Depressed Day Traders (EP. 477)

Summary

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Animal Spirits Podcast: "Depressed Day Traders" (EP. 477)

Date: August 12, 2026
Hosts: Michael Batnick & Ben Carlson
Theme: Markets, life, and investing – analyzing market resilience, AI-driven earnings, the mood of retail traders, and shifts in global and personal finance.

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Episode Overview

In this in-depth episode, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson unpack the paradoxes of today’s stock market—soaring to new highs amid turbulent headlines—and scrutinize how AI and hyperscaler investments are reshaping earnings, sector leadership, and economic growth. They also examine the psychology of retail trading, the consequences of speculative behavior, and cultural shifts in work, retirement, and even entertainment. The duo navigate timely headlines, studies, and their own investment anecdotes with their trademark banter and candor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. All-Time Highs Despite Bad News (00:50–04:45)

• Key Fact: The S&P 500 has hit 1,379 all-time highs since 1950—roughly 7% of all trading days.
• 2026 Context: 26 new highs already this year, above the 21-per-year average since 1990.
• Market Resilience: Despite wars, high inflation, Fed rate hikes, and corporate crises, stocks climb—driven (the hosts argue) mostly by the “AI trade.”
• Quote:
  • “The market is Teflon… war in Iran, higher gas prices… the stock market continues to move higher. Is it all AI?” – Michael (01:25)
• Insight: The duo credit massive, unprecedented capital expenditures (CapEx) from mega-tech "hyperscaler" firms as the engine behind markets and earnings growth.

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2. The AI/Hyperscaler Capital Spend Boom (03:00–05:50)

• Data: Hyperscaler CapEx has exploded from $500B (2022) to $3T over the next three years (Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft).
• Long-Term Thinking: Big Tech has shifted from buybacks to investing heavily in long-term projects (eg. data centers).
• Quote:
  • “There’s never been anything like this before, where the biggest companies just said, ‘Alright, we’re changing everything, we’re getting rid of all our money. Take it. See you later.’” – Michael (04:27)
• Caveat: Growth isn’t infinite; eventual ROI is needed, but the dominance of these firms makes betting against them risky.

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3. Earnings Growth and Market Breadth (06:40–10:00)

• S&P 500 Q2 EPS: On track for 30% year-over-year growth (excluding one-time markups due to private company investments).
• Operating Earnings: Multi-year vertical surge, reminiscent of a “momentum stock breakout.”
• Market Breadth: Despite headline gains, only 45% of companies are outperforming the S&P this year—tough for stock pickers.
  • Sectors like energy, materials, and tech lead, but few portfolios are overweight these groups.
• Quote:
  • “If you looked at this and thought it was a stock like a momentum stock, you’d say I’m buying the breakout here… It kind of defies logic. Imagine showing this to someone 5 years ago, pre-chatGPT.” – Michael (08:15)

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4. Emerging Markets: The New AI-Heavy Index (11:45–16:15)

• Valuation Disparity: EM index trades at a record discount to S&P (10x vs 20x forward earnings).
• Index Makeup: 45% Taiwan/South Korea (mostly semiconductors), 20% China, 12% India, 41% in tech.
• Retail Participation: South Korea’s retail trading jumps from 10% to 28% of volumes; household allocation to equities remains tiny, suggesting a “huge runway” for future asset flows.
• Reflection: Emerging markets have transformed from energy/banks to a “pure AI play.”
• Quote:
  • “Would you rather own emerging markets at 10x forward PE or the S&P at 20x, when EM is 40% tech?” – Michael (13:00)

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5. Crash Warnings & Market Structure (16:15–20:45)

• Michael Burry’s "1987 Crash" Call:
  • Hosts debate the merits and psychology of contrarian crash predictions.
• Probability of a "Swift Air Pocket": In the current environment, rapid downward corrections are more probable due to ultra-fast market repricing and information dissemination.
• Quote:
  • “When this thing does top out, it will be swift and fast… not that it’s going to be a 1987 rout.” – Michael (18:08)

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6. Rich Man, Poor Man—and "Degenerate" Investors (21:02–25:04)

• Drawing on comedy and news, the hosts find parallels between high-net-worth risk-takers and small-time gamblers—the difference, they argue, is mainly that the rich get second chances.
• Quote:
  • “If a person with $5,000 in their Robinhood account does five times leverage and blows up… degenerates. But if a billionaire does it, they’re a ‘risk taker.’” – Michael (22:05)

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7. Depressed Day Traders & Gambling Psychology (25:12–35:00)

• Stat: 25% of men aged 18–29 claim to trade stocks daily; two-thirds feel like failures.
• Trading vs. Gambling: Most daily traders lose and face greater psychological tolls due to loss aversion.
• Gambling Losses: US gamblers lost $5.8 trillion (1929–2025, inflation-adjusted).
• Self-delusion: 39% of bettors believe they're profitable; likely <5% actually are.
• Quote:
  • “The more you gamble on sports, take it from me, the more money you lose.” – Ben (27:14)
• Parental Tone: Most need to “pay the tuition of the market gods” and learn the hard way before becoming boring, long-term investors.
• Memorable Moment: Michael brags about lucky stock trades only to admit no real interest in day trading long-term (33:20).

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8. Speculative Mania: SPVs & SpaceX Hype (35:44–40:00)

• SPV Cautionary Tale: Investors in convoluted SpaceX pre-IPO SPVs face unexpected outcomes due to poor transparency; one investor’s $17k grew to $45k—good, but far from the expected $300k.
• Wolf of Wall Street: The guys reflect on the glamorization of financial fraudsters, with Michael hating the real Belfort:
  • “What a scumbag. No remorse.” – Ben (39:24)

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9. Cultural Shifts in Drinking, Work, and Retirement (40:31–44:37)

• Bars Targeting Gen X, Not Zoomers: Young people drink/socialize less—marijuana use surpasses daily alcohol use.
• Retirement Trends: Drop in labor force participation among 55+ is driven by wealth effect/early retirement, not despair.
• Quote:
  • “My house is worth way more. My stock portfolio is worth way more. My business is worth way more. I’m out.” – Michael (43:11)

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10. AI as Macro Stimulus—and PR Reframing (45:02–50:24)

• Hot Take: AI buildout is a macro “stimulus” (2.8% of GDP); perhaps without it, the US would be in recession.
• Host Skepticism: If not AI, investment would flow elsewhere—markets always find a new focus.
• Meta’s AI Spin: Zuckerberg pens a note on AI for good; hosts think PR is too little, too late to reverse growing negativity.
• Quote:
  • “We have to spin this more positively, and guess what, it’s probably too late.” – Michael (50:32)

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11. Personal Finance Habits & Portfolio-Checking (52:31–55:12)

• Wide gap between hosts on how often they check their portfolios: Michael updates a spreadsheet every six months, Ben checks “way more often than I should.”
• Quote:
  • “The more often you look, the more pain you’re gonna have.” – Michael (54:49)

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12. Predatory Gamification: Live Shopping App Destroys a Life (55:45–57:48)

• Story: An accountant lost $1.4 million, including loans and employer credit cards, on a live shopping/bidding app—citing “it was so easy to just swipe right.”
• Ethics: Hosts label these apps as predatory and call for greater scrutiny, balancing personal responsibility and corporate overreach.

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13. Housing Recession… With Rising Prices (57:52–59:54)

• Analysis: Housing recession since 2022, yet national home prices rose 12%.
• Supply/Demand: Millennials/Gen Z create huge demand, boomers won’t sell—housing shortage is structural, not cyclical.

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14. SpaceX Moon Ambitions & Disney’s Franchise Machine (59:54–64:27)

• SpaceX: Musk’s bold predictions for lunar "mass accelerator" and scaling intelligence; hosts admire the vision, though note a history of pie-in-the-sky promises.
• Disney: Despite brand power and huge franchise revenue (e.g., $1B/yr Toy Story), stock performance lags.
• Tech Frustrations: Clunky Disney+/Hulu app unification draws host ire.

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15. Pop Culture, Movie Genres, and Recommendations (64:31–82:29)

• Ongoing Zendaya Discourse: Michael calls her overrated; Ben disagrees, referencing her recent dramas for counterpoint.
• Westerns as a "Setting, Not a Genre": Ben muses on why the “Western” label persists.
• Streaming/Box Office: Impressive post-pandemic bounce, but IMAX/theater expansion slow due to capital risk.
• Personal Recommendations:
  • Kenny G Doc (Max)
  • The Westies (MGM+)
  • To Live and Die in LA (Classic ‘80s film)
  • Furiosa (Hulu)
  • Patricia Highsmith’s "Ripley" novels and Netflix miniseries

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “People hate data centers, but this is unprecedented CapEx. There’s never been anything like this before.” – Michael (04:27)
• “If you try to predict the crash all the time, you’re going to be wrong.” – Michael (17:00)
• “This is going to be one of those years where you go, ‘If you’re an active stock picker you should be doing really well,’ but you still might not be.” – Michael (10:06)
• “If a billionaire blows up, he’s a ‘risk taker.’ If a Robinhood trader does, they’re a ‘degenerate.’” – Michael (22:05)
• “The more you gamble on sports, take it from me, the more money you lose.” – Ben (27:14)
• “I love this insane entrepreneurial spirit—even if it sounds totally nuts.” – Ben, re: Elon Musk (60:41)
• “The more often you look [at your portfolio], the more pain you’re going to have.” – Michael (54:49)
• “Whistling. If you’re by yourself you can whistle; if you’re by other people, you can’t.” – Michael (71:07)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Market highs and AI as market engine: 00:53–05:50
• S&P Earnings and market breadth: 06:40–10:00
• Emerging Markets: structure & retail flows: 11:45–16:15
• Crash predictions & market structure: 16:15–20:45
• Day traders and gambling psychology: 25:12–35:00
• SpaceX SPV disaster & Wolf of Wall Street: 35:44–40:00
• Cultural shifts: alcohol, pot, retirement: 40:31–44:37
• Meta’s AI PR, economic impact: 45:02–50:24
• Personal finance: portfolio-checking: 52:31–55:12
• Predatory apps/gambling: 55:45–57:48
• Housing analysis: 57:52–59:54
• Elon Musk, Disney, pop-culture: 59:54–64:27
• Streaming, Westerns, 80s/90s movies: 64:31–79:34

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Closing Thoughts

In a market riding relentless highs, Animal Spirits finds plenty to question, celebrate, and warn against. The episode’s big takeaway: AI is both the growth engine and the risk-on flashpoint. Meanwhile, retail traders battle their own demons, pop culture shifts along generational lines, and skepticism remains the investors’ most valuable asset. Whether you’re a market old hand, new trader, or just here for the cultural tangents, Batnick and Carlson deliver insight with humility and humor.

