Matt Kohrs On YouTube; John Valeri On Books

Episode Summary

In this episode, Phil Hall interviews Matt Kohrs about his rise to prominence as one of YouTube’s most popular stock investing and trading commentators and John Valeri, host of the talk show “Central Booking,” on the state of the book publishing and retail sectors.

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MattKohrs

http://www.johnbvaleri.com/central-booking.html

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Guests:

Matt Kohrs “Matt Kohrs Investing” https://www.youtube.com/c/MattKohrs

John Valeri “Central Booking”

http://www.johnbvaleri.com/central-booking.html

Host:

Phil Hall

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Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

And yet another episode of Benzinga show business. Oh, there is no business, like show business on today's show. We're going to be discussing the state of the book, industry book publishing and book retailing. We have John Valarie is one of the most prominent book critics out there today.

That's a later in the show, but first up we have a very special guests. Extra special. I would say his name is Matt cores. I mean, if you're one of those happy apes who has been disrupting the markets this year, you know who Matt cores is. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today on Zika show business, more than happy to be here.

I think we're going to have an awesome conversation. I hope so. You know, Matt. I love what you're doing on YouTube. And I'm looking at your YouTube page now, while we're speaking and I see you have 365,000 subscribers as of today. And before we recorded this interview, you did a two hour live stream, which brought in 63,000 views.

I mean, you're, you're at a, I think you, Mr. Beast and Jake, Paul could all go out to lunch together. I mean, this is, these numbers are not what people usually associate with a financial. YouTube channel. What is the secret of your success on YouTube, man? I've been thinking about that a lot. Well, first of all, I very much appreciate those kind words.

I would love to be in the league of a Mr. Paul, Mr. Bass. I mean, those guys, like I look up to him, like I looked up just in this world of social media and audio, video production, uh, YouTube and all the other forms of social media. You just, um, some people like that. They're very much Titans and I would love to be in that level one day with me.

The one thing I've learned is social media very much, uh, it's a big benefit to do something that no one else has done. And I think we saw at the start of this calendar year, there was some sort of appetite at that point. It was mainly GameStop related GME when it went haywire, like, uh, you, you had a year when people were sitting on their couches, really, we were all locked inside.

Like a lot of people were feeling the financial burden of the situation. And then you hear about GameStop and it's running and all of this. I had this channel, my YouTube channel in March of 2020. And just to give you and your listeners a little bit more. Yeah. Ideal of how it happened in March all the way till January.

I was calling for every single subscriber and view I got. And I think from March, till January, halfway through January, I hit about 10,000 subscribers and obviously fast forward to now, I think, um, I believe you said 465, which is just crazy. And it puts the biggest smile on my face, but I think what it was.

At that point, I was doing something that's already been done. Like I was looking up to some of the biggest financial YouTubers, Andre, Jake meet Kevin Graham, Stephan, and I was trying to replicate a model that was there's people that were better at it. They've been doing it long. And then all of a sudden, I thought, Hey, this could be fun.

I know of live streaming through like the gaming world. A lot of people like to live stream those, but I was like, I wonder if there's some sort of appetite to live stream what's happening in the market. And fortunately, like with the insanity, which I could only describe as a black Swan event, there was a huge appetite.

And then that was directly related to, I guess, the blow up in my channel. And, um, even the insanity now, like I think for the best. Two two months, AMC, Jimmy kind of quieted down. And I think that's the summer. This is the first summer in two years that people have kind of been able to go out and spend time with family and friends.

But now that we're getting closer to labor day, people returning to their trading screens, uh, I'm just excited for the upcoming volume volatility and whatever that really brings with it. Who is the audience of your YouTube? So analytically in the backend, a lot of it it's male dominated and it's about 18 to 35 year olds.

But I would say if I were to describe them, it's people who are identify as being a member of eight nation. It's a bunch of retail traders. Something on a very human level, this story of AMC and GME resonates with them. And the part that resonates with them, obviously you're in stocks. You're trying to make money.

