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A
Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at Y Charts. Y Charts created a brand new deck helpful for advisors called Debunking Investing Myths. And I've got some favorite charts in here that they use. They have one that says fallen stocks will always bounce back. This is a thing where you not true. No it's not. So they show AIG 96% below all time highs. Citigroup 88% below all time highs. This one surprised me. Walgreens is 90% below all time highs. So while sometimes it seems like, oh, I'll just wait till a stock crashes and I'll buy it and it'll obviously come back because that's happened to a lot of stocks in recent years. Not all the time. Most of the time, in fact, these stocks never come back.
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B
If there was an ETF of stocks making new 52 week lows, it would be the worst performer 8 out of 10 years.
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A
Yes, you'd have maybe one winner in there or something, but you wouldn't have a lot of them. So we're big fans of myth busting here. Click the link in the Show Notes Download a copy of WI Charts latest deck. Get 20% off your initial WI Charts Professional subscription when you start your first free WI Charts trial through Animal Spirits new customers only. Ycharts.com to learn more, tell me notes we just sent you. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management.
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B
This podcast is for informational purposes only.
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A
And should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Brit Holtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
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B
Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We're going to start the show with one more plug for future proof. Signups are going bananas, Ben. Gangbusters if you will. So if you are an emerging manager, again no offense, not like a pajama day trader, but a real financial professional and you want to showcase to the world what you're up to. Sign up Link in Show Notes One other thing that we we've mentioned in the past but not for this particular event. Again it's March 16th to March 19th in Miami. Miami Beach. Literally on the beach. If you are an advisor you are eligible for a 700 up to a 750 reimbursement for travel and hotel. So what that means Is you're gonna. You're gonna pay. You're gonna sign up, you're gonna pay. But if you sign up for, I think it's eight breakthrough meetings. And again, we'll link in the show notes. It's all there. You have to pay, but afterwards, you submit for reimbursement and up to $750 with a free ticket, I should add. So come on. No brainer.
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A
Yes. And those breakthrough meetings are helpful, too.
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B
Yeah. That's not homework. You opt in. You can meet with who you want to meet with.
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A
I think for one of these future proofs, we need to do a. A roulette, roll the dice. And all of a sudden, Ben or Michael is there for one of these breakthrough meetings. A mystery guest, if you will. Right.
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B
I don't hate it. I don't hate it. So, okay, this has been. This has been a year. The deep seat stuff feels like it was 14 years ago. I don't love a lot of what's happening, but especially the fact that we have to be glued to our phones on a Sunday night. Not a big fan of that.
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A
Or the weekend. I.
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B
Did he just say. Or the weekend?
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A
Well, just the whole weekend.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because it's kind of started on Friday, so most weekends I'm busy with kids stuff. Right. It's sports and practices and birthday parties, and now we're gonna go skiing or whatever. And so I. One of the great things about that is a lot of parents complain I'm so busy, but I love being able to focus on my kids and not have to focus on the outside world. Right. I think it's actually like one of the benefits of being so busy is like, I don't have time to be glued to my screen. But this weekend I, you know, kids settle down, and I'm looking at all this tariff stuff, and it. So I have the analysis.
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B
You're a big tariff guy. Let's just get that. Let's just get that on the record. Ben's a big tariff guy. I don't. I don't like the fact. First of all, we're going to get into all the tariff stuff. And, you know, luckily, it seems like that's on hold for 30 days. We're talking about what it means. Yeah, I don't. I don't like that we have to talk about this because I don't think that Ben and I are overly political people. But inevitably there are people that are. That feel very strongly about this, that are going to email us and strong opinions. I don't know how to be non political about this, but I. My feelings on tariffs have nothing to do with the President. Okay, so tariffs. I just. What are we doing? I don't get it. Now again, fine, you could say he won because it was all a negotiating tactic. But just. But he actually does like tariffs like this. This was not a bluff and I guess credit to him because there was, you know, there were some deals that were made but tariffs are not good. And what are tariffs? They are a tax that the importer pays for bringing goods into the country that ultimately gets passed along to everyone. It is destructive economic behavior. It is like the opposite of free market capitalism.
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A
So Cullen Rolsh I thought had the really the best idea because a lot of people were saying, hey listen, I would rather buy my products from that are manufactured in the states and have to pay more. Fine. People were saying this and Cullen Roller said, listen, the genie is not going back in the bottle. We're a technology and service based economy now. You can't go back to the way things were when everything was manufactured here. That's just not going to happen. I agree the political thing because just because you have a financial analysis of something like this, it doesn't matter. I don't care if it's Republican, Democrat, Independent, a Green party, whatever. The facts are the facts. And the Wall Street Journal had the headline saying this.
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B
The notoriously liberal Wall Street Journal.
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A
Yeah, the dumbest trade war in history. And my explanation of this, I watched the movie Saturday night on Netflix this weekend, which was very good. Ben movie, not a Michael movie. I'll put it out there for that. So it was the very first night of. The very first show of Saturday Night Live back in the 70s. And I guess they took like six months of stories and put them into one night. So it was very chaotic. And Jason Reitman did it. I thought it was very well done. And the guy who played Chevy Chase. Cause it was Chevy Chase and Jim Belushi and Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd and Billy Crystal and all these people. And I thought all the actors did a very good job. But the guy who played Chevy Chase just nailed Chevy Chase. He looked like him. The mannerisms were the same. And at the beginning of the movie.
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B
You'Re a big Chevy Chase guy, right?
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A
Oh, love. Chevy Chase is one of them.
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B
What movies has he been in? I'm just kidding.
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A
So Chevy Chase's. And apparently this is a gag he did. He's walking down the hallway and he does a theatrical trip and he falls over and he Gets up and he jumps up and he goes, oh, sorry, I tripped over my penis in a very arrogant way. And that's the way I view these tariffs is that it's just more of an ego arrogant thing. Like, why are we doing them? Because we can. And that because the US Is in such a good position, it's like, well, why wouldn't we do this? Because we can. And I think that's the biggest mistake of puffing our chest out and be like, well, of course we can do these, because you don't know what the downfield effects are of that. And that's my worry.
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B
All right, so let's, let's get into some of the facts. Again, on hold, but who knows if they're going to be put on? So let's get into, like, if, if, if tariffs were to go into effect on our two biggest trade partners, what would that mean for us?
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Ben, before we get into this, the one thing I want to say is I would actually be okay with tariff, like, targeted tariffs on China. Like, China is a huge competitor of ours. If we wanted to put targeted tariffs on China and not let them completely take over the world, I'd be fine with that. But on Canada and Mexico, that's where it doesn't make sense because guess what? I like drinking Modelo. I like Pacifico. I like avocados. So this is from Torsten Slack. Goods imported from good imports make up 11% of US GDP. 43% of imports come from Canada, Mexico and China. That means 5% of US GDP is directly impacted by higher tariffs. And so it's a lot. And Callie Cox breaks it down for us. She did a great job on her site looking at all this. It's 90% of our fresh vegetables come from Canada or Mexico, 84% of beer, because the Modelo is like the biggest beer company in the world. Now, these are really high numbers. Berries and poultry and baked goods and.
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B
Wood, lumber products like toys, game and sports equipment. 73% of it is from China.
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All, like, all above. 50% of our. Of our consumption of these comes from these three trade partners. It's a big deal. Bloomberg did another one where they looked at it and again, it's beer and fruit and vegetables and distilled spirits and poultry.
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B
67% of our berries come from Mexico. Ben, I think I speak for all parents out there. Kids eat a lot of berries.