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Transcript

[Michael Batnick]

Today's show is brought to you by Xtrackers by dws. Imagine harnessing the power of global transformation, investing in artificial intelligence, critical technology, semiconductors and green energy. With Xtrackers innovative thematic lineup, you can gain access to the ETFs that target these transformational sectors. It's more than investing, it's aligning with the innovations that are shaping tomorrow. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, Xtrackers makes exploring new opportunities seamlessly. Find out [e-mail] Together we grow. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Information on the fund's investment objectives, risk factors, charges and expenses can be found in the Fund's [e-mail] read it carefully before investing. Distributed by Alps Distributors, Inc. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, how many new all time highs has The S&P 500 hit since 1950? What's your guess? Ballpark?

[Ben Carlson]

It 1,468.

[Michael Batnick]

It's like 1,379. You're pretty close.

[Ben Carlson]

Holy shit.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you just pull that out of your ass?

[Ben Carlson]

Not bad.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm very proud of myself, more or less. Okay, so I think that's like 7% of all trading days. I say this because last week we hit all time highs again. You and I talked about this a little bit. Some charts from exhibit A here that show when this happens, 26 new all time highs so far this year. The average since 1990 is about 21. So we're a little ahead of schedule here. But the average is obviously skewed and varied. And the good years, there's a lot of them because there's plenty years where there wasn't any. Look at those. Look at that 2000-2012 range. A lot of zeros, a lot of nothing. So you have to take this when you can. In the good times. I think that this many all time highs, given all the headlines, would have surprised a lot of people. War in Iran, higher gas prices, all this stuff people are worried about, right? And the stock market continues to move higher. Is it all AI still? Is this the thing that just AI trumps everything? It doesn't matter what the headlines throw at us. It all determined by AI.

[Ben Carlson]

Ben, you're right. AI is the only thing that matters. We've spoken recently about how this market is Teflon. It started with the global pandemic and once in 100 year storm of inflation. And then we had the Fed jack up interest rates. The housing market is frozen. Silicon Valley bank went under tariffs Liberation Day 2 War War 2 Wars the

[Michael Batnick]

Yen carry trade unwind that was a

[Ben Carlson]

thing who cares but yes it's it's

[Michael Batnick]

one in China Remember that when we had to worry about that pretend to

[Ben Carlson]

care about that Evergrande in China it's

[Michael Batnick]

one thing commercial real estate crisis was going to happen There was going to be a commercial real estate crisis because everyone worked remotely.

[Ben Carlson]

Private credit crash Yep.

[Michael Batnick]

Private credit stagflation fears I I the

[Ben Carlson]

the reason why none of this has mattered really and truly I do believe it's the AI trade. I mean I don't think I'm going out on a limb there. So look at this chart. Well actually you know what? The consumer part of it is also a big part of the story. The fact that the consumer has been able to be resilient through all of this is remarkable. But through the lens of the stock market, what matters obviously is is the AI trade and the continued expansion of CapEx numbers. This is wild. Look at this chart from hyperscaler farmer or hyperscale farmer. Bloomberg Consensus on a rolling basis now surpassed $3 trillion. So we're looking at the three year sum on a rolling 12 month forward basis for Amazon, Google Metal, Meta, Oracle and Microsoft. And in December 2022 when this thing started it was at $500 billion and it's gone up and up and up and up and now it's going vertical and we're looking at $3 trillion over the next three years I suppose. Is that what we're looking at here?

[Michael Batnick]

That's amazing. I think one of these things these companies don't get enough credit for is the fact that for years it was kind of like all these companies are too short term in nature and they just care about share buybacks. And now look at these companies are investing everything they have essentially back into long term projects. These things are not really paying out yet and I think they deserve credit for saying all right, fine, we're going to think and act for the long term and people still hate it because people hate data centers and we'll get into that later. But this is just, there's never been anything like this before where the biggest companies just said all right, we're changing everything, we're getting rid of all of our money. Take it. See you later.

[Ben Carlson]

Hope this works. You mentioned at the start of the show all the all time highs that were enjoying. I, I mean I hope you're enjoying them. I sure am. And it won't last forever as we know. So what could be on the other side of this. I think this is, this is the obvious danger is this line is now such a gigant. I mean it's, it's going absolutely vertical and it can't continue to do this forever. It's not going to go from 3 trillion to 4 trillion to 7 trillion. Like at some point there's an upper limit. And what's awesome about this cycle is that you're not relying on these fly by night companies that have no earnings or anything like that. But the hyperscalers are powering a lot of the earnings growth that we're seeing because they're the ones doing the spending and if and when they slow down, the market's going to come down with it.

[Michael Batnick]

But yes.

[Ben Carlson]

Do you think we could see a handoff?

[Michael Batnick]

But that's some, this is what we've been talking about for three years. I feel like, like eventually. But the thing is, eventually there's going to be an ROI in this for them. That's the hope. That's the handoff, right? Is the ROI coming, coming back, coming

[Ben Carlson]

back to their pockets?

[Michael Batnick]

You always give these corporate CEOs more credit than me saying like, listen, these are not dumb people. They're not doing this like for their own ego or something. They're doing this because they think it's going to give them a return on capital at some point. I do believe that and I, I

[Ben Carlson]

guess if, and I believe they believe, I believe they believe that, yes.

[Michael Batnick]

And if you're betting against that, you're betting against like 7 to 10 of the biggest and best companies that have ever been created, that they have no idea what they're doing. And it's possible that they don't. But I, I think you have to give them the benefit of the doubt for everything that they've done in the past 15 to 20 years in terms of transforming the stock market and their companies.

[Ben Carlson]

Let me give you a data point. This is from Civita, bank of America S&P 500 Q2 EPS is on pace to grow 30% year over year. And that excludes the investment markups from Amazon and Alphabet, all of their private shares. So real life earnings.

[Michael Batnick]

So wait, explain it to people, because people don't, I don't think everyone realizes a lot of some of the earnings growth has been because these companies own a share of anthropic and open AI and they've been jacked up. And SpaceX in valuations in SpaceX, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Correct. So that is showing up in, in their earnings. But if you back that out because obviously that's not repeatable. If you back that out, it's still on pace to grow 30% year over year. I mean if you include the gains, which are one time and you shouldn't, it's up 50%. But again, back them out 30% year over year growth. I can't believe the market's at an all time high. What a shocker. Look at this chart from Yard. Denny, looking at the. So we had Ed Yardeni on the podcast last week. Wall street legend, been in the business forever. He has a chart that shows if

[Michael Batnick]

you type in Ed Yarden or Yardeni, research charts. He's got a ton of wonderful charts. Yeah, I've been using his bull and bear market tables for years.

[Ben Carlson]

So he's got one on a side by side chart of the indexes, large, mid and small, as well as a forward operating.

[Michael Batnick]

You're an index guy, not an indices guy.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm an index guy. What I say the indexes. The indexes. I don't do indices. Nope, I know it's tomatoes.

[Michael Batnick]

If you have a, if you have a British, if you're a British accent, you say indices.

[Ben Carlson]

Sure.

[Michael Batnick]

If you have a Long island accent. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

You say indexes with the operating earnings per share up and to the right at an all time high.

[Michael Batnick]

And this is the kind of thing, if you looked at this and thought it was a stock like a momentum stock, you'd say I'm buying the breakout here.

[Ben Carlson]

Mm.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm doing technical analysis on operating earnings big time flag. But it kind of defies logic. How is this possible? Imagine showing this to someone 5 years ago. Pre chat GPT. Hey, by 2026, operating margin, operating profits are going to go absolutely vertical. What would they have said was happening? You couldn't have predicted something like this. There was no way in 2021 you would have said this is coming. We're going to have 5% rates, we're going to at some point have 9% inflation and S&P 500 is going to be up 16% per year and operating profits are going to go through the roof. What would have had to happen? I have. There's no logical scenario back then you could have come up with for this.

[Ben Carlson]

Correct.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. This is interesting from Duality Research. I think we share a chart from them like every once a week. Great. Substack this year alone on a year to date basis. Again, we always record this, usually pre market on Tuesdays. The Russell 2000 is up 22% per year. That's small cap stocks equal weighted S&P 500 is up 16% and the S&P itself is up 14%. So it's closed the gap a little bit. Equal weight is still outperforming, yet only 45% of companies are outperforming the S&P 500 on a year to date basis. It's kind of crazy. 86%. He breaks it up by sectors as well. 86% of energy stocks are outperforming this year. 64% of materials, almost 60% of technology, and 60% of industrials. So it's. I don't know that you could necessarily call this like a. A hands down pound the table. Stock pickers market, even even though these other areas of the market are now picking up the slack, small caps and such like, if you're a stock picker, this is still probably kind of a challenging year because it's not like energy and industrials and materials make up a huge part of the index. How many people have a huge allocation to those sectors?

[Ben Carlson]

Energy investors.

[Michael Batnick]

So this is going to be one of those years where you go, oh, if you're an active stock picker, you should be doing really well. And you might still might not be because not as many stocks are outperforming the S and P as you think.

[Ben Carlson]

I think it's like half right now.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. I just said it's 45%, right? Yeah, it's in the chart. See the blue line?

[Ben Carlson]

In my defense, I just got a very important text message, so I apologize to you in the audience, but I'll share the text message with you after and you'll understand.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. In my defense, and I get yelled at, my wife, I put my phone on do not disturb When I'm podcasting, all distractions away. My wife goes, what if there's an emergency? I said, no, Nothing trumps podcasting for emergencies. Okay, I just have to wait an hour.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, you know what? You know what? You look very handsome today.

[Michael Batnick]

Thank you.

[Ben Carlson]

I like your outfit. You're looking good. You've got a three button polo. And you gave me a couple of weeks ago because I had only. What did I have unbuttoned? The top two buttons. Unbuttoned?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Are you all the way to the top or is that one unbuttoned? I can't tell.

[Michael Batnick]

No, you do. You do one below the top.

[Ben Carlson]

How do you wear a shirt like that? It's so tight. If that. If I was wearing that, I'd be sweating my butt off. I'm a sweater.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, it's. It's kind of cool. It does it. It works. Thank you. And I like your Chun Li shirt.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, thank you.

[Michael Batnick]

Definitely. Yeah. Instagram is your personal shopper still. I see.

