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Today's show is brought to you by Invesco. Is it time to take your equity portfolio off autopilot? Relying solely on traditional market benchmarks may not give your portfolio all of the lift it needs. Invesco can help you take control with strategies that offer a different approach. Whether you're looking for an equal weight approach or mid cap exposure that can balance growth and stability, Invesco offers funds designed to help you break your concentration. Want to fine tune your approach? Explore our strategies targeting momentum, low volatility, quality and more. Visit Invesco.com to learn more. Invesco let's rethink possibility before investing Consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc. Today's show is sponsored by Y Charts. By this time of the year, most advisors are already in mid year mode. I know I am. You're running client education sessions, reviewing estate plans ahead of summer travel, and starting to have real conversations about how portfolios are tracking so far this year. And the reality is, most of the work still lives across spreadsheets, PDFs and disconnected tools. Why Charts pulls all of that into one place. You could take a portfolio instantly, see how it's tracking compared to its targets, and turn it into something you can actually use in a client conversation without rebuilding everything from scratch. It's the difference between preparing for hours and being ready in minutes. If you're in the middle of these conversations right now, it's worth trying. Click the link in the Show Notes to start a free trial and get 20% off your initial wide charts. Professional Subscription New customers Only.
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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
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are solely their own opinion and do
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not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management.
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This podcast is for informational purposes only
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and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions.
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Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We have a long shot. Well, we have a long doc. Ben has something at 10:15 so we're going to go an hour 10. I suppose we're going to take all the time. We've got 42 pages. There is so much to discuss. I feel overwhelmed. I am doing four podcasts this week and I still think I have more to say. I Mean, the amount of news flow coming out is incredible. But I want to take a moment to acknowledge that I feel like I am having a moment. Michael Batnik is having a moment. Now we are having a moment. We share a lot of overlap and our good fortune, but things are going pretty well for me right now.
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B
So this is the. You don't get the reference, but this is the summer of Michael. Like the summer of George and Seinfeld.
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I don't get the reference, but that's part of it. Like, all of this happening with the sun coming out. It's been a long, crappy winter, as they always are. Like, the fact that it's happening with while the sun is shining makes it even more sweet. But I say this not to brag, because bragging is gross. Nobody likes it. But more is just a. An acknowledgement that life is hard. Life has its ups and downs. And you know when you're. When you're sick and you're like, gosh, I just. I gotta be. I just wanna feel better. Please make me feel better. And then you're healthy and you completely forget about being sick. So I'm just trying to acknowledge and take.
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B
We talked about gratitude a couple weeks ago. Gratitude. It's a good thing to be grateful when things are going well. It's not bragging, it's being grateful.
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A
But it is also weird to be. To have clarity like this, that this moment in time, summer 2026, might be the peak for me, which is a weird thing to think about, I'll tell you.
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B
Apex Mountain.
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This is my Apex Mountain. I have waited a long time for this. Last week, I wore a shirt from the. From the 1999 finals. I was 14 years old. My father started taking me games when I was seven. To be able to share this moment with my boys is beyond special. I cried twice this week listening to podcasts. Once from Mike Breen, talking about how special this moment is, and once when Legler was talking about how good Jalen is. Like literal and actual tears falling down my face. It is.
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B
You were in some sort of news story showing you shouting about the Knicks.
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So my friend texted me yesterday. I am apparently the face of. Of people that can't afford tickets, which is obviously ironic, you know, but. But the. The tickets are out of control, expensive. So my plans, depending on how the series goes, if it goes the distance, I will be at games three through seven. I'm making the track. So I think Nixon five. I mean, I don't actually think that, but I do think Nixon 6. So we'll see. All right, so there's that. The Giants, after a lost decade, are finally. I think we bottomed. I don't think it's gonna get any worse for us. Movies are having a serious moment in time. What happened with Obsession and Backwards, which we'll talk about later in the show, is remarkable.
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B
It's not just movies. It's your kind of movies.
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It's. It's my movies. The movies that I have subscribed to, and I've had season tickets for a long time. Right.
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B
Yeah. Your deranged type of movies are having a moment.
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We at Ritholtz, things are, thank God, going well for us in the company and our employees and our clients. Things are. You know, things are going well. We launched Porterhouse, the momentum strategy that we've spoken about. And this is my regular, semi regular reminder that we need more advisors. We have a lot of people that are interested in our services, and we have a shortage of advisors to serve all of them, which is insane. I started my career, and I'm using air quotes for people that are not watching cold calling and getting hung up on. So the fact that there are now people that are coming knocking on our door is. Is something. It boggles my mind every day. I don't. I definitely.
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B
I've been saying this for a while. There's a bull market in the need for financial advice for the next 20 years.
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Yeah.
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Huge bull market. We need.
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All right, what else is. Is we launched an etf. Can't really say much more, but we did that. And family and friends, like, everybody's healthy and life is hard. My uncle, when my mom passed, my uncle said to me, and this is extremely corny, but it's also extremely worth digesting. He said, enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal. And it's true. We only. We only have one chance on this planet, and life has its ups and downs. So if.
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If I appreciate you starting with positivity, because I'm. I'm. I'm really sick of all the negativity in the world, so I enjoy a glass apple take on the world.
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Well, listen, I know that life is hard for a lot of people, and if you're struggling and you're. You're vomiting me, you know, expressing gratitude. I'm sorry for you, and I hope things get better, but I just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge publicly that, like, I'm having a moment. And it feels. It feels good.
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B
This is the top right there. That was it.
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Okay.
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B
Well, downhill from here.
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All right, let's get into the market because is happening every day.
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B
It feels like something is going nuclear. Is this, is this the worst FOMO we've ever seen in our lifetimes? Post.com is this, this. It seems like every week it's something. It's a country, it's an etf, it's a sector, it's a stock, right? It's Dell, it's Intel, it's Sandisk, it's Western Digital, it's. There's something going just bananas all the time. You look at the charts and it's this morning we're getting.com like 1999 like returns since for some stocks for a year like four digit returns. It's insane.
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Jensen Wong said this morning that Marvell could be the next trillion dollar company. And the stock is up, the stock is up 16 pre market. That's a big, big statement. But I, I think it's, I think it's accurate. I don't think. Because you could say 20, 20, 2021. But that was. Yeah, that was stupid. That was like GameStop nonsense, right?
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This is, that was like Internet fun times. This is real.
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This is real and it's hard to fight it.
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Okay.
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If you are an investor and you feel underexposed, you're not feeling awesome right now.
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No, I agree. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. Chip stocks powered the S&P 500 up 16% across April and May. A two month surge matched only four other times since 1950. The index was higher six months later, each time by median of 17%. So we're talking about a handful of times that this is the best two month stretch since 19. One of the best two month stretches ever since 1950. That's pretty good. This is interesting. I've never seen this before. Sam Rowe. So this is S and P via Sam Row from an all. I've never seen it presented like this. And I told chart kid Matt, I said hey, we got to recreate this from an all time high. How often did The S&P 500 make another all time high within the next day, week, month and year? 99% of the time. Within the next year, The S&P 500 made another all time high after making one. That's pretty insane.
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Yeah, that's good stuff. All right. I am not, I'm not, I'm not a analog chart guy. You compare two lines, right? Like I've said this many times, lines can only go in three directions. Up, down or sideways. So when you see two things lining up, you know one of My first blog posts, actually, I compared Altria to like Altria from whenever I wrote the blog post to the Dow Jones from a different time period. And I was like, this is very easy. It's very easy to find charts that line up. But this one I do find interesting.
