Markets turn Trump, Long rates spike, Election home stretch, Influencer mania, Saving Starbucks

Key parts of Chamath’s prediction have, on balance, played out as he described, though some language (like “overwhelmingly”) was stronger than what most models showed at the time.

1. “Overwhelmingly to a Trump win” / markets correctly pricing it in

   • Donald Trump did win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, 312–226 in the Electoral College and by about 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • On October 25, 2024, major prediction markets like Polymarket priced Trump around the low‑to‑mid 60s in win probability (≈63–66%), briefly spiking to 99% only because a single whale trade cleared the order book. (xbo.com)
   • A side market on Polymarket tracking Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin forecast resolved that Trump’s model odds on October 25 did not exceed 55%, implying a more modest edge there. (polymarket.com)
   • National polling averages in late October still showed a very close race, often with a slight Harris popular‑vote lead. (en.wikipedia.org)
     Assessment: Markets were indeed leaning Trump and that “tilt” proved directionally correct, but “overwhelmingly” overstates how lopsided the probabilities actually were. This makes the framing somewhat exaggerated but not flatly wrong.

2. Conditional macro/market call if Trump won
   Chamath’s concrete claims were that, if Trump won by a solid margin, in the short term: (a) gold would go up more, (b) Bitcoin would go up, (c) equity prices would move higher, and (d) long‑term U.S. rates would move higher.

   • Gold: In October 2024, gold closed the month around $2,744/oz; it dipped slightly in November–December (closing about $2,654 and $2,624) but then moved sharply higher through 2025, with monthly closes above $3,100 by March and around $3,29x–3,30x by mid‑year, and later records above $4,300 by October 2025. (statmuse.com) Over the months following Trump’s win, the dominant trend was strongly upward, consistent with his “gold’s going to go up more” claim, even though there was a brief post‑election wobble.
   • Bitcoin: Bitcoin closed October 2024 at about $70,215. In November—immediately following the November 5 election—it rallied to a ~$96,449 month‑end close (+37% MoM), remained in the low–mid $90Ks in December, and moved above $100K in January 2025, before eventually hitting new all‑time highs around $125K in October 2025. (statmuse.com) This clearly fits “Bitcoin will probably go up.”
   • Equities: The S&P 500 closed October 2024 at about 5,705 and then rose to ~6,032 by end‑November and ~5,882 at end‑December, leaving it clearly above pre‑election levels. (statmuse.com) U.S. equities continued to advance in 2025, with the S&P 500 above 6,700 by late November 2025. (apnews.com) This matches his expectation that “higher equity prices” would reflect short‑term economic upside.
   • Long‑term U.S. rates: The 10‑year Treasury yield was around 4.10–4.20% in early/late October 2024, then rose to about 4.36% on November 1 and 4.39% on December 1, later peaking near 4.63% in January 2025 before easing a bit. (value-trades.com) That pattern—yields moving noticeably higher in the months after the election—is in line with his call that “it’ll also push out long term rates.”

Overall:
Trump did win, and in the months after his victory, gold, Bitcoin, major U.S. equity indices, and long‑term Treasury yields all moved higher from late‑October/early‑November 2024 levels, as Chamath predicted. The only real quibble is his rhetorical choice of “overwhelmingly” to describe pre‑election odds, which were more like a solid but not lopsided Trump edge. Given that the core directional and conditional parts of the forecast came true, this prediction is best classified as right, with some overstatement in how he described the degree of market confidence before the vote.

Trump did win the November 2024 U.S. presidential election and took office in January 2025, satisfying the prediction’s initial condition. His administration has implemented notable parts of an economic program, including broad new tariffs and a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve / digital‑asset stockpile, which are relevant to inflation and to crypto markets. (en.wikipedia.org)

Inflation so far (up to late 2025):

• Headline CPI inflation has generally run around 2.3–3.0% year‑over‑year in 2025, slightly below or similar to 2024’s average (~3%). A monthly table of 12‑month CPI changes shows 2024 annual inflation at 2.95% and 2025 readings in the low‑to‑mid‑2% range through at least August. (in2013dollars.com)
• July 2025 CPI was 2.7% year‑over‑year, with core CPI at 3.1%, a modest uptick attributed in part to Trump’s tariffs, but not a clear break to significantly higher inflation versus the prior year. (reuters.com)
• Consensus forecasts from the National Association for Business Economics see inflation easing slightly from about 2.9% at end‑2025 to 2.6% in 2026, suggesting no confirmed sustained move to higher medium‑term inflation yet. Market‑based 5‑year inflation expectations have ticked up somewhat (to around the mid‑3% range), but these are expectations, not realized medium‑term outcomes. (reuters.com)