[Ben Carlson]

I've had this whole thing for years.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, From Bloomberg. After pulling back from an all time high in late June, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index is valued at 9.9.9 times estimated earnings next year, while the S and P fetches a multiple of 20. So it's saying that the emerging market stocks now trade at a record discount to the S&P 500. This is pretty insane if you think about it, because emerging markets have been outperforming for the past two years. They outperformed by a wide margin last year. I guess this year. Okay, EM has come back a little bit. What is it up? I mentioned the S and p is up 14. Emerging markets are up and 27% or so this year. No, 20% this year. But they outperformed both of the past two years. And obviously the reason this is happening is because Taiwan and South Korea are now such a big part of it. So you look at this. Taiwan and South Korea now make up 45, 46% of the emerging markets index. China is another 20%. India is 12. So those are the biggest ones. Technology now makes up 41%. So obviously you're getting a big part of this. Like if you think the US Stock market is concentrated, emerging markets are more concentrated. But it's interesting to think about this as a thought exercise. What would you rather own for the next five years if this, let's say the AI trade continues? Okay. Would you rather own emerging markets trading at a 10 times forward earnings, forward PE or the S&P trading at 20 times forward earnings? When I think emerging markets at 40% technology. And a lot of that in South Korea and Taiwan and then China, it's more of a pure AI play. Like, would you rather own the NASDAQ or the emerging markets right now? I think is a fair question.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, it is. So the valuation aspect of it is interesting, but I'm glad you said that because it's basically saying, would you rather own Samsung and SK Hynix or the Hyperscalers in Taiwan?

[Michael Batnick]

Semi. And yeah, dang it, I did say semi.

[Ben Carlson]

You said it in the ad read too. You're a semi guy. It's okay.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. But I, I think that this is another thing that five years ago you go, what? You're nuts if you want to take pure play technology. I'm owning the United States now. It's a this is a legitimate question if you want. And obviously the. One of the reasons that the earnings are cheaper is because these are semi stocks that are powering and the.

[Ben Carlson]

And the earnings are semi permanent. But I'm sure. Well, guess what?

[Michael Batnick]

How about this?

[Ben Carlson]

How about this both does it. You know, it doesn't need to be

[Michael Batnick]

all to nothing, but it's just, it's crazy how quickly this kind of stuff can change. Where emerging markets were for years were seen as this. It's energy and banks. It's all China materials. Yeah. And now it's a, it's, it's an AI play essentially.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. It's wild. It really is unbelievable.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. MEB Faber for the idea farm always shares these really long pieces of research. I was pulling stuff out of this. Interesting. Speaking of South Korea, this is from Bearings. They did this, they did this thing showing retail participation in the equity market for South Korea. It went from sub 10% through all the 2010s into 2020 and now has more than doubled to 28%. So retail is, is getting into like. And this is happening very fast. But this is.

[Ben Carlson]

I feel like this probably looks similar. I think this might look similar to our markets.

[Michael Batnick]

Here's what doesn't look similar though. South Korean household asset breakdown. 77% is in real estate, 9% is in cash, 3.6% is in equities and bonds. I don't think people are ready for the wave of money coming into stocks from younger people in other countries. I think there's a huge, huge Runway for other people in these countries to get interested in the stock market. For South Korea, this is the dot com bubble for them. In terms of the dot com bubble took ownership in the stock market from like 30% to 60% for you. For the US this same thing is going to happen in places like Taiwan and South Korea and maybe China and like that. That kind of thing is going to happen. Look at, look, this is kind of. This is the emerging market thing. Why the 4 p e is at a record discount. Forecast earnings growth expectations for 2026. The all country world index is. You kind of have to squint, but it's pretty high. It's like 25% for Korea it's 250%. 250% expected earnings growth this year in 2020.

[Ben Carlson]

Probably not sustainable.

[Michael Batnick]

Probably not. That's why it trades so cheaply. All right, I debated putting this in here, but Michael Burry made another crash call. And I want to look at this from a couple different angles. Not the usual like ha ha. Michael Burry is wrong again because he's whatever. If you try to predict the crash all the time, you're going to be wrong. So this is from cnbc. Michael Burry bets against rally. We are near a major top and a possible 1987 type fall. So he wrote this in his substack. I guess that he thinks it's possible for 1987 type fall which I think is. Is essentially impossible to predict. And I know, I think Paul Tudor Jones predicted the original 1987 or said something like this could happen. I don't think he said it's going to be 22% in a day, but he said we could major top. What did he.

[Ben Carlson]

This is a true story. I'm like 90. I don't remember if I put this in my book or not, but I'm 98% sure that I'm not making this up. I read this somewhere. He used, he used a chart from 1929 and overlaid it with what was happening in 1987.

[Michael Batnick]

Which is kind of hilarious because.

[Ben Carlson]

Which is the type of thing that we. 15 years type of thing that we literally laugh at. Yes, I suppose it worked for him that one time.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. Okay, so here's where I'm going to say like I kind of agree with Michael Burry in some ways. I don't think we're going to see a 1987 crash. And I think trying to predict one of those is just absolutely ridiculous. But I do think that the way the market is structured now and with the speed at which things move, an air pocket situation is way a much higher probability event than it was in the past. And that to me that's like a down 7, down 8 down 10 or down 12 day if something really bad happens.

[Ben Carlson]

We had, we had that a million times. And also during Liberation Day didn't we have, we had 10 down days.

[Michael Batnick]

I believe in the, we had back to back 5% down days. But I'm just saying that type of like that's the, that's where I actually agree with him is that when this thing does top out it, I'm guessing it will be swift and it will be fast. And that's the part that I agree with them. Not that it's going to be a 1987 route.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know that I agree with you. That could happen. But why would you say that's going to happen? Because I think there needs to be an event.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm not saying it's going, I'm saying it's a Higher probability event now than it was in the past because of the speed at which the market reprices and the speed at which information moves today.

[Ben Carlson]

Could be.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean listen, this guy, he. He keeps trying to predict crashes over and over again and he, he, this is interesting. He says shorting is not for everyone. I must short. Most should not. His personality is obviously I make glass Seth Full guy. He's obviously a glass stuff empty guy. Right? Like he just. I think it's in his bones that he has to do this. I looked, I had Chad, I had. I took a chart of the S and P. It said when did Michael Burry say sell? Remember all he did was tweet it up sell. And I guess it was in the beginning of 2023. January 2023. The market has doubled since he said that. I think we've talked about this. Some people just don't have the personality or the emotional makeup be long term equity holders. And he's obviously one of them.

[Ben Carlson]

Correct.

[Michael Batnick]

Guess what? He's still going to be fine in 2019.

[Ben Carlson]

He said there was a bubble in passive investing and it was going to pop.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. I wrote a long blog post about how people saying that passive investing is a bubble. It's silly. Did I write this or did you? What's two to three years away?

[Ben Carlson]

So I was thinking about this. Are we going to look back on the unwind of situational awareness similar to the way that we look on Long Term Capital management now? Long Term Capital management, for those of you who don't know, was a hedge fund run by quantitative mathematical geniuses and they were doing fixed income arbitrage. So they were trying to pick up pennies and they used a lot of leverage and the smartest people in investing blew up. So not exactly an apples to apples comparison. But that happened two years before the ultimate top in the stock market. Is this like the precursor before the ultimate unwind eventually in the future.

[Michael Batnick]

I know that sounds too perfect. The funny thing is people don't realize in 1998 the S&P dropped like 19%. That was a real correction. There was a currency crisis and Russia defaulted on its debt and that's why that strategy blew up. It almost is a little too perfect, but sure, I'll give you that one.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. What's.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, did you Adam Caroll, a rich man, poor man. Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

I did. It was fun.

[Michael Batnick]

I saw this thing from Seinfeld and he said we speaking of situational awareness, good lead in. I saw this thing from Seinfeld and he said this is one of my top five favorite pieces of comedy material I've ever heard. And it's Rich Man, Poor man from Adam Carolla. And he talks about how he said I'm not middle class. He said there are similarities that rich people and poor people like very wealthy and very poor people people have in common. And he said outdoor showers. Either you have one by your pool in the cabana or you use a garden hose. You're on a first name basis with a judge. Either you see him at the golf course or you've seen him five times in five weeks or something. What do you. Refrigerator in the yard. The other one was like you drive a car brand that is no longer available anymore. And, and for rich people it's like a rare unique car. And for poor people it's like a car brand that went out of business.

[Ben Carlson]

I like the toilet one. I forget what it was.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, he's got refrigerator in the yard. You have like a high end kitchen or like you have an appliance dumped in your front lawn. The other one I liked was you get escorted out of the stadium by police. Right. If you're a rich person, escort you out of the stadium. Anyway, I like I this, my finance brain always does this. This made me think of listening to that bit made me think of situational awareness. Okay, I'm going to tell you why. So Spencer Jacob at the Wall Street Journal wrote this and I love this is kind of line I wish I would have written. You probably aren't rich or well connected enough to have a 24 year old incinerate your savings. I love it. And you think about it this, the rich man, poor man is the same with billionaire investors or degenerates that we make fun of. Right? Because if a person with $5,000 in their Robinhood account hit turned up the dial to five times leverage and they blew up all their stock trading and they got margin called. You'd say, oh, that person is a degenerate. But if you do it with billionaire money, guess what, they're a risk taker. No, that's, that's, that's where like wealthy people, wealthy investors in degenerates are kind of the same and this is one of the reasons like the wealthy person though, the difference is they get a second chance. A lot of the degenerate gamblers might, if they get wiped out, they might not get a second chance. So this is from Bloomberg. Did you like my comparison there? Did that make sense?

[Ben Carlson]

I'm with you. Yeah, not bad.

[Michael Batnick]

Kind of landed right investors Clamor to bet on AI WizKids Fund after situational awareness turnover turmoil. Hey, they use wunderkind in here again. A week after the hedge fund nearly blew up, he's already getting requests from investors looking to place more money with the artificial intelligence wunderkind. Apparently, he says he's not taking new money yet. And then this guy from Sequoia says, our suspicion is that he's going to be a fixture in Silicon Valley for a long time to come. And that's why, like, people are backing this guy and trying to give him more money. Or maybe.

[Ben Carlson]

Or maybe he's the Ben Simmons of finance.

[Michael Batnick]

What never reaches his potential.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, just never to return.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I don't want to get too cute here, but isn't the whole thing. This guy used to work at OpenAI, and he's married to someone who's very high abidanthropic. And people are hoping that they just get connections through him. Like, hey, if he loses this money, fine. But we get the spouse of someone who was very high abidentanthropic. That's all that matters.

[Ben Carlson]

We're speculating here. Why would somebody invest in him? Because he's married to Dario's. Is it chief of staff?

[Michael Batnick]

I think so.

[Ben Carlson]

But why would somebody invest with him because of that alone?

