Say Bubble One More Time. I Dare You! (EP. 474)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast: "Say Bubble One More Time. I Dare You!" (EP. 474)

Hosts: Michael Batnick & Ben Carlson
Date: July 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson dive into the current state of the stock market as it sits just below all-time highs but with major, sudden drawdowns among high-profile stocks and sectors. They dissect what’s driving this violent divergence, debate whether the era’s “bubble talk” is warranted, examine retail investor behavior, and consider the normalization of economic conditions. The discussion is laced with their trademark banter, real-life anecdotes, and pop culture references, making complex market trends both relatable and entertaining.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Market Pullback & Stock Divergence

• The S&P 500 is down approximately 2% from all-time highs—a "stub toe," not even a "hiccup" in market terms.
• Despite the mild index drop, individual names, especially in tech, have suffered far steeper drawdowns:
  • Oracle, Ethereum: down 60% off highs
  • Bitcoin, Netflix: down ~50%
  • SpaceX: already 40% off highs since peaking
  • Intel, DRAM, other semis: -30% to -33%
• Michael: “Inside the stock market, there is a violent separation. Money goes to where it’s treated best—I feel like that is the theme of 2026.” (04:02)
• Discussion on how innovation booms can still contain massive losers next to outsized winners, exposing the volatility in concentrated trades.
• The pair emphasize that big declines in popular stocks can occur even as the index looks healthy—a reminder of the risks of stock/sector concentration.

2. Stock Market Breadth & What’s “Normal”

• Ben notes that 66% of US stocks are positive YTD; median return: 12.6%.
• This breadth feels contradictory given headline-grabbing slumps in “name brand” stocks.
• Ben: “It’s really surprising that a lot of these brand-name companies are getting slaughtered while everything else is doing fine.” (05:54)
• They reflect on whether this market environment is actually “normal” after such a strange decade, with GDP, inflation, and 10-year yields lining up near long-term averages.
• Ben: “Everything is average right now. Everything is kind of normal market-wise.” (13:11)
• Michael pushback: “When I hear normal, I think boring, I think average, standard, typical. It doesn’t feel like that to me.” (14:35)

3. Bubble Talk & Retail Investor Behavior

• The term “bubble” has spiked in frequency both in the financial media and on this podcast, per listener data analysis.
• Ben: “Can we maybe put a pin in the bubble talk, given that these names just had a 35% drawdown in two weeks?” (04:53)
• The hosts discuss wild bubbles elsewhere (e.g., South Korea’s market volatility, dramatic margin calls), but note that in the US, retail investors remain net buyers, especially in beaten-down tech.
  • Citadel data: No net sell day for US retail in July; second-strongest retail buying month since Jan 2020.
• Michael: “I love that this is still happening, that retail—that the everyday investor—is still buying the dip, still making money...” (17:05)
• Leveraged ETF assets are exploding, especially in semis/tech, which could fuel outsized volatility.

4. Notable Stock Stories: Nike & Netflix

• Nike is down 75% from its highs; Lululemon (-80%), Under Armour (-84%), Gap continues its decades-long slump.
• Michael: “I think Nike might be toast...I don’t think we’re going to be talking about how Nike regained its mojo.” (20:43)
• Netflix and Disney: both down ~50% off highs, despite Netflix being the clear streaming winner. Yet, Netflix now trades at a market multiple, despite strong margins and global reach.
• Michael: “The problem is that Netflix is still in the content business...a hamster wheel business.” (55:54)
• Debate over whether now is the time to buy beaten-down “quality” names, given repeated recoveries from prior drawdowns—yet Michael argues history is no guarantee.

5. Economic Normalization & Fewer Recessions

• Ben’s thesis: The US is back to a “normal” economic regime—steady GDP, inflation near average, strong job growth.
  • Recessions are rarer and shorter, attributed to structural maturity, diversified economy, and better policy.
• Ben: “We don’t have recessions anymore as much as we used to.” (27:06)
• They debate whether AI’s arrival salvaged the post-2022 macro outlook and the oversized wealth effect of market rebounds.
• There’s pushback against doomers who forecast crashes using oversimplified charts (e.g., S&P/Fed Balance Sheet).
• Michael: “If you’re still obsessed with the Fed’s balance sheet...you’re an angry person and things are not going well. And I’m sorry.” (32:42)

6. Technology, AI, and Labor

• The AI “boom” is just beginning—paid household penetration is only 2%, with a massive runway ahead.
• Anecdotes from the Washington Post illustrate social and workplace disruption in tech (from sudden wealth to layoffs to “AI-native” pressure).
• Hosts are skeptical of headlines painting all tech workers as anxious or unhappy given high salaries and job flexibility.
• Reader email points out that large-scale job displacement from AI is still at least 12–18 months out, and that it’s too early to know the ultimate labor impact.

7. Real Estate, Homeownership & Generational Divide

• Boomers are buying bigger homes instead of downsizing, upending traditional scripts and “crowding out” millennials.
• Ben: “The middle class rising out of WWII is an economic anomaly—it’s never happening again.” (47:27)
• Discussion about whether younger generations will shift from prioritizing homeownership to stock market investing as their “ticket to wealth.”
• Michael: “People as they age and have families need more space.” (51:19)
• Hosts note the large role of intergenerational wealth transfers in housing dynamics—and the challenges for those without parental help.

8. Entertainment Industry—Movies Are (Kind of) Back

• Blockbusters are driving a resurgence:
  • “The Odyssey” achieves Christopher Nolan’s biggest domestic debut since Dark Knight Rises.
  • IMAX, AMC see record box office quarters, but industry struggles to regain pre-pandemic attendance on an inflation-adjusted basis.
• Ben remains skeptical of full recovery: “All movies not back—big movies are back.”
• Michael (triumphant): “Numbers are up 11% year over year. Movies are back. We celebrate this!” (67:51)
• Nostalgic and hilarious banter about IMAX, moviegoing, and the future of theaters.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Market Pullbacks

“Do we want to give the 2% a name? Hiccup.”
—Michael Batnik (02:34)

“Inside the stock market there is a violent separation. Money goes to where it’s treated best—I feel like that is the theme of 2026.”
—Michael Batnik (04:02)

On Bubble Talk & Retail Investing

“Can we maybe put a pin in the bubble talk, given that these names just had a 35% drawdown in two weeks?”
—Ben Carlson (04:53)

“I love that this is still happening, that retail—that the everyday investor—is still buying the dip, still making money...”
—Michael Batnik (17:05)

On Economic Normalization

"Everything is average right now. Everything is kind of normal market-wise."
—Ben Carlson (13:11)

On “House vs. Stocks” Generational Shift

“What if just this new idea takes hold for enough young people that, okay, fine, the stock market... It’s not the house anymore?”
—Ben Carlson (48:24)

Regarding Nike & Old Brand Demise

“I think Nike might be toast...when I say toast, Nike is still my number one brand...But the numbers suck. Like, the numbers are not good.”
—Michael Batnik (20:20, 21:46)

On Streaming Wars & Netflix

“Streaming is not a bad business for Netflix...But the problem is that Netflix is still in the content business and it’s still a hamster wheel business.”
—Michael Batnik (55:27)

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Important Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening & Market Pullback Discussion
  [02:06] - [05:05]
  (“Market down 2%: what’s going on under the surface?”)

• Stock Market Breadth & Normalization Debate
  [05:05] - [14:35]
  (“Are we in a normal market? Is ‘normal’ boring?”)

• Bubble Talk & Retail Investors
  [15:24] - [19:13]
  (“Bubble discussion data. Retail keeps buying the dip. Leveraged semis ETFs grow fast.”)

• Nike, Fads, & Stock Stories
  [19:24] - [21:46]
  (“Nike and other ‘moat’ brands collapse. Will they recover?”)

• Bubble Data Analysis & Valuations
  [21:50] - [26:19]
  (“Podcast ‘bubble’ mentions up. Forward P/Es compressed. What’s overvalued?”)

• Fewer Recessions & Economic Normalization
  [27:06] - [33:38]
  (“Why don’t we have recessions anymore? Impact of policy.”)

• Fed Balance Sheet & “Doomers”
  [31:49] - [33:30]
  (“Debunking the S&P/Fed chart. Unemployment remains low.”)

• Technology & AI Anxiety
  [35:06] - [41:03]
  (“Washington Post: tech workers & AI. Paid adoption still low.”)

• Housing: Boomers vs. Millennials
  [44:49] - [53:55]
  (“Boomers upsizing, homeownership challenges, generational divides.”)

• Netflix & Disney: Streaming Wars
  [53:54] - [59:16]
  (“Disney’s costly acquisitions, Netflix’s struggle for growth.”)

• Movies—“Back” or Not?
  [59:23] - [68:11]
  (“Odyssey/IMAX; movies’ box office comeback, skepticism about pre-pandemic recovery.”)

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Closing Thoughts

"Say Bubble One More Time. I Dare You!" offers a thorough, textured, and often funny tour of what's sizzling—and what's fizzling—under the surface of the 2026 market. Michael and Ben blend macro data, stock stories, generational shifts, and cultural references in a way that makes the world of investing tangible and relatable, whether you’re a seasoned pro or a curious newcomer.

For those questioning whether today’s market is frothy, normal, or tottering on some generational pivot, this episode proves there are no easy answers—just a wall of nuance, humility, and, as always, a little bit of Animal Spirits.

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Transcript

[Michael Batnik]

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[Ben Carlson]

Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky and let's be real, Lots of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard. Some managers out there promise big returns, but those usually come with big risks and that can mean a roller coaster ride for investors. Vanguard takes a steadier approach. They don't go all in on risky bets. Instead, they focus on reliability and consistency. It's not always flashy, but it sets the standard for what dependable investing should look like. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for [e-mail] audio that's vanguard.com audio audio all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. 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.

[Michael Batnik]

This podcast is for informational purposes only

[Ben Carlson]

and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions.

[Michael Batnik]

Clients of Holt's Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

[Ben Carlson]

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. All right, Michael, The S&P 500 as of this recording is down about 2% from the all time highs. That's obviously nothing. You can't call it anything. That's that's it happened. But there are a ton of stocks that are like having a bloodbath. We've Talked a lot about stocks that have been going up, all the semiconductors and I guess some of those will come in. But there's a huge bloodbath right now. Can I say yes?

