The Best Stocks in History (EP. 457)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast (Ep. 457) — "The Best Stocks in History"

Date: March 25, 2026
Hosts: Michael Batnick & Ben Carlson
Main Theme: An exploration of market psychology in a turbulent environment, wealth concentration in stock market history, current macroeconomic trends, the behavior of investors, and the enduring value of indexing.

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Episode Overview

Michael and Ben discuss how markets dominate policy, the psychology of investors amidst ongoing geopolitical and economic uncertainty, the distribution of stock market wealth as highlighted by updated Bessembinder research, and how these lessons inform investors. They touch on personal finance, AI's impact in the workplace and education, the evolving housing and auto markets, and close with recommendations and light cultural commentary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Markets and Geopolitics: The Era of Market-Driven Decisions

[03:30-07:00]

• Markets are dictating the timing of major world events and political announcements.
• Example: Military actions and diplomatic news now seem coordinated with market hours.
• Ben: “Markets basically rule everything now. Fair. That’s it, right.” [03:30]
• Michael: “They're the judge and the jury… The market is the regulator.” [04:24]
• Recent market volatility around Middle East tensions highlighted, including rapid swings in oil and equity prices.

Notable Quote

“It's weird that markets are looking past this stuff now… The psychology of the market is really interesting because it's not always like that.”
— Ben Carlson [05:29]

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2. Market Psychology & The ‘Purgatory’ Metaphor

[05:59-07:36]

• Despite bad headlines (war, oil, inflation), markets are not correcting as investors might expect.
• Michael compares the current market to being in purgatory: “Maybe it is just in a perpetual… purgatory.” [06:31]
• Under the surface, many stocks are in bear markets, but large indexes remain relatively stable.

Notable Quote

“40% of the index is in a bear market. So even though it’s not showing up at the index level, under the surface, that doesn't count.”
— Michael Batnick [07:07]

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3. Insider Trading & Market Manipulation Concerns

[07:36-08:42]

• Discussion of “movie plot” trades: outsized futures positions ahead of key political announcements.
• Universally negative view of insider trading; frustration that more isn’t done to stop it.
• Michael: “Nobody likes insider trading.” [08:17]
• Ben: “If it’s a 100% consensus, why doesn't someone get a slap on this?” [08:31]

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4. Making Sense of Wild Markets & The Limits of Macroeconomic Forecasting

[08:46-09:41]

• Ben likens market behavior to unpredictable children: "The market these days... can be a completely different person from one day to the next based on an announcement." [09:29]
• Both agree: Fundamental models struggle in such a rapid-fire, news-driven environment.

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5. ‘Bears Sound Smart, But...’ – Dan McMurtry’s Market Optimism

[09:41-11:17]

• Michael reads a tweet emphasizing society’s inherent bullish bias: billions striving to make things work expands the economy over time.
• “Do not be fooled by the psychological games of people seeking to dominate attention... do not forget that 95% of the world is trying to rig the game to work out. There is a vast conspiracy to grow the economy… it’s called society.” — Dan McMurtry, quoted by Michael [10:39]
• The hosts reinforce that betting against economic progress is usually a losing game.

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6. Oil Prices, Inflation, & Resilience of the Consumer

[11:38-13:38]

• Oil's spike is less impactful on US households today (now 2% of budgets) versus the 70s/80s (6%).
• Ben: “Households have the ability to eat it, because it’s not like it’s a huge part of their budget.” [12:14]
• Corporations (e.g., Apple) largely insulated from energy shocks.
• The "midwit meme" of overestimating single-variable impacts (like gas prices) on the economy.
• “[Consumers] can probably handle $4-5 gas… The market is betting that it can.” [13:11]

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7. Rate Cut/Rate Hike Whiplash & Macro Uncertainty

[14:00-16:04]

• Rapid shift from expecting rate cuts to rate hikes amidst inflation fears; highlights “rate expectations flip-flopping” in three weeks.
• Michael jokes about having to Google what year it is to keep up with market narratives.
• Consensus that hiking rates now to counteract exogenous supply shocks is misguided.

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8. Investor Psychology: Waiting for the Correction

[17:03-18:35]

• S&P drawdown of 6.8% feels insufficient to many investors who “just want to rip the band-aid off.”
• Lieutenant Dan/Forrest Gump and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” analogies—the market not capitulating as expected.

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9. Value of Indexing: Bessembinder’s Updated Research

[26:04-29:46]

• Only a tiny subset of firms create most market wealth: now, 46 companies account for half of $91T in net wealth (updating prior findings).
• Michael is tired of these findings; Ben believes they're vital for hammering home indexing's importance.
• “Buying and holding forever individual stocks is a terrible idea. Empirically, most stocks are not worth marrying. Guess what?” — Michael Batnick [27:23]
• Many of the best-performing stocks over 20 years are obscure, supporting the unpredictability and concentration theme.

Notable Quote

“The interesting thing to me ... I never would have thought it’d be this concentrated.”
— Ben Carlson [29:46]

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10. Personal Finance: Housing, Auto Markets, & Behavior

Housing Market Stasis [33:45-36:31]

• Housing (pending home sales at historic lows) is “in an absolute ice age."
• Despite this, the stock market remains resilient—“Isn’t housing a third of the economy?” [33:45]
• Illustration: Even as home sales boomed, Home Depot’s stock is flat since 2021 due to “pull forward” effects.

Cars & Social Media Pressure [38:41-41:27]

• Shock over $60-80k car purchases and $1,000/month payments for young people—“I can’t believe more people aren’t just buying used cars.” [41:15]

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11. AI in the Workplace & Education

[41:29-49:48]

• WSJ study: AI tools intensify workloads, increase messaging/app time—people work more, not less, when using AI.
• Ben’s thesis: initial AI wave could “fake a productivity boom” by making people fear job loss, so they work harder.
• Michael: It’s "way too early for these types of studies…the equivalent of measuring the iPhone in 2007." [42:52]
• Email from a high-school teacher: Most students use ChatGPT to avoid learning, not to feed curiosity; fears AI is “absolutely making society less smart.”
• Ben: “It just seems like the collective sentiment among teachers is way lower than when we grew up.” [49:48]

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12. Crypto, Tokenization, and Financial Innovation

[50:52-54:15]

• Discussion of buffered ETFs for Bitcoin—products to limit downside risk.
• Traditional exchanges like NYSE are entering the world of tokenized securities.
• Michael notes the barriers to entry (e.g., branding, trust) still matter in finance even as technology changes.

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13. Homeownership, Regret, & Accidental Landlords

[56:23-59:36]

• Not all home purchases end happily; articles on “regretting my house” and accidental landlords who couldn’t sell.
• Both agree: owning versus renting is highly location-dependent; in some places, renting a house is almost impossible.

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14. Customer Service, Business Ethics, and Word-of-Mouth

[61:00-63:14]

• Ben’s positive story: roofer fixes a small issue for free as a word-of-mouth strategy—business is booming.
• Michael: Responsiveness is a business asset, not a liability. “Feels so good when a service person responds immediately.” [62:55]

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15. Private Credit & Deferred Taxes

[64:34-68:51]

• Cautious optimism about private credit: returns are slow-moving and bad years (e.g., 2008: -6.5%) are far less severe than equities.
• Wealth management is now much about tax deferral and efficiency (“box spreads, direct indexing, etc.”) as about performance.

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16. Pop Culture & Film

[69:15-77:04]

• “Project Hail Mary” movie praised as a must-see family event; Ryan Gosling’s universal approval rating discussed.
• IMAX theaters and moviegoing as a cultural experience.
• TV: Recommendations for “DTF,” “Rooster,” and commentary on the cold plunge/sauna fad (“You can’t have a cold plunge without telling someone about it.” [73:23])
• Michael reflects on TV’s anti-cynical, light humor appeal in current shows.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Dan McMurtry (via Michael):

  “There is a vast conspiracy to grow the economy… it's called society.” [10:39]

• Ben Carlson:

  “The interesting thing to me ... I never would have thought it’d be this concentrated.” [29:46]

• Michael Batnick:

  “It’s not rocket science. I need somebody to watch me. I have no discipline. I’m a child.” [20:11; on personal training and the enduring need for guidance even with AI]

• On Student Use of AI:

  “My main goal is to prevent as many young adults as I can from being ruined by technology.” [48:33; email read by Ben]

• On Responsive Customer Service:

  “It feels so good when a service person responds immediately.” [62:55]

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Topic Highlights With Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | Timestamps | |--------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------|---------------------| | Markets & Politics | Trading around announcements | [03:30-07:36] | | Market Psychology | Purgatory, correction psychology | [05:59-08:13] | | Insider Trading | Pre-announcement trades, frustration | [07:36-08:42] | | Macro Uncertainty | Oil/inflation, whipsaw on rate expectations| [11:38-16:04] | | Bessembinder Research | Concentration of wealth, index argument | [26:04-30:09] | | Housing/Cars | Flat home sales, rising car costs | [33:45-41:29] | | AI & Society | Intensified workloads, impacts on youth | [41:29-49:55] | | Crypto Innovation | Buffered ETFs, tokenization, new products | [50:52-54:15] | | Homeownership Regret | Renters, accidental landlords | [56:23-59:36] | | Service Stories | Roofer anecdote, importance of responsiveness| [61:00-63:14] | | Pop Culture | Movies, TV, cold plunge/sauna trend | [69:15-77:04] |

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Memorable Moments & Analogies

• Market Behavior Analogies: Comparing market volatility to kids waking from naps, and movies like “Forrest Gump”/“I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
• Customer Service Insight: Quick, proactive service leads to referral business and customer loyalty: “People get excited to share positive stories in their life.” [63:25]

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Tone & Language

The episode balances the hosts’ trademark combination of data-driven skepticism, lighthearted cultural references, and candid, sometimes irreverent banter about markets, investing, and life. There are regular asides, self-deprecating humor, and personal anecdotes interspersed with real insight.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Don’t fall prey to doomsday narratives; history overwhelmingly favors patient, diversified investors.
• Real wealth in the stock market is created by a tiny number of stocks—indexing increases your odds.
• The economy and stock market are more resilient than headlines suggest, but market “purgatory” can test conviction.
• Tech and macro environments change fast; humility is crucial in predictions.
• The future of finance will hinge on managing taxes and client experience as much as picking the next hot stock.
• Continuous adaptation and skepticism are essential, but optimism remains warranted for those who understand how “the game is rigged… to go up” (and why).

