I’m Buying $10,000 Of This Company Next

I'm buying $10,000 of this stock. The problem is I don't know what this stock is quite yet. I've set a buy price for every holding that I have, all 14 of them. And whichever of these 14 companies get to this buy target first, I'll be buying. So, in this episode, I'll be going through every single buy target for every single company that I own. And again, whatever one hits that price target first out of my entire portfolio, that's the one that the $10,000 is going to. So, I'll be going through and explaining all of it. Now, of course, we have some big news to get into as well. For example, Uber has received two different journalist outlets, both Business Insider and More Perfect Union, making hit pieces in video format. These are very well produced YouTube videos that are going viral, getting hundreds of thousands of views, and they are highly critical of Uber. Now, while most people are against the big bad companies, they they don't like the billion-dollar companies, I'm here to offer a different perspective, and I'll be offering a little rebuttal and highlighting how this bit of journalism is not really journalism. And then finally, in today's fail of the week, I have to regrettably highlight Gan Monster. We'll be going over that as well. Now, before we jump in, just a quick mention. If you haven't tried out Qualrim, I think you're missing out. It's only $10 a month, and it gives you access to a huge library of additional content. For example, I just interviewed someone that is very knowledgeable on Zeta Global. It's an interesting company. I learned about it for the first time in this 2-hour deep dive interview. It was incredibly informative. And then, of course, we have lots of videos on lots of different subjects, diving into Uber, building wealth, how to look at when the market is reaching a bottom. We have in-depth portfolio updates, and so much more. Qualum has around 13,000 active paying members. It continues to grow because most people that try it out really like it. So, you can try it out in the pin comment below. Now, moving on, we got to go to the company that I plan on buying. And again, this is not something that I know because right now, the way that I'm doing this is I have set a buy price for every single one of these companies and it is below their current price. So, this is a buy the dip strategy. Whatever company gets to that buy price first, whatever one trades down to that buy price for whatever reason, the $10,000 will go directly to that company. And that will be buying the dip. Now, just a note on my portfolio. I have 14 positions. So, every one of these has a buy price. The portfolio overall is about $1.5 million. It's up to $540,000 in gains. I also added in tracking so that since the last video, the last episode on Friday, which was August 21st, we're up around 1.5% which is $22,000. So, you have the portfolio value, you have the total gains. We also have the time weighted returns. And this is something that some people get confused about. You don't measure returns by looking at the total value and dividing it by the gain. So this is not a gain of plus 50%. That is the simple returns and it doesn't account for how much money you had in the portfolio at a given time. For example, had I started with all of the deposits that I've done throughout the life of the portfolio. If you accumulated all of those together and you assumed I started with that much money at the beginning, my portfolio size would be around $3 million today and my gain would be about $2 million. But unfortunately for me, I did not have this much money when I started this portfolio. For about a third of the life of this portfolio, I had under $100,000. In fact, it took till the beginning of 2023 to where I finally had around $400,000 or more. The majority of deposits into this portfolio are towards the end of its life. And those deposits haven't had as much time to earn returns. But all of this is added in and calculated into the time weighted return. And if you put this into a compound growth rate, it's around 14.8%. Which is not too bad. It's a bit above the S&P 500, but I'm hoping to do a lot better. I want to grow this portfolio a lot more aggressively. And part of having the best returns possible is getting the best prices on the companies you buy. So, let's go ahead and start off with the buy targets that I set. And the reason why, we'll start off here with Google, which is my current largest position. It's a $27,000 position with $113,000 in the green. Google today trades at around $347. So at 347, it's trading at a 26 Ford PE ratio and a 1.2% free cash flow yield. I don't believe that Google's cheap today. I'm not buying it right now. I continue to hold it mostly because it's such a good company and I believe the future is bright for it, but overall it's not a company that I think is a screaming buy. And the buy target that I've set for Google is $250, so around $100 less than its current price. Let's go ahead and bring up the DCF calculator and we can do some quick math here. If we assume that the growth rate slows down to 12% earnings per share growth for the next 5 years, which a lot of people may argue and say Google's growing way faster than that, that's true, but they're going to have a lot of expenses. They're building out mass amounts of data centers. They're spending all of this money on capex, which will transform into advertised expenses. So, I'm assuming that the growth rate is going to moderate. And again, these are what I believe are conservative assumptions. We assume a 12% earnings per share growth rate over the next 5 years. Then we get to the appropriate earnings per share multiple. Now, this is a bit of a judgment call. You can say that Google should trade at a 30p or 35 or 25. Again, I want to