[Michael Batnik]

5% pullback. 10 correction. 20% bear market.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

Do we want to give the 2% a name? Hiccup.

[Ben Carlson]

Stub toe. It's like when you stub your toe. Is that fair? Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

Stinks for a second.

[Ben Carlson]

So I want you to go bottom fishing with me here. Oracle is more than 60% off the highs. I put in the crypto here too, because those are the consist tech. Ethereum is 60% off the highs. Bitcoin is 50% off the highs. Netflix 50% off the highs. I'm going to talk about them a little bit later. SpaceX is already 40% off the highs. That was really quick. Intel is 30% off the highs. If you did the whole semiconductor memory space. Dram is down 33%. So this is like the agony and ecstasy of picking stocks. Obviously that you can have this happen while the market is really still doing fine. You're. You're a value investor right now in the tech space. Where are you looking?

[Michael Batnik]

Well, I own Netflix. We'll talk more about it. I bought more people.

[Ben Carlson]

People are. People are pouring dirt on Netflix's grave.

[Michael Batnik]

I bought more Netflix yesterday. We could talk more about that later. Which my body fishing for. I think there's a lot of opportunities.

[Ben Carlson]

It's really, really interesting that in an innovation boom that this still happens. That the. This is. This has to be the biggest during a boom or a bubble or whatever you want to call it. Maybe we can't call it a bubble anymore. The range of outcomes for the winners and losers has to be never been wider than this for, for the, the space that's winning.

[Michael Batnik]

Inside the stock market there is a violent separation. You know the phrase money goes to where it's treated best. I feel like that is like the theme of 2026. If it's not working, it's getting destroyed. And if it's working, it's working really, really well. Now we saw a lot of the air come out of the overly crowded memory trade, which I thought, I think is fantastic.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, definitely needed to happen.

[Michael Batnik]

You need this. I am. Nothing is. Nothing is better in my opinion than an awesome uptrend and letting some of the air out of over enthusiasm. Never like to see people lose money. Say that every time I say a comment like this. But you need the wall of worry to emerge for stocks to ultimately go higher. And the wall is Definitely back. And the bubble talk. I know we're going to talk about the bubbles later. Cu. We've been talking about bubbles a lot lately on this podcast. Could we maybe put a pin in the bubble talk, given that these names just had a 35% drawdown in two weeks.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, listen. I think the crazier part about it is that so much other stuff is doing well. So I took the Russell 3000, which is the total stock market. Call it like VTI. Essentially it's 2,600 names. Now we can't even get to 3,000. We used to be a country, you know, we used to be able to have 3000 stocks in the Russell 3000.

[Michael Batnik]

The Russell not 3000, has 3000 stocks.

[Ben Carlson]

It's like 2500 now because of the whole. It's smaller.

[Michael Batnik]

Are we sure about that? It's the Russell 1000. On the Russell 2000 combined. 1000 plus 2000, whatever.

[Ben Carlson]

I downloaded the Russell 3000 and they gave me 2,600 names. 66%. I always put this into call like once a week to see like what's going on in the stock market. 66% of stocks are positive year to date in the US stock market, median return is 12.6%. That's pretty good.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it's good.

[Ben Carlson]

Two thirds of stocks, right. Are positive. That's a pretty good year. I'm just saying it's really surprising that a lot of these name brand companies are getting slaughtered while this is happening to all the rest of the stock market. It's interesting.

[Michael Batnik]

That is interesting.

[Ben Carlson]

It's like we got, we have to mention the banging in the background. Michael, hear that? Is single handedly keeping mudrooms open for America and getting another new mudroom. Do you.

[Michael Batnik]

It's, it's, it's mudroom 2.0. It's running back now.

[Ben Carlson]

I have a question. Did you use the same construction people that did your first mudroom for the second mudroom?

[Michael Batnik]

Nope.

[Ben Carlson]

No. You aren't happy with it?

[Michael Batnik]

Not really. When you walk into my house, there is a set of stairs, about six stairs going up and there's like a little tiny nook area to the left. So if the four of us walk into the house, we have to do it single file. It's a very small area. And so what happens, anybody who's listening with kids knows that the piles up, the bags, the tennis rackets, sneakers, whatever it is, it's, it's so I need a butter room. So I'm cutting my, you know, I was gonna do this later in the show. I'll do it. Now, you know, my. That I'm on like a. A kindness streak, trying to be. Trying to be a little bit nicer. Trying to breathe when I get upset and not yell.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

When you have kids, it's. That's impossible. It really is. I know that there are people out there who don't yell at their kids, but those people are like, have no emotion or something.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. I'm not talking about my kids. They. They get no. They get no. They get no grace. Strangers. Because you never know. You know people. Life is hard and you never know what people are going through.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

So giving strangers a little grace. However, Ben, I live in a culdesac. Not a lot of traffic here. Okay. A dumpster went into my driveway and not two hours later, the town inspector comes through.

[Ben Carlson]

Holy cow.

[Michael Batnik]

Has an iPad and takes a picture of my house.

[Ben Carlson]

Does that mean that someone called them on you?

[Michael Batnik]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

Whoa.

[Michael Batnik]

And I think I know who it is. Ben. Now I feel like these people deserve no grace. I kind of want to knock on their door. Here's. Here's how I know. Here's how I know. I. I suspect there is a house in my block where I parked on my side of the street across from their driveway and they put a post it note on my windshield asking me not to park there. These are the type of people that call the town on you. Could you imagine calling the town on your neighbor for not having permits? Now, it's not like I'm doing a ton of demolition. I mean, this noise notwithstanding, this is. This is going to be. This is a quick project, in and out.

[Ben Carlson]

It's a question. Is this. Is this. Is this a couple who is of retirement age and they have nothing better to do their time?

[Michael Batnik]

What do you think?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, but still, why. Why cause trouble for people for no reason at all?

[Ben Carlson]

Nothing to do. This is why you don't retire. Because otherwise you just get in other people's business all the time.

[Michael Batnik]

Anyway, back to the stock market.

[Ben Carlson]

Congrats on your new mudroom.

[Michael Batnik]

Thank you.

[Ben Carlson]

Here's the thing. One more thing on this. When we were growing up, we did not have nearly as much stuff as kids have today. People did not have the lockers in the mudrooms and the spaces for kids, like cubby holes for kids. That stuff didn't exist when we were growing up.

[Michael Batnik]

You know why? When we were growing up, we didn't have stuff. Didn't have water bottles. What is this? How many water bottles do you have in your house? Kids can't go anywhere without a, a metal water bottle these days.

[Ben Carlson]

Our football coach, when I was in middle school, used to not let us have water as punishment. That guy would be like tarred and feathered on the Internet today.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, that's, that's probably good that we don't have those type of assholes in the, in our world.

[Ben Carlson]

True. All right, where are we going next?

[Michael Batnik]

All right, so anyway, the deleveraging we've been talking a lot about the, the source of. Yeah. People are, people are having fun here. People are going nuts. In Korea. The 30 day Cosby volatility surges to its highest ever, ever, ever. Including the dot com bust and the great financial crisis.

[Ben Carlson]

That's nuts.

[Michael Batnik]

There. There was some data floating around, around the number of South Koreans that got margin called or liquidated or whatever. There's levels to this, Ben, to the degeneracy.

[Ben Carlson]

I love seeing this because it's. We're a more mature market in a lot of ways. And so the behaviors that we see here, yes. Still happen, but they get amplified in other places that are, that are kind of coming up in the stock market world. I love to see this stuff. I don't know why. It's, everyone has to pay their tuition to the market gods at some point.

[Michael Batnik]

It's fantastic.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm sure that, I'm sure there are people who got fantastically rich off South Korean stocks. But there are probably some people who bet on the right stocks and still got their faces just blown off. Love to see it. How, how bad is South Korea doing? So, so the EW Y is a South Korea ETF. It's down 26%. So people with leverage have been. They're down 75% or something right now. Good for them.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, this is, this is such a typically Ben Carlson tweet. Go ahead.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I want to make the case. Last week you were trying to pigeonhole a bunch of stories that had no bearing on the market at all. You're talking like IBM and you were, you're trying to make stories happen.

[Michael Batnik]

You know what you said, you said about IBM, this thing, this sort of thing happens all the time.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

Do you know that a company with a $300 billion market cap falling 25% in a single day. I don't think that's ever happened.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but we have bigger companies now, so you can't say that because the company the size is bigger.

[Michael Batnik]

So that's inflation.

[Ben Carlson]

Inflation adjusted or something.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, so inflation adjusted and so, yeah, probably during the gfc it happened like Four times. Okay, so I think you just. You want to rewind 10 seconds. Does the IBM. I'm trying to pigeonhole stories. Yeah. $300 billion software company falling 25% in a day is a market moving story. But Back to you, Mr. Bourne.

[Ben Carlson]

You just talked about the fact that you're trying to be nicer. I don't believe you.

[Michael Batnik]

Not to you. You're not a stranger.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, well, you just said you're gonna go after this episode. You're gonna yell at your neighbors.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm not gonna yell at my neighbors, but they're pushing me.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so this is the most normal. I think we've gone through a period of normalization where this has been one of the most abnormal decades we've seen. We've ever seen. I think that's pretty fair to say. I think we're back to almost a normalization point because GDP growth is 2 to 3% right now. Inflation, 3.5%, which is right on the 100 year average. 3.5%. The 10 year is yielding 4.5%. Okay. The US stock market is up 11% six months into the year. Some people would say, no, no, no, that's a full year. But actually I would say the average up year is up 21%. So this is like the most normal. Take a snapshot the picture of this right now, right in the World cup. They do this with the square. I don't know why they do this.

[Michael Batnik]

What do they do that with?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, with the cards when they do var. Like we're going to go for the replay. They draw. They draw picture of a tv.

[Michael Batnik]

What is var?

[Ben Carlson]

You didn't watch the World Cup? Never mind. I'm not going to explain it to you.

