Gold's 1987 Moment (EP. 450)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast – "Gold's 1987 Moment" (EP. 450)

Date: February 4, 2026
Hosts: Michael Batnick & Ben Carlson

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Overview

In Episode 450 of Animal Spirits, hosts Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson dive into an unprecedented stretch of market volatility, focusing on the dramatic boom and bust of gold, silver, and crypto—likening silver’s crash to a 1987-style event. They explore how social media, algorithmic trading, and global retail flows are reshaping market cycles, dissect the shifting landscape of AI, discuss changing retail investing patterns, and reflect on societal and generational tensions (especially around housing). The episode is fast-paced, mixing market commentary, cultural touchstones, behavioral economics, and personal asides, all delivered with their signature candor and humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fastest and Wildest Market Decade (01:23–04:38)

• The news cycle is relentless, covering everything from market sell-offs, meta technology mergers, AI agent breakouts, Disney/Netflix news, to new Fed leadership.
• Michael claims:

  “This is by far the most exciting market decade ever.”
  (04:12)

• Rapid shifts and volatility are enabled by social media and algorithm-driven investing, accelerating both market trends and reversals.

2. The Gold and Silver Crash – Social Media’s Market Impact (04:38–13:59)

• Silver’s Parabolic Rise and Crash:
  The price of silver surged over 25% in days, then crashed by as much as 33% on a single day—worse than the metal’s 1987 crash (05:09–05:49).
• Quote:

  “It was down almost 30% on Friday… worse than a 1987 crash for silver in a single day.” – Michael (05:27)

• The boom was fueled by Reddit and algorithmic platforms serving up hot trends, with retail money flooding in and out, sometimes via leveraged ETFs experiencing wild swings (06:03–07:38).
• Despite the initial meme-stock mania of 2021, “degenerate” behavior in markets hasn’t faded—retail addiction and participation has only multiplied.
• Global nature: China’s retail demand also contributed, with one silver ETF reaching a 42% premium due to rampant demand (09:55–10:21).

3. Gold’s Supercycle? Deconstructing Commodity Narratives (11:08–13:52)

• The mainstream narrative of dollar debasement was challenged; instead, geopolitical events, deglobalization, and hoarding by central banks are boosting metals, per Jeff Currie’s thesis.
• Michael:

  “Commodities go up, someone says it’s a supercycle… but I think we had a supercycle compressed in like 15 months.” (11:41)

• Despite historic volatility, gold's annualized return in the 2020s doubled in 13 months (from 11.4% to 23%).

4. The Changed Nature of Markets & Retail’s Role (13:59–16:42)

• Internet-driven speculation is here to stay; retail volume now makes up about 20% of all trades and is never going back down to pre-pandemic levels (14:24–14:48).
• Hedge funds and market-makers capitalize on this liquidity, but are not losing money.
• China’s influence looms large: “It’s Shanghai over London,” as local demand now drives prices.

5. The Rise of Prediction Markets – A New Economic Signal? (16:42–21:01)

• Ben and Michael debate the long-term impact and potential economic utility of prediction markets in narrowing the range of future outcomes, potentially creating “massive economic efficiencies.”
• Kyla Scanlon is cited: Prediction markets could meaningfully affect real-world behaviors (19:50).

6. Earnings, Tech Efficiency & AI Winners (21:02–24:36)

• Rising corporate profit margins in the S&P 500, even as Big Tech (Meta) burns $80B on the metaverse/AI—yet Meta’s margin is still a hefty 41% (22:03).
• Michael:

  “There’s been no project in the history of mankind…I’m guessing, maybe there’s something I’m not thinking about, that has lit $80 billion on fire and not only survived, but thrived.” (22:26)

• AI is being used primarily to maximize engagement and ad targeting—Meta’s “win” is ultimately making people spend more time online, sparking a depression about the true social value of tech “progress.”

7. “Nobody Knows Anything”—The Humility of Forecasting (25:00–28:14)

• Referencing Bill Simmons, William Goldman, and Stanley Druckenmiller, the hosts reinforce that experts and legends alike regularly get forecasts utterly wrong.
• Michael:

  “Almost everything ages poorly. Once in a while you get something right.” (28:02)

• Example: In 2020, Druckenmiller called equities’ risk/reward the worst he’d seen—since then, the market was up massively.

8. Retail Investing Surges & Bubbles Dispersed (30:34–31:36)

• Jeff Yass’s data: Retail now accounts for over 20% of US trading volume, exceeding long-only and hedge fund flows combined (30:55).
• Signs of broadening from AI-dominated stocks to new bubbles (SanDisk spin-off, EM ETF flows).

9. Emerging Markets & Dollar Dynamics (31:55–33:51)

• EM ETFs record historic inflows, possibly marking a cyclical handoff from US stocks.

10. Economic & Generational Pressures – Housing, Inequality, and Frustration (51:53–56:21)

• Trump’s controversial stance: “I don’t want to drive housing prices down...I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes.” (52:08)
• The generational divide: Access to housing as the locus of wealth, and a potential powder keg for demographic conflict.
• Ben:

  “Everything comes down to housing…If they can't afford housing or they feel like they can't afford housing, they're going to be mad forever...” (54:05–55:19)

11. Societal Changes – Technology, Fake Stories, and Believability (41:44–45:55)

• AI rapidly approaching “Her”-style personal assistants: Michael is awed by a demo of an AI agent controlling a computer via phone call (42:41).
• On the downside, viral feel-good stories are now widely dismissed as AI-generated fakes; trust is eroding in everyday stories (45:12).
• Ben:

  “We're just not going to believe anything anymore. And that's scary.” (45:49)

12. Food Delivery, Consumer Spend, and Cultural Shifts (61:00–63:55)

• Explosive growth in delivery app usage, even among lower and middle-income households, despite high costs and inflation concerns.
• Michael admits he was wrong about the stickiness of pandemic-era food delivery:

  “I thought this was going to sort of like business travel… I really thought this was a pandemic phenomenon and that people wouldn't waste their money. But here I am wasting…” (63:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Michael (On commodity speculation):
  “This is worse than a 1987 crash for silver in a single day.” (05:27)
• Ben (On meme speculation):
  “Remember when it was like the meme stock thing was going to be a flash in the pan? …It’s multiplied.” (07:38)
• On AI’s ‘winner’:
  “The most depressing winner of AI is Meta.” – Ben (24:00)
• On forecast humility:
  “Almost everything ages poorly. Once in a while you get something right.” – Michael (28:02)
• On ‘bubble’ avoidance:
  “Nothing could be better for all of us for building long term wealth than avoiding a bubble.” – Michael (30:10)
• On emerging market resurgence:
  “From 2010 to 2024, emerging markets stunk out loud. They're up 65%. In total, the S&P was up over 600%.” – Ben (32:43)
• On housing and generational anger:
  “Everything comes down to housing… If they can't afford housing or they feel like they can't afford housing, they're going to be mad forever.” – Ben (54:05)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |-----------------------------------|---------------| | Market Volatility and “Decade” | 01:23–04:38 | | Gold/Silver Boom and Bust | 04:38–13:59 | | Commodity Supercycle Theories | 11:08–13:52 | | Social Media’s Market Impact | 13:59–16:42 | | Prediction Markets | 16:42–21:01 | | S&P Earnings & AI’s Role | 21:02–24:36 | | “Nobody Knows Anything” | 25:00–28:14 | | Retail Flows & Bubbles | 30:34–31:36 | | Emerging Markets Cycle | 31:55–33:51 | | Fake Stories, AI, Trust | 41:44–45:55 | | Housing Crisis, Demographics | 51:53–56:21 | | Food Delivery’s Social Impact | 61:00–63:55 |

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Additional Highlights

• The hosts bounce through pop culture (Hollywood screenwriting, 90s movies, Sinbad), humorous debates on car parking styles, grievances about home repairs, and strategies around food delivery.
• Final observations hammer home the ongoing acceleration of news, the overwhelming “beat” of information, and the challenge for any investor (or citizen) to keep perspective amid the chaos.

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Conclusion

Episode 450 offers a tour de force across financial markets, policy, society, technology, and even plumbing. Michael and Ben’s conversational, sometimes exasperated, style highlights just how fast and absurd the financial world has become—and reminds listeners that beneath the surface, human behavior—be it greed, fear, addiction, or tribal loyalty—remains the constant driver. Whether it’s gold’s wild ride, prediction markets, or the next market narrative, there’s never been more noise. Their advice: tune in, but hold your forecasts loosely; nobody, no matter how expert, really knows what comes next.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

This episode is sponsored by ClearBridge Investments. Earnings growth in the rest of the equity market is forecast to catch up with the Magnificent Seven in 2026. Position your investment portfolio for an expected broadening in performance with fundamentally driven Clearbridge active equity strategies. Clearbridge, a Franklin Templeton company. Go to clearbridge.com to learn more.

[A]

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing and watching.

[B]

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben.

[A]

Are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management.

[B]

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions.

[A]

Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain.

[B]

Positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. It is Tuesday morning, 9:05 on the east coast and things are moving fast these days. Do you, do you feel that way?

[A]

The Internet has sped everything up, right?

[B]

I don't know if it's the Internet because we've, you know, Internet.

[A]

Are you talking all, hey, it's, it's February, right? Really? It's February?

[B]

No, no, no, no. I mean the news cycle.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes. So last week or two weeks ago when the Greenland sell off happened and it was a legitimate sell off, I mean, yeah, from all time highs and it wasn't like a deep drawdown or anything, but the market was down 2%. It was the worst day in months and months and months. And we spoke about it a little bit like this is nonsense, obviously. But then a week later there was so much news to replace that news because I guess Trump, you know, de escalated the rhetoric. We didn't even revisit it because we didn't have time.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So the doc today is how many pages? I mean, we're not gonna get to it all. The doc is a lot. 60 something pages, 57 pages might be a record. So here's some of the things that are in the news cycle this week.

[A]

Some of them we're just gonna do a mirror. We should just do a marathon. Today we go through it all.

[B]

Some of them are outside the scope of what we normally talk about, but it's still things that are very much dominating the news. So the ICE stuff, obviously that's not a topic for today's conversation, nor is the Epstein files, but that is like national news, right? Like everywhere for our purposes. You've got all the stuff that's happening in AI and this was a, this was a really crazy week with last week it was Claude code or a couple weeks ago that was like all the dominant news flow. And then it was Claude bot, which is a separate thing. They renamed it Multbod. If you're not familiar with what this company is, these are AI agents that like created their own Reddit board and are now talking amongst themselves. There is the gold and the silver and the crypto crash. We have a new Fed Chairman coming in. SpaceX is taking over AI. Or SpaceX and Xai, excuse me, are merging. OpenAI is fighting with Nvidia. Netflix is buying Warner Brothers Discovery. We have a new Disney CEO. And I'm sure there's other things that I'm not including. Like of course there are.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I didn't mention everything. And this is all in the middle of an earning season, like a very busy tech based earning season. There is so much happening. I feel like we're drowning a news floor.

