🛩️ “Amalfi, please” — Travel Agents beat AI. Jerome Powell’s last day. Cerebras’ wedding IPO. +Kool-Aid Wellness

This is Nick, this is Jack. It's Friday, the real Friday, May 15th. Tentative's part is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Uh, new acronym you gotta make it to a tattoo Jack, A-T-H all time, hi baby. Despite back-to-back hot inflation reports, the tech rally on Wall Street cannot be stopped. Stocks just had an A-T-H and you guessed it, it's 'cause of the AI stocks. Which is actually our second story. So we've got three fantastic stories to go into the coolest place in capitalism, Jaguar, what do we got in today's T-boy? For our first story, one job to find AI right now is travel agents. Travel agent demanded is booming because chat GPT ain't got no taste. For our second story, the biggest IPO of the year happened on Thursday. Seribris jumped 100% on day one of trading. They're kicking off hot IPO summer and it reminds us of wedding season. And our third and final story. It's Jerome Powell's last day as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Jerry, so we're giving them two grades for two very different jobs. And those grades are very, very different. But yet he's before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. I mean, no better mix to go into the weekend with Love the Mix Jack. Every food company is bending over backwards right now to align with the wellness trends. Oh, and case in point, it's cool. They're now a hydration business. We repeat, Coolade, which includes sugar, red, 40, and artificial flavoring in their ingredients. That coolade is good for you. The giant red anthropomorphic punch bowl now does yoga, baby. Sure start. Coolade is launching electrolyte pouches with no sugar and no artificial colors. Jack, nice. The Alex taking a Stanley full of coolade to Pilates the other day. You did not. But coolade isn't the only brand trying to pivot to wellness. Capri sun, anyone? Last month, Capri sun also launched with electrolytes. They call it Capri sun hydrate. Put me in coach. I just pounded a Capri sun. Besties, we call this the addition economy. As in jumping onto a trend by adding one viral ingredient. For instance, craft mac and cheese now with protein or chips of white now with fiber or all birds now with AI. Hey, Snickers, why haven't you added peptides yet? Because gummy bears already beat them to college, you neck. You see, besties, when we were growing up, Tropicana added calcium to the orange juice. And that was a big deal. You sure as a big deal when they added vitamin C to your juice? And today, though, potato chips are adding Botox to the bag. And it's like nobody's even blinking. No big deal. Here's the formula, struggling like a sea brand plus hot trending buzzword ingredient, voila. To quote Parasilton, that's hot. And Parasilton, that is financial advice. Jack, let's hit our three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It was the best one yet, but the best is an orange. Jack, let's hit. That's it. I don't even need to practice. 50%. That's a fat tip. 4 Our First Story The industry of travel agents has never been bigger, which presents the travel agent paradox. It reveals the human trait that will always be better than AI. Look at it, we hear you and we get it. AI Anx is just everywhere these days. Even clowns are worried they'll lose their job to AI. Yeah. Real clowns. Your boarding passes yet is because one job is to find AI job loss. But travel agent, the humble travel agent, Jack. According to the Wall Street Journal, spending in America on travel agents rose 17% last year to $134 billion. Billion with the B. Jack, that is honeymoon sweet money right there. And it's not just rich people doing it. We'll get to that more in a second. Good point, Jack. Keep going for me, my friend. The number of travel agents in America as a profession, soared by 63% last year. There are now 310,000 American travel agents. LinkedIn just listed travel agents as a top 25 fastest growing job for the third year in a row, Jack. We know what you're thinking. Ten years ago, the travel agent appeared to be an obsolete profession in the digital age. The TripAdvisor.com and Yelp, they had killed off the travel agent. But travel agents as a profession are alive and well. Literally alive. Like human travel agents we're talking about here. If you're going to Tulum, you gotta let Tina handle your booking and itinerary. She'll get you all sorts of free upgrades. It won't even cost you. You gotta do it. Tina, are we going with the, oh never I will talk you later Tina. But in the meantime, yet here's what Jack and I find fascinating. We call this the travel agent paradox. Artificial intelligence and the internet didn't kill the travel