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- [00:00]
A
Today's episode is brought to you by Invesco. Adding income has its advantages. Invesco's Income Advantage ETFs are designed to provide consistent monthly income and maintain growth potential, all with less volatility and downside.
- [00:12]
B
Risk mitigation Access some of the world's best known stock indexes now with added income. With Invesco's Income Advantage ETFs. Invesco, let's rethink possibility. To learn more about Invesco's Income Advantage ETFs, visit invesco.com income-advantage There are risks.
- [00:28]
A
When investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.
- [00:56]
B
Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life 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.
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A
This podcast is for informational purposes only.
- [01:14]
B
And should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain.
- [01:19]
A
Positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. As the summer winds to a close, it is time to look forward to the fall. Is that right, Ben?
- [01:34]
B
Yeah, you live your life one season at a time.
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A
So Ben and I are going to Las Vegas in November for the FPA Annual Conference. We will be wrapping it up. When are we speaking? November 5th. Ben, you and I have never been to Vegas together. Is that right?
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B
No, I haven't played blackjack in a long time. So I was just thinking like, man, I can't wait to play blackjack again.
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A
Okay, so we've been to casinos together.
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B
Yes.
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A
Milwaukee and Arizona, I believe.
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B
Yeah, one of those was a short lived trip because of you, but we'll tell that story another time.
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A
What happened?
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B
An upset stomach.
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A
You know, blackjack is like a as close to a 5050 game as you can get, right?
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B
It's one of the best odds in the casino. Yeah, it's some of the best odds you have.
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A
And yet I think I've lost like eight times in a row now. Mind you, I just play by the book. I don't do anything exotic or special or fun. But I've managed to pull off the impossible.
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B
I don't know what it is, but I feel like I've won 80% of the times I've gone to play blackjack. I'm like the opposite. For some reason. I win way more often than I lose. I have an unbelievable streak of blackjack for some reason in my life.
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A
All right, well, I can't wait to watch it get demolished in Las Vegas.
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B
FBA conference should be fun. I don't think I've ever done an event in Las Vegas before.
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A
Okay, Will put. We will put a link in the show notes. We got a promo code to give listeners $100 off the current registration rate. So, yeah, come see us in Vegas.
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B
So the stock market is a bizarre place sometimes. Often counterintuitive. I. I tweeted this out the other day. The stock market was up, I don't know what, 2% on Friday. And the headline should have been that the stock market is up because Jerome Powell sees the labor market slowing down, which seems like an odd thing to happen, but that's essentially what it was. Correct. Powell sees the labor market slowing. That could lead to a fed rate cut. So the stock market rallies. Seems a bit odd to me, but I guess. So the hope is that we're just going to thread the needle.
- [03:32]
A
Yeah, I think maybe for the average person on the street, if you explain to them the situation, hey, good news. The labor market is slowing. They'd be like, huh? But I think at this point in the year 2025, it's well understood there's no more mysteries about why stocks rally.
- [03:49]
B
Okay. What's the. What's the reason?
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A
You're confused on why stocks rallied on Friday.
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B
I feel like we've been. We've been rallying off of the hope of rate cuts for, like, two years almost.
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A
Yeah, but they're. They're still, eh. I don't you think so.
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B
I. I just do wonder if. If we finally get the rate cuts, if that's like the signal of. Okay, this is like. This is actually like the cycle's coming to a. To a close kind of. It's not that easy ever.
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A
All right, counterpoint, though. We are seeing more and more stocks participating, and I always, for the most part, fall back on the stock market.
- [04:24]
B
Always, for the most part. That's a good. That. That was a grand.
- [04:28]
A
Always, for the most part, the stock market knows what's up. So Grant Hawk Rich has this wonderful chart that he shows the percentage of S&P 500 stocks that are above the 200 day, the 50 day and the. I can't even see anymore. I don't know what these are. There's three different colors. Point is, Grant tweeted, more stocks are trending higher, not fewer. Around 59 of the S&P 500 names are above both their 50 day and 200 day averages. Only 20% are below both. This isn't narrow leadership. It's broad participation fueling the trend. Brett is confirming the bull. One more data point from our friend Ryan at Carson Group. Friday was a rare 9,090 day, meaning 90 of the volume in stocks on the new New York Stock Exchange were higher. These events tend to be quite bullish, with the S P500 higher more than 90 of the time a year later and up more than 23 on average. So when you see this type of behavior inside the market, again, I fall back to the thing that, like, investors are not dumb. When the market is doing something that might be counterintuitive, as you put it, go with the market. And so you are. You are seeing more and more stocks participate. Micro caps, equal weight, Dow. What else do you need to see? It's all happening.
- [05:41]
B
Equal weight is up over 9% this year. The S and P is up close to 11% now. But the equal weight is. You're right. It's, it's, it's right there. The one thing I will say that the stock market has not been very good at, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, I'm right. I use them in my new book, which you got to wait till next spring to get. But leading up to a recession, the stock market is not very good at sniffing out a recession. If and when that happens, we don't get those anymore, so you don't have to worry about it. But if they happen, the stock market probably wouldn't be very good at.
- [06:11]
A
It does seem to like. So Tom Lee was on, by the way. What a goat that guy is. 250,000 views in the first 72 hours.
- [06:20]
B
Okay, I didn't listen to it yet. I still. I will listen to it today. I was busy watching 12 soccer games this weekend. Do you agree with him that we. That it's still early? Because I feel like.
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A
I don't know.
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B
But here, here's the. Here's the. I think this is, this is the talking point we've reached in the cycle. Is this 1996 or is this 1999? I feel like that's where people are starting to go to. And surprisingly, I've heard like in conversations with clients in recent weeks of, you know, I feel like at the end of last year it was, why am I not just all in U.S. stocks? You know, like, get me, this is where I should be. And now a lot of the conversations are, I am actually starting to worry about this like AI bubble forming. And what does that mean? I, I've heard that multiple times now. So I do feel like the 96 Greenspan says irrational exuberance, which if you read the actual speech, he doesn't even. It's, it's very coded. Like he just kind of slips it in there. He asks a question about irrational exuberance, he doesn't say, I see this. I actually read the speech. Not going to lie. I'm like one of those people who've actually read the Bitcoin paper, right? I read the Greenspan speech and then the S and T, I think was up 12% per year through the end of the decade. So people are already worried in 96. So that's kind of where we are. And I guess that's what Tom Lee's point would be. It's 96, not 99.
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A
Let me long Island Hedge this. It seems crazy to think that we're early considering the compounded returns of the S and P over the last 15 years. And even more recently, what have we compounded at since, since 2020 anyway?
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B
13 or 14% or even.
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A
And so I look at Todd's. Todd son's chart that shows Nvidia the mic. The market cap of Nvidia and Microsoft compared to healthcare, staples, utilities and materials, or real estate, something like that, it doesn't matter. And you see the two converging, you say, how could this make sense? Furthermore, how could we possibly be earlier mid cycle? What?
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B
Someone should make an ETF of that. Okay, long those sectors, short those two stocks.