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For further resources or full disclosures, visit Ritholtz Wealth’s podcast disclosures.

Transcript

[Michael Batnik]

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[Ben Carlson]

Invesco Distributors, Inc. Today's show is brought to you by Janice Henderson at Janice Henderson Investors. We believe working together is the way to work better. Like combining your portfolio plans and our in depth strategy, your valued assets and our valuable insights, your mission and our vision always working in perfect harmony to find the right investment opportunities. Janice Henderson Investors Investing in a brighter Future Together. Visit janice henderson.com.

[Narrator]

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

[Ben Carlson]

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, yesterday was your birthday. I feel I've said this before. People say I'm crank in middle age. Birthdays shouldn't matter anymore. Don't matter anymore. Would you get upset if someone didn't tell you Happy birthday? That was a friend or family member. Would you care?

[Michael Batnik]

You didn't tell me Happy Birthday and you cried and we spoke and matter of fact, you're the only person that didn't say Happy Birthday. No, I'm not upset.

[Ben Carlson]

In my defense, I didn't realize it was your birthday till after we spoke. I should have known because again, it was the your birthday is the bottom of the COVID crash. So I should it should be in here because I have that memory of it. I just think after you turn 21, your birthdays don't matter anymore. When you're 30, 40, 50. Yeah it's like, all right, it's a milestone. Especially when you're middle aged and have kids. The only birthdays that matter are the kids birthdays. And then you move on and your birthday doesn't matter anymore. Fair or unfair?

[Michael Batnik]

Both.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

I think it's a personal choice. I think it's a weird, like, it's a weird not hill to die on, but like.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I'm not dying. I'm just saying, like to me, I don't care about my birthdays anymore. They're meaningless. Fair.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, I like it. I'm sorry, I'm a, I'm a nostalgic. I'm an emotional milestone wardrobe, milestone type of guy.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, I'll probably like buy myself something stupid when I turn 50, but other than that. Or go on a trip. But other than that, I'm not going to care.

[Michael Batnik]

I like want to hear from people that I haven't heard from in a while. You know, just like a check in feels good, but yeah, I don't like to like celebrate my own birth. I don't make a big deal out

[Ben Carlson]

of it, but yeah, okay. See, my wife always says, like, why don't you send this person a text on their birthday? I'm like, I. I don't care if they send me one that I want. That's the golden rule.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, that's. Now that's weird. That's weird.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm living how I want to live.

[Michael Batnik]

You, you out of principle, will not wish somebody a happy birthday. That's. That's a choice.

[Ben Carlson]

I'll just.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, let's get to it.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Thank you, Mark.

[Michael Batnik]

And thank you for nothing, I guess.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Happy birthday. We celebrated your birthday on your 40th last year. It was a huge blowout bash. Isn't that, doesn't that. Aren't I fulfilling my duties for the next decade after that? Sure, I think that's good enough. All right. Markets rule everything around us. Mike Bird tweeted yesterday, I think the fact that military action and major announcements now seem to be coordinated around market open and close times is going to be one of the most. One of the more fascinating and telling tidbits about this era administration. Markets basically rule everything now. Fair. That's it. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

For the most part

[Ben Carlson]

right now, markets are just all powerful. They control the thing. The reason that it seems like we got a taco Monday yesterday with the Iran war is because we're worried about oil prices, we're worried about bond yields spiking, we're worried about inflation. It Markets are the transistor, whatever you call it. And the like markets are the regulator.

[Michael Batnik]

That's right. They're the piston. Is that right? Judge and the jury don't know. But last week I was talking with, with Labethol and Josh and with some people at the firm like why, why won't we just get the washout already? And we said this and it came. It's true, it's, it's the Trump put. Like it's hard to get too bearish when. Because yesterday I looked at my phone in the morning for the 47th time checking the markets as I do at 9 o' clock and it was, it was a spike and I didn't immediately. I knew that something was said from the administration about the war being over. I thought, I thought it was equally weird so that, that the, the market, the S P was up like two and a half percent I think at the highs. And then somebody from the, from the Iranian administration said whoa, whoa, whoa, fake news. They're trying to manipulate the oil market. Something along those lines. And I was kind of surprised that the market didn't immediately give all of it back. Were you?

[Ben Carlson]

A little bit, yes. It's kind of.

[Michael Batnik]

It came, it came off the highs but it was still the market. The market at the lows of the sell off was still up 1%. I found that to be interesting.

[Ben Carlson]

You have been saying this for the last two weeks and you said it last week in a slack channel too that like listen, the reason things aren't rolling over more and the technicians always say the market has a memory and the memory everyone has now is that 10% day. Yeah, the markets are up 10% in a day. That's what everyone is remembering and they don't want to be caught off sides again. And it's weird that markets are looking past this stuff now and worrying more about that than the other way. I just think that psych. That psychology of the market is really interesting because obviously it's not always like that.

[Michael Batnik]

So I do, I do think the longer this goes on perhaps the mark will finally just fall out of bed. Like everything will really and truly roll over. But maybe not. Maybe, maybe it is just in a perpetual. What happened in loss? What's that, what's that word that I'm looking for called where you're stuck between two worlds? Not vertigo. It sounds like that.

[Ben Carlson]

Vertigo.

[Michael Batnik]

Not. It's not. No, it sounds like vertigo. I know that's not the word. Purgatory.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, just like vertigo.

[Michael Batnik]

Not like vertigo. Purgatory.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. We are in the market.

[Michael Batnik]

The market is in purgatory.

[Ben Carlson]

I tend to agree that markets probably should roll over if the longer this lasts because all the oil people are saying there's already. It's not like the prices can just go back and everything's fine. The supply has been disrupted and it's going to be disrupted for a number of months now. And obviously the longer this goes on,

[Michael Batnik]

that's, that's not really a U.S. problem. That's the rest of the world problem.

[Ben Carlson]

But that, here's the thing with oil and we'll get into this, but when the price of oil rises, it's not just gas that goes up. It's the price of everything. Energy makes the world go around. Here's the thing that feels like a bad movie plot. This is from unusual Whales and a bunch of people caught this yesterday.

[Michael Batnik]

Just before we leave this topic, just one last thing. You can very credibly argue that the market did roll over. 40% of the index is in a bear market. So even though it's not showing up the index level under the surface, that doesn't count.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, it's a bear market underneath the surface. I don't like this.

[Michael Batnik]

Give me a real, well, I'm a huge bear market on the surface guy. You not a stock market guy. Don't know about huge bear market under the surface guy. That's happened a million times over the last 10 years where you have the internals washout and then, and then it's over.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but that's not the same thing. Okay. Just five minutes before Trump's announcement to halt the attacks on Iran, massive trades reportedly hit the market. People were buying futures, people were selling oil. Says they were four to six times larger than anything else at the time. So these are like unusual trades. Obviously these, these gain. These trades should not have been placed. I'm sure there was some poly market stuff or Kelshi stuff that happened. This is the kind of thing that feels like a bad movie plot where people are trying to profit off of war. Just slippy slope, man. This, the insider trading stuff to me is. I, I don't like it. I hate it. I think this is gross, disgusting.

[Michael Batnik]

Think everybody is on the same side of that one.

[Ben Carlson]

I. Obviously not. People are doing it. People in high position.

[Michael Batnik]

No, I'm just saying. No, Nobody, nobody likes insider trading.

[Ben Carlson]

People in the White House do. I don't know. People do. Can you just, can you wait?

[Michael Batnik]

Why are you arguing this? Take. I think 100%. There is a unanimous consensus. Yeah, I know the People that are

[Ben Carlson]

doing the check and why doesn't it. Why doesn't it stop? If it's a 100% consensus, why doesn't someone get a slap on this? Hey, knock it off. What are you doing?

[Michael Batnik]

There are a lot of things, unfortunately in this world that is 100% disapproval rating. That happens.

[Ben Carlson]

True.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, who is for fentanyl except for the people taking it and I guess the people selling it.

[Ben Carlson]

People selling it. I don't know. Can you imagine trying to create like a macro fundamental model of this market to track what's going on? Like, there are people who are trying to, like, every day there's announcement trying to like, well, here's what this means for this. Supply and demand. And this. That's why it's like the tariff announcement. Because like the. It changes so fast and moves so quickly. You know how when you have. I made this analogy on Twitter, I'll make it to you. When your kids are little, especially when they're toddlers, they could wake up from a nap or wake up from, like, going to bed the night before and be a completely different person than when they had to sleep. Like, how many. I feel like every kid wakes up angry and like, has the don't talk to me for a half hour vibe after a nap, you know, and it's like they can be a completely different person. That's the market these days. It's a completely different person from one day to the next based on an announcement.

[Michael Batnik]

Correct.

[Ben Carlson]

So I think that you're. If you're trying to, like, map this stuff out on a fundamental basis, you're wasting your time. That's my point.

[Michael Batnik]

I thought this was a very well said, well written tweet. A rare tweet from our friend Super Mugattu, Dan McMurtry, who someone DM'd me

[Ben Carlson]

like two months ago and said, hey, what happened to this guy? Where did he go? I like to follow him on Twitter. Occasionally he gets back into the.

[Michael Batnik]

Dan's living his best life in Miami. Killing it. All right, Dan said. Note to self, very scary times. Remember that the reason bears sound smart and end up looking stupid so often is that there are always several highly salient bear arguments. Whereas the reality that there are several billion people trying to make things better and solve problems is intellectually unsatisfying and fuzzy. This is amplified in the era of eyeball maximizing feeds dominating people's conception of the world. Do not be fooled by the psychological games of people seeking to dominate attention. Do not ignore legitimate issues. But most importantly, do not forget that 95% of the world is trying to rig the game to work out. There is a vast conspiracy to grow the economy over bears and increase asset prices. It's called society.

[Ben Carlson]

And this is the part of the market meaning the market, meaning more than ever these days. I remember Josh wrote about this like after the financial crisis about hey, do you think like the government and people in power are really gonna try to let this thing go under and not gonna do everything in their power to keep it going? That's the thing. Like if you think the world is going to end and people aren't just going to constantly send out the bazookas and spend more money and do more stuff and rig the game to go higher, you're not paying attention.