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A
We go through a ton of fruit in our household. Yeah. So again, this is. And the funny thing to me about the tariff talk is no one ever even Assumes that the businesses are going to pay for these. Right. It's. No one ever assumes like that tariffs are a tax on businesses.
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B
No.
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A
Right.
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B
Well, they're not.
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A
Well, the right. But because they immediately get taken by the consumer. Right. But you have to be.
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B
Again, they. Mexico bent the knee, Canada the next. And I don't say that as a good thing. Like I still don't think this was great on balance, but there were concessions. And again, I don't know enough about the border stuff. Like that's, that's outside the scope of, of our shtick.
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A
So this is from a Canadian listener and a lot of people in Canada were rightly scared because it could have a real impact on their economy.
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B
We heard from a lot of our Canadian friends.
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A
Yeah. And this is, this one was probably pretty, you know, exemplifies this. So we're scared, we're angry, we feel vulnerable and betrayed. I live in a small province that relies heavily on non energy US trade. We're going to be decimated.
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B
There was booing at the Raptors game for the national anthem over the weekend. Like, this is, this is not good.
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A
So the social media world freaked out. All the people in my financial sphere that I follow spent all weekend completely freaking out. And I made the joke that like if social media sentiment from finance people translated into market moves, we would have had a 1987 moment on Monday. Like, that's how much people were freaking out about this. Because I think the people on Wall street had initially thought like, he's never actually going to go through this. These are a negotiating ploy. And I guess it turned out to be a negotiating ploy.
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B
But Ben, you did a meme that was funny. What was your meme?
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A
Oh, I did a clown meme saying Wall street analysis on tariffs. And it was basically like, he's never going to go through with it. These are a negotiating ploy. Okay, they're going to be targeted tariffs. But no, actually if the trade war will actually be short, if it short lived, if it happens.
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B
But the truth is, again, not knowing his exact motivation, but it was, was it not a negotiating tactic?
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A
I guess. But it sounds like the tariffs on China are going through. So I don't think anyone. I think that's the hard part for people is we don't know. So I think people spent the weekend freaking out because it's like, oh gosh, maybe this is gonna go through. And people thought like, the financial implications of this are just not good, just an unforced error.
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B
Like we're, we're so far on the other side of inflation and like we're in a pretty good economic environment and like why shoot ourselves in the foot now counterpoint, it's like, well he ran on this and now I wonder if like the market's reaction. So we will talk about this maybe a little bit later. But the market, the S and p opened down 2% right now. Crypto was crashing. We'll talk about that later. S and P futures opened down 2%. Nasdaq open down 3%. The Vix only. I hesitate to even say spike, but it went up to 20. There was, it was a pretty muted reaction on Wall street and there was people saying like even last week on Friday, like why is the market looking past as it feels complacent? And I think the market was right in looking past this and saying like listen, this is, it's not going to happen.
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A
It's your boy who cried wolf analogy from a few weeks ago. The downside of that is let's say you take the chance of the economy breaking from 5% to 15%. Right? So Jake at economic did this thing, he said if I wanted to crash the economy, I think I'd put on indiscriminate tariffs, push cheap labor out of the country, slash public jobs, cut public spending, promote an alternative to the dollar and incentivize every global ally to look to partner with China. Maybe that's getting too cute, but let's say you just took the percentage from 5 to 15. I don't know how you reprice that. And I also think if we get out of a boy Craid wolf situation where like okay, finally he does say screw it, I'm going to do it. Is there a potential for an air pocket in the stock market? And I think that there is. And I'm really glad that stock market does not trade 247 because I think you would have seen a much bigger move this weekend because crypto was a pretty good risk off barometer, right? So that's why I'm glad that the stock market has the weekend to kind of chill through this stuff.
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B
But through the lens of the stock market alone, there is so much strength underneath the surface. There is so much buying.
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A
Oh yeah.
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B
This easily. Would you have been surprised if this was a down 6% date? Now I guess again, given that there was a deal made, you know, it's not surprising the way things ended up. But even prior to that the market was really not down a lot, especially given that we were 2% from all time highs. Like it could have Been way worse. But the market.
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A
Do you think that, that. Let's say we do have this trade war and it goes on and off for the next four years. And tariffs here. No, take them off. Tariffs like. And there actually is an economic impact. Do you think that the economic impact could actually be greater than the stock market impact? Because I think it's possible. What if AI is the counterbalance to all this in the stock market and the stock market ends up being okay, despite some volatility, because AI trumps all the tariffs, all the interest rate stuff, all the Fed stuff. The only thing that matters to the stock market is going to be AI for the rest of the decade. And the economy actually gets hurt more than the stock market in this case.
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B
Well, it's so funny how quickly the narratives shift, because last week it was all about earnings. It was all about Mag 7 and it was all about Deep 6. Right? It was Deep 6. And then how. How did Mag 7 look? And they look good and numbers look good.
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A
Deep Six sounds better than Deep Seek, but it is Deep Seek.
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B
Deep Seek, my bad. What's Deep six? I don't know.
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A
Deep Six is a better name. It sounds like some sort of spaceship in an alien movie.
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B
But the narrative shifts are wild. Nicolas. So in terms of think about like next four years. Nicolas was on with, with Jessica and Josh yesterday and he said, for as much as we talk about Trump's erratic policies, 80 of the hundred, or something like that of the hundred lowest VIX closes ever were during Trump's administration when there were tariffs. So it might not translate one for one. Now it seems like these are more aggressive than the first go around.
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A
These are way bigger. So that's the potential difference. But I just think where we are, I think the AI stuff last week and Nvidia dropping 20% or so in a day almost, I think that just shows that the margin of safety for this to keep harping on that term is much lower because stock prices are higher, valuations are higher.
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B
Yes and no. Yes and no.
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Way bigger gains. So I just think the, the potential for a VIX spike is way higher now than it was back then.
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B
I think that ultimately the tariffs are like to use the. The dog on leash analogy, the tariffs are the dog and AI earnings are the person walking the dog. And I think that ultimately Mag 7, the AI mega story, which is what it is, will Trump, pun intended. Trump's policies not, not in the short run, not like overnight, there's going to be wiggles and stuff, but ultimately that is the arrow Pointing up in the.
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A
Big downside risk is you have these tariffs and you have presidential volatility and you have AI that comes up short.
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B
For whatever reason that would be bad.
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A
That as double whammy would be as.
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B
Investors, as you know, this is unsettling. And whatever you might, you might like it, you might not, but you gotta look through the volatility.
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A
My whole thing is, I just think there's going to be a lot of reasons to freak out. I tweeted this on Sunday night. Like it's easy to freak out, but like there's a high likelihood any tariff related sell off would be a buying opportunity. Yeah, it's because.
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B
And also if you press, we have.
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A
The ability to walk them back. Because to your point, saying this is an unforced error. It does seem like it is. But it also seems like the Fed raising rates is that if the Fed raised rates too high, they could just take him down. And if Trump puts tariffs on too high and it causes a freakout, he can take them off. And I think that's, that's the way Wall street is looking at this.
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B
Yeah. Who, like, we don't know what happened in conversations with, with Trump and the, the leaders of Mexico and China yesterday. What if, what if Trump was the one that, that caved due to the market's reaction and he was just looking for like, I'm not saying that happened, but you, the point is this is not like, separate this from your portfolio. You have to, yes.
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A
You have to freak out about this stuff all the. Even if you don't like the policies or whatever, you don't like what's, what it's doing. You can't make investment decisions based on that.