No one is disagreeing with that, but they look at it as a unique way to stand up against the current wall street system and kind of the lack of transparency that tilted nature of the playing field. It's more of a pay to play. And if you have more money, it's easier for you. And they're finding, I guess, the best way to say it is against some of these.

Uh, in the qualities that we're really seeing in the current economic wall street system, especially in the UK. You have a background in, in broadcasting because you're very comfortable and very confident on camera and you have a good voice as well. Uh, not at all. Well, it's kind of funny that you say that maybe it's more of a, how people view themselves.

I actually hate my voice when I hear one of my videos start to auto-play like when I'm on YouTube, myself, and then my video plays, I turned it off. I don't like listening to my voice, but I think a lot of people ended up saying that my background broadcasting, no. My first live stream was December 31st.

So I went from March till the end of the year. And my friends who were like, honestly, we see that you've been doing YouTube for a while, but if you go to some of my oldest videos, they're horrific, I leave them up for the comedic aspect, but I it's too robotic, too scripted. It doesn't sound natural at all.

My friends, they basically said, Hey man, like, we love you. And you've been doing it for a while. We don't want to hurt your feelings, but they basically said it's bad. And I was like, well, what can I do to sound better? And they're like, we'll try live streaming. So that's how it started. So December 30. It was my first live stream.

And I just was doing, at that point, I did some like weekly updates of like, Hey, let's look at what Tesla is, earnings coming up. Apple has earnings coming up. I just did like kind of a weekly recap and then fast forward one month to when Jimmy exploded. And then that's when I started live streaming that, and then in February I ended up quitting my job and my job actually, I'm trained to be my main majors in computer science.

So I'm very like data, data oriented. And with that. No professional trading whatsoever. I definitely had to learn some of this on the fly. And even that I'm learning day over day of kind of the entertainment aspects of it. I feel confident. And of course I could always learn more in stocks, options, futures, cryptos, uh, but for me, it's getting better on camera having a better camera presence and better speaking ability and things of that nature.

Uh, I would actually identify as an introvert. So this is the part that I like really have to spend time learning and honing that particular. What do you see as your competition? Are you competing against other financial, YouTube burrs, or do you see yourself competing against the likes of Bloomberg TV or CNBC with that?

Um, I think it's one of those things that I've experienced with within the YouTube world and other social media. It doesn't seem like people are exclusively watching one. It really does seem like, as the water goes up, all these other big YouTube channels, specifically talking about AMC GME and these finance ones, it seems like all of our views go up together.

So of course there's healthy competition. Of course you want to be number one, like who wouldn't want to, but I don't think people are necessarily taking other people's views. Um, so I think the competition. Maybe not even taking views. Cause I bet there's people consuming mainstream media and also us. But it's funny that we're in the YouTube world, the social media world starting to be serious competitors.

Um, this is my high water mark thus far in my career, but when AMC was specifically running an early June, I had a concurrent viewership as in viewers, listening to me all at one time, simultaneously of around 88, 80 9,000. And I'm a graduate of Penn state. So I always compare it to beaver stadium, which can hold 110 ish thousand.

I was like, man, I almost maxed out an entire football arena. And I'm just sitting in my basement talking about a stock like this. It's not heard before. It's like literally the new edge is the frontier of financial commentary. It's insane that with the rise of technology and kind of this disdain for quote unquote, the man and people in suits, and there's a big trust factor.

And it's weird that right now, Verifiably, not just me. This is not a one-off thing. There's other YouTube channels, other social media accounts where the numbers are exploding. And I think some of the reason is a little bit upsetting because it shows how much disdain there is for the current system.

People there's a huge lack of trust. So they would rather listen to a guy, like I said, in a basement wearing silly duck shirts going on about random things. It's a sad commentary on the current state when that's more trustworthy than what some of the mainstream media. Well, I mean, you've had some interesting situations with YouTube offline a few times.