be very conservative here. I'm going to assume that it should trade at a 22 because if the EPS starts to slow down, maybe investors say, "Hey, look, it's not growing as fast. We're going to we're going to trade it down to a 22 earnings per share multiple." So, this looks a little confusing because we're going with hypotheticals here, but just to make this very simple, if we were to buy Google at $250 and we had these assumptions that it grew at 12% and it had an EPS multiple of 22, that means that we would get a compounded growth rate of 14.1% over the next 5 years. Which means that if we bought Google at that $250, we would about double our return from that buyin price. Google would trade from $250 up to $484. So, we'll make a note of this. The buy target for Google to get that $10,000 additional cash is $250. In number two, we have Mastercard, which is my second largest position. It's 13% of the portfolio. It's nearly a $200,000 position with around $52,000 in gains. I really bumped up Mastercard a lot during the dip this year. It's been one of the brighter spots in the portfolio. When I look at Mastercard today, it trades at $595 per share. And the buy target that I set for Mastercard is 450. So to put that in perspective, Mastercard would have to trade down from where it currently is year to date at the 596 all the way down to below the lowest point this year. So it' have to have a healthy dip. Now again, some of you may say, Joseph, that's never going to happen. You're never going to buy Mastercard at that price. But it could happen. When you look at companies, they trade around a lot. Some of them drop 20, 30% in a couple of months. Some of them dropped 10% after an earnings report. Companies can trade around a lot in a week's time. Look how volatile this stock has been over the past 5 years. And this is one of the most stable companies in the world. Yet, we've seen jagged spikes and dips of 20 to 30%. And again, the goal here is to be very strict with this $10,000 to make it only go towards a company that really deserves it, that's really in a meaningful dip. Now, if we look at how this breaks down, we can again plug in some assumptions here. And this again is a very conservative assumption that Mastercard's earnings per share growth rate slow down to around 12 to 13%. We have it at 12.7%. Now Mastercard has been growing much faster. Their earnings per share growth rate is around 15 to 20% or even higher. So 12% is assuming a big deceleration in EPS growth. With Mastercard, this is one of the companies that I actually believe the appropriate multiple for the company should remain relatively high at like a 29. It's just a really stable cash flow positive capital-like company. They're not doing any big capex. They're expanding their mo and market share. They're growing into services. This is not one that I believe should trade down to the low 20s. So, we have an appropriate EPS multiple of 29. That means that looking forward with these assumptions up here for the next 5 years, we would get an 18.5% compounded return every single year. That's a really high return. Compounding at 18 to 19% is crazy. that well over doubles your money in just a few years. So, we add in Mastercard at the $450. Whatever gets there first between Google at $250 or Mastercard at $450 gets that $10,000 of incremental cash. Next up for one of my favorite companies ever, we have Amazon, which is also a very big position. Now, when we look at these top three positions, I just want to show you how close together they are. Google's 13.8%, Mastercard's 13.3, and Amazon's 12.8. So they're almost evenly weighted and then whatever direction they trade, whatever one has a good week or a good month, that one will leaprog to the top place position. So far, Google has held its own for quite some time, but Amazon has been working its way up more recently. Amazon is a $191,000 position, $67,000 of that being gains. Now, when I look at Amazon, the buyin target for this one is at $200 per share. If Amazon reaches $200 first, then this company's getting the $10,000. And when we look at the assumptions that I believe are somewhat conservative. We have Amazon over the next 5 years growing at 16.1% earnings per share. That's fast earnings per share growth. But remember this is Amazon. They've grown their EPS much faster. They have a tremendous amount of operating leverage. I believe they're in more of a growth stage than the other companies that were considering care. I believe that the appropriate EPS multiple for company growing this fast and EPS this fast is around 27. And then when we look at that with the buyin price at $200, we'd get a 19.3% compounded rate of growth over the next five years. If this scenario plays out, if Amazon really traded down to $200 per share and I put $10,000 in with these assumptions, that money would around 2.4x over the next 5 years. So, it would be amongst one of the best returns possible. Let's continue on. This time, we get to holding number four. This one is Meta. It's a newer position to the portfolio. Like many newer positions, ones that haven't had years to earn returns, Meta is in the red. It went down quite a bit after my initial buyin price, it's just gone down because of the bad news, the lawsuits, all the people concerned about how Meta's product may change. In my mind, it has a lot of resemblance to what we faced with Google and the whole chat GPT scare. And I have a belief that Meta will turn out similar. And I believe Meta is actually a lot stronger than most investors are pricing in. But regardless, my position is a 10% position in the portfolio. I have $150,000 in this stock. I'm down currently $34,000 in the red. But just like all these other stocks, I need a meaningful dip in Meta for this $10,000 to be added to it. So for this one, I set a