[Michael Batnik]

So, Donna, you're out of your element.

[Ben Carlson]

This is. Yeah, you're like a child that wanders into the middle of a movie. Everything is average right now. Everything is kind of normal market wise.

[Michael Batnik]

Now, when you.

[Ben Carlson]

Is that a fair. Is that a fair take?

[Michael Batnik]

When you tweet this, are you like giggling like you're just trolling the Internet?

[Ben Carlson]

No, because this is facts. I'm saying the people who think this is the craziest thing ever and that this is normal, this is a normal market environment in some ways.

[Michael Batnik]

Through the prism of milk toast. If you are a snapshot investor, which I don't know, I happen to look at a screen during the day, I'm crazy like that. Then, yes, this is a normal market year.

[Ben Carlson]

If you look just at the averages of the economy and the markets, this Is a normal year.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, if you, if you, if you fell asleep in January. You know, Chris keeps texting me pictures of his vacation. I'm not Instagram. Why does he do this? I feel like, I feel like I'm being a curmudgeon and I love him and I'm happy that he's happy, but I don't do this to him. This is my partner, Chris. He treats me and Josh like. Where is it personal Instagram.

[Ben Carlson]

Remember back in the day that you people, you'd get back from vacation and you do the slideshow for people of all your pictures and no one cared then either. You're right. All right, great story in the Wall Street Journal.

[Michael Batnik]

Anyway, normal year, okay.

[Ben Carlson]

You don't believe me? It's a pretty normal year. We had a 9% correction.

[Michael Batnik]

No, I know where you're coming. I know where you're coming from, but this is a very exciting year. When I hear normal, I think boring, I think average, standard, typical. It doesn't feel like that to me, but I hear where you're coming from.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, Everyday investors are over the Mag 7 and into new AI darlings. This is your whole thing about money going to where it is treated best. This is interesting. So they show net flows by individual investors this month and a ton of retail money went into SpaceX a lot. And I guess it's all gotten slaughtered at this point. So do you think most of this sale has been people being like, okay, I was banking on a huge pop. It didn't really happen. But they're showing these names and I don't know half of these names. I've never heard of Andaz and Ayren and it's still some Mag 7, but it's not the names that you'd expect to see.

[Michael Batnik]

What is on Daz O n D a s?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. Someone's going to tell us in the comments that we're idiots because we don't know all the stocks.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

It's interesting though. We talked about buying the dip. Oracle, down 60%, has seen a huge inflow of retail investors trying to like trying to catch that falling knife. Okay. I think they put these types of stories in here just for me. Davis Cantrell, a college student based near Atlanta, has been investing for roughly two years and closely following the biggest AI players over that period. Listen, the 19 year old recently trimmed his Microsoft holdings. I'm looking for aggressive, more high risk growth stocks, he said. I just don't see Microsoft and Nvidia fitting into that category. Anymore.

[Michael Batnik]

Neither do I. I totally agree with him.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, this guy's got it figured out. 19. I didn't know what the stock market was at 19 years old. Quite a big guy. I really didn't. I think it's hilarious that they ask a 19 year old what he thinks

[Michael Batnik]

of this market and I think it's awesome that we read that quote and we're like, hey, credit to Davis.

[Ben Carlson]

It sounds like this was.

[Michael Batnik]

I, I don't know Davis. No, that's a real guy.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, Citadel, I just want to

[Michael Batnik]

say the $300 million into SpaceX, I'm going to guess that half of that money is out or maybe that's a lot. Let's say a third of the money has sold.

[Ben Carlson]

It had to be fast money.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. So.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

It is interesting though. This makes sense. Citadel securities had another report. They said, has retail started selling equities? No, the retail remains the strongest structural buyer of US Equities. We have not seen a single net sell day on our retail cash equities platform in July. Second strongest month for retail buying since January 2020 and the strongest July in our data set. So people are going in.

[Michael Batnik]

I love that this is still happening, that retail that the everyday investor is still buying the dip, still making money. And I hear buttle up bucker, Buttle. But buckle up buttercup. In the back of my head. Just wait. Yeah, okay, fine, just wait. But you've been saying that for a long time. Matter of fact, the buckle, buckle up buttercup. Was that an email to us or quote in a story? I can't remember. That was four years ago. How long have these just mean spirited cursions been mocking retail?

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnik]

Five years, 10 years? Just, just wait they say as they sit in cash. While every day and everyday know nothing investors get rich.

[Ben Carlson]

This is interesting though. They show the leveraged ETF assets under management and it shows the total. And if you show they show semiconductors, so the total is 198 billion. Semiconductors are already one fourth one quarter of that, which is absolutely insane because they were basically nothing before. So that the growth was just so semis is 53 billion. Tech X semis is 76 billion. The other ones are 70. So this, these leverage ETFs, it's all technology. That's pretty insane how quickly this new category can form, right? It's like building a brand new town in a week or something.

[Michael Batnik]

I did a talking wealth episode that's coming out next week I believe with James Seifer, Iowa friend at Bloomberg. Have you ever Heard of a company called Corgi.

[Ben Carlson]

Ish.

[Michael Batnik]

It's a new.

[Ben Carlson]

People mention it.

[Michael Batnik]

It's a new ETF company. Completely.

[Ben Carlson]

Another one that, that is like put. Bringing. They're acquiring all the new ETFs, right?

[Michael Batnik]

No, they're. They're filing for hundreds. They're just praying and praying. So they're bringing like a VC style playbook to the ETF land.

[Ben Carlson]

And just super interesting.

[Michael Batnik]

ETFs are. ETFs are having a moment. The number of launches is insane. But. So we've been talking about this a lot. $200 billion. When you amplify that for the amount of actual exposure, it's about half a trillion. And that's why you're seeing these wild gyrations in these memory names.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. When you get. So your whole thing about IBM being kind of like, oh, that doesn't happen very often. That's going to happen way more in the future now because of these single stock ETFs and leveraged ETFs. Fair.

[Michael Batnik]

Probably.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. More of a bloodbath. I can't believe that Nike lost its moat. So Nike is down 75% from the highs. I think it's at the same price it was in 2014. And my number one rule of thumb for stock picking, never invest in fads. Like Peloton was a fad. I sniffed that one out pretty. Every exercise workout thing is a fad. When's the last time you used your Peloton? Five years ago? No, years ago.

[Michael Batnik]

No, no, no. Three years ago.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I can't believe mine. I bought it in April of 2020. It's still working. I used it last night. Still going strong. I'm so.

[Michael Batnik]

I did do it. I did do a Peloton exercise class five weeks ago. Not to break.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, good job. But it seemed Nike looks like a lot of these other fads. So Lululemon is down 80%. Under Armour is down 84%. Gap is down 62%. It's funny, Gap still never, never recovered its price from the dot com bubble.

[Michael Batnik]

And it never will come back. A few times I think, I think Nike might be toast. And when I say toast, Nike is still my number one brand and there's not even anything close. Like whenever I buy any sports attire, I don't buy Adidas. I don't. I mean, I buy iclouds, but it

[Ben Carlson]

is for me too. Nike still my number one brand. That maybe that's why I'm so shocked by this. It's. Yeah, it seems like it's done. But based on the stock market.

[Michael Batnik]

But I mean the numbers suck. Like the numbers are not good. You know, I'm a big gaps get filled guy. And there was a big juicy gap up at 52 that I think probably will get filled, but I don't know. So Nike's at $43. Is the stock ever going to trade at $90 ever again? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't, I don't think that in two or three years from now we're going to be talking about an amazing. Put the stock price aside. I don't think we're going to be talking about how Nike regained its mojo.

[Ben Carlson]

There, there are all these brands from our youth that just don't really exist anymore. MTV was a huge brand. We grew up with Sports Illustrated the biggest. It feels like Nike is going to be put in that dustbin for. And it's. I can't believe it. I really, this really does shock me.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, it's not going away. Nike will be, will be around for the rest of the eternity.

[Ben Carlson]

But, but the stock market is telling and maybe this is like the buy signal of a lifetime. But it's, it seems like it's like, okay, this company is, they're not what they were used to be and it's not not going to be again.

[Michael Batnik]

The fundamentals of Nike's business sucks. It's not doing well, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, they kind of blew it. All right. This is kind of cool. Someone sent us this zook data on Twitter. I think he must be an AI guy. Oh, he works at data analyst at Block Works. He says, are you hearing the word bubble everywhere these days? I counted every mention of bubble across hundreds of episodes from two of my favorite investing podcasts. Can you spot the trend? So he pulled up Animal Spirits and the Compounded Friends and looked at how often we say the word bubble. And he did some graphs in here and there was not much mention at all. 2022-2025 ish. And now to start this year, massive. He's doing an eight week rolling. Mean, I wonder how he did this showing that the bubble talk for this show has skyrocketed this year.

[Michael Batnik]

But you know what? Credit to us, we are a reflection of the market commentary that's floating around. We are the most. We're pushing back on the narrative.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, we're a concurrent indicator though we're not like a leading indicator. Right. We're talking about. Everyone else is talking about.

[Michael Batnik]

We talk about what's happening. But I think I think it is interesting and notable. And I want to, I want to clarify one, one thing about this. When I'm saying my opinion is that this is not a stock market bubble in general, right? Like, I don't think the s and P500 is going to fall 70%. I can only talk about the stock market. I have no idea what's actually happening with the supply chain bottlenecks. And there's no compute, like how, what, what do I know about lithography and this? And I know, I know nothing. And as much as you do, nothing.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but the thing is, even the people who do know that stuff, they're not good at predicting what's going to happen in the market either.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, that's true. I'm just saying, I'm just knew all that stuff. I'm just saying to the audience, like, I don't, I know our audience is not counting on us to tell them that Micron is overestimating demand. Like, we, we can't do that. But I don't see a bubble in the stock market. And if people say, well, the earnings aren't sustainable and that's where the bubble is. Hey, dude, the market agrees. The market is saying their earnings aren't sustainable. You think this is like a, a great insight, right?

[Ben Carlson]

That's why these, that's why these companies are trading like 12 times forward earnings.