Do you want to talk about what happened and how they got resolved? Yeah. So two times in my career happening this calendar year, I was terminated. It wasn't like I got a strike against my account. It wasn't that some of my videos were taken down my account. Wiped off of the face of the planet, two separate times.

And I got an email from it being defined as harmful and dangerous both times. That's how, like that's the category they put me into. And for people who might not have heard of this, that's the category where like truly bad types of videos are uploaded like very violent videos. Like they put me in that I'm like I'm wearing, I wear induction and I talk about stocks.

How am I harmful and dangerous? So with it, um, I guess to be completely fair here, if YouTube wanted to get rid of. They would have never gotten it back. They would have been like, you know what? No, you're not getting it back. So what I think it is, I think there's some other third party who may be my best guess is like mass reporting my account.

And maybe there's like a certain level that it goes above that and YouTube just takes you down. And then of course, when it goes down, people now, especially at my size, people start to realize the second time around, it was actually trending in the United States, free Matt cores, like on Twitter. So of course, like at that level, I would assume someone at YouTube is like hanging on, like what's happening here.

They look into it, they do a human manual review and they're like, all right, this was some sort of hiccup within the system and they give it back. But as a creator, you start to learn the system. And I feel like I should have known this earlier, especially like being in the stock world. You don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Um, so because of that, I've kind of found out like I have a backup YouTube account. I now have a rumble account and then I also have a Twitch account. It the first time it happened, it's such an emotional punch to your gut when you're like, I just worked on this at this point for just over a year. I had my first one I lost was in April.

And so I was doing it for over two years. I was like, it was just gone like that. And that was like the moment to me. And I was like, okay, I need to be a little bit more safe. So at that point, the second time around, I had the Twitch and that worked well as a fail safe, but now it's even more redundancies just for like this, I guess, safety of my own brand.

We have to explain something, because this is obviously an audio podcast about the duck shirt. You're not like you're not like Elton John dressing up like Donald duck when he did his concert in central park. No, no, no. This is, if anything, um, the best way I could describe it. I it's just this random duck shirt that when game star started running in January, like at that point I was kind of poking fun of people wearing suits and that stuff.

So I went out of my way to just wear it. Pretty strange shirts. And when I was wearing that shirt, that was one of the first days that GameStop really ripped. So people were like, you have to wear it. And all of a sudden, the entire branding of ducks like took on a life of its own. But to your listeners to describe it, it's a Mallard duck shirt.

They're like there's many, many Mallard ducks in in-between, it there's just random flags. And that's why I bought it. And in college I was going to a random party. I bought it at a thrift store for like a dollar 99 cause of how absurd it was. There's a Canadian flag on it, the us flag and the Mexican flag.

And from there. I realized that people were saying, oh no, it's indicative of like the flight pattern, the migration pattern of the Mallard duck. I was like, I don't know what genius thought this had to go on his shirt, but I'm super happy. They put it on a shirt and now it's like a staple of my channel.

That's great. You mentioned Twitch and you mentioned rumble as other platforms. Do you have anywhere near the same number of subscribers on those that you have on YouTube? No. I would say that YouTube. Definitely. My flagship, just cause I've been on it for the longest. And who knows? Maybe when one of these days another one might overtake, you never know.

Cause it's just, it's social media and it's the internet. You never know. Um, I'm, I'm happy with the size, but it's definitely not at the size of YouTube. I think to remember that you were a guest, was it on Fox business news or, uh, CNBC? Uh, some weeks ago. Yeah. So most recently I was on Fox, but I've had the, uh, opportunity to speak with both CNBC and Fox, but, um, I've somewhat become a frequent guest with Charles Payne making money on Fox.

And I always love my conversations with him. How did that come about? Why did, uh, the Fox business people hear about you? I'm not really sure. I think maybe. For the first time I spoke to them was in June. And up to that point, this story specifically of AMC was only being told by one side, it was Mo it was mainstream media.

