It Feels Like 1999 (EP. 433)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast Ep. 433: "It Feels Like 1999"

Date: October 8, 2025
Hosts: Michael Batnick & Ben Carlson

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson dive into the sentiment sweeping today’s tech-dominated markets, reflecting on AI’s market impact, the echo of the late ‘90s bubble, and the challenge of making sense of evolving investment narratives. They dissect whether the current climate is truly “bubble time,” debate wealth inequality, discuss the proliferation of private markets, and share candid life takes—from social media brain rot to living through the phases of family life. With their trademark banter and skepticism, the hosts muse on why the AI mania feels both different and déjà vu, peppering the show with memorable analogies and timely data points.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Market Mania: Is This 1999 All Over Again?

(02:09–07:06)

• OpenAI’s investment in AMD boosts AMD’s stock massively ("Bubble time, let's do it." — Michael, 02:16).
• Paul Tudor Jones likens the current euphoria to 1999, calling it "potentially more explosive". He admits to being frequently wrong and distills his investing to one heuristic: the 200-day moving average ("When it's above the 200 day, good things happen..." — Ben, 04:36).
• Both hosts reflect on the almost universal optimism—but pending sense of doom—in the markets:
  • “Everyone’s bullish in the short term, but everybody knows it’s going to end badly. There’s no way it’s going to play out like that. It’s just–there’s no way, right?” (Michael, 05:56)
  • “The stock market is going to go up, but then it’s going to fall. How can you be wrong in that scenario?” (Ben, 06:18)
• AI is dubbed as "the single biggest market story" outside of crisis moments in the past 15 years and "potentially the biggest story" ever (05:17–05:48).

2. Bubble Analogies, Earnings, and Human Behavior

(07:07–11:57)

• The “bubble” vocabulary is everywhere—in news, memes, financial commentary.
  • “There is a bubble in financial news stories using pictures of bubbles.” (Ben, 07:07)
• Chart discussions show market forward-looking behavior; though the bottom precedes earnings, market tops coincide with earnings, making the next fall impossible to predict.
• Mania is compared to parties—“nobody wants to leave the party early” (Michael, 07:51).
• Quantum computing and speculative companies (e.g., Rigetti): stocks with no profits but sky-high prices. “It doesn’t matter. Stock’s going straight up.” (Michael, 10:24)

3. Retail Investors & ‘Junk Stock’ Mania

(19:12–25:05)

• Anecdotes on retail exuberance:
  • "Everyone is a genius in a bull market.” – referencing meme investors and TikTok anecdotes (Michael, 21:11).
  • Lists of 19 stocks up 400% since 2020 lows, almost all unprofitable.
  • Goldman’s stock retail index and “junk stock rallies” signal high risk-taking (21:53).
• Even professionals see a classic late-stage dynamic:
  • “The junkier the better.” (Michael, 23:25)
  • “There’s never been so many rich people as there are right now.” (Ben, 24:31)

4. Defining a Bubble & What It Would Take to Burst

(25:15–27:11)

• Hosts debate what qualifies as a “pop”—it would take a 50% Nasdaq crash to call it a “bubble bursting” (25:24).
• Odds discussion: “What are the odds of a 50% crash in the next 24 months?” (Ben, 25:50); playfully tossing around betting lines.

5. Wealth Inequality & The Social Narrative

(27:11–32:23)

• Discussion on increasing wealth concentration:
  • “America’s top 1% holds almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%...” (Ben, 29:56)
• Is it a growing social issue or an overplayed narrative? Michael resists focusing solely on negatives:
  • “I just want to put out goodness, that’s all.” (Michael, 70:42)
• Ben predicts: “Wealth inequality is going to be supercharged in the next decade.” (Ben, 31:59)
• The role of AI in potentially widening the gap—a recurring theme in their market optimism/cynicism tension.

6. Mega-Cap Tech Turnover & Market Structure

(13:28–17:52)

• JP Morgan chart: major turnover in top 10 S&P names since 1985; “These companies are too big and powerful for the government ever to step in and break them up... It’s going to be their hubris or the next... something else that comes up.” (Ben, 16:25)
• Michael resists “history always repeats,” betting today’s entrenched giants might persist longer.

7. Private Markets & Cracks in Private Credit

(44:14–49:41)

• The staggering number of private equity funds—“19,000 private equity funds in the U.S. There are 14,000 McDonald’s… That seems crazy, right?” (Michael, 44:14)
• Cracks emerging: bankruptcies in auto sector, BDCs (business development companies) getting “destroyed.”
  • “Something bad kind of is happening.” (Ben, 47:56)
• Michael stakes out a stubbornly bullish contrarian: “I am in the camp right now that nothing bad happens... Throw this in my face if this is the top and we have an 80% crash... but that’s the current mood.” (Michael, 48:12)

8. Life, Social Media & Lifestyle Observations

(55:32–62:12)

• Social media “brain rot”—addiction, declining happiness, and generational shifts.
  • “I just gotta get off this thing. It’s just so… It’s just poison.” (Michael, 62:12)
  • Instagram feels “good vibes,” Twitter is an “addiction,” and negativity goes viral.
• Ben and Michael reminisce on evolving family routines, “graduating” from zoo trips to youth sports, and savoring car rides with kids and the moments between games.
  • “I absolutely love it. It’s fun. I don’t know what else we’d be doing with our time.” (Ben, 63:09)
  • “I am never a ‘I can’t wait for X’ person because I’m very cognizant that, you know, we’re going to die.” (Michael, 62:52)

9. Stock Stories, Product Fads & Cultural Observations

(35:05–43:12)

• Discussion of tariff exemptions fueling AI hardware imports.
• Apple’s Vision Pro headset “bombs”; skepticism on mass-adoption of AR glasses ("I think society will reject this," Michael, 36:03).
• Costco’s PE rerating unexplained—“It just has been levitating for reasons that are... I don’t know why.” (Michael, 39:43)
• “Opendoor is up 10x from the lows, but home flipping economics don’t scale.” (Ben, 40:14)
• Housing market "normalizing" but likely to tighten again if rates fall (Ben, 42:44).

10. Sports Betting and Societal Impacts

(49:42–51:30)

• “A growing share of Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society… 1 in 10 US adults have placed an online sports bet in the past year.” (Ben, 49:51)
• Michael: “I love gambling… but if I could wave a magic wand and end it, I would. Sorry.” (Michael, 50:32)
• Dialogue on negative societal impacts vs. personal freedoms and fun.

11. Recommendations & Personal Life Bits

(64:41–end)

• Michael’s seasonal horror movie rec (“VHS: Halloween” is “totally demented… in the best way possible.”)
• Ben reviews the movie “F1” (“...did a great job of bringing me along as someone who knows nothing about F1. Very entertaining.”)
• Candid stories about travel mishaps and family routines.
• Both muse on the positive and negative aspects of growing up—and growing out—of family phases and social media stages.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Stock is up 25% off the announcement. I don’t know what's up right now. $280 billion company just adding $50 billion… It’s bubble time. Let's do it.”
  — Michael Batnick (02:16)

• “Everyone’s bullish in the short term, but everybody knows it’s going to end badly. There’s no way it's going to play out like that... right?”
  — Michael Batnick (05:56)

• “No one is going to be able to predict this coming fall. Not even the stock market. It’s going to happen when it happens.”
  — Ben Carlson (07:56)

• “There’s never been so many rich people as there are right now.”
  — Ben Carlson (24:31)

• “I just want to put out goodness, that’s all.”
  — Michael Batnick (70:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Tech Market Mania & OpenAI/AMD News – 02:09–07:06
• Bubble Talk, News Mania & Human Behavior – 07:07–11:57
• Retail Manias & ‘Junk Stock’ Rally – 19:12–25:05
• Defining & Quantifying the Bubble – 25:15–27:11
• Wealth Inequality Discussion – 27:11–32:23
• Mega-Cap Turnover & S&P Structure – 13:28–17:52
• Private Markets & Private Credit Shakiness – 44:14–49:41
• Social Media & Life Reflections – 55:32–62:12
• Sports Betting – A Societal Drain? – 49:42–51:30
• Movie & Book Recommendations, Life Updates – 64:41–end

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Tone & Style Reflection

The hosts blend wry, self-deprecating humor (“My personality is I don’t like popular things... That’s not a personality trait.” – Ben, 32:56), generous skepticism, and a clear love for markets and family life. Their discourse is jargon-aware but plainspoken; dedicated listeners and market novices alike will find value in their frank, approachable assessments and cultural asides.

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Summary Takeaway

Michael and Ben confront the paradoxes and peculiarities of our “mania” era—where everyone is bullish, yet no one trusts it; where retail logic runs wild, but the system seems robust; where the narratives are as vital as the numbers. Whether it’s the dominance of AI, the resilience of mega-caps, or simply the travails of managing screen time, this episode offers a sharp, relatable snapshot of investing—and living—in a world that feels part repeat, part reboot.

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Transcript

[Michael Batnick]

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[Podcast Narrator]

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. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the secure discussed in this podcast.

[Michael Batnick]

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I am on the airplane this morning taking off, got CNBC on the seat in front of me.