Because “medium term” in the user’s normalization is roughly 1–3 years after inauguration, we are less than one full year into that window (late 2025 vs. a January 2025 start). Realized inflation so far has not clearly moved higher than the pre‑Trump baseline, and we do not yet have data for the bulk of the 1–3‑year period. So the core claim that U.S. inflation will rise in the medium term under Trump’s program cannot yet be definitively judged.

Bitcoin and gold as hedges:

• Gold has strongly appreciated during Trump’s new term. The average gold price in 2024 was about $2,388/oz; in 2025 the average is over $3,400/oz with prices recently above $4,000/oz, implying roughly a 60% gain year‑to‑date and multiple new all‑time highs. Analysts and news coverage frequently tie this rally to safe‑haven demand amid tariff‑driven uncertainty, concerns over U.S. debt, and inflation / policy risks—consistent with gold trading as an "uncertainty/inflation hedge." (statmuse.com)
• Bitcoin has also appreciated sharply relative to pre‑election levels. It rose from about $44,000 on Jan 1, 2024 to around $94,000 on Jan 1, 2025, and then to record highs above $120,000 in 2025 before pulling back to the high‑$80Ks to ~$90K range. This run‑up overlapped with Trump’s election victory and subsequent crypto‑friendly measures, including the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which commentators describe as a major factor in the 2024–2025 surge. (in2013dollars.com)

These asset‑price moves fit Chamath’s view that Bitcoin and gold would “trade that way” as hedges in a Trump scenario, but the explicit prediction you supplied is about inflation rising in the medium term and therefore those hedges performing.

Given that:

• The conditional event (Trump winning and implementing a program) has happened.
• Bitcoin and gold have indeed appreciated strongly in a way consistent with hedge behavior.
• But the key macro piece—a clear, sustained increase in U.S. inflation in the 1–3 years after inauguration—cannot yet be confirmed, and the available data to date do not show a decisive move higher versus the pre‑Trump period.

The fairest overall assessment as of November 30, 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than clearly right or wrong.

The prediction concerns the entire next U.S. presidential term starting in January 2025 and running through January 2029. As of today (November 30, 2025), that term is less than one year in, with roughly three years still remaining. Final totals for additional federal spending/deficits over the full 4‑year period are therefore not yet known. Even though there are projections (e.g., from the Congressional Budget Office) about future deficits and spending under current law and assumed policies, those are forecasts, not realized outcomes. Because the time period the prediction is about has not finished and the actual cumulative deficits for January 2025–January 2029 are not yet observable, it is too early to judge whether the “$8–10 trillion regardless of who wins” claim is correct.

The prediction specifies a time horizon of 4–10 years starting with administrations from 2025 onward (i.e., roughly 2025–2029 at minimum, possibly out to the mid‑2030s). As of November 30, 2025, we are only about 1 year into that 4–10 year window, so it is too early to determine whether a “cataclysmic contraction in white collar employment in the United States” over that multi‑year period will in fact occur.

Available data so far do not settle the question one way or the other:

• U.S. employment in professional and business services (a major white‑collar category) has shown some cooling and restructuring in 2024–2025, including notable tech and corporate layoffs, but aggregate employment in these sectors has not yet undergone a clearly “cataclysmic” multi‑year collapse; instead, the labor market remains relatively tight compared with pre‑pandemic norms, with unemployment still low by historical standards.
• At the same time, AI and automation adoption is accelerating, and many analysts continue to debate their longer‑term impact on white‑collar work. However, projections about large future job losses are forecasts, not realized outcomes at this point.

Because the prediction is about structural labor‑market outcomes over a 4–10 year span, and only a small fraction of that span has elapsed, current evidence cannot yet confirm or falsify it. Therefore the correct status as of now is “inconclusive (too early)”.

This prediction is about the timing of major federal fiscal austerity: Jason says it likely won’t occur in the 2025–2029 administration but that the following administration (roughly 2029–2033) “is going to have to do some belt tightening.” As of today (November 30, 2025), the 2029–2033 administration has not begun, so there is no way to observe whether it will in fact implement “significant federal fiscal austerity measures.”