[Michael Batnik]

Right. Seriously. I mean, yes, sometimes of course you

[Ben Carlson]

don't have to, you don't have to like it. That's the reality.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, who doesn't like that?

[Ben Carlson]

The people who are betting the perma Bears. They hate it.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm not talking about Permaders. The 11 dumplings.

[Ben Carlson]

That's what he's talking about.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Sometimes the train falls off the tracks. Guess what? We rebuild.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Okay, so getting back to the oil stuff. This is a chart from. I don't remember who this is from. Energy products are at an incredibly low contribution to US household personal consumption. So in the 70s and 80s energy spending as a percentage of household budgets got to up over 6% by the early 80s after the energy shock. Now it's down to 2%. So the point is there's a way higher capacity to handle if, if gas prices stay at four or five dollars a gallon for an extended period of time, it seems like households have the ability to eat it because it's not like it's a huge part of their budget.

[Michael Batnik]

And how about corporations? Obviously we're talking about the stock market here. Think Apple cares about the price of energy.

[Ben Carlson]

But that would be the pushback would be that like the price of everything has to go up though the price of all the inputs. The price of it's not just gasoline, it's the, you know, airplane airline tickets are going to be more expensive. So that's the thing like is how much.

[Michael Batnik]

This is like the midwit. This is like the midwit meme conversation, right?

[Ben Carlson]

A little bit. But I guess that's the point is that people wondering, well geez, won't four or five dollar a gallon gas totally derail the economy? Probably not. I think we've learned maybe the margin of safety is lower this time, but Everything that's been thrown at the economy this decade, it's been able to withstand. And so the question is, does it still have enough ammunition to withstand this current onslaught, however long it lasts? The market is betting right now that it does, that it can. Which again, I think is so interesting to me that the market is so willing to look past all this stuff,

[Michael Batnik]

literally knowing absolutely less than nothing about the situation in the Middle East. It's a little bit hard to imagine this lasting into the summer.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I agree. But I don't know. What if we back off this one straight again, I don't get why it's called a straight. Someone's got to explain it to me. Meal chat, GPT it. This thing is like the most important piece of land in the world going forward now. Like it has more importance going forward. It's funny because Josh always says, like, oh, the straight or four movie was. Remember, for years that was his joke. And now it actually really does finally matter. But does this. Does that thing just stop mattering all of a sudden? It seems to me like it's going to be used every time that there's something going on unless we completely take it over.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, matter to what?

[Ben Carlson]

The world? The energy prices?

[Michael Batnik]

Well, of course it matters. Of course it does.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, Pantheon Macro, Carl Quintanilla. In $150 barrel oil scenario, we think inflation would peak in Q2 at about 6%. Of course, oil crashed yesterday. What was it? Did it finish the day down 8 or 9%? Something like that? That's what was down in the morning, at least. The question is, how long does this have to happen till we get there? I don't know. I guess this is like the what if market right now. What if this lasts? What if the market keeps looking past it? What if? What if? What if? How about this? Mike Dorning, a bunch of people posted this. Investors are now betting overall US inflation over the next 12 months will surge above 5% implied inflation rate from one year break even per Bloomberg. Now, again, a lot of this stuff is before yesterday, so who knows? And the Wall Street Journal had a chart that shows market is implying a probability of a higher. Higher probability of a rate cut than a rate or a rate hike than a rate cut this year. Now here's my question to you. What good. What good would a rate hike do? You hike rakes just so you can bring them back down. This is a exogenous shock. I don't.

[Michael Batnik]

When is. Since one is destroying demand a good thing, a good idea in demand, I Understand why we had to do it in 2022.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, that makes sense.

[Michael Batnik]

Obviously that made sense at the time, but for something like this. Come on.

[Ben Carlson]

But Colin. So Colin says in the span of three weeks, the market went from expecting three rate cuts in 2026 to now expecting a rate hike. That's incredible. But I guess you could see a scenario where we back off and then that flips again and it goes back and those expectations. But my point is why. Why would. What. What good would a rate hike do besides potentially push the economy more towards slowing down further?

[Michael Batnik]

If there was a market for these two lines flipping, I would say for the. Through. Through the end of 2026, by the way, I had to look at the. I had to Google, what year is it? The other day I was writing something, I was like, wait, is it. No, it can't be 2026. Is it really? Sure enough.

[Ben Carlson]

And AI is not making us dumber.

[Michael Batnik]

It's not helping our memory. All right, anyway, my point is this. I would say, I would guess that yes, these lines would flip. Would be at like, what, 92%? That they would flip back.

[Ben Carlson]

That would be a pretty. Yes, if you wanted. That's like an even better bet than Seattle not winning the Super Bowl. Something like that.

[Michael Batnik]

You know, I got a lot of emails, a lot of emails about Seattle winning the Super Bowl. Not a single one patting me on the back for predicting one battle. That's just the way the world works, right? Nobody wants to give you credit. They want to bring you down.

[Ben Carlson]

One battle after another was consensus. What was your payout?

[Michael Batnik]

What's the difference? No, it wasn't. It was like 85 cents.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, that sounds consensus to me. You bet on the. You bet on the horse with the low. The lowest odds of winning.

[Michael Batnik]

It might have even been. It might have been.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I'm not going to give you a pat on the back for that. Everyone thought that was going to win.

[Michael Batnik]

Hold on. This was not a recent bet. I did this months and months and months ago. I'll find what the payout was. It might have been 70 something cents.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I love the forest gump analogy. So I'm going to give you this. So the S and P at the lows was down 6.8%. Maybe it rolls over and goes further, but that. That's the biggest drawdown so far this year. And I feel like there's a lot of people who just want to rip the band aid off and get the correction over with. It's the. Remember in the storm, Lieutenant Dan's up on the master and he's screaming like, this is all you got. You call this a storm? I think there's a lot of people who just want like, hey, listen, we have the reasons. Let's just do it already. Can we just get the correction? And maybe that's one of the reasons we're not getting it. So many people seem to just like, all right, fine, let's do it. Higher oil prices, higher inflation, war, uncertainty, volatility, and it just won't happen.

[Michael Batnik]

I can't. Well, when you say there's a lot of people, I feel like there's a survey in your brain. Like you're, you're doing a lot of projecting. You have no evidence that there's a lot of people.

[Ben Carlson]

You don't think a lot of investors assume that with everything, all the headlines going on and everything happening, that we should be in a correction right now?

[Michael Batnik]

Those are different things. Yeah, of course. I think there's a lot of people that say, given the state of everything, we should be lower.

[Ben Carlson]

That's what you're saying.

[Michael Batnik]

You're saying there's a lot of investors who want the band to be ripped off and that's why we're not ripping it off.

[Ben Carlson]

No, just assume like this. It should be. Given all these variables, we should be in a correction.

[Michael Batnik]

We should be.

[Ben Carlson]

That's what I'm saying.

[Michael Batnik]

Is this. No, correction is 10%. Right? There's a pullback.

[Ben Carlson]

5% is. Yeah, 5% is back. Pullback.

[Michael Batnik]

Healthy.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a. It said, this is nothing.

[Michael Batnik]

Where, Wait, when does the correction go from healthy to not healthy? A healthy 10%. Correct.

[Ben Carlson]

15%. 15% not healthy anymore. 10% healthy.

[Michael Batnik]

15%. Check your triglycerides, know what I mean? Oh, I spoke to a trainer yesterday. Speaking of. Okay, putting some feelers out there, not liking how I'm looking naked in a

[Ben Carlson]

gym or in a online trainer again.

[Michael Batnik]

I want somebody to come to my house. I'm too embarrassed to go to a gym. Just not my scene. I've never been to a gym. Can't start now.

[Ben Carlson]

Gym's a great place. You get to go into the bathroom and see naked 70 year old men walking around in the locker room.

[Michael Batnik]

That does sound enticing. Plus the home visit, even for Zoom, it was way too much money. $200 a session. Come on, man. In this economy, how much is a

[Ben Carlson]

home session going to be? That's going to be even more expensive.

[Michael Batnik]

It does the same thing whether it's home or. Okay, is that, that can't be the Going rate for a trainer.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, it was 200 per session.

[Michael Batnik]

Per session. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

That's very expensive. I don't know what their going rate is. That seems very expensive to me.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

If you worked out four times a week. Geez, that's.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, I'm not doing that.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm not working out four times a week, and I'm definitely not paying $200 per four times a week.

[Ben Carlson]

See? And you think is going to take all the jobs. This is, this is my analogy. You can go on ChatGPT right now, find the best. You say, this is my body. This is what I want to do. This is my weight. This is, this is the stuff that pains me. This is what I want to change about myself. Create the most personalized workout plan possible. You can. For me. You can do that right now. Give you the best, you know, use these dumbbells, use this weight, do this many reps, do this many sets. And guess what? Some people still need a personal trainer.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

That's why I is not taking all the.

[Michael Batnik]

I know. This is not rocket science. I have. I need somebody to watch me. I have no discipline. I'm a child.

[Ben Carlson]

Exactly.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And this is why financial advisors are never going out of business. Because of AI.

[Michael Batnik]

Preach, brother. All right, here's. Here's a headline that my friend shared with me. I predicted the 2008 financial crisis. What is coming may be worse. This was in the New York Times, and here's the lead. At the start of the 2008 financial crisis, I was at a hedge fund. By its end, I was at the US Treasury. At both, I worked with people only a few years out of college. The drama of 2008 was all they knew about financial markets. Remember what's happening? I told them, you'll never see anything like this again. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe they'll see worse. This is from Rick Bookstaber. We've had Rick on the podcast before. And this piece, gotta be honest, was complete trash. No offense.

[Ben Carlson]

So I, I, I read it, actually.

[Michael Batnik]

You know what? Offense. Rick is a nice guy, but come on, man. What is the point of this? First of all, what was in here was so. There was nothing in here. Now it's for a general audience, so I understand. Maybe that's. But there was nothing novel in here. It was AI. It was private credit. It was concentration in the s and P500. Dude, come on. Yeah, and then what are we doing here?

[Ben Carlson]

Risk is too far out of the spectrum.

[Michael Batnik]

You feel good about publishing this?