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B
Remember how many 1929 charts there have been over the years?
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Yeah. Well, that's all. That's all. Yeah.
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B
The worst.
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Okay, so Bespoke tweeted the NASDAQ at 875 trading days after the release of Netscape on December 19, 1994, and the NASDAQ at 875 day trading days after the release of Chat GPT. And it's identical now. Whatever. You could see the rest of the chart. The, like the. The NASDAQ had only begun to explode after 875 trading days. So if. I guess maybe one of the takeaways is this thing can go a lot longer and a lot harder than anybody thinks. Whatever. Be that like, that's neither here.
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We're only in 1998 right now.
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Exactly. I just think it's. The parallels between the browser versus the ChatGPT should not be lost on anyone. It's obvious.
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All right, this is from the Wall Street Journal article. George Vanderheiden, once a Fidelity portfolio manager with one of Wall Street's best performance records, shunned tech stocks in the late 1990s in a bet that the bubble would soon burst, loading up on Treasuries instead. Performance slumped. He retired in February 2000, scribbling a message and his office whiteboard, tulip bulbs for sale. He said at the time, you try to manage the portfolio for risk, but the market hasn't rewarded you for it. The market has no fear. Obviously, the market peaked like a month later, but that's how I would describe this market. This is a market with no fear. There's none. I know people are trying to make up, oh, this is going to burst. The way the market is acting, there is no fear. Is that fair to say?
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Yes and no. I think it is a fair statement that on Tuesday, June 2, there is no fear. However, Warren Pies tweeted on May 31, despite many expecting a seasonal, top retail traders are still jittery. The 2% pullback in mid May, now that was. That was May. Okay, so on June 2nd, there's no fear.
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But in 2%, we're talking about.
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Let me finish. In mid May, the 2% pullback forced big inflows into cash and money market ETFs. Warren's point was positive price momentum and defensive flows is not something you typically see at tops. But remember there was a. Literally a 2%. Whatever. I don't want to say pullback. A 2%. Well, pullback, I suppose, but there was a, there was a, there was a rush into cash sneeze.
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That's like a market sneeze.
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So it's just, let's just take, take.
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It's just the fear. The fear could happen fast when it happens.
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So what am I. I'm trying to. There's a phrase I'm looking for. Take stock. That's the phrase. Let's take stock of the fact that things change so fast. Think about how bearish people were on the AI trade after Sam Altman said that shit on the podcast in, in the fall. Think about how bearish people were on the max 7 rewind all the way back to the pullback from the war. Sentiment changes so fast. But Ben, you're right. On June 2nd at 9:15 in the morning, there is no fear.
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It feels like we're on these train tracks of AI and just, we keep going and every once in a while the train gets derailed for something. Liberation Day, war, whatever fears are. And then we just find our way back onto the tracks and people are like, oh yeah, it's AI powering this thing. That seems to be where we've been for the last three or four years. All right, Carl can from Goldman US IPO gross proceeds will total a record 225 billion in 2026. Previous forecast was 160 billion. These numbers are just like not even close to anything else since the great financial crisis. It dwarfs everything. I think what the number was that the three companies alone did you have this last week for us? Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX will together have more proceeds for an IPO than any of the 1990com bubble stocks.
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All of them, I think it was. It was 98, 99 and 2000 combined. Now Denise on TCAT, Denise Chisholm made a good point. We're going to adjust for the size of the market cap.
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Yeah, obviously the market's way bigger today,
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but yeah, we are, we are in a moment. So last week Anthropic raised a 6. $65 billion Series H funding at a $965 billion post money valuation. And then four days later they said we're going to YPO too later this year. We got, they filed their S1 yesterday. I haven't had time to go through it.
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I love how the, the Headlines all say anthropic confidentially filed the S1. Like it's not confidential. We're all talking about it.
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I know we keep saying this, but it is the fundamentals driving this. Now, it's hard to, it's hard to like, know how much of the pie is excess speculation and excess euphoria. Obviously that's a part of it. Investors are rightfully excited. But last week Dell raised its outlook for the year after sales climbed 88%.
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Dell is still a company like where Gateway missed its moment here. Where's Gateway Computers?
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It not only is Delic company, it's a gigantic company. It now expects full year revenue to be 165 to 169 billion, up from a prior range of 138 to 140 billion. So the stock gapped up 38%. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that this is being driven by fundamentals. Here's, here's, here's a quote that I want to share, Ben.
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To me, the weirdest thing about this is so many of these companies have been around for a long time. Intel, Dell, Micron, Western, Digital, like all these are not new companies that are springing up. These are companies that have been around forever.
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Correct.
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In technology terms at least.
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I have. Ben. I tweeted this quote in 2017 from the pseudonymous Adam Smith. He wasn't really pseudonymous, but he went, he penned his books under Adam Smith. He wrote the Money Game, which in my opinion is the greatest financial book ever written. At least it's my favorite. And he wrote a book called Super Money. And to me, this perfectly describes how we are all feeling about the bull market. We are all at a wonderful ball where the champagne sparkles in every glass and soft laughter falls upon the summer air. We know by the rules that at some moment the black horsemen will come shattering through the great terrace doors, wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors. Those who leave early are saved. But the ball is so splendid, no one wants to leave while there is still time. So that everyone keeps asking, what time is it? What time is it? But none of the clocks have any hands. Is that chef's kiss or what? And I tweeted that in 2017 because at that time there were so many. There were so many people wondering, begging, when is this great ride going to end? When is the splendid ball one of the lights going to go off?
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I think you just have to have an open mind about this. And that's where I am, is that I know all the historical parallels. I do get worried that oh my gosh, this is the excesses we've been waiting for that that could tip us over and like honestly lead to a recession if the excesses get too big and there has to be a pullback. So that part does worry me. But I think you just have. If you don't have an open mind about what technology has done to the markets, to our lives in the past 15 years, then you haven't been paying attention.
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I think that's the right posture. The right posture is obviously not oblivious to the risks. How could you be at this point but an open mind that this could go on for a lot longer than you think and that some of the run ups are justified and have the bulls not earned the benefit of the doubt.
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B
I got the bearish take later in the doc, but let's talk about the bulls more. Micron, this company went nuts. So this is all the, all the $1 trillion. So you made this chart looks like how many charts, how many stocks is it now? 10, 11?
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This is the 11th.
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So which is crazy. So every stock in the top 10 of the S&P 500 now has a trillion dollar market cap or more. Just nuts.
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Ben, think about what's, what's not a trillion dollar company below Micron. You know what I don't see on this chart? I don't see J.P. morgan. I don't see Walmart.
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No Netflix.
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Well forget about Netflix.
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I don't know, I'm just thinking of
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household names but Walmart and JP Morgan or smaller than Micron. Okay, I guess that's kind of cool
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to see Eli Lilly on here too. So Bloomberg had some charts here. Trading days between 500 billion and $1 trillion market cap. Micron is the fastest in history. And guess what the next two are also happening now. Samsung and SK Hynix, which is which and like Microsoft and Berkshire took a lot longer.
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Okay, look at Alphabet. That wasn't like that long ago. It took, it took Alphabet over a thousand trading days.