agent. They actually made them stronger. And we discovered there are three reasons for this phenomenon of effects. First is that curation is queen. Second is choice paralysis and third is that we freaking love perks. Jack, how about we sprinkle on some context to kick off more of this story. The internet democratized travel. Italy had a record number of visitors last year. They're now charging tourists for what were once free things like the travel fountain. Nick and I are actually both going to Italy this year. Me for the first time. Different trips by the way. Everyone's like, oh we're going to be recording from Italy. But I booked my trip with the travel agent, which reveals the first phenomenon of the travel agent paradox. And travel at all time highs, you want insider information so you're not mobbed by the crowds. Like the Amalfi coast where Jack's going is so popular, curation is queen. That's what you want. I don't want to look at the sunset beside 53 other American tourists. That's the curation that only a travel agent could deliver, which then leads to the second phenomenon of the travel agent paradox. There are 396 restaurants in Pozzatano, 77 of which are in the Michelin guy. That's a lot of options. You need a resource to limit those options. No, I don't want the 500 restaurants with a 4.6 rating or better on Google. I want the three restaurants that the travel agent recommends. You'll pay a premium to avoid the choice paralysis. Actually, you won't pay a premium, Nick. We'll get to that in a second. Claude can't go to coppery, Jack. It reads reviews about coppery, but you can't trust the bot to tell you if running a boat is worth it if it can't even row the thing. Now this is where the business model of travel agents come in and you'll be shocked by this. You don't have to pay them. You see, Bessies, this is not a fee-based industry like a financial advisor is. The travel agent does get paid, but not by you. They get paid by the hotel, which is grateful that they sent business to them. The industry relies on commissions. And since the travel agent has a relationship with the hotel, they include perks and you're booking for free. The free breakfast, the spa credit, everyone's favorite, the late checkout. What I'm trying to say is not only do you as the traveler not pay for a travel agent, you get free stuff by using a travel agent. And there's a bigger element here. In the AMX-inspired credit card perk wars, that is what travelers want, the VIP experience. So travel agents bundle in perks, which is also a competitive advantage over bots and online booking. Because chat GPT can't get you a complimentary Prosecco with chicken. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies? Worried about AI? The travel agent paradox proves what humans will always have over AI. Taste. Ah, taste. Yeti's it is an ambiguous concept, hard to define subjective and that may actually be its savior. The dictionary says that taste is the discernment of style, considered harmonious or valuable. And taste requires fundamentally human perspectives that AI simply does not have. AI can't tell you how the palm tree placed on the bar interacts with the light and makes you feel at sunset. Or why the flavor of sauce makes that meal perfect for your last night of your trip. Only a fellow human who's experienced that room or that dish can tell you those things. A bot cannot. It actually reminds us of that scene in Goodwill Hunting when Robin Williams rips into Matt Damon, you know what I'm talking about, Jack? He says, "I might ask you about love and you'll probably recite Shakespeare maybe even tell me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable." That is taste. Matt Damon is AI in this scenario. Now we know what you're thinking yet, is yes AI can try to understand love or try to understand that dish or that restaurant. It can regurgitate what it's learned in reviews. Like Will Hunting regurgitated sonnets from Shakespeare. But taste is not crowdsourced. That's why the travel agent and other taste dependent roles can defy artificial intelligence. Four hours second story. The biggest IPO of the year just happened Thursday and Siripus Stocks surged 100% on day number one. Because the year of the AI IPO is upon us and it reminds us of 2018. Yet he's last weekend before Memorial Day, you know what that means, Jack. The birds are chirping, the flowers are blossoming, love is in the air. To quote an enthusiastic Vince Vaughn, "It's wedding season baby." Wall Street has begun a different season and they started it on Thursday. IPO season. Oh, and they are dressed up baby. SpaceX IPO's next month will be the biggest in history. Then anthropic, then open AI. Those could be the three biggest IPO's in