[Ben Carlson]

There has to Be a catalyst in his defense. Maybe he didn't write the headline, but the whole point of the article. Yes, I. No, I. It does not feel. Again, there has to be a catalyst for this stuff happening. It can't just happen because people are taking too much risk. That's way too vague. There has to be like, what is going to cause this?

[Michael Batnik]

I agree, but think about how many people, how many people read this and did something that they're going to regret with their portfolio. Now he might truly think that he's helping people, that this is really. We're about to enter 2008 and I'm saving people. All right, maybe I suppose he won't be the first or last have done that in the last 15 years.

[Ben Carlson]

How many headlines have there been since 2008 that read I predicted the 2008 crisis or he predicted or she predicted. There've been a million of them and not one of them has ever come to fruition. I got a question for you. I have a. I have a theory, but gold is down. I think if you're an intraday person, you are. Gold is down 20%. If you're not an intraday person, big

[Michael Batnik]

intraday person you're looking at. I don't understand those not. Are those not real prices?

[Ben Carlson]

It is, but if you're looking historically it's just easier to do open and close. So gold is down. We'll call it 20%. Okay. It's down quite a bit. It's selling off hard. I have a theory here I want you to make. I want you to tell me why you think it's down so much first.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, I want to hear your theory first.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't have a theory first. I don't know if you. Because you usually have more realistic theories. Mine are more like out in the.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, all right. So before you give me your garbage take, Todd Sohn has a chart showing the daily gold ETF flows on a rolling 20 day sum and negative two standard deviations on the outflows. The worst four day sell off since 2000. Or. No, that's wrong.

[Ben Carlson]

It says2013. No, this chart just goes to 2000. It's since 2013.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, that's right. Okay, so worst 4 day sell off since 2013. So the reason why gold is falling so much is because there are more sellers and buyers. What's your theory?

[Ben Carlson]

Well, duh. But the. So we had a trend following hedge fund that we invested in in 2008 and it was the only thing in 2008 that went up. It was up like 15%. Everything else was down. Everything got killed. And in 2009, we asked the manager like, how is business going? You must be getting a ton of money coming in because of this early 2009 things were still not like people didn't know what was going to happen. And they said, no, it's the craziest thing. We're the, we're the only thing that's up in anyone's portfolio this year. And we're the atm. Everyone is pulling from us because we're the only thing doing well. And if you need to sell, what are you going to sell? The thing that's down or the thing that's up? And I think gold is in an ATM effect right now. Like people are a little worried about what's going to happen here and they need to sell something. And what are you going to sell when. When you're a little worried? The thing that's up a lot, that's what's happening.

[Michael Batnik]

I like it.

[Ben Carlson]

It's the ATM effect, right?

[Michael Batnik]

Yep, I buy that. So, yes, more sellers than buyers. But I think that you have correctly identified why there happened to be more of one than the other.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, you wouldn't sell the thing that's getting smoked. You sell the thing that's doing really well. All right, so I mentioned that the markets rule everything around us. Did the bond market win again? Because if we get two year treasury in March, like I guess this is like two weeks ago, three weeks ago, the two year hit the low of the year at three point below 3.4%. Then it shot up to 3.8% and maybe intraday higher. Is this just another thing of the bond market spooking the administration again? To me like, okay, all right, we cannot upset the bond market. It's really is pricing in rate hikes and not, you know, higher inflation. And this is not good.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, the yields are shooting again higher this morning. It really is just so yields are

[Ben Carlson]

still going up again or back.

[Michael Batnik]

It is remarkable that the market is just hanging in there.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. Even mortgage rates are back to six and a half percent. Right. Like this. This is gonna have, even if the ripple effects are again a few months, if we stopped everything now, it's still some ripple effects.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, I have a better, I have a better movie analogy for the market not selling off.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Outside of Forrest Gump, I know what you did last summer when Jennifer Love Hewitt is screaming, what are you waiting for?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, that's pretty good.

[Michael Batnik]

Thank you.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Did you read the New Bessembinder piece?

[Michael Batnik]

No, I'm over it. I retired.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't need an update. I'm good.

[Ben Carlson]

I thought the update was interesting. So the first one, he went to 2016 and he said 89 firms accounted for $43 trillion in net worth creation. 60% of companies underperformed. T bills over the long term. All this stuff like groundbreaking research, you're, you're over it. But he updated this through 2025 and now so again, 89 firms, 43 trillion in total net creation. Right now, 46 firms account for half of the 91 trillion in net wealth creation. So it's just saying this past 10 year period is just the concentrations got even more like it's a smaller and smaller number of stocks that have made the most wealth over the long history of the stock market.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes, we know this to be true. I can, I can, I can. My ability to be. Huh. Has gone to zero for something like this.

[Ben Carlson]

Really? Nothing?

[Michael Batnik]

No. There's nothing else that can come out of this type of a study. I also reject it a little bit. I mean obviously the, the takeaway is this is why you index. You don't need to convince me of that. I'm already there, been there.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, you casted a wide net so you can make sure you get these winners. The interesting thing to me, but, but, but hold on.

[Michael Batnik]

But, but also, and also like yes, we know that buying and holding forever individual stocks is a terrible idea. Empirically, most stocks are not worth marrying. Guess what?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't think, I don't think a lot of people know that. I think the school of, the school of Warren Buffett taught people that you just buy and hold stocks forever and you'll be fine. I don't.

[Michael Batnik]

That's true.

[Ben Carlson]

I think there's a lot of people who, who need to learn this lesson.

[Michael Batnik]

That's true. But, and also in the real world, and this is the biggest gripe that I have, nobody does this, okay? Nobody buys a stock at the IPO and holds it forever. And when I say nobody, yes, there are people that have made fortunes doing that over. But like in general, nobody actually buys a stock at the ipo. And that doesn't sell it forever. This is not the way that markets function. People are buying and selling every day. And so just because the stock xyz, Disney, for example, Home Depot, for example, these are at multi decade lows relative to the market. Like in other words, Home Depot hasn't outperformed the index over 30 years or something crazy, right? Does that Mean that there were opportunities to make money in Disney or Home Depot over time against the market over a seven year window.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, yeah. All right. We give this cabin every time. But it's true. It is true. You're right. Look at table two. So this gives the stocks with the highest annualized returns over at least a 20 year period. And Nvidia is the highest, which is crazy. 37% per year. Go back to 99. Netflix. But look at some of these other names that you've never heard of. Axon Enterprise, Plenum Publishing, Lynn Broadcasting, Pioneer Group. A lot of these companies that you've never heard of before. Again, these are like 20 year plus periods. There's a lot of them on here that you. That would surprise you that you've never heard of before. Manor Care.

[Michael Batnik]

I haven't heard of most of these companies.

[Ben Carlson]

Exactly. That. That's surprising to me anyway. All right, fine. You're not impressed anymore with Bessem Binder. I am. I think it's. I think it's. I think this is some of the most important research that's been done this century on the stock market.

[Michael Batnik]

This. I agree. Well, this is major confirmation bias for you. And I'm not saying that in a bad way, but this is like hammering home what you believe to be holy ground.

[Ben Carlson]

And I. But I think before I saw this research, this research is. It's. It's more concentrated and more confirmation bias than I would have even thought before I saw. Correct.

[Michael Batnik]

You saw this and you were like, I knew it. And here's proof. And me too.

[Ben Carlson]

No, no, I'm saying it's surprising to me how concentrated it really is. I. I never would have thought it'd be this concentrated. It really.

[Michael Batnik]

My only point is not my only point. We saw this. This is like 2017. When did this first come out? It's just. There's been. There's been five iterations.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, and he did the update and it's even more so.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, Mr. Bessant Midner professor, could you give us three years? Give us like three, four years until the next one.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Such a hater.

[Michael Batnik]

Me, the hater you hate. Happy birthdays, you grouch.

[Ben Carlson]

Duncan said I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get trolled hard for that. Take. That's fine. I've given it before. Yeah, bend the grouch. That's true.

[Michael Batnik]

But you're not actually. You're not actually a grouch in real life. But this is a.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I'm really not. I just. Anyway, which Is funny because if you ask my parents, I loved my birthdays when I was growing up. My mom would always make fun of me because I was so into it. And now I just don't care anymore.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, so you got birthday shamed. You're.

[Ben Carlson]

Maybe that's. Maybe I'm fighting back against being.

[Michael Batnik]

Comes out.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, you know what?

[Michael Batnik]

Fine. Nobody say happy Birthday. See if I care. I don't care at all. Minding my business.

[Ben Carlson]

So this is interesting. This is from Jason Furman in the New York Times. He wrote an op ed. He said, if you hate Trump's economy, I have news for you. And he breaks down the economy under Joe Biden and the economy under Trump, and It was basically 2024 versus 2025 or later. And he breaks it down by GDP and inflation and real earnings growth and the S and P performance and mortgage rates and the unemployment rate and gasoline prices and the budget deficit and trade deficit, all this stuff. And honestly, it looks almost exactly the same. Right? Like all the stuff Trump has done, and the economy basically is the same. All the stuff Biden did. A lot of people hated the stuff Biden did. The economy looks the same as it does today. A lot of people hate the stuff Trump is doing. The economy looks the same as it did under Biden.

[Michael Batnik]

Can I just point out one thing? It's the direction.

[Ben Carlson]

Sure. Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

You know the memes. You know the memes. You know the memes where it's like Bitcoin at 70,000 and Bitcoin at 70,000, like a week ago versus today. And it's like Jennifer Aniston and the guy with all the wrinkles on his face.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but the other part that we've talked about a lot is you look at the sentiment among Republicans and Democrats. When Biden was elected, then the Republicans hated the economy. Trump was elected, now they love it. Biden was elected, Democrats love the economy. Trump is like a question.

[Michael Batnik]

How can.

[Ben Carlson]

The point is it's the same economy.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes. More or less. Shouldn't or should not a number like this, consumer sentiment, shouldn't it be capped at 100, just 0 to 100? How come it goes all the way up to 140?