[Ben Carlson]

Boom on mute.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah I was working.

[Ben Carlson]

Kidding.

[Michael Batnick]

And big headline OpenAI investing in AMD. I was about to make a turn. I couldn't think of anything so OpenAI doing some sort of deal with amd. Who cares what it is? Sam Altman tweeted excited to partner with AMD to use their chips to serve our users. This is all incremental to work to our work with Nvidia and We plan to increase our Nvidia purchases over time. The world needs much more compute. So AMD Nvidia, you're still good. Stock is up 25 of the announcement. I don't know what's up right now. 280 billion dollar company just adding 50 billion, whatever the number is. Everyone in the world like that. Let's go, let's go. It's bubble time. Let's do it. Let's do it.

[Ben Carlson]

The funny thing about this whole thing is just that the, it feels like there's not, I don't, I don't know if I guess you call it an oligopoly. Like it feels like these, they have everything cornered, but they're all doing it together and being like, hey, we're inclusive. You come to take, can take a little table scraps? Sure. Yeah. You want some too? Yeah, you too. Let's do it.

[Michael Batnick]

Intel. Where's Micron? They, they feel left out. Hey, so last week after our show, I, I, I thought to myself, you know what we're gonna do? Hyperscaler free episode. Let's just. It's enough. Come on, it's enough already. It's impossible.

[Ben Carlson]

So you, you have this in here? I saw it too. I, I had CNBC on, I have my, my three screens in my office and I had CNBC on one. And Paul Tudor Jones is on this morning. So I turned it on and credit to Andy Ross Sorkin because he said, because Paul Tudor Jones said, listen, it feels like 99. And he said, I think he essentially said, like, this is, he said, this is potentially more explosive than 1999. He was saying, like, listen, we're in for a blow off top here. And Andrew Sorkin pulled up some old quotes of his. Like, last time you were here, you were talking about the end of the world and you were talking about recessions and, and Paul Jones like kind of smiled and he goes, yeah, you know, what? Being it. But so I credited him for saying this because he's, he's been wrong like every hedge fund person. But he said, listen, hang on, hang on, hang on.

[Michael Batnick]

He's been wrong like everybody. You don't have to say about Hedgehog. Who's been right.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, true, but. So it was kind of funny. And he said, listen, I've been wrong a lot. Okay? Everyone's wrong. And he said, but my whole investing philosophy boils down to the 200 day moving average. Yeah, he's a moving average.

[Michael Batnick]

Wrong. I'm sure he's made gazillions of dollars. So he's not one of those pontificators that just bloviates and doesn't actually invest.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I think he's more of a quantitative investor that has, that has qualitative discussions sometimes. And he said, I use the 200 day moving average. When it's above the 200 day, good things happen. When it's below the 200 day, bad things can happen. The last time I was here was below the 200 day. So I was thinking bad things are going to happen.

[Michael Batnick]

Fair enough.

[Ben Carlson]

And then it did. So, so I thought it was actually a pretty good back and forth. But. So is this the point that we've reached is, is that the next line of predictions is blow off top.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so I mentioned that. I genuinely thought we were going to do an AI free episode. It's just like tiresome at this point. We've got 55 pages in the doc, so apologies in advance. Is this, I was thinking about this. This is the biggest market story of the last decade.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

Like there's been, there's been pockets of time where all we're talking about is inflation. All we're talking about is interest rates.

[Ben Carlson]

Covid was. Covid.

[Michael Batnick]

Hang on, hang on, wait, let me finish. Over time, as Covid. But that was within the context of like a crisis. So absent crisis moments over the last 15 years, this is the single biggest market story. And there's not, there's, there's, there's nothing even close.

[Ben Carlson]

This is one of the biggest market stories that we will ever have.

[Michael Batnick]

Correct. This is, this is going in the textbooks.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so anyway, Michael Semblis say this is like, this is the stock market bet of the century.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

This is not like, this is not like the biggest story of a decade. This is the, potentially the biggest story that. It's crazy to say, but it's, it seems true.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, here's where I'm at. It feels like everybody is aligned. Okay. We are entering the next phase of a blow off top. Maybe it lasts a year, maybe last two years. So everyone's bullish in the short term, but everybody knows it's going to end badly. There's no way it's going to play out like that. It's just, it's, there's no way, right?

[Ben Carlson]

No, that, that. But that is the perfect head to make a prediction. The stock market is going to go up, but then it's going to fall. That. How can you be wrong in that scenario? You can't. Because if it falls, you go, I guess, I guess I was just a Little early.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. You know, on Monday, a week ago, I sent you and Josh an image that I created from ChatGPT where it's everybody watching a bubble inflate. And it really feels like this is the moment. Right? Like more.

[Ben Carlson]

So how come every person in this AI generated picture is exactly the same? Like the women have the same face as the men.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know. They all have the same. Although if you look back a few rows, it's a weird image. But Derek Thompson this week wrote an article, this is how the AI bubble will pop. He had an interview with Paul Kadrosky. And it's not just Derek. I mean, it's quite literally everybody.

[Ben Carlson]

I made the point this morning on Twitter, there is a bubble in financial news stories using pictures of bubbles. Look at all the pictures. Every picture now has a picture of a bubble in it. Yeah, that's how you have to start the article. So chart kid Matt did this thing where he, he showed that the stock market bottoms nine months on average before earnings do in a bear market. Right. So the stock market is forward looking in a bear market. So I said, okay, that's, that's great. What about the top is this. Can the stock market call the, the peak in earnings before it happens? And we looked at it and it cannot the stock market. Look at this chart, the very first one here. The stock market and earnings basically fall together. It's within, it's within like a few days. So, so the stock market. That makes sense.

[Michael Batnick]

That makes sense like from a human behavior point of view, because nobody wants to leave the party early.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. But so the, the thing is, no one is going to be able to predict this, this coming fall. Not even the stock market. It's going to happen like when it happens. And I, I agree with you. It, it, it seems almost too easy to say, well, this is a bubble and it's going to pop like all the other ones there. The market is never that easy.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, maybe, but it seems, it seems hard to believe.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you make this gif of Derek Henry standing next to Mark Ingram?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah. You did a meme. So I did. It's one of my favorite meme templates.

[Michael Batnick]

That's good.

[Ben Carlson]

I, it doesn't. It just seems like AI is subsuming everything else with the economy and with the stock market that you keep hearing about the slowing labor market, but guess what? The growth for this coming quarter is still projected to be almost 4%. So yes, people keep worrying about the labor market slowing it. The stock market doesn't Care. The economy doesn't care. When does it matter?

[Michael Batnick]

Stalwart Joe Mr. Wasenthal tweeted. According to Challenger, the pace of hiring has fallen off a cliff. Weakest September for job creation since 2011. And it is a push and pull as. As the pundits say. I don't know, man. It'll matter when it matters. I. I have nothing. Like, I have no insight here. I don't think. I think that's the thing. Like, nobody does. Let's just be honest. We're all making this up. We're all guessing the best we can.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, that's one of the things that makes these kind of manias fun, because no one has a clue when it'll end.

[Michael Batnick]

Chart from J.P. morgan estimates the five major AI hyperscalers will spend a combined 1.2 trillion from, oh. From 25 through 27. How could you be bearish? I mean, you could say this is stupid and this will end badly. Sure, I think everyone's saying that. But Martin Shkreli is shorting, I believe, some of the quantum computing stocks, which by all accounts, there's nothing there.

[Ben Carlson]

What, are we taking investment advice from this guy now?

[Michael Batnick]

Well, just hear me out. The Rigetti CEO was.

[Ben Carlson]

They need to change their name. It sounds like a pasta company.

[Michael Batnick]

I got to be honest, I don't even. I have no. Is riggedi quantum computing. I genuinely don't know. Sorry.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I think so. But I need to change their name.

[Michael Batnick]

So he said, he was talking to Yahoo Finance and he said because of the hype that is going on in the quantum computing space and some erroneous statements are being made, including by people in our industry, we have to tamp down some expectations. I have to tell investors that it's still not the time to talk about sales. Not the time to talk about sales. There's no revenue and sales growth because we are still very much in the technology development mode. So it's essentially an experiment. We have to get the technology perfected before we can start seeing real material difference in sales. And guess what? It doesn't matter. Stock's going straight up. So Shkreli is. Is short. Obviously a lot of people are making on money on the long side. I think here's where I'm at with like shorts and longs in this. In one corner of the. Of the mania that we're. That we're experiencing, nobody comes out alive. Shorts are going to get taken out just because that's just how the market got his work. They're not going to let you make Money you're going to get margin called. It's just not going to be enough and then it'll fall 90%.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, did you read the Jerry Newman piece that, that colossus a few weeks ago basically said no one's going to make money in the AI bubble. Right. I, I agree with, like trying to pick through, sort through the winners and losers at this point.

[Michael Batnick]

Beyond hyperspace, I think, I think Citadel will make money.