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B
All right, here's another one. Again, we have to cover because I think it's a huge story. I am, my, my bias is I don't like this. I read this article and say, I don't like this. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it on the one hand. I also don't necessarily love how much bloat is in the federal government. Like, there's no doubt that the federal government, the systems, the processes, the technology is built on a layer. That was that. So that's from the 1970s. Right. Like, there's got to be a way to modernize the infrastructure, streamline it, bring it into the 21st century. I'm for that. Like, I am. I think that's probably on balance a good thing. And I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt to see where this goes. But this, this scares me.
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A
Can we start with the convenience fee every time I pay my property taxes?
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B
Sure.
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A
Can we get rid of that?
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B
Absolutely. So what am I talking about? There was an article in the Wall Street Journal. DOGE gains access to payment systems doling out trillions to Americans. So let me read the article. The Treasury Department has agreed to give Elon Musk's Department of Government efficiency access to a payment system that distributes trillions of dollars in entitlement benefits, grants and tax funds to Americans each year. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who was confirmed by the Senate this past week, greenlighted the move to grant DOGE representatives access to the system, which is typically run by career civil servants. Treasury's payment systems is one of the main financial arteries of the US Government, operating as an account payable department that disperses money to contractors and millions of Americans who get Social Security payments. Any interruption in its operations could result in far reaching economic disruptions. The payment System handles nearly 88% of all federal payments, including some 81 million payments every month for Social Security, Medicare and veterans benefits. This is like the most sensitive thing that we have and the richest person in the world with all sorts of potential conflicts of interest is in charge. Again. Do I think that this needs modernization? Yes. Is Elon the person to do it? I don't know. Maybe. Like, is this idea a little bit worrisome? Yeah, it is.
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A
So I guess for years they've always, they've always said like, why don't, why doesn't the government run like a business? Or why don't we have a business person running the government? And I guess this is going to be the grand experiment to see, see how those two things can coexist.
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B
Yeah. So I'm not going to like make any decisions on ultimately how I feel before this pans out. Like I said, I'm open minded. I like parts of this, but we'll see.
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A
Interesting.
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B
Is that a Grand Rapids hedge?
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A
Not quite.
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B
Okay.
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A
That was like a 7030 hedge.
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B
Okay.
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A
All right. Vanguard produced their look ahead for the 10 years for what their capital market assumptions are. That's a very high level sounding thing. But it just means what do they expect returns to be.
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B
Now Vanguard is again, they tend to lean, bearish their bonds for the long run.
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A
Well, for the next 10 years they might be. So they look at the median is kind of like that's their base case, I guess. And they think over the next decade bonds are going to beat U.S. stocks. They said roughly 5% for bonds and 4% for U.S. stocks.
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B
That would in no way surprise me.
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A
I don't. The scenario is easy to lay out.
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B
Yeah. We know what bonds are going to do, right? The bonds are yielding 5%. Okay. That's about what you're going to get. Can I see stocks doing 4% given that we've just done 15 for 15 years? Yeah. Here's a grand rapid search. I could also see the AI train continuing and lifting is much higher. But. But it is, it is credit to Vanguard. Like this is. This is. And this is sticking their neck out, I'm sure.
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A
Valuation based and mean reversion based and yeah, we could do 10 a year for the next 10 years.
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B
And counterpoint literally not specific to Vanguard. Every single one of these capital market forecasts has been wrong for the last decade.
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A
Oh yeah, they're never, they're almost never right. Yeah, right. Aswath the motorin, the professor at NYU has who's probably one of the better podcast guests. If he's on a podcast, I'm going to listen. He's always very good. He does this annual thing where he updates the calendar year returns for stocks, bonds, cash, and he added small caps and real estate and gold and all these things. And I reference it all the time. I use it for my blog and I was looking at it and every year I update it. Once a year I go through an update and I say what are the. And he goes back to 1928. So I update what are the returns from 1928 to 2024. And so I updated it from 2023 to 2024 and I saw like the very long term return ticked up and I looked at this and I thought, oh, you know, a few years ago it was the long term return was 9.5% and now it's closer to 10% because we've had such a good run and I wanted to look at how much this changed. So since in 1999 the long term return for US stocks was 10.8%, this is the S&P. By 2008 after that lost decade, it was down to 9%. So we lost almost 2 percentage points of long term returns from the lost decade. Obviously that's at the bottom almost now. Since then, since 2008 we've added a percent back. So we're back to 10%. That's like how much this run has added and how hurtful that lost decade was for long term. This is obviously very, very long term returns. Now we're closing in on 100 years of returns, but I think it is interesting how a 10 or 15 year cycle can really impact even the long, long term.
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B
Remember like in 2019, when did Fang. When was Fang coined? Was it 2017 or 2015?
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A
I think 2017, I'd say 17 sounds about right.
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B
Okay. So of course there was many people who were like alarm bells. Like, this is the top. There's a name for these groups. Apple's a Trillion Top. Right. So Demoderin did a blog post where he showed the contribution in overall market cap from the MAG7. And this is from 2020. 2024. By year 44. 30%, 43%. 55%. 50%. So from 2019 to 2024, 45% of the gains in the market are from the MAG7. So we are the world that's resting on the shoulders of these giants.
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A
Wow.
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B
Not bad shoulders to be resting on, but nevertheless.
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A
And I still feel like the2030s, there's going to be like two or three other companies that are robotics companies or AI companies that are trillion dollar companies.
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B
That I think they're gonna be. I think they're gonna be inside the Max 7, like Optimus for Tesla, for example. See, these are the biggest venture companies in the world.
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A
All right. I just think there's going to be a new company that we don't know about or that's that Nvidia was one of them. Nvidia was not in the top 10 as recently as 2019.
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B
True.
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A
So I just think there's going to be another company that comes up.
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B
I mean, another, sure. But if you're gonna say that like there's gonna be a new crop that like takes the throne or the crown, I would take the other side of that.
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A
Nvidia just did that though.
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B
No, I'm saying like a new group of companies that like.
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A
Oh, a group of companies. Okay.
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B
The idea that the Mag 7 is going to turn over, I don't buy it.
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A
Yeah, the whole Mag 7. I agree. A few of them, I still think that's possible. All right, Eric Balchunas tweeted about the Vanguard effect. We've seen a $5 trillion swing from high cost active to low cost passive over the past decade. And you can see we've seen this chart before where one of them's going straight down, the other one's going straight up. Now, Vanguard just announced this week they're slashing expense ratios on hundreds of mutual funds and ETFs amounting to what the firm said is the largest cost cut in history at over 350 million investor savings. Per year. Like taking what it is now, they. On an average, that drops the fees from 11 basis points to nine basis points. And someone will go, oh, geez, thanks. Two basis points, but that's 20%, 20% savings.
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B
And on trillions of dollars, that's. Now you're talking real numbers. Blackrock was down 5% yesterday.
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A
Why? It was a problem.
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B
This. Hello. Earth to Ben.
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A
So just because Vanguard took their fees from 11 to 9, BlackRock's down 5%.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Just because they know they're going to have to match.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Jack Bogle really is a saint. Like, because if Vanguard didn't do this, BlackRock wouldn't have done this either. Is that fair to say?
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B
It would have happened. Somebody would have done it, but it.
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A
Would have taken a lot.
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B
Not taking anything away from Bogle, all credit to him, but somebody would have done this.
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A
Vanguard is quite possibly the best thing that's ever happened to individual investors. Is that fair to say?