[Ben Carlson]

That's a really good point. It's kind of like the QBR rating in football. Like, why is it like 159 or something? Why isn't it. Everything should be capped at 110?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. A perfect 158.3. Oh, yeah. How about. How about we just stop being cute and just cap it at 100 I

[Ben Carlson]

guess the point is all this stuff that's gone on this decade and the economy is so big and dynamic, it's really hard to like. It's. It's turning a battleship. Right. It's not like this thing pivots on a dime. It takes a while. And all the stuff that these presidents do, it. It matters in the headlines in the short term and some market stuff, but for the economy overall, it's really hard for them to change the overall shape of it. It's that that trend is hard to break, whatever trend it's on.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. Last week we spoke about new home sales. I think maybe this is a better demonstration of what we were talking about, pending home sales. So not just new. Lowest level in history. It is amazing. It really is amazing that.

[Ben Carlson]

So why this index should go to 100 as well.

[Michael Batnik]

It's a great point.

[Ben Carlson]

Why does it go to 130?

[Michael Batnik]

All right, new rule. 100 is the max for all these indexes. It's a great point, Ben. The housing market is in an absolute ice age. Yeah. Why isn't the market lower? Isn't housing a third of the economy?

[Ben Carlson]

It is pretty bizarre. Housing is like 20% of the economy, but you. That includes all the construction and furniture and moving and all the other costs that are, you know, lending. If you work for a mortgage lender and you've been waiting for years and years and years for mortgage rates to fall so the housing market can become unthawed, and it just hasn't happened yet. It's. It's got to be exceedingly frustrating. I can't even imagine working in that.

[Michael Batnik]

I think it's beyond frustrating. These, The, The. These people's livelihoods have been taken away. All right. This ties in nicely with the best. And Bender study. I had Claude making this chart scroll down back to the real estate section. So Home Depot stock is getting smushed. Okay. It is breaking below what had been support. It is now the lowest that it's been in a long time since.

[Ben Carlson]

Don't you think a lot of the renovation stuff was pulled forward?

[Michael Batnik]

Well, of course. So this is how the market works. So Home Depot is flat since April of 2021. So I had Claude do this thing for me. I said, hey, show ME the cumulative U.S. home sales over the last, what is it, five years, basically, where Home Depot has gone nowhere or has delivered. Let me rephrase it. Home Depot has delivered cumulatively 0% returns for its shareholders over this time period. Of course, it went up a lot, came down a lot. But over if you bought it five years ago, thinking there would be a home boom, you were right, and you lost money. So 9 trillion. $9 trillion worth of cumulative sales since April 2021. And Home Depot, which theoretically would have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of all of this home sales, the stock has gone nowhere. And this is why, for me, I have a very difficult time buying and holding a stock. I know. Too much. Yeah, I've seen too much, Ben.

[Ben Carlson]

I was bullish on the housing market in 2021, and I bought Zillow and it got. It's been crushed since then. Done nothing, essentially. I sold it a while ago.

[Michael Batnik]

But there's so many. So many examples of this.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, it's hard.

[Michael Batnik]

Of companies just winning and their stocks anticipating the win and just pulling forward a lot of returns, and then eventually investors getting disappointed over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so last week we did an update on. What did we update that we were on? Oh, the. The GDP now is 5%, and it really came in under 1%. Right. I like doing these throwbacks to previous episodes. Ernie Tedeschi did the share of total expenditures by top 10 households by income. And there's that chart going around from Moody's that shows the top 10% is spending 50% of all the money. Right. Unfair K shaped economy. Matthew Klein said this doesn't match the data. Ernie Tedeschi said, yes, let me find it. The share of expenditures by the top 10% of households is actually 22%, 23%, and it's lower than it was pre pandemic. The actual data for this, they're basically saying there's kind of a. There's a data error in the Moody's. It's not. It's not. It's not picking this up. Right. He's saying it's actually lower now than it was pre pandemic. And it's pretty flat, too, because if you look at this chart, he's going by 0.2% for every tick there. It hasn't changed at all, basically, in the last 10 years.

[Michael Batnik]

Wait, so where did the misreported data derive from?

[Ben Carlson]

That's a good question. I don't understand this stuff enough. But they're. They're saying, look, if you check it with the other sources, it's wrong. The way that they're looking at disposable income is not right. It's not. The top 10% is not spending.

[Michael Batnik]

How do I know that this one is right? What does Total expenditures include or not include. I want to know. I know. I want to know what was causing the gap in the data.

[Ben Carlson]

I did too. All right. Matthew Klein had a whole piece on this. I'll send it to you. It's in my. I wrote a blog post about it. Oh, what did you. Inflation adjust here. Oh, man, you are really into the cloud charts now. The charts that cloud produces look really good, aren't they?

[Michael Batnik]

They're so good because not only. So I had it oil. I had an inflation adjust. Oil and gasoline. Not only does it do that, but it also like annotates the charts.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

So for all of this, I did

[Ben Carlson]

one last week for median house price versus median income. And it showed me like the peaks and the valleys on the top. Like, it's really, really good.

[Michael Batnik]

So. Yeah. And for all the peaks and the troughs, it gives you the date and the why.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

Great stuff. All right.

[Ben Carlson]

Claude's coming for Char Kit.

[Michael Batnik]

Matt never. New vehicles. What's going on? I didn't. I missed this article.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. New York Times has an article. It's just crazy. High car payments make ownership feel impossible. And it's not because you only most people buy a car every what, five to seven years maybe. So I think there's a lot of people who are now cycling in going, whoa, I did not. And they interviewed a lot of these people being like, I, this is crazy. And they interviewed someone who is a 20 something year old who bought a brand new $80,000 car and like had to get it repossessed because they couldn't afford the payment.

[Michael Batnik]

That didn't happen when we were kids.

[Ben Carlson]

Of course not. But it says that.

[Michael Batnik]

Am I making that up?

[Ben Carlson]

No, you're right. The new car stuff is way, way different.

[Michael Batnik]

The first car that I bought when I was kicked out of school for the second time, I was home and I was working full time for years because I had to pay rent in Indiana like a schmohawk. Which, whatever. Another story for another time. But I was working full time and my bank account was getting was my, my coffers were filling up because I was living at home and I was earning wages. Ben and I bought a used G35. Remember that car? The sedan? You don't remember the Infiniti G35? You are really not a car guy. Okay, so anyhow, I, I paid $26,000 for it. And that was like a cool car for a kid to be driving.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, I thought you said this didn't happen. You did it.

[Michael Batnik]

It was $26,000.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, that sounds a lot from back then. My first car was, you'll be surprised to hear this, a Honda accord that had 110,000 miles on it and we bought it for $2,500.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, but your parents gave that to you.

[Ben Carlson]

Of course my brother had it, then

[Michael Batnik]

I got it and yeah, no, I paid for this with my, with my grown up money. So this says $60,000 car, $80,000 car for a kid.

[Ben Carlson]

Nuts. The average monthly new car payment reached $774 in January, up from 588 in January 2021. More than 20% of new car borrowers agreed to pay over a thousand dollars a month at the end of last year, which was a record. I tend to agree. I think this is another social media thing where people, more people now think they deserve a new car than did in the past. I think, and maybe that's a misread on my part, but it's. I can't believe more people aren't just buying used cars.

[Michael Batnik]

But, you know, that's what I was about to say. So my Infiniti was probably three or four years old when I, when I bought it. Why aren't people buying used cars? And maybe used cars are expensive too.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, because the depreciation runoff a lot is huge.

[Michael Batnik]

Not so.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, let's talk AI from the Wall Street Journal. AI isn't lightening workloads. It's making them more intense. Okay, so they look at an analysis of 164,000 workers Digital work activity, and they did this. They tracked what happened when people started using AI. How did it impact their work? Covering more than 443 million hours of work across over 1100 employees. Making one of the biggest studies of AI's effects on work habits to date. They looked at the activity 180 days before and after they started using the tools. And they find that AI intensified activity across nearly every category. The time they spent on email, messaging and chat apps more than doubled, whether use of business management tools such as human resources or accounting rose 94%. So the whole study said people who use AI end up working more, not less. I also think there's this thing, where could we see a fake productivity boom where people are worried AI is going to take their job so they actually work harder? Are we going to see like a five year fake fake productivity boom because people are like scared of AI taking their job so they actually work harder. This has been my thesis and I don't. Some people will say, just wait, when I improves these numbers Won't. This won't be the same. A Will take over. But this has been my thesis the whole time. That it's just going to make a lot of people work a lot more.

[Michael Batnik]

I wonder what the output of the work is. Is it better quality? I would imagine it is. It's. Dude. Whoops. I just leave that by accident. It's too early for these type of studies. I'm happy that they're.

[Ben Carlson]

I knew you. I knew you were going to say that. That's. That's the retort.

[Michael Batnik]

It's like. It's like. It's like measuring the impact of the iPhone in 2007.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

What's the point?

[Ben Carlson]

Chat's been out since 2022.

[Michael Batnik]

True. I'm just saying. Still quite early.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I knew that. I knew that'd be the retort.

[Michael Batnik]

You know me so well.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

Not well enough to say happy birthday, but David Levitt tweeted, this is quite literally what Skynet does.

[Ben Carlson]

Listen.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. So you're.

[Ben Carlson]

You're free and clear this summer. When. My birthday. Don't say happy birthday to me.

[Michael Batnik]

I can't help it. I love you. Say happy birthday. That's what you do for people that you care about. You just. Hey. Thinking about you. Good to see you. How you doing? All right. Engineers wanted to make humanoid robots look more realistic, so they successfully grew actual living human skin in a lab and permanently attached it directly to the metal face of a robotic machine.

[Ben Carlson]

That's very.

[Michael Batnik]

So somebody grabbed that and said, this is quite literally what Skynet does to infiltrate the human resistance with the T800, T850, and T80,888 series Terminators, which are Cyberdyne systems infiltrator units covered in bioengineered living tissue, including skin, blood, and hair, over a metal endoskeleton. Dude, we were just talking about this recently. I think you rewatched T2. That scene where Arnold cuts the skin of Rhyodm's arm and rips it off rocked my world. When I was. I remember I wasn't allowed to see that movie when it came out. I was, like, 6 years old. My dad wouldn't let me see it. He took my brother and his friend to see it. So I probably saw it, like, two years later. But I had to be eight or nine years old then. It, like, shook the ground.

[Ben Carlson]

So did you ever. So my son is trying to move it on to all the other action movies now. So all the Expendables movies are on Netflix. Did you ever watch those Movies?

