The Teflon Economy (EP. 468)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast — "The Teflon Economy" (EP. 468) Air Date: June 10, 2026 | Hosts: Michael Batnick & Ben Carlson

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Episode Overview

In "The Teflon Economy," Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson dig into the resilience of the US economy amid persistent fears about AI, labor market strength, and market volatility. They analyze the latest jobs report, debate the labor impact of artificial intelligence, and reflect on how the market narrative shifts with price action. The hosts also cover hot topics including SpaceX's looming IPO, wealth concentration, housing market woes, the crypto malaise, and the rush of Gen Z into Roth IRAs. Personal stories of investing missteps and Knicks playoff ticket drama round out an episode rich in insight, candor, and market wisdom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Market Sell-Off Reaction & The Teflon Economy (01:34 - 06:55)

• Friday’s Sell-Off: Michael kicks off discussing a sharp market downturn, notable not for any specific data point he could cite (joking about being the “stat guy”), but for the market’s reaction to unexpectedly strong jobs data.

  • “It is just very rich in irony: the job market's good; AI is not killing the job market; is growth too strong? The labor market is heating up too—does the Fed need to cut?” (03:10, Michael)

• Market Psychology: Ben and Michael discuss how investors, despite a strong run in stocks and a stable VIX, are quick to get bearish on minor bad news, demonstrating underlying fear.

  • “Anytime there is a sniff of 'we’re getting long in the tooth', investors get real bearish real quick.” (04:01, Michael)

• The Teflon Economy Concept: They review the repeated predictions of doom—commercial real estate, tariffs, AI—none of which have derailed the economy.

  • “And now it’s the threat of AI and you just can’t kill this economy.” (05:03, Michael)

2. Labor Market & The Real Impact of AI (06:10 - 08:00)

• Jobs Data Surprises: Ben shares that non-farm payrolls and job openings are rising, challenging fears that AI would devastate employment.

  • “Job growth is breaking out. We have continuing unemployment claims steady for the past three years—job openings are rising. This is crazy to me.” (05:10, Ben)

• The AI Debate: Michael predicts AI will impact jobs eventually, but Ben remains skeptical about large-scale disruption, especially in the short term.

  • “You think this is inevitable… I don't, I don't quite feel that way.” (06:55, Ben)
  • “I do think you're going to see AI impacting the labor market. I really do.” (07:02, Michael)
  • “Of course it'll have some impact. I don't think it's going to have the impact—the tech people keep saying it's going to have.” (07:19, Ben)

3. Volatility, Human Behavior, and ‘Buying the Dip’ (08:26 - 11:41)

• Market ‘Slap on the Wrist’: Ben recounts how 2026’s big winners were hammered in a single day (Micron -13%, SanDisk -12%, etc.), framing it as a mini-1987 for sector leaders.

  • “2026’s big winners became the big losers on Friday… These stocks got hammered.” (09:03, Ben)

• Behavioral Patterns: Using statistics from Blue Kardick Market Insights, Michael describes the resilience of dip-buyers and how even sharp selloffs tend to be short-lived during bull markets.

  • “Since the start of the bull market, there have been 13 other 2% down days—four days later, the S&P was higher 11 of 13 times.” (09:26, Michael)

• Narrative Chasing: Both hosts agree that price action sets narratives—when the market is up, AI is invincible; when it falls, doubts resurface.

  • “One of the things I love about the markets is how the price always sets the narrative.” (10:29, Ben)

4. Concentration Angst: Mag 7, Tech, and Diversification (13:02 - 17:52)

• Concentration in Indices: Discussion around S&P 500 sector concentration—tech and communication services now make up about half the index.

  • “Tech is half the index… If the AI trade ends abruptly, we’ll all probably have to come tumbling down with it.” (14:39, Michael)

• Diversification Challenges: Ben points out how diversifying away from tech is now a huge and risky market timing bet.

  • “If tech makes up 50% of the index and you're trying to hide away from it, you're making a huge, huge bet.” (17:33, Ben)

• Low Volatility as a Refuge: Michael posits Invesco’s SPLV (S&P Low Volatility ETF) as a ‘place to hide’ for those wanting to reduce tech exposure.