[Michael Batnik]

So this chart from Peter Callahan at Goldman from Daily trick, the forward PE multiple gap between semis and the S P500 is at the lowest levels of this AI era. So the market agrees. It is not contrarian to say these earnings aren't sustainable. It's not, that's not going out on a limb, literally. That is consensus, right?

[Ben Carlson]

So if the market was, was valuing these things at 50 times forward earnings, you'd go, okay, this is crazy. They're, they think these earnings are going to continue or continue to grow or whatever, but then that's not what the market is saying, right?

[Michael Batnik]

So Duality Research has this great chart that we've shared before. It's the distribution of forward PE ratios. So he shows the percentage of S&P 500 companies as well as the percentage of the overall market cap that trade in various buckets. So for example, Alex says that more than 300 names, 61% or 40% of the total market cap trade for a forward p that's under 20 times.

[Ben Carlson]

So this is the, if you've been, if you've been a portfolio manager who has railed against overpriced tech stocks for Years. This better be your year. This is like, this is when you pound the table on the stock pickers market.

[Michael Batnik]

I would hope so.

[Ben Carlson]

Right, Because I'm sure there are people who've said for years to their clients, listen, we can't invest in this. Everyone's invested into this over concentration, overvaluation, all this stuff. This has to be your year. Has to.

[Michael Batnik]

He has. He also shows the FP breaking broken down by sectors. And just look at this. Basically everything is going down to the right for the most part. Everything is compressing with the exception of, I don't know, industrials are hanging high, I suppose, and real estate. But everything for the most part forward P's are coming in. This is like the opposite of what happens in a bubble.

[Ben Carlson]

These charts make it. If you just showed me these charts and didn't tell me what was going on in the market, I ma. Six months ago, I'd say, oh, the market's rolling over.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Not the market is up double digits this year. I'd say, oh, the market's probably down 12%.

[Michael Batnik]

And this is happening with the backdrop of all time high earnings and margins and acceleration. Like this is not a bubble. Stop. Might turn into one. That's not what this is.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I tend to agree. The hard thing to square is there's bubble like behavior in places like South Korea and retail investors.

[Michael Batnik]

But that, that will, that's all that's never going away.

[Ben Carlson]

I think that, I think that's the new normal.

[Michael Batnik]

If we have a five year bear market coinciding with a recession where people just lose it all. Yeah, they'll stop speculating.

[Ben Carlson]

But hang on, absent that, if we have a financial crisis that like the stock market falls 40% the Reddit crowd is going to be shorting stocks. Maybe you don't think that's going to happen or do you think they're just going to keep piling in and like they're going to go where the momentum is.

[Michael Batnik]

I also, I want to say what I was about to say. Keep going.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, let's move on from the bubble talk. We can't say it's enough. I'm going to say it like five more times just to up our ranking on this guy's data.

[Michael Batnik]

Of course.

[Ben Carlson]

Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble. All right, I was thinking about this in relation to my normal economic environment and I know you think I'm trolling. I'm just, I'm just putting out with the data set. Why don't we have recessions anymore? It feels like now a lot of people I put this question out there and I looked at the National Bureau of Economic Research has it the data going back to 1857. So look at all these 20 year blocks of how many recessions did we have? And pretty much for 100 years we averaged four to five recessions every 20 years. And since the 70s, early 80s, that has completely. It's flipped. The recessions are shorter in months and, and they're fewer in magnitude. We don't have recessions anymore. Now some people say, well, the reason we don't have recessions this decade is cause fiscal deficits and government spending and monetary policy. And I would say if that stuff stopped us from having recessions anymore, it's worth it. And I know that's obviously not the only reason that we don't have recessions anymore. You couldn't possibly say, no, that has no impact. Of course it does. Policymakers have figured out how to manage the economy better. And that's a wonderful thing. We don't have recessions anymore as much as we used to.

[Michael Batnik]

You know how Bill Simmons will sometimes say, how does like, I don't know, MVPs LeBron has. But let's just say how does LeBron only have three MVPs?

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnik]

And I was like, well, zoom in. Let's, let's actually look at it year by year and say like, which year was he robbed? And let's assess it that way. So to answer your question, I want to do something similar.

[Ben Carlson]

2022 for sure. That should have been a recession. Should have been, totally should have been a recession.

[Michael Batnik]

But so, so Zoom in. The 2010 post GFC decade, obviously we were coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Right. So, so consumers, balance sheets, governments, corporations, everybody was healing. And it probably took three to five years after that, at least.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. But 2011, everyone and their brother said double dip recession, Europe, the European debt crisis. This is going to drag us into another recession. Like that. Everyone was saying that 2011, that was.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, but we were. To me, like that was still post gfc. That gets lumped in with post gfc. That was not that far removed. It was.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, you're right. That'd be like 1937 after the Great Depression kind of.

[Michael Batnik]

Right. Same thing. And then the mobile cloud hyperscaler mag. What was Scott Galloway's book? The Four Horsemen. Like the tech giants dragged us out. And when I say us, I mean the stock market and making people rich with it. The tech giants dragged us out of that.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, I think technology is definitely one of the reasons that we don't have as many recessions anymore. The economy is more efficient than it used to be.

[Michael Batnik]

The technology stocks have turned the United States of America into the stock market. And the stock market fuels everything. So then we had a slowdown pandemic obviously fiscal stimulus that stopped a recession, 2022, inflation, interest rates. We genuinely would have had a recession if it were not for AI. If ChatGPT did not come onto the scene.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't believe that. I 100% believe that saved the stock market. But there wasn't enough spending then to stop a recession.

[Michael Batnik]

No way the stock market saved the economy. I 100 believe that.

[Ben Carlson]

No, it was really the wealth effect. People had locked in low interest rates that repaired their balance sheets. That's why we didn't have a recession. There was not enough spending on ChatGPT to cause a non recession then. No way.

[Michael Batnik]

That's, that's a huge part of it. But the stock market rebounding because the CHAT GPT called the stock market to rebound. If there was no rebound in the stock market, we would be in a way different place today than we were in 2020.

[Ben Carlson]

It's always something now and a lot of it is policy. Like I think we've just the one thing. The economy is bigger and more mature than it was. Like we were emerging market back in the 19th century. So of course there was more booms and busts. We were more of an industrial economy. So it was like plant and equipment and depreciation and right like that inventory and all this stuff. And now it's a service based economy. So that's, that's a big part of it too. We've just, we're more diversified, we're more dynamic. But policymakers and some people hate this. Some people want. The doomers want a recession.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't even want to give those people any oxygen. When you say some people it's like yeah, it's a few pundits and like less than 1% of the population wants everything to blow up. These are morons that don't deserve our airtime.

[Ben Carlson]

I kind of thought we got rid of these people, but I got tagged on this tweet a million times. So this guy on Twitter says if we divide the s and P500 by the Fed's balance sheet, the line is basically flat since 2008. I do too. So many people said hey, can you please address this? And someone said, hey, this, this seems like a blog post. Me what this guy, what this guy saying seems true. And I can't believe People still believe this. I just thought I'd address it really quick. Fine.

[Michael Batnik]

What's the tweet?

[Ben Carlson]

The guy stopped the chart in 2024. And if you go forward from 2024, the. The correlation goes away. So the Fed. The Fed's balance sheet has actually contracted.

[Michael Batnik]

Can we just stop?

[Ben Carlson]

2024?

[Michael Batnik]

Stop, stop.

[Ben Carlson]

So the Fed's balance sheet has literally contracted since 2024. 2023, it contracted too. And the stock market is booming. I don't. I don't. I think people forget that the Fed literally tried to put us in a recession in 2022 by taking rates from 0 to 5%.

[Michael Batnik]

Still obsessed with the Fed's balance sheet and for why the stock market isn't where you think it should be. You're an angry person and things are not going well. And I'm sorry.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I don't want to talk and. Right. Except for. So here's another reason why things remain strong. This is from Torsten Slack. Unemployment has been below the Fed's 4.5 Nairo estimate for a record time period. 57 months in a row. The unemployment rate has been under 5%. And if you take away that Covid period, which was kind of this fake thing because people lost their jobs. Yes, but they were being paid sometimes more from unemployment insurance. Like, we've had below 5% unemployment for almost a decade, essentially. Right. Take away the COVID period, which kind of doesn't count. That's one of the reasons things have remained so strong.

[Michael Batnik]

Let me ask you this.

[Ben Carlson]

People have jobs and they're going to spend. If they have a job over the

[Michael Batnik]

next 30 years, will this trend remain in place of fewer recessions?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. We're looking at like. And they're not going to be economic. I mean, sure, there's going to be a credit cycle eventually, but it's going to be more exogenous shocks. It's not going to be like, we're not.

[Michael Batnik]

We're not. We're not saying no recessions. Obviously there will be recessions. The business cycle exists. Immutable force of nature. But.

[Ben Carlson]

No, but you're using the playbook from the previous 80 years. You're going to be wrong in the future. You just are. It's a totally different environment now. All right, let's talk about technology world. Okay. This is from the Washington Post. A bunch of people were posting this on social media. I thought it was interesting. It has to be very weird to work in the technology industry right now because you're seeing certain people get like, not just life Changing amounts of money. But like certain individuals are getting like buy a sports team amounts of money. It's like, it's insane. And other people are every day going into work going oh my gosh, when am I going to get. Because the tech industry is not going to. They're going to be the first ones. They're the first line of, they're the first line of defense. Like right. They're in the, what do they call it in, in like Braveheart, like the people. The first line, you know, like those guys are probably gonna get killed. They're gonna get rolled over by that big log thing that rolls really fast, you know, and all the arrows. The tech CEOs are not going to have any like sympathy for their employees. They're. If they can replace their job with AI, they're going to. So it has to be a very weird place to work. You could get life changing amount of money or you could get out of a job tomorrow. So the Washington Post.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't, I don't have. I have very few people in my life that work in this world.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I'm just. So they, they interviewed a bunch of these people. It has to be so they said. At tech companies, leaders obsessed with winning the AI race have tasked their workforces of coders, lawyers and HR professionals with becoming the front line of the transformation. They're being measured by how quickly they can automate their own jobs while watching their colleagues get pushed out in successive waves of layoffs. So they said 800,000 tech workers been laid off since 2022. Now again, a lot of that is over hiring, whatever. So they, they posted this one thing about. There's this 31 year old tech startup worker in San Francisco, didn't want to say her name. She said that her engineering manager husband told her a few months ago that he needed to focus all his energy on becoming AI native and requested that she take on almost all parenting responsibilities for the couple's preschool age daughter. She complied. And she talks about how this is like surreal and it's weird and they have a combined income of like a half a million dollars. So they're doing pretty good. But they're saying they can't get a house. And it's funny to me that a lot of people on the Internet were up in arms about this, like, oh, this guy said he's not, you know, he's going to focus all his energy on his job. Pre 1990s, this was just life.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Is this a joke? Dystopia. We're talking about a 31 year old couple with a 2 year old where one of the spouses is working hard. Oh my God. Life.