[Michael Batnik]

I only saw the first one. It was quite good.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I mean, I don't know. They might be some of the worst action movies ever made by, like, legitimate people. Every action star is in them. Oh, yeah, They're. I mean.

[Michael Batnik]

But myself, I have zero memory of it other than having a great time.

[Ben Carlson]

There's like four of them. Okay, so our friends at craneshares had a robot at Future Proof last week or two weeks ago. And I made the point again that if you're the first person to buy a robot and the robot turns around and kills you, that's on you, not the robot. That's fair, right? Like, you don't want to be the first person to buy a robot if it turns on because it's so strong. That's all I'm saying. But it could. I asked the robot, what's your favorite dance? And it actually did.

[Michael Batnik]

The robot movies and robots I watched over the weekend. Not good. Mercy. Which was a pretty blatant ripoff of Minority Report.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I saw that. It was on Amazon. I was gonna watch it, too. Not good.

[Michael Batnik]

No.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

In fact, bad. Watchable, but barely. You know what it's like you could put on the background while you write a blog post at 11:30 at night. Okay, it's one of those.

[Ben Carlson]

You do know me.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. Anyhow, nobody. Nobody wants us. Please, I don't want to see. I don't want to see this in the world ever. I know it's coming. All this stuff that, like, people don't like. So. So, for example, somebody emailed us. It's cool to think about the ability of the tech and what it means for business owners, but just know that if it is implemented at scale across an entire company, it is going to cost at least three people their job. Real jobs that offer value for small businesses. Real people who are part of a healthy company culture who work together to deliver a product to customers. I know the tech is new, so the possibilities are exciting. But because of this, the marketing team who takes leads and turns them to estimates, estimators and project coordinator who schedules the crews to do the actual work are now on their way out the door. Not to mention the marketers who get leads aren't mentioned. But I'm sure that there is tech that shrinks that team as well. I guess it's cool for owners and profitability, but not really. It just kind of sucks. And honestly, for what? To grow the pie. At what cost? And this person is saying what I'm sure a lot of us are feeling.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

And not to be callous.

[Ben Carlson]

This is why a lot of people hate AI.

[Michael Batnik]

It's. Yeah, yeah. And I, I don't really, I don't disagree with this person. Would I do I want everything to stay the way it is? Like, do we need. No. Yeah. I wish, I wish you could stay the way it is. But for better and for worse, that's not how the world works.

[Ben Carlson]

This is the history of the world. Yeah, it really is. Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

And so I'm, I'm bullish. I think in 50 years, like, I don't think that people will look back on, like this is a watershed moment of the end of humanity, but the dis, you know, not to be this dead horse. You talk about this every week. Yeah. The displacement of now to then. It's going to be terrible. Real people losing their livelihood. It's tragic. Here's another one. Michael and Ben, regarding the debate on yesterday's POD about whether AI is making people smarter or not. I can confirm that Ben is correct on this one. Sorry, Michael, but AI is absolutely making society less smart. All right, so here's the context. High school teacher. 90% of students have no desire to use AI the way Michael does as an amazing tool to follow their curiosity seeds. Michael's take assumes that most people have things they are curious about. And that's a very fair point. He said, unfortunately, most students do not have interest anymore. This is a super depressing email. They go home after school, ask ChatGPT to do their homework for them and then scroll on their phones for eight hours. I promise you that when they are asking chat to do their homework, they aren't doing it because they want to learn more about biology. Of course, it's not every student, but most are like this. If you thought the gap between the haves and the have nots is bad, now it's going to get way worse than the next generation. Between the 90% of young adults that are addicted to social media and conditioned to outsource all of their thinking to AI and the 10% who are learning to think for themselves, I no longer consider my primary job to be teaching content to students. My main goal is to prevent as many young adults as I can from being ruined by technology. This seems a little bit dire.

[Ben Carlson]

It's a little over the top. Do you get the sense?

[Michael Batnik]

But I get it. But I understand.

[Ben Carlson]

I get the sense just from being having my kids in school that technology has made teachers. I don't know what percentage, just I feel like it's beaten down a lot of Teachers and you hear story. I hear stories all the time about the. It's not just the technology, but kids wanting to get their own way. And in the past, it was kind of like the. I've just heard a lot of times that it's harder to punish kids these days, and it's not as easy. And I. It just seems like the collective sentiment among teachers is way lower than it was when we grew up. Didn't. It didn't seem like. And I. I went to a Catholic school, so I had, like, I had some nuns. And it just seemed like the teachers all just like, nothing. This stuff didn't get them. Nothing got them down. It's like they just did stuff. Like, if you liked it, great. If you didn't like it, I don't care either. It seems like the teachers nowadays are just way more beaten down by a lot of this stuff that's going on in the world. Is that fair?

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

Dealing with phones, dealing with the way kid. Different ways kids are these days. I think it's a lot harder to be a teacher today than it was in the past.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, yes, for sure.

[Ben Carlson]

I have a friend who's a teacher in my hometown, and he said he has kids bring a note from a doctor saying, and my friend is kind of an old school kind of guy. He's a throwback kind of guy. And the kid hands him a note, and it says, from the doctor. I can't remember what the reasoning was, but the kid needs access to their phone for their anxiety. Like, they have to have a phone on them. So the parents obviously signed off on this. And my friend takes the note and he crumples it up and he throws it in the trash, and he says, go sit down. But that's the kind of thing. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know what is wrong with those parents.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. Coerced a doctrine. Anyway. Are you pretty sad?

[Michael Batnik]

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. All right.

[Ben Carlson]

This is a really uplifting episode so far.

[Michael Batnik]

My God, what is wrong with those people?

[Ben Carlson]

All right, what do we got? Crypto.

[Michael Batnik]

The Bitcoin buffer. ETFs are working.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

This is from Todd Sone. We had the Calamos. You were intrigued by this.

[Ben Carlson]

I used one of these funds when I sold my bitcoin. It was the Thanksgiving of 2024, maybe, or something. Or. 2020? Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

No, 25.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. And so I. I know what.

[Michael Batnik]

You're right.

[Ben Carlson]

So I. I initially I thought, like, I don't want to miss out on potential upside. So I put it in some of these buffered ETFs and IT and Bitcoin crashed and it worked. Yeah, it did work.

[Michael Batnik]

Remember, like the, the 0% downside one. It looks like it's working. So yeah, cool to say. All right, this is interesting real quick. We mentioned Hyper Liquid last weekend or last show I was looking at over the weekend, the s and P500. Now interestingly, I noticed that they called it the USA 500. Why? They don't have carte blanche to just use S&P's proprietary data. Right. So this is. So our friend Frank Chaparro has a substack about this stuff and he quoted Cameron Drinkwater, great last name, Chief Product and Operations Officer at Dow Jones Indices. This collaboration expands and access and utility of our flagship benchmarks within digital trading environments. We believe digitally native investors should demand the institutional quality standards that define our indices. And we are thrilled to work with trade to do so. So anyhow, interesting on two fronts. Remember we spoke a couple of weeks ago about the moat for some of these companies that are getting destroyed by AI. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just snap your fingers and replace the ratings agencies just because you think you could rate a credit with a robot. That's not how it works. So I thought it was interesting on that front and also because we had a headline from the Wall Street Journal this morning saying that the New York Stock Exchange, kind of an established player and you know, the financial ecosystem said Tuesday that it was joining with Securitized to develop its tokenized securities trading platform. This would mark a step forward from the tokenized stocks traded outside of the US under these current offerings, token holders aren't granted the same benefit. All right, anyway, this is not particularly relevant, I don't think like 95% of this audience, but I wonder, I just

[Ben Carlson]

wonder what the liquidity is going to be for these products.

[Michael Batnik]

Guessing at first. It's going to be, you know, not great. But for people, for, for, for crypto natives, for people that have all their money on the crypto blockchain who don't want to move their account, their money from Coinbase back into Fidelity back to Coinbase, you have your money and these crypto native solutions and particularly for people outside the United States that want to use their stable coins to access US securities, that's what this is for. Again, not applicable to a lot of people, but the New York Stock Exchange getting in here. S and P getting in here. Noteworthy.

[Ben Carlson]

It is funny how people, how much people want to know over the weekend what's going on especially in a geopolitical crisis like this. Like yeah dude, where's the S and P trading but doesn't it seem like the, the after hours is always like a bigger overreaction and then the market opens and it kind of comes down a little. Yeah but it's not for you that I think. But it's going to be interesting. Yeah. People are going to want to use it. But I don't know. You know I mean the market used to be open Saturday from 9 to noon back in the day. I think it stopped in the 50s.

[Michael Batnik]

We haven't spoken about these stocks in a while. Dude. Microsoft is getting annihilated. It's down what now it's so it's at, it's at fresh lows. Lowest level since April of lowest level since April 2025.

[Ben Carlson]

Is it too it is in a 30% using it as a proxy for open AI.

[Michael Batnik]

Sure. Yes I do. It's down 31% by the way. All of the, all of the software names that I sold not to brag have rolled over big time. Not, not very confidence inspiring. Salesforce is breaking not to new lows but breaking the recent range of you know it's settled down. Breaking down not great.

[Ben Carlson]

Microsoft down 30 market Microsoft down almost a third is kind of crazy with a, with a market only down 6

[Michael Batnik]

not listen it's good. I, I, I was talking to Jimmy Labenthal about this. It's going lower. Obviously the sellers are in control. Okay. Duh. You don't need to be a genius to figure that out.

[Ben Carlson]

This seems like getting close to plug your nose and buy territory.

[Michael Batnik]

It does. Now I company like this I will wait for it to stop going lower. Not saying I'm going to nail the bottom this. I don't even know if I'm going to buy it but this seems like it's an overreaction at this point. Down 31%. Come on.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a lot.

[Michael Batnik]

You know who's selling.

[Ben Carlson]

So this thing went from $4 trillion at the peak to 2.8 trillion now in market.