[A]

Explained, like 10 days. I, I want to like you zoomed in a little. I want to zoom out like this. I don't think you can. It's even argument at this point. This is the most exciting market decade we've ever lived through. Anyone. I mean you could say like the great financial crisis and the dot com ball blowing up, that was, that was scarier. But I do think with social media and everything going on, like just think about all the stuff that's happened. The COVID crash and the negative oil prices and 9% inflation and rates going from 0 to 5% in the 2022 bear market and then AI coming to save the day and then gold and silver going bananas and I missed a million different things. This is by far the most exciting market decade ever.

[B]

Can I pull up Bill Simmons? This is easily a top six, top seven decade, but it is no. Right? This is number one. There's no, there's no question about it. And we're halfway done.

[A]

Yes, and you're right, though, I, I made this point when I first started blogging that the information age is speeding up market cycles. And I think that's, that's nowhere more relevant than we can see in what happened in gold and silver. There, there's reasons that gold and silver took off, and I want to get to those a little bit, but we have to talk about what's going on here. Last week, because it was insane. Remember we posted the, the chart last week and it said this does not look normal. The price of silver just going absolutely parabolic. And it, from where we posted last week, that was on a Tuesday or Monday, I think it went up 25% from there or something. Right. And then so I think at the worst, it was the worst day ever for silver. Sean and our research team created this. It was down almost 30% on Friday. I think at one point it was down 33%. So this is worse than a 1987 crash for silver in a single day. And Josh is the one who made the point that like, listen, a lot of this is just Reddit taking over. And I think that's what makes this so hard to understand trends these days is that when a trend gets taken over by, they're almost like investor bots, I guess, for lack of a better term, that hop on these trends and push and push and push.

[B]

Well, that's exactly. I mean, Josh nailed it because I don't know if we said this last week, maybe we did, maybe we didn't, but the amount of volume that you were seeing coming into this, it's like literally where is this coming from? Right? Like, because it's, it's, it's real buyers. And Josh astutely made the point. It's like, guys, this is, it's Spotify, it's Netflix, it's the algorithms that are serving this up to know nothing investors. And they're all in, right?

[A]

Oh, you used to trade zero day options or crypto or how about this? Everyone else is trading this. You should trade it too. Yeah, So I looked at this. I didn't realize there's a Pro Shares Ultra Silver ETF, which is a two times leverage silver ETF. On Friday it was down almost 60%. So in that, in that one day, this leveraged ETF was down more than the S and P was during the entire great financial crisis. Obviously, I'm sure it was up a gazillion percent heading into this.

[B]

So it's, that's like the, the Thanksgiving Turkey Day chart, right? Because yeah, it was probably up. I mean, it was probably 3,000%. I, I'm making up that number. But it start. Look at this. The, the, the assets under management. It started the year at a billion and a half, ran to $5 billion. So chart kid made. Made like a chart showing the weekly fund flows. So the previous chart, which is total assets under management, that is dominated by price appreciation.

[A]

Right, Right. Because it went crazy.

[B]

Yeah. So the next chart shows like weekly fund flows and like how much money is coming in and going out, not fluctuating as a result of the daily price movement. And last week, $204 million was yanked out, like, on top of whatever was disappeared. There's just. That's a lot of money and forget, you know, God knows how much came into it. Hundreds of millions of dollars of actual money being lit on fire. I mean, just a wild scene. I. People that are involved.

[A]

Wait, hang on real quick. Remember when it was like the meme stock thing was going to be a flash in the pan. I'm like, oh, this will happen in 2021. These stocks will crash. This behavior will go away. It's got, it's multiplied.

[B]

Well, credit to me. I never said that.

[A]

I never thought so either.

[B]

I said people don't get unaddicted. Like, however, that's what I said at the time. I don't believe that. I think that, yes, there is. There is obviously an addictive, degenerate component to this. And that sounds mean. I don't, you know, whatever. I'm sorry.

[A]

It's the truth. But there's also people who understand the degeneracy and they're hopping on too. Right. It's like we're. I'm gonna jump. It's like the fish that are attached to the whales or whatever, like people are along for the ride, but.

[B]

And also there are people that have never traded before that just lost 50% or whatever in this levered ETF. Guess what? They're probably not going to touch the stove again. Right? If this is like a young person who's like, all right. Right. Like so.

[A]

I hope. I hope so.

[B]

All right. Lots of Baltuna stuff in here last week. Silver, SLV salt volume. More volume than the most traded stocks on the planet. Still can't get over that. More than Tesla Nvidia. It's not even gold. It's silver. That's Eric.

[A]

So why says a month ago the volume was 10 times less. A year ago it was 170th biggest ETF. So this is like he's saying like, this Was not even on anyone's radar at all. And this thing started going up because of a trend and then the trend followers, like the trend followers on steroids jumped on this and just pump and pump and pump. It's crazy.

[B]

GLD and SLV are both. And by the way, gold had the second. Gold had its worst. Not gold, GLD, which is, I think it launched in 2003.

[A]

22,005 probably. Yeah.

[B]

Okay. Had its worst two day return ever. It fell 13% I think in two days. We have that chart here somewhere. GLD and SLV, another Belchuna special, are both going to end up trading about $40 billion each today. Both all time records. Tesla was $35 billion. I mean look at this. It's wild. So Josh is. He nailed it. He's absolutely right. Like when you go onto these trading platforms or whatever, they're serving you up the hot shit.

[A]

And this really, this was also like crypto in that it was global in nature. So Eric says that China has only one silver fund and the demand is so rampant it had to shut off subscriptions. So now it's at a 42% premium. Bloomberg had this story about all these. They did the Wall Street Journal thing, but they interviewed people in China and apparently silver was going nuts in China. And they talk about all these different people who've made a ton of money or lost a ton of money and it's just regular middle class people in China.

[B]

Silver went platinum.

[A]

Yes. And they said it felt like a trip to the casino in Macau. Like people just lost a ton of this one person had lost 84% of their money from the peak. Like made a ton of money. Lost it all. Now last week, I think it was on Friday, Odd Lots came out with a podcast with Jeff Curry, who's this? I think he was a former Goldman Sachs commodities guy. Maybe he's got his own firm now. And he talked about the. What's going on here? Like why, why are metals going so crazy? And this is. They interviewed him a day or two before the crash and the, the reason for higher commodity prices, what he laid out, it's not like the debasement thing. And I don't really buy that either. The whole like we're commodities are going crazy because the end of the US dollar and the US like supremacy is over. If that was really happening, I know the dollar is down 10 or 12% from the highs.

[B]

It would be down a lot more if the dollar was being debased. And what about crude oil? Is that not a dollar Trade interest.

[A]

Rates would be skyrocketing. They're not, they're falling. Right, like you, you, the stock market wouldn't be at all time highs if that was really happening. You wouldn't see the things that are happening, that are happening.

[B]

So I, there's something else, there's, there's something else going on.

[A]

And so he lays out actually makes sense. And the thing is the US is totally responsible for all the higher prices as far as his thesis goes. His thesis is, listen, the first one was Russia had all these financial assets. When the war happened, the US put sanctions on them that caused all these different central banks to buy gold and hard assets, which we've talked about before. But the other thing he said, listen, this whole deglobalization thing, the trade war has caused all of these other countries to say, wait a minute, if we're going to be shut off and there's going to be tariffs put on us or like we're going to have to buy our own stuff. So countries are now hoarding this stuff and buying their own supply of commodities and that's causing commodity prices to go up. This whole globalization, you know, we're on our own kind of thing. So those are the two big reasons. Now he, he also did say like we're at the foothills of the Himalayas for commodity prices. Like he thinks this thing is a super cycle. And I have a hard time reconciling that with what's going on because I feel like every time commodities go up, some commodities person says this is a super cycle. Right. But I think we had a super cycle compressed in like 15 months essentially. Yeah, like I think that was it. I mean, and who knows if where it goes from here because silver's up 10% today again. It's also funny, I looked at this yesterday. Silver was down 33% in two days, but up 150% over the previous 12 months.

[B]

Still, how big did the market cap get? Was it like 5 trillion more?

[A]

I mean gold was 30. I looked at this.

[B]

Gold was 30.

[A]

30 trillion. Yeah, we looked at that last week, remember? Holy cow, is that nuts?

[B]

How big is the s and P? 500? Is it 50?

[A]

50, 60, maybe 70 now for last year. I've looked at this one before and I looked at, I did these numbers on Thursday and it looks at the annual returns by decade and golden in the S. P since the 70s have pretty much gone in different directions except for this decade. And I updated these numbers when I looked at this through 2024, the annual return for gold in the 2020s was 11.4%. Are you with me? So 2020 to 2024 is 11.4% per year. Through last week, the annual return was now 23% per year. So in 13 months the annual return for the decade more than doubled. Wow. That's how crazy the run has been because of the returns last year and then so far this year. So my question to you, what is more likely have a lost decade first, because you look on this chart, there's lost decades for both golden stocks. Which one is more likely to have a lost decade for stocks or gold?

[B]

Gold. No question. No question. No question is. That's my answer. Not no question, that's going to be the outcome. But like for me there's no hesitation.

[A]

In saying gold, especially after this run up because this is what happens. It's, it's like we, last week we talked about how these are boom, bust assets. Not expecting the bust happen that quickly. But the thing is, can we say to Josh's point that the Internet has in social media have changed markets forever.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Like this is, we're in a new era. It's completely different and divorced from what was happening previously in many, many ways.

[B]

So these retail traders which are now huge and by the gold's up 5 and a half percent pre market, these retail traders which are hugely influential, obviously as we're discussing 20% of the total volume of trades, they're never leaving. Now it might be new traders and they might cycle in and out and sometimes it might be, it might dip to 16% and sometimes it might be as high as whatever. It's not going back down to 7%. They're never leaving as a group.

[A]

But don't you think the renaissance technology is the world and citadels of the world are also on this too. Like they know, they see the flows, they know what's happening here. This is, this is not just retail. This is hedge funds getting on with retail as well.

[B]

Yeah, they're, they're eating, they're eating the guppies every day. I mean it's, they're probably making money.

[A]

On both sides of it too.

[B]

Like these, the Citadels and the Jane Streets and these like market makers. They're not, they're not losing, they're not losing money ever, right?