[Ben Carlson]

This is a sign of progress in many ways though, that, that this is the way that people think now.

[Michael Batnik]

Because again she described her experience as surreal.

[Ben Carlson]

He better get some shares out of this or something though. From OpenAI. But also I. What if this guy is really secretly taking naps under his desk because he's tired from having a toddler throwing that out there?

[Michael Batnik]

Can I say one thing? Are we getting got? Is this like manufactured by the Internet? Is this a three hour interview that was put together in a way that the author editors knew it would go viral? I'm pretty sure that's what happens.

[Ben Carlson]

That's part of it.

[Michael Batnik]

No, that's the whole thing. That's the whole thing. There's no way that this is real, that this person is despondent. I, I would hope, and maybe I'm, maybe I'm naive and kidding myself. I hope that this person read this article and thought this is not what I said. I really hope that's what's happening here because I don't want to live in a world where a 31 year old making half a million dollars, a two year old is despondent because her husband has to work hard.

[Ben Carlson]

I just. Yeah, you're right again. The Mad Men era, the even like the era that our parents grew up in. Like this. The one parent working a lot, not being around was just normal. That's why they called like they had. There's a whole latchkey generation that was the whole thing. Like your parents are working a lot. Some parents are working multiple jobs. You come home and you let yourself in and you watch TV and make yourself a TV dinner or something. That, that was just life before. Maybe a sign of progress again. I, I just think if you live in the Bay Area or you, you are a tech worker, your life is very weird right now. It has to be.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

It has to be a very weird place to work and live.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes. Chart from a 16z share of US household with paid AI subscriptions. We've made this point a bunch.

[Ben Carlson]

It's hilariously low.

[Michael Batnik]

We're not the ones that like thought of it, but it's, it's at zero. It's 2%. I mean it's, you know, it's, it's up from zero. So it's up a lot. But households, this number is going to, this number is going to be 10%, 20%, 30%. I don't know where it stops.

[Ben Carlson]

Isn't it just going to be like most people will have a paid license through their employer and their, the individuals will mostly use the free service unless they, unless they really make the free ones so bad that, that you have to pay to get like don't you think most people are never going to pay?

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know. I, I don't, I don't, I have no idea what people, how people are going to use AI. I, I, I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

Or will it be a Netflix bundle? You get Netflix, Hulu and Open Air.

[Michael Batnik]

But when we're like the thesis that I'm using in my brain, which I could be way off, I have no idea when we're talking about like will the, will the demand continue to be there in 27 and 28? Like I think, I think people are being so shortsighted.

[Ben Carlson]

Of course it will be there. There's a massive Runway. You're right.

[Michael Batnik]

We're just starting. And I think the stock market breaks our brains a little bit because we saw the, the news last week about this new moonshot AI company in China, another open source model that further amplified or exacerbated the, the, the memory stock sell off. It's, I think we're just, every time this happens, a stock market, we just lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that this is just starting.

[Ben Carlson]

I think so. So we got a good email about this. Some guy wrote us a long email saying he's on the front line of this. And I said last week that AI doomers are wrong. To this point, obviously I don't know what the future holds. He says, I think we have at least another 12 to 18 months of jobs netting out to something not ugly. I fear, however, once all these governance process and integration steps get commoditized, we'll see some pain. Which basically means like get over the hurdles, get through the red tape. Well, I don't subscribe to the idea that AI will create tons of new jobs we never thought of because we'll just pull point even better AI and robotics and 3D printing at those too. I do think the same technology will invent different offsets and offer a better quality of life in the long run. I, I still subscribe to the idea that like just no one knows how this is going to work out. Like, like right now there is no disruption, like wide scale disruption.

[Michael Batnik]

Well I'm glad you said that because last week you were pretty emphatic, like the doomers are wrong. It's not, we're not seeing the data and it's just way too early.

[Ben Carlson]

It is. But I, I think the doomers will always be wrong. I think the, the, the tech leaders that say like 50% of all entry level white collar jobs, like, come on. I just, I don't believe that.

[Michael Batnik]

I understand that. We will, we will, we will continue to draw conclusions that are way too early.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

You and I, that, that months and years. But like this is going to take years to play out.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. I, I still think my favorite take on this was the guy who said like AI is going to keep us on the same trajectory we've been on. I, I still kind of think that's probably the baseline I'm thinking of.

[Michael Batnik]

Would love it. All right. This made me happy. StubHub. Right in the face. I shared my story years and years ago. Several stories about how upset I was with StubHub shenanigans where I allegedly listed my same set of tickets seven times. They charged me thousands of dollars because I couldn't deliver the tickets. Like just a garbage organization. And it turns out CBC ran a story. StubHub's marketplace for fans is run by a mass scalper. SEC filings reveal CEO Eric Baker runs a side company that resells millions in tickets on StubHub. So this guy's basically running a hedge fund providing like short term financing and, and cornering the Marketplace. An estimated 70 to 80% of all tickets on global resale sites are controlled by mass scalpers. According to a sweet.

[Ben Carlson]

Is this. This is it. Will this guy say no? I'm like Citadel. I'm providing the liquidity here. Is that what he would. Is that his defense would be.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if they.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, it's also, Isn't it also the thing that these, like, these, these tickets go on sale and they're picked, they're picked up by the bots and the like. It's all. It all does seem very. It doesn't seem very efficient the way they do things. Obviously.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Fans, who do you.

[Ben Carlson]

Who would you use instead of subhub now? Like SeatGeek or some other. As I know there's a million of them.

[Michael Batnik]

Tick pick.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

I think they're the cleanest of the bunch as far as, as far as I could tell. This is unbelievable. The NFL suspended Cardinals personnel executive Ryan Gold after He placed a $25 wager parlaying the result of the team's first five draft picks. He was paid out $732,000 in winnings. Is this the Boner of the Year award. What a dumbass. Are you kidding me?

[Ben Carlson]

Wow. Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

You. You didn't think you were gonna get caught?

[Ben Carlson]

What a payout. I mean, yes, obvious. Have one of your friends put the bed in. Man, how did I wonder how he got caught like he did. He literally put it in himself.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm assuming it was a friend. I don't know. But either way.

[Ben Carlson]

All right.

[Michael Batnik]

And other truly unbelievable news, here's a headline. Trump, oh Truth Social to sell Wall street firms the fastest access to Trump's post. This is not a political podcast. We often don't talk about what's going on in the White House because I don't care. But this is a market story, so I'm going to talk about it. All right. Trump Media and Technology Group has unveiled a paid for licensed data feed that will give banks and trading firms the fastest access to posts from influential Truth Social accounts, such as President Donald Trump's, whose posts often move global markets. The product, called Truth API, will deliver posts from the 10 most influential accounts to customers at a significantly faster pace than a regular push notification on the Truth Social platform. A spokesperson said this is absolutely mental that the President of the United States is selling his tweets faster. That market moving tweets how. Who is happy about this? If you think this is good, you're an idiot.

[Ben Carlson]

So I guess all the people that worry about the government debt and all these other crises, I guess this would be my bigger worry is that everything is such a financial market now that it. It finds its way into the our biggest politicians and that they say president not great. Yeah. The level of grift is it's not good for faith in our markets, obviously.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. No, this is insane behavior. Don't like it one bit.

[Ben Carlson]

No. This is not pushing the country. So. You know, I think I mentioned this before. I didn't finish it. I rewatched the movie Dave about the 1990s. When Kevin Klein looks like the President, the real president has a stroke, they bring him in. It was just such a simpler time. And I know that politicians were bad back then, too, but you couldn't. You literally couldn't make a movie like that today because everyone would go, what? Like. The funny thing is, though, he ran on a platform of full employment. And I wanted to be like, Dave, if you run on a platform of full employment, it's going to be high inflation. People are going to hate it. Right. Anyway, all right. Boomers were supposed to downsize. They're buying bigger homes instead. Story from the Wall Street Journal. Wealthy older Americans are ripping up the traditional script for aging. So the script is you have to buy a home because it's your biggest and best investment. And then when you retire, you downsize and then young people will move into those homes because boomers don't need bigger houses anymore. And they say especially for wealthy people who have a lot of money, that's just not the case. Eight of the clients for Maryland Financial Advisor this year retired. Every single one of them upsized. Only one client has downsized in the past year. This guy, this financial advisor says the historic retirement play of sell your home and buy a smaller one just isn't happening. They say the new demand for even bigger properties is another way boomers dominate the housing market. They count for 40, 42% of home buyers, largest share of any generation. They're often cash buyers give them an advantage over younger purchase. Now they, they, they ask these people, why are you buying a bigger home? And one's like, listen, we have all these grandchildren and we want a bigger home. And so it's like, you can't get mad at these people for doing what's in their best interest or what they want to do, obviously. But this seems like a script that was something people thought would happen. And for a lot of people, it's like, no, I have a lot of wealth, I'm going to buy. And they interview this couple that went from like a 2,500 square foot house to a 5,000 square foot house. And again, this is just wealthy individuals. But here's something from Kyla Scanlon. She wrote this in the New York Times. Empty nesters now own about 28% of large homes in the US. Millennials with children own about 16%. So there is something where the baby boomers are holding on to their big houses. They're not. They say, no, no, we like this. We're happy where we are. And again, you can't fault them for this. But this was a big thing that, like, no, no, no, this is the next step. This is supposed to happen.