[Ben Carlson]

Right? Yes. The, the timing of the timing and the magnitude that's. That gets you every time I listen this. It's a human experiment though that we're running here. Right. That's what makes the stock market so endlessly fascinating to me is that it's like a laboratory for human emotions. And how far can we push them? How far can they, can they really go? We're going to find out.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So JP Morgan and this is from JP Morgan via Bridgewater. US real GDP growth contribution from tech CapEx. So it's showing that versus contribution from the rest of the economy. And somebody tweeted, this is alarming. Almost 40% of the US real GDP growth last quarter is driven by Tech Capex. Agri Capex can't keep climbing like this in the absence of real profits derived from AI investments. And somebody replied, this is surface. This is a surface level. Take most AI CapEx is spending against current demand with revenue coming in immediately. Let's dig a little deeper. Both fair points, but the, the unknown of where this goes is the. Yeah, you're right, Ben. That's what makes it fun.

[Ben Carlson]

The demand is coming from Oracle, which is coming from OpenAI, which is coming from Nvidia, which is coming from Oracle, which is coming from OpenAI, which is coming from Nvidia.

[Michael Batnick]

Didn't we say at the end of August that September was historically one of the weakest months of the year?

[Ben Carlson]

You know, I tell you what, I don't know how the seasonality stuff works. Like what's a historically good month or bad month? You tell me.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, you, you wouldn't. I'll tell you, September historically is not great. We 3.5% in 2025. Fourth best since. Fourth best September since, since the turn of the century.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

Not bad.

[Ben Carlson]

I tell you, seasonality doesn't do much for me.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I could take it.

[Ben Carlson]

Not gonna lie.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, Todd Sohn has a chart showing a table, the annual contribution for the S and p of the 10 largest stocks during positive years and 2021. 2020.

[Ben Carlson]

Wow. This is, this is very surprising. I don't remember talking about this in.

[Michael Batnick]

2023 and 2025 are all it is.

[Ben Carlson]

Funny that top 6, 99 and 2007, which are the tops. But I don't remember anyone talking about this in 2007. That it was 80% of the total almost.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, this is, this is before you had a podcast.

[Ben Carlson]

True. But obviously you look at these and you go 99 was a top 202007 was a top 2021 was a top. And then there's other years you can look at and say, well, that those ones didn't matter.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, here's a chart that was making the rounds this weekend. The forward PE of the S&P cap weighted versus equal weight. And needless to say, maybe not needless to say, they generally track each other pretty closely. There was a huge disconnect during the dot com bubble and there was a pretty big disconnect today.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, not nearly as wide as the dot com bubble though, obviously. Okay, so long, short S and P, long, equal weight.

[Michael Batnick]

Sure, maybe. But I feel like the people that are posting, the people that are posting this chart have literally been saying the same thing since 2015.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, they were pounding the table on cape ratio back then. Okay. Awesome new chart from JP Morgan. They had their new guide to the markets. I think I get an email every time that a new one comes in. And this chart has never, this chart has never been here before. They look at the top 10 names going back to 1985 every 10 years. Pretty sure JP Morgan stole this idea from me. Cause I did it before. Not to brag, I'm kidding. But they show which ones have stayed over time. And you can see there's a total turnover from 85. There was a few of them that hung on for a little bit, right? IBM hung on there for a little bit. GE hung on Exxon. And there's no names that were in the top 10 and 95 that are still there today. So there's been a ton of turnover between now and then. And Microsoft is the only one that was there in 2005. So here's the thing though. I feel like since 2017ish, when these tech companies really started to take off and their dominance was being becoming more well known, the one thing people would say is, listen, just wait till the government steps in and breaks these companies up. I think we've learned the government is literally. They can't do that or they don't want to or it's never going to happen. These companies are too big and powerful for the government ever to step in and break them up. And I think that at one time seemed like a real risk. I just can't imagine that happening today. Can you. Can you see that?

[Michael Batnick]

No. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

You've got to sell off, you know, YouTube. You've got to sell off cloud services. I just. They're too big and powerful. So it's going to be their. Their hubris or the next. In 2035, it's going to be a bunch of robotics companies or something, something else that comes up to take their place. But it's not going to be because the government steps in to, like, take away their power. Obviously, power is just growing.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that there's going to be a lot of turnover just because there has historically.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I'm. I'm going with history here. You don't think that there's going to be some, like, robotics companies are going to step in and new AI companies and that's the way that this stuff works.

[Michael Batnick]

Historically.

[Ben Carlson]

Some of these companies are going to trip and fall. That's going to. That's okay, sure. Maybe this time really is different.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm not pounding the table, but I would say, like, even money. How long are we talking about? We talk about 2035.

[Ben Carlson]

I think that the historical turnover rate is something like 30 to 40%. So three or four names.

[Michael Batnick]

I would say the historical turnover rate is going to be way less today, way less in the future than it was historically. I would. I would feel pretty comfortable saying that.

[Ben Carlson]

I think we could. So we'll talk about this in 2035, in year 17 of our podcast. But I still think that two or three of these names are going to trip and fall and something else is going to come or something else is going to come take their place.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, well, two. Two out of ten is not. I mean, that's nothing.

[Ben Carlson]

Two to three. That's. I said that's like, historically 30% or so is average. All right.

[Michael Batnick]

Great stuff from Rob Anderson. Nasdaq 100 has not seen a 3% correction for 115 days. It's the seventh longest streak going back to 1971.

[Ben Carlson]

So since April, essentially, then.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, for all the bubble talk, I thought this was interesting. US equity gains trail the rest of the world. This one, Bloomberg by the most since 2009. How do you explain this?

[Ben Carlson]

There's a lot of really weird stuff going. I keep saying if this is a bubble, it's the weirdest one ever. Gold hits a new highs every day. It seems like bitcoin hit new highs.

[Michael Batnick]

It's just everything international stocks you saw Japan is ripping this morning. Yuri and Timber tweeted. Strong technicals are confirming the bullish fundamentals. Finally, non US equities have a reason to mean revert. After being left dead for over a decade, he's got another chart showing like the payout ratio and how these companies are taking a page out of our book. It's global, man. It's not just us.

[Ben Carlson]

If you're not making money this year, you should just retire for being an investor. Hand the keys over, turn them in, put it all in index funds or something else. If you can't make money this year, you're never going to make money.

[Michael Batnick]

That's true. All right, what's the CML that we got, Ben?

[Ben Carlson]

All right, let me hear what you think here. It seems like other famous bubbles are accompanied by an anecdote of someone completely ignorant of the investment making an investment Darwin with railroads. Joe Kennedy allegedly said when the shoeshiner asked about the market, he throw in the towel. What feels different about the AI is that there really hasn't. Doesn't seem to be a lot of stories about people with zero idea about AI or the market just running and throwing life savings at AI names. People investing in it are doing so in a fairly rational manner through indexing or for the most part ETFs. Thoughts?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I re. I reject this dramatically.

[Ben Carlson]

Dramatically. I think I agree with it like 70, I'm like 75% of the way there. This, it doesn't feel like this is 99 where people are quitting their jobs to day trade or quitting their jobs because they're gonna turn over houses, right? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy and sell houses and I'm gonna fix them up a little bit and resell them. Those are the kind of things are happening in, in those bubbles. It doesn't feel like we have that kind of stuff happening today. The anecdotes of. All right, so I will give him that point.

[Michael Batnick]

Let me present the counterpoint. Hamptonism. Amtonism tweeted. I'm convinced anyone with any level of education can turn 100k to half a million in 12 months. Bucha Capital retweeted it and said we're close to the top. It's okay to keep dancing but recognize where we are. Here's another one. Oh, this is from Martin Shkreli. Let me, let me share my screen for a sec. This is a, this is a fake. I guess some sora which we'll talk about in a sec.

[Ben Carlson]

Here we go.

[Michael Batnick]

I have a dream that all overvalued stocks will collapse and the market will.

[Ben Carlson]

Be efficient once again.

[Michael Batnick]

Not bad, right? Okay, all right, so wait, hold on, hold on. I'm not done. All right, here's another one. Somebody I get. I don't know if this is Reddit. It looks like Reddit. After two months of thinking, I decided to quit my job today. They show their portfolio feels good, but.

[Ben Carlson]

I think I was wrong.

[Michael Batnick]

Tik Tok investors tweeted everyone is a genius and bull market. This person talks about their, their strategy and, and trading. We've got 19. This from Bespoke. We've got 19 stocks up 400% since Liberation Day low and let's see all but four of them or money losing companies. Cipher Mining, I don't know Kodiak Sciences, O we talked about Tango Therapy, a bunch of other names I've never heard of. We've got. This is from Deutsche Bank.

[Ben Carlson]

I've never heard of any of these companies before.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

I love, I love how they have the P ratio and like 90% of them are negative.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, right.

[Ben Carlson]

They don't have a profit. That means they don't have a profit.

