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- [00:00]
A
Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Public. Ben, I have a confession to make.
- [00:04]
B
Okay.
- [00:04]
A
Over the last couple of years, like so many other fine Americans with interest rates at levels that we hadn't seen in forever, not in my investing career, I accumulated more cash than, than I otherwise would have.
- [00:18]
B
You are the cash on the sidelines right now.
- [00:22]
A
But now, but now do I just take all my cash and invest into the stock market? I mean, I've been investing in the stock market, of course, my whole career. I want to maybe get some yield, lock in some yield, some bonds, if you know what I mean, know where I'm going with this?
- [00:34]
B
Yes. I think a lot of that cash is going to move into bonds. So@public.com, they have a bond account and they invest in individual bonds, corporate and high yield bonds. You can lock in a yield of 6% or higher. Right now, these are individual bonds. You actually do lock in the rates.
- [00:50]
A
For the record, I'm a stock guy, but I need some dry powder. Right. I want to be able to be aggressive if and when we get a healthy correction.
- [00:58]
B
Yeah. So you can go to public.com, check out their bond account, 6% yield or higher. Lock it in. Because we don't know these bond yields are going to be here forever.
- [01:06]
A
Lock it up.
- [01:07]
B
Yes. Brought to you by Public. Brought to you by Public Investing. Me, Member FINRA and SIPC. As of 9, 26, 24, the average annualized yield, the worst across the bond account, is greater than 6% yield. The worst is not guaranteed. Not an investment recommendation. All investing involves risk. Visit public.com disclosures Bond account for more info. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and investing.
- [01:35]
A
Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben.
- [01:42]
B
Are solely their own opinion and do.
- [01:44]
A
Not reflect the opinion of Rithol's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, welcome back.
- [02:04]
B
Yeah, good to be here. I was here last year. Last week, though. I just. In spirit.
- [02:09]
A
You got a little bit of a tan. You know, it's weird when, when I get a tan, people come back from vacations and you don't tan. I mean, you got a little bit of tan. I don't really tan that. You know, I tan over the summer when I've got constant Exposure to the sun. But I can't just go to a tropical place and get a tan. My face will melt off.
- [02:26]
B
I've never seen you with a tan before.
- [02:28]
A
No, I bronze in the summer. Although when you get back from a vacation, people say they make a joke about you not getting a tan.
- [02:34]
B
It's like, ah, yes.
- [02:35]
A
You're not those people.
- [02:36]
B
But there is the thing. You just get a little, little color. It's.
- [02:40]
A
You look alive again. You look alive again.
- [02:42]
B
It really does.
- [02:43]
A
Yeah. I've got my vampire winter shade going on.
- [02:47]
B
It is it. That's one of the depressing parts about winter. It's like your complexion matches the snow. I have more travel thoughts. I'll share in our travel part of the doc.
- [02:54]
A
Well, I've also got something of a teaser myself and the. In the ad read to public, I dropped a reference, a line, if you will. Lock it up. You lock it up. From Wedding Crashers. Rob and I listened to the Wedding Crashers rewatchables on the, on the. On a drive this weekend. Wow. That was time capsule. I'll. I'll get to it later in the show. It was 2018 or 20. 2018 when they did that show. And it was very, very interesting listening to it now to tell you where the environment was when they first. And we'll get to that later. Okay. Anytime I make it an announcement for Red holes Wealth management potential employee. I say housekeeping. I don't know what else to call it. It's not, it's not housekeeping.
- [03:34]
B
Announcement.
- [03:35]
A
Announcement.
- [03:36]
B
Like morning announcements at school.
- [03:37]
A
Sure. All right. I've said this before and I'll say it again with a twist. We have a booming office in Southern California, Los Angeles. Little south of Los Angeles to be exactly specific. And they need help. Now here's the twist. They need an incredible advisor to help them grow their business. This person needs to be amazing. What this person doesn't need a book of business, which is often a prerequisite for, for moving. If you are this person and you're an incredible advisor and you love the operations part of it. Not, I don't mean operations, opening accounts, trading, that sort of stuff, but just a lot of the, A lot of the support that, that a lead advisor would need. We need help.
- [04:20]
B
Someone who's organized.
- [04:21]
A
Yes, yes.
- [04:23]
B
And we've had a lot of luck finding employees through animal spirits. We're essentially like a junior LinkedIn here.
- [04:30]
A
This is. Yeah, I say this is where we're red hot. Wealth management monster.com.
- [04:35]
B
So every time we put this out there is monster.com still a thing.
- [04:37]
A
I don't know. But our best employees have all come from animal spurts not to break. So if you think that's you, reach out to us.
- [04:43]
B
Okay. Financial Times has a piece called the Mother of All Bubbles. I feel like we've had at least one of these articles since 2013. Like every six months or so. I looked back at. For some reason when I saw this article, I looked back in 2015. It was actually a zero hedge piece that Robert Shiller went on and said everything's overvalued. Everything. Housing, bonds, stocks, everything's over.
- [05:07]
A
When is the origin of the everything bubble that people were throwing around there?
- [05:11]
B
I mean, that's mid. Yeah, it's probably been a decade, so. But this. I thought this piece was interesting. Set aside the. The title for a second. So the whole, the whole thing here is just how much money. Like we've talked about the US economy and markets being the envy of the world, the rest of the world. And part of that envy is now flows. And everything is flowing into here. So they say. United by the faith and the strength of the US financial markets and their capacity to keep outperforming all their economies, global investors are committing more capital to a single country than ever before in modern history. As a result, the US accounts for nearly 70% of the leading global stock index, up from 30% in the 1980s. And the dollar, by some measures trades at a higher value than at any time since the developed world abandoned fixed exchange rates 50 years ago.
- [05:57]
A
May I? This person is saying. And by the way, this person, they wrote another bombastic article that we discussed years ago. I just can't remember which one it was.
- [06:08]
B
Okay. I think you mentioned that. Yeah. So this isn't their first rodeo here.
- [06:12]
A
Yeah. Anyway, conveniently choose in the 1980s, which I believe was a trough in US market cap.
- [06:19]
B
True. Following the. Yeah, that's true. Following the 70s. Yeah.
- [06:22]
A
So it's like, oh, we're 70% up for 30% at the lowest. What if you started at the 90s or the late 90s when we're about where we are today. How about that?
- [06:31]
B
True. This is interesting too. The US now attracts more than 70% of the flows into the $13 trillion gold market for private investments, which include equity and credit. I just. The sheer. Listen to the sheer amounts of money pouring in here. That part is interesting too, though. I mean, there's just. There literally is no other country region that comes anywhere close to us.
- [06:51]
A
Yeah. Now, I didn't read the article because I think I understand what this point person is trying to say and I don't entirely disagree with the message that I think that he's saying, which is that everybody is all in on the United States and there are potentially opportunities elsewhere. Is that, is that the tldr yes or not?
- [07:11]
B
Yeah. It's just a contrarian take of if, if everyone is this excited about the US Then this can't last or this can't possibly be a good thing. You have to take the other side of this.
- [07:22]
A
Okay, so I don't.
- [07:23]
B
If you're a contrarian person like you, you, you. That's what you say.
- [07:26]
A
Reasonable but, but, but reasonable. So look at this chart that we had chart can make for us showing the relative returns of other regions of the world. So we looked at emerging markets international developed China, Japan and Europe and we had Matt annualize these the differences. So on a 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year, 15 and 20 year, the US is outperforming every market on every time frame except Japan has outperformed us over the last three years. And I believe this is adjusted for dollars. So for, for the point of view of a US investor. And yet US Stocks have beaten the crap out of all these countries for a long time now. We've looked at charts historically of like US minus international rolling, various timeframes and there's always been mean reversion. But it doesn't mean that it has, that it has to mean revert. Right. Like we've been, we've been waiting as, as global investors for a long time for, for this to, to change. And now the danger is of course, like all right, well is now the time to dump your international stocks like right now when everybody is so pessimistic? So it's, it's hard. There's no.
- [08:27]
B
The problem is this is the magnitude of the outperformance has been worse in the past. Like Japan outperformed the US and the rest of the world in the 70s and 80s by a much larger amount. But the, the amount of time that this, this cycle has lasted, I think that's the thing that we've haven't really seen before.
- [08:42]
A
It's a long time and it's, it's not without good reason. It's not like people are dumb. Like no, the US has already. So, so Jake quote skyed this. Are we doing that? I don't know. Economic over at Blue sky quote tweeted the article and said he did like the, the Posh Spice. David Beckham, what's your real Name. Why am I drawing a blanket or name?
- [09:04]
B
Victoria Beckham.
- [09:05]
A
Victoria Beckham.
- [09:05]
B
Did you ever watch that doc? I liked it. I really liked it.