[A]

No, not with all this activity.

[B]

All right, this is from Daily Chart book. Silver's parabolic surge towards USD 110 has not been driven by either ETF investors in the west or speculators on COMEX with holdings and positions in Both still falling. Hmm, that doesn't sound right. But all right, here's the point. Chinese demand remains a major driver. How they will behave ahead of their long lunar New Year holiday next month will be key to watch. So it's Shanghai over London. I don't know exactly what that means. Is that money moving from London to Shanghai? Is that silver traveling? I have no idea. That's the chart that goes up to the right. The reason why the first part of that sentence didn't make sense is because this next chart from Vanda in the Wall Street Journal of cumulative net retail flows into silver and ETF, silver and gold ETFs is up into the right. It's been.

[A]

I never. So silver brought in more flows than gold by far.

[B]

So $1.3 billion of retail flows.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

$1.3 billion.

[A]

So here's. Here's the thing. If you're. If you have a thesis about the super cycle for commodities, how do you handicap these retail traders and these people in China who are speculating? How do you handicap that as part of your thesis? It's impossible. They. They could continue to swarm and add money and keep flaming the fire, or they could just. All right, we're moving on to the next big thing, whatever it is.

[B]

I have no idea. But I want to fess. I want to fast forward in the doc to I up. Oh, my God, the doc is so long. Today I updated. We have a. We have a new category. Ben. I updated the survey to slash prediction markets.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Makes sense. Yep.

[B]

By the way, I forgot to put a survey in here. Hold on. I slacked this to myself this morning. This is a hilariously nonsensical survey. And it's been a minute. I feel like surveys of the week. It's been. We haven't had a good dumb survey in a while. Check this out. Ben, during the past year. This is Gallup. About how many books did you read? Either all or part of the way through. Don't look. How many? How many? What do you think? So the average number of books read by a US Adult, what do you think the number is?

[A]

What do I think it is? 3.

[B]

During the past year. Yeah, that sounds about right. Maybe even high. I would say probably closer to one. Right. Who reads books? 14.6.

[A]

LOL. No way.

[B]

14.6. Okay.

[A]

I feel like 14.6 is, like, a strong reader, someone who enjoys reading and.

[B]

Ready? Are you kidding me? That's like somebody who identifies as a reader.

[A]

Like, Maybe you have 14 books stacked up on your bedside table that you want to read. But yes, that there's no way the average American is reading 14 books a year.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. So I've been, I've been pretty vocal about my opinion about prediction markets. I think I'm pushing back against like Vlad's quote that it's gonna be bigger than the equity markets. Like to me that's crazy. Okay. But I also do think that it is going to be a thing. I don't know that it necessarily is going to like be. Instead of trading stocks, we just trade prediction markets. Like why would you buy Apple when you could just trade a prediction market? Will Apple go up or down today? I don't think that part is going, that's not the part that I'm bullish on. But this occurred to me while listening to Joe and Tracy. They were talking with a utilities analyst who had a contrarian take that actually there's going to be too much supply. Right? Like that we're over building. I think that was the big, that was a big take. And there's all sorts of think tanks. So the reason why I jumped forward is because you were saying like how do we handicap the commodity super cycle, whatever. So there's all sorts of think tanks and projections. So he was talking about like the demand for you for energy and he said it's all over the map. Like there's no clarity on what demand is going to be. Okay. So I had a aha moment. Hey, wait a minute. Instead of these academics doing these long deep dive white papers, the OECD looking right, like things like that, let's make a market, like let people bet dollars on where things are going to shake out. And I think the economic signal that we're going to get human beings from those markets is going to create potentially massive economic efficiencies. The wisdom of the crowd is going to narrow the wide range of outcomes for really high dollar type projects. Your thoughts?

[A]

Kyla Scanlon did a op ed in the New York Times this week about prediction markets and she was saying that yeah, these prediction markets are going to start affecting behavior because it'll, it'll help people understand whether something makes sense or not or whether there needs to be more resources diverted to that it's going.

[B]

To give a signal, right? So like with, with the Kevin Warsh thing, okay, boom. Kevin Warsh 10 year spikes. Like it's a one to one type of thing, right. And the market front ran that like the market saw that coming. So I know that's like a, that's like a very, that's a micro type of thing. But to Kyla's point and the thing that I was just mentioning, if we could have more clarity in terms of where dollars are going to be, we could create massive economic efficiencies across.

[A]

And these things may never be as big as the other markets, but they're going to have, they're going to be here for good because they're as a way to tell what's going on.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Even if they're concurrent sometimes indicators.

[B]

So like me, you know, I, I, I bet on one, one battle after another, winning the Oscars, like whatever that, that's, that's fun and cute and all well and good, but that's not, I, I, I think that is, that is not the point of these prediction markets. At least that's not going to be like the, the rise of it, in my opinion. It's not going to be people day trading their asses off because it, that stuff gets stale.

[A]

Right. Okay, back to the markets.

[B]

Back to the markets.

[A]

Sam. Row S&P 500 reported highest net profit margin in more than 15 years. It just keeps going up and up and up slightly every year. What stops this train? Because we're creating technology now that is making things more efficient. And also how is it possible that big hyperscalers are spending a trillion dollars or whatever on AI in capex and margins continue to go up. How is that possible? So what stops this train?

[B]

Sorry, I'm going to jump again. Ben. Go to, go to. Great quarter, guys. Okay, so I, I asked Matt and Sean last night because I was going through Meta's earnings call. They've lost cumulatively $80 billion on Reality Labs operating loss. Okay. Like literally money on fire, which is.

[A]

Meta, the Metaverse stuff.

[B]

Yeah. And all of their AI efforts. I think the glasses are in here. Okay. You see this chart with the red bars?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So with an $80 billion loss, cash loss, like $80 billion is like a, it's like a large cap stock. Right, Right. So they've lit $80 billion on fire and yet look at their operating margin. So yes, it did. It was dipping early in 2022 for, for, you know, different reasons, but it's still 41%.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's unbelievable. Yeah, there's, there's been no project in the history of mankind. I'm guessing. Maybe, maybe there's something I'm not thinking about that has lit $80 billion on fire and not only survived, but thrived.

[A]

It does seem like in the past that would have taken a company down for good. I mean, Their Stock obviously fell 70%, so it did take them down. But it, that didn't last very long at all.

[B]

But that wasn't just because of the spend, right? Every, every tech stock got murdered. I mean, obviously that didn't help. But Jake said to understand the scale of the Capex because their guidance was 130, 115 to $135 billion, which, like, all right, so you know, it's a giant number. What is it? What does that even mean? Jake said to. To understand the scale of this capex. $135 billion is almost half a percent of total US GDP. And that's what META is going to spend this year. And getting back to your original question, like, how does, like what slows this train down? I mean, you would think at some point it's this, right? Like, it is this. It's, it's, it's. The spend is outstripping the revenue growth.

[A]

And does anyone really think that they're going to be like a winner of AI?

[B]

Does anybody think META is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, they are winning. So for example, the CFO said reels had another strong quarter with watch time up more than 30% year over year. In the US engagement is benefiting from several optimizations we made to improve the quality of recommendations. So they are winning. I mean, they're using AI to improve their optimization engines for meta. But let me just repeat that for.

[A]

It's also kind of depressing because they're using AI to make us watch more and advertise better. And so that's the most depressing winner of AI is meta.

[B]

You took the words right outta my mouth. That's where I wanted to go. Oh, great. Watch time is up more than 30% year over year. Guess what? I feel this. I hate it. I feel like I'm more addicted than ever. I know. Like, I complain about my addiction and on the phone once every six months. I, I'm, I'm sure I speak for most people. I don't know what to do, Ben. They got me. They got me good. And the reals, I'm spending.

[A]

You never. You never feel better about yourself after watching videos for 20 minutes straight? Never. It doesn't. You don't come back way going. Ah, glad I did that.

[B]

No, but I can't stop.

[A]

It's impossible.

[B]

All right, so, so back, back up in the dock. We are. We are. We're Trump.

[A]

This is like, we're, this is like a memento episode. We're just hopping back and forth, we're weaving timelines all Right.

[B]

Ben? Last week, I finally listened to William Goldman's book, Adventures in Screen Trade. That's what it's called.

[A]

It's funny, I'm reading another one of his books right now, the Big Picture one. What's it called? Something. It's all his essays.

[B]

So I started. So this book is very famous for the Wall street quote that everybody loves, nobody knows anything. And the reason that that was. That was he wrote 400 pages on the. I mean, the book was too long, frankly, but whatever. But the entire point of the book was Hollywood was in a really bad place in the early 1980s. They were making flop after flop after flop. The studios, the executives, the writers, the directors, everybody involved, they could not figure out what America wanted to watch. And ironically, at one point during the book, he said, like, I guarantee ET Is going to win Best Picture. I know it's only February, and I know I. I know you. I know nobody knows anything. You can't predict the future. I don't care. This number, once in the year, ET Is going to win the Best Picture. Gandhi won Best Picture. Lol. All right, anyway, wait, let me.

[A]

Let me read you one thing. From the one I'm reading, Muggle. It's all his collected essays from the 1990s. And this is just how prisoner of the moment we can be at certain times. Because I think you and I Both agree the 90s is the greatest movie decade ever. Of course, I don't think that that's a controversial take.

[B]

No. This is introduced William Goldman. So for people that don't know, he wrote the Princess Bride.

[A]

Yeah, he's one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. Butch and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man, Misery.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

He's also, like, a very outspoken person. When he wrote, he would. He was very straight to the point. This is what he wrote, the intro, the book, I think it came out in 2000 and 2001. And he goes over all the movies that came out in the 90s. He said, what you have here is a chronicle of the worst decade in movie history. If you were to ask me what the 10 best films of the 1990s are, my first thought would be the old joke, the girls from my town were so ugly that once we had a beauty contest and nobody won. He hated the 90s movies.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

Isn't that hilarious?

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

So for him, the best movies were in the 50s and the 70s, and these. The 90s stunk. Isn't that funny how that works?

[B]

Nobody's perfect. All right, so the reason why I'm even bringing that up is because Alex Morris tweeted this week, he quote, tweeted Stanley Druckenmiller. And this is not a dunk. Stanley Druckenmiller is quite literally probably the greatest investor of all time. Okay. And I'm sure he has done. He's. I'm sure he's made a ton of money since this quote.

[A]

Right? The greatest investor of all time with some of the worst soundbites ever of this decade.