[Michael Batnick]

So going to the retail thing that we've been talking about, how these people are just killing it. Sherwood had a chart showing the Goldman stock retail index is up like 19 straight days. I. What, I forget what number is but it's, it's madness. All right, so Deutsche bank has this wonderful chart showing the performance of the most shorted stocks going vertical and the stocks with the most net call volume going vertical. And let's just say that these are both retail names. You've got the defiance company launching a bunch of 3x ETFs modest proposal tweeted factor effectiveness the recent 12 months comparison to long term performance we're looking at the best versus worst quintile. So I guess this is long short. What's Number 1 High 9 Price Month Momentum High 12 Month Price Momentum High R and D to sales high beta and the worst is all like you know, value stocks. Mike Zakari tweeted the last six months have been all about low quality, the junkier the better. Augur Infinity has a chart which, which he's showing the S&P 500 performance since the lowest versus the non profitable tech stocks. Non profitable tech is up 105% since the lows. The Rugetti stuff that I spoke about earlier. So Ben, it's happening. People are going absolutely bananas for stocks. So when I was in, when I.

[Ben Carlson]

Was in my manager selection days, those portfolio managers would definitely have said, listen, this is a junk stock rally. We're not gonna chase the junk. We're high quality balance sheets, low debt.

[Michael Batnick]

It is, it is.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so here's the other, here's the other place where I think that there is a. I don't. I hate calling everything a bubble because at a certain point, you know how all the Gen Z kids, they, they say that everyone is a goat? You know, like, hey, this person at my company, they're a goat. Like, you can't call everyone a goat. Not everyone's the greatest of all time. Okay, stop using, Stop using goat so much. Young people. Like, it's. Reserve it for like one or two people in your life. That's it. So I don't want to call this a bubble, but it's. We're, we're at all time highs and we've never been higher. There are so many rich people now. And you and I are in a very. I think you and I are in kind of a, an interesting way to view this because not only through our business, but because of all the people we hear from that there's never been so many rich people as there are right now. And it's funny because the, the conversations that I'm having with really rich people in our day job, the biggest problem they have is what do I do with these huge capital gains I'm sitting on. That's the problem people are trying to solve for. And that's obviously a bull market problem and phenomenon. But I just think that there's just, there's never been more rich people. And I think that explains.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a big part of so much.

[Ben Carlson]

Of what's going on.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, let me ask you this, let me ask you this. The B word, the bubble word. Stocks, these stocks that we've been discussing, the one. I mean, Meta and Nvidia fell 70% to 2022. Amazon and Google got cut in half. I don't remember a lot of people saying, see, the bubble is over. The bubble just popped. My point is, what would have to happen for us to say, you see, it was a bubble? Because it's not. These stocks falling 40% and getting back to where they were in 2023. That's. That's proof of nothing. That's proof. All right. Yeah. These stocks were overvalued. A bubble bursting means Nvidia's got to go to a trillion.

[Ben Carlson]

It would. The S and P would have to fall 40%. The NASDAQ 100 has to fall 50. I think that's. To me, that's okay. It was a bubble.

[Michael Batnick]

So if the Nasdaq doesn't fall 50. Get out of here. The Nasdaq could fall 35%. Means nothing. It fell 35% of the first quarter, didn't it?

[Ben Carlson]

And in 2020 and in 2022. Yeah, that's. That's fair. I. I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know what the number is. Is 50% at a minimum or. Or don't say the word bubble.

[Ben Carlson]

I think that's a fair definition.

[Michael Batnick]

At a minimum.

[Ben Carlson]

If handy. Put. Put your gambling hat on. What's. What will the odds of a 50% crash being the NASDAQ 100 in the next 24 months? 24 to 36 months.

[Michael Batnick]

If he said 24, what would make me bet on a 50% crash over the next 24 months? I don't know, man.

[Ben Carlson]

You need a really high plus odds.

[Michael Batnick]

Plus 700. How about this?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, I need. I would need way higher odds than that.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. For you to put, I don't know, ten grand. Ten to one.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. At least.

[Michael Batnick]

Actually, you know what? If anyone's willing to give me 10 to 1 odds, I would take it. That's a good payout.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

If you extend it to, like, 48 months, then I would say seven to one. 50 is a lot. And now it could. Obviously it could happen. Of course it could.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. But. But what is the level we're going from to your point? And what does it bring you back to?

[Michael Batnick]

Well, that's the other part of it. It's like, listen, where's the S? P? Is it 60? Ooh, is it 60? What is it? 6700. Okay, so if the S&P goes to 8500 and it goes back down to 6000, who cares?

[Ben Carlson]

Sam Rowe had a great point the other day on Twitter that the Dow bottomed at, like, 6700 in the great financial crisis. Now it's at 46,000, almost 47,000. And now the S&P is at 6700 round numbers.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, this is a good thing. Goes to the retail stuff that we're talking about, but you love to see this. The value of equities held by the bottom 50%. And this is all Robinhood, so credit to them. This started to go vertical in 2020, so in 2000, it was 100.

[Ben Carlson]

This is also the pandemic, though. This was the pandemic. People had.

[Michael Batnick]

Sure.

[Ben Carlson]

People had disposable income. For the first time, a lot of people for the first time in a long time.

[Michael Batnick]

But the bottom 50%, the value of equities had gone nowhere from 2000 to 2020. So 20 years, not inflation adjusted, I don't think. And now it's 600 billion. Now there's a, there's a denominator thing in here. Like, I don't know how many people this is, but nevertheless, this is still a good thing.

[Ben Carlson]

No, the jump here was so high, you can't say that this is just. But here's the thing. To me, 9% inflation was worth this. We don't get, we don't get this without 9% inflation.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, that's.

[Ben Carlson]

Was it worth it?

[Michael Batnick]

I don't, I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

Why you. Because it was all the money we sent to people that. That's why this happened.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I don't know. That's a, That's a big, That's.

[Ben Carlson]

I think that's a reasonable trade off as far as I'm concerned. Okay, let's add one more thing to your bubble thing. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Yield premiums, corporates over Treasuries is at a 27 year low. The spread.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow.

[Ben Carlson]

And the quote from the article was, it's kind of the old spreads are tight, but yields are all right. So yields are high. So people don't care. They're buying corporate bronze hand over fist. So there's not requiring much of a spread.

[Michael Batnick]

So same with junk, too. So there was another journal article talking about this and Howard Mark said, and this is definitely true, just, it just is. The worst loans are made at the best of times.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, that makes sense. Right? Okay. I want to. So I feel like that, to me, they're starting to get a groundswell of inequality stuff. I feel like the inequality chatter, well, it's growing. So here's, here's a question for you. So because I looked at the Atlanta Fed now and I get again, it's like 4% for this quarter. They're not all seeing all knowing whatever. But let's say we get a slowing labor market, right? And it doesn't really impact the economy. People start losing their jobs. But the top 10% controls 50% of consumption. I think the top 40% controls 60, 70% of consumption. AI makes businesses more efficient. Okay. So parts of the economy are slowing, but the economy or the labor market are slowing, but the economy still does fine, mainly.

[Michael Batnick]

You mean like what's happening literally right now?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Let's say this continues. Is your strategy to buy torches and pitchforks because. Look at this.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't want to. I don't want. I'm don't. I don't want to go there.

[Ben Carlson]

Listen, I'm living in the world as it is, not as I would love it to be.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. This idea.

[Ben Carlson]

Look at this next chart. Okay? Look at this next chart. America. This is from Charter. Today, America's top 1% holds almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The bottom 90% holds 33% of wealth. The top 1% owns 31. And it was. Forget about the top 10.

[Michael Batnick]

Hold on.

[Ben Carlson]

In the 1990s.

[Michael Batnick]

Forget about the top 1%. This is. It's Elon and Larry Ellison and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and Jeff Bezos. Like this idea that it's only the billionaires and everybody else is screwed. I'm sorry, I just. I reject that idea. Listen to what the companies are saying about their consumer. They have no reason to not tell the truth. I feel like we're beating this dead horse.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I agree. But listen, if you are boxed out of buying a house right now and you live in a very expensive city and inflation feels higher and I don't know what percentage of the population. Let's say 33% of the population, because 62% of people own stocks, the homeownership rate in this country is 65%. So let's say a third of people are boxed out, and some of them do that by choice. So let's say it's really 20% of people are boxed out of the stock market and the housing market. Who do you think they're going to blame for their play?

[Michael Batnick]

Listen, I'm not denying rich people. There are people struggling. Obviously there are, and I'm not incentive to that. I just feel like we're spending too much time on that topic as a society as like, we're only focusing. We're. There's so much good. There's so much good happening in the world. And it's very easy to feel like there's just a lot of bad things happening because there are, and we're more aware of it, but there's a lot of good things happening. I was in the airport today at jfk, one of the busiest airports in the world. And guess what? It's not all billionaires in there.

[Ben Carlson]

But here's the thing. It's never been easier to look around you and see wealth extravagantly on social media and in news stories.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, well, I agree. Well, guess what. But we don't need to contribute to that on this podcast, all right?

[Ben Carlson]

I keep living in the world as it is.

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no, no. You're living on social media world as it is.

[Ben Carlson]

Cuz listen, AI is wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is going to be supercharged in the next decade.

[Michael Batnick]

You watch nasty market crash outside of social media. This is not, this is not a topic of conversation.