- [09:09]
A
So she's saying the US market is in the bubble of, is in a bubble of the ages. And David Beckham says be honest. And she says I am being honest. What PE multipliers are you comparing? Says David Beckham. Then she says European industrials with the US Tech. And David Beckham says thank you. Credit to Jake. That's a great meme. And I think you can't talk about, to Jake's point, you can't talk about the differences of of just straight pes when the composition of the markets are so different. Now obviously not the dot com bubble. The question is and this is, you know, this is part of what makes that was bubbles. This is what makes investing hard. It'd be a lot easier if we could see the future is like has all of the US exceptionalism and premium multiples that have been earned by the way, is all that bacon to the pie and is now the time to. And you know, we don't know.
- [09:56]
B
That's the impossible one to answer. So I had chart kid create one for me and I've seen something like this before but I wanted to see market cap weighting on a global basis. This is just using the AC which is all country world index and then the GDP weighting by country. So the US is 65% of the ACWI global stock market, but we only make up 26% of GDP weighting around the globe. And the biggest.
- [10:19]
A
You should have had one more.
- [10:21]
B
What's that?
- [10:22]
A
Corporate profits. US corporate profits for the rest compared to the rest of the world.
- [10:27]
B
It's probably pretty close to the market cap weighting.
- [10:29]
A
It's probably closer to market cap weighting.
- [10:30]
B
The funny thing is though, if you look at some of these other countries, Germany, France, India, Britain, Canada, Japan, their GDP and their market cap weightings are pretty similar. They're in the same ballpark. The only other one that really stands out here is China makes up 17% of GDP, but they make up just 2.4% of of of the market cap weighting.
- [10:51]
A
Again, a discount that they have earned. Like global investors are not dumb.
- [10:55]
B
So the funny thing to me here is that we seem to have just taken China's share of of GDP and translated into market cap and everything else is kind of close. So I guess the one takeaway here would be like geez, this makes no sense. How could the US be 65% of the global stock market? But 26% of GDP and then you have the line. What's the Simpson thing? Say the line. Say the line. The stock market's not the economy. Okay? You've seen the meme. The stock market is not the economy. And the s and P500 and those big companies, those are not the economy.
- [11:30]
A
Right, Right.
- [11:31]
B
That's the whole point. We've talked about this before, that the, the sheer amount of revenues and profits that come from smaller companies, it's, it's a much bigger number than you think. So you can't really make that kind of comparison and say like this has got to come back into balance because it doesn't. And it never really has. I guess for the U.S. yeah.
- [11:48]
A
Something has to give. Oh yeah. No it doesn't.
- [11:50]
B
It is kind of mind boggling, the sort of US exceptionalism here. Because it is the kind of thing in, in 10 or 15 years where you look back and either way, however this outcome happens, there's a fork in the road. One way the US underperforms or the US outperforms, it's going to look very obvious in hindsight.
- [12:06]
A
Either outcome would look obvious in hindsight, don't you think?
- [12:09]
B
If the US continues to outperform, it'll be obvious. Of course we're outperforming. We have the best companies, the most profits, the most exceptionalism, we create the most jobs.
- [12:17]
A
How about this? I won't say that because it's not obvious to me today.
- [12:22]
B
I mean I'm just looking at all these pieces and then the other side of it would be, of course it's obvious. Did you see all this stuff? That the COVID indicators of the US is the envy of the world and all this stuff. Okay, so again, there are, there are reasons for this though. Joey Politano at Appraisitas is that you say it his upstack. Very good. He talks about America's productivity boom. Now look at the productivity growth in the US versus the rest of the world. It's just we're off the charts and no one even comes close to touching us. And this is going back to the mid 2010s and it's only gotten. Our lead has only grown in the 2000s. This is, I think this is the big one. This is the, if you want to talk about like the American exceptionalism, in one chart he shows America's business boom, the business applications we've talked about that just took off in the 2000s. I just think this, the risk taking thing is something that we have that most other Countries do not have.
- [13:14]
A
Yeah. So you can make the argument that it's structural. And then somebody could say to me, anytime you use that word, it's probably, you know, anytime you use the word it's a structural thing, then that's already baked into the pie and everybody knows it. And therefore like again, you could, you could spend yourself in circles. I feel like the guy in Princess Bride. Right.
- [13:31]
B
The weird thing about this is I remember, I think I right when I got out of college. Remember when you first read your first like adult books? Because I never read in college or high school because I was an idiot. And it's so funny. My daughter reads all the time now, my oldest daughter and she's probably already read more books than I by age 10 than I had by age 21. I never read anything. I didn't start reading until after college. But I read the World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, read out of college. And I thought I am the smartest man alive because I've read a book. But the thesis of that book was that like the fall of the Berlin Wall and, and all this stuff flattened competition around the world. And you'd have thought that thesis would have played, made this whole thing much different. Like why, why is this the case?
- [14:13]
A
Yeah.
- [14:13]
B
If, if the globalization in the Internet in information technology makes it easier than ever for anyone to do anything and start a job and communicate well, because it's cultural.
- [14:21]
A
We support risk risk taking.
- [14:24]
B
I, I that I guess that's the only answer. But it's knowing that back then it would be surprising to say this is the outcome.
- [14:30]
A
Okay, here's another one. Derek Thompson on Bluesky. This really is remarkable. He's showing two charts from Jason Furman. Labor productivity and non farm business of the euro area. Europe's productivity growth has collapsed to basically zero. At the same time the continent's politics is turning away from immigration. Quote, Europe's just a museum is becoming an insult to museums with membership growth and new exhibits.
- [14:55]
B
Shots fired. Are we going to do a counter for every time we do a Blue sky post here? Like ding, you know.
- [15:01]
A
Yeah, no, here's, here's an interesting chart. I think it was from John authors at Bloomberg. It shows until the election US and European bank stocks moved in tandem. This from December 2023 until the election. And then as soon as the election happened, whoosh. They wanted complete different directions.
- [15:23]
B
I guess I understand why US banks did better because of the deregulation stuff. Why did European banks all of a sudden sell off?
- [15:32]
A
Because investors were selling European banks and buying US Ones.
- [15:35]
B
Just a positioning thing. Yeah, no, you're probably right.
- [15:38]
A
I don't know.
- [15:38]
B
It's a positioning thing.
- [15:40]
A
All right. Speaking of positioning, the constant wondering of.
- [15:45]
B
Where, by the way, this is another element of this is the Top. Right. This is. Add it to the list of the last 15 years of this is the top moments.
- [15:52]
A
What? This conversation?
- [15:54]
B
Yes. Every. Every conversation is that this is the top. I was looking back, for some reason, the YouTube algorithm sent me an old animal spirits video, and there was one, and it was like, 12 months ago, and it was the. The Ben Carlson top, because I think it was Michael Santoli told Josh that he's saying Ben's spiking the football way too, a lot, way too much lately on his podcast. And I think we called it the Ben Carlson top. And still.
- [16:19]
A
Yeah. By the way, how. But how is this topic. I think what we're saying is, like, we don't know that the US Performance is going to continue.
- [16:24]
B
No, I'm saying a lot of these stories just. Just shoving it in the face of the rest of the world saying, the US look at how great we are.
- [16:31]
A
Yeah, but it's not. This is not the first time we've had this conversation. Like, there's been multiple go rounds of these over the years.
- [16:38]
B
Yeah, fair.
- [16:39]
A
So, okay. Beltunas ETFs just set a monthly flow record in November with 155 billion. A shocking number given there was only 21 business days in the month. That's $7.3 billion a day, about triple the norm. Triple, thanks to the Trump bump. Year to date, flows at 983 billion. Headed to a trillion for the first time ever, likely by Wednesday. Just. Wow. Now, probably a lot of this is. Is crypto, so. But even nevertheless, I just continue to, like, marvel at where this money is coming from. Every time we say this, we get a lot of emails about, like, different theories, and it's. The answer is it's not one thing, of course. Right. Like, it's. We hear from. Oh, it's overseas investors. It's mutual funds.
- [17:20]
B
That was the one I heard recently. That's overseas investors. Okay.
- [17:23]
A
I'm sure. I'm sure it's all these things. It's just. It's so much and just. Wow.
- [17:29]
B
Yes. So much.
- [17:30]
A
I think one of. One of the themes continues to be there's just a lot of money in the world and it needs to find a home.
- [17:35]
B
Yes. Everywhere. All right. Jason Zweig has been doing wonderful work in the last year or so, just pulling things to light of. Of shady Practices. And he has this, this story from last week that is, is really sad. And it talks about these people who. What, what was the fund, what was the fund called? Yield. What was it?
- [17:58]
A
Max.
- [17:59]
B
Yield Max. Or one of these companies was promising a guaranteed return.
- [18:04]
A
Oh, a firm called Yield Wealth.