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A
All right, but maybe, maybe it's a combination of yes, Nvidia is discounting a lot of the future growth, but what if these other names that have just been left for dead are just way undervalued? And what if part of the broadening out of the market rally is an acknowledgment of that? And what if we see the Mag 7 sort of pause or go sideways? Sounds implausible over the next 12 months. And you do see a rotation into equal weighted stocks, materials, healthcare, things that have been left behind. And maybe it's not a catch down, but like a catch up where those four sectors just take off and get back to a more normal standing.
- [09:03]
B
It's not out of the room of possibilities.
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A
Well, no, that's what's happening. That is what's. Who's to say how far it's going to go. But that's what happened on Friday with that 90, 90 day. Everything is working and it's unusual to see a day with the Dow leading the charge. It's been a minute but maybe rotation is underway.
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B
You're right. I mentioned this before so you could have said that same thing in 95 or 96. Like the returns for the past 15 years have all been double digits, high double digits. There's no way this can continue. And then you had a bubble and a blow off top and all that. But again though, a lot of those other stocks were participating back then. It wasn't just, you know, like I said, a lot of the blue chips were very highly valued back then. We don't have that today. You're right. Maybe that could be.
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A
So we've got a clear path forward, a fork in the road if you will. Ben of on the one hand you have rate cuts coming, you have the AI trade working and also you have a potential broadening out of the market. All very bullish. On the other hand, in the real world you do have a slowing labor market. That's a fact.
- [10:11]
B
Housing market activity, recession still.
- [10:14]
A
And you do have the one time, but whatever. One time, one time. The impact of tariff prices of tariff pushing prices up and on top of the 30% cumulative inflation or whatever the number is. Obviously it varies that we've seen over the past five years. How much more can the consumer handle? So there's a push and pull.
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B
Okay. You're not mad that we're talking about this again?
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A
I feel like we're synthesizing. Ben.
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B
Okay.
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A
We're tying a bow on it.
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B
Matt and the team at exhibit A did something about the S and P performance following rate cuts. They went back to the 1950s and it's kind of funny because they look at the 12 month forward returns from the start of a rate cut cutting cycle and it's essentially average. It's 9.7% or something, 8.7. It's. It's essentially average and they look at the drawdowns and it doesn't really tell you all that much. Nah, I've looked at a lot of these. So many market stats, if you look at enough of them essentially tell you that it's about average most of the time things go up.
- [11:19]
A
But that's happening. Yes. That's why I really appreciate all the work that Ryan does and I say his work all the time. When you see the psychology of the market doing one thing and you look at the backtest and you see that that is always or usually very often quite bullish. Like, that's the stuff that I fall back on that I take seriously. Because the psychology of the market, everything changes all the time. The makeup of it, the fundamentals, this, that, but the psychology in the market really is. It's always the same.
- [11:50]
B
I know we had just had a mini bear market in April. I really think that we could use like a double correction year. It just since the bottom, it has felt way too easy for people. I feel like a slap on the wrist would be actually healthy here.
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A
Yeah, we. I mean, we got two tiny pullbacks, but we have gone sideways for. I mean, I know we broke out on Friday, but we went sideways for a couple of weeks.
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B
A couple of weeks?
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A
I know, man. I don't know.
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B
I guess that's how cycles are these days.
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A
We paused for a minute.
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B
All right, so I had chart kid Matt, I think you put something on slack the other day that he was, he was working with you on Sunday. For some reason I had this in my head that I wanted to see something on a Saturday. And this kid is sending me off charts on his way to Alex Palumbo's house, who we work with, who's having a pool party. Apparently. We didn't get the invite.
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A
No breaks. Yeah, no, that's okay. We were old.
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B
So he did value versus growth rolling three year periods. This is just S&P value versus S&P growth. And it's excess. Which one is underperforming, which one is outperforming? And value had a pretty decent run in the 2000s and it had a little blip coming out of the pandemic. And now growth is just kind of. And so do you think that the lack of recessions is actually one of the things that has hurt value investing? Because it tends to be those pivot points in the economic cycle where value tends to come back. And I wonder if one of the reasons that value, quote unquote, died, and obviously it's not dead, it works sometimes, but it doesn't work nearly as much as it used to. The fact that we've had longer economic cycles, I think, is that one of the reasons that value investing has stopped working so well.
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A
I think it has more to do with growth and less to do with value. And I also think it depends, like when you say value, which. Which value are you talking about? So I made this chart Because I saw you put this in here. I made this chart of the iShares, e.g. s&P 500 value ETF versus just the S and P plane. And over the last five years the S&P is up 103% and the value version was up 95%. So barely, that is surprising. Barely any difference at all. And then I said okay, well what is actually even in The S&P 500?
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B
I was wondering, is the S and P value actually a.
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A
So these are the top three names. Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. Right now four through ten looks a little more traditional value I suppose. ExxonMobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, JP Morgan, bank of America, Chevron. But it really, it depends what type of value you talking about. Like deep value. You talking about stocks that are trading like left for dead. Which value stocks you talking about? You talking about small cap value.
- [14:26]
B
So I, I just wonder if this is, and this is obviously large cap value. So that's, that's part of the problem. Probably been the hardest place to, to find anything. I've done work in the past where I've shown that commodities you want to use not as a really long term buy and hold, but more of a trend following thing because when it works, it really works. And when it doesn't work, it can go nowhere for years. And you almost want to have it be more of a trend following model. I wonder if value is reaching a point and this is just in the U.S. i think because we've shown it still works internationally. If in the US if value is more of a trend following thing like when you, when it finally starts working, you want to be in, but it doesn't work as much as it used to.
- [15:06]
A
All right, so this is really good timing. I was reading Adam Parker's research note this morning and again it has more to do with growth. I think this conversation and less to do with value because value stocks have disappeared, at least according to Adam. So they look at the S&P50, the mega caps, and he said we have a proprietary style model that labels stocks as growth value or middle ground. We call neither based on several factors at the end of each month. Below we show the percentage of mega cap market cap that falls into the growth or value categories. From 2003 to 2014, the percentage of market cap among the top 50 stocks was fairly equally split between growth value and neither. Today, 77% of the mega cap universe is growth. Only 3.9% is value. Wow, isn't that wild?
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B
Look at this chart and the value was as high as say 45% or so.
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A
Yeah, they used to be neck and neck. So again it's growth. It just. Nvidia. I mean this is the boring part that we just talk about every freaking week.
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B
But yeah, just ate everything.
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A
It had everything. Here's another, another thing on growth.
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B
But this is, this is a US only phenomenon.
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A
Correct.
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B
There's still a ton of value stocks in the rest of the world and value strategies have outperformed overseas.
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A
And another reason why historical comparisons that people have been making or trying to make about the Cape ratio and this and that, they just, it doesn't work. And here's why. Buco Capital tweeted crazy stat from Instacart that highlights the moat these ZIRP era companies have. Quote, it took us 100 million orders before we were able to get to positive unit economics. Nobody is going to fund a new competitor. The battle will be won by the current players on the field. That's buko. It's unbelievable. Like the impact of zero interest rates on the companies that Silicon Valley was underwriting completely changed the playing field.