buy target of $450. Now, you may say Meta is already inexpensive. It's already at a low PE ratio. It's already at a decent free cash flow yield. The stock price is already way down year to date. So how is it going to get down to $450? Well, that's the thing. The market can trade companies way down below what they really deserve. It was just in 2023 that Meta was trading for $300 per share. We're getting hit with bad story after bad story on Meta and that can cause the stock price to drop down. Now, if that happens and the $10,000 goes to Meta, this is what the numbers may look like. We have earnings per share growth rate that I set very modestly below 10%. Assuming that Meta is going to do a lot of spending on capex, there's going to be a lot of advertised expenses over the next 5 years. that's going to slow down the EPS growth rate. So, we assume around nine and a half, maybe 10% earnings per share growth rate. For Meta, I'm assuming a very modest appropriate EPS multiple. If Meta traded at a 20p ratio, growing 9.4% and we bought it at $450, that means we'd earn a compounded annual return of 17.2% over the next 5 years. So, all of these buys so far at these target buy prices, assuming these very moderate assumptions, would have incredibly high returns. Next up, we get to S&P Global. It's my fifth largest position. We're at $127,000 total size, $20,000 in gains. It's about 8.5% of the portfolio. My buyin target for S&B Global, if it's going to get this additional $10,000, is $350. Now, looking at the chart here, S&B Global has not traded down below 350 this entire year. So, it seems unlikely. Maybe it won't hit this buy in target, and that's fine. We want to be disciplined with this new money. The last time the S&P Global traded below 350 was back in late 2023. So, I believe it's unlikely for it to hit this target, but I think there's still a chance. And again, we're looking for really good buys here. We're not just looking for modest dips. I want this additional $10,000 to be a very high returning $10,000. If we look at the numbers, assuming we get it at 350, we have an earnings per share growth rate that I assume of 10.7%. So very low earnings per share growth rate, an appropriate EPS multiple of 25, which also I I believe is modest. For a company as good as S&P Global, you believe it would trade in a mid20s PE. With those assumptions, if we bought the stock at 350 with this target buy price, we'd earn almost a 16% compounded return over the next 5 years, which is a very strong market beating return on very conservative assumptions. See, it looks very unlikely that any of these companies would actually hit these buy prices because if you look at anyone individually, it's far below their current price. And that is true for any one company. It seems unlikely. But when you start adding all of them together, all these different stocks, the odds dramatically increase that at least one of them will hit these buy targets. And next we get to ASML, which is just behind S&P Global. It's holding number six. It's a $124,000 position with $91,000 in gains. ASML is one of my favorite stocks ever. I really love this company. It's so cool what they're doing. But I have to set a buyin target at $1,200. If we look at how the numbers play out here, we can assume very moderate assumptions for ASML. The earnings per share growth rate of 12.5%. I'd put a PE multiple of 30 on it. When we look at that, at a $1,200 buyin price, we get a 15.2% return. So, I believe with these assumptions, at $1,200, the stock would essentially double over the next 5 years. Now, next up, we get to Netflix. This is holding number seven. It's a $16,000 position, $34,000 in gains. Netflix currently trades at $80 per share. The buy-in target I'm setting for this company is $60. If Netflix is the first company to reach its buyin target, it'll earn the additional $10,000. If we look back at when Netflix has reached $60, it's been some time. So, investors have generally been enthused about Netflix. They've liked the company, but recently you can see that it's in a downtrend. So, I do believe there's a chance if investors get really soured on Netflix with their next earnings report for whatever reason, we could see the stock drop rapidly. We've seen it before with Netflix. Now, if we look at the assumptions of what this would look like just mathematically, if we assume that Netflix is going to grow earnings per share at 16%, this is on the low end of where I think it's actually going to grow. I believe it will be much higher, but this is a more moderate conservative assumption. It grows EPS at 16%. The appropriate multiple for a company of this caliber with this margin this growth profile this TAM I believe is a 24 and then when we look at those assumptions buying it at $60 per share would mean that we get a 19.9% compounded growth rate a 20% kagger would be incredible this would be one of the highest projected forward compounded growth rates of any stock in my portfolio but remember just like any of these other stocks it's whatever one gets there first that's one that I'm going to deploy the $10,000 to. Now, after that, we have Microsoft. Microsoft is number eight. It's a $104,000 position. $50,000 of that being gains, and it's a 7% weighted position. For Microsoft to get that $10,000, I will need it to drop down to $400 per share from the $490 that it currently trades at. After the last earnings report, Microsoft shot up around 25%. It went up like crazy. And before that, it was at $400 per share. So, if Microsoft simply gives up the gains of its last earnings report bump, then this will be the one that gets that $10,000. We can assume a modest 12.4% EPS growth rate over the next 5 years. With that, I believe that Microsoft's appropriate EPS multiple quite high given the moat and the structure of the