00:00:01 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Alex Spiro
[00:00:01] S0: You're watching TBPN. [00:00:03] S1: Today is Wednesday, 11/04/2026. We're live from the Temple Of technology, the fortress of finance, [00:00:11] S0: the capital of capital. [00:00:13] S1: Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money, save both, easy use. [00:00:17] S2: It's corporate cards, no pay accounting, and a whole lot All [00:00:21] S1: in one place. Historic history, historic day yesterday. Of course, fifty one days till Christmas. We missed it on the show. Yesterday was fifty one days till Christmas. That means today, fifty days till Christmas. Fifty days till Christmas. We're counting down here. It's getting pretty Christmassy right here. [00:00:43] S2: Apple [00:00:43] S1: is 50 years old. Not today, just generally. [00:00:49] S0: It's generally Generally, 50 year old company.
00:00:49 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Apoorva Mehta
[00:00:49] S0: It's generally Generally, 50 year old company. [00:00:52] S1: Happened over the summer. We talked about it when it happened. But reminder, it's 50 years old. We're doing free association here. No. Of course, the midterms took over the timeline as a... The Wall Street Journal cover story. Democrats take Congress in stunning rebuke of Trump. This was confusing to me. This was confusing to a lot of folks in our audience. So I went over to ChatGPT and tried to figure out what's going on. So I asked, what are the midterms? And apparently, the midterms are US elections held halfway through a president's four year term. They happen every four years, two years after a presidential election. The twenty twenty six midterms, I guess they were on Tuesday, so yesterday, November 3. They're called the midterms. This is a fun fact because voters are effectively passing judgment on the president and the governing party at the midpoint of the presidency. And so Okay. Now, you're kind of up to speed. You kind of understand what's going on with politics. We said yesterday we'd get into politics deep dive. And I think we I think we went pretty deep just now. [00:01:56] S3: Nailed [00:01:56] S1: it. I think we nailed it. [00:01:58] S0: Deeper than we've ever gone.
00:01:58 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:01:58] S0: Deeper than we've ever gone. [00:01:59] S1: Extremely. Yeah. No. We've been we've been pretty out of the loop. Haven't really been covering it, but there are some interesting posts, some interesting knock on effects. Tyler Cowen had a cool reflection on the election. He said procedurally, it seems to have gone just fine. And this was a big question because the freezers are getting hacked. There were a lot of questions about like if the grid goes down now, that would be the worst time for some [00:02:24] S0: Reports the of like power outages Yeah. In Florida. Yeah. I was wondering, okay, is this like... Yeah. [00:02:29] S1: And and and and and the the important thing is that the both sides are kinda like Trump's like, yeah, we accept the results and the Democrats are like, yeah, we won. Yeah. Great. And so, it's not even that there's like rumors or or whispers. It's agrees. [00:02:42] S0: I don't wanna speak too soon but it seems like a functioning democracy. Yeah. Is. People were very upset Yeah. Unhappy. They sort of, you know... [00:02:50] S1: Yeah. No. No. The [00:02:52] S0: results are being accepted Yeah. Which is a nice change.
00:02:56 · John Coogan
[00:02:56] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Ron Al Bahari is in the Wall Street Journal. He's the Chief Investment Officer at Multifamily Office L and W. Let's give it up for Multifamily Offices. He said, I also think equity investors are breathing some kind of relief that the president is gonna accept the results. And so I'm sure everyone's seen, but the stock market is booming today. The Dow Jones is up 3%. The Nasdaq's up 1.88%. Russell two thousand is up as well. There's a bunch of positive news in the market. But the AI trade is still shifting around. Not everything is up. It's not all green. The deck is reshuffling. And Ben Thompson had a really great breakdown. 10 hot takes that we can go through in just a minute. But Tyler Cowen, in his roundup, he says, Rising in status. Matt Yglesias, socially moderate. Democrats did very well. Normie, social science results on campaign finance. And Nate Silver predictions all did very well. Falling in status, tariffs are on the way out, corruption's on the way out, war with Iran, wealth taxes lost in California, gerrymandering came back to hurt Republicans given the blue wave. There's actually another name for gerrymandering that hurts you. It's a different phrase. I heard it from Nate Silver on some podcast but I can't remember it. And he says, and there you go. So fun fun reflections. The prediction markets also held up well. We... I I felt like we were gonna get into a debate. Have you changed your position? Are you impressed or unsatisfied with the quality of prediction markets this time around?
00:04:35 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:04:35] S0: Overall, they called almost everything right. Yeah. I thought that obviously Texas was was a bit of a surprise. Prediction market's not that helpful if it looks, you know, one way, you know, for months and months and months, and then in the two hours before results are in, it flips completely. [00:04:53] S1: This is always the trick. [00:04:54] S0: But but, I mean, again, and it's hard to process that, you know, if if something has a 30% chance of happening... [00:05:01] S1: That's one three. I'll take those odds any day. Anyways, so [00:05:08] S0: yeah, some some surprises but but but overall, like they seem to be pretty effective. Yeah. It was interesting. There were there was a number of people both in tech and tech adjacent [00:05:21] S1: Yeah. [00:05:21] S0: That were basically taking the stance of the polls are wrong and the prediction markets are wrong. Like, just every indicator that we have Yeah. Is And then it turns out they were actually... Those individuals were wrong like way way... They were way more wrong than I think anybody even thought they were maybe wrong. Right?
00:05:21 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Derek Blasberg, Apoorva Mehta
[00:05:21] S0: That were basically taking the stance of the polls are wrong and the prediction markets are wrong. Like, just every indicator that we have Yeah. Is And then it turns out they were actually... Those individuals were wrong like way way... They were way more wrong than I think anybody even thought they were maybe wrong. Right? [00:05:43] S1: So, wrongs don't make right in this scenario. Yeah. So sheet Fascinating. Kalshi came in at 95% accuracy when the polls opened. So you can always look at a prediction market and it's like, oh, right before the mainstream media calls the election. The prediction markets usually have it pretty dialed right before then. But the question is like, what's the predictive power a month, two months before? But even three months before Kalshi was at 81 accuracy whereas Vote Hub average was 77%. [00:06:15] S4: Which which that's... [00:06:16] S1: 75%. Know, like they... [00:06:17] S0: Just just my napkin math that feels pretty impressive given that a lot of those markets at the time were not like eighty twenty. Right? Oh, yeah. They were more like sixty forty. [00:06:27] S3: Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:28] S0: Yeah. And so it would appear that there... You you can maybe put a little bit more weight on average Yeah. On markets Yeah. Where there's like a definitive leader.