Wall Street history all in the same year. It's crazy. Where is day? The biggest IPO of the year so far. The company we're talking about is Siripus. It's an AI company who stock doubled the moment it began trading on Thursday. Vastys, Siripus ended the day worth 95 billion bucks. Jack, he's sprinkling on some contacts, please. This chip company you've never heard of is worth more than Airbnb. It's worth more than Nike. It's worth the equivalent of 19 lifts. And just like the first wedding of the year, you know what went down, Jack. They just went all out. They smuggled little shooters inside their jacket that they sift on during the nuptials. And they tossed those $1 bills all over the dance floor. Wow, spoiler, Jack. Spong guy got a good one wedding with. But Vastys, this is what Jack and I find fascinating. The reason Sariris doubled on day number one of trading is because the year is not 2026. It's 2020 chips. The theme of the year besties is an AI. It's the computer chips powering AI. GPs like Nvidia. Nvidia last week became the first company to hit $5.5 trillion in value. The VanXemic Conductor ETF, it's up 61% so far this year. Poet, a random chip stock you've also never heard of, it's meaming right now. It's tripled in just the last month. But here's the funny part. Saribris actually hates the term chip, even though that's their industry. Well, they say they don't make chips, they make wafers. Wafers, you see besties Jack and I jumped in T-Boist out to the IPO paperwork. And we notice they said the word wafer, 127 times. What is wafer? It's a giant slice of 99.99% pure silicon. That's why they call it Silicon Valley. And it looks like a cheese it, but way bigger. It's like a big square cat-sized fake Newton. That's what I'm looking at Jack. Wafers are the rawest form of compute. They're actually 58 times larger than your average AI chip, and they look like they were made in a giant tree by a bunch of giant Kebler elves. After all, they're called wafers. But again, why is this wafers so critical to this company Jack? Bigger wafers are faster at processing than smaller chips, so it solves AI's awkward silence problem. The awkward silence. You know besties when you ask Jack GPT about that thing on your thigh, and then it takes like 30 seconds to process your query? That's the awkward silence you get with an AI chat. Seribra says that they're huge wafers speed up AI's response time. Less awkward silence. So that you don't need to jump into another tab while you're waiting for your answer to be processed, only to forget that you asked it about the thing on your thigh in the first place. So besties, it's no wonder open AI is both the biggest customer and the biggest shareholder of this company, Seribra. And we're not surprised one bit that Sam Altman has set himself aside 89,000 shares of this hot IPO, Seribra. Apparently Sam Altman has a craving for wafers and now we know why. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies at the biggest IPO of the year? Seribra. Too many IPOs, like too many wedding invitations requires hard decisions. Look, yet, if you're 25 to 35 years old, you probably got like a dozen wedding invites this summer. You got to stack away papers on your counter. But here's the problem. You just can't go to every wedding you get invited to. You don't have enough time or enough money to travel. Like 2K, just the flight of Martha's vineyard in July. So to keep our wedding analogy going, there's a similar issue facing this epic AI IPOs of the 2026 summer. Think about it. The markets are at crazy high all time highs. Everybody already has all their cash in stocks because they bought every dip that there's been. I mean, Jack's SpaceX is looking to sell 75 billion bucks a stock next month. That's more than most entire years worth of IPOs. Where is the money going to come from? That's the question. Yeah, investors want to buy SpaceX Anthropic, open AI Seribras, but they'll need to sell something to come up with the cash. So will investors have to sell older tech stocks like Microsoft, Google, and Apple in order to buy the newly listed tech stocks coming later this summer? Besties the year of the AI IPOs could come at the expense of other tech stocks. In 2018, I got invited to too many weddings. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, before the weekend, grab the cupcakes and office pizza party because today is Jerry Powell's last day as head of our central bank, but he's not going anywhere. He's creating him on two things. The economy he managed and the institution he protected, and those two grades are very different. Yeti's Jerry Powell. J-Pow. Jerry Too Late Powell. Each is a nickname and each is revealing. Sounds like we're doing slam poetry, but it's all the same person, just different names. Jerome Powell though. That reflects his bipartisan institutionalist personality. His inexperienced finance guy who was appointed by Donald Trump to lead our central bank back in 2018. I think I respect from both parties, confirmed overwhelmingly in 2018 by the Senate, reappointed by President Biden. But then he also came to be known as J-Pow. That's the Wall Street bet's nickname he got on Reddit. You see, during the pandemic, he was printing money through our central bank, which created a whole generation of stock traders. But he was also known as Jerry Too Late Powell. Jerry Too Late Powell, as in the man who fought a president and won. Most Fed chairs fight two things, unemployment and inflation. But this Fed chair, J-Pow, also had to fight the president of the United States more than that in a minute. But to grade J-Pow's eight-year tenure as Fed chair, it's helpful to define what we call the terrible 20s. The terrible 20s, the last six years have been a perpetual crisis in America and the world you've seen it, you've felt it. In the last six years, we had a pandemic. We had Russia invade Ukraine. We had brutal inflation. We had a trade war that was extremely chaotic. We had the war in Iran still ongoing. Plus AI. And you had that jet too holiday meme and Will Smith slap at the Oscars. Who could forget any of it, Jack? And with Congress mostly at a constant stalemate, it's been our central bank in America that's been the primary firefighter of all those crises. And who put out all those fires? It was Jerry Powell. He kept the U.S. economy in the stock market as the best in the world. Now we did have a five alarm inflation fire. And he had to pull out the interest rate water bazooka to put that thing out. We actually went from near zero interest rates in 2022 to 5.5% interest rates in 2023 to stop that inflation. It was the biggest rate hike in 40 years and rates are still high, which is brutal if you're trying to buy a house. Basically J. Powell was rate maxing before maxing was even a meme, baby. But we have to sprinkle on this context that no major economy emerged from the pandemic or the global inflation crisis stronger than the U.S. did. Drew Jack, but at the same time, Jerry contributed to that global inflation crisis with his easy money policies. And he should have acted sooner to put out inflation quicker. Maybe whipped out that fire hose on inflation a few months earlier than he first did. He kept money a little too loose and easy a little too long. But still, America's GDP, America's stock markets at ATH all time highs, unemployment, it is very low jack. The American economy is looking pretty good. And the picture during Jerry's eight years of the Fed is even better when you compare it to the other developed economies out there. So for the U.S. economy, we're giving Jerome Powell a solid B. Solid B, we're not great inflators like a B is solid, that's good, that's good. It's not great as an A, but it's better than a C. He had six crises he had to deal with because inflation's been brutal, but given the perpetual crises, he's done a good job. But Jack, this report card ain't over yet. Oh, what's the takeaway for all our buddies wondering about J. Powell's last day? For the economy, Powell gets a B. For the institution, he gets an A+. Yet he's, the president has relentlessly insulted and harassed J. Powell, demanding that he lower interest rates. Even though that demand is economically backwards, lowering interest rates would have made inflation worse. Regardless though, of whether President Trump's thoughts are right or wrong, no president should metal with a central bank. We know that. And Jerome Powell knows this better than anybody. Any country that's let politics influence their central bank has resulted in economic disaster. So interestingly, when President Trump's Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into J. Powell, Powell stepped up. He took the narrative with a famous and unprecedented press conference, calling out the president's moves as political interference. And a federal judge agreed, said that President Trump was weaponizing prosecution to interfere with monetary policy. And Trump's harassment has ended up backfiring on it. Because Jerome Powell, the guy he hates, he's staying at the Fed for two more years, even though he's no longer the Fed chair. To protect our central banks and dependents, which is a bedrock of our democracy and our economy. So now we have a new boss of the Federal Reserve. Kevin Warsh, starting today. But the old boss is going to be in the room for all the key decisions for the next two years. Jerry's sticking around, but in a different role. It's like that meme on TikTok, you know what I'm thinking about Jack? Push him play. Who are you? I'm Pam. Who are you? I'm the owner of this house. Oh. So J. Powell's tenure will be remembered. Not by his defense of the economy, but by his defense of the central bank and its independence. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the real Friday? The travel agent paradox. It's the hottest profession in hospitality travel agents. There are now 310,000 of them in the USA. Because AI will try to learn taste like Will Huntington, but only humans can truly command it. In the 2026 IPO season kicked off Thursday with Sir Rebres and AI company, who stocked doubled on day one. But too many IPO's, like too many wedding invites, require some really hard decisions. And our third and final story is Jerome Powell, his 8 year tenure as the head of the Federal Reserve ends today. For the economy, Jerry gets a B. For the institution, Jerry gets an A+. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. Far as President Trump visited China for the first time since 2017, visit and today what are they having for dinner. So far, in terms of new announcements or new policies, the trip's been a bit of a nothing sandwich. Yeah, we were going to cover this story, but there was enough there. A lot of pop, a lot of ceremony, no new policy on trade, AI or Ron. That's kind of typical of these trips, frankly. The big news is that President Trump invited President Xi to visit the United States in September. So now we're hosting. And second, the new thing you were going to see today is a little yarn ball hitting your head. And as Gen Z just discovered for the first time, the Haki sack. The New York Times says the renewal started over in Boston. Haki sacks blowing up right now. It's a top trending topic for people under 20 in Massachusetts, the Haki sack. It's all part of the 20-year-old. rule of nostalgia in our opinion. Why 2k core making a comeback baby. And finally, the 2026 FIFA World Cup final will feature a super bowl half-time show. Shakira Madonna, BTS, they are all starring in the show at half-time at the World Cup. And this show was curated by Chris Martin of Coldplay. They really got all the names and all the nationalities in that. It's usually like a 15 minute thing in soccer, but now we're extending it to 34th the show. Now time for the best fact yet, this one noticed by Jack and I, so we had to tell you that. The state of Maryland just did something no other state has done. Maryland's governor just signed the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act into law. The first state to ban surveillance pricing. Surveillance pricing, which is spying on you using the internet and like your Instagram account. To set a price based on how much they think you can pay for it. Well, Jack, you looked fantastic all week. Besties, you were glowing all week. Rule number 76 of the podcast, Jack. Celebrate the win. Am I right? Well, that make you love me, Dad. Besties, let us know yourself right and drop it in the comments. We can't wait to see it from Monday's show. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Eddie Shreyes Row in Carnotaka, Bangalore, India. Happy birthday to Evelyn and Clark Teran, turning two years old in Palo Alto, California. And Emma O'Eita is one of two Seattle girls on TikTok, turning 28 on the big day. Happy birthday to Greg Jacobson, who's living the dream in a while, who right now, over in a while. And the dog, Lavinger, is a surgical red and nofellow turning 39 up in Teran. Happy birthday to Josh Swardbluff, the hardest work and business owner of climate impact ventures. It's his birthday just inside Boston. And Panid Bra are happy 30th birthday down the street in San Francisco. Happy birthday to Lillian Schneider, the corporate cupcake queen of Washington, Michigan. And Brian Burke and Aubreyana are celebrating back to back 23rd birthdays and joy the weekend, guys. And happy birthday to Sabrina Manier, turning eight years old in San Jose. This girl has been a Yeti since she was four years old. And congrats to Nubia Gijuana in New York City. This high rocks racers graduated from NYU Stern this weekend. Congratulations to Epiphany, the Long Islander graduating from Cornell Law School. If you know, you know. And Ethan and Elise Herzog have got their one year anniversary up in Minnesota. Congratulations, guys. Congratulations to Carrie Manion and Ryan Worthy, getting married in Foster City. Can't wait to see the pigs and Anthony Lawn. Kristie Tom have got a one year wedding anniversary in T-boy merch in Arcadia, California. And to anyone else, celebrate something today. Make it a T-boy. Celebrate the win. This is Jack Ionstock of Lift and Reddit, at Nickeland Stock of Nike and Airbnb, and we both own Stock of Apple.