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B
No, that and triple levered ETFs. Speaking of which, all the way on the other side. Okay, so Bloomberg had an article about levered ETFs, and they say traders have been diving into leverage exchange before.
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A
Someone keeps. Someone asked us, is it levered or leveraged? Which one is it?
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B
Either way. Either way, you. Dealer's choice.
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A
Okay.
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B
I feel like I say both.
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A
Okay. Yeah, I probably do too.
- [25:34]
B
Yeah. Traders have been diving into leveraged exchange traded products funds. Excuse me. A subset of the derivatives enhanced products offering to amp up. All right, why am I reading this? They netted around $940 million in revenue in 2024. That's a record 37% jump. $940 million in revenue. So, like, that's the headline, right? Like, holy. And my credit to me, my initial thought is, well, I need to know more. Like, all right, but what value are they providing? And again, we've, we've spoken a bazillion times about these products because we had emails all the time. And we get another email from a very sophisticated listener who's like, listen, if you, if you are using these levered or leveraged ETFs in, inside of a portfolio, it can actually have like, diversification benefits. You could get like intelligent leverage. I'm like, listen, dude, I'm not talking to you. Like, you know exactly what you're doing. And there are absolutely ways to use this responsibly, even though they're not meant to be held for the long term. Whatever. Like, there are ways inside of a portfolio. I'm talking to the kids that are just getting started, that email us like, hey, why wouldn't I just put all my money into a triple levered etf? Like that's what I'm talking to. But anyway, be that as it may, Jeffrey Patak did did yeoman's work. I don't know what that means, but I know it's something people say to like, look further beyond just the fees. Like what sort of value did they provide to investors? And look at this chart. It shows the fees versus the income and the gains. And the fees, as noted, are a billion, but the income and the gains are like 16 billion. So Jeffrey said, if you're like me, and Jeffrey is an analyst at Morningstar, if you're like me, you look at this and say, sure, they paid a lot in fees, but they also made real money. Sixteen and a half billion dollars in income gains. To put those numbers in context, the ETFs held $38 billion in average net net assets that year in all. So it means investors paid 0.65% of average net in assets, asset and management fees and earned a 43% return on those assets. Not bad. Not bad at all.
- [27:30]
A
The funny thing is, is that no one has ever invested in a levered ETF before. And gone, I wonder what the fee is on this thing.
- [27:36]
B
Yeah, nobody cares. Besides the point, but what really stands out is the extent to which investors dollar gains in these ETFs lag the ETF's reported total returns. So that's like the behavior gap stuff. We know that that has something to do with the product issuer. And then Jeffrey goes further to say that the actual gains lagged what the issuer said they might expect to gain. But either way, credit to Jeffrey. Great analysis.
- [27:58]
A
Yes. But every time we talk about these products, we do get an email from someone who has an intelligent way of thinking about these. And I agree, if you have a highly volatile strategy within your portfolio and you use it to rebalance, it actually can provide benefits in your portfolio. But a lot of people that ask us these questions are not doing that well.
- [28:18]
B
Listen, also, there are gazillions of dollars in these things. It's not all people that have no idea what they're doing. Right. Like there's obviously a lot of institutional investors and hedge funds that are, that are using this.
- [28:28]
A
We're offering a PSA here. Keep your eyes, just keep your eyes open, that's all.
- [28:30]
B
Yeah, the fee, the fees are completely besides the point because they're getting access to an area of the market that's Liquid and quick and whatever. Whatever. Okay. AI Ben. This was. This is good. Somebody uploaded a bunch of Ben Carlson posts into one of the LLMs. I don't know which one. And they said, like, let's. Let's see what Ben Carlson would say about Deep Seek. Okay. Pretty good. It's pretty good.
- [28:56]
A
Okay, here we go.
- [28:58]
B
It's hard to keep up with the aar. You know what? Why don't you read this? I mean, this is your writing.
- [29:03]
A
I looked at this. Read it.
- [29:05]
B
Really?
- [29:06]
A
I'd say no. I just want to give my.
- [29:08]
B
No, no, no. I'll read it, then you can respond. If you don't feel comfortable reading your computer voice. It's hard to keep up with the AI arms race these days. One day everyone's talking about OpenAI and Nvidia. The next, a Chinese startup comes out of nowhere and wipes out half a trillion dollars in market value for the biggest players in the world. Welcome to the stock market in 2025. And then it goes on. I don't know, man. This sounds. This sounds pretty good. It sounds like you.
- [29:28]
A
So they did, like, the takeaways at the end, and then at the end it says if you take.
- [29:34]
B
That's been okay.
- [29:36]
A
Disruptions happen fast. The AI race is still in its early innings. Diversification is your friend. Market reactions are often overblown. Okay, that's. But the ending here, the takeaway.
- [29:45]
B
Go ahead.
- [29:45]
A
If you're investing in AI, buckle up. It's going to be a wild ride. I'd say it's like 60% there.
- [29:52]
B
No, this is you, dude. The takeaway isn't that. This is you. The takeaway isn't that Nvidia is doomed or that deep seek is the future. It's that innovation is unpredictable and markets will always struggle to price it correctly. That's the Ben Carlson Grand Rapids Hedge. I'm sorry, dude. They got you pegged. You will be obsolete.
- [30:08]
A
I don't think I'm ready to finish this job yet, but it's not bad. So I was playing around with my kids ask questions all the time, and I finally put ChatGPT on their iPads and said, why don't you play around with this a little bit? And it's funny, the one thing my daughter wanted to do, she's like, what do I ask it? And she asked me some questions, and she was kind of bored immediately. And I said, why don't we do a Taylor Swift thing? So she said, all right, because she's big into basketball right now. I want to write me A song about Taylor Swift and basketball. And ChatGPT did a Taylor Swift song about basketball that, honestly, my daughter and her friend were singing it and they were like. It was actually pretty. It was actually pretty good, the way that they were rhyming stuff. I was actually kind of impressed. All right, let's talk about crypto.
- [30:48]
B
You know what's funny about the crypto stuff? Like, I think that people say that, like, one of the good things they usually say sarcastically about crypto is that it's like a. It's a risk gauge for sentiment over the weekend.
- [31:00]
A
Yeah.
- [31:00]
B
And I think that if crypto wasn't behaving the way it was behaving, people would probably have been a little bit less freaked out. Right. Like, oh, yeah, nuked by 20%.
- [31:10]
A
It was down 30%. At one point over the weekend, it was down 20% in a day. So my first take is crypto is not a tariff hedge. I think we've. We can rule that out, take that off of the hedge list of crypto. But I do think that it does serve a purpose on the weekend. I think one of the reasons that the stock market didn't freak out so much, because crypto did it for them. Maybe crypto already did it. What? Bitcoin was down 15% or whatever.
- [31:35]
B
By the way, nobody's saying crypto as a tariff hedge.
- [31:37]
A
I know, I know. No one said that. But I feel like the crypto people are, like, secretly hoping it's going to hedge one of these things eventually and not just be completely risk on, risk off.
- [31:47]
B
But it is, but that's what it is. It's a risk asset. Why would it not behave this way?
- [31:52]
A
Exactly.
- [31:52]
B
It's a risk asset on steroids. The original and with leverage, there was $2 billion of leverage wiped out. It was the biggest wipeout ever.
- [31:59]
A
But don't you remember the whole narrative of bitcoin when it first came out was this thing's going to be an inflation.
- [32:03]
B
The narrative changed.