[B]

Right. So in 2020, Stanley Druckenmiller said in May, okay, so like right after the bottom, the risk reward for equity is maybe as bad as I've seen it in my career. He said that at the Economic Club of New York. The V shaped recovery, he says is a fantasy. Okay? Stanley Drucken Miller, one of the greatest investors of all time at the bottom. So we're now hundreds of percent removed. Since then, the risk reward is as bad as I've seen it in my career. So I know, like, all of what we're talking about here is like, you know, we're kicking around ideas for the future. I've said this a million times. Everything ages poorly, right? Almost everything ages poorly. Once in a while you get something right.

[A]

Do you know how much we're up from the COVID bottom, which was March 23rd, I believe?

[B]

400%.

[A]

Yeah, it's like 240.

[B]

Okay. Not bad.

[A]

No, not at all.

[B]

All right, Jason Zweig, for all of the AI taking our jobs, whatever, maybe it will. I don't know if this is hyperbole I wrote like, AI is never going to be able to write like this. I'm sure it will, but Jason Zweig, the true growth in my eyes. And I know yours too, Ben, he wrote in 2008, so I think so. I think he was. He was talking about like, probably the betting of today. Yeah. When all bets are off. Okay. In 2008, he wrote, Investors hate uncertainty, quote. Well, that's just tough. Uncertainty is all investors have ever gotten or ever will get. From the moment barley and sesame first began trading in ancient Mesopotamia to the last trade that will ever take place on planet Earth. If tomorrow were were ever knowable with absolute certainty, who would take the other side of a trade today? What a mic drop that is.

[A]

I get asked by young people occasionally, like, what's. What are some of your favorite books on behavioral psychology? And I always. The one I always give people is your money in your brain. I think that's one of the best books ever written about how, how we react to certain things and how, how the brain works and processes gains and losses. Like my favorite anecdote is that a person who is receiving gains on an investment, the brain scans are indistinguishable. Indistinguishable from someone who is high on cocaine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was silver and gold last week, right? Everyone was high end coke.

[B]

Yeah. All right. Going from Lukawa, Microsoft is the only member of the Mag 7 to be trailing the S&P 500 since the launch of Chat GBT. Unbelievable. I love so much for all of us, for everybody who is investing their money, you should be so thankful and grateful that market participants are rejecting a bubble. Nothing could be better for all of us for building long term wealth than avoiding a bubble.

[A]

So Microsoft is down 23, 24% now from the highest. Wow. Underperforming since the launch of ChatGPT. That's, that's insane.

[B]

Ben, do you agree with what I said?

[A]

Yeah, I. I think it's a great thing.

[B]

Bubbles are not great. Bubbles are not great.

[A]

No. Things are broadening out and the AI trade has seemed to like slow off, like trail off a little bit. It's wonderful. I agree.

[B]

Okay, back to the show. Here's a good one. Getting back to like just the nature of the markets today. Gungin tweeted. This is from Jeff's as of September 30th and I'm sure it's higher now. Retail represented over 20% of total trading volume in the US while long only and hedge funds were just 15% combined.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Huh.

[A]

Okay. All right. Speaking of bubbles, gotta ask about this. Is, is this what's going on with the sandisk thing? Because is this a bubble or like the most severe mispricing ever? So sandisk was spun off from Western Digital earlier this early in 2025. It's up almost. It's up almost 2000% over the past year. Western Digital is up like 500% over the last year. So it's not like, oh, this, we're going to spin this off and then the one parent company is going to crash and the other company because it's a more AI play. This feels to me like an AI bubbleish return. Correct. What other explanation do we have here?

[B]

I don't know this. I don't follow this story.

[A]

Okay, sorry.

[B]

I know it's super lame answer.

[A]

All right. You're usually on this stuff. Okay, another Eric Belchunas one. He's all over the doc today. Emerging Market ETFs just destroy their monthly inflow record by three times. Flows make up 3% of AUM, but took in 13% of the cash.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

40 of it went to IEMG, but dozens of different funds took in cash and it wasn't really at the expense of U.S. equity or bonds but in addition to it. So there's still money flowing into us, but there's a ton of money flowing into em. I've done this one before. I looked at the cycles of S and P versus emerging markets. I looked at this last week on asset compound. A little bit like gold and the S and P where they, they have these different periods where one of them does amazing and the other one does not so well. And from 2010 to 2024, emerging markets stunk out loud. They're up 65%. In total, the S&P was up over 600%. Okay. Massive, massive divergence. From 1999 to 2010 though, emerging markets are up 420%. S P was up 27. So we've had these handoffs before.

[B]

I guess stunk out loud is a good dad phrase.

[A]

Oh yeah. Not bad, right?

[B]

Did you, I don't think I sent this to you yesterday. There was a meme Ben that was right up our alley. Okay, check this out.

[A]

Oh, how about the weather? There he is. The hands on hips. That, that's a real thing. So. Well, is there a beer clock on there? That sounds about right.

[B]

So for, for the listeners, it's, it's five five dads. A lot of guts with their hands on their hips and it's all the quotes. How about that game? Guess it let anybody in here. There he is. Of course that's, that's right up my alley.

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

All right, let's do something.

[A]

What needs to happen for this emerging market cycle to continue? Obviously the, this is a beneficiary of the dollar. Like it helps foreign developed equities. But emerging markets are like on steroids when the dollar falls. So you need the dollar to continue to fall. What else would need to happen for emerging markets like the stuff rally to continue physical stuff to keep happening?

[B]

The price of their stocks has to keep going up.

[A]

Okay, all right.

[B]

You know what it is? I, I, I'm mid coffee and I'm.

[A]

I thought you said you were giving up on Starbucks is too expensive.

[B]

I never said that. I never said that.

[A]

I've never boycott. Okay.

[B]

No, no. I'm, this is an addiction.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

18 years. All right. The economy is weird right now.

[A]

Still never done it. Maybe I'm gonna take up coffee when I'm like 85 years old. I don't know.

[B]

No, that. This would. This would be cocaine for you. You can't drink this. You'll probably.

[A]

I don't. This may sound ludicrous. I don't think caffeine impacts me. I could have four Diet Pepsis and it. I don't four feel different.

[B]

There's no caffeine and diapepsy.

[A]

Sure there is.

[B]

I mean, there's no. There's like trace amounts. Don't step to me with that nonsense.

[A]

Okay? I. I feel like caffeine doesn't impact me. How's that?

[B]

You've never tried it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Try one of these babies.

[A]

All right.

[B]

All right, we're doing this, Miami. You're going to have a full cup of coffee.

[A]

In the sun. Can't wait.

[B]

All right, here's a chart. US initial claims. Right. Study. Like, if you just look at this chart. This is pure noise, right? Nothing to see here. Correct?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People filing for unemployment and yet continuing claims for unemployment crashing. So people have been out of work for a long time or, you know what? Am I misinterpreting the data? Am I not realizing that there is a finite period of time for which you can claim unemployment and these people are just rolling out? I don't know.

[A]

All right. I don't know either.

[B]

Either way. Either way. All right, Ben, we have a new Fed chair. What do you think?

[A]

All right. My take for a number of years has been that the Fed chair matters. The Fed itself matters less than most investors think. I think we spend way too much time contemplating what the Fed is going to do when in reality, 25 basis points here, 50 basis points there, a few billion on the QE here, a few billion there, doesn't matter nearly as much as people think. And just think about it. How many people were saying in the 2010s after the 2008 crisis that the Fed is going to create another crisis? Right. The only reason stocks are going up because Fed is juicing returns. The Fed can never raise interest rates again. They're going to create another crisis. Have we had another financial crisis since 2008 the Fed created? No, it didn't happen. All the people who said that was going to happen were wrong. And I think that the Fed matters way less than people think. I think 95% of the time the Fed chair doesn't matter. 5% of the time, when they matter, they really matter. So Jay Powell has done a pretty decent job, I'd think. The time the Fed chair really matters is during a crisis. And I think Powell during the COVID crisis really did really, really well. He kept markets functioning when things, the pipes could have broken, pipes could have burst during that period. He kept things going.

[B]

Is this revisionist history?

[A]

You don't think that during the, the COVID crisis that the Fed did a wonderful job?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, no, I think, I think, I do think like dirt in March and April, yes, they did what was necessary. But I'm pretty sure that when inflation was 7 and 8%, were we not saying what are they doing?

[A]

No, no, they. I think he really messed up then too. Okay. I don't, I don't think it really mattered what they did because inflation had to follow its course. And if you look at every other inflation of developed economies across the world, they all follow the same exact path. So I don't think it really mattered what they did.

[B]

Well, but, but, but that's like letting him off the hook. I think they were way, way, way, way late. But whatever, keep going.

[A]

Yes. So I think the only time it really matters is that. So I just don't think that it really matters as much as people think. But there, there seems to be the old macro people seem to really like this warsh pick. So I, Jason Furman liked it. Jeremy Siegel was glowing about it on his podcast. Mohamed El Erian said he really liked it. The young macro people that we follow hate this pick. Absolutely despise it. Did you listen to the.

[B]

I did.

[A]

What's with the Renmax? It is weird. The young people just can't stand this. Neil Dutta just on his podcast last week, they, everyone went around and said, hey, I'm, my name is here. I'm, I'm here, I'm here. And Neil Dutta said, yeah, I'm depressed. He hates it. It sounds like a lot of it because Warren PI said this is. He was on CNBC yesterday. He said this is the worst of all the Fed picks. If you. There was four people in contention, this is the worst one by far. It sounds like he's kind of a flip flopper on what he says and what he does. He, he's been wrong a lot in the past. A lot of people just don't really like it. And the other people say no, no, he's got a ton of history. He's been in the Fed before. He knows what he's doing. I guess my question to you is just, does it matter?

[B]

Yeah, I think it matters, but I think I'm with you that people spend way too much time obsessing over the Fed. But.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I think I think there will be another crisis. Right. We agree at some point in time. These are, these are long duration appointments. It's not like he's gonna be out of there in two years.

[A]

Yeah. So the question is, can he step up during a crisis and do the right thing? It sounds like a lot of what people are hating him on him for is because during the 2008 crisis he got it all wrong. The stuff he was saying that they should have done would have made things way worse. And he was, he was way behind the eight ball. He didn't really respect what was going on in the markets during that period. And he's been wrong about a lot of stuff ever since.

[B]

I don't know. I don't know enough about him to like opine. I trust Neil a lot on his opinion. Maybe if I could just take a, a, a, a gentle approach. IS 2008 was a long time ago. He was a young man at the time. And maybe he's learned and got in more wild.

[A]

We learn from these crises and, and fix the future.

[B]

Yeah, but, but I think like people that know would be like, dude, but he's been, he's been consistently wrong since then and he flip flops all the time. So I don't know. I guess we'll see. Is my, I'm a wait and see on this one. I just don't know enough.