Current analyses of the U.S. fiscal outlook (e.g., Brookings, Stanford’s SIEPR) do emphasize that debt and deficits are on an unsustainable path and that at some point non-trivial tax increases and/or spending cuts will likely be required, but those are forward‑looking warnings, not evidence about what will actually be done in 2029–2033. (brookings.edu)

Because the administration window the prediction refers to is entirely in the future, the prediction cannot yet be evaluated, so the correct status is “inconclusive (too early)”.

The prediction explicitly covers a 5–10 year horizon starting from October 2024, so as of November 30, 2025 we are only ~1 year in—too early to know whether the long‑run outcomes on debt, corporate behavior, and distributional effects will materialize.

Available data so far are broadly consistent with possibility but not confirmation of the debt part: U.S. gross federal debt was about $35.7T in Oct 2024 and around $38.1T by early November 2025, an increase of roughly $2.2T in one year. (theworlddata.com) If that pace persisted for a decade it would be on the order of +$20T, but future policy and macro shocks are highly uncertain, so this cannot yet be judged right or wrong.

Large firms are clearly emphasizing efficiency and doing layoffs, especially tied to automation and AI, but they have not literally “stopped hiring,” and the overall labor market remains relatively stable: unemployment claims are near a 7‑month low even as high‑profile layoffs mount. (businessinsider.com) Corporate profits remain high—rising 5.1% in 2024 with small quarterly moves in 2025—suggesting continued profitability but not yet an extraordinary structural break. (bea.gov)

Asset‑owner performance has been solid but we only have a short sample: the S&P 500 is up about 16% in 2025 year‑to‑date, and national home prices are still rising a few percent per year. (statmuse.com) That’s positive for equity and real‑estate holders but far from demonstrating that they will do “fabulously” over an entire 5–10 year period.

On the distributional side, the Federal Reserve’s 2024 household well‑being survey (fielded near the time of the prediction) finds about 73% of adults say they are at least doing OK financially, leaving 27% saying they are just getting by or finding it hard to get by—evidence of strain, but not the 40–50% share the prediction envisages, and we lack multi‑year forward data to see whether that group rises into the forecasted range. (federalreserve.gov)

Because (a) the forecast is explicitly long‑term (5–10 years), and (b) current evidence neither clearly confirms nor clearly falsifies the magnitude of the debt increase, the persistence of ultra‑lean hiring at large firms, or the specific severity/scale of financial stress among 40–50% of Americans, the prediction’s accuracy cannot yet be determined.

This prediction is explicitly about the long term ("for the next 50 or 100 years"), so as of November 30, 2025—barely a year after the statement—it is far too early to determine whether Bitcoin will:

1. Persist as the dominant global inflation‑hedging asset for decades, and
2. Structurally displace gold’s role as the primary rational economic insurance policy against inflation.

While we can currently observe that:

• Bitcoin has at times outperformed gold over shorter windows and is increasingly discussed as a macro or "digital gold" asset in financial media and institutional commentary.
• Gold still has a vastly larger total market value, is widely held by central banks and institutions, and remains the canonical inflation hedge in traditional finance and reserve management.

…none of this evidence is sufficient to validate or falsify a 50–100 year structural claim. Market leadership as an inflation hedge, central‑bank reserve behavior, regulatory treatment of Bitcoin, technological risks, and macro regimes will all evolve over many decades.

Because the prediction’s time horizon extends out to roughly 2074–2124, and we are only in 2025, the correct assessment is that it is too early to tell whether the prediction is ultimately right or wrong.

Based on the actual 2024 U.S. election outcome, Kamala Harris did not win the November 2024 presidential election; Donald Trump won the presidency. This is reported in major U.S. and international coverage of the 2024 election results and subsequent inauguration coverage.

Because Chamath’s prediction was explicitly conditional — "what happens if Kamala Harris wins" — the condition (Harris winning) never occurred. The forecast concerned how markets would react in that counterfactual scenario, so we cannot empirically test whether the stated reversals in long‑term yields, the dollar, and flows into gold/Bitcoin/equities would have happened.

Since enough time has passed but the antecedent did not occur, the correctness of the prediction cannot be determined from real‑world data, making it ambiguous rather than right, wrong, or merely too early to tell.

Chamath’s claim was that, given the then‑record level of the Buffett Indicator, U.S. equities were likely to become cheaper before they got more expensive.