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know. Because VC people, they care about connections and networking and such. But this was. This was really easy to you and I talked about last week. Of course people are going to give him more money.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Give him a second chance. That was obvious. Again, the poor person, though, who blows up the Robin Hood account. They're not getting a second chance.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, we get it. We get it.

[Michael Batnick]

All right.

[Ben Carlson]

That was good. It was good.

[Michael Batnick]

You do the next one.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, there was a headline in Bloomberg. Young men who trade stocks daily feel like failures. You don't say. You don't say.

[Michael Batnick]

One Quarter podcast. This is. This is one we actually can get behind, probably.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. One quarter of men aged 18 to 29 said they trade stocks daily. All right, let's just think about it for a second. One out of four men said they trade stocks daily.

[Michael Batnick]

No, 18 to 29. Yeah, that. That seems on the high side.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. What would you guess? Want to. 10, 20?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. 5%.

[Ben Carlson]

4. Come on. Whatever. 2 thirds of them report feeling like failures. All right. That part of it, I believe. All right, so they look at the shares of.

[Michael Batnick]

Funny thing is, though, that. That. That two thirds probably changes at any one point. One third of them feel good because they're lucky and they're winning. Thirds of them are losing. But then it shifts some of anyway keep going.

[Ben Carlson]

So they compare. They compare like stock trading and gambling. And if you're doing it daily. Yeah, you're going to lose, obviously. And if you do it less than daily, you feel a little bit like less of a loser. Gambling and investing. So sports betting and. And stock market gambling are the same thing. The stock market is a place to build wealth over the long term. But you could treat it like a casino. Obviously with sports betting, you can't treat it like investing. It is a negative sum outcome. The more you gamble on sports, take it from me, the more money you lose. Matter of fact, there is. This was actually great timing.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. But this is why people like trading options, because it's not that you that the house like wins. It's that there is a big payoff or a big loss. And with stocks.

[Ben Carlson]

You're kidding me. It's so much fun.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

So I was wondering about this after I saw the study from. I saw Baltunas tweet this. How much money do people lose gambling? I literally, I asked Claude that. And then later that afternoon, Ben Chef's Kiss, Mike Maubouson and Dan Callahan wrote a published a report called the Wisdom of Crowds and Markets. Crowds Behavior in Prediction, Betting and Stock Markets. Great time.

[Michael Batnick]

Very good.

[Ben Carlson]

So it turns out that gamblers in the US and I don't know how they calculated this, but whatever. Gamblers in the US cumulatively lost $3.9 trillion nominally. So $5.8 trillion in today's dollars from 1929 to 2025 sounds like a pretty big number.

[Michael Batnick]

Now, is that higher or lower than you would have thought it'd be? I've never thought about that number. Really?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. I have to. Like, how much is that a year? How much is that of overall gdp? How much of that is. Is disposable income? Is it less than 1% of people's disposable income on average? Yeah, probably. It's a giant number, but you have to adjust for it anyway. Some of the things that I thought were particularly interesting is I am a huge as I think you are, Ben, Wisdom of the crowds type of person. Don't tell me what you think or don't tell me what you think other people think. Put some money on the line. And when you do that, you get a much different outcome, a much more accurate outcome. Which is why the prediction markets do a lot better for politics than some of the survey Exit polls do. So I think there will be all sorts of interesting economic benefits from prediction markets that might make the economy more efficient. But I also am sympathetic to the fact that it's just straight up gambling and 80% of the activity is still sports betting. Whatever. Anyway, I thought this, this chart was super duper interesting. They show the actual win rate versus the contract price on Kalshi and it is almost one to one accurate.

[Michael Batnick]

So it means that they're setting the right odds.

[Ben Carlson]

Setting the right odds, the market gets it. Right now there's like a long shot bias where bets that are like 90 cents actually win more than they should because who wants to bet on a 90 cent outcome?

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

The, you're more likely to bet on the 10 cent because it's the, it's the asymmetric payoff.

[Michael Batnick]

So that's where a lot of losses are happening. The people who are betting on the 10 and 20%.

[Ben Carlson]

So the long shots actually lose a little bit less than implied by the rates. So anyway, they said that the average vig is like four and a half percent, which makes sense.

[Michael Batnick]

So me prediction markets or for all gambling.

[Ben Carlson]

I think for, I think they said this is for like, for Vegas type odds.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, that makes.

[Ben Carlson]

Anyway, so if that's, if that's the rake and you know that that's your baseline. So me, my FanDuel account and I've spoken about this before, I, I lose 7 cents in the dollar now it fluctuates sometimes I have, I have a good streak and I get down to like 5 cents. Sometimes I'm bad, I'm down to 9 cents. So I guess I'm worse than average.

[Michael Batnick]

So will we there, I said, will we see a fee war from the gamblers where the vig goes down or is that just always going to be the case?

[Ben Carlson]

No, I don't think so. I think that's just like baked in.

[Michael Batnick]

So they also said, I think, I think gamblers are okay with it for the most part. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Everybody knows what's up.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

This is interesting. So the survey found there. So they asked people how do they deal with betting? Like what are, you know, are they good, are they bad? 39% of bettors claim that they win more than they lose and 28% said they break even. Hilarious. That self assessment contrasts sharply with estimates that 95% or more of sports bettors are unprofitable over the long run. Yeah, of course you're unprofitable over the long run because you're 4 cents in the hole when you Start,

[Michael Batnick]

of course. Yeah. That's a huge hurdle rate.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So 39%.

[Michael Batnick]

You're essentially paying like hedge fund fees.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

You're paying 2 and 20.

[Ben Carlson]

So 40% of people said they win more than they lose. Yeah, sure.

[Michael Batnick]

I guess the thoughts on gambling changes when you realize that for 80% of the people, it's probably entertainment. Right?

[Ben Carlson]

No, more than that.

[Michael Batnick]

You think it's higher than that?

[Ben Carlson]

I think it's. I think. Let's say I think I'm gonna make this up. 96% of people are entered, are entertaining themselves.

[Michael Batnick]

The problem, though, I did a whole chapter on risk and reward about day trading, and there's all these studies about, again, why it's so unprofitable. But it's just the loss aversion thing. The fact that losses sting twice as bad as gains feel good. The more you do these kind of things, the more you're going to lose, the more painful it's going to be.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So most people stop.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Ben Carlson]

So I was going to say 96% of people are like me. I love it. I will never stop because I entertain myself. And this is discretionary money that I am happy to hand over to fanduel in exchange for entertainment. Although I do think this might be my year. We'll see. 2% of professionals and 2% are people that get, unfortunately, that ruin their lives because they're addicted.

[Michael Batnick]

Having said all that, I think I'm gonna be a trader now because.

[Ben Carlson]

Go ahead.

[Michael Batnick]

I was in New York last week.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, get in the game, Ben. Let's go.

[Michael Batnick]

And I've retired from individual stock trading like 12 times. And I heard Sean and Matt are just back and forth all day. Sean's our research analyst. Matt, from Exhibit A. Chart, kid. They're talking about which stocks to buy and all this stuff. And they're talking about SpaceX. And the whole consensus is everyone is waiting for SpaceX to get to 100. Right. And this is on Wednesday. I said, you know what? It's never going to get there. People are, I'm going to do the beauty contest thing and I'm just going to buy a little SpaceX. And I bought it and it immediately went up 20%.

[Ben Carlson]

Did you sell it?

[Michael Batnick]

Like three days. And I sold it.

[Ben Carlson]

Good for you. Attaboy.

[Michael Batnick]

And I almost nailed the bottom. Microsoft. I got Microsoft about three weeks ago. Like right before it was up 15% a day. I'm up like 40% in two. I'm going to become a day trader.

[Ben Carlson]

You got to the itch?

[Michael Batnick]

No, no. Because then Then you either have the

[Ben Carlson]

gene or you don't. You're not a gambler.

[Michael Batnick]

No. Well, I am a gambler though. I love playing blackjack. Blackjack. That is true. We do favorite things.

[Ben Carlson]

That is true.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I, I don't. But I'm not the whole other like options betting and day trading. That stuff doesn't do anything for me because I, I know the, I know it. I too, I have too much knowledge

[Ben Carlson]

there, you know, too much two eyes. But you know, but you know what else you were right on? What other stock you were right on early but right. You see Airbnb.

[Michael Batnick]

What's it doing now? It's going crazy. Is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bought it at the ipo. I was way, way early.

[Ben Carlson]

Way, way early.

[Michael Batnick]

Speaking of how quickly Starks move, I just want to look at, in. At the beginning of July, Microsoft was in a 35% drawdown. Now it's 5 or 6% from all time highs. It happened these things, these things happen so fast today.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so in conclusion, young men that are day trading. Yeah. Don't do it or do it, get out of your system. It's a loser's game. It's not fun. I mean it's fun for a little.

[Michael Batnick]

But some people just have to pay the tuition of the market gods.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. You know what I feel like? I feel like most, most people go through this. Most. I don't know if that's, maybe that's a stretch. Whatever. I certainly did. I got it out of my system. This is like, this is what it is. You, you discover the market. Holy shit, I'm gonna get rich. And eventually, hopefully. Most people are like, all right, man. It's harder than I thought.

[Michael Batnick]

I talked to a financial adviser once who told, who told me like he had a client come in who he could tell just wasn't. He goes, you're not a prospect. He said, you're not ready for me yet. Go back out for like five more years and do your own thing and get outta your system. Then come back to me. Some people aren't ready for just like the boring stuff right away. They need to have the excitement and then they get the boring stuff later.

[Ben Carlson]

You truly are a1of1. You literally opened a brokerage account and bought a retirement date fund, did you not?

[Michael Batnick]

That's right. My very first purchase was a target date fund. You are really. This is like. That was like 2005 maybe.

[Ben Carlson]

And how much are you up on that? Do you still hold it?

[Michael Batnick]

I, I traded it for something else

[Ben Carlson]

a long Time ago, but that would have been something. All right, we have to talk about SpaceX. So we, we spoke about the SPVs over in the lead up to the IPO. An SPV is called a Special Purpose Vehicle or it stands for a Special Purpose Vehicle. And there were all of these people that wanted to get into SpaceX, but you couldn't get primary shares from the company. So maybe an existing investor wanted to sell a piece of their shares. And so you were able to basically. Free ride, not free ride. It was a transaction. You were able to get some of their shares into this different fund and you would raise money from people and you would buy a piece of their fund. And then it became like a Russian. Is it a Russian egg doll? Right, A Russian Russian doll. Russian. Why did I say egg doll?