company, I think it should trade at a 28. And with those assumptions, buying it at $400 per share gives us a compounded annual growth rate of 16.8% over the next 5 years, which I believe would soundly outperform the market. Next up, we have Costco, which is position number nine in my portfolio. It's also one of my longest held positions in my entire portfolio. I basically started buying Costco day one when I started investing. I didn't know as much back then, but I knew Costco is a really good company. And the investment test turned out on a compounded growth rate. Costco has been one of the best returning stocks in the market. But it currently sits at an $83,000 position with 50,000 of that being gains. This one here is a little bit tricky because Costco currently trades at 9 and $69 per share, but the buy target that I have for this one is all the way down. It's way down. It's down at $600 per share. Now, with most of my companies, my buy targets around 18% below to 25% below the current price of the stock. But with Costco, it's a dramatic 38% below its current price. So, for buying Costco at $600 per share, the stock needs to drop 38%. And with Costco, I rate this as very unlikely. Looking over the past 5 years, Costco does have drops, but usually they're short-lived. Usually it drops maybe 5, 10, maybe 20%. It does not typically drop nearly 40%. So, I believe that this is one of the most unlikely drops out of all the ones. Now, the reason why I set that buy target so much below the current price is because Costco's overvalued. It is an overvalued company that I continue to hold. Anytime it pays me the huge special dividends, I put that capital into other positions. When I look at some assumptions here, if Costco grows its EPS at 9.3%. And it trades at a nice multiple of 31. Now, right now, it's trading at a 50 multiple, but even assuming it trades at a 31 multiple at a $600 buyin price, that means that we're getting around a 10.6% return. So, a decent return for the company, but still not amazing. And that's part of the reason I put the buy price so far below the current price. Next up, we get to position number 10. This is where we're getting into some of the smaller positions where $10,000 of incremental cash added to them would make a pretty big difference. We look at Texas Roadhouse and it's a $60,000 position with 51,600 of that being gains. Texas Roadhouse is my best performing position when we look at the buys and sells when I've trimmed and added to the position. Now, Texas Roadhouse trades at 205, which I believe is a very healthy price. It's trading with a lot of positive sentiment. People have finally gotten more bullish on beef and stabilization of cattle and all of the factors that affect this company. On top of that, Texas Roadhouse has just been performing top tier. Everything continues to move up really, really well for this company. The buyin price that I'm setting for this one is 140. So, I don't believe Texas Roadhouse will get to 140 anytime soon. I'm not planning on that, but if it does, and it does so before these companies get to their buy targets, then Texas Roadhouse will earn the cash. If we assume an EPS growth rate of 11 a.5 to 12% over the next 5 years, we assume the appropriate earnings per share multiples around 23 and we buy the company at 140, that means we get a return of around 13.4%. Next up, we have Moody's, which is my 11th largest position. So, it's towards the bottom. It's only a 3.5% weighted position. The holding's $53,000 with 12,600 in the green. Moody's has been an okay position, but not amazing. I guess it's held up. It's made a little bit of gains, but it hasn't had some radical outperformance. I'm setting the buy target for Moody's at 375. When we look at the assumptions on Moody's, we can have some conservative assumptions here. Just above a 10% earnings per share growth rate. I believe a 24p is appropriate. If we buy the company at 375, we get a 12.1% return. It'd be on the lower end, but it would still be good. Nobody should really complain about earning 12% per year for 5 years. It seems low compared to these other stocks, but it's still great. Next up, we have the Green L, which is Duolingo at position number 12. It's a $35,000 position, which is a 2.4% weighted holding, and it has $11,200 in the red. So, this one has been the biggest loser by far since buying it. Dualingo was growing really rapidly. They decelerated and pulled back on their growth. Plus, a lot of investors became very concerned about their marketing efforts and how viral they can become. And then the biggest concern for Dualingo today is obviously centered around AI and AI assisted learning. Many people believe that ChachiBT or Claude or Gemini will take over AI learning and that's kind of what Dualingo does. I don't share that bare thesis. I don't think that's going to happen with Dualingo. I think that they're going to continue growing in their users and engagement and learning because that's all they focus on. Now with this stock, it has actually traded up quite a bit. If we look at the stock year to date, it was at 185. It traded as low as $90 per share and then it's been a bit of a rough climb all the way back up to where it is today. Right now, it's trading at $146. And the buyin target for this one for the additional $10,000 is going to be at $90 per share. So, if Dolingo goes back down to $90 per share, it'll get an additional $10,000. Now, again, that seems like it could be unlikely because that's nearly a 38% drop. It's a staggering drop for most companies, but Dualingo is not like most companies. And it was at $90 per share as recent as April of 2026. To put some conservative numbers with this, we can look at Duolingo growing around 18.5% earnings per share growth. I believe that there's much more upside if they get