- [32:04]
A
It's not. If someone plotted tqqq, which is the two or three times levered NASDAQ on Bitcoin. And it basically follows it. Exactly.
- [32:11]
B
Yeah.
- [32:12]
A
Right. So, yes, it is risk on, risk off. I did want to plug our. Our talk, your book with Calmos. This week we talked to Matt Kaufman from Calmos. And when these downside protection ETFs from Calmos came out, there was a story on Bloomberg and the story on cnbc. And I saw people on social media dunking on them and saying, like, why would you ever want to protect Bitcoin, and it's, there's a, there's one where you can have zero losses, but your upside is capped like 11%. There's one, they come out today actually like downside is capped at 10% but upside down.
- [32:41]
B
I thought it was 09. I thought it was. 09%. Is it 11? Either way.
- [32:45]
A
And then there's another one that you're capped at 20% downside, but your upside is 55. And all these people are going, bitcoin is this huge volatile asset. Why would you want this?
- [32:52]
B
Yeah, the volatility is the point.
- [32:54]
A
And our, you and I both, we talked about this before. We talked to Matt and we said like, I don't understand this. Let's push him kind of hard on this. And his explain, you folded like a cheap suit. His explanation, like, so I just, if you've heard of these products, listen to our podcast with him because I think your mind will be changed or at least will give you a different perspective about the reason for strategies like this. And it made way more sense to me than it did just reading the headlines.
- [33:20]
B
Yeah.
- [33:20]
A
So it's worth a listen.
- [33:21]
B
All right. There was an article over the weekend or last week that got a little bit of attention. It was, the headline is parents ditch 529 plans and embrace Bitcoin for college savings. And of course you see this and you're like, what the. Come on. No, don't stop. Like, no. College savings bitcoin. No. And some quotes from the article. Take Jim Crider, a 35 year old father of four from San Antonio, Texas, who wants each of his kids to have one whole Bitcoin saved by the time they turn 18. As a certified financial planner, he knows some consider, he knows some consider putting all his children savings a bitcoin is risky, but he believes the asset will reach $1 million in a decade. The opportunity is too good to pass up, he says. And then he said, I think it's incredibly risky to have 0% exposure to Bitcoin. And I think people see this and understandably their knee jerk reaction is top. Oh my God, blah, blah. This makes no sense. It's outrageous. But like I still think that bitcoin is still. So I don't, I'm gonna say under owned like it should be owned by everyone, but it's still like, it's still a fringe asset. Despite the tens of billions of dollars in, in, in Bitcoin ETFs, most people still don't own bitcoin. And I think if you're looking at stories like this that are like, you know, admittedly sound like copy and stuff. I just think it's like, it's not. That's not it.
- [34:37]
A
This also happened. I had a friend's parent from college tell me that saving for College in the 90s was easy because we didn't even bother with 529 plans. We put it in the stock market in our brokerage account and the stock market went up 20% every year. Whatever. I think that's also why these stories happen, because people see the huge gains that you've gotten and then they think, okay, sure. Do you think this guy is a financial advisor? Do you think that does that? I don't know. As a financial advisor, that seems a little risky to me. In issuing the 529 plan to put your kid's college fund into bitcoin, putting.
- [35:13]
B
All his children's savings in Bitcoin. Yeah, it's risky. I'd say.
- [35:16]
A
I understand. Like, I want my kids to own bitcoin forever, and I'm going to start them early. That I can see. But for college savings, to me, I think that that is a leap to.
- [35:26]
B
Do all of it. Yeah. What I would say is not what I would recommend, but to each of their own. This is a. I would not have.
- [35:31]
A
Expected that coming from a financial advisor. I guess a young financial advisor. That makes sense, but that's all I'm saying. Okay. Lawrence Hamptil, friend of the program, wrote a great story at Fortune Financial about the implications of an aging household stock. And he looks at census data, provides this. When were the houses in the US built that people live in? And more than 60% of houses in the US are at least 35 years old. So 1989 or earlier, which is crazy. And look at the number of houses that are still 1939 or earlier. It's almost 12% of houses were built that long ago. Obviously, there's been remodeling all this stuff. I do think this is going to be a massive story because I just don't think young people are going to put up with an aging housing stock.
- [36:16]
B
Okay. So, Ben, I am a shareholder in Home Depot and Sherwin Williams. It sounds like you want to jump in while the water's warm.
- [36:24]
A
I've been talking about home renovations forever, and I don't know why I don't own these stocks. I'm an idiot. I don't follow my own advice.
- [36:29]
B
Guess what? The market's open right now. It's not too late.
- [36:31]
A
So I mentioned before, my daughter has Been watching Full House lately. She's on like season four, the original. She started with Fuller House, then she's going back and watching the original. So every once in a while I'll watch an episode with her before she goes to bed. And one of the things I can't believe. Well, funny enough, I'm thinking about the fashion at the time. Like, Uncle Jesse and Uncle Joey have mullets which are apparently back in style.
- [36:52]
B
They're back.
- [36:53]
A
Yeah. The hairstyle is back. But the. Remember when Uncle Jesse starts dating Becky who. She's the mom who went.
- [37:00]
B
I think Becky was everybody's first crush.
- [37:02]
A
Yeah, she's the mom who went to jail because of the college scandal a few years ago.
- [37:05]
B
Yeah.
- [37:05]
A
But she has her own apartment before they get married and they try to dress it up as like this stylish because she's like a news reporter, you know, on like the San Francisco Today show or whatever.
- [37:16]
B
Oh, and she works with Annie.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah, she was Danny's co host. But her apartment is just so. It looks. They try to make it look like in the 90s. It's chic, but it's like pink carpet and like green furniture and gold. Whatever. It's. It's just. That kind of stuff just would never fly today. And I think that's. I just think the tastes of young people these days, blame it on HGTV or whatever. Are so much like there's going to be a massive remodeling boom if they're buying these older homes. That's my point.
- [37:44]
B
That bobblehead behind you, is that you? It looks like Jack Bogle.
- [37:48]
A
It is me.
- [37:49]
B
It looks like a young Jack Bogle.
- [37:52]
A
The Motley fool did something and used one of my articles for something and sent me a. I'm even holding my own little book here. Yeah, that's great.
- [38:04]
B
Yeah. Full house. What a show. What else are we doing with houses?
- [38:07]
A
So I looked at like the equity is just. It keeps going up. It was. I looked at an old piece I did in like 2021. And I was saying, like, gosh, home equity is at like $20 trillion. This is crazy. Is that $35 trillion now? Home equity, it's just. Look at this. This, this is the higher. This is like a chart of Nvidia home equity in the United States. So I wanted to talk about my strategy for renovations because the Axios did this piece where they looked at the median price of home renovations and it's gone from $15,000 to almost $25,000 pre pandemic to now. So Obviously, wages have gone up, materials have gone up, and the demand for this stuff has gone up. So I feel like these people can do it now. So they say the high end kitchen remodel can run up to $200,000, which is just insane.
- [38:52]
B
Obviously, I have a friend of mine who's doing something like that and it's wild, but he's like, dude, my mortgage is under 3%. Where am I going?
- [39:02]
A
So here's my stretch. So we have some stuff we want to do. I'm thinking about maybe adding an office space for myself at home.
- [39:07]
B
Extra mudroom. Extra mudroom.