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B
It is pretty amazing that these investors, I mean obviously it's an illiquid investment. They'd have a choice. Are just so willing to sit that long too to wait for this to play out.
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A
Well it were. They were winning.
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B
I know but I'm saying they, but they didn't have like, like he said, positive unit economics. They're, they're sitting on losses forever and.
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A
Ever and ever because just remember the, the era like this is a little bit later but raising a new round was a sign of success. It was just more and more and more and more because it was all about scale and nobody cared about the bottom line. It was all about scale. And for the companies like Instacart and, and Dash, Doordash like they won there, there are no, there are no more competitors because building out that three sided marketplace in this example, impossible.
- [17:57]
B
Well, there's some competitors. It's just, it's two or three. It's an oligopoly now instead of a monopoly. Right. Because it's whatever Uber eats and Doordash and Instacart. And it is kind of crazy though how our, our behavioral patterns have just changed because people would have thought ah, this stuff will go away. People aren't going to keep paying for this stuff. We had 9% inflation. People kept paying for this stuff.
- [18:18]
A
I said to Josh last week doordash is the company that I think I've.
- [18:21]
B
Been most wrong On, Yeah, people just prefer convenience and people complain and they'll put the receipts up online and stuff, but they still do it. All right. Investors love options. This is from Dungeon at the Wall Street Journal. Call option volume across all US stocks and ETFs hit the second highest level in history, almost 47 million contracts. And she shows this thing is just up and to the right and this is just this decade alone. How much of this is speculation? How much of this is like people have just gotten really in on the yield thing? Because I want to talk about the yield thing in a minute. But why do you think this is the case? Do you think it's more speculation?
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A
So it's both. I feel like we do this a lot, you and I, and I'm not pointing fingers at you because I do it too. Do we think it's this or that? It's both. In the case of a lot of questions that we ask, it is a combination of the yield Max Degens and the Boomer Candy investors. Right. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's all of it. But yeah, people love it. People love trading it, people love packaging and ETFs and people love buying that. So it's everything.
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B
Yeah, you're right. It's 6th of 1/2 of the other. Okay. Jeff Patak, friend of the show, always sends us good research. He did something on the yieldmax etf. So if we talked about a couple weeks ago and we got some emails from people saying, hey, listen, I do this with like 5 or 10% of my portfolio, I think I'm going with my eyes wide open. He says, Jeff says this is smoke and mirrors. So he did this, this thing where he looked at the yield Max ETF for Tesla and Coinbase and Nvidia and he compared it to just owning the stock itself and owning it 67% in the stock and 33% in cash and rebalancing an occasion and essentially you would have done better just owning 2/3 of the position of stock in cash as opposed to owning this option strategy. You see these charts?
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A
So the red line is what? The red line.
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B
Red line is the red line is actually owning 2/3 of the stock and one third in cash. And the blue line is owning the income ETF strategy and paying fees and then paying taxes on that income as well.
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A
The Nvidia one is actually pretty close.
- [20:31]
B
Yeah. So this isn't owning just a stock. This is Right, owning a two thirds position. So he says the yield on these ETFs that they tout appears to be a financial sleight of hand. The manager more or less chooses the monthly or weekly distribution rate it looks it likes. Then it's so he's just saying that, like, the income can be so high that the only reason that these ETFs have done okay is because the stock's done okay, but the income is essentially an illusion. So he says. Yield Max is declaring extremely large distributions for shock and awe. Though a number of the stocks that they've chosen have done well, it's been insufficient to fund the distributions. Investors are flocking to these products for yield. But in reality, whatever return the ETFs derive is likely to come mainly from the stock with a bit of volatility dampening from the option writing they do. That is it's not an income story. So the yields look great, but if these stocks stopped going up, you wouldn't be able to get them as much. The total return would be way worse. So you're better off just owning these stocks.
- [21:31]
A
Yeah. And I don't think you could dissuade people from buying this. Like, I think, I think for this in particular, again, we, we do, we've done the story, but some people know, some people don't. You get burned once, you probably won't touch the stove again.
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B
Right? Yeah. So it. So once these stocks do have a problem, but these strategies aren't going to look as good.
- [21:52]
A
Okay. Fidelity did a story. 2025, State of the American Investor. Some good stuff in here. All right. They looked at people that are over 18, 2007 adults, household income of $25,000 or more, at least $25,000 of investable assets. The only wrinkle in here is that the survey was conducted by an outside company not affiliated with fidelity from April 15 to April 24. So perhaps skewed some of the answers. That was obviously post Liberation Day. The market was crashing. But either way, a lot of the results jive with what I would have expected the results to be. So investors with more experience express less optimism compared to newer investors. And they ask the question, my portfolio will perform better than it did in the last 12 months. Which, by the way, I like that they disclose that because oftentimes we're like, what was the question? Right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So there it was. And people with zero to five years of experience, 56%, responded in the affirmative, compared with only 34% for people with 11 plus years of experience. Why do you think newer investors always, always and forever are more optimistic than experienced investors?
- [23:16]
B
Well, especially in recent years, it makes a lot of sense because things have done so well.
- [23:24]
A
I get my answer.
- [23:25]
B
Hope springs eternal.
- [23:27]
A
Well, but seasoned investors can have hope. Here's what I think it is.
- [23:31]
B
I'm actually surprised that more seasoned investors are this pessimistic. Or do you think it's just because things have gone so well that they assume, well, this can't go on forever.
- [23:39]
A
We've seen this before, perhaps, but I think that this is less sensitive to today's market. I think it's. I think it would always look like this for the most part. And the reason why is because, as we know, bear markets suck and they. They, like, ruin our psychology forever. And the longer you're invested, the more likely you are to experience a gigantic drawdown and the less tolerant you are of taking excessive risk.
- [24:09]
B
And your expectations are just out of whack. If you haven't invested very much, you assume true. I can. Yeah, I can get these crazy returns and I'm the next Warren Buffett.
- [24:18]
A
And it also very much drives with just older people's mentality versus younger people across literally everything. Younger people are more optimistic. Right. They have a long Runway.
- [24:30]
B
Yeah. You have your whole life ahead of you. Anything is possible.
- [24:33]
A
Exactly.
- [24:34]
B
That's why this is why a midlife crisis happens. I've read many books about this, that you get to midlife and you realize, like, hey, this stuff that I thought would happen to me, I'm not a Congressman, I'm not a CEO. Like, what the heck? Yeah, but when you're in your 20s, you go, I'm going to be a Congress. I'm going to be a CEO. Of course.
- [24:51]
A
All right. Newer investors are more familiar with advanced income generation strategies, while tenured investors are more familiar with more traditional strategies. So look at covered calls, for example, green is the younger people. So 43% of younger people or investors are familiar with covered call strategies versus just 33% of older ones.
- [25:16]
B
It is funny because you would assume a covered call strategy typically would not be a great thing for a younger investor. No.
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A
You're capping your upside.
- [25:25]
B
Yeah. You're capping your upside. And it's for people who won't need help with experiencing volatility. I guess it makes sense. But typically for a younger person, you'd think you'd want to be more aggressive. And that's. That's not an aggressive strategy.