[Ben Carlson]

Wealth inequality. I don't know, man. It's going to be you. Wait, this is going to be a big thing in the coming decade. This is going to be a huge issue. You watch.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, Sound like, you sound like, you sound like you're rooting for it. Wait, hold on. What do you mean it's going to be an issue? It is an issue. It is an issue. I'm not saying that it's not. It is an issue. But do we ever focus on the positives or we only get to focus on the negatives?

[Ben Carlson]

Hey, listen, I. You're right. I am. I try to be a positive guy. I will. Listen, I think the fact it's so.

[Michael Batnick]

Dude, I'm just invested in the stock.

[Ben Carlson]

Market is a huge positive.

[Michael Batnick]

It's so easy to focus on the negatives and it's. I'm over it. Sorry.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I've got, I got something for you that in. Later in the show. I'll say it now. How is, how is this. This is me trying to contribute positively. I think a personality trait, and this is true probably of people on social media or more middle aged people, is my personality is. I don't like popular things, right? So they hate on anything that's popular. And my daughter was telling me she hates this because she's, she's a swifty. She's a big Taylor Swift fan. And a lot of. I feel like middle aged people are saying Taylor Swift has another album. Oh, great. It's awful. Have you heard the lyrics? And I'll tell you what, I had to. I was in the car with my daughter for an hour on a way to a soccer tournament this weekend. And we listen. Had to listen to the whole time because that's what we do. And I nodded my head a few times. It's not bad. I feel like if your whole thing is like things that are popular are not good. That's not a personality trait. That's just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. How's that? I'm saying new Taylor Swift album, not bad. That's my contribution to positive thinking for this week. How's that?

[Michael Batnick]

Let's Go positive.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, So a lot of people have wondered, why is it that the stock market hasn't cared about tariffs at all? There are no tariffs on the stock market. How's that? This is Joey Politano from Appraisitas has this cool substack. He said the single largest exemption for tariffs, covering an astonishing $34 billion of imports per month, is for computers and parts. An exemption that AI companies are now completely relying on for the record breaking investment push. So he shows the largest tariff exemptions. It's like there's Mexico, Canada, pharmaceuticals, energy, precious metals, smartphones and computers and parts are way at the top. And he says that's a big part of the growth. So he said large parts of the US Economy are totally dependent on this tariff exemption exception for computer imports. And so his point is, if free trade is delivering such amazing results for the one sector still able to enjoy it, why are we subjecting farmers, manufacturing and families to this protectionism? In other words, if data centers get to be exempt from tariffs, shouldn't we all be? Which I think is a fair point if we're going to like, let. And it's a good news that they decided to exempt all the AI stuff because it's helped the economy, it's helped the stock market, but maybe we should just not have them at all. How's that?

[Michael Batnick]

Sure.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

Works for me. Ben, I saw that Apple, I think I didn't read the story. So it was something about the Vision Pro and then like maybe scaling back their efforts to making a smaller, lighter, better version of it.

[Ben Carlson]

How long, how long did you have it for? Like a week before you get rid of it? Yeah, I mean, that thing just bombed, right? There's like one guy who wore it to his wedding. And does anyone still use it, do you think?

[Michael Batnick]

Ooh, to your wedding. Tough scene. Anyway, Zuckerberg is really making a push for the glasses. Not like the goggles, the glasses. And Gene Munster had a piece. He said they're investing $100 billion into these technologies.

[Ben Carlson]

God, I hope these things bomb.

[Michael Batnick]

So he said, I believe glasses will take about five years to gain traction. And once there, this technology should become central to consumer spending. And there's a picture of Zerko with the glass. I just, I don't think, I don't think so. I think society will reject this.

[Ben Carlson]

I hope so. I really hope so. I, I don't have a lot of faith in society in the short run, but the ability to just video camera, videotape someone with your glasses and not have them Know, it, I think, is so creepy. I don't think the upside outweighs the downside on these things at all. I agree there's way too many creeps that are gonna use these things. But here's the thing. So if you want to have a cynical view of AI, so OpenAI and Facebook both said they're gonna roll out these AI social media video platforms. So the SORA is the new one. And I think that these companies are just better off the dumber we all get, and that's how they make money. Like, do you really trust Mark Zuckerberg to bring goodness from AI into the world, or is he going to use it to. To make us watch slop videos and get mad about stuff that didn't actually happen to keep eyeballs in his social media platform? Like, I have zero faith that he's going to use AI as a positive for humanity. I think he's going to extract every last bit out of us and try to make us dumber so he can make more money.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, let's put a pin in this. There's some. There's some social media stuff later on in the show, but, yes, I agree with you. All right, so Josh had the privilege of interviewing Peter lynch last week in Boston, which was quite a treat. And one of the things that. So, Jo, Josh did this thing where he read a lot of his greatest quotes and had him react to them. And I had forgot. I had forgotten how many amazing quotes were attributed to him. My favorite of all time, that's his. Is selling your winners, which. Guilty. I've done this way too many times. Selling your winners and buying adding to losers is like pulling out your flowers and watering the weeds. How good is that?

[Ben Carlson]

I was always pretty partial to the refrigerator one, too.

[Michael Batnick]

What's that like?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah, just that people do more research on buying a refrigerator than they do on the stocks that they buy.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, I saw he. He did. He did that. He did that bit for me in the green room. It's pretty cool to say he's playing the greatest hits.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Anyway, so during the conversation, Costco came up and he was saying that he can't really make sense of the valuation. So I did some research.

[Ben Carlson]

Me and Peter lynch were the same.

[Michael Batnick]

I did some research over the weekend, and the PE of Costco going back to the start of the 21st century was around 20. It's been around 20 between 2000 and 2020. And then it just exploded higher. Got as high as 60 earlier in the year. And I went on wide Charts like what's going on here is we're getting margin expansion. Is that the deal? So the top is gross profit margin. Nope, about 10, 12%. Been that way forever. Look at operating operating margin, bottom line profit margin. Nope, 3%. So it's like, all right, well let's look at the, the membership revenue. And yeah, this is going higher. And this pretty much flows to the bottom line. It was $2 billion in 2016. It's now up to 5 billion. But so what? I mean, it's a giant company. So I went on all of the different LLMs. I went on anthropic and chatgpt and gemini and they also the same thing. I think it's ChatGPT. Yes, the PE multiple for Costco has expanded materially, but it's not solely or even primarily because Costco is suddenly massively more profitable. Rather, it's a combination of modest margin tailwinds, emphasis on modest growth in E commerce, international scale, the strength and stability of the membership model, a premium multiple for perceived defensive qualities, investor rerating dynamics. And they all said the same thing. There was nothing there that was like, oh, I get. Okay, this makes sense. It just has been levitating for reasons that are. I'm sure somebody knows why. I don't know why.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, that's good. So no one can answer the question either then. All right, is it. I think it's just sometimes there's a RE rating where people just. All of a sudden investors realize that, remember Apple had this re rating, their PE ratio.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but 50 for Costco.

[Ben Carlson]

It does seem. It seems a little, a little high. Although have you been there on a Saturday or Sunday before? Well, it's the worst place on earth. How about this? I'm still. Opendoor is up. How much is it up from the lows? Is it a 30 something?

[Michael Batnick]

It was 85 cents when he first tweeted about it, give or take.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so now it's almost $10. Okay. Wow. So it's a 10 bagger. More. So the Wall Street Journal had this piece on it. They said for all the recent excitement, a crucial problem remains. The economics of home flipping. Business don't scale. Expecting Opendoor to figure them out now represents a triumph of hope over experience.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh yeah? Guess what, asshole? It's up 15% today. Shove it.

[Ben Carlson]

I tend to, unless they completely change their line of business, if they're going to stick with house flipping as their strategy. Because it says that for the first half of 2025 it had $227 million of gross profit on $2.7 billion of revenue. This is a low margin business. And I, to me, it's a prove it thing. If you're going to prove that technology can fix the real estate market, I got to see it first. And again, unless they totally pivot their business to doing something else, I don't see how this house flipping thing ever works. At scale, it's up 15% and maybe the stock doubles from here and holy cow, I just, I don't understand. Well, yeah, they've got new people coming in, but I don't see how the business itself, I don't see how it works. It's never worked to come in. Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know anything about its business. My default would be. This is, this is tricky, but I just don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

Housing is the one place technology has not been able to supplant the right. It hasn't been able to work at all. I'm gonna have to see it to believe it. Maybe it'll happen someday, but it has not happened yet. All right, speaking of the housing market, it is normalizing. This is from Lance Lambert Club.

[Michael Batnick]

What do we mean?

[Ben Carlson]

All right. 21 of the nation's 50 largest metro area housing markets in September 2025 had more active housing inventory for sale than in September 2019, up from just 13 of 50 in September 2024. So in 40% of the largest metro areas, there's more houses for sale now than there were in 2019 pre pandemic. So this is, it's, it's actually kind of happening a little bit. Bloomberg had this chart where they show the inventory for sale plus or minus August 2019. And it's pretty much just the Northeast and the Midwest that we've been talking about. Everywhere else is, is normalizing in. There's more houses for sale. So listen to this. There are now more completed new homes on the market than at any time in the past 16 years for sale. The problem is part of this remains kind of a buyer strike. And I wonder if this is just rates have been so high for so long and so are prices that this normalization is gone the minute mortgage rates hits 5%.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

So this, to me, this seems like, yay, things are getting back to normal. But the reason they're getting back to normal is because no one wants to pay up right now for 6.5% mortgages and higher housing prices besides you ex Michael Betnick. But don't you think that this is a case where, yay, we get normal? It feels like a Stalemate to me. Where once rates fall, everyone back into the pool and see you later.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. I don't think this is, like, the housing market has been fixed. And I guess the thing about it is. What was I going to say? I lost my train of thought.