to scale. I think we could see the earnings per share growth go much higher than that. At an EPS multiple or a PE ratio of 27 and we buy the stock at $90 per share, we get a 14.2% compounded return over the next 5 years. Next up, we have one of my personal favorites, which is Door Dash. And it's a bit funny to see Duolingo next to Door Dash. One of these companies is based on the idea that people will better themselves. They'll learn something every day. They'll speak new languages. They'll practice math. They'll practice chess or something that's a brain exercise. It's a healthy product trying to get people to do something better. And then Door Dash is a product that delivers food to your doorstep so that you have to put minimal effort into life. They're on opposite sides of the coin. And so far, that convenience is winning out. Door Dash is a company that has earned a very high return in a very short amount of time. I've only been invested in this company for a couple months. It's already up 31% or $6,700. So now it's grown into a $28,000 position. It's a 1.9% weighted holding. So Door Dash is doing great. The stock price is racing up. This is one where I feel like I timed my entry point and buy into it really well. I had trimmed ASML towards $2,000 per share and put that additional cash and it's earned a higher return so far. I'm going to set an aggressive target for this one. Door Dash will need to trade down to $120 per share to get the additional $10,000. That's around a 47% decline. With the high-flying valuation of Door Dash today, I need it to come down so that I can get a more conservative approach here. If we assume a 28% earnings per share growth rate, that means that buying the stock at $120 would produce 15% compounded returns over the next 5 years. Now, finally, we get to my last holding, holding number 14, my smallest position, which is Uber. Now, I've actually invested more into Uber than I have into Door Dash. The reason that Door Dash is a bigger position, is simply because it's performed better. It's just gone up more. So, I'm not less bullish on Uber. I've actually put more money into the stock. But regardless, most of these companies move up in the ranks and in the holding by growing and growing. And so, I expect both of these companies to do that over time. Now, Uber is a 1.7% weight to position. It's a $25,000 position with $1,900 in the green. So, I feel like we're still getting started with this company. And with Uber, I'm setting a lot less aggressive of a buy target. The buy price for this one is $60. If it's the first company to hit its buy price of $60, that will trigger it. And that's only around 23% from its current price. Uber traded at $60 per share in late 2024. Based on what I believe are fairly conservative assumptions, if Uber really did hit $60 per share, I believe it has some of the best forward-looking returns. For example, if we assume that earnings per share will grow at 16%. And then we assume it will trade at a 22 Ford PE ratio, that means that if we buy the stock at $60 per share, we'd get a 20.9 compounded annual return for the next 5 years. So Uber looks like it would be one of the best opportunities at that buy target. So, here's the target buy price for every one of my positions. Whatever stock in my portfolio gets to this target price or below first will trigger an automatic buy of $10,000. I'll be automatically notified. I'll buy the stock and I'll let you know when and if that happens. Now, these are prices are below the current stock price. And you may say, "Well, Joseph, what if none of the companies what if none of them get to this stock price or below?" In that case, that's okay. That just means that all my positions are going up. If none of them go down, if none of them drop 20 or 30%, that's a good thing. That means I don't really need to deploy more cash. I don't really need anything to buy because all my stocks would be headed upwards. So, I have no problem if none of these trigger. But I actually believe it's very unlikely for no stock in my portfolio to trade below one of these stock prices. Because when you look at it individually, one of these stocks, sure, but when you have 14 positions, odds are one of them will go south at one point in time. It's impossible to have a 100% pick rate. No matter what fund manager you are, whatever investor you are, one of your stocks is going to go down to a meaningful amount. So, I actually believe that within the next 6 months, it's very likely that one of these stocks trades at below the target buy price here. And when that happens, I will let you know and I'll buy the stock because I believe every one of these companies at this price or below has a very attractive future expected return. Now, moving on, we get to some news here and this is a story that I think is worth covering. Uber has been hit with two back-toback video presentations. These are documentary style, very slick, very persuasive videos. One of them from the progressive activist group More Perfect Union and the other from Business Insider. Now, there are slight variations in the videos, but they basically cover the same thing. They suggest that Uber is charging people too much. And the way that they're charging them, more importantly, is with personalized pricing, which is something that's like a dirty word today. Personalized pricing means that you use information about someone, them specifically, their spending habits, their income, things about them, to charge them the maximum amount. Now, there's another thing that's also being discussed today and it's becoming a more topical issue, which is dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing isn't pricing specific to a person. It's specific to a situation. Meaning, if a lot of people want to go to a concert and it has a lot of