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know where the egg thing came from. Maybe, I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

A Russian doll where people were then selling pieces of their spv. And it became this whole convoluted thing where it was scary because like you, the, the investors couldn't even prove that they held underlying shares, that they actually had exposure. And so one of the horror stories came to light in the Wall Street Journal. They said that. So they, they highlighted some poor guy who put $17,000 into one of these SPVs in 2020. He thought it'd be worth $300,000 at the IPO. A life changing amount of money. Thought he was going to be able to send his kids to college. Turns out that the investment company sold it in 2024. His stake was worth $45,000 now, a good return. But that's not the point. If you thought you were, that you were going to get $300,000 and you got 45, it's, it's a catastrophe.

[Michael Batnick]

Was the guy who ran the investment company your friend who sold your Knicks tickets before the finals? Because it sounds like the same guy.

[Ben Carlson]

Brutal. A private offshore in invest. So this from the Journal. A private offshore investment firm based in the Bahamas called Capital Truth acquired a portion of an SPV that owned pre IPS SpaceX shares. It then appears to have repackaged the interest and sold them on to Late Stage, according to court documents and lawyers. So Late Stage was the company based in New Jersey. Huge red flag, no offense to New Jersey.

[Michael Batnick]

You can't trust a company based in New Jersey or the Bahamas called Capital Truth. Who can you trust?

[Ben Carlson]

But the, the, the, the horrible thing is like, obviously these are unsuspecting investors. How did they know?

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Ben Carlson]

They're getting swindled so, of course, this person that they profiled fielded dozens of congratulatory text messages, according to the Journal, from friends who knew about a space.

[Michael Batnick]

He was. He was bragging to everyone.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, dude, of course. I mean, yeah, dog. That's what you do. This is right. Like, you can't. I. I wouldn't be able to keep that to myself. Oh, he went out to dinner to celebrate. Just absolutely horrible. I hope these people go to jail. And speaking of. Speaking of this, they did a real Wolf of Wall street documentary on Amazon, a three parter. And it was great, I thought. Did you watch it?

[Michael Batnick]

I did not. I just. I'm. I. I hate Jordan Belfort. I hate that guy.

[Ben Carlson]

What.

[Michael Batnick]

What a. I think he's such a scumbag that I don't want to give him any of my attention.

[Ben Carlson]

Fair. What a piece of garbage. I mean, obviously, the Wolf of Wall street, the movie, I don't know that it glamorized him, per se. I mean, it. I don't think it made him look like a good guy, but it. But they did nothing to talk about the crimes that he committed and all of the victims. And in this one, that was why

[Michael Batnick]

I didn't care for it as much as most people. I couldn't. I just felt. I felt gross watching it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, well, even still, Jordan is talking about how he's a redemption story and the comeback and no remorse. So that's one of his.

[Michael Batnick]

No remorse.

[Ben Carlson]

One of. One of his best friends, I think the guy that was who Jonah Hill played. I can't remember exactly. Daughter died of leukemia. And Jordan didn't send, like, didn't no text message, no nothing. Just a world class scumbag.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I'm. I'm sure it's entertaining, though.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Bars are giving up on young people. Ben, on a recent Friday night. This is Aust from the Wal Journal. On a recent Friday night, Philadelphia's trestle in. Welcome. Welcome to crowd for a Prince themed dance party. Revelers rocking purple eyeshadow and love symbols slurped down the whiskey sours and lit up the dance floor while a Go Go dancer gyrated to hits like let's go crazy. In 1999, almost everyone was over 50. Well, obviously. So the bar owner said, we realized that the younger generation weren't drinking as much. And these early parties were a way to get older folks in the door. The bars have a new favorite customer, the Gen Xer.

[Michael Batnick]

It makes sense. So Derek Thompson on Plain English last week had a story about how marijuana use on a Daily basis is now more than alcohol use. Probably for the first time in history. It's pretty crazy to me.

[Ben Carlson]

This is a catastrophe. So I was a huge, huge pothead growing up, and it literally. And now I know I'm an extreme example of this, but it literally ruined my life. Now I have an addictive personality. I am like. I am like Richard Lewis, who is an alcoholic drinking champagne. You're like, how do you even get to that point? So I smoked way, way, way, way too much. And I once heard Elon Musk describe marijuana as coffee in reverse. And that's what it is. At least that's what it is for me.

[Michael Batnick]

When you're young. When you're a young guy, you just sit there and play video games all day, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, it is. It is a demotivator. It like. So there's some people that are functioning potheads. I get it. Right. But let's assume that most people are not that the fact that young. That there's 21 million people. Oh, wait, hold on. Is this young people? It's a lot of people, regardless, but every day.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, this. Yeah, this is. This is everyone. And Derek's point was. Yeah, this is. Marijuana actually makes sense for this moment because people are more anxious and they're using it as an anxiety sort of medication. What if you call it that. But it's also for people who want to stay in and don't want to be social. And that's the point. Like, it's. It is the antisocial drug. And you mentioned the demotivator. And obviously there's people who just do gummies and they use it to help them sleep or whatever. And.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, I was. I was about to say that, in fairness.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

It's not like when we were. When we were potheads and we were just taking bong cuts all day like complete morons.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

People are, like, much more responsible today. They're taking tiny doses. They're taking it to fall asleep. It's not like everybody's walking around stoned all day. But that is a wild number.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but it seems like a lot of people have traded the negative physical effects of alcohol for the negative. They're giving up on the. They're trading it for mental health. Negative effects. That's where we've gotten. Alcohol just does make you more social. It just does. I'm. I'm a very introverted person. I probably took it way too far and, like, when I went to college. But it helps me, like, be more extroverted.

[Ben Carlson]

Of course it does. So when, when Ben and I are pounding the table for young people to get out there and drink. I don't, I'm not saying like, hey, listen, young people drink.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. We're not saying that.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, stay at home and drink a bottle of vodka. Obviously, we're not saying that. Get out there, be social, get a life, go have a drink, meet somebody, talk to a human being.

[Michael Batnick]

I do think whenever I go to a big city, it seems like young people are doing this still. I know that the bars are saying it's, I don't know where, but when you go to New York and Chicago in places there's still young people out at the bars, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, we were out of the bars last week. We saw young people.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, this is a good girl from bank of America. It's funny, if you talk about the unemployment rate today, people will say, yeah, but what about the labor force participation ratio? Right? If you look at it like for older people, it's falling. And they use that as a sign of, this is a bad thing. But so the labor force participation rate for 55 is dropping at a massive rate. Like it's down a lot in the last year and a half or so. And bank of America says, no, no, no, no, this is not a bad thing. This is not a sign of people who are giving up on the workforce. This is a sign of people who have a lot more money than they thought they would and they're retiring early. My house is worth way more. My stock portfolio is worth way more. My business is worth way more. I'm out. There's a lot of people who are retiring early right now. This is a. That's a massive drop.

[Ben Carlson]

It's fantastic. Here's a companion chart also from bank of America. Their average 401k balance is now 160 something thousand dollars. It was $100,000 in 2023. God knows what it was in 2017. The stock market is fundamentally changing our country and hallelujah, it is.

[Michael Batnick]

Now the thing that people would tell you is just wait, what happens on the end. I do think whenever the next recession hits, and let's say we get a 30% bear market and it lasts for 15 months instead of three. I'm fascinated to see what the reaction is going to be. Like, will we.

[Ben Carlson]

Which reaction? The narrative or the spending or the sentiment?

[Michael Batnick]

Like, will everything, Will we get the next recession? Will it kind of be like inflation where the sentiment turns so, so sour because we haven't experienced it in so long. Like, I think the sentiment is, I Don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

What are we talking about? We just did that.

[Michael Batnick]

Did what?

[Ben Carlson]

We just had a bear market that lasted 15 months.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, we didn't have a recession. I think the recession piece and people losing their jobs is what's going to really. True, true, true, true. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, you know what? Just wait. I reject that. You know why? If somebody has enough money to retire, because the stock market out kicked its coverage for what their expectations were. You think they're 100% in stocks? No, dummy.

[Michael Batnick]

Right, exactly. They shouldn't be, that's for sure. All right, opinion piece from Bloomberg. We would be in a recession without AI Obviously, this is not even like, controversial. Virtually nothing matters more to markets at present than the AI build out. It's such a sudden massive stimulus for the US that it has shifted macroeconomic data. This professor from Columbia School of Business argues that without it, US would be in a recession. He estimates AI infrastructure investment at roughly 2.8% of GDP, larger than the railroad boom, and it's projected to keep rising. Here's the problem with this, though. When you think about it this way, like, if we just took AI out, the economy like this money would be, would have been used for something else.

[Ben Carlson]

It goes other places.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

This is like, this is like, okay, the Knicks, maybe this is a bad example, but just go with me. Jalen Brunson is not playing. If The Knicks score 110 points a game and Jalen scores 27 points a game, now they're going to score 87 or whatever the number is. Right. Like, all right, no, the points go somewhere else.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

So the Knicks are. The Knicks are worse off without Jaylen, and the economy would be worse off without AI but it's not a, it's not a linear decline. Come on.

[Michael Batnick]

It wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a hole. Like, take that hole out and then there's nothing there.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. And also in fairness, I, I do think that there's a, a, a decent probable, I would say better than 50, 50 chance that the economy would be in a recession without AI I do think that if it weren't for this, given higher interest rates and everything else we have, I don't think we would have been able to observe all of that without the magic of this, this cycle.

[Michael Batnick]

And if you listed what will the reason be for the next recession, I would put AI as like 80% favorites. Yeah, the odds on it would be you wouldn't be able to want to take those because AI has to be the, the reason for the next. All right. I think the. The PR people are out in full force and they're realizing it. So Mark Zuckerberg, who. He's another one that I read the book that the Social Network was based on. Ben Mezrick wrote this book. I think it's called the Young Young Millionaires or something like that. It was the book that was. And I read it before. Like, he really was huge in the zeitgeist and popular. So I read this back in. I don't know when it came out. The mid, early 2000s, like 2007 probably. I read this 2008, and he was another one. I'm just like, God, he's such a slime ball. And I feel like I've kind of underestimated him ever since because of what I read about him in that book and how he acted in college, you know, but one thing that he has.

[Ben Carlson]

Let's not judge people's. Let's not judge people's character based on how they behave in college.