- [18:06]
B
So, yeah, yield wealth, 15.25% return. No. No losses at all. And this one Guy took his $760,000 retirement fund and his wife is like, I don't know, this doesn't sound. And he's 60 years old and he talked to his wife about it and he said, I can't handle the volatility, the stock market anymore. This guy's going to give me a. This place is going to give me a guaranteed 15%. Took all of his money out of his 401k, every single cent, rolled it over. And now all of a sudden, stuff stopped coming in. There's no income anymore. This place was some sort of Ponzi scheme and it's gone, he says, with the promise of. This is from Zweig. With the promise of such high income and a guarantee against loss, says Graham. It sounded like a perfect solution, which is just a tale as old as time, unfortunately. But here's my question to you. So I've said this in the past, that the best selling point, especially for retirees and people who are conservative investors, is yielding.
- [19:02]
A
When you said the best, you mean the easiest thing to sell?
- [19:04]
B
The easiest sale you can make is yield.
- [19:06]
A
Yes.
- [19:06]
B
You don't need to know anything else. What's the yield? 9% in. 10% in. 12% in.
- [19:12]
A
Last week I had a handyman in the house doing some things that I'm not capable of doing, like screwing in a light bulb, for example. And he saw my charts on the screen and he's been here before, so he knows that I work in money or whatever. And he's like, hey, let me ask you a question. Where would you invest $50,000? And I said, well, what are you looking for? What's your risk tolerance? What are you looking for? Nothing too risky. Maybe some income. So I explained to him, I'm like, all right, well, the risk free rate is 4.2%. Ish. That's what you can get from the government for 10 years. And so anything, if you're looking for income, anything above 4% has to have a level of risk. 6% is more risky than government. 7, 8 is more risky, et cetera. So if I said to him, hey, there's a product that's, you know, 11% principal protected, whatever whatever. Done. Two seconds. Oh yeah, but funny that. Not to go too much of a tangent on this, he's like, all right, well, because he's like, you know, something not too risky, like maybe some income. And I tell him that he can get 4.2% or whatever, he goes, what about Tesla? So, you know, that's a whole separate conversation.
- [20:31]
B
But my question is this. So how many private credit fund scams are we going to see in the years ahead? Because these things are opaque and kind of black box. And don't worry what's in there? No one really knows. I think the scams in that space, there's going to be a lot of them of just yield, promise, don't. It's private illiquid stuff. Don't worry about it. There's going to be scams there for sure.
- [20:53]
A
I'm not. Just to be very, very clear, this is not in a scam bucket, like separate conversation. Today, speaking of private credit, BlackRock announced that they're buying HPS, which is a private credit company. I think they have 150 billion in assets under management. A lot of money. So in the past year BlackRock has bought Prequin Global Infrastructure Partners and Now this company, BlackRock is making a huge push into private markets. And here's a quote from the Wall Street Journal from the cfo. Combining public and private credit is the future of fixed income. And there's no reason to not believe what BlackRock says it's going to do. It's doing it. So that is going to be another interesting wrinkle over the next coming years in the fixed income world. Is private credit getting into being commingle with public.
- [21:44]
B
The fact that BlackRock already owns half of the homes in the United States. I mean, gotta believe them. Stop kidding.
- [21:50]
A
That is a. That is a joke.
- [21:51]
B
All right, I don't wanna get an email. I've got an email from BlackRock in.
- [21:55]
A
The past we have.
- [21:59]
B
I told her the one I got was someone asked me to change a headline of my blog and I was like, no, I can't.
- [22:05]
A
And by the way, it's Blackstone that owns half the houses. And of course that is a joke too. So Logan Motashami does all the work swatting away the, the non truth spewers about this. What?
- [22:19]
B
It's like, it's like 2% or something.
- [22:21]
A
1%?
- [22:22]
B
Yeah, it's very, very low. The terms of institutional investors that own homes.
- [22:26]
A
The amount of. The amount of individual investors that own homes. Right, right. Like dwarfs institutional stuff.
- [22:32]
B
Yes. The individual renters or individual landlords own more homes, single family homes than institutions.
- [22:39]
A
Yeah.
- [22:39]
B
Jeffrey Patak at Morningstar. Remember last week we talked about the leverage mania. There's a new place called the One in One Funds. I don't know who, who's running this or it's just a new fund company, but it's, it's the Corey Hofstein return stacking. So It's Bitcoin and ETH, Nasdaq and ETH, S&P and Bitcoin, S&P and ETH, S&P and Nasdaq S&P and VIX. And it's these, it's using options to add leverage to a portfolio. So you can have a different.
- [23:04]
A
I, I, I like this idea.
- [23:06]
B
These, these really, these aren't terrible. Actually, it kind of makes sense if you understand, if you understand the key.
- [23:14]
A
Word, if you understand. I think these are perfectly viable products.
- [23:19]
B
Yes. I actually think these are kind of interesting. But you know that the ones that are, that just go psycho and go way above this are going to get more assets. Of course, the reasonable ones aren't going to get a lot of assets. All right, so you saw this thing about the Enron post yesterday.
- [23:35]
A
There's what happened. Please explain to me. I did not click.
- [23:38]
B
I don't know if it was a meme or the community note said it was a crypto scam masquerading as a bankrupted. So there was a tweet saying this is at Enron from Twitter and says, we're back. Can we talk? And it's talk about. And everyone's going, oh, Enron's back. This is a sign of the times. And it was, I don't know if it was a meme or a joke or a scam.
- [23:54]
A
Well, hold on. Before it just a little bit of color because I saw Jack, Jack, our friend Jack Reigns, tweet about it this morning. All right, this is from Sherwood News. The college company had owned the Enron trademark since June 2021, allowing it to legally sell merchandise with the Enron logo. And that trademark is now owned by Gatos New Enron Corporation. For those curious, the college company also owns one other trademark, Birds Aren't Real, alluding to a Gen Z conspiracy theory that birds are actually government agents. So, all right, so I'm still not clear what's going on here. What's going on here?
- [24:22]
B
I don't know if it was a crypto scam, though, or something. My whole thinking is that the 2000s is kind of morphed into the decade, especially for young people of like financial nihilism. And if this was a crypto scam thing, the, the whole, all the meme coin stuff, like I guess it comes with the territory. But I think on the one hand.
- [24:41]
A
Wait, can you explain why, why you're saying this is a crypto scam? I didn't, like I said, I didn't click the video.
- [24:45]
B
Oh. The community note for Twitter says that a crypto scam masquerading is bankrupt at Enron Corporation.
- [24:50]
A
Got it.
- [24:50]
B
Okay, got it. And I just think the one positive net benefit of all the craziness that's gone on the markets in the 2020s is that we've got more people involved in the markets. And I think people have up their risk taking millennials. Remember that millennials had their own like death of equities thing where they wanted nothing to do with risk following the great financial crisis. And Gen Z is like, no, give us as much risk as possible. And, but with that comes like, I feel like this like nihilism of the meme stocks and the, the meme coins and the shitcoins and all this stuff. And I feel like that that is the down, that is a double edged the other side of the sword where it's like just like stuff doesn't matter, let's invest in the funny thing or that part is the thing that's kind of depressing to me.
- [25:29]
A
Yeah, it is. But like, like every other previous generation, they'll, they'll learn and they'll write like, like we all did, we all went through our shenanigans early on. But I do think that getting more people interested in investing, like just the concept and the, even if it's not like the right pathway to start is, is unbalanced a good thing. But the positive, maybe another, another side effect of this is CFA candidates going lower. Like why would a young person look, try to figure, do fundamental analysis like deep work when you could just buy shitcoins and make money.
- [26:03]
B
Yeah. So Mike's a cardi tag us on this. And it shows the CFA exams taken per year and the huge drop off in 2020 obviously. But it's, it came back a little bit and then now it's way lower than it was in the late 2010s and it doesn't appear to be coming back. And they, the Financial Times gives some reasons for this. They, they say the pandemic was part of it. I guess a lot of the tests were taken in China and, and the shutdowns there slowed that down. So there's not as much growth in emerging markets.
- [26:30]
A
I mean, not, no offense to the Society or the Institute. I mean, Ben and I are charter holders. But like, it does seem a bit antiquated in today's world, though.
- [26:38]
B
A little bit, yes. I'm sure that's part of it.
- [26:40]
A
Like when we were coming up, like, banking was sexy, right? Like, being investment banker was cool. Now, of course, I couldn't be an investment banker because I got kicked out of college twice, graduated Queens College, didn't know anybody. I was not.
- [26:52]
B
I just never would have been an investment banker because I couldn't handle the hours.
- [26:54]
A
Well, I mean, I, I wasn't even. There was. There was never happening for me. Let's be honest, right?
- [27:00]
B
No. Well, me neither. I didn't, I didn't have the grades.
- [27:03]
A
Pedigree, sort of pedigree for that. But. But, yeah, but young people don't want to be in. Who wants to be an investment banker?
- [27:10]
B
I'm sure there's still a lot of people from the Ivy Leagues, but yeah, I'm sure tech is much more sexy. The funny thing to be.
- [27:15]
A
Of course, you're right. But like, it's just not as cool as it used to be.