demand, they might dynamically raise the price of additional seats in the concert because they know there's just generally a lot of demand. So, dynamic pricing is situational based. Personal pricing is persontoperson based. Most people don't have such an issue with dynamic pricing. It makes sense logically that things that have higher demand have higher prices, but nobody really likes personalized pricing. Now, I want to look at some of these documentaries that are clearly against Uber. One of them is from a progressive activist group that does fund campaigns and they're actually real activists, which is more perfect union. It's a YouTube video that says, "We investigated Uber again. It's worse than last time." Now, that sounds really bad. Let's go ahead and take a look at what they investigated and what they found. Everything is expensive right now, but the ride you take to work, to the airport, home from the bar, that's climbing higher than almost anything. Uber CEO was asked where that money's going. >> Well, I think it is about inflation. Our drivers need to make a living. >> And maybe he's right. So, check. Pull up a fair and do the math. The problem is you can't check. Since 2022, Uber uses an algorithm no one outside the company can see to set wages and fairs. In 2024, I ran an experiment with seven drivers, different pay for the same rides. Uber said, "We got it wrong." Okay, so this is important. They have seven guys in a building here, and each of those guys like they they put down their phone, and they all try buying the same ride from the same place to the same destination, but they get different prices. So, that to them is signaling. Business Insider takes that as a signaling that Uber is doing personalized pricing cuz it's the same building. It's the same destination and the prices are different. So Uber must be looking at these individuals, some information about them and trying to extract different prices out of different uh different riders here. That seems really dirty. That's really bad if Uber's doing that. And then for the next couple of seconds, they mention Uber's response >> drivers different pay for the same rides. Uber said, "We got it wrong." >> Now I want to point this out. Uh this is again more perfect union. Uh it's this activist group that's supposed to be doing deep dives into this issue. They highlight the problem here that they think that Uber is doing personalized pricing. When Uber responds, this is how they summarize Uber's response. They said Uber said they got it wrong. Now, this video continues on highly critical of Uber, asserting all sorts of allegations, saying that their pricing is a big blackbox, saying that they're basically accusing Uber of doing personalized pricing, trying to extract money out of people, and having a take rate that's much higher uh than what people think. So, lots of allegations are being launched at Uber. Huge allegations of business misconduct trying to break trust between Uber and their riders and their drivers. So, this is a very scathing review of Uber. It's a very skeptical look at the company. But this isn't the first time that this has happened. In fact, this entire documentary by More Perfect Union. The whole thing is based on a report that's months old. A report that Uber has actually responded to. Now, this is the report that they say right at the beginning, Uber says we got it wrong. The only issue is they never actually mention the report beyond that. They never actually look at Uber's response. In fact, this entire video, the 20inut presentation, simply bashes Uber, alleges a bunch of things against them, and then doesn't even show Uber's response. And we have people here in the comment section, like this individual saying, "This is what journalism should be." With 4,000 thumbs up. Let's take a look at the type of journalism they're doing here. They make a 20-minute documentary alleging a bunch of things, a bunch of allegations at Uber. Uber takes the time to write a very technical, detailed response to all the allegations. This isn't some public uh disclaimer. They didn't just say, "Oh, we think you got it wrong." No, Uber goes into specific technical nuance and detail about every single aspect that's being alleged to them. And Uber doesn't just deny the allegations. They completely reject them and they show what they're actually doing, where the documentary has it wrong, and how their system actually works. They explain it very simply but also in great technical detail. But More Perfect Union being an activist advocate group doesn't take the time to actually examine Uber's response. And their audience never sees it. The people commenting on this video, the 1,800 comments, the people liking this comment saying this is what journalism should be, none of them have a clue what Uber even says. They're all completely blind to the argument of the group they're even accusing. So this is not what journalism looks like. This is a one-sided activist campaign against Uber with massive omission bias. Now, the other aspect of this is Business Insider, who ironically just at the same time released another video that's very similar to More Perfect Union. Now, to Business Insider's credit, they give slightly more rebuttal from Uber, but still not not much. It is very much the same case where they show a slickly edited documentary accusing Uber of a bunch of things and then they don't take the full time to really explain Uber's response. So, for example, let's just play the beginning of this one. These 11 people are calling an Uber X from our office in lower Manhattan to the Plaza Hotel. Same ride at the exact same time. >> 6627. >> 64.96. Princess 54.95. What? That's >> Frub bricks per Uber at Cloud. >> The highest fair was nearly 21% more expensive than the lowest fair. >> We're all just