- [25:35]
A
No. Anything else?
- [25:37]
B
Chicken. What do you call it? Chicken Equity.
- [25:39]
A
Chicken. Yeah, Chicken equity. Older people. No. No interest in crypto assets. Just 23% compared to 56% for younger investors.
- [25:53]
B
Okay. So we had this conversation on Slack last week about how a lot of traditional finance people still just absolutely hate crypto. Right. And they see anything about crypto and they can't stand it. And part of that is having just missed out, I think, and like, don't understand it. Never going to be involved.
- [26:15]
A
Also the. Also the behavior of the. Have fun staying poor people.
- [26:18]
B
Yes.
- [26:18]
A
I think that scams and the rug.
- [26:19]
B
I think part of it, too.
- [26:20]
A
And FTX and the ideological beliefs of a lot of these people turn people off, which, you know, same.
- [26:29]
B
Yeah.
- [26:30]
A
So in that vein, they say how Americans currently invest, and of course, it's cash and individual stocks, mutual funds, CDs. CDs. Interesting. Cryptocurrency are behind CDs.
- [26:42]
B
So it's kind of funny that these retirement reports like this. In the past, it would be a couple on a sailboat or a couple on a beach.
- [26:50]
A
Not retirement. Not retirement. For the record.
- [26:52]
B
Well, okay, but these kind of finance things. But all the pictures in this show people on their phone, on their laptop. You never would have seen these kind of pictures in the past. Every one of them is someone who's looking at their. Their screen.
- [27:05]
A
But. But here's the. All right, but why are options only 5%? Wonder how this is worded that.
- [27:13]
B
Yeah, because it's so much. So much bigger. Now.
- [27:15]
A
That's maybe. But this, when we talk about, like, different platforms, whether it's Fidelity or Schwab or Robin Hood.
- [27:20]
B
Yeah. Maybe it's just not used as much there.
- [27:22]
A
This also jumped out to me. Only 7% are not.
- [27:26]
B
That makes sense to me, though. Right?
- [27:27]
A
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just affirming the opportunity that we, that we talk about for these larger companies. So there you have it.
- [27:34]
B
What's your grand takeaway here?
- [27:37]
A
My big takeaway are that I think this group, this cohort of younger investors, genuinely looks very different than previous generations. Even though I just said that there's a lot of things that stay the same. I think that this generation is far more sophisticated, like orders of orders of magnitude than previous young people, myself, myself included. Like, the. The stuff that I was doing when I first started trading is hilarious compared to what these kids are doing today.
- [28:11]
B
I remember I wanted to invest in some Vanguard funds when I first started, and the minimums were like $3,000. I didn't have $3,000 like you. There's no fractional share. I talked to Carl Richards last week. It was on our Talking wealth channel. And I asked him, do you think because he wrote the book the behavior gap. And he had the picture, the illustration that showed the behavior gap, like, right. Investment returns, investor returns. And I said, do you think the behavior gap is shrinking? Shrinking? Because I think it is. And he said, you know what, I talked to a bunch of high school and college students there. My, my kids, friends a couple weeks ago, and all of these kids were talking about their Fidelity and Charles Schwab accounts and how they own index funds and ETFs at like 18 years old because it's so easy for them to do now.
- [28:52]
A
Yeah. I also think that if we were. So the behavior gap is the difference in returns of a fund or any instrument versus what the average investor earns in that fund over the same period of time. And there's usually a gap because of bad behavior and other things. It could be path dependent. But I think that there is a positive behavior gap. Maybe behavior gap is the wrong word. I think a lot of younger investors are absolutely trouncing the market, just destroying it.
- [29:22]
B
Oh yeah, because they've been on just a handful of tech stocks or Bitcoin or.
- [29:25]
A
Yeah, so. And. And then the other takeaway from, from for me is that not only are younger investors much more sophisticated, but they are much more brazen and embrace risk. Like, wild for people that think that, like, they're just going to disappear after the next bear market. I would remind you we keep saying this. Did you not see 2022? Were you not around during the massacre of the first quarter of 2025? And yes, granted they all were. Were relatively short in duration, but these kids are not going anywhere.
- [29:58]
B
All right, well, one of the reasons is because the way that we invest is totally changed. So this Onvest in substack had a piece about how people invested before the Internet.
- [30:07]
A
What substack is this? I'm not familiar with this.
- [30:09]
B
I'd never heard of it before either. Tata's linked to this on abnormal returns.
- [30:13]
A
And on vest on Onvest on. Okay.
- [30:18]
B
Yeah. So they talk about how in the 90s commissions were like $50 a trade. And they were saying most people paid something like $500 in commissions alone. And for a smaller account, you have $10,000. We're talking like decent sized percentage of the portfolio. This was an interesting piece too. Though the 90s retail investor operated in an environment of severe informational disadvantage. Professional research was largely the domain of institutional investors and wealthy individuals who could afford premium services. Most retail investors relied on newspaper financial sections, monthly magazines like Money or Forbes, and basic broker reports that often arrive days or weeks. After institutional investors had already acted on the same information. Real time market data was expensive and difficult to access. Basically saying that like these retail investors were investing blind, making decisions on like past information. And now there's so much more at your fingertips today. Models and research and daily up to the minute data that they just didn't have in the past. And it's funny, that's, I think one of the big reasons that institutions are having such a harder time outperforming. Did you read the Michael Steinhardt book before?
- [31:18]
A
Yeah.
- [31:19]
B
Like one of the ways he made a ton of money was just like using these brokers. He. And he's had an advantage over everyone else because he was like the first one and he was bullying these brokers like the way that he made money. He couldn't do that today.
- [31:32]
A
Correct.
- [31:33]
B
And it just, it's a totally level playing field. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, I mean that's, that's such, such a big advantage for, for individual investors today to just be able to open your phone, link your bank account, put money in and trade and not have to write a check at a brick and mortar building and then have them pay buy it for you and pay like a fee to buy it. It's so much easier. All right, it appears that the sell us trade was really a one month thing. Torsten Slack did a chart of this and he looked at treasuries and equities and corporate bonds and there was definitely some sales in April from foreigners. And then it just reversed and went back because he looked at this by month, April, May, June, and there was a decent outflow and then the money came rushing right back in.
- [32:20]
A
So not the end of American exceptionalism.
- [32:22]
B
Turns out for a month it was. Yeah, that's it.
- [32:26]
A
All right, this is interesting. Some good news.
- [32:29]
B
The big American exceptionalism thing is I've said this before, that we buy the diploma. Yeah, that's like the optimistic part. Like we rush in when that's the American exceptionalism thing. That. Right.