- [27:19]
B
No, no, no. But I'm surprised that because more portfolio and one of the other reasons they give is that just the rise of passive investing and ETFs. You don't really need the portfolio management skills. The funny thing to me is a lot of people do throw shade on the cfa. And for me, it helped me in my career, it helped me get jobs. Whether it helped me become a better investor, that's another story. But it helped me get jobs by taking it. And I think it did help me early in my career. It is funny though, because people always talk down in the cfa, but you know, the person who started the CFA was. Whose idea it was.
- [27:47]
A
Was it Ben Graham?
- [27:48]
B
Benjamin Graham was the one who. It was his idea that got the CFA rolling.
- [27:52]
A
Can I. I don't know if I ever told the story on the air. I don't even know if I ever told you the story. Ben. In 2010. In 2010, a friend of mine that left Mass Mutual and by the way, I was thinking about this the other day. You know, what is going to. What do we say is going to die with boomers?
- [28:12]
B
White tighty underwear with, you know, with the blue and the yellow stripe. I did a whole blog post on this. Like, I'll find it.
- [28:23]
A
Here's another thing. Shoe shines. I literally used to wear a suit every Day because that's what everybody else did. And I got my shoe shined because I was an impressionable young idiot, and that's what I saw people doing. That's gone away, right? But you ever get your shoe shine, Ben?
- [28:39]
B
Maybe once, but, yeah, I don't think so.
- [28:41]
A
Go get your shine box. Anyway, okay. So, so my friend who left Mass Mutual got a job as a wholesaler at, at Pimco, and he got me a job interview, and I was sailing through, dude. I was, I, I, I spoke to two people, was doing great. Personality was shining through, making jokes, showing interest, developing rapport. And then I get to the hiring manager, and I'll never forget it. I went to his office. Mahogany, greaseback hair, the whole thing. Exactly what you picture a Long island branch manager to look like. And I think this was for an internal wholesaler. I'm pretty sure. Yes, of course it was, because you don't start as an external. It was an internal wholesaler position. And we're talking, we're talking. He looks down at my resume and goes, CFA candidate. What? That's not what this job is. He's like, why are you. Wait, this, you know, this is like, sales position, right? You're, this is not an analyst position. I don't think it's right for you. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- [29:47]
B
There's a turn off.
- [29:47]
A
I was like, I'm only doing it so I could get a job. I'll stop, I'll stop right now. I'll stop right now. And I didn't get the job. And I'm like, I'll never know. I'm, I don't know, 85% sure that had I not had that on my resume, the job was mine.
- [30:02]
B
Listen, we don't want people who know about markets on this job. Okay?
- [30:05]
A
Yeah.
- [30:05]
B
Learning here.
- [30:06]
A
Yeah. This is not, this is not the career path for cfa. But isn't that wild? Like, what a, what a fork in the road type of moment?
- [30:13]
B
I, I applied for an analyst job at a bank right out of college, and it, it was analyst in name only. It was also a sales job. And they asked me, like, what, are you interested? I'm like, well, I'm a number person. I want to, you know, and like, no, no, we call this analyst, but really, this is a sales role.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah, I'm a markets guy.
- [30:30]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [30:33]
A
I. Ben, last week or a couple of weeks ago, we were getting a little bit worried about the fact that everybody's pretty excited. The wall of worry is nowhere to be found. Right. We like having a wall worry. I don't know if there's a wall of white per se, but it did stick out to me. Dietrich tweeted. AAII bears are outnumbered bulls for the first time since late April. Bit curious, no? Usually don't see a bear spike in a bull market like this. Very unusual.
- [31:10]
B
No offense to the AAI people. I've done talks with them in the past. I've written articles for them in the past. Is this survey useful anymore?
- [31:20]
A
I don't.
- [31:21]
B
Well, look at the bearish are always like.
- [31:24]
A
Well, when you say, when you say useful, I don't know that it's ever again, no offense. And I don't think the point of it is to be useful. It's just, hey, this is what it is. I don't think that anybody's ever like, made money trading this consistently, but it's just. No, it's just interesting, that's all.
- [31:38]
B
I just don't know if this is a good fear and greed gauge even anymore.
- [31:41]
A
Oh, no, it is, it is. Because I, I'm pretty sure that the bear, the, the bear spike in October 2022 was the bottom.
- [31:48]
B
Oh, okay. But no, it's just funny now that it's spiking now it's a different spike.
- [31:52]
A
To be clear, it's not nowhere near 30%. It's nowhere near what it was at the bottom. But nevertheless, it's just, there's more bears and bulls in this sort of market. Take it.
- [32:00]
B
Okay. All right. Oliver is back. We're rebuilding it brick by brick.
- [32:05]
A
It's back. Okay. Black Friday. You a Black Friday guy, Ben?
- [32:10]
B
I buy a bunch of stuff online. I got a bunch of packages waiting for me when we go back from Dominican. Do you bet? How many T shirts did you buy?
- [32:17]
A
Okay, no T shirts because it's the one you're wearing. I didn't buy any T shirts. I did buy a lot of the same type of long sleeve T shirt, if you will. Like, it's just a plain long sleeve shirt. I can't help it. There's so many sales and they, they know where to get you. They get you right on the street.
- [32:34]
B
It is true. You know, you know what the thing to do now is too? You go in and you put something in your cart and you go, and I'm going to leave and then they send you an email saying, hey, we saw you put that in your cart. Here's an extra 15% off.
- [32:45]
A
Fine.
- [32:46]
B
All right. Yeah, you do look at the numbers and you go, oh, everything's 60% off. We were walking, we went to the movies the other day, which I'm going to talk about later. And then walking through the mall, my daughter wanted like a Christmas sweatshirt or something. And one of the stores said like 50% off everything in huge letters. And then in really tiny letters below it said exclusions apply. And I thought, you know what? It's not everything. I want to talk to the manager.
- [33:07]
A
I saw, I saw Rag and Bone. They got me. It said 80% off. And I'm, I'm like, nothing I bought was 80% off. But guess what? They got me in the door. Credit to this. Shame on me.
- [33:17]
B
The up to it always gets you.
- [33:19]
A
Okay, so Adobe analytics consumers spent a record $6.1 billion online on Thanksgiving, up a 8.8% year over year expect. Adobe analytics expects consumer will spend a record $10.8 billion online for Black Friday, up 9.9 over year. And Cyber Monday rule remain the year's biggest shopping day, driving a record $13.2 billion in spend, up 6% year over year. Somebody. I saw somebody tweet a video of like Black Friday. Remember back in the day, people would line up at Best Buy at five in the morning.
- [33:50]
B
My wife and her parents used to get up and go at like 4:30 in the morning to places while I was still sleeping in. This is something our kids will never know about, right? Like people waiting. The other day I had my. For some reason I didn't have my. I always had my phone plugged in and Apple CarPlay on and I didn't for some reason. And the radio came on and a song came on and my son goes, who's seven? He goes, what song is this? Put on this other song I like. And I said, oh, I can't. It's the radio. Let me plug my phone in real quick.
- [34:15]
A
Radio.
- [34:16]
B
Who needs a radio? And he goes, what's the radio? And I'd explain what it is. Well, they play music and. Cause then the DJ came on and started talking. He's like, who's this? And I had to try to explain to him what the radio is. And his mind was blown. He's like, I don't get it. Yeah, why would you. Why would you listen to this when you can just pick the song you want total? I said, no, when in the past you listen, but you'd have to listen for an hour to get the song you like. They might play it maybe.
- [34:38]
A
By the way, the Black Friday shopping thing was the. Was the prem. One of the. One of the Scenes in Thanksgiving, a very fine horror film that you will never see. Anyway, I was. I was showing Kobe clips on YouTube of old basketball games. He was asking about the Hornets for some reason. So remember back in the day before hd, it was. You couldn't see anything.
- [35:04]
B
No.
- [35:05]
A
And he goes, what did he say? Oh. He goes, why did it look all glitchy? I can't see anybody's numbers. He called it glitchy. I'm like, this is what TV used to be. Like.
- [35:14]
B
We didn't know any different.
- [35:15]
A
We didn't know any different anyway.
- [35:17]
B
All right, a lot of spending. A lot of spending from GDP now. We're looking at 3.2% real growth in GDP for this quarter according to the model. This economy just won't slow down. I don't know. I mean, I was thinking about this the other day. We were on Derek Thompson's podcast, plain English in January 2023, and he was like, right now, I'm putting you on the spot, recession or no recession this year. And we all kind of like, ugh, gun. You know, gun to my head. I'm going to say no. You think about how strong the economy has been since then. Everyone thought we were still going into session back then.
- [35:55]
A
Not us.
- [35:56]
B
It's amazing. All right. Torsten Slock charts of the week. He shows 73 million people are receiving Social Security benefits right now. Then he shows total federal spending. It's like almost $7 trillion. Social Security is about 1.4, 1.5 trillion of that. So we'll call it 20% of the total, I guess. I know people want to make the government more efficient and cut spending. I think if they ever decide to touch this, that would be the biggest mistake we could ever make. There's ways you can make Social Security more efficient and raise the age for young people getting it or something. Or change the. But, like, trying to take Social Security away from people I think would be the biggest mistake they could make. So many people rely on this as their only retirement.