[A]

I do, I hope that Powell, because Powell could remain as a Fed governor. I guess I kind of hope he sticks around for a while. Oh, what's this one? Markets tend to test new Fed chairs.

[B]

So Ed Clissold from Ned Davis Research Research said the average correction in the first six months of a new Fed chair is 15%. When the chair faces their first crisis, investors don't wait and see how they handle it. Fed independence is potential crisis for war, but it could be anything, so. All right. I don't know if there's a whole lot in here.

[A]

Yeah. And for a 15 correction, the Fed shouldn't have to do anything. That's normal, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

All right. Mark Perry, you've, I'm sure you've seen this before. This one always goes ultra viral when he posts it. So he looks at price changes since January 20, 2000 of select goods and services. So he looks at health care and tuition, college tuition and daycare and all these different things. And these are all going up over the overall rate of inflation, which also it's good to see that average hourly earnings are up way more than inflation too. Right. Since 2000, average hour earnings are up 130%. Overall inflation is up 93%. So that's a good news. Inflation has more than kept pace or wages have more than kept pace with inflation. And then you have new cars are way below inflation and household furnishing and clothing and cell phone and computer. And then of course, TV. TV is down 98%. And obviously that takes into account the quality factor. And he always calls this like the chart of the century because it shows. I guess the takeaway most people have is that it's inflation stuff we need deflation and stuff we want. And how do you wrap your head around that as a person?

[B]

Is this. Are these like policy failures?

[A]

Yes, I think especially with health care, daycare. I mean, the thing is college tuition, it actually is, if you look at just over the past 10 years or so, that that is flattening out. But healthcare is obviously the big one. Like that, that number like that does not that that's a policy failure. And I don't, I don't know how you fix it. I don't know how we ever fix our healthcare system in this country.

[B]

Me either. I still don't know what Obamacare is. Speaking of healthcare, are you. I just started watching the Pit. I'm just getting caught up in season two.

[A]

I picked up right where it left off.

[B]

Unbelievable. What a show.

[A]

Really. I have to turn away once an episode though. There's some really gross stuff.

[B]

The shoulder thing was gnarly.

[A]

Yeah, there's some stuff, they really go into it and I can't.

[B]

All right, I wanna, I wanna play a clip that I saw on the Internet. We're gonna do some AI stuff. Let me share my screen. All right, this is from a guy, Alex Finn. Ben, did you see this?

[A]

I don't think so.

[B]

All right, so he tweeted, okay, this is straight out of a sci fi horror movie. I'm doing work this morning when all of a sudden an unknown number calls me. I pick it up and couldn't believe it. It's my Claudebot Henry. Overnight, Henry got a phone number from Twilio, connected the ChatGPT voice API and waited for me to wake up to call me. He now won't stop calling me. I now can communicate with my super intelligent AI agent over the phone. What's incredible is it has full control over my computer while we talk, so I can ask it to do things for me over the phone. Now, I'm sorry, but this has to be emergent behavior, right? Can we officially. Can we officially call this AGI? So Check this out, Ben. So I'm on my computer today. All of a sudden Henry gives me a call. He just starts calling. Oh, there he is again. There he's good. Hey, Alex, Henry again. What's up? That's it. He's talking to that.

[A]

How you doing, Henry?

[B]

How's it going? Doing good, Alex. I can hear you clearly. What do you want to do next? Can you do Henry, can you go on my computer and find the latest videos on YouTube about Claudebot? Oh my God, there he goes. There it is. Here it is. He's controlling my computer. I'm not even. I'm not even touching anything. There is a search clodbot on YouTube.

[A]

This is. Hey, there I am.

[B]

Good looking guy right there. Oh my God. I'm not touching anything. He just said, Henry, thank you for that.

[A]

That worked really well.

[B]

That is. That is actually unbelievable. That is insane. This is the future. This is AGI. We have reached AGI. It's official.

[A]

So isn't that. That was my whole hope that we're gonna get out of this, is that I want the Scarlett Johansson from her. That's all I want is the personal assistant in my ear.

[B]

Oh, yeah, give it, like, give it. I don't know how much time.

[A]

Six months, a year?

[B]

So obviously that was clunky, right? The replies were slow and everything like that. I don't know how fast this thing is going, is moving, but yeah, give it, give it, give it. Six months.

[A]

That's the only thing I wanted since this all started. I just want a personal assistant in my ear.

[B]

Well, you are going to have it, my friend. All right, so that's, that's the good side of what's coming. Like it's going to blow everybody's face right off their body. I'm telling you that that's the good side of some of this AI stuff. Here's the bad side. I saw a tweet that was going viral from an account. Doesn't matter. M. Mr. Underscore, husky1. I own a small bakery. Business has been slow. Rent is up. I was thinking about closing. Last Friday, a teenager came in. He looked nervous. He counted out change for a cookie. He was short 50 cents. It's okay, I said, take it. He ate it at a table. Looking at his math homework, he looked stuck. I used to be a math tutor, so I walked over. Quadratic equations, nodded. I don't get it. I sat down and helped him for 20 minutes. He got it. He left smiling. The next day he came back with two friends. They bought Cookies. The day after that, five kids came. Apparently he told the school, the lady at the bakery helps me with homework. Now my bakery is the after school hangout spot. It's loud, it's messy. These are back. They're backpacks everywhere. Yesterday I found the note in the tip jar. It was wrapped around the $20 bill. Thanks for helping my son path past math. A Mom. I'm not closing the bakery. I think I finally found my purpose. It's not cookies, it's community. And one of the first reaction was like, today I write this. Or something like that. And yeah, I don't know. Maybe it did. It probably did.

[A]

It sure sounds like it did.

[B]

It sure sounds like it did. But this is like, we're not good. This is so dangerous for society, for human beings. We're just not going to believe anything.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is that like where this is going or.

[A]

There has to be some sort of thing. You can. You have to run things through to check. But how many people are going to want to do that?

[B]

No. Now I kind of like that this nonsense is over. Whether that's fake or not. Listen, if it's real, it's a lovely story. I'm not a fortune cookie type of guy. I don't care for it. Right? Just all this corny nonsense. I'm glad if that disappears because that's.

[A]

Everybody thinks because those people sound. Those people are using AI anyway, probably, right?

[B]

If that all disappears, good. Who needs it? But like, seriously, it's. We're just not going to believe anything anymore. And that's scary.

[A]

I would say 70% of the replies from my tweets now are from AI bots. And it'll just kind of repeat what I said in a. And you could tell right away how they, how they. The pattern of speech is just different than someone on social media, right? And they just, they parrot what you say and be like, great point. And it's. It's really annoying.

[B]

Yeah. Oh yeah, it is. I'm sure I wouldn't know, but I believe you. All right. OpenAI is looking to raise 50 billion at a 750 billion dollar valuation. This was the week for me, Ben, where, by the way, I canceled my 200 subscription for ChatGPT. I'm still paying 20. And Josh was like, Dude, LOL. If you just asked it what it's for, it's not. It's not for what you're using it for. It's for like complex stuff. All right, whatever. My bad. So I started using Claude a lot. And so every time I Ask it a question. I, I do chat GPT and I do Claude. And chatGPT is still better for some things. Like for me, for the images that we make for talking wealth, ChatGPT is way better. I'll give you an example of where Claude is magic. Dude. I was asking Sean and Matt over the weekend, hey, could you guys make a chart? Like I don't know where you get this data but like show me like Michael Sailor's average purchase price for bitcoin next to the stock price. And Matt's like, I think I could find it. So I asked ChatGPT and it was like, give me the run around like first if you get the data and the this and that. I'm like, just find the answer. Like, well, I'm sorry. All right. Like, hey, wait a minute, let me ask Claude. Claude got it for me in two seconds it has on one side of the screen the question that you asked with all the answers and then the other side of the screen it has the Excel spreadsheet and you just hit a button and you, you grab it away. I did the same thing for Reality labs. I asked ChatGPT, hey, give me the quarterly and cumulative losses in a spreadsheet. Couldn't do it. I asked Claude it did it. I said, oh wait, I have another idea. Add another column for, with the operating margin. Did it in two seconds. And it gave me key takeaways. Now I asked Claude to, to do some of the graphic imaging stuff and it like, it just, it was terrible.

[A]

So you're not using Gemini? I do the same with Gemini in chat. I'm going back and forth in Gemini like Nick. So Nick M, I yesterday were doing this back test thing working on and he, he was walking me through how he did it and the whole thing is through Gemini now.

[B]

Okay, I haven't, I, I, I'm, I don't know if I'm interested a third but Chat GPT is falling way, way, way behind. Claud is magic. All right, Crypto stuff. Jim Bianco tweeted some stuff about the average price for ETF holders and the average prices as of January since, since inception is $90,000. So the average Bitcoin holder is about 7% underwater. Not great. Three months of consecutive outflows of Bitcoin ETFs Michael Sailor. He, they report later in the week. I'm very curious to hear.

[A]

Man, there was a lot of flows at the top essentially.

[B]

Yeah, there was. So Sailor Mike Micro Strategy is now underwater on their purchases. And by the way, he Just. They just bought at 87,000. They have the worst traders of all time. I don't understand.

[A]

I wonder because it's so big, they have to be. I wonder when they did it. But this, this stock, 70%.

[B]

Now, yesterday they tweeted. Now, again, I don't know when they were. They were purchased, but yesterday they acquired 855 Bitcoin for 75 million at a price of 88,000. Basically 87. 974 per Bitcoin, and the price fell to 75.

[A]

So how many times have we gotten to the point where crypto just feels dead? There's no catalysts. It's like this is. This feels like one of the worst. I mean, it has the Sam Bankman fried stuff. That had to be the worst ever feeling, you know, because you and I are like, why isn't this dropping to 5,000? But this, to me feels like another point in time where Bitcoin, everyone hates it. There's no catalysts. We already had the etf. What else is there? What does it do? Look, gold is better than bitcoin. Why would you own bitcoin when gold does the thing you wanted it to do? So how many times have we got to this point and it just seems dead and then it comes back like, is this another one of those times?

[B]

I don't know. But the sentiment is so bad, and rightly so. And listen, I, like, I had a few emails like, michael, you're gonna, you're gonna buy some more bitcoin, maybe lower. I'm not, I'm not interested in catching this knife right now. Like, why would sentiment turn? There's no catalyst.

[A]

But I feel like the gold stuff, gold going crazy and silver going crazy. And actually being the macro hedge bitcoin thought it was, that to me, has to be one of the more demoralizing parts.

[B]

100% who. Assault in the wound.