  • “This is the anti-AI trade… less than 2% in tech and comm services.” (16:45, Michael)

5. SpaceX, Index Inclusion, and IPO Mania (17:54 - 25:33)

• S&P 500 Will Delay SpaceX: The hosts are surprised S&P won’t fast-track SpaceX, and discuss the feedback-driven index committee process.

• Sentiment Around SpaceX: Finance community is bearish; tech is bullish on the coming IPO. Ben shares numbers showing SpaceX’s inclusion will be minor for index funds.

  • “If SpaceX is three times the float, it’ll make up 70 basis points of the NASDAQ 100… It’s meaningless.” (19:58, Ben)

• Valuation and Hype: Michael highlights wild revenue projections for SpaceX as a possible top signal.

  • “Morgan Stanley sees SpaceX’s revenue reaching $3.4 trillion in 2040… If that is even in the ballpark… then yeah, okay. Seems cheap.” (21:11, Michael)

• Liquidity & Secondary Markets: SpaceX shares are already trading at a premium on blockchain-based markets.

  • “$118 million in 24-hour volume on Hyperliquid—enough for me, that’s the price.” (25:05, Michael)

6. Changing Fads: Gold, Silver, and Private Credit (25:33 - 26:36)

• Market Focus Shifts Rapidly: The podcast notes how big narratives (like gold/silver rallies and private credit) fade as new stories (AI, SpaceX) take over.
  • “The market only has time to worry about one thing at once... Remember private credit?” (25:33, Ben)

7. Behavioral Finance and Investor Reflection (27:33 - 30:11)

• Self-Awareness in Investing: Listener writes in about framing his investing mistakes (not buying Micron at $70–$80 when it’s now $970) as a learning reminder.

  • “All I can do is laugh at myself. Everything is so clear in hindsight.” (27:33, Listener email)

• Knicks Ticket Market Saga: Michael shares a stressful lesson on efficient markets through his experience buying/selling Knicks playoff tickets.

  • Detailed account from listing for $18,000/ticket to finally selling for $9,000 (30:11, Michael)
  • “Turned what should be a blissful moment of Zen into beyond stressful.” (32:23, Michael)

8. Empathy and Perspective (36:39 - 40:55)

• Be Kind—You Never Know: Michael recounts a personal story where, after being frustrated at a late invoice, he learns the vendor’s child had been battling cancer.
  • “You never know what someone else is going through. Right.” (40:04, Ben)
  • “It was such a gut punch… a good reminder to try to be nice.” (40:46, Michael)

9. Wealth, Markets, and Socioeconomic Trends (41:01 - 45:54)

• Rise of Gen Z Investors: Massive growth in Roth IRA adoption among Gen Z; growing market participation among the young.

  • “IRA ownership under 30 has doubled from 5% to 10%. Total Gen Z IRA contributions up 65% in Q1 2026.” (41:27, Ben)

• Inequality and Wealth Concentration: Discussion of NYT/Financial Times studies showing the top 3% now hold over half of US wealth — driven by extreme upper-end gains, even as most Americans are getting richer.

  • “The top 3% has seen their wealth double, middle class share fell. Politically, this is the problem.” (45:36, Ben)

10. The “Economy vs. 1970s” Debate (46:31 - 49:15)

• Listener Pushback: A 54-year-old complains that today’s economy is “objectively worse” for big-ticket items compared to the 1970s.
• Ben’s Defense: Highlights persistent high unemployment, triple recessions, and double-digit inflation in the ’70s—insisting things are better now by most metrics.

11. Global AI Race and Innovation (50:16 - 52:27)

• US vs. China on AI: Addressing questions about US AI investments’ edge as Chinese models close the gap at lower cost. Hosts confess it’s more complicated than valuation or code.

• Flood of AI-Driven Content: Explosion in quantity but not in quality of apps, e-books, and scientific papers as generative AI becomes widespread.

12. Crypto Malaise & Market Rotation (53:19 - 56:38)

• Crypto’s Bearish Turn: Joe Weisenthal’s piece on why this crypto winter feels especially bleak—AI has overtaken crypto, and the most recent bullish catalysts have already played out.

  • “Now we are fully risk on in a tech boom and crypto is not keeping up. That’s the thing that would have me the most concerned.” (54:22, Ben)

• Banks Move to Blockchain: Major US banks are launching tokenized deposit networks to speed up settlements using blockchain—but the market shrugs as crypto prices languish.