- [36:39]
A
Yeah, this is really the third. I don't think it's on the table. Right. Nobody's talking about Social Security.
- [36:43]
B
I don't know. I hope not.
- [36:46]
A
All right. We got an email talking about inflation and how it was obvious that we would get it with the stimmy checks and so hold on. What's the point of this? Oh, basically, it's like, what is happening now that in five years will be painfully obvious to look back on. It's always a good, like, mental exercise.
- [37:05]
B
Yes. He was saying that a lot of the stuff we've been talking about is regret minimization and they're talking about their friends with this.
- [37:12]
A
But like things that seem obvious now with the benefit of hindsight, like looking forward, what would it be like? We were so dumb. Like, how did we think that was a thing?
- [37:22]
B
I feel like no matter what happens though, the hindsight always kicks in so quickly in the recency of. Yeah, of course that happened.
- [37:29]
A
That's recency bias right there. Found it. Because your recency bias is with the election, everybody thinks that the past is obvious. I don't, but I don't think that that's like something that we do that often. I don't pretend that the past was, was obvious. That's not, that's not my thing.
- [37:46]
B
Okay, so the thing that seems obvious now is that everything's great, right? The markets are rocking. Crypto can't go down. Like that's the obvious stuff. Now that in a few years you go, oh, of course, the economy couldn't possibly keep going up forever like this. The stock market couldn't possibly keep going up forever. That would be the thing. People would go, oh yeah, duh. Like it could keep just going like this could be, Wouldn't that be. That's the simple one, right? Something throws a wrench into the economy. I think the, the tariff thing, if that ever really was a thing, I, I don't think the markets are discounting that at all right now.
- [38:23]
A
No, you're right. I don't know. Like, I know we've spoken a lot about how we've been in a secular bull market, which we have, but like, I think we lose sight of the fact that we just had a really, we just had a bad bear market.
- [38:33]
B
We did, we just. 2022 was, I called it one of the worst years ever for financial markets. It was a combination of stocks and.
- [38:38]
A
Bonds and it lasted, it lasted. When did, when did markets peak? Like whatever, late, late mid 2021. We had a two year bear market and it was pretty severe. Like Google got cut in half. So let's not forget, let's not act like that didn't happen.
- [38:53]
B
How about this as a hypothesis? Not predicting this.
- [38:56]
A
Are your arms crossed?
- [38:58]
B
Is that okay?
- [38:59]
A
No, I just. Body language. I feel like, yeah, like you're, you're, you're scratching your chin. Go ahead.
- [39:07]
B
Interest rates, I think being at long term average levels, 4, 5, 6% rates, I think people are going to look back on this in five years and go, oh man, we should lock those in. I don't think that's sustainable. Higher interest rates like this. How's that? 7% mortgage rates, 5% bond yields, 12% private credit. I don't think this stuff is sustainable. I don't see how the economy can continue to rock higher with rates like this. I think rates have to come down if we want things to keep progressing.
- [39:39]
A
Not a bad take. All right, all right. Real quick on crypto. Sorry. Damn it. You guys hurt my head.
- [39:50]
B
Like the one guy this.
- [39:53]
A
I'm not having a guy.
- [39:54]
B
We had people tell us keep talking about crypto, but one guy didn't want us to.
- [39:58]
A
I can't shake. I can't shake him going to the airport next week. Imagine I see him next week. That'd be something anyhow. All right, somebody tweeted if Sailor Soldier, he would go down as having placed one of the best trades of all time. $14.9 billion so far. That's how much he's up on this trade. To put that in perspective, here are some of the biggest in history. John Paulson's bet against subprime mortgages. Paulson's hedge fund earned approximately $4 billion by shorting subprime mortgages during the financial crisis. George Soros, when he short. When he shorted the British pound, profited $1 billion. You know, you have to adjust that for inflation, but whatever. Jesse Livermore made around $100 million short in 1929. That's the equivalent of over $1.4 billion today. So again, sailor's up around 15 billion.
- [40:45]
B
Okay, I hate to split hairs here, but you can't make this comparison. Sailor used his publicly traded company to raise money. He didn't raise money from investors that make a place a bet. He did. You could say, like, the greatest investment of all time is Apple buying back shares for the past 10 years because they made. You know. So I don't think. You can't. You can't make this comparison. I'm sorry. That is not a trade. It is a trade, but he's using the balance sheet of a publicly traded company. That's different than.
- [41:13]
A
Okay, okay, fair enough.
- [41:14]
B
But nevertheless, it's a good trade. But you can't compare to these other trades. These other trades were like. Those were legitimate hedge fund trades. This was a publicly traded company that he was doing it with.
- [41:26]
A
You're right. You're right. So not apples to apples, but he deserves to us.
- [41:31]
B
And then he says here, I'm not selling.
- [41:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. So he said, I'm not selling. So we were hypothesizing, like, what could Potentially stop this. And so we've got Mara, a company. What is Mara is Mara Bitcoin Mining company.
- [41:46]
B
I have no idea. I never heard of it before.
- [41:48]
A
Mara holdings announces a $700 million private offering of interest free convertible senior notes due in 2031. Proceeds will be used to acquire more Bitcoin. So if a lot of other companies do this and they get the same advantage that Michael Saylor does, maybe the premium on micro strategy will shrink and maybe it will start to go into other companies. And there was a third company that started to do this. So possible still.
- [42:11]
B
Remember that would be the interesting thing if Bitcoin didn't really crash but MicroStrategy starts going down. Yeah, that's a possibility.
- [42:21]
A
Possible.
- [42:22]
B
Okay. From our own Nick Magulia of Dollars data, he had three predictions for the next 10 years and I pulled out one I thought was interesting. He says U.S. residential real estate will underperform inflation. And he shows this graph from Shiller that I've used in the past too that basically shows for the first, I don't know, for 100 years or so on an inflation adjusted basis, housing prices basically went nowhere. 1900 to 2000 housing prices on an inflation adjusted basis went nowhere. Since 2000 they've taken off like a rocket ship. And Nick says basically it's risen too much too quickly. As a result, I think it'll have a negative inflation adjusted return over the next 10 years. I would take the other side of that.
- [42:59]
A
Me too. Yeah, I don't know about this, although I'm not sure. I'm not. How about this? I'm like, I'm not sure.
- [43:05]
B
He like, it's not a terrible prediction.
- [43:07]
A
Yeah, it's not a terrible prediction but.
- [43:10]
B
I don't know, I don't know what stops this train.
- [43:13]
A
It's close. I would say like this is sort of a toss up. Like either side would be like +110, minus110, that type of thing or -110 each?
- [43:20]
B
No, I don't think so. I, well I mean a lot of it depends on what inflation is. But.
- [43:25]
A
Well that to me that's the thing. It's like what's inflation going to be? Because I still, I don't think that house prices are going down. I'm making this up. I think they'll go up on, you know, 2 to 3% a year for the next decade. So the question is what's inflation going to be?
- [43:38]
B
Yes, but the thing is if inflation is higher, that's good for the housing market. Typically good. How higher Inflation is better for housing market because it costs more to build a home. It costs, replacement cost is higher. And in higher inflation environments, housing prices actually do better.
- [43:53]
A
It's good for people that own a home.
- [43:55]
B
Yes, that's what I mean for housing prices. Yes. All right. Torsten Stock also had his marking US housing market outlook. And I thought he gives 10 facts that kind of summarize everything because it's like 100 page book. I don't know if you went through this, but some of these are interesting. So median age of all homebuyers is now 49 years old, up from 31 in 1981. And to me, that's all baby boomers. Right. That's just. You have a huge demographic that controlled it back then and it controls it now. They predict, their model predicts housing prices will increase 10.8% in the coming year. That'd be a pretty good start to being inflation. Let's see. 40% of homes don't have a mortgage. Record high household equity. 73% of housing values. That's how high equity is. 36% of Americans, a record high. Say they would rent if they were going to move. So they wouldn't, they wouldn't buy. More than half of all mortgages outstanding have an interest rate below 4%. And let's see.
- [44:53]
A
So are they saying that like there's, there's just so much more demand than supply?
- [44:58]
B
Yes, that's, that'd be my, that'd be my basic thesis for why housing prices will probably do better than inflation. Because I don't think in the next 10 years we're in bill enough homes to meet the demand.
- [45:07]
A
Yeah, that's, that's not controversial. That's the thing.
- [45:10]
B
Yes. Okay. Wall Street Journal article, they have an article saying that people are now buying houses before they get married. So people who are moving in together, I think the number was 75% of people move in together before getting married. I'm guessing that number is way, way higher than it was back in the day.
- [45:25]
A
This seems like a big mistake.