[Michael Batnick]

That's fair. Well, he did screw over Red Water pretty bad. But I think one thing that he's done over time is he is just a chameleon to whatever is going on at the moment. He, like, he's. He knows how to shape shift and do what he has to do. So he wrote this whole piece about how the future is for everyone, the path to a positive AI future. So he's trying to say, like, hey, all right, let's. Let's take a step back and look at the positives of AI because obviously the negativity is growing. He says it is surprising that the discourse for many developing AI is so filled with doom. I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future. Like, he's saying the. He's saying the right things that should have been said from the beginning. And then he says, all right, let's talk about what AI will do for you in the future that will be positive and not focus on the negatives. And this isn't like, groundbreaking stuff, but I think this is probably the stuff that he wants to do with meta. So he says, everyone have a personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about 24, 7 work on your behalf. Everyone have a personalized tutor and Coach with a PhD in every subject. I think that's a positive thing we could say for our children, hopefully. Right? And he says, everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. Now, this is the part where it probably Gets kind of tricky for these companies if everyone has access to free or affordable access. Like, who's. Is it just going to be the top 5% of people paying for all the tokens? Is that, like, the hope that it's going to be the people who are so overly reliant and that's going to subsidize everyone else?

[Ben Carlson]

Why?

[Michael Batnick]

Because there are people who just won't. Because he's saying everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. He's saying, listen, if we want this to work and help people, this has got to be cheap for the masses. There has to be a free option available for people to use this.

[Ben Carlson]

It is cheap for the masses. First of all, there's a free version. And how much is chat? 20 bucks a month for the paid version. That's Netflix.

[Michael Batnick]

But don't you think there's some people who just won't pay for it?

[Ben Carlson]

So don't you think there's a free version?

[Michael Batnick]

All right, he's saying, like, we need to have a free. Anyway, worth a read. But the PR departments have obviously figured out, like, guys, we have to spin this more positively. And guess what? I think it's probably too late for that positive spin.

[Ben Carlson]

I agree. Ben Duncan tells us it's a Russian nesting doll. So I don't know where egg came from, but it's not egg. It's nesting.

[Michael Batnick]

You give it your best shot. All right, So I think for probably once or twice a year, when I come to New York, you do a good job of getting us comedy tickets and going to the Comedy Cellar. And that's my favorite neighborhood. The West Village is my favorite neighborhood in New York. I love going there. I love the bars and restaurants and walking around and the vibe and the energy. And so we went to the Comedy Cellar. We had you and Chris and I, we had great seats, perfect location up on the level ledge a little bit. And as most comics do, they. They. They rip on the people in the front row. Like, I. I don't know if I'd want to sit in the front row at a lot of comic because you know you're going to get ripped on. And a lot of people, that's their shtick is, hey, where are you from? What do you do? Hey, are you two dating? What's your story? And so there was a guy who was enjoying himself in the front row. He's mid-20s, probably. And one of the comics said, what do you do? You know, he said, I work for Nvidia. And the comic goes without missing a Beat goes, what is that? TVs. And you and I are the only ones in the whole audience who started laughing because we and no one else got. You and I are the only ones who thought this was funny. That the guy who works for Nvidia, who was putting a fair number of drinks back and enjoying himself to the point where the comedians really couldn't understand what he was saying. I think he was probably celebrating stock options. And the comedian didn't. And then, then he said, well, she said, wait, what is that again? And he said, oh, like AI. She said, oh, data centers. And then she, like, people started booing kind of. And.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, really?

[Michael Batnick]

She was like, oh, yeah, you didn't catch that? She was kind of like, oh. She kind of, like, gave it a negative. But that just got me thinking that, okay, this still has a long way to go. And if people still don't know the biggest company in the world, $5 trillion company, who's helping build AI, we got a long way to go. Is that a fair anecdote?

[Ben Carlson]

Perhaps? I don't know. Maybe.

[Michael Batnick]

I know, maybe I'm getting too cute.

[Ben Carlson]

We're gauging the market by the comedy seller. Maybe. Should you and I step outside our comfort zone one time and sit in the front? I don't think I would enjoy it. I have too much anxiety for that.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a lot, right? Someone did call you a JV wrestling coach once.

[Ben Carlson]

A gym teacher.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, gym teacher. Okay. That was.

[Ben Carlson]

Hey, last week I made a comment about our audience being more tuned into the market than. Than the. Than the average. Than the average citizen. And we got a bunch of people saying, I actually don't really, like, check the market, my portfolio, all that much. I listen to you guys, and I'm sure it's a mixed bag of people that listen. Some people are watching.

[Michael Batnick]

We've heard from people that say, like, listen, I outsource my news to you, and if it's in the news, you guys are going to cover it. Great.

[Ben Carlson]

I love it. Love to hear it. So I got me to thinking. How often do you check your portfolio, the balance of your portfolio? And I will set the over under at. I will set the over under at every two weeks. And I would probably say. I would probably say the over as meaning, like, less frequently than that. Every three weeks, every month,

[Michael Batnick]

Every six months, I update a spreadsheet that has all of our accounts on it. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

You are such a boomer.

[Michael Batnick]

Retirement accounts. I sell.

[Ben Carlson]

You know, we have technology for that. Right? You know, we're. We run A raa. We could, we could, we could take care of you for that.

[Michael Batnick]

I do. I still update it manually every six months, but I don't do it if it's a bear. I only update it if it's a bull market. I do not look at my accounts if it's a bear market. Because I don't want to know. I know what they're. They are, but I don't. So I, I'd say like our porterhouse strategy. I check that occasion, but I feel like for me, that's more thinking through

[Ben Carlson]

clients, because that's for clients.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so then once every three months.

[Ben Carlson]

Holy.

[Michael Batnick]

Because I know in the back of my head I can do the math on the back of the envelope. I know what it is. I don't need to constantly see the number and see it moving. I practice what I preach here, man. You know, the more often you look, the more pain you're gonna have and

[Ben Carlson]

you are better off for it.

[Michael Batnick]

How often do you do it? Once. Once a week. Once a day.

[Ben Carlson]

Once a day. That's it. Come on. Those are rookie numbers. Yeah. No, all the time. Way, way, way, way more often than I should. I mean, well, because also I'm picking. I'm picking stocks. I'm having a good time. I'm doing what you're not supposed to be doing.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Now that I do. But yeah, you only pay attention to that one, that one part of your portfolio when you're picking stocks.

[Ben Carlson]

You know what I am? You know the story about the, the husband and wife are at a blackjack table. They're. They're playing cards and they go off on their separate way. And he says, how'd you do? And she goes, I lost 200 bucks. He goes, $200? You. How you lose $200? And she said, well, how much? How did you do? I lost $1,000. You lost $1,000? And you're yelling at me that I lost 200? And he said, yeah, but I know how to gamble.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Ben Carlson]

That's me.

[Michael Batnick]

I like it. Thank you.

[Ben Carlson]

One more thing on the gambling stuff, Ben. There was an article again in the Wall Street Journal with the headline the Live shopping app, where some people bid until they're broke. You know about these things? No, this is some real predatory. All right, here's the lead. Sean Harding downloaded whatnot, a live shopping app, after rekindling his childhood baseball card collecting hobby. Within four months, the 45 year old accountant had spent almost $1.4 million from his savings, his personal loans, money borrowed from a friend and finally, from his employer company's credit card. Holy gee. When his wife discovered the fatality, she filed for divorce. He said, I just kept telling myself one more time that I'd sell it all and make all my money back. But it was so easy to just swipe right. Oh, this poor bastard.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know what this is.

[Ben Carlson]

So this is, this is a shopping app where you could buy. It's like an auction. So it's possible that you buy an IMAC computer for $11 because you just so happen to like, whatever. The auction runs out and like, there's all these anomalies that they highlight that they advertise. You can buy this for this. And they hook people in. I mean, this, this, there's nobody winning here. This should, this should just be illegal. This.

[Michael Batnick]

So, so what did he spend all his money on then? What did he get?

[Ben Carlson]

Clicks? Nothing. Nothing. He's gambling that he's going to be able to buy an item for 80% less than it's worth and then resell it.

[Michael Batnick]

And if you don't get it, you don't get anything.

[Ben Carlson]

Nothing.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow.

[Ben Carlson]

Gross. Right? I mean, listen, I'm a, I'm a capitalist. I love companies making people, making money. This is, this is. Not that. This is disgusting, but I mean, if

[Michael Batnick]

this guy did all this and he put it on his. He borrowed money for a friend and he put on his employer credit card, was going to do something like this eventually.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, there is obviously the personal responsibility angle, of course.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

But this is, this is just predatory behavior.

[Michael Batnick]

It's true. That's. I didn't realize how that's how those things work. All right. Connor Sen has a new substack called the Housing Frame. So we're writing about housing and how it relates to the economy. He says his first post is the housing recession is over. I thought this was interesting. He looked back at other lengthy housing recessions. He said, listen, since the first quarter of 2022, we've had a housing recession that's almost half a decade. He said, we had one from 1979 to 1982. And the Fed nuked the economy with tight money for four years. We had another one from 1988 to 1991, which was a savings and loan crisis in the Gulf War and then the Great Recession, of course, lasted six years, 2006, 2011. Here's the interesting thing, though. So he's saying like four years ago, home builders pulled back, apartment development slumped. Number of homes for sale surged in places that boomed the most during the Pandemic housing frenzy. And he's saying he thinks it's over, like we're getting some signs of activity. The crazy thing to me is this, this has absolutely been a housing. If you worked in the housing industry, this has been brutal for you in a loan department as a realtor. Like this has been rough. The case Shiller National Home Price Index is up almost 12% since the first quarter of 2022. So during a housing recession, housing prices still rose almost 12%. Now you could say, well, inflation was up even a little more than that. So on a real basis, but still, this is. I, but I think this people assumed that the Great Recession, housing recession, like that was the baseline to think through. Housing prices just don't fall very often. It just, even Those other ones, 1979 to 1982, housing prices were up.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, wow.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. So like in most housing recessions, housing

[Ben Carlson]

prices still rise and the supply demand imbalances is permanent. There's what, 70 million people between 37 and 39 years old or something like that. And the boomers just aren't selling their houses.

[Michael Batnick]

Exactly.

[Ben Carlson]

So this is not, this is not going to get fixed. It's awesome.

[Michael Batnick]

And obviously we're not figuring out ways to build more homes either that it just seems like that ship, for whatever reason has sailed. And even if we did decide it would take so long to do, who knows how long it would take to actually matter for young people, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Do some, some quarter stuff. So SpaceX reported, and here's a quote from Elon Musk. If you have a mass accelerator on the moon and you have solar and radiator production on the moon, you can, I know this sounds totally nuts, but you can probably scale to a thousand times the economy of the earth in terms of intelligence, launch of space, probably maybe even a million times.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, the hard part of Elon Musk, like if you listen to a technology person, they'll say, hey, never bet against Elon Musk. Look what he's done. He created this EV company he create. He can have rockets that take off and land, but he also says so many things that just don't come true. So it's really hard to know. He's made a lot. He's made a million promises, right? He remember he was going to have that hyperloop thing. I'm going to create tunnels underneath cities and we're going back and forth and it's going to be so fast and there's so many things he's promised that

[Ben Carlson]

no, okay, I love this. I am not an Elon Musk, fanboy. But I love this attitude of, yeah, we can do anything. As crazy as it sounds, this insane entrepreneurial spirit to move the world forward. Advanced technology. That sounds science fiction and sounds totally insane. I love it. I love that there's people out there like this that are just pushing the boundaries of what sounds like something that you would giggle at.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, it would be cool to have the view of Earth from the moon. Like, if you've lived on the moon, every morning you wake up and see the Earth. That's a good view, right?