It was wall street. And you had all these people who were talking about the fundamentals of what was going on and how this was such an obvious choice. And like, it seemed like I'm assuming on their side, they probably said, hang on. Like, why are we only hearing this one thing? Why is this not going up? So I'm assuming that, uh, someone was looking, they probably just searched it.

And at that point, my channel was like, in the middle of its explosion, I was getting a lot of views, a lot of concurrent viewers. So they just ended up reaching out to me on Twitter. And like Twitter led to an email, led to a phone call and they're like, Hey, would you be interested in doing it and shout out to them?

Fox making money with Charles Payne was the first one of mainstream media of national TV giving us really a voice. And then from there, one thing led to another, but, uh, it's definitely been a great experience, but I'm assuming they just wanted to hear another voice besides the same thing that we hear regurgitated over and over and over again.

As I mentioned at the top of our conversation, the next segment of this podcast is all about books. Do you have any book deals in the work or plan to write your own? No. I mean, uh, being a computer science major, unfortunately my skillset is definitely more in the mathematical realm of things and I'm still working to become a better speaker.

Maybe one of these days I'll work on my writing ability, but, um, uh, nothing in the works right now, unfortunately, but who knows, you know, you can never say that. Indeed. And don't it don't sell yourself short. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century was cringe Russell, who was a mathematician who went on to where the Nobel prize for literature.

So, oh, wow. Going from two plus two to a thank you. King of Sweden. So, wow. I didn't know that. Give the, give that you learn something new every day. Well, the reason why you should read Benzinger and listen to Benzinga because what you're going to learn. So what is next on your agenda, Matt? Uh, are you going to keep doing what you're doing or are you looking to expand into other areas?

Definitely. Right now, it's, I'm at the point in my career with it where like, It's always like the next thing. And right now I love the AMC community. I love the GME community. I'm never going to turn my back on them. If anything, I want to bring my own work, schedule up to that next level and start including other types of content for me, it's like, okay, I want to entertain.

I want to educate. And I see other opportunities right now. It looked like the crypto sector, the fandom behind it took a little bit of time. But as you know, it's probably it's picking up right now. So I'm like, okay. Maybe there's interesting opportunities there recently in the kind of, I guess, calmer nature of AMC and Jimmy I've taken that opportunity to teach more about options.

So for me, if I could always provide value, whether it's through entertainment or through education of things, stocks, options, futures, crypto. That's what I want to do. And. I view it as, as I provide more and more value, that's going to resonate with more and more people and it's better off because people are being either entertained or educated.

And for me, I'll hopefully bring that the brand to the next level. Well, Matt, thanks so much for being a guest on this edition of Benzinga show. Super happy to be here. Hopefully we'll be back one of these days. Indeed. I suspect you will. And folks don't go away going to hear a very quick, but very important message from our good friends over at Benzinga pro the access to actionable news and market research.

With all the information you need to invest smarter and profit faster. Start your free trial [email protected]. On this segment of our podcast, we're going to be discussing books, publishing, book, retailing, all things biblio. And I certainly have a wonderful expert to help me on that. He's John Valarie.

He is a well-known book critic and is also host of the central booking talk show where he gets to interview all bunch of famous writers. So, John, thank you so much for taking the time to be on our program. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me here. You know, John in preparation for this interview, I was reminded of a quote that gore of a doll gave, uh, shortly before he passed away, he was interviewed and he was asked, where are today's great writers and gore Vidal.

And his usual wonderfully dyspeptic persona looked at the interviewer and said, where are today's great readers? And I guess. I would, uh, channel my inner core of a dollar and ask you at the same question, where are today's great readers? Are people reading books today? You know, I think we're all kind of hunkered down in our homes, but we are still reading.

And I think that one of the interesting things that happened throughout the course of the pandemic is book sales, print books. Sales actually reached an all time high for the first time in a decade, um, after really struggling to find place with eBooks. So we are still out here looking to read great books and there are still people out there looking to write them, which leads me to be very helpful.