sitting in the same room and you're going to give different prices. Like, is there a reason they're getting more expensive one? >> See, it's the exact same thing. In the More Perfect Union video, they gathered seven riders together. They put their phones on a table. They all called for Ubers. And the prices were different. In this Business Insider one, they have all these people joined around a table. They call for the rides and the prices are different. Now, this individual right here, she asks, "What am I missing?" Well, the answer to her question is yes. There is a reason that some people are getting more expensive rides than others. And you don't even have to do a lot of investigative journalism to get that reason. You just have to read Uber's response, which gives a very objective and logical explanation. Right here at the beginning of this report, Uber explains the nuance and why these people are being confused of getting different prices. The central flaw in this report is that it treats trips with the same pickup and drop off point as the same trip. In reality, those are different trips. In an open dynamic market, a trip is defined not only by where it starts and ends, but when it is requested and the marketplace conditions at the moment. Uber's pricing is marketplaced. fairs automatically update in real time based on objective factors like ride demand, the estimated time and distance of the trip, real-time traffic conditions, and the immediate availability of nearby drivers. That all makes perfect sense. Uber has an algorithm that looks at all the factors on the street, all the things that are going on in a busy world with real assets moving around, and they have to update those things on the fly. Now, in the case where you have these seven or eight people around a table and they're all hitting the button to buy a trip at the same time, you may believe that the conditions are perfectly similar, so they all should get the same price. But that's not the case. If they're all requesting for drivers at the same time, there's a limited amount of drivers on the road, meaning one of them may be able to pick up one or two of them. So the first two people that press the button may get the lower price and then the additional people pressing the button even a second later are routed to a different driver that's further away for him to get there to their location. He needs to drive further. The price is going to be higher. The trip is going to take a little bit longer. There's not like an infinite amount of drivers all perfectly waiting situated at every corner. So, it actually makes perfect sense that all of these people situated in real time hitting the button each at the same time are actually getting different prices because they're not hitting the button at the exact same time. One of them is requesting a trip right before the other, right before the other. And Uber is seeing that there's a demand spike. So, Uber's instantaneously adjusting the price upwards because they know they're going to have to call in drivers from further away. That is dynamic pricing. That is not personal pricing. And that's an important detail. What you're seeing here is logically based dynamic pricing. Meaning that if Uber sees a big demand spike of a bunch of people trying to leave a building at the same time, the people that call for a request first will get lower prices. The people that continue calling more and more and more from the same location will get higher prices as the drivers will be further away. But none of that is personalized to the person. None of that is because Uber is looking at how much money someone makes or some some type of mysterious data about that person and then pricing it based on them. It's all based on these market conditions on the road. In the official documents from Uber of which they are audited, they say to be clear, Uber does not engage in surveillance pricing. We do not personalize prices to individuals and we do not use protected characteristics, phone battery levels, phone models, or other devices or information to set prices. User specific behavior attributes to customer segments also do not factor into prices. Uber's being very clear here. They don't use personalized pricing. That's not why these people are getting different prices. They reiterate over and over again. Even if you try to replicate a duplicate trip, it's not really a duplicate trip. These are not the same trips. Consumer Reports treats trips with the same pickup and drop off as identical. They're not. In a real-time marketplace, a trip is defined not only by where it stands and ends, but also when it's requested, the marketplace conditions, rider demand, driver abil driver availability, traffic routing, estimated trip length. All of this changes within a literal second. The report's analysis therefore compares different ride requests made by different people under different conditions and not the same trip. The core flaw underlines every finding in the report and shapes the headline numbers that follow. Another thing that the More Perfect Union video said is just a matter of fact is that Uber's promotions are fictitious. They're just fake. And they said that with giving no rebuttal from Uber. But Uber's already clearly rebutted that even before this video was published. Uber's promotional discounts are not fictitious. The methodology behind the claim about fictitious discount relies on another flawed assumption. They decided arbitrarily that a trip can only be genuinely discounted if it's cheaper than the median price of a given route. But a route level median is not the correct reference price for a specific trip or request. Trips with the same origin and destination can legitimately have different prices because of real time market conditions change. So basically every