- [32:43]
A
So good news on the inflation front. McDonald's is lowering their prices. So this is from the Journal. After pitching operators on the plan, McDonald's and its US franchisees agreed to keep the cost of eight popular combo meals 15% below the sum of the individuals items prices. According to the company. The chain will also run $5 breakfast and $8 Big Mac and McNugget combo meal specials latest year. So we spoke about quick service AKA fast food last week versus sit down places. And I thought like maybe when the prices of those things Converge when you could buy a Chipotle bowl for $14 or sit down at a proper Mexican place and get a $17 meal. Like, you'll just sit down. But I think, I don't think that's true. I think these are just different customers. Like you're not, you're not replacing one with the other. Maybe when fast food gets too expensive, you just, you know, bring up, bring your own food or something like that. But either way, I was on quarter and I said, show me a chart of McDonald's same store sales growth in the US so it did that and then it gave me a quote inside the transcript. So I clicked on the quote and these tools are just magical. We'll talk more about this later in a second. So the CEO of McDonald's said, overall QSR traffic in the US remained challenging as visits across the industry. So anyway, I'm sorry, I forgot one major part. Same store sales growth for McDonald's was negative for four quarters. Like they were getting smoked because people were like this. This doesn't make sense. More, I can't shop at McDonald's. All right?
- [34:25]
B
Not us. We're still going to McDonald's. My son loves that place.
- [34:30]
A
Overall QSR traffic in the US remain challenging as visits across the industry by low income consumers once again declined by double digits versus the prior year period. So that's it. Low income consumers declined by double digits. So they're getting hit really hard by these price increases. They said re engaging the low income consumer is critical as they typically visit our restaurants more frequently. The middle and high income consumers. Yeah, that's the story.
- [34:59]
B
I mean, I already said the solution is you have the app on your phone. 20% off of anything over $10.
- [35:04]
A
Yeah. All right. A good take on what AI is going to do to the job market. Seth Godin Since I was born, humans have created 6 billion jobs. All while technology relentlessly disrupts existing industries. The pin making machine replaced the handcrafted pin. The ox pulled plow replaced millions of hours of backbreaking work. The amplification and electronic distribution of music upended the work of the live musician. And the camera replaced countless portrait artists. The Internet destroyed the travel agent industry and Grammarly and Photoshop turned fine editing jobs into low paid gig work. Then he goes on to say, when the web arrived, many of the projects I had built as a book package or some at great cost became obsolete. It didn't seem to me that I could do much about this though, arguing that I was entitled to have people buy the information. Please Business Almanac instead of looking stuff up online wasn't going to work. It's entirely possible that a magical AI will replace every single human job and then destroy the Earth, but it's far more likely that the pattern of the last 500 years will continue.
- [36:12]
B
I absolutely agree. All right, you want to talk about this Cracker Barrel thing?
- [36:16]
A
I do for a second.
- [36:17]
B
So wait, can I, can I zag and just say I like the new logo? I don't really feel, I don't really say that, but I feel like no one's on that corner, so I just want to put my plant my flag there.
- [36:25]
A
I like that. It's a good Zach. So we don't have Cracker Barrels here.
- [36:29]
B
Oh, really?
- [36:30]
A
Yeah, I, I, I looked it up. Where's the closest one? They have ones, like in Megapin, upstate New York, but there's none by me. So I am entirely unfamiliar with this restaurant. Slash.
- [36:43]
B
Okay. I've been to one like five or six times, I guess. Good breakfast food. I would like to know how many people are upset about the logo, have actually gone to a Cracker Barrel in their life.
- [36:52]
A
So the story was they changed their logo and the stock just got pummeled down 15%.
- [36:59]
B
It's hilarious, right? Is it really going to change things?
- [37:05]
A
But the, it's, it's funny how the investor base has become so important to the fundamentals of these stocks. Like, look no further than what Eric Jackson is doing with open. You investors can genuinely change the trajectory of a company's fundamentals if there's more liquidity. If they could do secondaries, it gives them more optionality. I hate that word. This is an obvious structural change in the market. This did not exist prior to 2020.
- [37:36]
B
Right. Like, it changes the fundraising structure of.
- [37:38]
A
A company not going away.
- [37:41]
B
So is Cracker Barrel going to change the logo back? They have to, right? It is funny to see how open arms people get about logos. I guess it doesn't really bother me one way or the other, but people get really mad about this stuff.
- [37:54]
A
Yeah. And other news that people are still mad about, I think, I think FTX really just nuked the average investor appetite for crypto. Because I saw this chart going around and we spoke about this with Tom keeps saying, like, really? Nobody cares about crypto outside the crypto people. So dtap Cap tweeted, which of the following cryptocurrencies do you hold? This is from Morgan Stanley. And I don't know exactly who is served here, but whatever, it doesn't really matter. 82% do not hold any cryptocurrencies.
- [38:26]
B
Huh. Okay. You're right. It does feel like much of the cheerleading is still coming from inside the industry.
- [38:32]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if like they're gaslighting us into thinking that everybody owns it or that it's, you better own it before it's too late. But I listen to strategy's earnings call over the weekend.
- [38:45]
B
Wait, do you think a lot of people just getting beyond the. Okay, I don't understand it. I'm never going to get it. I'm not going invest. I'm too old to get this. Are there a lot of people who go, I missed. It's a huge run up happened. I missed it. I can't buy now. Schmuck.
- [39:00]
A
Yeah. So as we said, I think it's a combination of obviously that sour grapes and people think it's a scam. And if you missed it and you're mad, then you definitely think it's a scam.
- [39:07]
B
Right, Right.
- [39:07]
A
Just like human nature. So I listened to Michael Sailor and this was the first time, I believe, because I've listened to one before and they didn't do it. I believe this is the first time they opened it up to questions. Usually it's just a presentation. So it was two hours. And I gotta say, it's impressive. Like he knows exactly what he's doing. And it is, I think strategy is one of the most fascinating areas of the market. What he's doing. Collateralizing crypto is interesting. So here's a quote from Fong Li, who is our president and CEO. He said, our objective is to be the largest treasury company in the world, not just the largest bitcoin treasury company in the world. If you take our bitcoin holdings and compare it to cash and short term investments of companies in the s and P500, we are currently number five. Today I could see us being in a place by the end of the year or in the next year or so where we're number two and we pass the mag seven. And I'd see us, I'd like to see us be in a place in three to five years where we could surpass Berkshire Hathaway's $348 billion of capital and thus having the largest capital base in the world based on bitcoin. So how are we going to do that? We're going to do that primarily through tapping the preferred market. So a lot of the call was about their strategy shifting. They used to do these convertible notes. Now they're doing preferred equity. And I understand most people Are like, this is nonsense. This is so dumb. This is financial engineering. It's a house of cards. And I understand where people are coming from, but I don't know, I don't know that. Listen, it worked. I don't know if it's going to work forever. I can't see the future. But I think that people are still not giving enough credit to what he's doing.
- [40:49]
B
How big would the treasury holdings have to be where this company itself could actually impact the bitcoin at large and lead to a downfall at some point? Kind of like if Nvidia messes up, that could bring in all the other AI stocks. Isn't it the same thing with bitcoin? Potentially.
- [41:04]
A
I don't think they're getting margin called. I don't know. That's how this works.
- [41:07]
B
Not margin called but just they aren't able to raise money anymore or something or there's enough competitors where it dilutes it and they can't get as big as they want to.