- [39:09]
A
We need a bigger mudroom. We do. That's maybe something eventually. My wife is talking about how she wants more storage in the kitchen. Actually, she said, you know what, I don't need the kitchen stuff yet because I just want to keep taking vacations. That's where I want the budget to go. So kudos to her for not wanting to have her cake and eat it too. But I think my strategy for renovations is I think the cost of this stuff is just going to keep going up. And if I'm just borrowing from my home equity line of credit to do it, I think I would rather do it sooner than later because I think every year you wait, the cost is just going to rise. And yeah, you pay inflation.
- [39:39]
B
Did Ben just discover inflation?
- [39:41]
A
No, but I think the cost is going to rise more than the rate of inflation is what I'm saying. I think the increase in this stuff because I think that the home renovators are going to have so much leverage because they're going to be so busy that they can offer you obscene estimates and it's going to be like, I don't care. I've got so much work, it doesn't matter.
- [39:59]
B
Supply and demand.
- [40:02]
A
Is that fair though? You've done some renovations in recent years. What's your strategy?
- [40:07]
B
My strategy is to invest in the home renovation stocks, use the gains.
- [40:15]
A
How do you source these things? Because that's something I've done, but I.
- [40:18]
B
Haven'T done any large. I haven't done any large projects that require a big chunk of money.
- [40:26]
A
Okay, but you added stairs and a play space for your kids or whatever in the attic. That's a pretty decent sized project. We bought our house brand new and so we've never had to do any full scale renovations. Like, how do you even go about finding a person to do these things? I sound like such a noob, but that's where I'm at these days.
- [40:42]
B
I guess you ask around, but do.
- [40:45]
A
You have a contract broker that you use for a general contractor?
- [40:49]
B
There should be a contract broker.
- [40:50]
A
I know that's how it is. You ask people, who do you use?
- [40:54]
B
But just specifically, if you're asking me, what would I do if I needed to do my kitchen or something? Yeah, I would take it. I would do a heloc. No.
- [41:02]
A
Yeah. No, I'm not saying, how would you pay for it? Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do, too. I'm saying, like, how do you find the right place to do it?
- [41:08]
B
Okay, this is crazy. I would call a friend and say, hey, who did your kitchen? Were you happy with the work that he did?
- [41:14]
A
Yeah, the way that I'm gonna do it is I'm gonna get three or four bids and see where they come in. Like, I'm gonna shop around.
- [41:23]
B
Yeah, obviously.
- [41:25]
A
Yeah. Okay, well, come on. No offense, but I can see you just taking the first one and be like, ah, fine. That's good enough.
- [41:32]
B
You got me pegged when you did your.
- [41:35]
A
Did you.
- [41:35]
B
No, no, no, no, no, no. The first mud room. Didn't we talk about this? I went nuts on the show. The first mudroom quote tried to give me $40,000.
- [41:43]
A
Oh, no.
- [41:44]
B
Was it the mudroom? It couldn't have been 40. That's insane. It was a quote that pissed me off so much because I'm like. And then I spent ten grand on the modem, I think. And even that pissed me off when I saw what the actual scope of the project was. Beams this. That. Come on.
- [42:00]
A
So I feel like it's like a car relationship. So I'm having a guy do a quote for us for my office, and he said, think about what you want to spend for your budget. But I don't want to give them a number. I want them to give me a number first.
- [42:13]
B
Well, no, I think you have the number in your head.
- [42:15]
A
Yeah, so that's the thing. I want to tell them what I want. I want to tell them what I don't want to give them a number because I feel like whatever number I have, they'll anchor to it and add 20 or something.
- [42:22]
B
Yeah, right.
- [42:23]
A
So I don't want to. The guy's like, just give us what budget you want. I'm like, no, no, no. Tell me what it's going to cost.
- [42:27]
B
What's your budget? You tell me. How much does it cost?
- [42:30]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [42:32]
B
Listen, as somebody who climbed out of the passenger door, I think that you're gonna get steamrolled. Okay? No offense.
- [42:41]
A
Hey, I'm good at Negotiating for my cable bill.
- [42:44]
B
And you know, I ran into somebody recently, this week actually. Where was it? I was talking to somebody, maybe on the phone, I can't remember. And they're like, was Ben kidding or did he really climb out the passenger door?
- [42:57]
A
Sadly to say, I actually did climb out the passage because my kids got in the car and said, why is your door. Why is your seat all dirty? In hindsight, did I make the wrong move? Yeah.
- [43:07]
B
Yeah. Okay.
- [43:08]
A
Everyone agrees.
- [43:09]
B
Live and learn.
- [43:10]
A
I got a good survey for the week. This is from the National Bureau of Economic Research. How much do employees value remote work? Did you look at this already? If not, don't look.
- [43:19]
B
I did it. I did it.
- [43:20]
A
Okay, okay. On average, what are. This is a big giant survey they did where they said they kind of. They had these numbers before they wanted to look at it in a deeper way. What pay cut would employees be willing to accept for partly or fully remote roles, like versus going into the office all the time? What kind of pay cut would people be willing to. To accept? 8 to 12%, 25%.
- [43:42]
B
All right, that's, that's, that's not true. I'm. I believe that's what the survey answered. But no, that's not actually. When the, when the rubber meets a road. No way.
- [43:50]
A
They also said 11.8% of full time workers work fully remote. 29% are partly remote. Does the 12% number surprise you? Is it higher or lower than you would have thought? That, that seems pretty high for all full time employees. That's not just saying white collar work.
- [44:08]
B
I don't know, feels right. Ish.
- [44:11]
A
I do think people that have lived through the remote work, I think part of it is if you are already working remotely and you said you have to go back full time, I think that's when the pay cut thing comes in. Because if you already tasted that sweet, sweet, sweet remote work. Right. I think it'd be really hard to give it up. And I think you could say, like, yeah, I'd take a lower wage to do it, but anyway. All right.
- [44:34]
B
The.
- [44:35]
A
Bonaparte, Doug and Heather have this subset called the joint account where they talk about money and relationship issues. And they did this thing post a couple weeks ago, said, no, we will not ski with you. And they were saying that they've got a lot of peer pressure from friends every ski season. And they said they're not big skiers and it's expensive and it's time consuming and there's. Kids have all this stuff going on and they just, they feel the pressure but they just don't want to be pushed into the skiing thing. And I DMed with Doug a little bit, and I said, I've felt this exact same thing. We have friends who ski. I've never asked you, but are you a skier? Have you ever skied?
- [45:09]
B
What do you think?
- [45:11]
A
I bet you've tried it before, and there's gotta be some mountains in upstate New York, right?
- [45:16]
B
I've tried it, but I feel like you either grow up skiing and then you're a skier or you're not.
- [45:21]
A
So here's the thing. I actually. Grand Rapids hedged this in the middle. So we moved up to northern Michigan when I was in fifth grade, and there was three ski hills within five or ten miles of us. And so just for something to do, because we got so much more snow up there, we kind of taught ourselves how to ski. But I was not a skier. Like, if you saw me on the ski hill, you wouldn't go, oh, that guy's a skier. You know how people have the look that was not me. You know, I did not have the ski jacket, and I didn't look like I had the used skis. They were probably gray, right? They weren't the nice brand. So I skied because it was something to do. But I still remember the. So I started in fifth grade. I retired from skiing in college, and I still remember exactly why it happened. Freshman year of college and Christmas break, four or five friends said, hey, let's drive up to Canada and go skiing for the weekend. And so we all piled into my friend's Suburban and went up to Canada. And we got there, and we realized that, oh, the drinking age here is 19. And two of the friends who were huge skiers and had been skiing, they went from ski families, went skiing, and the rest of us stayed in the ski lodge and drank beer. And I didn't go skiing all weekend. We just stayed in the lodge and drank beer. And that's the last time I went skiing. I retired then.