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So Bloomberg also four years. Bloomberg has Micron's earnings are expected to explode higher. This chart doesn't look real. So it shows their trailing 12 months earning per share going back to 2017. And then the average analyst estimates for the next three quarters and it's a tenfold increase five fold increase. It's, it's, it looks like a totally different chart to your point about like the fundamentals. The crazy thing to me is just that this, it wasn't like two years even a year ago people were saying this is going to happen. These memory that semiconductors are going to take off like this. This wasn't something people were foreseeing in this whole thing. Right. This is a, this is a new thing that no one was like pounding the table saying these are the stocks. It had this to your point, not happening fast. This happened so fast. And the RE rating and the earnings RE ratings and the stock RE ratings of these, it's just, it's nuts.
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A
I want to give a shout to Roundhill for the greatest ETF launch of all time. So they launched DRAM in early April. The ETF is up 127%.
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Oh, I've had this later in the life. They sent out an email today. So listen to this. This is from Roundhill. The Roundhill memory ETF ticker. DRAM surpassed $10 billion in assets under management in only 35 days. Faster than any ETF in history. Wow. Holy crap. $10 billion in 10 days. So this is all those stocks that we just been talking about. Micron, Standisk, Sk Hynix, isn't it? It's only like six stocks essentially.
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Oh, I don't know about that. I have no idea. I don't know what the whole things
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are that make up the majority of it.
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Okay. I would assume it's a bigger basin than that. But there's $14 billion in assets as of yesterday. This is credit to them. These guys are good, but better to be lucky than good. Unbelievable. Love to see it. Good for them.
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B
Okay. All right. So sorry. Yeah, the, the top stuff, but. Oh man.
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So we, we shared a chart on, on TCAF. The distance between SMH and its 200 day moving average. And there's nothing in history like this at least. Well, I'm sorry, it goes back to 2001. So maybe, maybe it's crazier in 99, but for goodness sakes, like if you are putting new money in here, I'm, I'm just have some sort of an exit plan. Like you got to, you got to fight. You got to fight the fear. Fight the fight the fomo.
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B
Well, this is the kind of thing where you said like people have such big profits here that there's going to be a time when these stocks, something happens and people. Okay, my gosh. I need to, I need to lock these profits in now and there's going to be a huge cascade of selling. Even if it's like a one day or one week thing.
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I keep saying this. When Micron reported its blowout numbers last quarter. Blowout numbers, the stock fell 30% in about two weeks, three weeks. And that was. Guys, that was like, in March. So I'm not, I'm not. I don't want to be like, it's super lame, but just be careful.
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B
Yes, there's going to be those stats that say, oh, my gosh, These stocks down 30% but still up 400% for the year. Whatever.
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And by the way, we, we. We own a lot of these names in Porterhouse. Like, we own a lot of these names. And if and when they break our. Whatever our rules are, they'll. They'll get sold.
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B
Yes. That's the point of momentum strategy. The trade is global. This is one of the things that I've kind of been talking about for a while, wondering or predicting whatever you want to say. So Michael Semblance looked at a basket of Chinese AI stocks and a basket of US AI stocks. And this is going back to the start of 2024, and they're essentially following each other beat for beat. Chinese stocks are actually outperforming a little bit. Going back to the same thing. The Emerging Markets ETF versus the NASDAQ 100 has kind of tracked it pretty similarly and are up about the same as each other since the start of 2024. So this is the kind of thing where this, this is not just on our shores anymore. This is a global phenomenon. And I actually, I've been thinking that AI, The Internet really didn't level the playing field as much as people thought. I think in terms of, like, US Domination of the world, I think AI might be the thing that does it. That sort of brings the rest of the world up to us. I think it's possible. All right, I want to give the AI bear case now and talk about my favorite new macro podcast. So TS Lombard has a podcast. Dario Perkins is a guy I follow on Twitter. They have three macro people, they're all British, and they make macro calls. And then if they get it wrong, they all rip on each other on the next podcast.
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A
I love that.
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B
So that. So I really, I really enjoy it. So they said, let us lay out the bear case here, because everyone has the bull case. So Dario Perkins says, I did the numbers. 80% of the revenue right now is circular, meaning it's going from Google to Oracle to, like, it's. It's the capex from one company going to these other companies. So a lot of it is. He's. He's saying it hasn't quite broken out yet to the wider world of businesses yet. A lot of it is still circular. So all this capex we're seeing is them shuffling the chairs around, so to speak. And he's saying if. If we don't see the leap, then that's. That's a worry. If it's just these companies spending with each other. And it's interesting, Ben Thompson, I know his podcast last week said that Nvidia is now starting to break out their quarterly numbers by hyperscalers vs non hyperscalers. Because I'm sure they're getting crap about this. Like, hey, is this just a big circle jerk? Are we. What are we doing here? So anyway, it's worth a listen. So it's called Global Data is the name of the podcast. I think it's worth a listen for the bearish take, because I think we are now in the camp that I feel like the bearish takes before an AI were kind of getting the most oxygen, and now I feel like the only thing you hear is bullish. So, again, trying to keep an open mind. I want to think about both of these things still. And what I should be looking for mile markers and goal posts to be like, all right, fine, that bears trope. That one was knocked down. Right? Anyway, you know what?
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You know what I found? You know what I found really helpful for me early in my journey as a. As a. As a young investor, I used to write down everything when I bought or sold something. I would write down what I was doing. And Ben and I have joked about this in the past. In 2011, I think I shorted Amazon, and I would. I would, like, frequently reread what I wrote, like, with the passage of time. And I don't mean, like years later. I mean, like, like three months later. I would look back and believe me, it didn't take very long before I discovered that I was not, in fact, the next Stanley Druckenmiller. And if you do that, especially in a time like right now, because whatever happens, you will. It will have appeared obvious in hindsight, for the most part. And I would say, listen, if. If the bull market goes another year, if we're up 30%, I don't. I'm. I don't think anybody's gonna be like, not anybody. I don't think a lot of the narratives, like, well, of course we're up another 30 spend, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, there. There will be more disbelief, in my opinion. But if we're down 30%, everybody will have seen it coming. Everybody will have said it was so obvious. Oh, yeah, okay. If you think it's so obvious, that we're in a bubble, then sell or short or whatever. But write down. Write down. It's really. It's a really helpful exercise. Write down how you're thinking before you buy or sell something and do that for a couple of months and see if it doesn't sober you up about your own abilities to predict the future.
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B
Yes, I agree that. That. That's one of the reasons that I like having a blog, because it keeps me honest with that stuff. And it's one of the reasons that we have policy statements for. For our clients. Writing stuff down reminding you of your goals and why you're investing. Duality Research had a good one showing that this is really a tale of two bubbles or not bubbles, two bull markets. Sorry, I got bubbles on the brain here. Also, the other thing is, no one can time a bubble. No one can do it. It is impossible. Isaac Newton was probably the smartest person to ever walk the earth, maybe one of the top three. And he got caught up in a bubble in the South Sea. One of my favorite stories. It's impossible. No one can time it.