[Michael Batnick]

That's okay. Damn it.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, this is a cool chart. I can't remember where I found this one. Maybe someone had this on Reddit. Might have been Nick Magulia's blog. The portion of housing units built before 1960, percentage by state. You know, the state with the highest percentage built before 1960 is.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow.

[Ben Carlson]

New York. 53% of houses were built before 1960 in New York, 35% for Michigan. There's gonna be a lot of renovation needed in the years ahead. I think this is especially true when baby boomers start dying out of their homes. There's gonna be a ton of renovations that are needed for people coming into these houses. On a nationwide. It's like 26%. D.C. and New York are both over 50%. Those are the two highest kind of crazy, right? Michigan's 36%.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. That's a good chart, Ben. Switching gears to the private markets, one of the executives at, I believe, KKR was doing an interview, and she said there are 19,000 private equity funds in the U.S. there are 14,000 McDonald's. How are there more private equity funds in McDonald's? That's actually crazy, right? That seems. That doesn't seem right.

[Ben Carlson]

And they did this for the hedge funds, too, back in the day. Yeah, I remember people used to say there's. There's 7,000 Taco Bells and 10,000 hedge funds. Where are hedge funds and Taco Bells?

[Michael Batnick]

Can I just. Can I call BS? Who said there's 19,000 private equity funds? That sounds made up.

[Ben Carlson]

19. No, that's. Honestly, that probably is because every one of these funds has fund one, fund two. Like, they're funds that are still in existence. Right. So that actually kind of makes sense to me.

[Michael Batnick]

19,000 are.

[Ben Carlson]

You're just going on vibes here alone. You don't. Just don't.

[Michael Batnick]

Sources. I made it up. I'm just saying it sounds crazy.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, according to Gemini, there are over 18,000 to over 39,000. There's 10,000 private equity firms as of 2020, so it's more now.

[Michael Batnick]

10,000?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Private equity by the numbers.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so a lot of funds. There's all that dry powder, and you're bearish.

[Ben Carlson]

McDonald's, maybe.

[Michael Batnick]

There is a story brewing in the private markets. There's two bankruptcies in the auto space. One of them is called first brands, I believe is the name of the company. And the other is. Is it a tricolor or is that a salad? I don't know. Two auto companies that went kablooey. A lot of off balance sheet stuff, a lot of private credit things. And is this the canary in the coal mine? I. I will admit that I am a tourist at best here.

[Ben Carlson]

So with all the dry powder there is, these businesses must have been really, really bad that they just let them fail because you could think they would just take money from somewhere else to prop them up.

[Michael Batnick]

So a man group had a post over the spring dispelling five myths about private credit. So they're saying, yeah, the market grew at a compound annual growth rate of 17% from 2016 to 2022. It's forecasted to grow at 11% from 24 to 28. So it's huge. It's $3 trillion. But they have a great chart showing fixing the denominator blindness. If you look at non investment grade compared to investment grade, you would say, what's the story here? I don't, I don't see anything. See this chart?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

As a percentage of the overall market, non investment grade is pretty steady at. Was that 30% or so, give or take. Anyway, there's definitely seen some cracks in the market. So some of the companies are getting hit pretty hard. The equity Blue Owl, for example. Which other ones are not doing well? KKR is hanging in there. Some of them are doing worse than others. But anyway, a lot of the BDCs are getting destroyed. So blondes and money tweeted, I don't own any BDCs. But the BDC squad is flashing a warning sign, all names in the toilet this year. And a lot of the sponsored BDCs like hsbd are absolutely tanking. So again, I am ignorant here. I'm a Taurus at best. But I am in the camp right now that nothing bad happens. Now, I know it sounds toppy. I know that sounds complacent.

[Ben Carlson]

So the bad is two companies went out of business and these firms are hitting. Something bad kind of is happening.

[Michael Batnick]

So I bought Aries Capital Corporation, arcc. That is definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely not investment advice.

[Ben Carlson]

Again, you're trying to catch a falling knife here.

[Michael Batnick]

I am. I know nothing. I'm just. I, I still, I. I think that. I think that nothing bad ever happens. Throw this in my face. If this is the top and we have an 80% crash here, I'll Apologize. But that's where. That's. That's the mood. That's the current mood. I'm in the I don't, I don't believe it camp. And there's a lot of people that are like, dying, dying, dying, dying, dying for the private credit story to fall apart. I'm taking the other side.

[Ben Carlson]

Are you blinded by your long term bull thesis that the RIA money has to come in here?

[Michael Batnick]

Maybe.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't think this is the epicenter of the next credit crisis, which I am stipulating that it might be. I don't know how to handicap this. I have no idea.

[Ben Carlson]

This is another one of those things where I would love to fast forward five to seven years to see how this stuff does in an actual downturn. I think it's going to be really interesting to see.

[Michael Batnick]

But hold on. These BDCs have been around forever. These are not. These are not new.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm not saying that. I'm saying the private. How. How it impacts the private credit. So if. If private credit returns go from 11 to 9% because there's some defaults, is anyone really going to care about that? No. If.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I'll tell you who's going to care. The finished times. They're going to. They're going to dance on the grave and act like they called it.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, but if the returns went from 11% to 2%, then people can say, whoa. Right?

[Michael Batnick]

Correct.

[Ben Carlson]

Then, then. Okay. Game on.

[Michael Batnick]

Game on.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Sports gambling survey of the week. This is from Pew Research. A growing share of Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, you think?

[Ben Carlson]

43% up to 34% in July 2022. This is way lower than I would have thought. They say only 1 in 10 US adults now say they have placed an online sports bet in the past year.

[Michael Batnick]

1 in 10.

[Ben Carlson]

Way lower than I would have thought.

[Michael Batnick]

No, these names, which I draft, Kings flutter, which is FanDuel, got destroyed last week on news that CI is allowing parlays, I think.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, so you can parlay? Like, who's going to win the Oscar with.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know. That. That sounds. That sounds very.

[Ben Carlson]

President of Ecuador.

[Michael Batnick]

Only one in ten. But the growing shares of Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society and sports. Yeah. You think if. Listen, I love gambling. I love it. I have a lot of fun with it. It's not up to me, but if I could wave a magic wand and end it, I would. Sorry, what?

[Ben Carlson]

No. You're willing to let wealth inequality flourish, but you want to End sports gambling. I see how it is.

[Michael Batnick]

That's capitalism. I like capitalism.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I. But here's the thing.

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no. Because the thing is sports betting is just. It's negative sum. There's nobody really is. And don't email me if you're. If you won, I'm happy for you. On balance, it is a drain on society. And there are people, there are lots of people whose lives are getting absolutely ruined on. And unfortunately, I know, I. I know people whose lives are being ruined by this.

[Ben Carlson]

And way more people than their lives are being helped by this. And no, we had an email this morning from someone who said that his sports gambling picks beat the S and P over the last year.

[Michael Batnick]

Great.

[Ben Carlson]

He wants to come on the podcast. It's still not legal in California or Texas. Not yet. But some politician is going to make this an issue. And if this really was an issue that they said at the federal level, we're going to ban sports gambling, you know where there would be a big short. The sports podcasting industry, because they are so intertwined. Everyone's advertising. So the FanDuel or DraftKings or their pick your sportsbook. Every sports podcast right now is that's.

[Michael Batnick]

That's powered by sports gambling. That's first level thinking somebody would step in to fill the void.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

And by the way, that is weird. I'm in Texas right now. Can't place any wagers.

[Ben Carlson]

I. That's shocking to me. I didn't realize.

[Michael Batnick]

I want to lose some money. Tonight on the Jaguars Chiefs.

[Ben Carlson]

It's shocking to me that it's not legal in Texas with all the. Their whole thing about being deregulated and such.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. Our friend Gungeon interviewed.

[Ben Carlson]

Hey, credit to you for not giving us like your latest parlays of the week there that I don't want to hear about.