- [46:26]
B
That was anticlimactic.
- [46:28]
A
Sorry, I just. It ran its course. Okay? That's all I'm saying. And I just. I didn't. I didn't miss skiing. Like, I had a fun time doing it because there's something to do, but I didn't. I wasn't a skier. So now.
- [46:38]
B
So when you say you're getting pressure to skate, like literal. Or people just asking, you're saying no, or they. So here's ski. You know you want it.
- [46:46]
A
I want to tell you what. So we just have friends who like, go on trips and. Yeah, why don't you guys ski? It's so much fun. And so my twins are seven going on eight, and they got invited to a ski party for someone's birthday, and they've never skied before.
- [47:01]
B
A ski party?
- [47:02]
A
Yeah. Like, the girl was having wanted to go skiing for her birthday. They have a really cheapo ski mountain here, so they've never gone. And my wife's like, what do we do? I'm like, I don't know. Tell them they don't ski. Of course they don't ski. We got other stuff going on. And so she said, no, no, no, we want to try it. So she got them lessons. They did an hour lesson, and she said, oh, I guess they're good to go. So they tried it, and they went last night. And so they did the lesson for an hour, then they went skiing with a friend, and now they love it.
- [47:30]
B
All right, long story short, you're going to be ski dad.
- [47:33]
A
So my wife said, why don't we get into skiing? And I said, I don't want to get into skiing again.
- [47:36]
B
You're gonna use skiing.
- [47:37]
A
But now that my kids want to do it, I feel like I'm gonna be. I'm gonna have to. But am I the crank for saying, like, that's already kind of passed me by. I don't need to.
- [47:46]
B
No. I wouldn't want to learn skiing in my mid-40s either.
- [47:50]
A
Okay, thank you.
- [47:53]
B
I stand with Ben.
- [47:54]
A
If my kids want me to do it, I'm sure I probably will. But I didn't have the desire to do it again. I feel like that's part of my life that I've moved on from and not caring. Okay. Anyway. Okay, read this one from the Private Chef because we got. I think one of the most proud things I am of this podcast is the fact that we have such a diverse listening audience. Like, every time we write about an obscure topic or a different profession or something, we get an email from someone says, hey, that's me. Or, I know about this.
- [48:21]
B
Well, it is funny, because last week after concluding the email, I was like, I don't think we've ever read an email that had so little connection with our audience. And we got a bunch of emails from people in the Private Chef world. So here's one. I would agree with your assessment that this playing field is generally for the 1% of the 1%. However, I have noticed that my field has grown in demand. I have colleagues that have generally not gravitated towards being a mercenary for Hiring have become jet chefs or travel with these clients and their families, including travel with them for extended periods of time to different parts of the country where they have homes. Having a private chef is more of a flex for new money and a basic normality for people who have had existing wealth. Generally, the old money knows how to work with us, while newer money is often more demanding or particular and treats us almost as any regular service worker. Shout out, Michael, what does that mean? Are they saying that I, That I.
- [49:15]
A
Because you know how to treat, That.
- [49:17]
B
I respect, That I respect workers, or that I would treat them poorly?
- [49:19]
A
No, I think that you respect service workers.
- [49:21]
B
I absolutely respect service workers.
- [49:22]
A
So this is interesting. So it's like the, the old money probably treats the private chef as more of like a member of the family or friend, whereas the new money is like, maybe not as nice or not as accommodating is what they're saying.
- [49:35]
B
Okay, I would assume that old money is just like. They don't even like, look at them, they just sort of. It's just, they're just like invisible.
- [49:42]
A
No, I don't think that's what they're saying.
- [49:44]
B
The opposite though, they might be just wrong. Anyway, they conclude none of us will ever go back to work in restaurants or starting a business with a physical location, owning a brick and mortar mom and pop shop or even a restaurant or something only 1% of us even consider doing. And that's because they are either. Whatever. So, yeah, I guess for chefs this is like a new line of business because being an entrepreneur is.
- [50:07]
A
I think this is the new normal as the wealth gap intensifies. And I agree with that. The other thing is, I can totally see being a private chef and not having to worry about the overhead of running a restaurant. Your profit margins are through the roof. I'm sure that. Who's on the hook for buying the food, do you think? The chef or the family?
- [50:25]
B
Who knows? Maybe. I don't know. So what's your strategy for getting a private chef? Is this like, Is this a HELOC 2 or asset backed loan or what?
- [50:33]
A
I can't imagine bringing a private chef on a trip with you. That is a serious flex. But those are the families that probably have a nanny and a private chef and a living person who cleans the house. I don't know. That's a world that will never be part of, I guess. Oh, okay. Let's do some random thoughts here real quick. So I thought about this because I was reading Howard Marks last week and he calls his updates to Clients. He calls them memos. Okay. So I thought, oh, that's such a boomer thing to say. Memo.
- [51:05]
B
Because I like memo.
- [51:07]
A
For millennials, it's called a blog. For Gen X, it's called an update. And for Gen Z, it's called a newsletter. They're all the same thing, but they call them different things, right? Yeah. Like, Howard Marks would never say, like, this is my blog or this is my newsletter. For him, it's a memo.
- [51:23]
B
Yeah.
- [51:23]
A
Depends what generation you're in. Okay. Ooh, this is a good one. On your podcast, you said that we still don't know what to call the oughts. The Brits are calling them the naughties. We got a few people who said this.
- [51:33]
B
I don't like it.
- [51:34]
A
Yeah, but it sounds way cooler with a British accent. They can pull it off. We can't.
- [51:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. This one tickled my funny bone. Our friend group has been debating this all day. Would you rather hiccup every minute for the rest of your life or sneeze every minute for the rest of your life? Thanks, guys. Love the show. I. I'd rather die than have either of these, but I think it's an easy answer. What do you think?
- [51:53]
A
Sneeze. Hiccuping is the most annoying thing ever.
- [51:55]
B
Okay. I was going to go the other way. You'd rather sneeze?
- [51:57]
A
I think hiccuping is just so uncomfortable. Well, again, both of these are bad.
- [52:02]
B
Okay. All right. Ben, you tweeted. Actually, you skied. How do you differentiate between what you're going to sky, what you're going to tweet?
- [52:09]
A
I feel like. You know how comedians sometimes go into the comedy cellar and work out 10 minutes of their show?
- [52:14]
B
Oh, I gotcha.
- [52:15]
A
Blue sky is where I'm working out my new material.
- [52:17]
B
Okay. Did this. Did this make it to Twitter?
- [52:21]
A
I don't think so.
- [52:22]
B
Okay. I think the true sign of middle aged wisdom is realizing how useless all the self help quote books were in your 20s and 30s, but understanding there will always be a market for that crap. Spot on. And I want to talk about middle age for a moment. Specifically mental middle age, because I think I'm getting to mental middle age. Be. We got an email. Hey, Michael and Ben, your brief conversation about filling tires with air caught my attention. I have a recommendation. Not long ago, I bought a compact air compressor on Amazon, and it is so convenient. Plug it into your car, set this psi, and boom. And I said to myself, oh, my God, I have this. I bought this.
- [53:00]
A
I forgot I had it it's only 30 bucks. That's a pretty great. That's a great deal.
- [53:04]
B
It's a great machine. Why have I been going to the gas station for two years? I have this. So I'm like, oh, my God. All right.