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A
One of my favorite stories about humility in this, in the stock market is Stanley Drucken Miller, who I think everybody has on there, like Mount Rushmore of Mount Whatever your style is. He's on the Mount Rushmore, if not the goat. Okay. Drucken Miller was in the business for almost 20 years prior to the top. In 2000, he had been killing it. He already was a legend for shorting the pound. Like he was a guy. And he fought the bubble. He fought, he fought, he fought. He was under invested. He hired a couple of young kids because he was like, all right, clearly I'm out of sync with the market. I need some young blood. Maybe they have a better idea of what's going on than I did because, well, whatever. We don't get into his backstory, but. And he went all in, in his words, within hours of the actual top, into tech stocks, he lost $3 billion in 24 hours. Something like that. And as he reflected on what he learned, his answer was nothing. I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway because I couldn't help it.
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B
That was from your book, right?
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A
That was my book. All right, so what. So back to. Back to this chart. What are we looking at here?
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B
All right, so you talk about analogs between the 80s and 90s and today. I think this is another one that it was that period, however you want to, whenever you want to start it, 82 to 9980 to 2000, whatever it is, it was really two different bull markets that were just kind of mashed into one over time. And so duality research looked at in the 2000, so 2013 to 2020, new highs in the S&P 500 came at low VIX prints. Right. It was like the stair step up. But now in the2020s, since the pandemic, new highs have come with higher VIX prints. So there's more volatility when it happens. And this is showing that since the pandemic, this is a totally different market. The bull market is acting differently. So here's how the market is still grinding higher, but without the same complacency we saw in the 2010s. In other words, investors are still paying up for protection even during rallies, pointing to a more hedged, more cautious backdrop, which is interesting.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah. So that's why I push back a little bit because you're right, there's no fear today. But fear comes back so fast. It comes back so fast. All right, so we, let's. We'll do a little bit about SpaceX here. I'm doing a full episode because it deserves a full episode tomorrow on Talking wealth of Aaron Dillon about what advisors need to know about SpaceX. Because clients are asking a lot. This is the hottest.
- [29:17]
B
We've got a ton of questions.
- [29:18]
A
This is the hottest IPO of our lifetimes. What does it mean for index inclusion? What does it mean for buying? So we'll get into that a little bit today. My dad texted me yesterday, should I buy the SpaceX IPO? My dad never ever asks me about individual stocks ever. So this is on the brain.
- [29:37]
B
What did you tell him?
- [29:39]
A
I said no. He said, okay. I said the price might go up in the first few sessions. Who knows? But it's a cluster. All right, so let me elaborate.
- [29:48]
B
I can't. I know you're going to get into this. On Talking wealth. I can't force myself to get up in arms about Space X being an anthropic eventually being included in index funds. I can't make myself get mad about it.
- [29:59]
A
Okay, So I know a lot of
- [30:00]
B
people want to be mad about it. I can't. There's no such thing mad about it.
- [30:03]
A
There's nuance in there is. Yes. These companies should be in a cap weighted index. If they are like a top 15, top 10 stock in a cap weighted index, how could they not be included? It would be bizarre.
- [30:18]
B
Exactly. That's my feeling.
- [30:20]
A
People are upset because the NASDAQ is changing the index providers are changing the rules. Guess what? These rules were not handed down on a tablet by Moses. What do you mean we're allowed to change the rules? The market looks so much different today than it did back then. The rules are allowed to change. Okay, the question is, are the rule changes protecting investors? And everybody has their opinion. I think to include an IPO of this size in the index after 15 days is kind of nuts. There are all sort of chicanery that can be played. I don't think there's enough time for price discovery. I believe that they should be included in the index. But 15 days, 15 days or, or even five seems nuts. Now the part that, I think, the part that people are upset with is exit liquidity. They are, they are coming out with a very short, short float so that the index has to buy all of it and it's manipulating and it's. So that part I sort of understand. But, but the, the nuances of it matter. So here's Matt Levine. So the schematic, maximally cynical approach for SpaceX would be something like this. Do an IPO, sell like one share of stock to the most ardent possible Elon Musk fan asset manager at a $2 trillion valuation. Sell perhaps tens of billions of dollars dollars of stock to ardent Elon Musk fan retail investors. Whoever's willing to buy at that $2 trillion valuation. Lock up all the rest of the stock so that no one can sell. Get in all the indexes because you are huge. Something like 24% of the stock of the average member of The S&P 500 index is held by index funds at a $2 trillion valuation. That's like $500 billion of stock. Sell $500 billion of stock to index funds at that $2 trillion valuation. They can't say no. That is, the maximally cynical approach is to sell as little stock as possible to price sensitive investors in order to keep the supply low and the price high, and then sell as much stock as possible to index funds who can't negotiate on price. Actually can't negotiate on price understates the issue. If index funds need to buy 24% of your stock and only 20% of your stock is available to buy, then the index funds are forced to chase it, driving up the stock to whatever price you like. You have effectively created a short squeeze for the index funds. They have to buy stock at any price and there isn't enough stock for them to buy. Just keep bidding. You tell Vanguard, okay, so that's Matt Levine. But the Reality is a little bit more nuanced. Here's Lu Wang and her colleagues also at Bloomberg. They say fast track timelines vary by index. But if S and P follows its competitors, the resulting passive demand for SpaceX from funds tracking indexes would be nearly $20 billion. According to Bloomberg intelligence analysts James Seifert and Rob Dew. Rob. Rob Duboff's estimates with a $75 billion raise. All right, so they're raising $75 billion. That would be roughly a quarter of SpaceX's offerings. So to be clear, SpaceX will not be in the index at a $1.8 trillion valuation. We had a, we had a bunch of listeners email us like hey, is this, is this total horeshit? Like should I sell my index funds? So here's where it is going to fall inside of the index. This is this C. So Cie C. Cox calculated this for us based on, you know, putting a few pieces together of the new float adjusted rules. The float is what's actually being available. Okay. She, Callie said it's going to be right around Amgen and Gilead and Shopify and Honeywell. So, so if you look at this graphic that chart created, it's going to be like the 195th company in the
- [34:13]
B
S and P. It's not automatically going to be a 3% position right away or something.
- [34:16]
A
But that's assuming that they wave the profitability requirements which are probably going to. Sounds like they're going to. And we don't know when it's going to get included. I think the bigger idea is what do future unlocks look like and how much supplies ultimately could be dumped on index funds and what does that do to the price? And we will cover all of that if you want more on talking.
- [34:35]
B
Well, but I'm sure this is going to cause the index providers to change more rules in the future if they try to manipulate them.
- [34:40]
A
All right, so half baked idea, that will never happen. What if there's a new rule for private companies where once you cross a certain threshold in market cap, you can't be private anymore. You can't, you can't come public at a trillion dollar valuation. What if there's a limit? Like if you want to be a publicly traded company, there's just a limit. You can't come public at a 4 trillion dollar market cap and only release 4% of the float to investors pushing stocks higher. Push it like, I don't know, it's probably not going to happen. I'm, I'm sure that's, you know, probably not a great idea for various reasons. It's an interesting experiment. We'll see what's, what's going to happen. And that brings us to one of the big questions is how much supply can the market handle? Because the money's got to come from somewhere. And if open AI is coming public and SpaceX is coming public and Anthropic is coming public and they're raising 200 billion. What was the number that Goldman was a.250.250 billion dollars in new shares coming to market. You have to sell something. And how does, what does that do? Okay, well, funny you should ask because Google apparently needs to raise money or they are choosing to raise money. So Google is doing an $80 billion equity offering. It is the first time since 2005.
- [36:10]
B
Tell you what, this, this is a narrative buster to me. This whole story is so bizarre to me.