accusation launched at Uber are in this makebelieve world where nothing changes on the road where you have the same amount of drivers, the same amount of traffic, the same amount of demand, the same amount of everything and Uber just decides to charge different amounts to hurt the customer. And that's not the situation at all. Now, was any of this argued in Uber's videos, did they really read the replies? Did they really share the technical detail and breakdown and nuance from Uber's report? No. None of the people watching these videos from Business Insider or More Perfect Union have any clue about Uber's response. They're just seeing the one-sided message from these activists. And as much as you want to try to call this journalism, it's just not. Journalism shows both sides. It can have an argument, it can have context, but it should show the rebuttal from the company. This is narrative- driven documentaries trying to get you to believe something by omitting a lot of important data. So, I get the urge to be against the big bad billionaire companies, but that doesn't justify lying about them or completely omitting their rebuttals. Now, moving on, we have to get to today's fail of the week. And regrettably, I have to highlight Gene Monster. Now, I don't actually take any joy in doing this. I actually I like Gan for some reason. I've disagreed with him on some stocks, but I I like his thoughts and the way that he conveys things, and I I think he's probably a good guy, but I just feel like he has this one wrong. I think he has this one wrong, and I believe it's worth highlighting. Here's Gene on CNBC commenting about Meta. >> Bring in Gene Munster, managing partner with Deepwater Asset Management. Don't own the stock. You don't personally. Deep Water doesn't either, but I know you have views on this. I mean, what what's your take on what, as we said leading into this segment, is the most consequential case on this issue to date? >> Well, Scott, before I need to preface my comments that I'm a big believer in AI. I think it's going to make the world a much better place longer term, but I think what we're seeing here around the courts is uh minimal. I think it is uh the tip of the iceberg of what is going to be a sea change in terms of the influence that these platforms are going to have on teens and how they see the world. And so there's kind of two different lenses to look through. You know, the the setup that Julia did right there, you know, the impact on Meta, let's say ultimately they're probably going to pay somewhere around 25 billion in fines over the next 5 years, just rough numbers. when they're at a steady state of cash flow, they're going to be generating after they get through this capex uh burst here probably 40, 50, 60 billion a year. So, they can definitely afford five billion a year in and losses. But that's not the point. The point is that Zuckerberg in his manifesto back on August 10th basically said they're throwing out the old playbook. The playbook being the Instagram playbook where you get things kind of fed to you and they're moving to a superbot playbook based on super intelligence. And I my sense is this is going to probably move at first at the speed of a glacier and then a fast glacier. But what Meta is going to be set up for in five years from now is probably lawsuits that are dramatically bigger because if Zuck makes good on talking about or or fulfilling this promise of superbots, uh what we're seeing right now today is really chump change. >> Wow. This is just the beginning. This is literally, he says, the tip of the iceberg. That we're going through a profound change. That Meta will no longer be influential. That teens aren't going to use it anymore. That the $25 billion lawsuit is just the beginning and they're going to prof face profoundly bigger lawsuits and more profound changes. Gene, you're just doing it again, man. Uh this is if we rewind time, we go back to Google. Gan, you had the same view on Google. You thought CHACBT was gonna destroy Google. You said it was going to be a big sea change for Google. You said the 10 blue links were no longer going to survive and that Google is going to be a way worse company. You were so bearish on Google when it was trading at $170 per share. It was is at a low price, completely depressed. Sentiment was terrible. And you went on to CNBC and you were talking all the time about Google, how bad this stock was, how it's not going to do well. Now you own Google. It's one of your favorite positions. You go on CNBC seeing how it's going to go up after Google's stock price went up 100%. So you became more more positive sentiment when the reports showed that Google was just fine. Now we find you with Meta doing the same thing. Meta is trading at an 18 Ford PE. Investors already know about the lawsuits. They're already well aware of them. This is an incredibly powerful company with terrible sentiment already priced into the stock. And now you're saying the same thing that it's going to get way worse and investors should be terrified at this point. This feels a lot like a repeat all over again. Maybe Gene will be right this time. Maybe Meta will just continue to go down over the next 5 years. Maybe things will get worse and worse and worse. But I don't believe that's typically how it happens. We're in a time period where Meta is an incredibly high mo strong company, fast growing revenue, record amounts of daily active users, and they know about the fines. you know about the the lawsuits and the stock is trading at an already depressed valuation. So I don't feel like now is the time to become super bearish on Meta and that's why I have to highlight unfortunately Jean as the fail of the week. That's going to be it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed. See you in the next one.