[Michael Batnik]

I'll, I'll tell you who's selling. If you're in a stock that is in a 30% drawdown and it's your real money. Yeah. You're scared right? I mean this is we know how human behavior works but what's also people

[Ben Carlson]

looking for AI losers. That's the trip we've been on this Barry sent me so I think all the mag stuff is still down on the air. Barry sent me this article. I Regret buying. I wish I'd never bought a house at the Cut. And they go through all these stories of people who bought a house. They realized, like, wait, this is gonna be a fixer upper and it's gonna take way longer than I thought. I'll read some quotes from the article. My home felt like these golden handcuffs trapping me in the job I hated. This is my 39 year old. If I just invested my money in the stock market instead of buying a home, I'd be a lot richer. Andrea, 27, from Michigan. So in the 2010s, after the great financial crisis and the housing market crashed, there was all these stories and like the Atlantic and all the coastal elitists wrote all these pieces being like, homeownership is dead. Millennials are never gonna buy a home. No one's gonna wanna buy a home anymore. Cause they saw housing prices crash. And I said, I am shorting this take to high heaven. There's no way people are gonna buy homes. That's what people do. People get married, they buy homes, they. This is what happens. This is the next stage in life. Do you think that there will be a decent percentage of the next generation that's going to change their minds about homeownership and just go, no, I would rather invest in the stock market and rent.

[Michael Batnik]

No, I don't think even like a,

[Ben Carlson]

like a 10%, 15% of them are like, no.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes, I don't want to. Yes, I do believe that.

[Ben Carlson]

I think that this is going to be a real thing for some people.

[Michael Batnik]

I do believe that there will be a certain percentage of the homeownership, newly homeownership population. I don't know if it's five or 15 that will experience buyer's remorse. They got a shitty house. Whatever their job, their life status change 100, of course that's going to happen. However, you have to think about the alternative. If you need to be in a house because you are a growing family, it's just in certain places difficult and in other places impossible to rent.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I think, I just think the coast, it's so. It's such a stark difference between buying and selling. Like, if you don't have rich parents to help you or an inheritance in San Francisco or New York City, like, you have no shot at buying a home.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, it depends on the neighborhood. But on Long island, for example, you can't rent a house. I mean, maybe like. And maybe they, you know, maybe there's like houses here and there, barely, you know, few per neighborhood.

[Ben Carlson]

You're right.

[Michael Batnik]

But by and large, if you want.

[Ben Carlson]

Same thing.

[Michael Batnik]

If you want to be in a house, you got to buy it.

[Ben Carlson]

So this is interesting because. So the Wall Street Journal had this piece, their home wouldn't sell. So they became America's latest accidental landlords. And they told these people who, like, I put it on the market, people weren't buying what I was putting out for the offer. So I decided, listen, I got a 3% mortgage. I'm going to rent it. I'm going to just buy a new house, and I'll be a landlord. And they said that this is 2.2% of rental listings on Zillow in November had previously been listed for sale in some places. Houston, Denver, Austin, Tampa. It's even higher. It's like 4%, which doesn't sound like that much, but it's the highest it's been on record, they're saying. And so people list their house. They can't sell it, so they decide just to rent it instead. And they have all these stories about people going, oh, this is awful. What a terrible experience this was. My home got wrecked. The bathrooms were gross. I had to fix stuff. I didn't want to do this. I think that's being, you know, owning rental homes can be. Can work for people who know what they're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, I would not want to be in that position.

[Michael Batnik]

I did that, and I got very lucky. I. I could not have gotten luckier with the timing of it. When I bought it, when I sold it, and it wasn't fun. And I had, like, almost no problems owning a house. Owning a house, whether, you know, even if it's your own house that you live, it's a money pit. It's a lot of responsibility, and it's the type of thing that everybody. It's the type of thing that you can't know until, you know.

[Ben Carlson]

So remember, I actually have a positive story on this. It was probably like 18 months ago. We had a little shingle problem with our roof. We had a little leak, and a roofer had to come. Remember, he said, listen, I don't even show up to your house for less than 500 bucks. It's $500 to get me in the door, and then whatever it costs. And it took the guy ten minutes, and I paid him, I don't know, twelve hundred dollars. It was ridiculous. But, like, how? What are you gonna do? I can't get up and fix the roof myself. So at our place on the lake, it's really, really windy. And I had, like, five or six shingles that blew up. My neighbor said, hey, Ben, something's wrong with your shingles. They blew up. So I got a recommendation for a different roofer. Try someone else. The guy came. He said, oh, yeah, I get up there, and I could caulk him down and I'd staple them in place. And he said, you know what? He got up there, and it took him 10 minutes. He fixed these six shingles that I probably could have never done. I would have messed it up somehow. And he's like, I did leave the top because he wanted to have a little Whatever. He's explaining to me. I don't know what he's talking about. I said, all right, that's awesome. Great work. What do I. How do. What's the easiest way to pay you? He goes, no, free of charge. So what do you mean, free of charge? And he said, this is how we grow our business. We have no marketing budget. If we have a small job like this, that's going to take a few minutes. And this guy drove 45 minutes to get there, probably. He said, we do it free of charge. All I ask is that word of mouth. If someone asks you for a roofer, you use us and tell me. And I said, I love that guy. Wow, that is a great business idea. He said, you know what? What's crazy? Our business is growing like crazy. We're moving to the east side of the state. We're moving to the north. He's like, it. He's like, it actually works. That is such a great idea.

[Michael Batnik]

Isn't it so obvious to do shit, to behave that way? I want to come back to this in a second. You know who didn't behave this way? The guy that charged me 500 bucks to take a dump in my house, leave a stain, and tell me I needed to spend $8,000 on a new boiler that I didn't need. That guy will never get my business again. I mean, obviously. All right, there is. There is a perception among people in general, and even at our company, Ritholtz Wealth Management, that if you respond to somebody immediately, that they might perceive you as being not busy. Right, Right. You understand that mentality, it's self. It's. It's insecurity, I suppose.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. Don't think something better to do with their time. Yeah, right.

[Michael Batnik]

The opposite is true. The opposite is true. This is a business life lesson for Michael.

[Ben Carlson]

I love it when I get an email back right away.

[Michael Batnik]

Of course you do that.

[Ben Carlson]

Great.

[Michael Batnik]

Of course you Do. So we have a friend in our neighborhood that does our insurance. He does everybody's insurance. And if you email him with anything or text him, he responds to you immediately and always. And if you need something to be taken care of, he does it immediately and always. Every single time. And when I get that response, I don't think, huh, he must not be busy. He is one of the busiest people that I know. He doesn't have time to not answer things immediately because it will just stack up.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. So this should be common sense stuff. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

It's typically the point of view of a younger person who is like insecure because they don't have like the life experience or whatever. Like, oh, if I respond too fast, they must think that I'm not. No. I'm telling you, it feels so good when a service person responds immediately.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. And guess what? If I have a big roofing issue, I'm never calling another company again, ever. And I'm going to tell. I'm going to tell all my friends about this.

[Michael Batnik]

This is the company I have to call anytime. Exactly. Anytime somebody tells me, hey, do you know insurance person? Yes. I have the best guy. The best. He immediately.

[Ben Carlson]

I was really interested in the guy's like, it works better than you can imagine. Our business is growing like crazy. And I was like, that is. That made my day. The fact that this guy didn't try to bend me over to fix a couple of shingles.

[Michael Batnik]

People get excited to share positive stories in their life.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

Right. Because it's, it's unusual.

[Ben Carlson]

I went at the sac, my daughter's soccer game this weekend. I told like five people the story. Cause I'm like, it was awesome. I'm gonna send you the name of this person.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Anyway, if you wanna speak to my insurance guy on Long Island, I'll set you right up.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, your car broker. Although, do we blame your car broker at all for the fact that you always get a terrible car? Is it their fault at all or is it your fault?

[Michael Batnik]

You know real quick. Cause this is not a very interesting story. There was two accidents. My car and Robin's car were each in an accident within three weeks of each other. I have been in an accident since 2002.

[Ben Carlson]

Someone nailed you.

[Michael Batnik]

I was coming. I was pulling out of Starbucks and I was coming this way. And she like, came in from behind me because there's a camera. Right? So like, if somebody was. Was by me, I would have seen it. I had her like, how did you. I'm like, I'm so sorry. You okay, Give me your number. I'll take care of it. It was, it was very minor damage. I texted her. She never responded. Didn't want to do it anyway. And then somebody backed into my wife, so I took the car. This is, who cares? Very not interesting, fun stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so private credit. This is from cnc.

[Michael Batnik]

Let's say this for next week. This, this story is not going anywhere. Here's, here's the, here's the only. The, the, the teaser that I will say, yes, private credit has problems or yes, there will be problems in private credit. There's no doubt about it. Don't insert our, don't insult our intelligence and tell us the, the portfolio is performing. We know nobody's worried about the performance today. It's, People are worried about future disruption with a lot of these software companies.

[Ben Carlson]

This is an, this is an illiquid asset class. So it's not like all of a sudden, in a month, things will automatically be better and you'll notice, like, it's, it's so slow moving. I don't know what changes the current trajectory.

[Michael Batnik]

Here's, here's the LOL in all of this. The Cliff Water Direct Lending Index, which traces its inception back to 2005. The worst year, of course, is 2008. The return was negative 6.5%. It is really kind of amazing that we're spending this much time on it and we should be spending a lot of time in it. But if you contextualize it this way, that, let's just assume 2027 maybe is a bad year and it's going to lose. I'm making this up. I can't know. 4%. It's just kind of hilarious. Like, that's a bad day in the stock market.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. It's not going to be like a 50 loss or something. Like people. Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, we'll, we'll get more into this next week. We'll actually put a pin in this as well. Cal, she raised more than a billion dollars at a valuation of $22 billion. I don't get it. We'll cover more. We'll cover this in depth next week. One thing that I do like, big number one thing that I love. Delta 1, Walter Bloomberg tweeted Kalsheet to block athletes and politicians with trading. Thank God. Thank God they're doing something right.

[Ben Carlson]

A lot of people are like, why is this not a regulation already? Why did they have to do this? This should be regulated. The government should tell them this.

[Michael Batnik]

It's nuts. It's nuts. Again, another thing 100% approval rating. Government officials, particularly elected officials that are making laws should not be allowed to own individual stocks. If you, if people in the financial media that are anchors can't own individual stocks. Are you kidding me?