- [36:15]
A
In what sense?
- [36:17]
B
The fact that people have been talking about Buffett sitting on a cash pile and the timing of Berkshire Hathaway getting into this is bizarre to me.
- [36:25]
A
So they bought Google last year. They're buying more. They're buying $10 billion, which is, I mean, what's their cash pile? Is it $300 billion? It's. So it was done by a. Via private placement at only like a 4% discount to current prices. And the whole story is fascinating. It's very interesting.
- [36:42]
B
There's a million. A company as big as Google and mature as Google raising equity is. So we, I looked it up. It this. I'm like, when has this ever happened before? It's. This is basically a one. One of one that this has happened. A company that produces this much. Yeah. This size, this mature. I mean Tesla did a bunch of equity raises, I guess like I, I was, I was scouring all the LLMs, like when does this happen for? They're like, never. This is new. So here's like, like this has never happened before.
- [37:09]
A
Here's their press release. During its Q1 2026 earnest call, Alphabet announced that its 2026 capex are expected to be 180 to $190 billion and that it expects 2027 capex to significantly increase compared to 2026. The equity offering is part of Alphabet's plan to fund its investments in a balanced way while retaining a healthy balance sheet. Their other sources of funding include strong operating cash flow. Over the last 12 months, they generated $174 billion of cash flow and debt issuances. Over the last year, they raised $85 billion of debt. So People are rightfully saying like hey wait a minute, what in the world is going on? $175 billion of operating cash flow issued $85 billion worth of debt just over the last 12 months and you still need more money. To me, the clearest the, the, the. My reading from this is I should buy more Nvidia. I own Nvidia.
- [38:03]
B
I should buy more that the narratives I was thinking about this is obviously this means there's so much demand. Yes. That they need, they needed money this bad that they had to raise equity which is to your point, crazy with how much capex they already produce. The other one is these are way more capital intensive businesses now and if they can't fund everything with cash, cash flows like that, that potentially changes the business model. And those are the two things that I came away with here.
- [38:30]
A
So I forget the exact details. They did $10 billion in a private placement with Berkshire. They're doing a $40 million at the market equity offering sometime in the third quarter. And there were some preferreds in there. Now this is like nuance that really who cares. Part of this is to pay the tax bill. So they issue a lot of stock to their employees that is treated like cash comp. They have to pay income tax for that. So they're doing that. I saw somebody made good points like well cash is fungible. They could, they don't want, they, they could just use it from operating. Right. But, but they did say that's part of the use for this. So the stock is doing water in the pre market this morning it was down 2 1/2 percent. The stock is down the stock. Oh, the market is open. The Stock is down 4 1/2 percent. So to me this is going to be very interesting how the market digests.
- [39:13]
B
So there goes the discount right away. Huh? You said they bought it at a 4% discount.
- [39:19]
A
So Google's at 355. So we'll see how the market digests over the next couple of days and sessions. But it will be interesting to think about this in conjunction with all of the new supply that's coming to the market.
- [39:31]
B
I feel like we just need to start putting a file together for the thing that signaled the top. Right. Because one of these things has to be it. Remember when Google raised money? That was it. That was. Yeah, not that easy. Let's talk about South Korea real quick. So someone from South Korea sent me a picture of my book at a bookstore there, which is kind of cool. People sent me pictures from India and South Korea and New York of like seeing the book out in the wild, which is kind of cool. And so I wrote back to the guy and I said, hey, how crazy are things in South Korea as far as investors go? And he said, it's crazier than you think. The speculation is nuts. So I got a few charts here.
- [40:07]
A
Wait, hold on, hold on. On the speculation thing, are you hearing from friends?
- [40:13]
B
No, I'm really not. You're right. That part of it seemed like I was hearing from more people in the 2021 meme stock thing than I am with this. So I guess is it possible that this is. Obviously retail is involved, but it's possible that so much of this is really just professional investors in these and not. Not individuals. I don't know. So over the past 10 years, the South Korea ETF EW Y is now outperforming the S&P 500. All of that outperformance for the past 10 years has come in the past year because it was wildly underperforming through 2024. This is from Bloomberg. We talked about how South Korea passed the UK before past Canada. Now South Korea has a bigger market cap than India, which has actually kind of stagnated a little bit. South Korea is just going nuts. Eric Belchunas the 2 times SK Hynix ETF in Hong Kong has grown AUM 10 times this year is now the third biggest ETF in that market, accounting for 8.5% of all assets. A leverage ETF, a single ETF is almost 10%. He says that's insane. It'd be like an ETF in the US having $1.3 trillion, which doesn't exist.
- [41:18]
A
Makes us sober.
- [41:19]
B
It trades over a billion dollars a day, which is the US equivalent of 150 billion, which has never happened before. Holy crap. And now everyone of course says it's two stocks. Idiots. Yes, we know that.
- [41:31]
A
Well, yeah, duh. By the way, just, just getting back to my point, the comment we made a second ago about retail investors, I think retail investors that are trading all the way are all the way in. Like if you've been involved in cycle, you are all the way in. I guess my question was like, is it, is it pulling in new people into the market the way that 2021 did? I don't think so.
- [41:49]
B
That's true. I think we pulled forward a lot of demand.
- [41:52]
A
This is getting investors an interesting dynamic. Kevin Gordon tweeted quite the gap. The S&P 500 continues to look stretch relative to its 200 day moving average. Like how far Stretch we are above yet the percentage of members of trading above the 200 day moving average continues to struggle to move higher. Whatever. Not really surprising dynamic. We know what's going on.
- [42:10]
B
Back to worrying about concentration again.
- [42:11]
A
Yeah, it's a lot of the, a lot of the mega caps doing the heavy lifting and yeah, people are all in on tech. Cumulative flows into tech year to date or actually since the March low. My bad is this is from Todd son is like 30 billion and the cumulative flows x tech is negative 4 billion. Did you listen to Dan Loeb on Patrick's podcast?
- [42:31]
B
I didn't listen yet.
- [42:32]
A
He was basically like, yeah, this is by far our biggest exposure is tech. And you know, I mean, makes sense. This is, this is where the market is.
- [42:43]
B
If you want to, if you want to get out of ex tech now you're, you're getting rid of like half the market. It's a, it's an enormous bet.
- [42:49]
A
We haven't spoken about money market funds in a while. On the other side of the spectrum, there's now $8.28 trillion in money market funds. I don't necessarily want to say that this is going to like, in fact, you know What, I was 100% right here. I was.
- [43:05]
B
You called this. I'll give you credit.
- [43:06]
A
Yeah, I was 100%.
- [43:07]
B
This money's not leaving.
- [43:08]
A
This money's not leaving because it's just. Yeah, go ahead.
- [43:11]
B
It helps that people thought the Fed was going to be keeping lowering rates and that would do it, but the rates have stayed pretty steady and we're still getting what, three and a half, 4% for money markets. It's not bad.
- [43:20]
A
So I don't think this impacts the stock market at all. There's probably personal finance ramifications here.