- [45:27]
B
Oh yeah, I think so too. So they say, let's see. 555,000 unmarried couples said they had bought their home in the previous year, according to census data. That is up 46% from 10 years ago. So way more people are doing these unmarried couples account amount count for 11% of all home sales. And that steadily increased in the past two decades even while marriage rates have fallen. And so they show this chart here of this, this is just, this is, has. This will not end well. On it. Right.
- [45:59]
A
Well, the thing that I'm. Are you thinking because like, what if they don't get married? That. How annoying and ugly is it to split?
- [46:04]
B
Yes, yes. If, if you break up with some, I don't know who, whose name you put it in, how that works, do you start fighting over, Well, I put $25,000 into this house and you didn't.
- [46:15]
A
And yeah, this sounds awful.
- [46:17]
B
Breakups are already ugly enough as it is. But I understand why people do this though. People say, hey, we're going to get married in two years when things are. Make more sense and we're out of school or whatever, but we're going to buy a house now because why wait anymore?
- [46:27]
A
Yeah.
- [46:29]
B
Yes. But yeah.
- [46:30]
A
Picture of you.
- [46:32]
B
Okay. So my sister sent this to me. She's my sister. My younger sister is going through and taking all of the old pictures that were printed out. Can you believe we used to have to do that? You bring a roll of film in and they would develop it for you and like three days later you go pick it up and she's taking all those photos my parents have and digitizing them and she, every once in a while she'll send me one. She sent me this one. I must have been, I don't know, five years old there or something. Looks great.
- [46:58]
A
That carpet is incredible.
- [46:59]
B
So that this is my house. Yes. That I lived in for, I don't know, 10 years. And look at the carpet. Houses were so disgusting in the 1980s.
- [47:08]
A
Yeah, it's true.
- [47:09]
B
Can you imagine anyone right now moving into a house from the 80s? Especially young people who've grown up in HGTV. Houses were just, I mean, even like the 50s and 60s sometimes. How's like if you watch the Graduate, like some of those houses I would live in today, like those were sleek, they were cool looking. Houses of the 70s and 80s are just disgusting.
- [47:32]
A
Speaking of 70s and 80s, what are people thinking? Did you watch the yacht rock documentary?
- [47:36]
B
I did not. But I'm a big yacht rock guy on my boat, so.
- [47:39]
A
Of course you are. Who's not? Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
- [47:41]
B
So you liked it?
- [47:42]
A
Yeah, it was great.
- [47:43]
B
Okay.
- [47:44]
A
Yeah. I didn't know a lot about the era and the stories behind it. I know the music, of course, but yeah, a lot of fun.
- [47:50]
B
It's one of those things where it's hard to. I'm sure they go over this in the doc. It's hard to define what it actually is.
- [47:54]
A
Well, here's how the doc opens. Or one of the lines that, that tickled me. It's not that it doesn't rock. That made me laugh.
- [48:04]
B
Okay.
- [48:05]
A
To try to, like, describe the shadow. It's just that it's not rock and roll.
- [48:08]
B
Right. But it's catchy, right?
- [48:12]
A
It's. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun music. It's boat music. That's what it is. Okay. All right. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal by Ben Cohen, why everyone is now watching podcasts on YouTube. And you and I were a little bit late to convert our. Although it feels early now, I guess in hindsight, we were a little bit late to convert our podcast into a video because we were thinking we were.
- [48:36]
B
Dead wrong on this.
- [48:37]
A
Yeah. Dead wrong. Who wants this?
- [48:39]
B
We had a bunch of people ask us, hey, why don't you guys put the whole pod. Because we were showing, I think we did video clips back in the day, and then a bunch of people said, put it on. Put the whole thing on YouTube. We said, no, you know what? We said, no one's going to watch that.
- [48:49]
A
Well, also, to be fair, we don't have the resources to do it.
- [48:52]
B
Right.
- [48:52]
A
Like, But. But anyway, so. So they show the US share of weekly podcast listeners and kind of wild. Spotify growing and flatlined. Apple is going down and YouTube is now ahead of all of them.
- [49:08]
B
I did not realize that Apple has Apple shares fallen as Spotify because Spotify and Apple were basically neck and neck in 2020.
- [49:14]
A
Well, remember, overcast, like overcast sort of stopped working. It got glitchy, so I dropped it. All right. This year, YouTube passed a competition. It became the most popular service for podcasts in the US with 31% of weekly podcast listeners. SEGA is now the platform they use. Most 150 million people in the US now watch YouTube on their TVs every month. In the final stretch of his campaign, President elect Donald Trump appeared on more than a dozen shows that collectively drew more than 100 million views on YouTube. Daniel X said he's the CEO of Spotify. If you said five years ago that people would want to watch people talking and sitting in front of a microphone, I'd say probably not. Oh, speaking of, by the way, we're animal spirits. Is not going to be. Our video is not going to be on Spotify.
- [49:53]
B
Yeah, Duncan did this with Asset Compound two and showed me. And it's really cool.
- [49:58]
A
Really cool. So I. I was watching the Mark Andreas and Joe Rogan video. Did you. Did you watch? We don't need to get to that. But. But I love the. I love the option it's not like I'm like sitting holding my phone, watching.
- [50:12]
B
It, but like it's kind of like concurrently. You have the podcast going and then there's the video too, on your phone.
- [50:18]
A
Yeah.
- [50:18]
B
And if you want to check in on the video, you can.
- [50:20]
A
If you want to. If you want to check in, you can. So anyway, so we're. So our podcast is going up normal times Wednesday, Wednesday morning at 8. And I think our video is going to be up. So if you. If you want to wait or whatever, you have the option. Now, what is time? Is it going up? What time does it go up?
- [50:35]
B
So the video goes up later. The same like this?
- [50:37]
A
Later.
- [50:38]
B
Sunday, Wednesday evening?
- [50:40]
A
Wednesday evening. Okay, Duncan.
- [50:42]
B
Duncan, what do we got?
- [50:43]
A
Actually, you know, Duncan, get in here. I have a bone pick with you. Duncan, I don't know what time is our videos going up in Spotify?
- [50:54]
C
It'll be around like 5:30 to 6:30. It depends on the length of the episode. Some weeks you guys are going like an hour and 20 minutes. Other weeks 55, you know.
- [51:02]
B
Okay. All right.
- [51:03]
A
Well, Duncan, you kicked the hornet's nest over the weekend on Slack. Duncan was saying that, what New York Cityers or New Yorkers are so elite. And I said, you know what? I want you to defend your. You know what? I want to quote you. You actually say you, you, you, you.
- [51:19]
C
Sean and I were joking about how a New Yorker can't be a man of the people, quote, unquote.
- [51:24]
B
That's it. Yes, yes, yes.
- [51:26]
A
All right, defend your take.
- [51:27]
C
Well, it's just. I mean, a man of the people is someone in touch with the common man, the common person. And it doesn't feel like the average New Yorker is.
- [51:36]
B
New York is an uncommon.
- [51:37]
A
So you're saying the most populous city or one of the most populated cities in the United States cannot know what it's like to be a common place.
- [51:43]
C
Well, the examples I was giving you guys are that I feel like to be a man of the people, you have to the people around you. And I gave you some examples of, you know, where New Yorkers. The bystander effect.
- [51:54]
A
Just don't.
- [51:55]
C
Don't ever come to the defense of.
- [51:57]
A
So. So you're moving the goalposts. You're moving the goalpost. Now you're saying that New York's. That New Yorkers are rude on the streets, in which case I would agree with you. I would agree.
- [52:04]
C
Not. Not rude. I was. I was giving examples of people being in altercations and things like that, and no one stepping in and Coming to. To the defense of their. Their fellow.
- [52:13]
B
You know, Michael was very hurt by your statements about the everyday man.
- [52:17]
C
I didn't say Long Islanders.
- [52:20]
A
Okay, fair enough.
- [52:21]
B
That's true.
- [52:21]
A
All right, well. Well, thank you. Thank you for that.
- [52:24]
C
People are gonna love this.
- [52:25]
A
Agree to disagree. Duncan. Thank you. Okay, I have a few more thoughts. New York, New York walkers. Yeah. Not. Not the. Not the most polite bunch.
- [52:34]
B
Yeah, but if there's 7 million people, you're bound to run into some bad apples.
- [52:37]
A
Yeah. All right. Anyway, just getting back to the. The podcast stuff. For a decade, podcasts were something you listened to while you were doing something else. Driving, working out, unloading the dishwasher. That's. That's where I do most of my listening. That was a passive experience. Now an entire generation has been conditioned to think of podcasts as something they can actively watch anytime, on any kind of screen. A phone or computer, tv, which might sound nuts to you, but to young people, it just sounds normal.
- [53:02]
B
It is. Yeah. It's. We've talked about the demographic breakdown of how people consume things and young people. YouTube is their thing. When I have a. I got a new TV last year, and it's a Google tv, it's the interface. When I pull it up, it'll have the streaming channels and all the options and movies, and then there's a YouTube thing, and it'll give me YouTube recommendations. And to your point, I think a lot of people are watching YouTube even on TV.