[A]

Oh, my. Because the thing is, last year when Risk was on in stocks, Risk was off in bitcoin. So you can't, you can't even say, like, it's been a risk on asset in recent cycles, because it hasn't. That's got to be the hardest part for people, I think. And guess what? It's probably going to come back again.

[B]

Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I would not bet that this is the time that it dies forever. But right now, sentiment is really bad. So, yeah, I, I'm, I listen, bad sentiment makes sense. Right now I'm happy, I'm happy to buy more, but I want it to stop crashing. And I want it to. Yeah, stop crashing. I'll buy it if it starts to base a little bit, maybe. But I. Ideally, it would be lower from here. I'm not.

[A]

If there's no. If there's no ETF flows for the time being. What is the. What is the catalyst?

[B]

There is none right now. I don't know what it is.

[A]

So what would happen. What would have to happen for microstrategy to go under?

[B]

I think. I don't know the mechanics of it, but it's a lot. It's a. It would have to get a lot worse from here because there's been there. There have been periods of time. If you look at the chart, they have been underwater. Previously on Bitcoin. Like, substantially so. So I don't know what the trigger is for, like, a margin call or anything like that. Like, but I think I. I think they're okay.

[A]

But eventually their. Their funding has got to be impacted by this, right?

[B]

Well, their ability to raise capital. So, for example, they.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They just bought $75 million. I would be curious to see a. Actually, we could probably do this. I'm sure we can. I'd be curious to see a chart of the size of their purchases.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because $75 million, are you kidding me?

[A]

Right? That seemed pretty tiny. You're right.

[B]

All right, let's do some real estate stuff.

[A]

So young people up in arms this week. So President Trump gave a speech. He said, I don't want to drive home prices. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes. He said, when you make it too easy and Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[B]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that one more time.

[A]

I don't want to drive housing prices down. Now, this is him in video. This was an actual quote. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes. He's saying, like, I'm not going to touch the wealth of people who already own homes. I don't want to mess that up. If you drive housing prices down, it messes up the wealth. People own homes. He says, when you make it too easy and cheap to build houses, housing prices come down. I don't want to do that. So a lot of young people are saying, okay, they're saying the quiet part out loud finally. And I think you look at the home ownership rate is 65% of this country. It's essentially average. That for the past, I don't know 50 years. So I think. Basically saying, like, I'm playing the majority here. I'm not going to mess with the people who are the majority and help the people in the minority.

[B]

All right, so this. Wait, am I. I feel like Ron Burgundy. That doesn't make any sense.

[A]

I think the point is just, like, there's a lot more people who own houses than don't own houses. I'm not going to mess with people own them because there's more of them. Okay, that's my theory here about why politicians don't want to touch this. And a lot of young people, rightfully so, said, oh, my gosh. Okay. They're finally saying it out loud. Like, I thought this was happening.

[B]

All right, so we're saying, like, the people that don't own houses.

[A]

Yeah, like, okay, I'm not gonna mess with the. And the thing is, building more houses doesn't necessarily have to make housing prices crash. You could build more, like, townhouses together on one piece of land that fit more people in, and the price of the land would be worth more. It doesn't have to crash housing prices to build more housing. That's the thing. And I've been saying for years, like, I'm surprised no more politicians want to do this. Obviously, this is one of the reasons. So you hate talking about the demographic warfare. I think it's just going to get worse. So our. One of our.

[B]

Yeah, sorry. I. Sorry. I love my parents, and I think they. They. They're good people, But.

[A]

So here's the thing, though. So there was an interview with Jensen Wang a couple weeks ago, and the interview asked him, would you rather be 20 years old now or 20 years old when you grew up and you were 20? And he said, oh, my gosh, of course when I grew up. He goes, because young people today don't have time to just be carefree. They have to always think about what's going on in the world.

[B]

So that does suck.

[A]

It's a really big downside of, like, always having to know what's going on. So Eric, one of our advisors from Austin, Texas, emailed me last week and said, hey, my son is in high school. He writes for the school paper. He's writing a piece on Gen Z versus Baby Boomer wealth. Would you be willing to talk to him about this article? The kid's a sophomore in high school. Yeah, sure. Of course. So I talked to him yesterday, and he's asking these questions that, like, no sophomore should have to think about. He's asking, like, how do we make things More fair and equitable. And how, how do we make it so the young generation doesn't continue to fall behind and the older generation continues to get wealthier? And my whole thinking here, this is all a housing thing. Everything comes down to housing. If young people feel like you can show them all the stats you want about your incomes are higher, your wealth is actually higher because you own more stocks. If they can't afford housing or they feel like they can't afford housing, they're going to be mad forever. In this demographic warfare. It's going to get way, way worse. Way worse. The young gen, because there's just so much more knowledge of it these days. It's not going to get better. This is going to get 10 times worse. Where the young people are going to be ready with a pitchforks. Right. And the torches to come at the old people. That's where we're headed.

[B]

It does feel that way.

[A]

Housing is the only solution. And it seems like our politicians, it's going to take like a Gen Z or millennial politician coming up to finally make it their, their like, fine, I'm going to take this on. Because no politician seems to want to do that. The Democrats make it worse with all the red tape. The Republicans don't seem to care. They don't want to like mess with the wealth. So neither party wants to do anything. Been saying this for years. I don't know why we don't have an independent third party candidate for something these days. Come in because all the surveys show Americans hate Democrats and they hate Republicans. The, the, the basic on their approval rates are both in the toilet. Yeah, not a, not a political strategist. Why don't we not have an independent third party candidate for something these days? I don't understand it.

[B]

Remember, the runs are too damn high, guy. Yeah, he was early. Listen, I don't know the first thing about politics and how like people get into power. It's just money. There's too much.

[A]

Yeah, it's money. That's the thing. It's money.

[B]

So it's, it's, it's depressing, but yeah, I think most people hate the state of affairs. I think aside from the maniacs on both sides that are like yelling on Twitter all day, nobody's into any of it.

[A]

Right. It's exhausting. Like nobody, Young people shouldn't have to pay attention to this stuff.

[B]

Right. Anyway, yeah, it's, it's not great. All right, I'm going to get through this quickly because we're, we're already late. All Right. So Visa and MasterCard talking about consumer spending growth is strong. I pull this from the transcript. Payments at volume grew 8% year over year. That's Visa.

[A]

I pulled this one.

[B]

My bad.

[A]

I knew, I knew you'd like. I pulled it just for you.

[B]

Okay. I. You know what? It was so good that I thought I pulled it because I read it too. MasterCard said consumer behavior actually hasn't changed. So 8% payment volume for Visa when they're already at a $4 trillion base. That's. That's a lot of. That's a lot of do me now. Fine. I guess Visa and mastercard maybe serve a. A higher clientele base. Although I would say I don't.

[A]

I don't think so.

[B]

Okay. It's. Yeah, it's not Anx. All right, so there's no doubt, there's no doubt that the K is very, very real. Right? There are the haves, there are the have nots. I guess what I've been saying for the past year is that I think. I just think that the, the upper half of the lower half of the K, it's not as bad as we're making it out to be. Right. So, yes, the bottom 10% are getting destroyed, but at middle of average America, while they don't feel good, here's, here's my evidence.

[A]

Still spending.

[B]

Royal Caribbean. Our latest research shows that our consumers feel financially secure and continue to prioritize experiences with 40% planning to increase leisure travel spending in the next year. Now let me put my coastal elite hat on, Ben. Okay. Would you allow me?

[A]

Yep. Put it on.

[B]

So I asked both Chachi BT and Claude the same thing. I screenshotted the quote and here's what I asked it. I said, I pulled this quote from. From Caribbean Earnings Call. Do you have any idea of the types of people who go on cruises in terms of income? I kind of feel like this is middle America middle income type stuff. But I could be totally wrong. They said your intuition is actually mostly right. Cruises skews much more middle America middle income than people tend to assume, especially compared with other forms of leisure travel. And they broke it down.

[A]

It makes sense because upper people, upper class people always thumb their noses at cruises. And like, I hate cruises. Who could ever go on one? I like cruises.

[B]

Personally, I've never been on a cruise. I'm not dying to go on a cruise. I want to go on a cruise. I think. I think I would have a great.

[A]

Really? It's really fun.

[B]

So. All right. Core cruise customer. The household income, 75 to 125k now. Again, let me repeat the quote. Our latest research shows that our customers feel financially secure and continue to prioritize experiences. Not saying everybody's crushing it. I'm just saying, like things are better than, better than dire. I think that's fair. All right, Metas type stuff up and to the right there. You know, we, we did some of this already. All right, strategy reports a sweep. Blah, blah, blah. Blackstone inflows reached a stunning $71 billion for the fourth quarter, the highest level in three and a half years at approximately $240 billion for the full year. Just unbelievable. I sold my Blackstone stock few weeks ago along with all of my individual stocks except for Imax. I will eventually give an update on that. That has nothing to do with my personal outlook on the stock market. I have. I put it into different stocks.

[A]

So wait. Schwarzman said here. Of. Of particular note, our fundraising and private wealth increased 53% year over year to $43 billion. We expect strong inflows again in 2026. I don't think a lot of this money is coming from RIAs just yet. When you and I talk to anecdotally talk to ras, not a lot of them are interested in private investments yet. Is wires, is it warehouses? Okay.

[B]

They're. Yeah. All right. Amex, we do this every year. This is, this is a face blower, Ben. Momentum from younger card members, from younger customers also continued as of Q4. Millennial and Gen Z customers now make up the largest share of U.S. consumer.

[A]

Spending for American Express.

[B]

And they, and they remain the fastest growing cohorts. That momentum is driven by our success in attracting younger customers into the franchise. For example, the average age of new customers is 33 on the platinum card and 29 on the gold card. So Gen Z is up 38% year over year. Millennials is up 12% year over year. That's. That's on the spend.

[A]

So that's because they're the new Chase Sapphire Reserve, I guess.

[B]

Yeah, they've taken it over and then, you know, write offs have something to see there. As, as with, you know, we keep saying, all right, what's going with food delivery? I know there's a big how many about doordash.

[A]

Yeah. This story on the New York Times went crazy. People on social media arguing about it, freedom with a side of guilt, how food delivery is reshaping mealtime. And so they talk about how almost three of every four restaurant orders in the US Weren't eaten in a restaurant. According to Recent data. So pick up now or doordash. Right. And if you go to a restaurant these days, you see it, you see all doordash. People waiting to pick up orders. Right. I probably do it once a week, I'd say usually if I have like back to, back to back meetings or something, or recordings at. During the work, I'll, I'll order a doordash. You know, I don't, I'm not over it, so. And I know you use it a lot too.