13. Housing, Migration & Unaffordable Beauty (56:38 - 59:54)

• Midwest Housing Crisis: Ben tells of skyrocketing home prices in scenic Michigan towns, crowding out local workers and making it hard for regular people to live in “discovered” places.
  • “How do you have people who are teachers… working at the shops downtown?” (58:55, Ben)
  • “There is no solution… this is what it is.” (59:37, Michael)

14. Private Credit Fund Redemptions (59:54 - 60:56)

• B CRED Investors Exit: Blackstone’s private credit fund is capping withdrawals at 5%; industry watches to see if this slows the bleed or fades as a story.

15. Consumer Life: Car Shopping, Retirement, and Informed Clients (60:56 - 65:44)

• Sticker Shock in Car Buying: Hosts express astonishment at the new, much higher “normal” prices for cars and SUVs.

  • “Like, $54,000 is the affordable car!” (63:10, Michael)

• The Rule of 55: Listener feedback prompts discussion of early penalty-free 401(k) withdrawal rules; hosts note how LLMs like ChatGPT are making financial advice easier for consumers.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Market Sentiment:
  “The market and psychology is just the ultimate mind... Forever and ever, for always and ever. The market really does twist your brain.” (11:16, Michael)

• On Wealth Concentration:
  “Think about what Elon and Bill Gates and Bezos… their wealth alone, just those three people, does to this chart.” (46:02, Michael)

• On Efficient Markets:
  “This is supply and demand... There is no solution, and there's nobody who would benefit from changing it.” (59:33, Michael)

• On Empathy:
  “You never know what someone else is going through. Right.” (40:04, Ben)

• On the Dream of Work:
  “Seeing these guys in their 80s still do what they love, that, to me, that is the dream.” (67:17, Ben)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:34] — Market sell-off & labor data reactions
• [04:47] — The Teflon Economy, recap of failed doomsday predictions
• [05:10] — AI & labor: Data not supporting disruption fears
• [09:03] — Market sector rotation: Big winners become big losers
• [13:10] — Index concentration and the Mag7 phenomenon
• [17:54] — SpaceX, index inclusion, and IPO numbers
• [25:33] — Shifting market narratives: gold, silver, private credit
• [27:33] — Behavioral investing stories, Knicks ticket market microeconomics
• [36:39] — Lessons in empathy from small business dealings
• [41:27] — Gen Z's investing boom, Roth IRA stats
• [45:36] — Wealth concentration and inequality
• [46:31] — Debating the 1970s economy vs. today
• [50:16] — US vs. China in AI, monetization challenges
• [53:19] — Crypto: Why the "winter" feels different now
• [56:38] — Housing market woes in the Midwest
• [59:54] — Private credit fund redemption updates
• [60:56] — Sticker shock in car buying and retail consumer trends
• [65:44] — Longevity in work, podcast tour stories
• [69:11] — Pop culture round-up: Movies, TV, and family bonding over 90s romcoms

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Tone & Style:
Conversational, candid, occasionally self-deprecating, mixing serious analysis with dry humor and personal anecdotes. Michael and Ben stress transparency—a willingness to admit mistakes, and a focus on investors’ real-world experience.

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For New Listeners:
This episode is a masterclass in market psychology, long-term investing perspective, and the challenge of separating market noise from statistical signal. Through a blend of data, debate, and entertaining asides, Michael and Ben provide a 360-degree view of markets, investors, and the stories we tell ourselves along the way.

Transcript

[Ben Carlson]

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[B]

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholz 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.

[Michael Batnik]

Welcome to Animal Spurts with Michael and Ben. Ben, Friday was a really ugly day in the stock market. One of the ugliest that we've seen. Hey, see what I just did there? I don't have a. I don't even have a data point for you. And you could say, come on Michael, it's lazy. You're hosting a podcast. You know, you can't even tell us it was the X worst day or whatever. I do three podcasts a week. Three mark related podcasts a week. One with you animal spirits. I do. What are your thoughts tonight with Josh and I do the Compound and friends and credit to me. I've gotten pretty adept at making sure that there's not too much overlap in what I'm saying. Which is harder than it sounds because I have stats at the wazoo. But as I'm. As I'm opening the show right now, I have no stats for you today. I'm sorry, I. I'll be the stat guy for you.