- [53:24]
A
Yeah. Yes. Is it? Most people who watch YouTube watch it on TV.
- [53:30]
B
It could be. It is.
- [53:32]
A
Here's. Listen to this. Since the pandemic, video podcasts have been growing faster than audio on Spotify, and the number of users watching video podcasts increased 88% over the past year.
- [53:42]
B
Wow.
- [53:43]
A
Would never, ever have guessed this.
- [53:45]
B
No. That is crazy.
- [53:47]
A
All right, Ben, so you have. You have more vacation thoughts.
- [53:49]
B
Hit us a few final thoughts. So people are very anti tipping in the United States now because they're just bombarded with it, Right? The button. You have to tip for everything. People hate tipping now. It's become a thing where people actively hate it. Tipping is fun at an all inclusive resort because everything is already paid. So it's a psychological thing. It's mental accounting. But we went with a envelope full of cash to tip people. And I'm Jim Carrey and dumb and dumber. There you go. There you go. It was fun because you're not paying for anything else, so you don't mind tipping. And the people there like, the service is so good. I just Love Dominican. People were so good. I talked about how great the Lazy river was. Someone sent us this saying, next time you're in the Houston, stay at the Marriott marquee downtown. And they have a lazy river in the shape of Texas. That sounds kind of awesome. It's not just a lazy river, it's in the shape of something.
- [54:40]
A
Remember we were in Houston and I ordered us four margaritas and the guy poured.
- [54:46]
B
That's right. And you had to have a talk with them.
- [54:48]
A
Unbelievable.
- [54:49]
B
They're going to give us the great seat by the waterfall. So I mentioned the Lazy R being amazing. There's a great way to ruin it. So we were going around and then there's a flotilla of like 20 people on a family reunion. And you know, people are like all attached together, you know, in their tubes. You know, people are serious drinkers when they like get a new drink every time they get around the Lazy river, but they also drink out of the thermoses like they have. They bring their own cups to drink out of.
- [55:11]
A
Yeah.
- [55:11]
B
Not just the cups, you know, like if you bring your own temperature controlled cup, you're a serious drinker.
- [55:17]
A
Yeah.
- [55:17]
B
Like you're not messing around.
- [55:18]
A
Yeah.
- [55:19]
B
And one of them threw up in the Lazy River.
- [55:22]
A
Had to evacuate me.
- [55:23]
B
Had to evacuate? Yep.
- [55:25]
A
How old?
- [55:25]
B
Luckily it was towards the end of that. These, these were older people, just a little overserved.
- [55:30]
A
You showed me a picture of what it was. Brock Purdy shirt. Is it. Was it nsfw? I can't remember.
- [55:35]
B
It was big Brock. And it was a dad. We were on, we were on a snorkel trip.
- [55:41]
A
That is nsfw, by the way. We have, we have kids that are listening back.
- [55:44]
B
Okay. Big. So we took a trip to a snorkel thing where we went out to the. The ocean.
- [55:49]
A
Snorkel thing.
- [55:50]
B
Yeah, I do snorkel.
- [55:51]
A
Snorkel things are great.
- [55:52]
B
It was fun because my, you know, your, your kids, you always want them to do certain things and they're going to be their own people. But the one thing I want from my kids was I wanted them to be adventurous. Like my kids are very chaotic and they're sometimes hard to like control. They're kind of nuts sometimes, but they're very adventurous. They like one of the things that I would like. Roller coasters were always great to me. I always love to go on excursions when we go on trips. And so they got in. They've never done snorkeling before. We were snorkeling and there's sharks and stingrays in the Water, like, we saw these nurse sharks that we could swim with, and my kids did it right away, so that was kind of cool. But the thing gets over at like 10am Snorkeling, and then we're on the booze cruise portion for the next two hours. And, you know, I'm having drinks during the day for the whole trip, and it's kind of like I need to take it easy, you know? But the music starts playing, and the Dominican people have the best rhythm of any nation on earth, I think. And they start dancing, and it's like, you know what? Yeah, I'll have a Coco Loco. I'll have a few drinks. I don't know. Eight drinks before 11am and in my mind, vacations like that are like a wedding. Everyone is having fun.
- [56:50]
A
Yeah, right.
- [56:51]
B
Everyone's in a good mood. Everyone is drinking, having fun. Smiles on the face. Just the vibes are immaculate. That's my kind of vacation.
- [56:57]
A
Yeah.
- [56:58]
B
And also, we had. You got your home alone shirt on. We made the joke because on our way back, our first flight got delayed for whatever reason. We were flying into Charlotte and we the time because we had to do the go through customs on the way back and then catch a flight. And it was tight. We had like a half hour to go through customs, get your bags, recheck your bags, go through security again, get to your gate. We had to run through the airport. It was the first time. First time my kids ever done that. Awful feeling. Also kind of exhilarating.
- [57:27]
A
Nah, it's horrendous.
- [57:28]
B
You don't think it's kind of exhilarating? Like, are we. Aren't we? Are we? Aren't we? I was running and I had my backpack on, and then my daughter's backpack on, and so I got backpacks everywhere, and I run into this guy with a backpack. He goes, hey, bro, what's up? I said, hey, man, we're gonna miss a flight. Ah, you got it. Go ahead. It was cool. All right, that's. Oh, one more. So we did a lot of swimming in the ocean. My son loves the bodyboard riding on the waves, and the waves are pretty big there. You could tell me the most scientific reason or the simplest reason for why the tides exist, why tides go up and go down, and to me, it's always going to be magic.
- [58:03]
A
Yeah.
- [58:04]
B
It makes. Can you imagine being someone before we had information and seeing the fact that the ocean goes up and goes down? Like, what sort of gods did they think did this in the past?
- [58:14]
A
Yeah. Don't you know? No. It's the moon and the gravity. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
- [58:18]
B
It sounds like magic.
- [58:19]
A
How about magic? Okay. Our own Bill Sweet, our cfo, my accountant said, confirming my first flight out or bus mandate. And Bill is sharing a chart from the New York Times that shows a percentage of firm of flights, excuse me, arriving 90 minutes late or more. And it starts out relatively low at 5am it's just 2.3% of flights. And then it, you know, it goes up. The later you go, the more likely you are to be delayed. And there's an interesting part of the article.
- [58:46]
B
So Bill is saying he's an early flight guy for this reason.
- [58:48]
A
So listen to this, Ben. This is some shit. The average flight today from Kennedy Airport to LAX is slower than it was in 1995 in every conceivable way. Planes face longer delays leaving the gate, take more time taxiing before taking off, and spend more time in the air. But here's the, here's some shit part, okay? They're gaming the system, Ben. They're gaming the system. Why do today's flights arrive more early than often? Even though they're slower? Airlines have extended their scheduled flight durations even more than the flights have lengthened in actual duration. The average scheduled flight from JFK to Los Angeles has increased 23 minutes since 1995.
- [59:23]
B
I noticed that they always go, hey, we arrived early. I feel like every flight, now this has arrived. I feel like they do this on purpose.
- [59:29]
A
Yeah, they're moving the goalposts.
- [59:30]
B
Yeah.
- [59:30]
A
They're telling you that the flights could be three hours when they know damn well that it's 2 hours and 42 minutes.
- [59:34]
B
Yeah, because on our flight back, we thought we're going to be late. And the captain goes, you know, I'm going to take like a shortcut here, try to get the winds. And it's like, no, you're not.
- [59:41]
A
Yeah, you're lying. So there's a chart that shows the percent of flights arriving at least three hours late. And it's terrible. It's at an all time high. Why, why should it be this way? It shouldn't, it shouldn't. I don't this way.
- [59:53]
B
I feel like every time I go to an airport, I wonder how we do this every single day. How are millions of flights around the world taking off and going like, how does this not get totally screwed up all the time?
- [60:02]
A
New all time record at the airport this week, 3.087 million people.
- [60:08]
B
See, to me, that's a wonder that it, that it, it's anything that, that it all works as well as it does.
- [60:15]
A
Okay, we're going very late, so we're gonna save my story about my. I got a new Addie. I can't believe it.
- [60:25]
B
Okay. All right, let's.
- [60:26]
A
They had me. They had me by the. You know what? I had no choice, and I'm very angry. I'm not mad. I'm. I'm angry.
- [60:34]
B
So how. How much money did you lose on your other one?
- [60:37]
A
I'll tell the full story next week. Okay. I feel my blood pressure rising as I. As I.
- [60:43]
B
Okay, I have a quick story then. Before I left, I noticed I had a metal protrusion sticking out of my tire. And I thought, oh, shoot. And I go to my. It's the day before we left on our trip, and I pull it out with some pliers and immediately air tire goes flat. So, shoot, I gotta deal with this when I get back. Have you ever changed a tire in your life?