[Ben Carlson]

I would. Yeah, it's a great view. Beautiful. All right, let's do Disney real quick. So this blew my face off. Ben. Toy story does $1 billion in annual global retail sales. Geez, is that hard?

[Michael Batnick]

My kids really like the new movie. I didn't see it. My kids loved it.

[Ben Carlson]

It was excellent. They estimate it's done $16 billion in income for Disney, the Toy Story franchise. All right, so here we go with

[Michael Batnick]

a bigger monopoly, where the stock has stunk more than Disney. Disney has a huge monopoly.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, and theme parks.

[Michael Batnick]

Theme parks and just brand branding. Disney has a huge branding monopoly, and the stock stinks.

[Ben Carlson]

No, they don't. They don't have a brand monopoly.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, not. Maybe Monopoly is the wrong way to say it. They're just. They're.

[Ben Carlson]

They're.

[Michael Batnick]

The reach of their brand has to be about as strong as anyone that there is.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnick]

And the stock stinks.

[Ben Carlson]

Total revenue grew 7%. 11% revenue growth at the parks and experiences, which is kind of nuts considering how expensive it is. And they keep raising prices, and people seem to keep going, so. And it's accelerating. So they haven't had growth like this in a long time at the parks. This is confusing. This quarter, we passed an important milestone in app unification, allowing Hulu standalone and bundle subscribers to link profiles. So this is, like, getting really annoying with my own app. How. How hard is this? I guess it's harder than you would think. So if you log into Hulu and Disney, they don't. They don't sync with each other. So if you're watching. I don't know, what's a Hulu show right now? Say you're watching Tires. Whenever that comes out. Wait, is Tires Netflix? Let's say you're watching the bear on Hulu and then you try and watch it on Disney. They don't. They don't talk to each other. Crazy, crazy town.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, you're right. So that's right. He doesn't pick up where you left off. On one or the other. By the way, I finished the bear finally. I didn't mind. The last three episodes were actually pretty decent. The last two seasons didn't need to happen, but they finished. They finished it. Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Did you finish House of the Dragon?

[Michael Batnick]

We got one more episode.

[Ben Carlson]

Finished it last night. That I listened to House of R with the great Chris Ryan, Joanna and Mallory and I had. It's like they're watching a different show and.

[Michael Batnick]

Because they're so into it or what? No, no.

[Ben Carlson]

Because I am such a. I am. Because I am such a. It's like I'm watching a different show. How about that? Not. They're watching a different show. I'm watching. I have no. I still have no idea what's happening. I might have just the biggest dumbass in the world. I cannot follow this show for the life of me.

[Michael Batnick]

I feel like you need a flowchart for every one of those episodes.

[Ben Carlson]

But even hearing them discuss, I'm like, yeah, I'm still lost now. That being said, I enjoyed the shit out of it. It was great tv.

[Michael Batnick]

It's entertaining. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Great tv.

[Michael Batnick]

It feels like Game of Thrones kind of.

[Ben Carlson]

One last thing on Disney, this was the most watched Q3 for ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN on ABC since 2016, which is kind of insane. Is that.

[Michael Batnick]

Is that your Knicks or what?

[Ben Carlson]

Well, the fi. The finals were huge. It was only five games though. Is it. Also, did they have. Did they have the World Cup?

[Michael Batnick]

That probably was part of it. Didn't. I thought Fox had the World Cup.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. All right, Ben, we got a lot of emails about this. So you were mentioning Spider man, bemoaning the fact that they just won't stop.

[Michael Batnick]

So a lot of people agreed with me. There's a lot of other Spider man haters out there.

[Ben Carlson]

I wasn't a huge fan of the last one where they brought in Garfield, Toby and Holland. I thought that was not for me. But basically Sony has to keep making these movies, otherwise the rights revert back to Marvel. And I don't know what the timeline is, but they're not going to stop, so get used to it.

[Michael Batnick]

By the way, I have a Spider man hot take.

[Ben Carlson]

Go ahead.

[Michael Batnick]

Zendaya is like the biggest actress alive right now. She does nothing for me. She. Every movie she's in, she doesn't do anything. Like in. In Dune and in Odyssey, her character was. Their characters don't do anything. They just stand there. Like, she doesn't. She doesn't move the ball forward at all. Like in The Odysseys. She didn't need to be a character. Why didn't she play a better role in the like?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, counterpoint.

[Michael Batnick]

Hot take. She's overrated. I'm just saying.

[Ben Carlson]

No, she's not.

[Michael Batnick]

Tom Holland is too.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, the drama. Did she do nothing in that movie too?

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, I still don't believe her. You're right. She was good in the drama. I liked her in the drama. And what's the 10 of the tennis one?

[Ben Carlson]

The tennis one. She was fantastic in that.

[Michael Batnick]

But she should stop doing garbage tape. She should stop doing Spider man and the Odyssey. Like she does nothing in those movies. She should actually keep doing these smaller movies.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm a Zendaya fan. David O. Russell's Madden is this from Variety? Is skipping a nationwide theatrical release. Nicholas Cage stars as the legendary American football coach and sports commentator John Madden opposite Christian Bale, Katherine Hahn, John Mulaney, Sienna Miller and Shane Gillis. Holy Would have casted, but is this movie gonna absolutely suck? Shit. They're not giving it a release.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you see the preview for it?

[Ben Carlson]

No. You know, I raw dog these things. I mean, whatever. I know the story here, but it

[Michael Batnick]

looked like a straight to streaming video movie. Okay, Nicolas Cage as John Madden. Are we kidding? There's no way that's gonna be good. No way. He does not have that.

[Ben Carlson]

David Russell had a good movie. Let's see. Oh, you liked American Hustle. I hated that movie. Oh, I thought it was very disappointing. Amsterdam bombed. I didn't see that one. Silver Linings Playbook was the Philadelphia sports

[Michael Batnick]

one with Bradley Cooper.

[Ben Carlson]

It's probably that Playbook. Yeah, that was a good one. All right, year to date, box office through August 9th. Andrew's cardi shared this with us. Highest in highest since post pandemic. We had the CEO of Rich gel on yesterday on Josh and I did on TCAF for imax.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you ask them why they can't build new theaters?

[Ben Carlson]

You know, I didn't press him hard enough on that. I should have. He gave the same answer that we've heard. Listen, the truth, it's expensive and a lot of people don't want to make the investment and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Things look very good now.

[Michael Batnick]

It makes no sense to me. Why? It's just because they're doing so well. You'd think they would want to do more, but I really don't get it.

[Ben Carlson]

It's not. It's maybe not repeatable. It's not guaranteed. This is a really hot year for movies.

[Michael Batnick]

All right,

[Ben Carlson]

All Right. Ben, I've got a few stories. I know, I know it's a long ass episode, so forgive me. Although maybe you like. Maybe you like, like us and like sticking around for the long ones, you know, the. You know, when in I love you, man, when Paul Rudd calls, uh, Jason Siegel Joben, of course, and he just, like, his brain just breaks.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

By the way, I saw Rush and Paul Rudd and Jason Siegel doing the slap in the bass at the Rush concert was just dead on. Nothing but people playing the air instruments. Saw air drum, air guitar, air piano.

[Michael Batnick]

That movie just makes me smile the best.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so anyway, I was walking to the train station. I had a bag in my hand. It was heavier than I expected. I was sweating. Stopped at Starbucks, was hoping somebody would. I would see somebody who could give me a ride. Sure enough, guy from the neighborhood that I'm friendly with pulls up and he said. He point. He said, need a ride? I said, yeah, saddle me. And he walks away into Starbucks. And I'm like, what the Saddle me? That's. That's like not even close to anything. He said, saddle me.

[Michael Batnick]

So sounds like it an innuendo of some sort.

[Ben Carlson]

So we get in the car and he goes, hey, did you say saddle me? That's the best part.

[Michael Batnick]

I love you, man. Is he calls him out on it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So this guy called me. I'm like. I had. I. I don't know my. I don't know, man. I don't know what to tell you.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm.

[Ben Carlson]

My brain broke for a second. All right, I got one more for you. Remember last week on the show we were talking about how you have. You are more OCD brained, where if there's something.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Something that needs to be done, you just get it done. All right. I'm the opposite. So I bought a green light for. For my backyard. The. A green light is you. You drop it in the water and it lights up and you see all the fish swim by and the kids.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, right. We had that in Florida. My son loved it because the fish would come up at night. We could. That's when you go fishing at night.

[Ben Carlson]

It's great.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

So I've had this thing in my backyard. It's been in the package for three weeks. And Robin kissed by. Could you just. What do you just plug it in and put it in the water? What are you doing? So I finally got around to it. I lubed it up, lathered it in Vaseline, because apparently that keeps it brighter and it keeps like the seaweed off of it.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, okay.

[Ben Carlson]

So I lubed it up, I plugged it in and I threw it into the water. But what I didn't do, Ben, was I didn't unravel the wires. So I plugged it in and I threw it in and the wire came out and just like right to the bottom. And Robin's like, you're this. You're the dumbest person I've ever met in my life.

[Michael Batnick]

So I get another one.

[Ben Carlson]

I think I could get it eventually.

[Michael Batnick]

Put on your scuba gear and go get it. All right.

[Ben Carlson]

Can I just say one more thing? And this might not. This might sound mean spirited. Sorry. I can't help it. It irks me. Is whistling the most annoying thing ever? People who whistle.

[Michael Batnick]

Amen. There's a guy in my gym who whistles the entire time he's in the locker room. He doesn't stop whistling. And.

[Ben Carlson]

Come on.

[Michael Batnick]

I feel like if you're by yourself, you can whistle. If you're by other people, you can't whistle. You just can't do it. It's very annoying.

[Ben Carlson]

Highly irritating, yes. It's like. It's like you can't really tell somebody to stop because it's such like a. It's like such a dickhead thing. Like. Hey, hey, do you mind?

[Michael Batnick]

You want to tell him to stop?