[Ben Carlson]

How's that?

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. You got stats. Great. So those are. I got stats for what are your thoughts about the nature of Friday stock market sell off? It was ugly and what precipitated it was a way better than expected labor market report. And it is just very rich in irony that the actually wait a minute. The job market's good. AI is not killing the, the job market. Wait a minute, is AI not effective? Hey, wait a minute. Is growth too strong and the labor market is heating up too? Does the Fed need to cut? It's, it's just, it's very funny that that could be the story. Now. I, I, I, I will push back against that narrative to the extent that such a narrative is not just one that is born.

[Ben Carlson]

Good jobs market equals bad stock market. That would be kind of ironic, I guess in some ways. Like hey, yeah, this means AI is not working.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. So my read of Friday was, was twofold. Number one, I love that the stock market will still slap investors down anytime there's a whiff of danger. I think people looking for reasons to sell as opposed to reasons to buy is something that you don't see at a top. There's, there's still things that happen inside the market where stocks will just get smushed instantly. I think there's still a lot of fear out there. Even though The Vix is 17, even though the stock market has done so well. Anytime there is a remote, a sniff of oh, we're getting long on the tooth. Like investors get real bears real quick.

[Ben Carlson]

That was one of those middle aged ads looking out at the rain. It's raining today in Michigan. God. Ah, we needed this law, needed this. That was one of those.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes, Ben. Yes, Ben. And also position positioning things were extended. I think investors were looking for a reason to sell, an excuse to sell. And on the, on the economic front, it is just freaking incredible. The labor market was softening, has been softening as part of, part of the conversation that the, that the Econ Nords have been having for the better part of the last year. And we keep saying like this economy is Teflon. I don't know when we first said that, but first it was soaring inflation accompanied by higher interest rates, an aggressive Fed hiking cycle. Then it was a commercial real estate collapse. Okay. An absolute frozen housing sector.

[Ben Carlson]

Remember when commercial real estate was going to take the whole economy down? Yes, I forgot about that one.

[Michael Batnik]

Then it would. Do you remember the maturity wall? I think we're hitting it in 2028. Then it was tariffs. Okay. Then it was higher gasoline prices and

[Ben Carlson]

I've been worried about maturity walls since 2011. Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

And now, and now it's the threat of AI and you just can't kill this economy.

[Ben Carlson]

It is funny because the, if you look at the data, you have this Wall Street Journal chart in here. Non farm payrolls changes from one month to the next. The labor market was slowing, we were getting a decrease in jobs and now it's coming back and it's kind of crazy. So there's some exhibit A charts in here that shows like the three month moving average of jobs growth and it is trending up. If you were, if you were doing a technical, anal, technical analysis on this, you'd say this is breaking out, right? Job growth is breaking out. We have continuing unemployment. Claims have basically been steady for the past, I don't know, three years. They have not ticked up at all. Job openings in the US Economy are now rising from one month to the next. This is crazy to me that job openings are rising. And so obviously the, the Goldilocks situation would be, okay, fine, AI is not going to destroy all the jobs. It'll make people more productive. That's the best, best case scenario here, obviously. Right. But I think people have been waiting. I made a joke on, on after the spurs lost game two the other night. I said WEMBY is like the labor market. It's inevitable, but it's not quite happening yet. Sorry, I didn't mean to like throw a dig in you after last night. So I think people are going to keep having to wait on this. I honestly think if AI is going to have a big impact on the job market, it's not going to be until we have a recession. I think that's when people will pull the trigger and not rehire. But I don't think we're going to see a massive change.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm on the other side of you.

[Ben Carlson]

You have been for a while. And I think eventually you're going to have to finally admit you're wrong because the data is not supporting AI hang on market at all.

[Michael Batnik]

Hold on. It's not like I've been saying this for three years.

[Ben Carlson]

What a couple months you've been pretty strong about. AI is going to totally disrupt the

[Michael Batnik]

labor market since March.