- [43:25]
B
But yeah, credit to you. You call this one. Okay, Heather Long, let's look at the other side of things. This is stunning. She says personal Savings rate in April 2025 was 5.5%. Personal savings rate April 2026 is 2.6%. That's a sharp plunge. It underscores how squeezed Americans are right now with higher prices and incomes not keeping up. Maybe you can explain away that some of it by baby boomers retiring, but not all of it. Now, a lot of people saw these numbers and said, oh my gosh, how is an economy like this with a booming stock market and all this stuff and people can't afford to save money? That's the intuitive way you read that, the counterintuitive way you read this and how it actually works in Reality is. No, no, no, no. The wealth is so much higher, people think they don't need to save as much. And this happens all the time. This happened in the 90s. This happens in every boom. The savings rate decreases when asset prices boom because people's wealth is up and they don't need to save as much anymore.
- [44:20]
A
Nailed it. I mean, right? My savings rate is way down. Probably because exactly what you just described.
- [44:25]
B
Right. Mike Zakari posted a chart from bank of America that shows just that the savings rate tends to be negatively correlated with household wealth. When wealth goes up you. And now you.
- [44:35]
A
Of course it is. Of course it is. You're afraid to spend in bad times. Duh.
- [44:40]
B
Right? Yes.
- [44:43]
A
All right. This is from Torsten Slok. He says he has a chart showing the US ADP Weekly employment. He said it is Javon's paradox playing out in real time. Cheaper technology is creating more demand and more jobs. And this would be amazing. This would be an incredible outcome. We will see. I don't think that. I think it is way too early to draw any conclusions, like, ridiculously early to draw any conclusions. But I hope it happens. I hope that all the fears and fears that I shared the Satrini report bummed me out. I'm not gonna pretend like I wasn't bummed out. I would love. I mean, we would all love for nothing more than for this to not be the case.
- [45:35]
B
This is. This is. There's certain segments that are gonna be disrupted, obviously. I think the hardest part is the people who are in technology are the ones who are seeing the biggest disruption right now. And the people in technology are like running around their hair on fire because they see what's happening to software developers in their space and they're going, no, you people don't get it. You have no idea what's coming. And I can't tell if it's.
- [45:57]
A
I think they don't get it. I don't think they understand human beings as a group over generalizing.
- [46:03]
B
No, I definitely agree with that. I think the emotional intelligence, the EQ of tech in general is a lot lower than other industries, and that's not a slight.
- [46:12]
A
So, Kevin Roose. No, their IQ is higher. Their EQ is lower. That's. That's the, that's the computer brain. Like, we all know people like that. Kevin Ruse tweeted, overheard in an AI lab. How are you spending the last 300 days of work? Buco Capital retweeted and said increasingly think the only options for the AI labs are to end up in prison. Or as government employees. I think he's being. I mean, I'm guessing he's being hyperbolic, but he. He said rhetoric and outcomes they are pushing for are completely incompatible with current society. They're either wrong, enemies, consumed.
- [46:44]
B
Right. The point is, if everyone in AI is right, that whatever 50 million jobs are going away, something's going to happen.
- [46:51]
A
Yeah.
- [46:52]
B
We're not just gonna let that happen.
- [46:54]
A
A friend of mine shared with me a YouTube video on somebody walking through Google's Gemini Spark, which is like the agentic stuff, like, here's how it helps you throughout the day. Right. So this is coming. I mean, it's here. So I haven't messed around with it yet and engaged. But here's an example, A few micro examples of something that I would love to have. I don't want to be on Twitter. It bums me out. It's a cesspool. However, that is where we get amazing content for the show.
- [47:26]
B
Yeah. If you have the right filter in place. Twitter is still great.
- [47:29]
A
There's, there's. There's tons of gold and there's great aspects of Twitter, but I don't want to be. I don't want to be engaged because I get drawn into the negative aspects of it. Okay. So. But I need it. So, like, I basically want, like a. I want my agent to go through all of our transcripts, our. Our podcast transcripts, find out the people that we pull charts from all the time, like Mike Saardi and Carl K and B and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and just deliver them to me like Daily Chartbook does. Right. So I'm sure I can build that. I'm sure that exists. So I will, like, look to do something like that.
- [47:59]
B
So that's what. Gavin Baker was on Patrick's show, and he said, what do you use it for? He said, I, I have. I take all the podcasts by AI and I have. I have it. Summarize it for me.
- [48:08]
A
Here's another example that's going to exist. If I wanted to know the price every day for what a Chipotle bowl cost in New York City, and I wanted the AI to track that over time, it could do that very easily. It could go into Chipotle, create an order, and then just not hit submit and find out what the order is. Right. And just do that every day so I could see the trends. Like you could do that.
- [48:36]
B
Okay. Why would you need that?
- [48:38]
A
You don't. But just as like we're covering Chipotle. Right. We talk about it now. Of course, you don't need it. It's a silly micro example. But my point is the possibilities are endless. Okay, like for. For. So I am going to the NBA Finals.
- [48:51]
B
But this is why AI is going to lead to more work for people. I listened to a big tech person on a podcast a few weeks ago and he was talking about how awesome it is and how it's going to destroy all the jobs and he's. I just. I don't see how it doesn't destroy every job. And the host asked him, what is like, the coolest thing that you used AI for? And he said, you know what? I had all these pictures on my phone and had AI go through the pictures and like, sort them in different buckets. And it's like amazing. What good? What? No, but what good does that do you? As for. As a human being, it's just something that's kind of cool to have. It doesn't actually do anything for you. It's just cool to have. It's very cool. You're giving yourself more work with AI. That's the thing that's going to happen.
- [49:25]
A
I love more work. As a. As a hyper attention sort of person, I love more work.
- [49:31]
B
People, People think that it's going to save them time. It's just going to be doing more tasks that you weren't doing before.
- [49:37]
A
Yeah, sure, of course, of course. Here's another thing. Like, I want to monitor the ticket situation for the NBA Finals. I have to check it all the time. It's annoying if that could be automated. If you have an agent do that. And of course you can.
- [49:52]
B
Right?
- [49:53]
A
Fantastic. All right, so it's all happening in news. That's not happening. That was a. God, what a terrible segment that was. That was super lame. Michael Saylor, earlier Last year in February 2025, tweeted, Sell a kidney if you must, but keep the bitcoin. Well, well, well. Look how the tables have turned. This from Wall Street Journal of Strategy. The bitcoin hoarding firm founded by Michael Saylor said Monday that it sold 32 Bitcoin. I mean, it's 32 Bitcoin. It's not a lot of bitcoin. But nevertheless, he sold 32 Bitcoin this week for roughly $2.5 million. Markets first sale since the depths of the crypto winter in late 2022. Why? Because they need to make payments on, I don't know if it's their preferred stock, whatever it is. He told the Wall Street Journal. If you sold 1 bitcoin to buy 10 more bitcoin technically you sold the bitcoin, but economically you bought nine more bitcoin. That's like Kenny Atkinson language. Analytically, they, they, they want. Give me a break. Come on, dude.
- [50:47]
B
I think that this is short term negative for crypto. Long term positive. If they're, if they're a force seller of bitcoin, I think that's actually good that the, I don't think him being the face of bitcoin is good for crypto. Yeah, I think actually if, if they're forced as a seller, I think this is a good thing long term for crypto.
- [51:04]
A
It depends how, it depends how much crypto they're forced to sell. But I, I agree with your general statement. So bitcoin is at 68,000 and going lower. How strategic. It actually wasn't even that, that red. Oh, no. Okay. It's more red today. Okay. It's down.
- [51:16]
B
Don't you think that a lot of that, that a lot of it was kind of priced in like people knew this was coming.
- [51:23]
A
What do you mean?