[Michael Batnick]

Nobody cares. I'm well aware. Gungen at the Wall Street Journal interviewed Ken Rickey. He is the chairman of flexjet. He's a billionaire and he was very candid about how he spends money, very open how he talks with his family about spending money. I loved it. I thought it was fascinating. And I think she's. Hopefully she does more of it because it was really good. One of the things that he said during the interview was he tips a thousand dollars at a restaurant when he goes to there for the first time. At a hotel. When he gets to a hotel for the first time, he tips $10,000. Now remember we spoke about this a couple of months ago. It was April, and I thought it Was really cool to see a guy at the hotel take out a hundred bucks or 200 bucks, whatever it was, and tip the person. I was like, wow, that's awesome. I want to do that one day. And not, I mean, I could do that 100 bucks. I think I could swing that. But Robin had a good take on this. She said, wait, he's not just being generous. He, he, he wants something for that $100. And I was like, of course. So this guy said, and, and this is fair, he tips $10,000 when he gets there. And he said, if you tip at the beginning, they know what your expectations are. And I love that he wants to get like, he's doing something that very, very, very nice. Not to show off, per se, but he wants good service. And what's wrong with that? I, it's phenomenal. Now I'm a, I'm a low maintenance guy. I don't, I don't need somebody like waiting on me like that. As a former waiter myself, I don't need that. But I, I, I love, I love generosity.

[Ben Carlson]

If you're a billionaire, that's money well spent, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Hell yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

I like it.

[Michael Batnick]

What, what is, what is a better helping out the services than making people like making people's month year. I love it.

[Ben Carlson]

Convenience, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, on the other side of the billionaires, let's talk about the buy now, pay later stuff. So there was an article in Fortune with the headline, a quarter of US consumers are now financing groceries with buy now, pay later as economic pressures mount. Survey says, I wonder if you would replace that buy now, pay later with credit cards.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, that seems like a, this seems like a nothing burger to me. I think young people are using these as credit cards, are they not? Is that the correct story?

[Michael Batnick]

So from the article, more Americans are taking advantage of financing options for essential purchases. The latest sign of mounting concern. Is it really? One quarter of shoppers have used buy now, pay later for groceries, up from 40% who uses a service a year ago. Guess what? Buy now, pay later still pretty early. What if people are just opting for that over grocery, over credit cards? And I will refrain and wait till we hear from these companies on their earnings call. Because last quarter we looked at this, I listened to a firm and their default rate was like, no, they were fine.

[Ben Carlson]

Right?

[Michael Batnick]

Nothing.

[Ben Carlson]

The thing is, you could, you could take my personal budget and say, michigan man spends and uses credit cards for 98% of his purchases and you'd think this guy is doing awful. But no, I do it because it's Convenient. It's easy.

[Michael Batnick]

Exactly.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm getting floated a month long loan from J.P. morgan and American Express for my payments and, and they give me rewards in, in return. It's a great deal.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, this is, there's an article in the Financial Times talking about the decline on time spent on social media. So it peaked in 2022. They break it down by age brackets, 16 to 24. You're seeing a fairly dramatic decline and the older you get, it's a little bit less or so. And then they show up by geography. So the global average is rolling over North America. We're still hitting a number, hitting an all time high. Two and a half hours a day almost on social media. I'm only on Twitter on nights and weekends. And I feel worse than ever about it because during the day I thank God I, I have. I don't have time for this anymore. So I'm very little time spent during the day. But every. I feel, I feel terrible when I'm laying with my kids and I'm on like the for you tab and I'm doing at their baseball game. It's. I'm only on the weekends and I feel it's making, it's making me not happy. I don't like it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, see, I, I stay away from the for you tab for sure.

[Michael Batnick]

How do I find it, Ben? How do, how do I uneddict myself? Because I'm really. Again, I'm not on it during the week, during the day, at all. Ever. At ever. But a lot of this brain rot. It's. Is there any data anymore? Is anybody saying social media is like a net benefit or are we. Is that charade over?

[Ben Carlson]

This is a good thing that it's falling. I still find value in it in terms of finding charts and stories and stuff that we use. But I'd be like myself if I said that's the only reason I'm doing it. Obviously.

[Michael Batnick]

No, you're addicted. So am I. But guess what? You know what? If you just looked at the daily chart book every day and what some of the other substacks and Sam, you'd be well taken care of. You don't need to be on social media.

[Ben Carlson]

This is true. Yeah. No, I've been doing it for way too long. I can't help it. Okay, this is interesting. This one's from Scott Galloway. We talked about the slop stuff earlier and he said people don't actually want to create content, they just want people to feed it for them. And that's where OpenAI and Facebook is going to step in and do it. So he says 4% of YouTube videos account for 94% of the views on the platform. 5% of videos on TikTok generate 89% of the views, and Instagram is saying 3% generate 84%. The top 25 podcasts reach nearly half of Us Weekly listeners.

[Michael Batnick]

You know what's interesting? So. But I'm on Instagram, too, and Instagram doesn't make me feel bad. I get enjoyment out of it. I don't. I don't feel like the world is ending after I close my Instagram app.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, see, it's kind of funny. I don't really use Instagram, but that. Yeah, because it's. It's harder to make the world look bad through pictures because that's, in a lot of cases, reality. Unless it's AI crap is.

[Michael Batnick]

It is the simple reason I haven't thought about this, but I'm sure a lot of other people have, because there's just no sharing. There's no retweeting, there's no, quote, tweeting and dumping people. Negativity doesn't go viral. It's just. It's just good vibes, I tell you.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. But. But anytime a tweet now gets more than a certain amount of likes, call it 500 likes. I can't believe how many trolls there are coming out of the woodwork to tell you how awful things are and how terrible.

[Michael Batnick]

I can't believe. I can't believe you can't believe it.

[Ben Carlson]

Obviously, that's the thing that's gotten way, way worse in the last five years is just the sheer amount of people who think everything is bad at all times or that's the character they're playing. I don't know. So story time. I. I said my daughters are swifties, so my wife took them to see on Sunday morning to see. Apparently there's some Taylor Swift music video thing that's tied to a new album in the movie theater. I think it was the number one movie this weekend by box office. My two daughters and my wife went to see it. So my son, what do you want to do? Me and you go do something. And so we went to the zoo. And it was a good reminder about graduating from certain levels in your kid's life that I'd never even thought of that much. When we were. When our daughter was younger, our first daughter was born, we got a pass to the zoo. And we would go to the zoo almost. Unless we didn't have plans. We'd go there every weekend because it was something to do. And when your kids are really young, they're still in, like, stroller age, right? Let's go to the zoo. She likes it. And we'd go there all the time. We use that family pass so much. And I went to the zoo, and my son and I are walking around and realizing we went there on Sunday morning, like 10:30 in the morning, you know, before the crowds got there and before it was too hot. And I'd say 95% of the people there were parents with kids in a stroller. And, oh, look at the ana, you know, and it's just. I forgot that. Oh, my gosh, we totally graduated from that thing. And I never even realized it. Now we're on to the. The weekends are full of sports games and such. And I was talking. I had a physical last week, and my doctor was asking me, you know, if you go to a doctor or a dentist, they always ask you, hey, how are the kids doing? Right? Every time. And I don't know if they really care. They just want to ask you. But my doctor said, what's going on with the kids these days? So I tell them, you know, we're in it with youth athletics, and we have soccer, we have football, and every day, you know, Monday through Thursday, every day we have a practice, and then on the weekends, we have three or four games every weekend. And he said, God, I'm so glad to be done with that. And I think the opposite. I absolutely love it. It's fun. I don't know what else we'd be doing with our time. Um, obviously I'd maybe be relaxing more or something. But I think it's so much fun to graduate from that old stroller mentality of you're trying to kill time because you don't know what else to do until nap time to now you actually have stuff the kids are involved in and liking. And anyway, it's just I've. It was the first time I realized in my life, like, oh, my gosh, we graduated this. And then I guess the next step is when they become, like, social creatures in high school and they start. They leave you alone and never, never want to do anything with you.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I see both sides. I hear what you're saying, and I think you're probably right. I'm wrong here, but I was so freaking bored at Logan's t ball game the other day, and I actually felt like shit because I was the only asshole. Robin was home. I was by myself. And I'm on Twitter on the for you tab, and I look up and I'm like, why am I torturing myself? Nobody else is on their phone. Nobody else.

[Ben Carlson]

The two into the game. But I also do one of your. Put in one of your Audible books.

[Michael Batnick]

So I'm reading our friend's book. Morgan wrote a new book, the Art of Spending Money.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I got it behind me somewhere, too.

[Michael Batnick]

And Morgan's gonna come on our show and talk about it. And he was. There was one part about, like, talking about, like, what, what matters and obviously, you know, time spent with our family and stuff. And he, Morgan wrote something about, like, how much freaking time are we on wasting on social media? Not to. I know it's lame to complain about, so whatever. Forgive me, but this is my podcast.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, you are really harping on this this week, huh?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I am.

[Ben Carlson]

Come to Jesus moment.

[Michael Batnick]

I think I'm just like, peak. I gotta, I got, I just, I just, I just gotta get off this thing. It's just so. It's just poison. I don't know what else to say. It's just. You know what, it's. It's a young man's game, young person's game. The social media thing.

[Ben Carlson]

It is, but we've all aged with it in a lot of ways.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but I think, I think we've aged out of it. That's what I'm trying to say. What else was I gonna say, Ben?

[Ben Carlson]

You say you're not feeling the sports stuff. Listen, no offense to baseball people. Baseball, as a parent, baseball is really, really slow.

[Michael Batnick]

It's really tough.

[Ben Carlson]

When my son returned from baseball, I did not think twice about asking him again if he wanted. You sure? Are you sure? No.