[Ben Carlson]

I think it's been a while.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. That is a while since March.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. I think it's been longer than that. I think you are in the camp that you think this is inevitable and I don't, I don't quite feel that way.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know. Inevitable seems strong. But I, I mean, because that's 100% chance. But I Do I do feel strongly not in. I wouldn't say inevitable, but yes, I do think that you're going to see AI impacting the labor market. I really do.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, of course it'll have some impact. I don't think it's going to have the impact.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, there it is. The Grand Rapids Hedge.

[Ben Carlson]

The impact that the tech people keep saying it's going to have. I think they are totally, completely wrong when they say AI is going to take all the jobs. I think they are ridiculous and they're wrong.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. I mean, I'm not. Don't, don't, don't put me in the 10% unemployment camp. I'm not saying that. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

But of course it's going to have. But obviously it's not impacting the labor market yet. The numbers don't bear it out at all. People can worry about it all they want. It's not having an impact.

[Michael Batnik]

So you're obviously correct.

[Ben Carlson]

Job openings are rising. The unemployment rate is a 4.3%. We're adding jobs every month.

[Michael Batnik]

You are correct to the extent that, that it's showing up in the data now. It is clearly not. And it's clearly not to the extent that it caught investors by surprise on Friday. And they said, wait a minute, we don't need to rehash what happened on Friday. We know what happened on Friday.

[Ben Carlson]

But it's a combination of, hey, oil prices are causing inflation expectations arise and now if we have a strong job market and wages start rising again too, then that's.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, so do you. This would. This question sounds ridiculous given that we've, we're looking to have a modest bounce for the second straight day. Was at the top.

[Ben Carlson]

Obviously not. But it was a good. You're right, it was a slap on the wrist. And we, we.

[Michael Batnik]

Slap on the wrist.

[Ben Carlson]

We said this last week, listen, these stocks are going to get hit. And I, I have some numbers for you. Micron was down 13%. This is in one day.

[Michael Batnik]

Wow.

[Ben Carlson]

SanDisk was down 12%. Western Digital is 11 DRAM, which is that Round Hill ETF we talking about. The memory storage is on 15%. South Korea was down 14%. SMH was. Semiconductors down 9.2%. And then the Q's were down almost 5% in a day. That was a. You're right, that was a big. And Sherwood News had this chart where they showed 2026 is big winners became the big losers on Friday. And you can see there, there was a lot of, lot of stocks down double digits in a single day. Look at that chart.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, that's, that's, that's good stuff. That's great.

[Ben Carlson]

Dell, intel, like it's these stocks and they pair it with the year to date returns. And these stocks got hammered. This is kind of a mini 1987 situation in a lot of ways. In 1987, the stock market was up like 45% going into 1987, and then it crashed. That's like these stocks had like their own individual mini 1987 moment. Yeah, too much.

[Michael Batnik]

So this is, this type of data point is one that I love. There's, there's a pile of historical data points that people bring out that I throw in the dustbin. But the ones that I keep coming back to are the ones that are based on human behavior. For example, this one from Blue Kardick Market Insights. He said, or they said, dip buyers have been rewarded pretty well in this bull run. They see a 2% down day on the S&P 500, like on Friday, and they buy the dip. Since the start of the bull market, there have been 13 other 2% down days. Four days later, the SP was higher 11 of 13 times. So along the way, these slap on the wrists have been bought up.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. People see, people saw 10% stocks down 10%. I'm going to buy those.

[Michael Batnik]

By the way, that, that, that introduction that I gave to that tweet was. Didn't match up. I thought I was gonna serve up another tweet. I thought it was like more behavioral based than that. Hey, hand up. My bad.

[Ben Carlson]

So exhibit A. Matt and team at exhibit A also had this thing that shows the total number of 1% down days on average is like 31 per year. And we've had 11 this year so far. So this year has been rel. You know, we had a minor little correction, but there haven't been many big down days like that. So that was kind of. Again, we kind of needed it. The thing that I think is interesting is that I love. One of the things I love about the markets is how the price always sets the narrative. And this is obvious, but on Friday when things were crashing, it was like, oh, maybe this AI stuff isn't working. Maybe it's like any. And when prices are going crazy, you're like, okay, this AI trade is going to last forever. When prices come back in, you go, oh, wait a minute. You start looking. The skeptical arguments make more sense. It's so funny how the market does that to you. You can't, you can't help it.