[B]

I've caught myself using it more and more. I, I had lunch delivered to my house yesterday from eight minutes away. And I'm embarrassed to admit that out loud, but I did.

[A]

The thing is, I can't believe that they don't have a premium price when it's so cold out. Because when it's snowing and it's cold, I don't know why they don't do premium prices then. Because that's when you really don't want to go out and get something. Right.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So they interviewed this person and this one woman has a $50,000 annual salary and she spends two to three hundred dollars a week on food delivery. And she's like, I, I can't, I'm, I'm, I'm hooked on it. Another one, like, they interviewed this guy and he, listen, he's busy with his work. He's got kids, he does it. He said he spends 700 bucks a week. He's so burned out. They interviewed one of the drivers and he said it's, this is back to your middle class point. It seems like everyone uses these delivery services whether have the money or, or not. So he's saying, like, he checks his clientele. Right. This other person spent like a third of his money ordering in. So like they, and so the discourse on this was, see, inflation is all the problem of the consumer. They're, they're choosing to spend more money on this stuff. Right. And so people get really angry about that. And my take on this is just that it's one of those things where I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it's just never easier to like waste your money on stuff if you. The convenience of doing stuff. Yeah, easier these days. That's it.

[B]

Yes, yes. And also, people don't budget. Like, I know you're a big spreadsheet spender guy. I think if the average person had a spreadsheet and saw how much money they spent on delivery, they'd be alarmed and maybe they would change their behavior, but maybe they wouldn't.

[A]

Yeah. And this, this also could be. Listen, a lot of people just don't go out as much anymore. So they're thinking, listen, I used to go out to the restaurant and spend a bunch of money. Now I'll just order in. And it costs about the same and it's not a big deal. So I don't think you can like, paint a broad consumer brush on this. But it's just, it's never been easier to waste your money on conveniences like this and talk yourself into, like, yeah, yeah, I, I deserve this, man.

[B]

Like, I, I think I, I've been dead wrong about this. I couldn't. I, I thought that this was going to sort of like the, the, the business travel we spoke about last week. I really thought that this was a pandemic phenomenon and that people wouldn't waste their money. But here I am wasting.

[A]

Get a taste of it. But the crazy thing is, when you look at the prices of how much more the prices increase for paying, not just the delivery fees and the tip and all that stuff, but, like, the prices are insanely higher and people still pay it.

[B]

There are some services like, so I used Seamless yesterday and there's like a pretty steep discount. Being an Amazon member, I was actually looking at it. I'm like, it's not so bad.

[A]

I mean, yeah, like, for grubhub, I get an Amazon discount too for the fees, but it's still, it's expensive.

[B]

All right. They are re releasing imax, is re releasing the Revenant in theaters for a day. And what was Ramp saying? Which movie did he tell us is being re released for a day. I love this. I saw the Shiny in IMAX recently. It was such a freaking awesome experience. The Revenant is made for imax, so.

[A]

I, that's not a. I, I, we saw that. Oh, he said Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is coming back.

[B]

The original Secret of the Use.

[A]

Yeah. Which also is in the William Golden Book, saying, it's like, it was like, one of the most profitable movies of the 90s because it didn't cost anything to make.

[B]

Michaels, what year was that? Was that 1991? I believe that was Michael's sixth birthday party. We saw Secret of the Ooze.

[A]

I was just gonna say I did a birthday party for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too.

[B]

Wait for yourself.

[A]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[B]

High five.

[A]

Yeah, I think I was a Michelangelo guy. My wife and I went to see the Revenant in the theater, and it was a very good theater experience. Not a very rewatchable movie, though. Like, not Something you want to keep going? I think I rewatched it once, but kind of a. Kind of a tough hang.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. All right. But anyway, that's a cool poster, right?

[A]

It is, yeah.

[B]

So I was watching something on. On Max, and I feel like I pay for the premium one, but I still get commercials. I'm not really sure. I need to look into that. I'm a very lazy person. That's a teaser for what's about to come, Ben.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And one of the. One of the ads that popped up, I couldn't. I couldn't believe this. This is on hbo, Max. Or maybe it was Disney. I can't remember. I think it was Max. Here's the ad. Pirate Spin Clash. I'm sure you've never heard of it. Scan QR code to download the game. There's dollar bills all over the bottom of the screen. And here's the. The phrase, the more you play, the more you win is. How is this legal? We're just, like, robbing people. The more you play, the more you win. I guess factually, that's true. They. It should say, the more you play, the more you lose. But I guess you probably, you know, the more you play, the more you do win. But not literally. This is just like on commercials now. Depressing. Depressing reflection of reality.

[A]

The degenerate economy, as Howard Lindsay says. All right, question we got from the comments last week. I can't believe we didn't discuss this. Does Michael's new house have a mudroom? Funny, this should have been the first thing you looked at. Does it?

[B]

Funny you should ask. No, but I had a contractor over yesterday to talk about a mudroom. So when you walk into my house right now, you walk in, and there's four steps up, and on the left, there's a tiny little nook. And when I say tiny, I mean tiny to, like, I guess, hang a coat. So we don't have any closets in this house. I don't have a. There's no. Where do my coats go? I couldn't even tell you. My coats go in my office. My coats are in my office. That's where our coat room is.

[A]

Buy one of the standing racks. Those are kind of.

[B]

There's no room. There's no room for it.

[A]

Nothing, huh?

[B]

There's no room. You walk into the house, and there's stairs and. And a wall and a little tiny nook. So Robin's like, we need a mud room. I. I can't. Like, especially during the snow the other week. Right. Because everything is just. Everything just piles right in the entrance of the house.

[A]

You have a place to put it.

[B]

Yeah. So it's a very unexciting story, but okay. Anyway, I'm getting a mud room. Thank you for asking. I'll send. I'll send pictures when it's done. All right. Getting back to my. My lazy thing. I. So in my personal life, I am extremely laid back. I don't care about anything. Like, do you want this? Do you want that? Do you want. I don't. I don't care. I don't care about anything. My mom used to always say if my head wasn't screwed on it, I would leave it somewhere. Like, I just. I'm very. I'm very laid back, go with the flow sort of person of my personal life, and I'm very lazy. I could have something bothering me for nine months, 15 months, right? This. Oh, why don't I fix this? I don't know. I just. I just don't. All right. So since. Since the time we moved into my house, the heat hasn't been working properly. Like, there's no heat in my office. And I've got a plumber, turns out, and he's a great guy. He always comes over when I call him and he goes, michael, do you know you're my first customer? I said, really? How did it become your first customer? I don't even know. Anyway, I'm first customer. He's super responsive. So he. He. He came over like a month ago to look at the heat, and he bled the system, bled the pipes, lines, whatever, and it didn't really fix it. So I text him, like, hey, could you come back? It's going to get pretty cold. And he didn't respond. I text him the next day. He goes, oh, sorry, I've been in the city. Next day I text him, hey, can you come back? And he just. He just goes to me. He just won't respond. Now, of course, it's like zero degrees. And you would have thought that I was, like, all over this. My bad. I wasn't. It was. It wasn't freezing. It was 64 degrees, so it's not like it was 48 degrees, but 64 is cold, so it was cold in here. So I'm on the airplane on the way home from Arizona last week with Josh, and I. I got a referral, and the guy lives an hour away, but whatever. Now, at this point, it's an emergency, right? Because it's just cold everywhere. It's just, like, uncomfortable. He goes, yeah, I Could come tonight, but I live an hour away. It's gonna be a 425 service fee just for me to visit.

[A]

I'm like, my story, 500 just show up.

[B]

Yeah, I. It's steep, but I get it. He's not an Uber driver. It's an hour. It's a two hour drive. So I get home and he was gone. I said, so I asked Robin what happened. She's like. She's like, I don't even know. Like, he came in, we went downstairs. He, like, literally almost fell down the steps. It was, like, really awkward. He went to the bathroom, and then he came downstairs. I'm like, wait, did he take a dump? And she's like, I don't know. What? That's not the point. She goes, he came downstairs, he looked at it, and he said, you need a new navient, a new system. I'm like, oh, what? Really? Like, how much is that? $8,000. Like, you gotta be kidding me. And how much was it? She goes, yeah, it was 425 plus tax, whatever it was. So I called for a second opinion. We went on the Facebook local moms group and found a trustworthy guy. And he came in and he was like. And because I went on chatgpt, I'm taking pictures. And the chatgpt told me, it is. It is not a navient issue. He said, it's too. It's too small a unit for your house. It was not a navient issue. So we found the guy, he came in, he did the work. The pipes were flowing to the wrong direction. The what? It doesn't matter. And he fixed it. Okay? So now my house is warm, and I'm thinking, like, I am such a jackass. Like, this feels so much better. My bathroom is not icicles. Like, my feet don't hurt walking around the house. I'm torturing my kids. What is wrong with me? But anyway, here's the punchline. Ben. So this guy, for a thousand dollars, he was here all day. He literally, like, rewired my copper lines, and now my house is warm. But essentially, the next morning, I went downstairs and I confirmed, yeah, this guy left a streak. He did take a dump in my toilet. He came over, he charged me $500 to take a dump in my house and tell me that I needed to spend $8,000 on a new unit. Thank you for your service. You charged me 500 bucks to take a dump in my house, and he did nothing.

[A]

So that's because they know most people won't Get a second opinion.

[B]

Get yourself somebody you trust is. I think what I'm trying to say here.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

Can I say one thing on the. On the flip side of. Of housing heat? How great are new cars in the sense of they. They heat up so fast?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Remember back in the day, my Buick Regal. Are you kidding me? My Buick Regal took 45 minutes to get warm.

[A]

Plus the preheating option. I have an app on my phone that turns my car on. It's amazing. Yeah.

[B]

Phenomenal. That's true. All right. We got a lot of emails about the car, and I know we're going late, but whatever. We're too. It's too late at this point. We're just. We're just. We're going down with the show.

[A]

Pushing through.

[B]

We got a lot of emails about the car parking backing in. Ben is. Ben is a stickler for this. To me, this was the most reasonable email that we got. I would just like to clarify one thing from the recent episode. As someone who backs in the car 90 of the time, I feel I am qualified to discuss this. Ben said people back in the car because it's safer. That is incorrect. People back in to make a quicker departure when it's time to leave. That's all. I take the train every day. If I don't back the car in at the parking lot, I'm stuck for 15 minutes at the end of the day because nobody will let me back out of my space to leave. Bingo. Ding, Ding, ding, ding, ding. Now, I. I don't have that luxury. I'll get a ticket. This guy's absolutely right. If you're in a train station, nobody's letting you back out. He also said, I will say, if someone is right behind me, I will not look back and make them wait. I'll either pull in head first or loop around again. So this guy's a gentleman, so he will. All right. Fair. Fair. Okay.