[Michael Batnik]

I, this is supposed to make me mad. I. Right, like, this is, yeah, it obviously

[Ben Carlson]

does make some people mad.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, I think, listen, this is not an awesome situation, but who are you getting mad at? Like, I think these people acting in

[Ben Carlson]

their own self interest, like they're, they

[Michael Batnik]

want bigger houses for their, to host, to have their families over. And yeah, this is, this is what it is.

[Ben Carlson]

I made the point last week that the middle class rising out of The World War II is an economic anomalies. Never happening again. And Kyla put in her piece that the post war generation is the only American cohort ever handed a starter home ecosystem by federal policy where the government literally said we're going to back all the loans, we're going to help the builders, we're going to build the suburbs, we're going to build houses that Americans can afford and we're going to give them low mortgages. And it's the only time the federal government has actually said we're doing this. And the only reason they could do it is because there was so much goodwill coming out of the war that they had to do it. Like, you couldn't have that type of federal program today. No one would agree to it, even though obviously it seems like it would make sense for young people. So my question is, and Alison Traeger had a piece about how like the stock market for younger people started to take over as how like housing as your biggest investment because housing just doesn't keep up with the stock market because of this. What if just this new idea takes hold for enough young people that, okay, fine, the stock market, we've been talking about this. The stock market is just the thing. It's not the house anymore. Pew Research says one in four adults younger than 40 say buying a home is a good investment. One in four older generations, it's way higher. I don't think we've thought through what if this is the new script for people, like the new narrative.

[Michael Batnik]

People need houses to live.

[Ben Carlson]

But I know, but what if enough young people say I can't afford. It doesn't make sense for me to spend 55% of my budget on a home when I could rent and spend 35% and put the rest in the stock market.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, they have two options. Why don't you. Actually, I think they have one option in this case move. And I. That sounds very callous because.

[Ben Carlson]

But a lot of people don't want to do that.

[Michael Batnik]

That is not happening. The other option is. What is the other option? You, if you like. There's no, a lot of suburbs don't have rental homes. And if you are having a family, you can't live in a 650 square foot apartment.

[Ben Carlson]

And the funny thing is, so someone sent us this story.

[Michael Batnik]

Now, hold on, hold on. One other thing here. A lot of the population, obviously not all, but a lot of the population is getting help from their parents. Like that is, that is what's happening

[Ben Carlson]

when people mad at the baby boomers, like the people with the baby boomers with Money are, in a lot of instances, helping their kids. You're right down paying a lot.

[Michael Batnik]

And a lot of baby boomers. A lot of baby boomers have a lot of money, and it sucks for people who don't have a parent with money, obviously.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. I was born into a family where my parents aren't rich. What do I do now?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, that sucks.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. But to your point about moving. So someone sent us this story. The top 20 metros with the largest share of millennial homeowners. Number one, Grand Rapids, Michigan, at nearly 70%. We've had a lot of people. We have a lot of friends. It used to be like, if you. If you lived in West Michigan, it's because you grew up in west Michigan. We have a lot of friends now with young kids who just moved here from other states. And we're kind of like, what. What's your tie to West Michigan? Nothing. We just moved here for jobs. We moved here because it was a good place to raise a family. So there are people who've decided it's a very affordable place compared to the coasts. Obviously, housing is a little more expensive, but I think you're right. That unfortunately might have to be the case. But I still think. I think you're poo pooing this idea of the stock market overtaking the housing market in terms of like, this is your biggest investment. No, I don't think we've thought through what happens if that is takes. I'm not saying that young people, too.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is I don't think people are going to say to their spouses, to each other, we're not going to buy a house because we want to invest in the stock market. I think homeownership has become obviously unaffordable, and young people have been crowded out and therefore have been putting their money into the stock market. That's obviously what's been happening. But people, as they age and have families, need more space.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. But I do think it could just be the house comes later, stocks earlier house.

[Michael Batnik]

That is what. That is what's happening.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

So every time, by the way, also, this, this is. This is like a borderline national emergency for the people that are impacted by this. And it's not like 10,000.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. But the reason it's not a national emergency is because the people who own homes have gotten fabulously wealthy from it. And the homeownership rate is 65% in this country. So it's not a national emergency because it's a minority of people, unfortunately.

[Michael Batnik]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

And I feel for them. Every time something's happened to your house and you tell someone about it, of course, the first thing they say is the joy of homeownership. I've had many joys of homeownership in the last month. So this is the people who think that house is, like, always a great investment. This is just in the last month for my house. Garage door wouldn't open. We had to get a whole new set of wheels and tracks in our. Our home. We bought brand new. We built the house when my kids were born in the same month we. My wife had twins. And the next month we moved into a house. I don't know how we did it. So our house is nine years old. So the great thing about having a new house is, like, there's the upkeep and maintenance right away is nothing. That's. That's a wonderful thing about having a new house. Like, there's nothing like, oh, no, this went out. But now stuff is starting to go out. The garage doors went out. We had moles in the garden bed. They had all. They make these little tracks, you know, the moles, little jerks. Had to have some guy come. I said, how do you. How do you kill him? How do you get rid of them? He said, we stuff carbon monoxide down the hole. Oh, wow. Anyway, our house is white, so we had to have a whole house washed, right? They come, spray this stuff, and then they wash the house. The light fixtures in my house, you know, I have a farmhouse, whatever, modern farmhouse. They have those lights that kind of hang over like this, you know, they look great. I love them. But my kids play basketball, and the balls are constantly hitting these lights. So the light is, like, hanging like this now. And new light fixtures. Dryer went out, washer went out. Had to get a new washer and dryer. Okay. And while they did it, hey, why don't we come clean the dryer vents, too? This is all in the last month for my house, by the way. Got a new washer and dryer last week, and they got it installed yesterday. It was very fast. I have no more sticker shock for prices that are too high. Like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe how high that price is. My new sticker shock is when something is actually not as high as I thought it would be. And the cost of a washer and dryer, 2,800. We bought a new one, new set for our house on the lake four years ago, and the price hasn't changed in four years for what we, and I think last when we bought. Maybe it was a supply shock thing, but I couldn't believe that the prices weren't higher than they are. How much was the washer dryer for both the set? They're each a thousand dollars, I guess a piece. 2,000 for the total.

[Michael Batnik]

Not bad.

[Ben Carlson]

That's what we paid four years ago. I couldn't believe it. I thought it'd be way higher. Anyway, the joys of home ownership. All right, let's talk about Netflix. Jake, our friend at Economic who used to actually blog at Economic, doesn't do it anymore. This is almost hard to believe. Disney spent $129 billion acquiring Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, ESPN and Fox. 182 billion in today's dollars, throwing all their legacy assets and the entire company's market cap is $169 billion. Man, if they could do a Doc Brown DeLorean back in time, would they not do Disney? If they could, knowing what they know now, would they not do Disney?

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, yeah, I think they do a lot of things differently. But, yeah, so, but we, we said this over, we said this at the time, that streaming is a really bad business model. All these companies were losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Peacock, Paramount, Disney, hbo, chasing Netflix. Netflix was a coyote that ran over the cliff and then ran back and everybody. And now it seems like Netflix ran over their own cliff and hit the ground as well.

[Ben Carlson]

Netflix and Disney are Both in a 50% drawdown from the highs right now. And Netflix is obviously, they're the obvious winner of streaming. They're the best technology platform. They don't have the best stuff for sure, but they won and they're still down 50. And the thing is, I think a lot of people assume, like, okay, fine, they don't get the Warner Brothers deal. I think that'll help the stock. It hasn't. It hasn't really changed it. And is it. Is this just. Are people just realizing, yes, this is just a crappy business? It's kind of hard to believe.

[Michael Batnik]

So Netflix's operating income is up into the right. In 2022, Disney had $12 billion and Netflix was 6. So Disney was 2X. Netflix is about to pass Disney's operating income, which is wild because they don't have the parks, and the parks are wildly profitable. Streaming. Streaming is not a bad business for Netflix. So Netflix is growing at 12 to 13% now. Their growth is slowing down. Their. Their margins are 30%. So their margins look nothing like these media Companies. But the problem is for Netflix and I own the stock. It's, it's not a small position for me and I bought more of it. The problem is that Netflix is still in the content business and it's still a hamster wheel business. And their, their daily average views is not really growing anymore. I mean it's growing one and a half, 2%. So it's really, it's just really hard.

[Ben Carlson]

So people are saying like, yeah, it's, it's, it's not a, it's not the growth story it once was. I gotta be honest, I dipped it, I dipped a Michael Batnik big toe in Netflix as well. Even though I keep.

[Michael Batnik]

So my, my average cost is like 90 bucks. The stock is 67. I've said this many times. It's true. I'm, I'm, I've been really good at taking losses fast. Probably to a fault. In fact, not probably. Wait, definitely to a fault. I don't have a lot of like double digit losses. Double, like even 10 losses, which cuts both ways. I'm really bad at holding on to stocks. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

But the history of Netflix would tell you this is. So I looked at this.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't, I don't buy that though. So anyway, Netflix is a stock that I'm down 30% in or 27%. But I don't buy that. History says anything. History says nothing. History says that it has declined and come back.

[Ben Carlson]

So this would be so. Yes. So since it went public, it's had a 60% drawdown, 75%, 56, 82, 76 and now 50. So it's had these massive, massive drawdowns.

[Michael Batnik]

And it's still tells you nothing going forward.

[Ben Carlson]

But this is what makes stock picking so hard because you look at that and you go, oh man, every one of those times I should have bought. And then this time you go, yeah, but now this time is different because it's actually a media company and the growth is slowing. It's not a growth play like it was before. This is what makes it hard.

[Michael Batnik]

Correct. So right now Netflix is trading at a market multiple, which is kind of hard to believe because it is a premium brand still growing with awesome margins. So if you look at the financial profile, it doesn't look anything like traditional media.

[Ben Carlson]

The reason people, the reason these other companies wanted to get into streaming, because they said we want the same pe Netflix has.

[Michael Batnik]

Correct.