- [51:25]
B
I don't know. The stock's already in a 70% drawdown or something. I know it's more today, but.
- [51:29]
A
Oh, I think, I mean it's down 7% today. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. It's priced in. I think that was probably a result of crypto being.
- [51:34]
B
I wonder how the people who went all in on this stock are doing because there's a lot of people who talked about like I, we, we heard from a lot of. Right.
- [51:41]
A
Yeah, I, it's, it's, it's sad. I don't.
- [51:45]
B
All right, let's talk real estate. And I read this real estate story about real estate agents are quitting the slow housing market, which is like, there's no activity. There's not a lot of activity. Right. So of course, people. Here's, here's a line from the Kim Taylor better career in the housing market. Mid 2023, she launched her own brokerage account with her brokerage firm with her husband. All right. She started out with a team of seven agents and quickly bought six more aboard on board. By 2024, high mortgage rates and prices were weighing on demand. Homes sat on the market. Most of her agents had to find other part time work or full time jobs to stay afloat. Her husband took a job last year working for a school district. She said we became a bleeding artery. The last 11 months have been the hardest of my career. And so this is happening to realtors all over the country. Of course. And the thing that the hard part about this is this is nothing that these people did personally. They didn't create this. They had no control over this. The fact that the housing market boomed, rates went lower, then the housing, then rates went higher and the housing market slowed. These people had nothing to. This is just bad luck. And I think it's important to recognize that. You talked about, like, all this stuff going well at the beginning of the podcast for us. Like, some of this is just great timing, great. Obviously hard work. Yes. But, like, right place, right time, too. And sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- [52:59]
A
Absolutely. I, I, I, I think that we have earned a lot of our success, but I freaking met Josh at the train station by an absolute miracle. And had I not met Josh, and I've, I've said this a million times, the reason why I am so appreciative is because I was eating shit. Like, my life was going really poorly. I was 25, and I was my only friend that was unemployed and I was unemployable. I was in a dark, dark spot. And, and it was my fault. It absolutely was my fault. I was staring at the consequences of my own actions as a stupid young idiot. These people did nothing wrong. They were in a booming industry that they were rug pulled. And I mentioned, like, I mentioned the, the strategy investors that said they lost their money. I mean, there's degrees of sad. That was like a choice that they made and whatever. This is sad. This is truly sad when people's actual livelihood is being torpedoed. And it is interesting that so much of the conversation during the boom time were, these people don't deserve 5%. What are they even doing right?
- [54:11]
B
The typical agent with two years experience or less did three transactions in 2024 and earned $8,100 in gross income. The typical agent that completed 10 transactions earned $58,100 in gross income. So it's not like these people are rolling in it right from there.
- [54:26]
A
Really sad.
- [54:27]
B
It's tough. And so obviously there's people who are leaving. And it said about 71% of agents served by the NAR in 2025 said real estate was their only profession, the lowest proportion on record, meaning they have to have other jobs to stay afloat.
- [54:40]
A
All right, Ben, so movies are having a moment. AMC Entertainment records highest May attendance since 2019. Man, I nailed the movie trade. And I bought the wrong stock. So I bought imax. I've held IMAX for a long time. It's doing fine.
- [54:55]
B
Wait I thought IMAX did okay.
- [54:57]
A
No, no, IMAX is doing fine. But AMC is up. Well, I mean, I'm not buying aim. It's a, it's a, it was a, you know, it was under a buck. Some sort of half joking, but it was up. It went from, it was up like, I don't know, 40% in the last two days.
- [55:11]
B
Yeah, but that's just because it's like maybe not going out of business anymore. This is still a slight, like 99%.
- [55:16]
A
No, no, I know, it was, it was sub. It was sub $2. I was, I was teasing. But.
- [55:20]
B
But what's down 99.4% from the highs in 2021.
- [55:26]
A
What's especially interesting, by the way, that was so weird that AMC was and GameStop were the two faces of that period. Just what a. AMC, what that's like,
- [55:36]
B
at least the boom right now is like a real thing. That, that, you're right. That was, that was, that was not a real thing back then.
- [55:42]
A
What makes this current moment in cinema so very interesting and exciting is that the two gigantic hits over this and last week juxtaposed with what happened with the Mandalorian is exactly what you want to see. So Star wars earned just $6.5 million on its second Friday. Six and a half million dollars, dude, that's a 70% drop. A 70% drop. So the fact that backrooms, which open to $81 million, by far, by far, by far its biggest opening weekend, and Obsession, which is going to cross a hundred million, like both those movies are going to smash Star wars is unbelievable. So I listened to, I listened to the Big Picture, did a podcast with this guy, Kane Parsons, who was the director of, of Back rooms. He was 18 when they greenlit this movie. Jeez, he's 20 years old.
- [56:46]
B
The story, he was a YouTube. He was making movies on YouTube. That's what he was doing.
- [56:50]
A
So I came home and the, the next morning actually Kobe said, daddy, you saw Backrooms. And I'm like, how do you have back rooms? He goes, it's on Roblox. So backrooms was a YouTube series. They've. There's been over 224 million views across 22 videos. So I raw dogged it. I had no idea. I didn't see the trailer. I didn't even know that this was a YouTube thing until I heard about this kid. So I went to see the theater and I saw an 850 on Friday night. And there was at least, at least two other earlier showings. So it was on at least three screens. When I left at 11 o', clock, there was a ton of young kids pouring into the theater. So Arts Bill Arts, who is a huge movie fan, slacked me. Okay. I don't, I don't know what to make of back rooms. And I'm going to quote myself because I don't want to freelance. This is how I felt. I said, so I love that this is all happening. And that was also my reaction. Did I love it? No. Was there some aspects of it that I did love? Yes. More weird and risk taking? Yes. Exclamation mark. So I saw it in a packed theater and there were a lot of bright pieces. So, like it wasn't just a dark movie so you could see the audience. Right. And every time I looked around me, the audience was enthralled. Just a dead stare at the screen, no phones. And it was a young crowd, dude. Like it was a young crowd and nobody was on their phone. And Art said, that's exactly right. I don't think I'll watch it again. But it was a singular experience that I won't forget. It's just really cool that we're getting stuff like this rather than IP slop. And I couldn't agree more. I'll just say the, the opening scene was, was in my opinion, pretty terrifying. But it wasn't like, it wasn't like a scary move that, like, you know, you can't. That. That a normal person would be too scared to watch. It was something else. And it's exciting. And then Obsessions, another indie movie, I think broke $100 million. I mean, and that was another kid. So both these kids were on Fantasy's podcast and the maturity. So that other guy who did Obsession, I watched One of his YouTube shorts called the Chair, which was excellent. What's his kid's name?
- [59:20]
B
So these are horror movies because I have no idea what these movies are about. It's just interesting to me that the horror movie has subsumed the superhero movie. But so again, the 40s or the 50s and 60s, all the movies were westerns. And now they never make westerns anymore. That's going to be horror movies someday. They're making so many horrors. Horror movies is the genre.
- [59:38]
A
It is. This is the western of then because it's so cheap. So this kid, his name is Curry Barker, they gave him a million bucks to make this movie.
- [59:49]
B
I'm impressed. I'm never going to see these movies. I'm impressed.
- [59:52]
A
It's so cool, man. I'm so, so, so excited. That we are over the hump now. There's still a ton of sequels.