On the episode date (Oct 25, 2024), they explicitly note that the market‑cap‑to‑GDP ‘Buffett Indicator’ had reached a new all‑time high, implying very stretched valuations.【0search2】 This aligns with outside reporting that by late 2024 the Buffett Indicator was near or above ~200%, its prior “danger” zone peak.【6news15】

Pricewise, the S&P 500 closed at 5,808.12 on 2024‑10‑25.【5view0】 After further gains into late 2024 and early 2025, a Trump‑driven tariff shock in early April 2025 triggered a sharp selloff: FRED data show the S&P 500 falling to 4,982.77 on 2025‑04‑08, clearly below the 5,808 level on the podcast date, and nearly 19% below its then record high.【5view0】2search3】1news14】 That is a material correction and unquestionably “cheaper” than on Oct 25, 2024.

Valuation metrics moved the same way. Coverage of the Buffett Indicator notes it surged past 200% in late 2024, then dropped from about 208% in mid‑February 2025 to roughly 180% by April 2025—a ~13.5% decline—due to that market pullback.【6search4】6news13】 That means broad equity valuations (market cap vs. GDP) were indeed lower than around the time of his comment.

After this correction, equities did in fact “get more expensive”: the S&P 500 recovered and went on to new record highs above 6,173 in June 2025 and later higher still in October 2025.【1search1】1news14】

Because U.S. equities first became meaningfully cheaper than at the time of his statement and then moved to substantially higher levels, the specific prediction that “equities are probably going to be cheaper before they’re going to get more expensive” describes what actually happened.

The prediction is explicitly about the next decade after October 25, 2024, i.e., roughly through October 2034. As of today (November 30, 2025), only a bit more than one year of that 10‑year window has passed, so we cannot yet know whether U.S. Treasury yields will spend a sustained period in the 6–8% range.

What we can observe so far is that the 10‑year U.S. Treasury yield in late 2025 is around 4.0%: recent data show it at about 4.0–4.1% in November 2025, below both the historical long‑term average (~5.8%) and well below the 6–8% band Chamath mentioned.

• YCharts reports the 10‑year at 4.01% on November 25, 2025, with commentary that this is under the long‑term average of 5.82%. (ycharts.com)
• TradingEconomics/Fed data similarly place the November 2025 10‑year constant‑maturity yield around 4.0%. (tradingeconomics.com)
• Other market commentary through mid‑2025 also discusses 10‑year yields in the mid‑4% area, not near 6–8%. (pnccapitaladvisors.com)

However, the core claim is about where the fair/market‑clearing yield ends up “over the next decade,” and specifically whether it could be stably in the 6–8% range for a meaningful period. Since most of that decade is still in the future, we cannot yet label the prediction as right or wrong; it is simply too early to tell.

Based on data through late 2025, the prediction has not come true yet, but its timeframe (“at some point in the coming years”) is long enough that it can’t be definitively judged.

1. Fed Treasury purchases have not significantly increased; they’ve declined.
   Federal Reserve balance sheet reports show that from September 25, 2024 to March 26, 2025, total assets fell from about $7.1T to $6.7T, with securities held outright down $240B and U.S. Treasury holdings down from about $4.38T to $4.24T. (federalreserve.gov) Subsequent H.4.1 data for October 1, 2025 show Reserve Bank credit and securities held outright continuing to fall, with U.S. Treasury securities down to about $4.20T, confirming ongoing balance sheet runoff (quantitative tightening), not renewed large-scale buying. (federalreserve.gov) A Congressional Research Service summary for March 26, 2025 likewise notes about $4.2T in Treasuries on the Fed’s balance sheet, consistent with a smaller, not larger, Fed footprint. (congress.gov) This is the opposite of “needing to buy the debt” in a new monetization phase.

2. There is still substantial private and foreign demand for Treasuries.
   Market coverage of a 2025 30‑year Treasury auction reports “strong demand,” with the issue clearing at a yield below pre‑auction levels and a higher‑than‑average combined share for direct and indirect bidders, suggesting that investors remain willing to absorb new supply. (barrons.com) Broader commentary notes that despite de‑dollarization talk and some reduction in foreign central bank custody holdings at the New York Fed, total foreign holdings of Treasuries reached a record around March 2025, implying ongoing foreign (especially private-sector) appetite for U.S. debt. (reuters.com) That contradicts the near‑term premise that “there is no one else to buy the debt.”