[Michael Batnick]

Now, even though I'm bored. I am. I am not. I am never a. I can't wait for X person because I'm very cognizant that, you know, we're going to die. People die early.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yes. I don't. I can't wait till this stage.

[Michael Batnick]

I, I, I, I definitely. I never go there. I don't think about that.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm the same way. The thing is here, here's the thing, though. I got to. My daughter had a game in Lansing, which was like an hour away soccer game this weekend. And it was my turn to bring her because my wife had to go to my other daughter's soccer game. So I was in the car with her for an hour. You know, no screens. We. We listened to the new Taylor Swift album. But I just got to talk to her. For two hours straight. And that's the best part. The before and after the games. And I try to have a rule, too, of don't unless it's positive. There's no constructive criticism or anything for, like, 24, 48 hours. And usually at that point you forget about it anyway. So there's no, like, hey, next time in the game, you should try this. Like, I. My wife and I talk about it, like, none of that. We're not doing that. We're not being those people because that everyone hates that person who, like, tries to get in and coach their own kid, you know?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Speaking of aging out of things. So I think we're going to. I think we're going to Disney in December. This is probably going to be our last year.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. I'm going in November. I'm going. I'm going in November. So I will give you all the.

[Michael Batnick]

Tips, but I feel like Kobe's eight. No, I've been. We've been to Disney, but, like, there's like a very, like, the. The boys become, like, too cool for things. Pretty. Around, what, like 10? I don't know what the age is.

[Ben Carlson]

I could see that my. My wife and my kids really want to go to Disney again. I gotta be honest. This is one of those things that I would like to be graduated out of. You said I don't want to look forward. I love Disney is just. You do?

[Michael Batnick]

I do. I love it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Just not my thing. I hate crowds. I hate waiting in lines. And we're gonna probably do the thing where we get the passes and stuff that My wife's gonna have that all figured out. I still. It's too much for me.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

It's too much.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I get. No, it's not for.

[Ben Carlson]

We're going over Thanksgiving weekend.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. So, recommendations. I have one thing, you know, I. I've been. This has been a lot. A busy part of my life. Been traveling a lot, moved houses, Jewish holidays, unpacking, all that sort of stuff. So I haven't really. I haven't watched Black Rabbit or Task in a few weeks. I just. We haven't. I just go to sleep every night. I get into bed. But I did start to watch one new movie, Ben, Because I don't know if you know this, but it's October. You know what that means?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, even more horror movies for you.

[Michael Batnick]

So for my fellow sickos, there is a new VHS out on Shudder. I only watched the first segment. Ben, you don't have to worry about this. And, yeah, Wait, why?

[Ben Carlson]

Is it a vhs?

[Michael Batnick]

No, that's the name of the. That's the name of the movie. There's like five or six of them. It's called vhs. And there's like. It's like home video slash found footage and just completely demented. And vhs Halloween, the most recent one, is no exception. I saw the first segment. Like I said, it's probably, I don't know, 15 minute bit and I had to turn off. I said, this is just too much in the best way possible. Just totally demented. Totally, totally, totally sick stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I finally watched F1 this weekend and I know I should have seen in theater. It was a very fun movie. It was very stylish. It almost in some ways felt like a. I've never gotten into F1. I know people who watch the Netflix show, like, Duncan loves F1. I know people get up early to watch it and people became big fans. I've never been like a racing person, so I never got into it. So I felt like it did a really good job of bringing me along. As someone who knows nothing about F1. It did a great job of explaining it. I knew nothing about it. I recognized some of the names. I guess it did feel a little bit like a commercial for the sport, but I guess that's probably what they're going for and it didn't. The stakes of the movie never felt that high. It was just a very entertaining movie. Like a very easy watch. Good, clean, you're on the edge of your seat. I'm sure being at the theater in the racing parts would have been better, but honestly, on my couch, it was fine.

[Michael Batnick]

I liked it in Boston last weekend. There was an F1 bar in the seaport and we did some fake racing. By the way, got to say, Boston, great city. Oh, quick story.

[Ben Carlson]

So you did the Boston to Austin.

[Michael Batnick]

Now since you're in Austin this week, Boston to Austin. So a friend of ours, I went to go meet him for breakfast and he gave me his address, Church Street. I punched it up. Oh, this is great. I've never been to Cambridge. I'm gonna go see Harvard and see what's up. So I took a blue bike there, which is their version of the city bike. It was a seven mile ride, so it probably took me like 40 minutes. It was great. It was lovely, beautiful weather. I had a great time listening to team arrivals, and it was just a really, really enjoyable moment. So I call him. I'm like, hey, I'm here, I come get you. He calls me, hey, where are you? I'm like, I'm outside. He goes, where? I said, I'm next to the whatever bar. He goes, you in Cambridge? I said, yeah. He goes, dude, I told you, I'm in whatever town. And I'm like, so there's six church streets in Boston. I went to the wrong one.

[Ben Carlson]

So he should have given you the name of the restaurant or the bar, not the address.

[Michael Batnick]

He gave me the address in the town. I just. I didn't punch in the town. That's hand up.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I got one more thing on F1 you and I talked about when we saw Gavin Rossdale. He's 60 years old and, man, still a great looking guy. Brad Pitt, he's like 61, isn't he 62. He still got the fastball, man. All right, I did finish Black Rabbit. And I tell. I don't know how far you are into it.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm only on episode four.

[Ben Carlson]

It's one of those. Okay. It's one of those shows that makes you very uncomfortable because bad things keep happening. And you're like, now this is gonna happen. Oh, now that's gonna happen. Now this, like, this whole show is.

[Michael Batnick]

That's my type of show.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. It's just things constantly going wrong and nothing ever going right. And to me, I get very uncomfortable with that. But then you want to know, how is it gonna end? How are they gonna. How are they gonna wiggle their way out of this? And I thought, like, the ending was. It was fine. It was a good show. Good. Not great. Like a seven, not an eight, I'd say I enjoyed it. And my wife and I, we binged it pretty quick because we wanted to know what's gonna happen. Finally, you mentioned the. I'm staying. I'm not going to sports games and doing the. For your tab like, you sicko. I bring my son an hour early for his football games so he can warm up. And by the way, we're listening to Rage against the Machine on the way to his football games. Get him pumped up, which is pretty great. He's like, hey, put that stuff on again. I liked it. So I put some earphones in and I put my audible on and I walk around, you know, the school campus and I. And so I've been listening to the Hamilton one. I'm almost done with it finally. Which is really, really long. Probably wait just way too long. Listen, Ron Chernow. Great.

[Michael Batnick]

Way too long.

[Ben Carlson]

Just cut 40% of it out. But the stuff that people write in all biographies when they describe a person from the olden Times. It all sounds the same.

[Michael Batnick]

He was a barrel man.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. He had a bulbous nose and rosy cheeks, a pointed chin, and you kind of go, who cares? I don't care what he. They're all kind of. Anyway, that. That's. That's what you get in bag. All right. There's been anyway, great stuff in that book.

[Michael Batnick]

It's not. It's not our fault, but can we try and make a pact to do an AI free episode next week? Now, listen, we didn't make the deal with OpenAI and AMD. Like, I don't. I'd love to talk about something else.

[Ben Carlson]

We're in the midst of a mania. Why do you want to talk about anything else?

[Michael Batnick]

I feel like it's a lot. I feel like the audience is bored, frankly. I'm a little bored.

[Ben Carlson]

This is. You said this is potentially one of the biggest stories of this century, and you wanted to sweep under the rug and.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I don't want to sweep anything under the rug. I just want to just. Can we maybe take a week off maybe?

[Ben Carlson]

All right, if. If we won't debate whether it's a bubble or not. How's that?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Okay, Allison. All right, that's last thing. Can we just. Let's choose a little bit of positivity. I want to put. I want. I want people to finish our episode feeling like this is the not for you tab. I want people to feel good. I know there's a lot of really ugly shit happening in the world. There always has been. Unfortunately, there always will be. The world is a dark and scary and dangerous place. But I feel like people don't come to us for that. And I just want to put out goodness. That's all.

[Ben Carlson]

I put the good news of the week heading in here. I want you to fill it up for next week. How's that?

[Michael Batnick]

That's your homework.

[Ben Carlson]

Hey, these [e-mail]. i believe they're sold out at the moment. The compound hats.

[Michael Batnick]

They are.

[Ben Carlson]

They're going to be coming back soon, Right?

[Michael Batnick]

For those of you who are listening, Ben just put his hat on.

[Ben Carlson]

They're coming back soon. And these are the trucker hats with the compound. People love them. They're coming back soon. Hopefully Nicole will let us know and we'll let you know when they're back. But they're sold out right now because people love them. Itemshop.com for all your merchandise needs. I was passing out the animal Spirits koozies to my friends, the dads at the soccer game the other day. That went over well, those are fun. All right, send us your email. Animalspiritscompoundnews.com thanks to the production team, as always. Michael's been filming in different cities every week, it seems like, and they're dealing with his spotty Internet and everything else. So thanks everyone for listening, and we'll see you next time.

[Michael Batnick]

Sa.