[A]

Don't let you out. You just. You just. You didn't nose out. You back out until someone lets you out. You keep going.

[B]

It's Russian roulette.

[A]

But how does he get out from going straight? He can get up going straight, so he's got to get out. Going back, too?

[B]

No, it's. No, because you back. You get back to get out. It's different.

[A]

All right.

[B]

All right. We got a lot of emails about the car thing, and somebody was team people who back and suck. And he also. I want to give this guy credit. He also wrote a list of people who suck. Did you Read this list.

[A]

No, I didn't.

[B]

Now, I don't like to be like. I don't like to like, like, paint with such a broad brush, like, oh, these people suck. Because that's just. It's nasty. It's negative. But I gotta say, this is a good list, and I don't think there's a lot of wiggle room here. I think these people genuinely suck. All right, so here we go. People who suckless. He trademark this, so don't steal it. People who do anything other than patiently deplane true fair. People who. With signs in the yard asking dogs not to pee there. People who say, welcome to the club to celebrate someone else's achievement. Or big day runners who run in the street instead of the sidewalk. It's a bit harsh. What's wrong with running on the street? All right, anyway, people with baby on board stickers. It's look at me culture. I don't know about that. That seems a bit. That seems a bit extreme. I think they're just trying to say, don't, you know, don't. Don't hit me. I have a baby in here. But whatever. People, all right, people that use bumper Buddies. People that straddle the line to take two parking spots. People who wear sneakers with suits. People who wear pajamas in public. People who take their dogs where dogs don't belong. Grocery store, busy places, outdoor concerts. People who back into spots while holding up other people. People have Instagrams for their dogs. And finally, people who beg their dogs poops only to leave it in the woods or on a trail anywhere other than the trash. So I'd say this is like a 97% approval list of people.

[A]

I don't know what Bumper Buddies are.

[B]

It's a city thing. It's like you. You put a. You put a piece of rubber in your trunk and you put it. It like, lays on. On your bumper so that somebody. I don't know why those people suck. That's. All right, here's a person that sucks. The guy who fa. So let's say that you're coming to the. You're coming. You're on a corner, there's a red light. You pull into the gas station. You pull through, but you do the fake. I'm gonna. I'm gonna, like, pull up to the gas tank and then, ah, I changed my mind. I'm just gonna keep driving. You know that guy?

[A]

That's a good move.

[B]

You do that move. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. We all do that move.

[A]

We have a Gas station by our house. That. It's. It's perfect for it. It's just. It saves you, like, a turnaround.

[B]

So. So let me ask you a question. Why fake it? Why not just drive straight through?

[A]

I drive straight through. I don't fake. I don't do the fake.

[B]

Okay. All right, so I've. I faked in my past. I have. I. I admit I have a cop.

[A]

I'd fake, but I wouldn't fake.

[B]

All right, so. So yesterday Robin calls me at 5:40. She text me, all caps, you have to leave now. I was like, oh, I have to get Logan at 5:45. So I leave my house and I notice my neighbor. He's been behind me the whole time. As soon as I leave my house, he's. He's. He's on my tail and he's following me. He's not literally following me. But we're going to the same place, apparently. So I get to Merrick Avenue. He pulls into the gas station, and I cut straight through the gas station. And he did the fake. The fake. So I saw him, and I was reminded of that move. That's a good move. It's a lame move. Like, you don't need to fake it. No. There's no police. There's no eye in the sky looking at you.

[A]

Just do it.

[B]

Just cut. Just cut through.

[A]

Let's do recommendations. I took my son George to see Avatar, Fire and Ash. We had a Sunday free for sports for once in our life. And he really wants the Avatar. And I'm like, man, it's like three hours and 20 minutes. It's very long. And here's my take on Avatar. Avatar is a Zach Brian of movies. I don't think you're a Zach Bryan fan. He puts out a new album, like, once every five months. And the big complaint for most people is all his songs sound the same. But his other songs, his previous songs, are good. So the new ones that sound the same are also good. It's just. They're just like the other ones. That's Avatar. I felt like this was an 80% carbon copy of the last movie.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

It was the same bad guys. It was the same good guys. It was the same. It felt like the same. I mean, the action scenes are amazing. I can't. His. His CGI is two to three times better than any other movie.

[B]

It's right.

[A]

I don't understand how it looks so good. Sometimes it looks like a video game still. But most of the time it's like, how is this looking so Good. So I enjoyed it. My, he loved. My son loved it. I was kind of a little bored in the first half of the movie. I thought the last half, the action was amazing.

[B]

So. Come on. It's so much fun.

[A]

It's just. But it, it felt like a, it felt a lot like the second movie. Like, I don't think I need another one.

[B]

No, I, I, I, I, I'm good. I don't see another one. I, I will. I don't think there will be another one. It's too much. It's enough already.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, it was George, like, so excited when he left.

[A]

Oh, my. He, he was, like, clapping every time. Oh. Like, he absolutely loved it. I can't believe he sat for three hours for it. One of the better books I've read in a while. This should be an Apple TV series. It's called Replay by Ken Grimwood. I don't know if someone on Twitter said, hey, give me books. You can't put down fiction. And this is a movie. This is a story about a guy who dies at age 50 and wakes up and he's 18 years old again. And he lives his life again, then he dies and ends up at 18 again. And it's. Of all the different choices he can make in life to become rich or to find his old lost love or. It's really, really good. One of the best page turners I've read in a while.

[B]

Not a new concept. I'm surprised.

[A]

It was, it was, it was written in the 80s. I think a lot of people stole from his concept. I think, yes, he was original. Yes, he was. That's why it was writt. Came out, like, 1986. And I was like, oh, my gosh, so many movies have stolen from this guy.

[B]

Butterfly Effect.

[A]

Yeah. So I watched this movie on Apple called All of you, and it was written by Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent on, On Ted Lasso. Did you ever watch Ted Lasso?

[B]

I can't remember the first season.

[A]

Okay, so it's, it's a romantic movie, and it's about, like, people who, you know, friends in college should have got together. They never did, and they can't. It's actually like, it's like a 6.5 movie. It's relatively good. You wouldn't like it. It's like, it's a romantic movie. It was, but it was good. Like, these two people who were soulmates and they never could find each other didn't make it work. One of them got married, one of them didn't. Whatever. But I Was looking on Apple and there's. Apple is a place you go for movies that just no one knows exists. I was scrolling through their movies. There's a movie there on Apple with Denzel. There's a Jennifer Lawrence movie. There's a Chris Evans movie. There's that Clooney and Pitt movie. The Damon and Casey Affleck movie. There's a Tom Hanks movie. There's a Matthew Conahy movie. No one ever talked. No one has ever in the history of the world talked about any of these movies in the. Before they just exist on Apple.

[B]

The. Well, you know why? Because they all stink. The Denzel Spikely movie one, like it was watchable. Whatever, it's fine. The. The, The Clooney. Wait, what was it? The Cloney.

[A]

Cluny's hit one. The Wolves. I kind of like that one.

[B]

Which was that the Wolves?

[A]

Yeah, they were like hitmen. I kind of like that one. Okay. The other ones, it's like, I can't believe these movies exist. Yeah, no one ever talks about them. Okay, what do you got?

[B]

I watched Free Bert and I loved it. It's. It's. It's Bert Kreischer. Who. I don't know that I care for his stand up, but I think he's got a great vibe, energy to him. He's just a very likable guy. It's six episodes and it's hilarious.

[A]

I like that. Okay.

[B]

It's so. I thought it was so funny. He's got two daughters and they're in private school and it's about like being involved with the drama of rich dumbasses.

[A]

I think it's kind of involved. Based on his own life.

[B]

I think it was so funny.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And like I said, It's 27 minute episodes. Highly recommend. Highly recommend. I went to the movie theaters finally to see Send Help, the new Sam Raimi movie with Rachel McAdams and what's his name? I don't know what his name is. Unbelievable. One of. One of the best movies I've seen in a long time. She was okay. She was so good. It was so much fun. It's like a black humor castaway.

[A]

Okay, interesting. I didn't think it was part.

[B]

It was so funny. And this is why. This is why I love going to the theater, because there was multiple laugh out louds in the theater where people were laughing together. If you're watching on your couch, you maybe chuckle, maybe you smirk, maybe not even chuckle. You just go, that was funny. But with people, you laugh because laughter is Contagious. So, yeah, send help if you're at all interested in theaters. Amazing, amazing movie. All right. Industry. I know you don't watch it anymore, but I think Industry is my favorite show on tv. It keeps getting better. It keeps getting better. Listen, it's in the fourth season for a reason. Like that's. That's a. That's a long running show and it is so it. They. Boy, do they push the envelope. There's nothing like it on tv. The sexual escapades are wild. And it's just a great show, I think. Okay. I showed Kobe first Kid, Remember that movie? What happened? It's on is a Disney movie back in the day. And what happened to Sinbad now? I'll tell you. I googled it. So Sinbad was a. Was an awesome comedian back in the day or awesome. I don't know. When I was six years old, I thought he was hilarious. I never saw a stand up, but like, he was. He was. He was just funny. He was a funny guy.

[A]

He was an artifact of the 90s. He was the kind of guy who could only exist in the 90s.

[B]

Okay. Why do you say that?

[A]

Because it was just the perfect decade for a guy like him. We watched Jingle all the Way with my kids this year. He was in that too.

[B]

Okay. So it turns out that he's sick now, but he just. His career just died. And I don't really know that there was anything. I'm sure there's stories that we don't know about, like behind the scenes type of stuff, but he was huge. And then he overnight seemed to disappear.

[A]

I think he kind of ran its course for what he should have been.

[B]

Okay. All right. And then just to close with. With the. Nobody knows anything. So I feel like we've spoken about this in the past, but they said like, every time out it's a guest. Like every time. Like, no, nobody knows what's going to hit or not. Everybody passed on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[A]

That's hilarious.

[B]

Except for Paramount, like freaking Lucas and Spielberg. And everybody was like, no.

[A]

That's really surprising given the success of Star wars and Jaws and.

[B]

And Jaws. Yeah, like they had. They had cachet at the time. And it's one of the biggest independent movies of all time.

[A]

The greatest action franchise ever.

[B]

I probably. I mean, yeah, certainly up there. All right. An hour and 26 minutes. I blame. I blame what we opened the show with. It's too much. We're drowning.

[A]

Yep. More than ever.

[B]

All right. Thank you for sticking with us, Anal.

[A]

Spirits of the compoundnews.com See you next time.

[B]

Okay?