3. But the prediction’s horizon is multi‑year, so it can’t yet be falsified.
   The statement was that “at some point in the coming years” the Fed will be forced to monetize federal debt because other buyers will be insufficient. Only a bit more than one year has elapsed since the October 25, 2024 episode, and current evidence only shows that this scenario has not occurred yet—not that it cannot occur later in the remaining “coming years.”

Because (a) the Fed has not significantly ramped up Treasury purchases and demand from other buyers remains adequate so far, but (b) the time window of the prediction clearly extends beyond late 2025, the correct classification at this point is inconclusive (too early) rather than right or wrong.

Key elements of Friedberg’s thesis have partially materialized, but the full commodity/inflation cycle he was talking about is still playing out, and performance across commodity‑linked businesses is very uneven.

1. Did the “upcoming inflationary environment with rising commodity prices” occur?

• Global inflation has eased from 2022 peaks but remains above pre‑COVID norms, with the IMF projecting global headline inflation around 4.2% in 2025, and U.S. inflation remaining above target with upside risks. This is described as persistent and more stubborn than hoped. (meetings.imf.org)
• U.S. data show renewed price pressures in 2025 (e.g., September 2025 CPI and PPI up 0.3% month‑on‑month, with producer prices driven by higher energy costs), and forecasters expect tariffs and input costs to keep inflation elevated. (reuters.com)
• Commodity prices are mixed: the Bloomberg Commodity Index is up about 15% over the last year as of November 26, 2025, indicating a broad rebound. (ycharts.com) However, the World Bank’s April and October 2025 Commodity Markets Outlooks project overall commodity prices to fall 7–12% in 2025 and further in 2026, driven mainly by a significant oil glut and weaker global growth. (worldbank.org)
• Within that aggregate, precious metals have exploded upward: gold and silver hit all‑time highs in October 2025 (gold briefly around $4,300–$4,400/oz; silver above $54/oz), driven by inflation and “currency debasement” fears. (markets.chroniclejournal.com)

Net: we do have an inflationary backdrop with high and sticky inflation and some strongly rising commodities (especially precious metals), but not a clean, broad‑based commodity bull market—energy and some bulk commodities are weak.

2. Have commodity‑linked businesses outperformed non‑commodity businesses “over that cycle”?
Evidence is mixed and depends heavily on which commodity segment you look at and what horizon you choose:

• Metals & mining equities:

  • The FTSE Global All Cap Precious Metals & Mining Index is up ~85.7% year‑to‑date in 2025 through August 29, 2025, outperforming the broad FTSE Global All Cap equity index (up ~14.75% YTD) by more than 70 percentage points. (lseg.com)
  • The MSCI World Metals & Mining Index shows a one‑year total return of ~27.9% as of November 21, 2025, well above global equity benchmarks, which are in the high‑teens to low‑20s over similar 12‑month windows (e.g., MSCI ACWI IMI ~17.3% 1‑year as of September 30, 2025). (ycharts.com)
    This is strong evidence that at least some mining/commodity‑linked stocks have substantially outperformed broad non‑commodity equities during the recent inflationary episode.

• Energy equities:

  • The S&P 500 Energy sector has a negative ~‑3.7% 1‑year total return as of November 25, 2025, badly lagging the S&P 500, which is up roughly mid‑teens percent in 2025. (ycharts.com)
  • World Bank and other analyses attribute much of this underperformance to an oil supply glut and expected further declines in energy prices through 2026. (worldbank.org)
    So energy producers—also quintessential “commodity‑linked businesses”—have not outperformed the broader market.

• Commodity trading houses:

  • Physical commodity traders (Vitol, Trafigura, Mercuria, Gunvor, Glencore, etc.) enjoyed record profits in 2022–23, then saw earnings fall sharply in 2024 as volatility normalized, though profits remained historically high. (spglobal.com)
  • By 2025, reports describe trading margins as having “normalized” from boom levels, with some rebound in metals trading in particular, but not a clear, broad step‑change that would let us say they have decisively beaten non‑commodity sectors through a full new cycle. (markets.financialcontent.com)

Given this:

• Certain commodity‑linked segments (especially precious metals and some metals/miners) are dramatically outperforming broad equity indices in 2025. (lseg.com)
• Other major commodity‑linked sectors (notably energy producers) are clearly underperforming. (ycharts.com)
• The “commodity trading businesses” Friedberg mentioned have moved from exceptional boom profits to more normal—though still high—levels, not a simple, sustained step‑up versus the rest of corporate earnings. (spglobal.com)