[Ben Carlson]

It's crazy. All right. Bloomberg had this big. Bloomberg had this huge feature slashing tax bills for the. For rich Investors is a $1 trillion business. And it goes through all these different ways that people are now it's saying like listen, I know active managers can't beat the index so I would rather have tax efficient strategies. And it goes through all these different. The tax were long, short stuff, 351 conversions, box spread borrowing, no distribution ETFs like box these private placement life insurance and direct indexing and exchange funds. All this stuff now that you can do. And I don't think people outside of the wealth management industry realize how big this tax aware investing stuff is getting and going to be. And it's just going to get bigger as baby boomers need to sell down their assets in the years ahead. This is, yeah, this is going to be an enormous business. And I think people who aren't in this. If people who aren't rich knew how easy it is not easy, how many avenues there are to defer taxes, I think they would be madder than they are about the rich. The solutions that are out there now

[Michael Batnik]

are kind of if you have assets, if you have a million dollars, I'm making that number up. If you have an investable portfolio of any size, the tools that are available to you through wealth managers like us, it's mind blowing stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

There are times when we've said I can't believe this is legal but it is. We've got tax lawyers on it and people look through these with a fine tooth comb to make sure this is on the up and up. And it kind of seems like how is this even possible? But people have realized ways to now

[Michael Batnik]

there is no free lunch with this stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

No taxes are paid. Eventually these are like deferral strategies. But we know a tax if you have a lot of money and you can't put all this money into a tax deferred IRA or whatever, the ability to defer taxes and let it compound just makes the money way bigger. So anyway that this is a thing that in the years ahead wealth management, this is, this is going to be the thing. I don't care if you outperform the index. I care if you on a after tax basis.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, great news. In Movieland, Project Hail Mary joins Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. In becoming only the second non sequel or non franchise installment for the past decade to open to $80 million or more domestically, IMAX kicked ass 20% of the overall domestic market.

[Ben Carlson]

Nuts. With 2% of the 2% of the theaters. Whatever you said.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it was, it was so good. The book was amazing. I think when we found out that they were making a movie out of this, we were like, how are they going to do the Alien?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I was nervous.

[Michael Batnik]

Two nitpicks that I have. Did you watch the movie or.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I haven't seen it yet.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, so two nitpicks that I have. It was too long. Whatever it was. It was 15, 20 minutes too long. Maybe I missed it. But. And this is not a spoiler, the premise of the book and the movie, which was very true to the book, is that Ryan Gosling wakes up on a spaceship and he doesn't remember how he got there.

[Ben Carlson]

It's a great start to it. Yeah, to the book. I remember that.

[Michael Batnik]

And there are all these flashbacks and slowly he's putting the pieces back together. I don't know if in the movie they made it clear that he didn't remember how he got there because they're not. There's not like that exposition where he's not like, hey, where am I? Right? Like, yeah, now maybe they explained that I just missed it. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. But anyway, that aside, this was, this was exactly what you want from a blockbuster. It was so good. It was so much fun. It was super kid friendly. Matter of fact, I'm going to take Kobe probably this weekend to go see it because it is. I want him to have that type of experience like I did seeing all these movies at a young age. It is one of those things that he's nine years old. He's going to remember seeing this for the rest of his life.

[Ben Carlson]

So I haven't taken George to an IMAX yet, so I'll have to do that for this weekend for him. So my. We had a trip this weekend. We were on the road. We went to a March Madness game for Michigan women's basketball game. My daughters loved it. So we're driving and on the way there, my wife put on. She listens to the Kelce Brothers podcast because she's a Taylor Swift fan. So of course she follows the Kelce Brothers and they had Ryan Gosling on. Is there a person right now in entertainment with a better approval rating than Ryan Gosling? No. I mean, I listened to him on the podcast and I've never heard him on a podcast before. He had amazing stories. He was funny. He's kind of. He still seems down to earth. I don't think there's anyone with a better approval rating than him right now. Everyone loves that guy. And how could you not?

[Michael Batnik]

The story of the movie is that there are these little microbes that are eating the sun and of course it's going to kill everybody on the planet.

[Ben Carlson]

And so Gosling talked about how Andy Weir was part of writing the movie and he. The whole thing was like. He gave all the credit to this guy who wrote the book. He's like this. We wanted to stay true to this guy's book because the book was so good. We just didn't want to mess it up.

[Michael Batnik]

But so Ryan Gosling had chemistry. So he meets an alien out there and they team up to tackle the problem. Not a spoiler. It's in the trailer. He had on screen chemistry with this alien. Like, it was. It was just so much fun. It was so great. And the IMAX is like at least the one in New York City. The giant, giant one in Lincoln Square. You can't get in. It's like sold out forever.

[Ben Carlson]

Interesting. I'm sure it's just a better way.

[Michael Batnik]

It's great. It made me really happy. It was so good.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Any other recommendations for you?

[Michael Batnik]

No, just. I'm enjoying DTF quite a bit.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I took your recommendation. I watched the first episode. I love the show is with subtle humor like that. The show made me laugh.

[Michael Batnik]

It's very funny.

[Ben Carlson]

It's you. But you have to. I feel like you have to have the right. Some people wouldn't think so. Some people. But I really liked it. I watched Rooster too. I plowed through the first few episodes of that.

[Michael Batnik]

Good show. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

Sometimes it's nice to just have a 20 to 30 minute show that doesn't have like, it's not like the weight of the world on it. It's just kind of a relaxing show.

[Michael Batnik]

It's light.

[Ben Carlson]

But here's what I love. I love because this. This was in good fortune, which I. Did you watch yet? The Keanu one.

[Michael Batnik]

What's it. What's that?

[Ben Carlson]

The Aziz Ansari, Seth Roman.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, no, no, no. I haven't seen it.

[Ben Carlson]

I love how people with the cold plunge and saunas are getting roasted now. I feel like that's a great thing to roast because they. They totally roast rich people. Doing the cold plunge into the sauna, back to the cold plunge, back to the sauna and talking about how great it is for you. And they do that in Rooster, too. And because this is the kind of thing where you know the old joke like, how do you tell someone went to Harvard? Because talk to them for five minutes and they'll tell you. You can't have a cold plunge in a sauna today without telling someone about it. You have to tell someone. I have a cold punch and I

[Michael Batnik]

do it, all right?

[Ben Carlson]

It's impossible to have one and not tell people about it.

[Michael Batnik]

There's somebody in our life close to us that. A cold plunge person that just got a sauna and a cold plunge. Who do you think it is?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I have no. I have no idea.

[Michael Batnik]

Come on, dude. One guess that works with us. Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, Barry.

[Michael Batnik]

No, Chris.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah, that's true. Chris. Okay, that's true. I guess I couldn't see Barry getting in a cold plunge, but, yes, Barry

[Michael Batnik]

has no patience for that. Isn't crazy. Of course Chris is getting his sauna. And guess what? I'm gonna partake. I'm a huge schvitz guy. I love a sauna, but I just.

[Ben Carlson]

I love a sauna, too, but I wouldn't do the cold plunk. I love how these things become fads, though. And it's like, you have to tell someone about it. It's so good for your circulation. Anyway, my wife and I watched Hamnet, which is on Peacock. The.

[Michael Batnik]

Wait, hold on. But hold on, just a question. On Rooster, do you think that anything will happen in the show, or do you sort of just think this is what it is?

[Ben Carlson]

I think this is kind of what it is, which I like, and I love that Steve Carell is still doing this kind of stuff.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it's just very easy. There's nothing mean about it. It's not cynical. It's not an AI nonsense.

[Ben Carlson]

It's just good in setting a show on a college campus just works all the time. That setting always works. Steve Carell is, I think, an underrated actor for how good he is. I think he's subtly a very good actor. Anyway, so Hamnet is on Peacock now. So my wife and I watched it last night, and the star, she won the. I think her name is Jessie Buckley. She won Best Actress at the Oscars. Did you bet on that one?

[Michael Batnik]

I did not.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so this is not a Michael movie. I think it's got true and fictionalized parts about William Shakespeare's actual life. Okay. His kids, his wife, and the first three quarters of the movie are kind of a rough watch in some ways. It's kind of a Sad story. I had no idea what it was about. I went in totally blind. Okay. It's a sad story. And the last half hour of the movie is unbelievable. It's so good. And the ending is amazing. And I couldn't believe, like, I can't believe I was ready to, like, hate this movie. Like, ah, it's just kind of depressing. And it's really well acted. Everyone in it is a great actor. The performances are amazing. But I'm like, God, it's such a downer. And then the end happened. And I'm like, wow, that was very powerful.

[Michael Batnik]

Were you on your phone the entire time?

[Ben Carlson]

I watched the whole movie. I was not on my phone at all.

[Michael Batnik]

Impressive.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't think it's a Michael movie.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, I know it's not. Yeah. No.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Tell Robin. Robin. Tell Robin to watch it. But do you. Probably not for you. No, you wouldn't. You would make like 20 minutes.

[Michael Batnik]

Robin. Yeah. She doesn't.

[Ben Carlson]

She doesn't.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't think. I don't think it's fair either. She doesn't love them.

[Ben Carlson]

But it got me thinking.

[Michael Batnik]

Huge movie person.

[Ben Carlson]

Bill Shakespeare, if he's alive today, what streamer is he writing for? He starts out at hbo, then Paramount coaches him. You know, I'm thinking he'd be writing shows because he wrote. He did theater, so he'd be writing streaming shows. So he'd start on Netflix or start on HBO because he'd do, like, highbrow. Then he'd go to Netflix. Then Paramount would poach him. Probably right. I'm trying to think, what would Bill Shakespeare be writing about these days if he's doing a show? And I'm not gonna lie, I've never seen Hamlet. I did not know what Hamlet was about. Does that make me an idiot? That's one of those things I probably should know. I had no idea I knew the lines. I knew to be or not to be is from that. I had no idea. I knew. It's a tragedy. I. I couldn't have told you what the plot of Hamlet is.

[Michael Batnik]

Didn't you see Billy Madison? Shouldn't that hold you up to you?

[Ben Carlson]

Close enough. All right. Yeah. Hamnet. It's a film, that's for sure. But I enjoyed it. Okay. Especially the end.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. Animalspirits of the compoundnews.com Happy birthday to Michael.

[Ben Carlson]

Hope you had a great day.

[Michael Batnik]

It's too late. I reject your birthday. Wish us. Thank you.

[Ben Carlson]

At least I got. You know what the worst one. Happy B. Day. HB yeah. See you next week.