- [61:01]
A
Of course I have. Man of the people. Duncan, take that.
- [61:03]
B
Have you really?
- [61:04]
A
I have changed a tire, yes.
- [61:05]
B
How many times? You know what you're doing? This is the first time I've ever. I've done it in the past where I've helped people like I helped a friend in high school. I've never had a flat tire to change myself. I did it. I'm. Thank God for YouTube because I got it up. I got all the lug nuts off.
- [61:18]
A
Yeah.
- [61:18]
B
And then the tire's stuck, not moving at all. I'm hitting it with a mallet, I'm kicking it. Nothing. And I go to YouTube and it says, take the spare tire and whack the top of your tire because it's just stuck on there.
- [61:28]
A
Oh, tire on tire.
- [61:29]
B
Yeah. Tire on tire. And it immediately came off. So thank God for YouTube did it. Bell tire fixed it for free. Back on there. All right, recommendations? We were both at the movies this weekend, I think, so I went on Sunday. We always buy tickets early before we get there, you know. And Wicked sold out, literally all four theaters in Grand Rapids. Nothing. I mean, every time there might have been one or two seats, but we have five, so nothing for us. Of course, Moana sold out all across the city, so we had to see the red one with the rock and Chris Evans. Terrible. Terrible. Very bad. My kids enjoyed it, but I don't know who that movie's for, really. It's not a holiday classic. Like, I watch Christmas movies because of the family element. It was trying to be like this over the top action movie. My son loved it, but that's My type of kid. Really, really bad movie. That's all I streaming is crazy because big name stars just show up on TV shows and movies out of nowhere. You've never heard of it. So we were flipping through the other day and my kids wanted to watch a holiday movie. And there was a Ben Stiller movie on Hulu, brand new, called Nutcrackers. Never heard of it. Just came out and gotta say, it was stuff that's been done before. It was the parents die and there's four crazy kids and the uncle has to come take him over as a foster parent. And he's the big city guy, but they live in the rural area. It's been done before. Gotta say, it was actually pretty good. Okay, not a bad at home movie.
- [62:56]
A
What's Greedy People.
- [62:57]
B
Oh, and I watch Greedy people on the airplane.
- [62:59]
A
What is that? Never heard of it.
- [63:00]
B
Joseph Gordon Levitt. And it's the guy from yesterday and the girl from yesterday. That Beatles movie. It was the two leads in that. And it's just one of these. Accidental death, there's money involved, there's a hitman. It's like five different stories coming together. Oh, kind of, kind of interesting. Not really well done. And then the ending was very dark. Not without expecting. So like the kind of movie you would only watch on an airplane. You should only watch in an airplane. It was decent, but it kind of trailed off at the end. But airplane movie.
- [63:30]
A
Okay, that's all. By the way, we spoke about this recently, you and I, about Deadpool versus Wolverine. I just have no interest. I'm not even gonna watch an airplane. I just don't care.
- [63:43]
B
I totally understand that. It's just, it was entertaining to me, but it's not necessary.
- [63:48]
A
Yeah. Okay, so where do I want to start? Oh, the wedding crashes, Rewatchables. Okay, when did this happen? So I listened to this with Robin on the car on the way upstate and August 2018. Now if you rewind back to 2018, this is really a trip down memory lane. Not that 2018 was that long ago, but for the first hour I think it was. Bill, Chris and Sean were talking about how inappropriate the movie was. And it was a lot of throat clearing about, first of all, the premise, of course. Right. Like think about what the movie was actually about.
- [64:30]
B
Oh, just saying, like, it wouldn't fly today.
- [64:32]
A
Yeah. And then there was just like a lot of like, you know, gay jokes. And the only part of the joke was you're gay.
- [64:37]
B
I guess I don't really watch old movies and even think that because of Course you don't.
- [64:41]
A
No, of course you don't. Because it's a comedy. And you know, it's not. It's to make you laugh. Not to be taken that seriously.
- [64:47]
B
Right.
- [64:48]
A
But Rob was like, what? Why? Why are they doing this? And because it was the height of the Me Too movement.
- [64:55]
B
Okay, that makes sense.
- [64:57]
A
Right? And it was just like, it was so weird to listen to.
- [65:00]
B
I mean, that is the kind of movie that probably would never get made today.
- [65:02]
A
Of course it wouldn't. But none of those. None of those are comedy movies would have gotten made. Like, then you know how I know you're gay? That whole part from 40 year old virgin. That would never happen.
- [65:10]
B
Right.
- [65:10]
A
All of that stuff would never be made today. Not saying it should be made, but, like, at the time, of course, we didn't think about. But anyway, it was just so interesting. Listen to them clear their.
- [65:17]
B
Instead of talking about how funny the movie is.
- [65:19]
A
Yeah, it was an hour. It was so much time on.
- [65:22]
B
Why problematic. It is interesting.
- [65:24]
A
It was really. It was really like, huh. Anyway, what else?
- [65:27]
B
I don't like. I don't really like relitigating the past.
- [65:30]
A
Of course not for a movie. For comedy.
- [65:32]
B
Especially for a movie. Yes.
- [65:33]
A
Yeah. So speaking of just things that just pop up on the streamer, they're like, oh, you ever hear of the movie called Father Figures?
- [65:41]
B
That's an Owen Wilson. All right. And Ed Helms.
- [65:43]
A
You saw it?
- [65:44]
B
I think I've seen it pop up before. I never watched it now, so it was.
- [65:47]
A
It's. It's top 10 on Netflix. A lot of laugh out loud for me. So we.
- [65:52]
B
Oh, really?
- [65:52]
A
We spoke.
- [65:53]
B
Good.
- [65:53]
A
We spoke last week about when is it appropriate to recommend something before you finished it with the book or movie?
- [65:58]
B
Mm.
- [65:58]
A
I'm 45 minutes in, so I feel like I've got a decent hand on the movie. I don't know how it's gonna end. It's probably not gonna end great. Who cares?
- [66:04]
B
Comedies usually tail off at the end.
- [66:06]
A
Yeah, whatever. Who cares? Guess what? Multiple laugh out louds for me. In fact, there was one laugh out loud where Robin was falling asleep. She told me to turn the movie off.
- [66:13]
B
Okay.
- [66:14]
A
Yeah, Father Figures. All right. So anyway, so I saw Moana too. And look at this chart from Axios. Look at that spike in PG at the box office. Big year for family friendly movies. PG rated films made up one third of ticket sales at the domestic box office.
- [66:29]
B
That was the problem with red one. It was PG13. So there's a lot of swear words and it's like, should this movie for kids.
- [66:33]
A
Okay, so we've already gone late, so I'm gonna skip all this. But, like, there was a really great article, I think, by Ben Cohen in the Wall Street Journal about how Moana became a sensation. And it was not a. It did not do monster numbers at the box office. But of course, it became a huge hit on Netflix first, by the way, it was on Netflix first because Disney plus was not a thing.
- [66:53]
B
Interesting.
- [66:54]
A
So it was the number one movie on Disney plus or number one streaming movie, I should say, in 20, 20, 21, 22, and 23. So Moana too. I took my kids to see it. There was a line for Moana to it. There's a line for Wicked. Like you, Ben. I got sold out everywhere. So the only my local theater. There's no assigned seats.
- [67:12]
B
That's a blast from the past.
- [67:14]
A
Yeah. So Moana 2 was supposed to be a straight to Disney plus type of thing. And it shows. I thought the quality of the movie was. Was really not great, like, at all. And the music stunk.
- [67:26]
B
Really.
- [67:27]
A
And the part. The reason why Moana is so that's.
- [67:29]
B
Why everyone loves the first one is.
- [67:31]
A
Because the music is incredible. And Lin Manuel Miranda was not part of the second one. My kids loved it, obviously, right? Everybody, all the kids seem to love it, which is, you know, I guess all the kids.
- [67:40]
B
But kids have the worst taste. They like everything. But when is the last time a kid didn't like a movie?
- [67:46]
A
True, right?
- [67:48]
B
Kids like everything, but.
- [67:49]
A
But yeah, I was really disappointed, but as a Disney shareholder, I'll take it because the movie is doing mega numbers, as is Wicked. And Gladiator seems to be doing well. So movies are back.
- [68:03]
B
Big time for movies.
- [68:04]
A
Big time.
- [68:05]
B
Theater was packed.
- [68:06]
A
Okay. All right, Duncan, sorry for making you to the long edit. Although do take umbrage with some of your comments.
- [68:15]
B
So you did this on purpose.
- [68:20]
A
All right, Ben, welcome back. You look great. You've got some life, some color back in your skin.
- [68:26]
B
It's not gonna last.
- [68:29]
A
Okay, where do people find us?
- [68:31]
B
Animalspiritscompoundnews.com where do people email if they want to become an advisor for us in California?
- [68:37]
A
You can email us or you can email hiring. Redhole12.com personal emails. As always, personal responses. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next time.