3. Is the cycle far enough along to judge his claim “over that cycle”?

• The podcast was released October 25, 2024, so only about 13 months have passed.
• Macro forecasts from the IMF and World Bank see inflation gradually declining but still above target in some advanced economies (especially the U.S.) through at least 2026, and they project commodity prices in aggregate to decline further into 2026, not obviously completing a new, clean commodity “up cycle” yet. (worldbank.org)
• Because Friedberg’s statement is explicitly conditional and multi‑year (“over that cycle”), the relevant comparison period is the full inflation/commodity cycle he anticipated, not just the first year of it. Right now we’re mid‑stream, and forward‑looking projections are still being revised.

Conclusion:

• We can say that parts of his thesis look directionally plausible: in a period of renewed inflation worries and strong precious‑metals rallies, some commodity‑linked equities (particularly gold/silver miners and broader metals & mining indices) have massively outperformed broad global equities so far. (lseg.com)
• However, other major commodity‑linked sectors (like oil & gas producers) have underperformed, and the aggregate commodity price outlook is for declines into 2026 rather than a clear, sustained up‑cycle. (ycharts.com)
• Because the time horizon and exact definition of the “cycle” are vague, and we are only about a year past the prediction, there isn’t yet a clear, cycle‑complete data set that would definitively show that “commodity‑linked businesses” as a whole out‑ or under‑performed non‑commodity businesses across the entire episode.

For those reasons, the fairest assessment today is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than clearly right or wrong.

Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election, receiving 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226 and winning the national popular vote with 49.8% to Harris’s 48.3%. This outcome is documented in official result summaries and post‑election analyses of the 2024 United States presidential election, which identify Trump as the elected (and now serving) president following the November 5, 2024 vote. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given David Sacks’s prediction that “all the data is basically pointing one direction, which is a Trump victory,” and the verified election outcome showing that Trump indeed won, this prediction is right.

Trump did in fact win the national popular vote in 2024, taking about 49.8% to Kamala Harris’s 48.3%, and won the Electoral College 312–226.(en.wikipedia.org) However, multiple nonpartisan analyses explicitly conclude that this was not a landslide: the Council on Foreign Relations and others note that 312 electoral votes and a 1.5‑point popular‑vote margin are modest by historical standards and smaller than classic "landslide" wins like 1964, 1972, or 1984.(cfr.org) The Cook Political Report points out that the race ultimately hinged on roughly 230,000 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, underscoring how close the outcome was.(cookpolitical.com) In addition, pre‑election national polling averages generally showed Harris with a small lead rather than Trump clearly leading the popular vote, contradicting the scenario the prediction envisioned.(aljazeera.com) Since Trump did win the popular vote but the result is widely characterized as a narrow or modest victory rather than an Electoral College landslide, the conditional claim "if Trump is winning the popular vote, then it’s a landslide" did not hold in practice.

Donald Trump did win the November 5, 2024 U.S. presidential election, receiving 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226 and winning the national popular vote 49.8% to 48.3% (a margin of about 1.5–1.6 percentage points).(en.wikipedia.org)

However, David Sacks’s prediction was not just that Trump would win, but that he would win “not that close”—a “solid victory” and “pretty handily”—as opposed to a very tight race.

Post‑election analyses characterize 2024 as a close election:

• FiveThirtyEight/ABC’s retrospective explicitly concludes that “the 2024 presidential election was close, not a landslide,” noting Trump’s national popular-vote edge of only about 1.6 points and that Harris would have won the Electoral College had she done just a couple of points better in a few key states.(goodmorningamerica.com)
• Pennsylvania, the tipping‑point state, was decided by roughly 1.7 percentage points (50.4%–48.7%), meaning a swing under 2 points nationwide could have flipped the outcome.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Commentators have stressed that Trump’s margin is historically small, with opinion pieces pushing back on claims of a “landslide” or overwhelming mandate and emphasizing the narrow popular‑vote margin and relatively modest Electoral College spread.(theguardian.com)

Given that:

1. The national popular‑vote margin was about 1.5–1.6 points; and
2. The tipping‑point state margin was about 1.7 points, leaving the election easily flippable with a small swing; and
3. Major analysts explicitly describe the outcome as a close election rather than a landslide or decisive blowout,

Sacks’s qualitative claim that Trump would win “not that close” and “pretty handily” is not borne out by how the results and subsequent expert analyses characterize the 2024 race. The direction (Trump wins) was correct, but the core prediction being evaluated—victory by a clear, not‑close margin—was wrong, so overall this prediction is best scored as wrong.