- [41:16]
A
So I, I think the, I think the big risk for them in crypto is they are buying so much of it all of the time that if there is a not if, when there is a risk off event for whatever reason, stocks go down, bitcoin goes down, everything goes down and investors appetite for more risk taking wanes and they're not able to raise more money and just the amount of demand for Bitcoin goes down then yeah, sure that's a risk obviously. But listen to this quote from Michael Saylor himself. Most of the world is unable to access the crypto economy. And so what we are doing is refining and we're harnessing the power of the bitcoin asset and we're able to actually refine it into low volatility, low leverage, less risky financial products and then higher volatility, higher leverage financial products. So just like you might refine a barrel of crude oil into kerosene which would be very, very pure in asphalt, which is not so much. We're basically providing a function that say an ETF cannot provide. You can see I bet the most famous example here in this chart. It basically wraps Bitcoin and it serves up a security flavor of raw Bitcoin to the investment community. We on the other hand are offering step down elements of convertible bonds, convertible preferred stock, senior fixed stock, junior high yield preferred stock, and of course this treasury preferred stock in the form of stretch which is one of their things, one of their, one of their new preferred equities. And those in essence we're stripping and modifying the duration of the asset. And we're also stepping down the volatility of the asset and we're actually extracting the yield from the asset, which is Bitcoin, and we're serving it to each of these fixed income investors. But the excess yield, excess volatility, excess performance, that does not go into those fixed income instruments goes into the micro strategy common stock. And then of course that feeds to the micro strategy based ETFs and the options. So all of these are different instruments. They're all targeted at different types of investors. They're all, some, some of them off a yield, some of them off a return. So then they dive into it and listen. I, I hear myself reading that and I hear the average listener be like, what the. Yeah, exactly. Like, just stop, stop. I can't take it.
- [43:24]
B
This is something that sounds way smarter in a bull market. And when a bear market happens, you go, of course, of course this fell apart. Of course, it was a house of cards.
- [43:31]
A
All right, so, but you're to your.
- [43:34]
B
Point, credit, where credit is due, that they, they pulled this off.
- [43:37]
A
These are, these are the opposite of dumb people. I'm telling you. They, their deck is impressive. Their reasoning might sound cuckoo, but they said what they were going to do, they did it. The market cap is $112 billion. A lot of that is a premium that they were able to generate based on all these different instruments. And I get it, I get why people hate it, but it's working.
- [44:01]
B
However, backs up like 2000% since 2023.
- [44:04]
A
Yeah. So say whatever you want. It's the best performing stock in the world. All right, but that being said, is it running out of steam here? So look at this chart. Year to date, Bitcoin is up 24.5%. It's been on a pretty epic run in 2025, would you agree?
- [44:22]
B
Not bad. Yeah.
- [44:23]
A
And yet strategy formerly known as MicroStrategy is not keeping pace. MicroStrategy hasn't made a new high all year. Hold on, let me just confirm. MicroStrategy, yeah, MicroStrategy made a new high or last minute high in November 2024. So why is strategy only keeping pace with Bitcoin? Why is it not made a new high since 2024? Why is it 20% off its highs? And then look at Mara, for example, which is the second largest bitcoin treasury company. It's down 3% year to date. So it's not working the way that they would want it to in this type of environment.
- [45:09]
B
They Pulled forward a lot of returns. How about that?
- [45:11]
A
Yeah, maybe huge premium.
- [45:14]
B
And that premium had to come in eventually anyway.
- [45:17]
A
I won't bore the investors or the listeners every week with this, I promise. But I am going to be paying close attention to this. And yeah, I'm a listener. The calls are very, very interesting. And the guy is colorful to say the least. And not an idiot. The opposite of an idiot.
- [45:34]
B
Man. He sounds like a preacher to me though. Yeah, he sounds more like a preacher than a CEO.
- [45:39]
A
Yeah.
- [45:41]
B
And bitcoin crypto itself is kind of does have religious undertones to it, so it makes sense. All right, real estate, this is good news.
- [45:50]
A
Logan Motorshami has a chart showing the spread between the 30 year mortgage rate and the 10 year Treasury. And he's got this sweet line chart showing year to date in 2025 versus 24 and 23. And there's like a 2.2% spread which is lower than it's been at this point in the year in a couple of years. So the question is, all right, well yeah, the Fed's going to cut rates, but there is also inflation and expectations of inflation picking up. So what if the overnight rate goes from four and a quarter down to four? It doesn't mean that long term rates are going to come down because if inflation expectations keep longer term rates high and guess what, mortgage rates are going to stay.
- [46:35]
B
People keep saying that because last time when The Fed cut 50 basis points, mortgage rates went up and it was kind of ridiculous how exactly to the date like Fed cut rates go up. But don't you think the, the slowing labor market might have a say in this as well? We're in a different economic environment than we were then. I know people are worried about inflation picking up and but even the Fed themselves have said, listen, if we get tariff based inflation, it's going to be a one time thing. I'm surprised how easily they're sweeping that aside. Like ah, it's just a one time price. Like I don't know that still matters. But it doesn't it seem like a slowing labor market could have a say here on rates falling in.
- [47:13]
A
You would think.
- [47:14]
B
Yeah. I had a little back and forth with Logan last night because Zero Hedge tweeted this thing that said adjustable rate mortgages climbed to 41% of total mortgages held by US banks, surpassing the previous all time high of 38% during the global financial crisis. So everyone says, oh my gosh, we're doing arms again that like it's going to be housing market crash I said Logan, there's no way that's that high. And he sent me a chart that shows arms are 8% of the total or something.
- [47:38]
A
So what's the, what's driving the Delta as they say?
- [47:44]
B
I, I mean because so many people got into fixed rate mortgages.
- [47:46]
A
Like no, no, I'm saying how come Zero hedge are showing 41% and Logan is showing 8?
- [47:51]
B
I'm not exactly sure what. I'm sure it's something to do with the bank balance sheets being different now than they were then. But the point is that the actual ARMS held by borrowers is still very small. And it was, it was almost like 40% in the last crash and now it's below 10. So I think people wisened up and realized like we're not doing this again. Especially when fixed rate mortgages, it's just, it's the best deal there is. It's a lot of other countries. Yes, a 30 year fixed rate mortgage is one of the best thing that's ever happened to American consumers because a lot of other countries have variable rates. Although someone, one of our listeners, Adam in Canada sent me the Canadian mortgage rates. Right now they're, they're like in the fours because they are tied directly because they're variable rates there directly to the, in Canada has been cutting rates.
- [48:35]
A
Yeah.
- [48:35]
B
All right. The real estate industry is impervious to change. I'm becoming more and more convinced in this fact. This is one area where technology will never ever, ever change the industry.
- [48:47]
A
Okay, you're fired up. Talk to it.
- [48:49]
B
They had this big thing, this is in the Wall Street Journal, remember, they had this big settlement how realtor fees have got to be. We can't continue to charge people make the, the seller pay the commission for the buyer. We can't do that anymore. We're breaking it up. So we're going to have flat fees in for Realtors and people are gonna be able to negotiate and those fees are gonna come down. And guess what? Average commission rates went up. They said people like why? They said it's just a very durable industry and people, buyers like are scared to negotiate. They just take whatever deal is given them and they, they don't want like no one, you have the ability to do this now. No one wants to. People are just staying with status quo. I don't think you can disrupt this industry. If it hasn't happened yet. It's never going to happen.