[Ben Carlson]

Hey, do me a favor. Would you. Could you. Could you knock it off?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. Whistling your own head. I agree. Email from a listener. Ben, I had a question for you based on something you said years ago. It was at the height of the pandemic. You said you were never going to wear a tie again. Since work dress code has changed so much in the pandemic, it seemed like a good prediction. I'm curious if you kept your prediction and also have not worn a tie since the pandemic. Great timing. This question just came in yesterday. I wore my first tie since the pandemic this past weekend, but I was forced to.

[Ben Carlson]

You're great. Where were you?

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island. This is the only. My face is not the greatest in that picture. This is the only one I could find with me and sitting next to my brother in law on the porch. Grand Hotel has been around since the 1800s in Mackinac Island. Mackinac island is this little island between the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula. You have to take a ferry to get there. It's very touristy. There's a lot of fudge and ice cream and shops, restaurants. But this hotel has been there since the 1800s and they kept it up. And it's like a time capsule. Remember in Midnight in Paris when Owen Wilson goes back in time to, like, the 1920s?

[Ben Carlson]

Never saw it.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. I love that movie. It feels like you're going back in time at this place. But they have rules still. At 6:30, if you're walking through the lobby and you're staying there, all men have to have a sport coat on. Women have to look, you have to dress. And at dinner, there's one, the main room that you have dinner, you have to. If you're a man, you have to have a sport coat and a tie on. And women are.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Huh.

[Michael Batnick]

And honestly, at night, the place was great. Everyone was dressed up. It felt like an actual, like, event. It was like. And I thought, like, we're a nation of slobs now. This is one of the worst outcomes of the pandemic, is that I get it, everyone's more comfortable. But we're just. In the past, people used to dress up and go on planes. Now everyone is a slob. Everyone wears PJs everywhere. Like, it felt nice to have everyone dressed up again. And I liked it. So that was my time wearing a tie. First time in a while.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I've got. I've got a bunch in the recommendation section this week. Let's start with this. I tease this to you. I'm confused by the concept of Westerns as a genre. And this hit me. I was watching, my dad recommended a movie that I didn't really care for. Well, I didn't finish it, but I think I got far enough.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't really understand this take. Like, you don't like Westerns?

[Ben Carlson]

No, no, no. Although I actually don't love Westerns, if I'm being honest. I don't hate them. They're just, you know, not in my top 20. What was the name of this movie? Old Henry. Did you see this?

[Michael Batnick]

No.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, whatever. It's a Western. My take is this. I'm not hating on Westerns. I'm just confused by Westerns as a concept, because a Western really isn't necessarily a genre of movies like horror is. Because there can be a comedy Western, there could be a drama Western, there could be a horror. Did I say horror already? There could be all sorts of different types of Westerns. It's a setting.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a setting.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, It's a setting as a style of movies. But there's not.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, I feel like that setting always works.

[Ben Carlson]

Or desert movies. It's just kind of interesting when you

[Michael Batnick]

Think about it, right? It's a time, it's a timepiece, but for some reason it works because it's like there's outlaws and there's no rules and all right,

[Ben Carlson]

we have any other period, but we don't have any other period or, or. Or location genres is all just it occurred.

[Michael Batnick]

Fair.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, this, this is another. I saw this. I was like, wait, so I'm scrolling for movies. The other night Robin was out. Whatever night it was, I was by myself and I'm scrolling and I come across a movie called the Return with Ray Fines. I'm guessing you've never heard of this.

[Michael Batnick]

No.

[Ben Carlson]

Let me read you the intro or the description. Tell me if this sounds a bit familiar, Ben. This movie is two years old. After 20 years away, Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king finds much has changed since he left to fight in the Trojan War. His beloved wife Penelope is a prisoner in her own home and hounded to choose a new husband. Their son faces death at the hands of suitors who see him as an obstacle in the pursuit of Penelope. In the kingdom, Odysseus is no longer the mighty. All right, you get the point. I saw this. I said, wow, are you kidding me? Ray Fines, one of the best actors ever, did this movie two years ago and it grossed three and a half million dollars. And it got decent reviews on the tomatoes. And Christopher Nolan comes over the top. Billion dollars. Isn't that wild?

[Michael Batnick]

Was it any good?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't think I'm gonna watch it.

[Michael Batnick]

I thought you're gonna watch it. It's pretty hard to watch after the fact now. Right, Right.

[Ben Carlson]

What would be the point?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, true.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I do have an actual. A few actual recommendations. She rides shotgun. Ever hear of this?

[Michael Batnick]

No.

[Ben Carlson]

This was a. It's not really a you movie. It's like a. It's like. It's a great airplane movie. It's gritty and it's grimy. An ex conviction goes to get his daughter, takes her away. They're on the lamb, Ben, as you like to say.

[Michael Batnick]

I like him.

[Ben Carlson]

You do like that guy, right? You're an Edgerton guy. Not Joel, the other guy. Are they related?

[Michael Batnick]

I don't think so. Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Good movie. The Kenny G documentary was hilarious. It's on Max. It felt similar to the Yacht Rock Doc because it's made by the same, same, same group. And I never really thought about Kenny G before. He's just always been in my life as I'm sure he's always been in your life as this guy that.

[Michael Batnick]

Putting Kenny G on. And we had family dinner with my dad. Love putting Kenny G on in the background.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, it was. But it's like weird because he's like a global phenomenon and you spend. You probably spend zero time thinking about him other than the fact like he's sort of a joke and people make fun of him and whatever because he's cheesy and corny and I love that guy. Great vibes in on the joke. Has a beautiful sound. That was awesome. All the hair. And he's a Jew. Of course he's Jewish. I had no idea. His name is like, whatever. He's a Jewish guy from Seattle.

[Michael Batnick]

I didn't know that either. Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, he. He looks a lot of stuff I

[Michael Batnick]

didn't know from your recommendation.

[Ben Carlson]

He's got the Long Jufro. Anyway, I enjoyed the shit of that. And then lastly, actually two more. I'm sorry, The Westies. The Westies is a. Is a damn fine show. Again, it's on MGM Plus, I spoke about this a few weeks ago. J.K. simmons is the head of the Irish Mafia and he's going head to head with. With. My God, my brain is breaking. Gotti.

[Michael Batnick]

I have every streaming service on the planet. I'm not gonna slum it with MGM. Plus, I appreciate that you like this show. I'm not going to. Plus. Sorry.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. We got a few emails about it when I mentioned it. All right, Last.

[Michael Batnick]

Dozens of you. Dozens.

[Ben Carlson]

Lastly, Ben, you're going to like this. You're going to like this a lot. I watched. So instead of watching. Instead of watching the Return with Ray Fines, I watched To Live and Die in la. And I'm saying, huh, why have I heard of this movie before? They did it on the rewatchables a few months ago. And I. I didn't listen. Because I didn't. I missed it. And It's a classic, classic 80s movie. And I thought to myself, hey, you

[Michael Batnick]

know, I've actually never seen that one either.

[Ben Carlson]

You would love it.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Remember a couple of years ago I said the 80s movies don't hold a candle to the 90s. In fact, 80s movies are trash. And I think I was. I used Top Gun as a jumping off point for that. Like, what a silly, stupid movie. Right? 80s. Kind of like. Like 80s are like Westerns. They're their own genre. Right? Like it's a complete time capsule. 80s movies are different. 90s movies are more Modern. And they hold up like, I think a 90s movie in 50 years will still be a Terminator 2 will still be an awesome movie. Whereas Top Gun or any of these other movies, it's like, what the hell was happening?

[Michael Batnick]

Well, Top Gun. Hey, take it easy.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm just saying the 80s movies as a collective, you'd be like, this is weird. Like, what was happening in the 80s. So I. I'm taking it. I. So the 80s movies have grown on me over the years as I've seen more and more of them. I filled in my portfolio.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I grew up in the 80s, so I love them all.

[Ben Carlson]

But I'm still saying that if you hold them next to the 90s, they don't. They still don't hold the candle. And if you were to break it down not just by like the top hundred, but genre by genre, the 90s, like, across the board is better. But I have a. I have a better appreciation for 80s movies than I did a couple years ago.

[Michael Batnick]

Good. Good for you. All right. I don't have as many as you. Furious on Hulu. My wife and I love it. Very good. It's got a lot of stuff going on. Emmy Rossum is really good in it. I know her from Shameless, which is a show that was on. Was it on Showtime or was it HBO? It was on for like 11 seasons. William H. Macy was on Showtime. The guy from the Bear. Yeah. It probably should have five. If it was a five season show, it would have been awesome. But it stayed on for way too long. But I loved that show at the beginning. It's overstayed. It's welcome. She's really good in it, and it's about a serial killer, but it's also about human trafficking and domestic abuse and cops and FBI. And there's a lot going on and I'm here for it. I think it's very high quality.

[Ben Carlson]

So I watched the first episode because I heard CR and Andy raving about it and it was okay.

[Michael Batnick]

I like it. I'm really into it. I like it. I think it's very well done. And finally, the Talented Mr. Ripley is, speaking of 90s movies, one of my favorite, most rewatchable 90s movies. I love rewatching it in the summer. It's like you transport it into this place and I feel like if you were to pick a movie character that you could trade lives with for like a day, you'd pick Jude Law on that. He's living in this little town in Italy. Right. And, like dresses nice and anyway, and then I watch Ripley on Netflix. But then I finally read the original book by Patricia Highsmith. I think there's like five of them. And I can't believe how well the book aged. The book is still. It felt like it was something that could have been written today. Just taking away the technology. It was so good.

[Ben Carlson]

They made a book out of that.

[Michael Batnick]

A lot of. Yeah. Weird, huh?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. That's one of my favorite lines ever. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

[Michael Batnick]

They made a book out of that movie anyway. Very well done. I liked it. I'm going to read the rest of the books now.

[Ben Carlson]

Is Ripley on Netflix worth watching? Was it a series on Netflix or was it not? I can't remember.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a miniseries. I really liked it. And that series is more closely aligned to the book than the movie is the movie. They made some different choices, which I like the choices they made. But they veered away from the book in a lot of ways. Anyway, good stuff. All right. We did it.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, wait. One less thing. I almost forgot. Lioness. Holy shit. What a show. Unbelievable. He's done it again. Taylor Sheridan knocked it out of the park.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, I never got it.

[Ben Carlson]

Episodes one and two are out. So good. Not for you. Do you not like CIA fb? Well, the type shows.

[Michael Batnick]

I feel like a lot of it's been done. I'm watching Furious. So it's an FBI show. All right. Email us animalspiritscompoundnews.com thanks to the production team. As always, Duncan's making sure we know what a Russian nesting doll is.

[Ben Carlson]

I think this is our longest episode ever, possibly.

[Michael Batnick]

We had 45 pages in the document. Thanks everyone, for listening. Appreciate it. See you next time.