And actually the, uh, the percentage of the increase that you're citing. 0.2% from 2019 to 2020. So if there was anything good that came out of the pandemic, it certainly was good for the book publishing it. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think that there's continued to be a struggle, you know, with retailers, you know, independent bookstores versus big box, Amazon Barnes and noble.

Um, but I think that there was a surge from a lot of people to really try to rally around their independent booksellers and protect them, and also to be, you know, aware of the struggles that authors are facing into sort of, you know, search out those books. And then I think also we. Sort of want that element of escapism.

Um, and when you can't leave your house safely, you can bring that to you through a book. Well, is this going to continue through 2021 was sort of coming out of the pandemic, but maybe we're not because of the Delta variant, is this momentum that the industry experienced last year going to be something continuing, not only this year, but also into 2022 and beyond.

That's a great question that I wish I could look into my crystal ball and answer for you. Um, it's so hard to say because there is so much flux with the Delta variant. Um, but I think that publishing has always been a notoriously volatile industry. Um, and it sort of. Finds its way, even if it takes a little bit of time, I think that there are going to be changes.

Um, I think that there is an initial surge that we'll probably see some drops in the level of book sales. Um, but depending on how the Delta variant plays out, if people are starting to social distance more. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that rise in book sales. If people feel like they're confined to their homes again.

Um, but I have heard from some booksellers that there was, you know, a great initial surge of interest in is things normalized. Um, as people were getting vaccinated that, that sort of waned a bit. Um, but I wouldn't again, be surprised now that a lot of us are being more cautious. Um, if there was another increase in those things, Well, according to the figures from last year, and I'm quoting from the, the good people at NPD BookScan, uh, the category, uh, that was the strongest last year was the education reference language category, which had a 55.5% increase.

Obviously a lot of people wanted to better themselves intellectually while they were stuck at home. But what was interesting, the second biggest sub category involve games, activities, and hobbies, which was up 31.3%. And that seems to be more of a generation spanning type of a category for the youngsters who would like to play games at home.

And also for the older people who get to catch up on hobbies, they usually weren't able to take care of prior to the pendant. Yeah, it's interesting. I saw that statistic as well. Uh, and it really does show that people are looking for different forms of entertainment. I mean, I think that we're so accustomed to leaving the house and interacting in person.

And when you don't feel that you can do that safely. What are you going to do? You can pick up a book, which is great, but if you were in a family situation and you want to have that face-to-face engagement, I mean, all of a sudden it was a situation where parents and children were sort of forced to interact in a way that they might not have been, uh, you know, schools shut down.

Um, a lot of parents couldn't go into the office and had to parent from home. And so I think games presented a way, a fun way for people to really engage with each other meaningfully that they may not have been thinking about before. I mean, the typical is, you know, you get home at the end of the day, you got to get dinner on the table.

Homework has to be done bath and shower, and then you do it all again the next day. And the pandemic sort of forced the slowing down of all of this. And I think gave us a time to reflect on what was really meaningful. And then, you know, how we would fill that. Well years ago, a lot of the big hit movies were based on the best-selling books.

We don't really get to see that much. Today. And it's interesting because the last year the adult fiction sales were only up 6% year over year compared to the other categories. Well, what does that mean for the Hollywood studios that used to, uh, go to the bestseller lists to get their projects? Does this mean that we're going to probably be seeing more remakes and reboots of vehicles as opposed to, uh, exciting new films based on new models?

Well, you were the movie, man, you would probably know better than me, but I think absolutely. Yes. Um, you know, looking even at what's coming out now it does, it tends to be sequels, remakes, reboots. And again, I think that people realize that, you know, if there's a brand that's recognizable, it's easier to draw people back to something that they already know, um, versus creating something entirely new.

Uh, there are great books out there that I think that. You know, lend themselves very well to the screen, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be in the mindset and I'm talking collectively because there will always be outliers, but they don't seem to be in the mindset of taking great big chances right now.

