious about making a deal.

What did the market do?

The real question is what didn’t the market do? Since April 2nd (the Rose Garden Speech), the S&P 500 has fallen 12%, followed quickly by an increase of 9.5% on Wednesday’s news of the tariff pause, followed by a decline, followed by a Friday rally of 1.8%, all to end this past week up 5.7%. While yes the news was cause for rapid changes in prices, algorithmic traders that can trigger massive selloffs or purchases based on sentiment of new stories may have something to do with the pure range of volatility.

What are experts saying?

• CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon - when asked about the turbulence compared to previous crises, “This is different. It’s a significant change we’ve never seen in our lives.” Additionally, “I think the best thing to do is to allow the Secretary of Treasury and the folks working with him and the administration to finish as quickly as possible the agreements that they need to make around tariffs.” Lastly, “This is still the most prosperous nation on the planet, [with the] the deepest and widest capital markets the world has ever seen. If you’re going to invest your money in something, America is still a pretty good place in a turbulent world.”
• CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink - “In the short run, we have an economy that is at risk…The sweeping tariff announcements went further than I could have imagined in my 49 years in finance.” Fink said he remains confident on the health of the U.S. economy in the long-term. But he also cautioned that the U.S. is facing stiffer competition for investment dollars and that the “American exceptionalism” that has powered outsized U.S. stock-market returns is being challenged.
• CEO of Morgan Stanley, Ted Pick - He believed that companies would be eager to invest and strike deals once there was some certainty and that the bank was “cautiously optimistic that we won’t go into recession.”

What are non-experts thinking?

• Unelected Government Unofficial, Elon Musk - Called Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro, “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

What should I care about?

If you think you know what Trump is going to do, you don’t. Yes, I have read Art of the Deal, but that was talking about real estate deals, not trade wars. He may continue pauses, he may take a harder stance, he may start reciting from the Cheesecake Factory menu like he did that one time on the campaign trail. All I am saying is that in times of uncertainty, to make a massive bet will mean either you are kicking yourself or praising yourself in a few years from now. One thing that remains stable, weighted dollar cost averaging into stocks or real estate is one of the many ways to de-risk as much as possible through the turbulent times. Avoid the peaks and troughs by investing at both.

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• According to research and advisory firm Gartner, by 2028, 1 in 4 job candidates will be fake. Due to a mix of AI, deepfakes, and other fabricating technologies, it is getting easier for people to create candidates for jobs, so that once hired, an impostor can install malware to demand ransoms from companies, or steal customer data.
• What even is AI? The founder of Nate, an AI shopping app, Albert Saniger, was charged for defrauding investors by the DOJ. Saniger claimed you could buy from the e-commerce site through a single click, and an AI agent would complete the purchase. Saniger must have a loose definition of AI agent because he was actually using hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete the purchases. The real automation rate was effectively 0%.
• The Masters wraps up today, but the real winners are off the course. Families in the area have rented out their homes for Masters week and managed to pay their mortgage for the whole year from this one week of rental income. Real estate is pretty great.

As a former rower, seeing this book turned into a movie was something special. Especially considering the impact a 30 second racing clip from the movie The Social Network had on the sport of rowing.

I don't care if you know rowing or not, the book is an incredibly inspiring and motivating piece of art. The tale of a group of 9 men coming from nothing to take on Hitler's German 8 in the 1936 Olympics will make you want to go out and run through a brick wall. While I do hope more rowing books come out, so I can stop hearing, "Oh, you rowed? Do you know Boys in the Boat?", this is a pretty great one to gain recognition for the sport.

⭐ 4.78 / 5.0 in my book (no pun intended)

1. "Never trust another man in negotiation! That’s textbook. Art of the Deal! Art of the Deal, bro!"
2. "Everyone knows, the head cow is always grazing."
3. "His neck is high. It makes me trust him."

Chicken Jockey isn't the first time a meme drove box office results. In 2022, a Minions movie had teenage guys dressing up in suits and buying out theaters with their "boys" in a trend known as #Gentleminions.

1. It's Always Sunny (Mac)
2. It's Always Sunny (Frank)
3. It's Always Sunny (Charlie)