Squawk Pod · Nov 6, 2026 · 57m · 47m saved
With Ron Baron, Founder of Baron Capital · Tarek Mansour, Co-Founder & CEO of Kalshi
Photo: Web Summit, Diarmuid Greene, CC BY 2.0 via Wikipedia
The Nasdaq lost about $2.5 trillion in value on November 5, 2026, its worst single session since the "Liberation Day" tariff selloff roughly 19 months earlier. Most investors spent the next morning parsing what a Democratic sweep of the midterms meant for Washington's appetite to regulate AI and Elon Musk's companies. Ron Baron, who has run Baron Capital for 56 years, told CNBC's Squawk Pod it barely registers.
"These are things I normally don't care about. I don't think about elections. I don't think about the price of oil. The only thing I think about macro is inflation." — Ron Baron
Ron, who turned a $10 million bet into Baron Capital's roughly $70 billion today, says Musk alone accounts for about $30 billion of that fortune and expects "hundreds of billions" more over the next decade.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 57 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
Ron Baron says political and regulatory risk around Musk "doesn't factor" into his investing
He ignores elections, oil prices and talk of congressional hearings; only inflation moves his portfolio
Baron Capital has already banked about $30 billion on its Musk-related holdings
Without Musk, Ron says his original $100 million would have compounded to $40 billion instead of $70 billion
Musk builds data centers for a fraction of what rivals pay, Ron says
Where competitors spend $50–60 billion and two and a half years, Musk's operation does it for about $35 billion in four to eight months
Anthropic pays about $3.1 billion a month to rent xAI's spare compute, Ron says, until Grok needs it back
Kalshi's own data flagged a Democratic sweep hours before the networks called it
Its "power index" had favored Democrats for six months; a bellwether county's returns pointed to a sweep by 6:01pm on election night
A $1.5–2 million attempt to move an LA mayoral contract reverted in nine seconds, Tarek says, which he calls evidence that real-money markets self-correct
Tarek wants Kalshi's own insider-trading bans on politicians written into law for the whole industry
1. Elections Don't Factor
Ron does not build his portfolio around politics at all, even after a near-record one-day loss across the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000. He watches one number instead.
Ron Baron says he ignores elections and oil prices because only inflation moves his portfolio
"These are things I normally don't care about. I don't think about elections. I don't think about the price of oil. The only thing I think about macro is inflation." — Ron Baron
Asked directly whether he can predict how Washington treats Musk next, Ron said the question itself is the wrong one to be asking.
"Can you predict this? I cannot. Can you predict this? No. So why bother? Let's talk about the business." — Ron Baron