Whereas if they know that they have a franchise that is going to be a money draw, if you look at horror specifically, That's really the, the dominant part of that market is reboots remakes. That's why we have another Halloween movie, a scream movies coming out. Um, so, so I agree with you that I think that that is the trend that we're going with right now, at least on a large scale.

Oh, there's going to be another screen movie that sort of spoils my day. Thank you. You know, it's funny. That is the first franchise I ever loved and I'm actually very excited about it because it's the first one without Wes Craven. But, you know, he passed unfortunately, but they have the whole surviving cast back for it.

And some directors that seem really invested in the legacy versus a cash grab. So, so we'll see. But yeah, I mean talk about reboots, right? 25 years later, we're starting again. Yeah, I'm, I'm only kidding about, uh, that's one thing I'm not kidding about, and this is rather interesting also from the NPD BookScan data, uh, political books and books tied to social justice.

Uh, we're only up 4.8% year over year during 2020, of course, last year. Well, it's probably the year for anything political or anything related to social justice. Uh, has this topic just been tapped out? Has it just the media oversaturated it to the point that people are not going to be spending $20 or more to have a hard cover book on the subject?

I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I have never felt so oversaturated in my life. I mean, we get media in so many different ways now. So between television, our phones, our computers, there's sort of an endless cycle. And I think that people feel like they've seen it on TV. So why do they need to read a book about it?

And I also think that there's sort of. A conscious unplugging, like I've known so many people who have stopped watching the news, you know, gone on Facebook hiatus just to get away from it. And I think that that's been a bit reflected in book sales as well. I want to talk about a very prominent national book retailer.

I'm not going to mention the name, but I think you can probably guess who it is. And I've been in a couple of their stores recently and I couldn't help, but notice that when I go into the stores, uh, they have a cafe which is always crowded. Uh, lately they've had a lot more toys for sale, more vinyl albums, uh, DVDs, Blu rays, a lot of accessories, tote bags, scarves, Globes, uh, holiday cards, et cetera, not as many books as I recall before.

Uh, Is it unique to this particular retailer who will not mention that they seem to be putting more of everything, but books into the stores or is this also happening with the independent bookstores around the country? Wow. Oh, I know exactly the retail you're speaking of I've had the same experience where, you know, you walk in and you'd have to Wade through it.

Stuff just to find your way to the books. Um, I think that it is true of independent booksellers as well, but on a much smaller scale, um, you know, there are several independent booksellers that do have, you know, a cafe element, uh, or to have a gift element. Um, gift items, but I think that they're more carefully cultivated and it doesn't overwhelm the store.

It's, you know, it's sort of an accessory to the books, but books continue to be the primary presence in the store. And I think that that tends to be the difference between an independent bookseller and some of the bigger retailers. Like they still want to hand sell you those books, but while you're there, they're going to offer you all those other items as well.

Let me ask you a somewhat flippant question. Let's assume you're in. Book retailer, who we are still not mentioning. And you're going through, uh, one of the aisles, new pickup, a book, you open the book and much to your surprise. You find a thousand dollars inside the book. If you had a thousand dollars just handed to you, would you see yourself investing in media companies that are concentrating in book publishing either specifically or as part of their overall media strategy?

You know, my first inclination, it would be that moral dilemma. Oh my gosh, I found a thousand dollars. Do I keep it? And really, you know, being in that environment, I would want to take the money and run to my favorite independent bookseller and just spend it there. I think my inclination would probably be to invest it directly in an independent bookseller in some way.

That's interesting. So you would go directly to the bookseller to ensure that this small business is able to succeed as opposed to, uh, going on Robin hood or going to calling your broker and saying, Hey, put my, uh, new found thousand dollars into X. I would, I know that's sort of a unique perspective, but you know, money management is not my greatest strength.

I will tell you. And I do have a lot of friends in the independent bookselling world. So it would be, you know, a real thrill to just show up with a lot of money and be like, hit me with all your best books. That's wonderful. And I hope that people listening to this podcast. We'll also check out their local independent booksellers.