Jason’s prediction matches what happened in the run‑up to the 5 November 2024 U.S. election. In the final 10–12 days, U.S. intelligence agencies and fact‑checkers repeatedly warned about and debunked viral fake‑election videos on social media: a Russian‑made video showing supposed mail‑in ballots for Donald Trump being ripped up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which racked up hundreds of thousands of views on X before officials declared it fake; and a separate viral video of a man claiming, falsely, to be a Haitian immigrant voting multiple times for Kamala Harris in Georgia, which the FBI and other agencies also identified as manufactured by Russian influence actors just four days before Election Day. (theguardian.com) These were part of a broader wave of Russian and other foreign disinformation operations that, according to U.S. intelligence, relied heavily on fabricated media and were expected to intensify in the immediate lead‑up to voting. (en.wikipedia.org) While analysts later judged that AI deepfakes did not completely transform the election, there were notable AI‑generated or AI‑manipulated pieces of political media in 2024—including widely shared deepfake‑style videos and audio of Kamala Harris circulated on X months before the vote—which demonstrated exactly the kind of synthetic content Jason was concerned about. (nationalsecuritynews.com) Taken together, the documented surge of viral, demonstrably false election content in the last week or two—some of it involving AI‑generated or heavily manipulated media—means his qualitative forecast of “a lot of fake news, maybe even deepfakes” during that period was borne out.

Public data show two key things since October 25, 2024:

1. GLP‑1 adoption clearly kept rising.

   • Multiple reports in 2025 describe GLP‑1 weight‑loss and diabetes drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, etc.) going from niche to mainstream, with about 1 in 8 Americans (≈12–13% of adults) using a GLP‑1 by late 2025, up from lower levels in 2023–24. (axios.com)
   • These articles emphasize rapid growth in prescriptions and widespread cultural impact, confirming the “GLP‑1 adoption increases across the U.S.” part of the prediction.

2. Starbucks’ same‑store sales did not keep falling as GLP‑1 adoption rose.
   Around the time of the prediction, Starbucks’ U.S. comparable store sales were already under pressure: Q3 FY2024 U.S. comps were –2%, and preliminary Q4 FY2024 results showed a 6% decline in U.S. comparable sales, driven by a 10% drop in transactions. (investor.starbucks.com)
   After the prediction, however, the pattern is:

   • Q1 FY2025 (reported Jan 2025): global same‑store sales –4%, North America –4%. (theguardian.com)
   • Q2 FY2025 (quarter ended Mar 30, 2025): global comps –1%; U.S. comps –2%. (investor.starbucks.com)
   • Q3 FY2025 (quarter ended Jun 29, 2025): global comps –2%; U.S. comps –2%. (investor.starbucks.com)
   • Q4 FY2025 (quarter ended Sep 28, 2025): global comparable store sales increased 1%, and U.S. comps were flat (0%), with September turning positive. Starbucks highlighted this as the first quarter of global comp growth after seven quarters of declines. (investor.starbucks.com)
   • For the full FY2025, global comps were –1% and U.S. comps –2%, but importantly, the direction stopped being “continuously down” by Q4 FY2025. (investor.starbucks.com)

Chamath’s normalized prediction was stronger than just “GLP‑1 will be a headwind.” He said that as GLP‑1 adoption goes up, Starbucks same‑store sales will continue to go down, and framed this as something Starbucks couldn’t fix with its then‑current offering. In reality, during a period when GLP‑1 usage became mainstream and kept rising, Starbucks’ comps:

• Declined for a while, but
• Then stabilized and turned (slightly) positive globally and flat in the U.S. in Q4 FY2025, even as GLP‑1 adoption remained high and rising.

Because we now observe a quarter where GLP‑1 penetration is higher than ever yet Starbucks’ same‑store sales are no longer falling, the strong directional claim that “as GLP‑1 adoption goes up, same‑store sales will continue to go down” is not borne out by the data. Confounding factors (new CEO, turnaround strategy, pricing, operations, macro environment) make causality murky, but on the literal prediction of ongoing declines with rising GLP‑1 use, the realized sales trajectory contradicts it. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as wrong.