- [53:12]
A
So have you ever used it before?
- [53:14]
B
Yes, it's great. I use it all the time in the basketballs. It's wonderful. So I stopped working out with my trainer because my schedule was too busy and blah, blah, blah. This is probably four or five months ago, and I haven't touched the weight since.
- [53:31]
A
All right, still got your peloton back there.
- [53:34]
B
All right, so that's the backstory for this. So last week I said, you know what? Let me touch those weights. Did some presses, did a few squats, and the next day I was really sore. And I'm like, wow, you're a real pathetic loser. I didn't do a lot, and I really was sore. So I tell that story because I was walking and I felt soreness. And I wanted to call our friend Dan LaRosa, who also uses his trainer, and say, hey, I finally worked out, right? So anyway, I called Dan, put the phone back in my pocket. He goes, yo, what's up, dude? And I had to take my phone out of my pocket because I forgot who I called. And I told Dan that, and he's like, oh, my God, dude. He's like, anyway, what's up? And then I'd go, oh, no. I don't know why I called you. And so for, like, two hours, I was driving myself nuts. Like, why did I call him? Like, what were we talking about? Why did I call you? And then later during the podcast with Dan Ives, I, like, I stretched, I felt sore. Boom. Remember why I called Dan LaRosa? But it's. That's pretty bad.
- [54:52]
A
Okay, so once you finally do lose it and go down the Alzheimer's dementia route, like, what we're gonna have to do is record this podcast every week and pretend like it's still happening, but it's not gonna be released into the world. Cause you're gonna be so forgetful that we're just gonna, like, me and you have a one on one session, like a podcast.
- [55:08]
B
Yeah, this was, like, I did not feel good about this at all.
- [55:11]
A
It happened. All right, recommendations. I mentioned Saturday night, this was a recommendation from Barry. So this was, again, a bunch of early Saturday Night Live stories that they all condense into one. And the reason that I listen to this is because Neal Brennan has a podcast called Blocks. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. And he's a big therapy guy, Realized he made a bunch of money in success and he wasn't happy. So he's trying to work on himself. And so he talks to celebrities about their biggest blocks. And it's so funny because they're all just as messed up as we are.
- [55:43]
B
More so.
- [55:44]
A
Yeah, more so. And there's a good one, like Ed helms and Chris O'Donnell. No, not Chris O'Donnell. Jerry O'Connell. Close enough. And so he had one with Jason Reitman, who's Ivan Reitman's son. Ivan Reitman did, like, some of the best comedies of the 80s. He did Ghostbusters, and he talked about doing Saturday Night, which is the Saturday Night Live movie. And the guy who's in Snack Shack plays Lorne Michaels on the show. And then again, they have all these, you know, Belushi and Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, and I don't think you would like it, but, like, the. The intensity of the show, like, made you feel like how Saturday Night probably really does feel. It was their very first episode and how no one thought it was gonna work. And I thought it was just very well done. One of the better movies I've seen in a while.
- [56:23]
B
People keep emailing us about Snack Shock. I gotta watch it.
- [56:26]
A
Wait till the summer. Don't watch it now. Wait until it's summertime. Wait till you're going back to your pool. Then watch it. You gotta be in the right state of mind to watch it. All right. That movie here with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright is on Netflix as well.
- [56:39]
B
Who directed that? It was a big director.
- [56:41]
A
Zemeckis.
- [56:42]
B
Okay. That's right.
- [56:43]
A
I give them credit for taking a swing. It was ambitious. You know, the whole story of the.
- [56:47]
B
Movie is I forget. I listened to a podcast, but I forget what it was.
- [56:49]
A
It's literally one camera angle. It doesn't move. And then it's one room of a house. And all the things that happen in this one room of a house over time. And it's different people living in this house. And so it goes back and forth between years. But it also does the de aging thing on Tom Hanks and Robin Wright because they start out like they're in high school. And I appreciate the ambition of this movie. It wasn't very good.
- [57:12]
B
Okay.
- [57:13]
A
And I think the de aging thing, it throws me off. It feels like I'm looking at. It doesn't. It's like Tom Hanks, but they. He looks like a young Tom Hanks. But he looks like an AI version of a young Tom Hanks. It takes you out of it. And so I think this was a cool idea. Not a very good movie.
- [57:28]
B
All right. Hard pass for me, right?
- [57:30]
A
Definitely. It just. I'm sure some people might like it. It just didn't like it.
- [57:36]
B
Okay. I watched a Ben movie and I really enjoyed it.
- [57:40]
A
Okay.
- [57:41]
B
It's called Good Rich. It's on Max. Michael Keaton plays an older father of twins. He had. He had Mila Kunis in his first marriage. And the premise of the movie is he wakes up, gets a phone call from his younger wife who checked herself into rehab. And so he is scrambling to become a father of two 9 year old twins and also get repair the relationship with his daughter. It's like a very you movie and I very much enjoyed it. I might have even cried.
- [58:13]
A
Oh. Because it's almost like a coming of age movie.
- [58:16]
B
Yeah, it's like a coming of age movie for like a 70 year old dad. I guess. It's very good.
- [58:22]
A
Don't you think that millennials are going to have more coming of age moments as they're older too? I feel like that's just going to be a thing. I don't know, it just seems like a thing that our, our generation is much more deep, introspective. Okay. I'm gonna. I love Michael Keaton.
- [58:37]
B
Yeah. Somebody emailed us. We spoke about American Primeval a couple weeks ago. The first battle scene took like a year to film, which is not surprising considering like how wild it was.
- [58:48]
A
Yes, it's very. It was epic. Yeah. Someone said they, their brother or something or brother in law worked on the scene and it took forever and so I finished it. Very gory show.
- [58:57]
B
Oh, my God. I don't know. Like, I have like a weird feeling about the show. Maybe I, maybe this was the intent. Like, I didn't love. I didn't love watching it. It was, it was, it was a lot.
- [59:09]
A
I have one episode left. Yeah, it's. You almost feel bad watching it, even though, you know, it's probably pretty relatively accurate for how well done.
- [59:16]
B
Yeah, like it was, it was good. Just not really a lot of fun. In fact, it was the opposite of fun. It was tough.
- [59:20]
A
No, really well done. But yes, you're right. You don't get great feelings coming out of it. All right, Goodrich, I'm gonna add it to my list. Maybe you should watch Saturday Night then.
- [59:29]
B
Nah.
- [59:30]
A
Okay.
- [59:33]
B
All right. Animal spirits at the compound news. Could we get through one week without nutso stuff happening?
- [59:42]
A
Probably not. I think this is just life these days, the 2000s. This is what this whole decade has been. But think about all the crises that we've lived through. Remember the Silicon Valley bank thing? Like, I feel like our crises these days now all last a weekend. AI is going to be over Silicon Valley bank tariffs. Eventually we're going to have an actual crisis that stays. But most of the things people freak out about now, we move on in two days. It's like. Yeah, remember that thing? It didn't matter. Yeah. We freaked out about, then we moved on.
- [60:12]
B
Okay, that's. That's depressing.
- [60:15]
A
All right, it is. But I think that's just where we are.
- [60:19]
B
Okay, everybody, enjoy the week. It's almost getting sun. It's sunny out here. Sunny today, 45 degrees. We turning a corner? Probably not.
- [60:26]
A
No. It's still early February. It's freezing in Michigan. This is why you have to come to Miami with us next month.
- [60:30]
B
Okay? That's right. All right, we'll see you next week. Thank you for listening.