[Ben Carlson]

But it went the other way instead. Netflix is now coming down to them.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Anyway, I am, as a, as a, somebody with a vested interest, but even If I did, I'm just very curious to see how the market values Netflix on a go forward basis. Because right now, obviously to say it's pessimistic is an understatement. I thought this is very interesting. We've been talking about the season one to season two drop off and I thought Ted Sarandos made an excellent point. So they were, they spoke about this on the call. He said, we are not seeing any material change in our second viewing in our second season viewing compared to season one. Our second seasons are performing well within our bands of expectation. Very often we see drop off from season one to season two. It's very common in the industry. It's even more so with us because we launch our shows so big. Our global reach, our discovery mechanism, releasing all at once. This enables us to find a very large audience early. Our shows tend to start really big, while most other places their shows start pretty small and occasionally grow from there. I think that's very valid. Think about White Lotus season one, like nobody. I mean obviously it's a brand new show. It took a while for that.

[Ben Carlson]

You had to discover it. That makes sense.

[Michael Batnik]

And succession as well. Like it takes a while for these names to find traction. Yellowstone didn't hit it big until like season three, I don't think.

[Ben Carlson]

And that didn't really happen because of the pandemic. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

So I thought as I'm reading something like I. Excuse. No, I think it's, I think it's valid. All right, let's talk about the Odyssey.

[Ben Carlson]

I think he's, he's the reason that you also have kind of faith. I, I have faith in him as an, as a leader. Yeah, right.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, I do, I do, I do. I think that, by the way, this is an example where like I'm not staring at the screen saying like the market is wrong. Why are you selling, you idiots? I totally understand the story and what's happening. I totally understand it. I don't think the like, so I'm not pounding the table. The Netflix will all of a sudden like get rerated higher. But I think that, but based on,

[Ben Carlson]

based out of all those companies I mentioned at the start of this show, like where would you buy the streets? Netflix is the one to me that makes the most sense.

[Michael Batnik]

Netflix is the only company that I understand. Right. So like as an investment, I'm going to hang around. I couldn't tell you the first thing about intel or SpaceX. Like, are there trades in there?

[Ben Carlson]

Like, yeah, we're doing both first level thinking and second level Thinking, boom.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, let's talk the Odyssey two

[Ben Carlson]

and a half times. Thinking.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm, I'm really upset. I saw it last night. I'm really annoyed that I didn't see it in the, in imax. But it sold out through August. The one in New York City doesn't really matter.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, the people like you have to see it in IMAX because you can see the. Come on, it's a movie.

[Michael Batnik]

You have such a. You have, you have, you have weekend. I'm trying to be nice. You have, you have a bad attitude here.

[Ben Carlson]

I think the IMAX people need to settle. I mean, you're wearing an IMAX hat, but the IMAX people need to settle down just a little bit. Like, fine. Make more IMAX theaters then.

[Michael Batnik]

IMAX is my biggest position. Okay, what do you mean make? It's expensive. Hold on. So there, there was a side by side video of we watch movies on a tube tv.

[Ben Carlson]

Come on. I get it's better, but like, can't be that much better.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, let's just move on. So The Odyssey did $124 million domestic, defying this from Variety, defying expectations, setting up the R rated spectacle for a long, long journey in theaters. The ticket sales are notable as Nolan.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, did it really defy expectations? I thought the expectations for this were massive.

[Michael Batnik]

No, these ticket sales are notable as Nolan's biggest debut since 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, as well as the third largest opening of the year following Toy Story and Super Mario. They're also impressive not just because the Odyssey is a three hour long movie, but because it's rated R, which limits who can buy tickets. So look at this. Domestic box office openings for movies directed by Christopher Nolan. Biggest since Dark Knight Rises, which. So in between there we've got Interstellar, Dunkirk, 10, and Oppenheimer.

[Ben Carlson]

He really is, he really is the guy right now, isn't he? He's like, he's the.

[Michael Batnik]

Significantly, significantly bigger than Oppenheimer. So this is from imax, second biggest domestic weekend ever.

[Ben Carlson]

It still kind of blows my mind that Oppenheimer was as big as it was. That might be one of his greatest accomplishments.

[Michael Batnik]

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.

[Ben Carlson]

If you, if you just explained that movie, it's unbelievable how big it was.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it was massive.

[Ben Carlson]

It's kind of, I mean, kind of a boring movie in a lot of ways. He's, he's for regular people.

[Michael Batnik]

He's the only one to use it to, to put my Dan Ives hat on. Nolan is the godfather of imax. He's the only one that could do what he's doing right now. So IMAX had 24% of tickets, 45% of tickets were. Were premium format. Highest pre sales ever with $50 million. All right, so anyway, needless to say, movies are back. Adam Aaron, this chairman and CEO of AMC on the call said in AMC's entire 160 year history, there has never been a quarter like this one. Domestic box office hit 2.99 billion. The highest second quarter in seven years. Fifth best quarter in the past 50 years. Obviously there's an inflationary component in here. And premium tickets, the overall domestic box Office was up 10.7% year over year. Six different films had 75 million dollar opening weekends or more. And we've still got a bunch on the docket. We've got Doomsday, Avengers, we have Spider man, we have Dune 3, we have resident Evil. There's the Tom Cruise movie Digger that I think is going to be big. And I've made a lot of bad calls. I mean too many to count on this show. But this is one of the good ones that I had been. So I was reminded of this by Sean Russo who said, Michael, you made a hell of a call. And I thought I would take a second to go back in time because Ben, you said let's revisit this conversation. So we're going to. All right, let's talk. The box office 2025 was only 350 million below the previous year for a kind of underwhelming year. That's not so bad.

[Ben Carlson]

Really. I thought people said this was like a banner year for the, for movies.

[Michael Batnik]

No, it wasn't.

[Ben Carlson]

We had Avatar, we had Zootopia, we had Minecraft. Think so. Sinners and one battle after, like there was a lot of movies people talking about.

[Michael Batnik]

It was, it was, it wasn't. I'm telling you, it was down $350 million.

[Ben Carlson]

Secular decline. I'm totally selling your theory that 2026 will be higher. Every year is going to be lower from now on. This is it, man. It's over.

[Michael Batnik]

2026 will be higher than 2025.

[Ben Carlson]

No way. Sorry, man. It's done. Movies are done. I don't think you've realized this yet. They're done. Unless they double the ticket prices. Movies like as a thing, it's just, it's slow sec. It's. It's not cyclical, it's secular.

[Michael Batnik]

I have more experience than you do on this topic that you're blind.

[Ben Carlson]

You have blinders on because you Go to the all the time.

[Michael Batnik]

How do I that dude, the opposite. You have no idea because you have never been to the movies. I go frequently.

[Ben Carlson]

So for numbers, people would rather watch a movie at home than go to the theater. It's true. It's easy.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, of course. Of course that's true. Of course that's true. And that is already reflected in the revenue. That's not. That's not going to happen in 2026. That's been happening.

[Ben Carlson]

Right?

[Michael Batnik]

It's 2026 is not the year that people decide to watch movies at home. That's been happening for the last decade.

[Ben Carlson]

It's just slowly but surely eating away. So is it going to continue to get worse?

[Michael Batnik]

All right, so. So I tell you a story about how I took Rob about to see the handmade and you're like, what's the handmade? By the way, Handmade did $400 million in box office.

[Ben Carlson]

I still can't believe that that movie was. That movie stunk out loud.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, I'm almost done. Pat himself in the back. Last one anyway. Yeah, listen, I'm not like, I'm not, I'm not an idiot in the box office. I understand numbers have been down year. I'm just saying I think 2026 is the year that it comes out. One of the reasons why it was as bad as it was is because some of the movies that were supposed to come out in 2025 didn't. Mike. The Michael Jackson movie, for example, is probably going to do a decent that that was punted to 2026.

[Ben Carlson]

No. Though any of those biographies about musicians now, they're dead money. No one cares.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't think the mic. I think the Michael Jackson one is going to make money.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. If you're hanging your hat on Michael Jackson biopic for 2026, I'm going to be the winner here on this bet. We'll check back in in a year. Okay. I was wrong about Michael Jackson. Can I, can I defend my honor?

[Michael Batnik]

No, they don't have to defend your honor. Michael Jackson did a billion dollars in boxes, by the way. Honestly, I didn't realize that you were going to look bad in this clip. It was just about make me look good. But so what I'm wrong all the time. This just happened to be one of the times that I was right.

[Ben Carlson]

Can I caveat your take that movies are back though?

[Michael Batnik]

Because why, why does it have to be caveated?

[Ben Carlson]

Well, because big, I got the numbers here from my friend Claude. He has a little beret On. So if you inflation adjust the numbers from 2014 to 2019 every year, it was essentially $15 billion in box office. Okay. Inflation inflation adjusted this year so far is $5.3 billion. So let's say it stays on the same course and we double the first six months to the last six months. So you'd be looking at $10 billion in ticket sales versus 15 billion pre pandemic. You're still 30% below pre pandemic levels on an inflation adjusted basis.

[Michael Batnik]

Talk about moving the goalposts.

[Ben Carlson]

So I'm saying big movies are back. All movies not back.

[Michael Batnik]

I said 2026 would be higher than 2025. And you're saying it's still below pre pandemic levels. I mean, of course it is. I'm not saying we're all the way back.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so. So we get 5.3 right now. Last year it was $9 billion. So it's on course, but it's basically on course to be the same. You're not quite there yet. I know Dune and the vendors are probably gonna help.

[Michael Batnik]

Numbers. Numbers are up 11% year over year.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Movers are back. This is great. We celebrate this.

[Ben Carlson]

I think it's a little bit of recency, but it's not back to. I was saying pre pandemic levels is never coming back. That's true. Okay. I was wrong that it's gonna go down every year. You're right.

[Michael Batnik]

I was wrong about that anyway.

[Ben Carlson]

But it's not pre pandemic numbers are gonna go down.

[Michael Batnik]

So you know what?

[Ben Carlson]

That's gone. That's toast.

[Michael Batnik]

You can watch. I'm. You can watch the Odyssey at home and have a terrible time.