- [59:59]
B
But you didn't. You guys didn't. You and Bill Arts didn't exactly sell it to me. Will I ever watch this movie again? No, I don't know that that sells the movie to me.
- [60:06]
A
Hold on. I want to come back to this for a sec. Dune 3 is still going to be one of the biggest movies of the year. Like the sequels and the franchise movies like Mario, like those are still dominating the box of us. But the fact that we're getting this as well, and hopefully there's more of that, less of.
- [60:18]
B
Yeah, young filmmakers. That's cool to see. I agree.
- [60:20]
A
All right, so maybe we didn't sell the movie that well. Listen, don't watch on your couch. I mean, you might as well skip it at that point. But going to the movies to see this was an absolute experience and 100%. And 100% worth it. If you were like, now, if you're not a movie person, don't watch it, because you're going to go there like, what is that bullshit? Like, fine, don't watch it.
- [60:40]
B
No. If you're not a horror movie person. I'm a movie person. I'm not a horror movie person. It does nothing for me. Horror movies don't move my heart rate at all. They don't do anything for me, so I just can't watch them.
- [60:50]
A
That's so crazy. I know that. I know that you're not alone in there, but I was terrified, at least in the opening scene, so I love it. I'm jacked to the tease, as Mr. Gosling said in the big short. All right, so did you finish Halfman?
- [61:07]
B
We're about one episode away, so that is. Honestly, it's one of the most stressful shows I've ever watched. And I almost. After the first episode, I told my wife, I'm like, I don't know if I can finish this show. It's too much. But then somehow it, like, draws you back in and it. It gets crazy. Then it draws you back in, and it's that. I can't even explain what kind of show that that is.
- [61:28]
A
It is Uncut Gems. The. The anxiety that you get from watching Uncut Gems. It's that on hgh. It is.
- [61:36]
B
But it's something that is really well done, though.
- [61:38]
A
It is so dark and so demented, depraved and twisted. All right, so it is. It was so well done. It's one of my favorite shows. Like, it's one of the it's one of the best miniature series I've ever seen.
- [61:51]
B
I thought it was also kind of pulls you in and has emotions to it, too. It's dark, but it also has emotions. It's very bizarre. I can't even compare it to another show before.
- [61:59]
A
I'm so excited for you to see the finale.
- [62:02]
B
Okay.
- [62:02]
A
All right. Finally, friend of the show. My friend was an executive at Amazon Studios, and two years ago, he called me and told me that I might be in Spider man noir, the Nicholas Cage Show. And he told me that he was writing me into the show. And I was like, oh, my God, that's so cool. And it was like. I think it was two years ago. So as it's getting closer to release, I'm getting, like, you know, a little bit anxious. Like, I'm like, am I this. You know, this could be fun for me. I want to show my kids. So I'm in episode three. Nicholas Cage plays Spider man noir, and he goes into a hospital with an alias and his alia. His alias is Officer Batnik. So he's outside the hospital, he's going through some fake, like, ID cards. He's like. He goes, batnik, Batnik, badnik. That's the one. So he goes to the hospital. Who are you? I'm Officer Batnik. He goes into a bedroom, he goes, I'm Officer Batnik. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My kids had, like, no reaction. They were like, oh, daddy's in Spider Man. I was like, what?
- [63:08]
B
Nothing. Huh?
- [63:11]
A
What? Like, I thought their head was going to melt. No reaction.
- [63:15]
B
Okay.
- [63:16]
A
I think it's, like the coolest thing ever. So. Thank you, Matt.
- [63:19]
B
Hey, kids. Keep you grounded, right?
- [63:21]
A
Sure do. Anything for you, Ben.
- [63:26]
B
Yes. You had the. I was listening to the Rewatchables with Steven Spielberg, and I've never seen. I've never seen Space Odyssey before. Okay, we.
- [63:34]
A
We gotta play this clip. So this gave me nakis, which is a Jewish, a Yiddish word for just joy. This made me so happy. So the. The Rewatchables is my favorite podcast. Not even. Like, I love. It's my favorite podcast of all time. There's not even number close number two. And to see Sean Fennesee have this moment of joy brought a tear to my eye. It was. I thought it was. So. It was so cool to see him get to experience this. So I want to play this for the audience, for you guys. So he's talking to Steven Spielberg, which
- [64:12]
B
is that in Dr. Strangelove, Major Kong says, fire the explosive bolts. And in 2001, the entry hatch sign reads Caution colonial explosive bolts. Oh, which is his own. I never saw that.
- [64:27]
A
You know something. Look at Sean teaching you about movies. Hey, guys, I'm just saying that I'm having such a good time talking to both of you about this movie. But that one insight just makes this day.
- [64:42]
B
That's great.
- [64:45]
A
A criteria orgasm right there. We. Is that the coolest freaking thing ever?
- [64:50]
B
That was pretty cool. So I told you last week, I told you I watched the Martin Short documentary on Netflix and he intersperses in the documentary a lot of home movies. And he has a cabin on a lake in Canada that they would go to every summer. And the people who hung out the most because their kids were all the same age, it was Marty Short and his family, Tom Hanks and his family, and Steven Spielberg and his family. And they said, listen, all our kids were the same age. So it just kind of made sense to do and all. And they showed all these home videos of these guys and it was Marty Short and Tom Hanks acting out scenes for Steven Spielberg or something. It's just nuts. Anyway, really worth a watch. Interesting that those kind of guys were friends.
- [65:30]
A
So. All right. What a time to be alive. What a time to be an investor. If you, like me, are enjoying a good time of your life, be thankful. That's my Jerry Springer. That's my Jerry Springer impression. Take care of yourself.
- [65:47]
B
Not everyone is. Obviously.
- [65:49]
A
Not everyone is so. All right.
- [65:52]
B
You're right. This is an exciting time in the markets for the stuff that we do. This is a very exciting time.
- [65:59]
A
This is a time. Yeah. We will look back on these times, hopefully with fond memories. Hopefully this doesn't turn into a bubble that burst. But for now, it's really something to.
- [66:06]
B
I just know there's going to be pain at the end of the rainbow at some point. There's. There is. There just is. This is how markets work. Everything is cyclical. Is that cycle five to seven years from now or is it one year from now or three years from now? I don't know. There's going to be pain at some point. Prepare yourself for it. It's going to happen.
- [66:25]
A
So next week I will take the other side of that. Barely. I will just offer a week because we spoke a lot about keeping an open mind. I will have the other. The other take next week. That this doesn't have to end badly.
- [66:37]
B
Okay. I'm not saying it even has to come from AI.
- [66:39]
A
No, but it's gonna come from something. Dad, don't hedge. You said what you said, okay?
- [66:45]
B
Yes, everything is cyclical. This cycle will come to an end at some point, but it could last a lot longer than people think in the meantime.
- [66:53]
A
All right, animal spirits, the compoundnews.com thank you very much everybody for listening for the emails. Hope everybody is enjoying their early summer. Go Nicks. We'll see you next time. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
- [67:20]
B
I don't know if you knew this,
- [67:22]
A
but anyone can get the same premium wireless for 15amonth plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have
- [67:30]
B
one of your assistance assistants switch you
- [67:32]
A
to Mint Mobile today.
- [67:34]
B
I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile. Com switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available,
- [67:46]
A
taxes and fees, extra default terms at mintmobile.
- [67:49]
B
Com.