- [49:32]
A
Yeah, I think you're probably right. So you're not buying open door by the way. Holy cow.
- [49:43]
B
But the Thing is, has anyone talked about, like Opendoor's actual home purchasing process in this thing or are they just talking meme stocks?
- [49:49]
A
No, Eric is. He's talking about the business, but either way, the stock went from. When did he first tweet about it? It was like 80 cents. It's at $5.
- [50:01]
B
Yeah, it's going crazy. And I don't know, it was 20 before it crashed, so it's bouncing off lows. But like, for a business model perspective, call me a non believer still that this is going to change the way people buy and sell houses.
- [50:13]
A
I don't even know what their business model is. Is it still straight eye buying? I'm sure there's other, there's other parts to it at this point either way. All right, let's move on. All right, Jason Zweig wrote an article. The Ivy League keeps failing this basic investing test. On average, in 2024, educational endowments with more than $5 billion in assets held 2% in cash, 6% in bonds, 8% in the US stocks, and 16% in international stocks. That's interesting. Twice as much international stocks. Okay, so where's the other 70% ish.
- [50:52]
B
Private equity venture capital, hedge funds.
- [50:54]
A
That's right, Ben. Jason wrote, the lesson is so simple, even Ivy Leaguers should be able to understand it. In good times, investors give no thought to liquidity because cash is plentiful and the need for it is impressing. In hard times, liquidity becomes the only thing investors can think about because cash is scarce and the need for it is desperate. Note that this retrenchment is recurring amid one of the biggest bull markets in history. Just imagine how hard it would be for these institutions to raise cash if public markets were crashing, as in 08 or 09, or if interest rates were skyrocketing, as in 2022. How did this happen? This is all just Yale, right?
- [51:28]
B
I saw it happening in real time when I was heavy into the endowment world. And yes, it was all Yale. You're right. They saw Yale, they saw Harvard doing this, and they said, we have to do this too.
- [51:39]
A
This is like the worst example of groupthink ever.
- [51:42]
B
Oh, yeah, it is. And it's total groupthink. They get together at these conferences and they all talk about, oh, shoot, they're doing this too. We have to do this. And you're right. If these, if they actually have to raise real cash for operations at these.
- [51:53]
A
Universities, like, what a joke.
- [51:54]
B
They're gonna have to, like, borrow money.
- [51:56]
A
Well, they did, so. They wrote about that in the article. That these companies, a lot of these endowments were borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars, even sitting on top of 10 billion in some cases much higher endowments. It's, it's, it's mental.
- [52:07]
B
It's, it's such a big amount in private, it's on. And the whole idea was, well, listen, we're, we don't need liquidity, we're investing for perpetuity. But like the colleges and universities need this money. Some at some point, like you have to have some, some sort of liquidity management. It, it's, I, I was banging my head against the wall having conversations with these people back in the day and I still don't get. And guess what? Not everyone can be David Swenson. Not everyone can be Yale. And now that there's so many of them in there, obviously the returns have come in as well.
- [52:39]
A
Yeah. All right. Earlier we spoke about the price pressures, hitting lower income consumers harder, obviously. Walmart reported last week and they said that same store sales grew 4.6%, which is pretty damn impressive, reflecting ongoing share gains across key categories and all income cohorts with upper income households contributing to the largest gains. Duh. But as we replenish inventory at post tariff price levels, we've continued to see our costs increase each week, which we expect will continue into the third and fourth quarter. This is Walmart. This is a big company. That's not great. You don't like to hear that. Not surprisingly, we see more adjustments in middle and lower income households than we do with higher income households. Yeah. So that's going to be a continued story through the rest of the year.
- [53:30]
B
So Sam Rowe has this joke where he says if Walmart's earnings are bad, it's bad for the economy because low income consumers are doing bad. But if Walmart's earnings are good, it's bad for the economy because it means people are trading down to Walmart. This, this is going to sound very inconsiderate of me, but the low income segment, as far as the economy goes, doesn't really matter anymore.
- [53:49]
A
Well, it certainly doesn't matter. No, no, no, it's not inconsiderate because we're not talking about people and of course they matter. We're talking about the stock market and how this impacts the stock market.
- [53:59]
B
Right. This doesn't matter. The top 20% are driving almost all the spending and that's for the economy that matters more. You could say, well, it's a canary in a coal mine type of thing. But for the economy, no.
- [54:08]
A
Yeah, it matters in real Life. But for the stock market. What was that stat from Savita that we mentioned a couple of months ago? The bottom 20% contribute 20 basis points of earnings to the S&P 500.
- [54:18]
B
Oh, I never saw that one. That's pretty good. Okay, good one. From the Wall Street Journal today, this is the lead. Lisa and Anthony Deli are saving about a thousand dollars a month for a seven year old daughter, Zoe. The money isn't for college tuition or summer camp or medical expenses. It is to support her once she is an otherwise independent adult. About 60% of parents with children 18 to 34 say they helped their kids financially in the previous year, according to Pew. And they go through a bunch of examples in this piece. And I think this is actually just a thing now. And we get questions all the time in our inbox from people saying, hey, listen, beyond, I'm not talking about 529 or HSA. How do I actually save for my kids for the future? And I opened up, I did a liftoff account and I put one in each of my kids names as well. And I thought about this same thing. When they get out of school and they need an apartment or they're paying off student loans or they got their first car payment or maybe a wedding or something, it probably makes sense to save for them. And a lot of people are realizing that because of the rising cost of housing and these things, like they're probably going to have to help their kids eventually. Maybe we should plan for it.
- [55:27]
A
So I've been doing this since my kids were born, but I'm embarrassed. The Lisa and Anthony are saving $1,000 a month.
- [55:36]
B
It's a lot of money.
- [55:37]
A
I'm putting $50 a month.
- [55:39]
B
I think I'm doing like $85 a month for a kid. And but yes, that's, that's a ton of money they're saving obviously. And you hope, hey, the kid's gonna be fine and we won't have to use this money on them. But obviously the, the, the sort of not so good ramification here is that this is just makes wealth inequality worse because the people who can help and have the means do. And a lot of people obviously don't have the means.
- [56:06]
A
I transferred $150 out of Kobe's account last week to pay me back for that ridiculous 350 bills that Robin gave him.
- [56:14]
B
Did you have them pay you for the movie that you rented for him too? But this, this is a real thing people are thinking about now to do.
- [56:24]
A
Good, save for your kids. It's great but yes, of course, the, Listen, the, the capitalism exacerbates income inequality while simultaneously lifting all boats. The boats. The yachts get lifted a lot quicker. It just is. And there's no better solution.
- [56:42]
B
Speaking of yachts, someone sent me a. Someone emailed us under animal spirits account the other day with a picture of a pontoon and it said midwest yacht.
- [56:49]
A
Nice.
- [56:50]
B
That's a pretty good one.
- [56:51]
A
But, but one of the things that it's not to throw your hands up in the air and say you can't do anything. The baby, the. Is it baby bonds? What are we calling them? Yeah, that every baby born gets. Gets. Gets stocks. I love that. Let's do that.