[Ben Carlson]

I will be seeing the Odyssey in the theater, but I will see it in a regular theater, not the imax. I will definitely be seeing the Odyssey. My kids are going to camp next week. I'm going to see the Odyssey. I can't wait.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. Could you please see it on a big screen? Just go. Just please see it on a bigger, normal screen.

[Ben Carlson]

Our IMAX seats are not comfortable. I would rather be in one of the recliners if I'm going to sit in a movie for three hours.

[Michael Batnik]

Anyhow, congratulations to Christopher Nolan and movie fans across the globe. What an. What an unbelievable movie.

[Ben Carlson]

He really is the man. Even I didn't care for Tenet at all. And it had in the. That's his lowest number by far. It just didn't work for me. But he still took a swing, so I just. I appreciate him as a movie maker.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. Ben, we've been talking about GLP1 land a lot on the show in the recent weeks. KFC is closing 207 U.S. restaurants. I'm sorry. They closed 207 restaurants between January 2025 and March 31. That wipes out roughly 5%. That's a lot of its domestic locations. I don't know what's going on overseas, but they added 2,971 internationally.

[Ben Carlson]

So maybe Chick Fil A is probably eating their lunch too, don't you think? Places like that, those kind of things.

[Michael Batnik]

Also uts. Uts? Utz, the potato chip company. Is it OOTS or uts?

[Ben Carlson]

I have no idea.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, they. They are going private. The Stock is down 70% and they were just bought for nice little premium. So whoever owns UTS or uts, the stock, credit to you. Nice.

[Ben Carlson]

I've never heard. I've never heard of these chips. Is this a New York thing?

[Michael Batnik]

Maybe it's an east coast thing. I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I got a story for you. I think I told you briefly, but I gotta tell the whole story. So my daughter plays in a summer league, basketball turn league. So I'm walking into. In the parking lot, and there's two guys in the parking lot, me and another dad. And he's probably 100 yards away from me. And he puts his hand in the air and he goes, there he is, very loudly at me. And I'm looking at him.

[Michael Batnik]

Did you think. Did you think it was a fan?

[Ben Carlson]

I know. I thought it was another parent. And I kind of squinted and I'm like, I don't know who this guy is. Then I thought, oh, maybe he's a fan. And he got closer and he realized he didn't know him. And he goes. Kind of looked both ways and just like, okay. And just kept walking. Just nothing. He thought I was someone else.

[Michael Batnik]

He didn't acknowledge it?

[Ben Carlson]

No, didn't acknowledge. Just kind of looked at me, kind of looked side to side and then kept walking.

[Michael Batnik]

That's weird.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, he should have said something. All right, let's do recommendations. All right. Speaking of, I watched some movies. I went to the movie theater this week. I took my kids to see Monsters and Minions last week. Minions and Monsters. It seems like the people who make those movies have to be on some sort of drugs, the way that they do the plots. But they're entertaining. And I've laughed like five times. My kid, my daughter Kate loves the Minions. She's seen every one of the movies, like six times.

[Michael Batnik]

You should take your you should take your kids to Universal Studios. It's really good.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm sure they would like it. And it was only 90 minutes. That was the best part. And I barely only dozed off once. My wife and I watched Obsession and the only thing I knew about this movie is a guy makes a wish that a girl loves him. That was in the trailer. That's all I knew. And I know this movie got huge, supremely high hype. And I. And I. So my expectations were probably like, I got. I better rein it in a little because the hype is so high.

[Michael Batnik]

Can I. I. You loved it, right?

[Ben Carlson]

I loved it. It was so good. And it's not really my. I don't know how you even describe this movie. A thriller, a suspense movie, not really horror. I don't. It's hard to even like pigeonhole it.

[Michael Batnik]

But you know what? You know what? There's. There's some movies that are so good that expectations can't ruin it. Like Hail Mary and the Odyssey. They're just movies where it's like, I'm just going to tell you flat out, you're going to love this movie. And I'm not. Because sometimes I'm care. I want to raise the bar too high. And then you're disappointed. If you don't like this movie, you're an idiot.

[Ben Carlson]

But here's. Here's why this is so impressive to me. So I know this is like a young filmmaker. The movie just felt really high quality with a bunch of people I've never seen act in a movie before. I've never. I didn't know any. There was one guy who was Conan o' Brien's right hand man. He was in it for like five minutes. What's his name?

[Michael Batnik]

I don't even know who you're talking about.

[Ben Carlson]

The dad in the record store. They worked. Oh. But he was the only actor in the whole movie. I knew. I knew none of these actors and I thought they were. I thought the two leads were both really, really good.

[Michael Batnik]

I thought she was way better than he was. But he was good too. The. So the, the lead actress. She is. She has a big role. She got a big role as a result of this. I'm happy you. I'm happy you liked it.

[Ben Carlson]

How.

[Michael Batnik]

How great was that movie?

[Ben Carlson]

I really. My. My wife loved it too. It just. It was just really, really well done. And there was so many things like, oh, I just love the choice. And it just. It just felt like a high quality movie. I can't explain it. Like you could make that movie be very low budget, low quality, and be like, oh, okay. It's kind of interesting, but not great. But it was just a really good, well done movie.

[Michael Batnik]

And that kid Cory Barker, who directed it, I think he's like 23, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, it was just. There was a lot of very creative choices. I really liked it. Okay, so you mentioned Rewatchables is your favorite podcast. They did she's the one. Last week they actually did Hitch. This week was kind of hilarious because my daughter and I are on a rom com binge and we just watched Hitch, which just. That's got to be one of the funniest rom coms of this century.

[Michael Batnik]

I haven't seen either of these.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I can. So the Ed Burns. I'm a huge Ed Burn. I thought I was the only Ed Burns fan there is. He's made all these movies he makes. It's about him and his family in Long Island. That's why you probably could like it. I don't know where in island because there's all these different places. Long Island. But I've always really enjoyed his movie. They're not great movies. They're just. They're just well done and they're always about family. And I. So I've always really appreciated them. I couldn't. I didn't realize that there was like an Ed Burns fan club out there because I'm a member and obviously the two. So I enjoyed it. And finally, I have a book recommendation. How to Get Rich in American History by Joseph Moore. This guy actually sent me a note when my book came out, and I didn't know he was. And he was on meb's podcast last week, but I listened to it, and this is the most unique finance book I've read in years.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, wow.

[Ben Carlson]

How to Get Rich. It's a history of the financial advice people have gotten over the years. And it's really.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, I love that idea.

[Ben Carlson]

It's really, really well done. And it's like this stuff that you. And his whole point at the beginning is like, you don't realize how good we have it today. And how he said, there's never been a better time to get ahead than today. And he talked about how, like, in the 19th century and 18th century, like pre Civil War days, there were so many different currencies, no one thought about saving money. It was, you got the money, you spent it immediately because that currency might be gone in a month.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it's just.

[Ben Carlson]

It's. It's really. It's a really fascinating book. And it was. He's. He's a history professor, and it was just. And he talked about how he decided to try every form of getting rich that's ever been invented. And he talks about how he got rich being a broke college professor. It's really, really good. I loved it.

[Michael Batnik]

I will. I will certainly listen. I love this. That's very, very cool idea.

[Ben Carlson]

What do you got? Just the Odyssey.

[Michael Batnik]

So I watched the second half of the World cup finals. Argentina versus Spain.

[Ben Carlson]

You picked, like, the worst game to watch.

[Michael Batnik]

I had a great time.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

I thought it was absolutely riveting. And I feel like a total schmuck because I missed the entire thing. And it turns out so many.

[Ben Carlson]

There were so many good games.

[Michael Batnik]

It turns out I'm a fan. Yeah, I. I loved it. I was. I was glued to the screen. I thought it was. I thought it was excellent. And the fact that you say it was a terrible game. And I know, like, I guess by all accounts, it wasn't a great. Wasn't a great game, but I loved it. Will I watch the next one? I'm not sure, but I genuinely felt like an idiot. Like, I listened to Simmons and Chris Ryan and some other guy, the soccer guy, and they were recapping. I really did feel like a schmuck. I missed the whole thing. Great sport.

[Ben Carlson]

I liked it.

[Michael Batnik]

One final thing, I was at Fanatics Fest last week, and I was in line for quite a while. I bought a Knicks poster and had them all sign it. Jalen and OG weren't there, so I have to find them, track them down at some other point. So I had some time waiting in line, sitting down. Anyway, I said that to say that I binge watched season two of the Agency, and I thought season one started out awesome. And then it petered off for me. I didn't really like. I thought it would. I thought it was like the horse meme. The horse to donkey meme. So I was sort of iffy on season two, and I. I watched the first two and I thought sort of was going to turn it down, and then somebody told me to pick it back up. So fantastic. I thought it was so good. It was so much better than season one.

[Ben Carlson]

I thought, this is a very underrated show. It's funny. I started season two last night, and one of the very first scenes in the show, it's Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere, and the guy who plays McNulty on the wire all sitting there having a drink and a cigar. I'm like, oh, my gosh look at the firepower in that room right now.

[Michael Batnik]

Jeffrey Wright is so good in that show. The whole cast is great.

[Ben Carlson]

But so the thing I like about it is a lot of these spy shows, it's like a season. This is the whole story. Then the next season go to a new story. But it's a continuation of the story from the first season.

[Michael Batnik]

It was excellent. Truly, truly excellent.

[Ben Carlson]

I can't wait. I'm one episode in. It's a very underrated show.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. That's about it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yep.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. Animal spirits of the compoundnews.com, personal emails personal responses thank you for I answered

[Ben Carlson]

a bunch of emails this week. I know you don't think I, you know, fulfill my quota, but I did a lot of answering emails this week. Okay, you shamed me into it.

[Michael Batnik]

Thank you for your service. We'll see you next time.

[Ben Carlson]

Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better.

[Michael Batnik]

Every plan $15 a month.

[Ben Carlson]

Month even unlimited.

[Michael Batnik]

That's it.

[Ben Carlson]

Happy ending, zero tears.

[Michael Batnik]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[Ben Carlson]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 or 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only

[Michael Batnik]

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[Ben Carlson]

See terms.