- [57:03]
B
Yeah, I agree. But imagine telling it because there's, there's. I'm sure there are some hardline people that say, hey, once the kid is out of the house and they're 18, they're off the payroll. And I did feel like this in high school. I remember he worked his whole time through high school and he said, When I'm 18, I'm totally off of my parents, everything. And it was like very well known, like, I'm done. And he, it was very stressful for him in high school.
- [57:25]
A
Did he choose that or his parents did.
- [57:26]
B
His parents did. They were like at 18. Listen, you're, you're on your own, man. You, you're out of the house. Find your own place to rent after high school. You're. You're an adult.
- [57:36]
A
I respect that. I will, I will not be doing that to my children, but I do respect that.
- [57:39]
B
Imagine telling a parent that today. Like, sorry, let your kid. And obviously. But no parent. Parents want to do. Will bend over backwards to do whatever they can to help their child succeed. Obviously.
- [57:51]
A
Yeah.
- [57:52]
B
All right, let's do some recommendations.
- [57:56]
A
By the way, Ben, I got bad news for you. The stock market can use a pullback. That's not what happens when stocks breaking out. They don't just pull back. I guess they could, but anything's possible. But massive breath thrust, as they say.
- [58:08]
B
Okay.
- [58:08]
A
On Friday.
- [58:09]
B
I'm just saying a healthy correction would probably be nice, but market doesn't always give you the returns you want or need. Okay. I talked earlier about how much better it is as an investor these days because technology, I think as a consumer of pop culture, it's just. Things are just so much better. So the ringer had this piece on the oral history of the 40 year old virgin. And I feel like in the past you would, we would watch these movies and then not really think of them again. Not do like the deep dives into IMDb. I always do. You always. Do you use IMDb very often or not really. Yeah, like if I say movie, I like, I will go through and look at the trivia and IMDb and so some of this I'd read before, but it was really good. And just thinking through some of the. I mean, this is just sophomore humor. Some people would say, like, how. But they talked about the joke writing process and how Garry Shandling helped with the ending. And there was a certain joke that they tried to figure out, and Adam McKay helped out with it. Reading through, like, Adam McKay said that he. The light bulb thing where they're breaking light bulbs on each other, that he used to do that at his job. So that was his idea. And just to see where the ideas from these jokes come from. The genesis, just the deep dive when you think this is so dumb. But it had such thought into it. I rewatched it. I rewatched this. I think it's on Amazon Prime. It still totally holds up, but it's hard. And they talk in the story about how Seth Goat. Seth Rogen was 22 years old helping produce this movie.
- [59:32]
A
That's crazy. He looked like he was 35.
- [59:34]
B
Yeah, he looked very old. Must be the goatee, which is. You don't see goatees anymore. Right. That is totally a 90s, early 2000 thing that went away.
- [59:42]
A
I was watching 25th Hour last night, and Ed Norden was sporting a very healthy goatee. And I had the exact same thought. Hey, you just don't see this anymore.
- [59:52]
B
Yeah. Ben Stiller was on Marc Maron's podcast just talking about all the comedy movies he did and like, him as a director and how he does severance and just seeing the curtain be opened. Like, this is just really interesting to hear how people think about these things. Anyways, interesting because of the book. I'm. I'm just re watching old stuff because there's nothing good new these days. But you gave me the 1999 book about the best movie year ever, and there's a whole chapter on the office space. So I rewatched it, of course, because I rewatched that movie, like, every few years. So let's say you're an. In a tech employee in 1999. Right.
- [60:27]
A
I'm Michael.
- [60:30]
B
But do you think that, though, like, are those shares worthless now? Or did, like, people become. Oh, yeah, okay.
- [60:35]
A
That company went to zero.
- [60:36]
B
I mean, I know they stole some of the money, but I just. I feel like the. This movie was so much Deeper than I remembered it. The part about where he asks, like, lawrence, what would you do with a million dollars? And that's the funniest line in the movie, right? Two chicks at the same time. But he's. And he asks, peter, what would you do? And he says, nothing. I would do nothing. I would sit there and I would do nothing. And he says, take a look at my cousin. He's broke. Don't do shit. You don't need a million dollars to not do anything. I feel like that was a very, like, well thought out, personal finance happiness sort of analogy that I missed before.
- [61:06]
A
Shout out to Mike Judge.
- [61:08]
B
Yes. Okay. That's all I got.
- [61:11]
A
All right. You just mentioned a lot of podcasts. I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a little bit of a hiatus. Not really, but I'm really leaning into the audiobooks thing. I love it. It makes me feel, like, much more productive. I mean, I feel like half the listen I do is for entertainment purposes. I've listened to every episode that Bill Simmons has put out for the last 10 years, literally. I think I'm good. I get it. Right?
- [61:36]
B
At what point do people become oversaturated on animal spirits, though?
- [61:39]
A
Yeah, that's a fair point. Nobody listens to this cover. Yours. So my listening habits on the podcast side was Simmons, and I listened to Priscilla's podcast and sometimes Zach Lowe and the Town and the Rewatchables, which I will never not listen to, and the Big Picture and Joe and Tracy and Patrick. And I'm a hyper consumer of information in the years. But anyway, I'm leaning to the audiobooks. I really enjoy it. I feel like I'm like, did you sign up?
- [62:10]
B
What's the Amazon thing where you sign up for a Kindle Unlimited or something?
- [62:13]
A
So I just bought credits, so it's pretty cheap. It's like 75 bucks for 10 credits on audible and one book per credit. So $8. Yeah. I feel like it's a new me. I'm excited.
- [62:23]
B
So what's your latest one you're listening to?
- [62:27]
A
This one was on Libby because I told you. I was like, between. Oh, I finished the jab lacers. That was good. I think somebody bought me this book. Somebody bought me. Somebody bought me this physical book called Unstoppable, the Unbelievable true story Siggy Wilzig's astonishing journey from AIT survivor and penniless immigrant to Wall street legend. So, anyway, this is the book that I'm listening to today, but I just feel good when I'm learning and that's.
- [62:52]
B
Another story that'll never happen again today. No, that's probably like a mailroom guy again. He worked up from the mailroom and.
- [62:57]
A
Yeah. So I'm excited.
- [63:00]
B
Okay.
- [63:01]
A
Turning over new leaf, Ben. Until. Until sports betting starts and then I'll be back to Simmons and Priscilla. So I've got three weeks left.
- [63:08]
B
Okay. Anyway to plug here. Now's the time.
- [63:11]
A
No.
- [63:12]
B
All right. Check our talking wealth. We were gonna end up reband from the unlock, right?
- [63:20]
A
Yeah.
- [63:21]
B
All right. I had my Carl Richards one out last week. I think Josh has got one this week. Right? You're going on vacation. You're out of here. I'm going to work. On vacation?
- [63:30]
A
Yeah. I'm not gonna not work. I have. Yeah. Phone calls in the car and et cetera, et cetera.
- [63:35]
B
All right. Animal Spirits, the compoundnews.com, we'll see you next time, Sam.