[Michael Batnik]

We are, we are two piece in a Pod. Ben, I wrote this in my notes and I forgot to put into the doc. I'll read you what I wrote, but I. I wrote down to myself the exact same thing that you just said. The market and psychology is just the ultimate mind. Forever and ever, for always and ever. I found myself recently thinking, yeah, I guess this is just going to continue.

[Ben Carlson]

Right?

[Michael Batnik]

And the market really does twist your brain. It's awesome to feel, like, internalize and to watch. Right. So you watch other people behave and you're like, oh, you idiots. But, like, of course we all feel it. Like, and it's really. It just really is. It's the best.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, you can't help it because there was all these anti AI stuff that came out on Friday and it's like, oh, that makes more sense now. When the market is down, then the market comes back and go, oh, those people are idiots. So last week you said, the fear will come back soon. And it's funny because there was a Wall Street Journal article saying, market route leaves Wall street bracing for rockier times. Investors confront challenges from the latest inflation reading and SpaceX IPO in the days ahead. Of course, Dalio was calling this another. He said. He said Friday's tumble was important, a move that highlights the central role that global craze for artificial intelligence and other weighted stocks has played on the record run. He said market and economic concentration is in one new sector that is highly volatile and risky and is super popular among unsophisticated investors. That's classic bubble stuff.

[Michael Batnik]

Just stop talking. How about that? It's enough.

[Ben Carlson]

I know. I would love a punch card. I've said this before. You get a. You get five punches on your card like this. Like when you go to your local deli, you get five punches. You get a free sub. Like if you call for a crash five times. Sorry, no more crash calls. You can't do it. Dalio's got 36 punches.

[Michael Batnik]

There should also be a window of time.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

Because I'm pretty sure he said it was 1937 in 2015.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, yeah, I wrote a bubble.

[Michael Batnik]

Just maybe say, hey, you know what? I'm just. I'm out of touch with markets. You got me? This is harder than. This is harder than I thought. I'm using an old playbook.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. For 10 years, calling a bubble. You can't keep calling it a bubble. Okay, this is interesting to me. So this is another exhibit A1. A lot of plugs here for them. They looked at The S&P 500 versus the 493 and the Mag 7 and the 493 is outperforming both the S&P 500, and the Mag 7. And the Mag 7 is underperforming the S and P, which is surprising because people have Talked about that Mag 7 concentration, but now I feel like the concentration talk has moved to no, no, no, no. Because the 493 includes all the memory stocks, so of course it's just AI concentration. But I feel like people are moving the goalposts on this now.

[Michael Batnik]

I agree with both things you said, and I also do think that the concentration that's happening in the semis is notable and fair. But, yeah, I don't think that most people would think that the Mag 7 are underperforming. I don't think. I knew that.

[Ben Carlson]

It was surprising to me when I saw it. Yeah, I thought so. This is one from Bespoke. Speaking of concentration. So they put tech and comm services together, and comm services essentially was a sector that was spun out of tech a few years ago for reasons unknown. I don't know why they did that. They should have just kept them together because the biggest holdings are Google and Facebook.

[Michael Batnik]

I think the other things that are in there, though, is like, where do you put Disney and Netflix? Yeah, I know it felt weird at the time. It still feels weird to me, but I get it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. I don't know why they did. Anyway, so if you add those two together, those two are now 49% in change of the index. It's half the index.

[Michael Batnik]

So it's basically. It's tech.

[Ben Carlson]

Tech is half the index.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. When you think about it that way, it is. It is kind of.

[Ben Carlson]

With all the other nine sectors, it's the same as all the other nine sectors combined, which is kind of nuts to think about.

[Michael Batnik]

If you want to be long stocks and you say, all right, this is just. Listen, if. If the AI trade ends abruptly, we'll probably all have to come tumbling down with it. Let's be honest. There's probably gonna be very few places to hide. But I do think that, like, Berkshire is probably a good place to hide. It's not quite. It's. It's not quite.

[Ben Carlson]

Hey, they just bought Google, though.

[Michael Batnik]

True. It's not quite lagging to the extent that it was in 1999 when it was down, like, 30% going to the top, and the NASDAQ was up a billion percent. But if you look at Berkshire compared to the index, there's no bid. Nobody wants it.

[Ben Carlson]

The funny thing is, I was thinking about this in terms of diversification, how do you diversify away from this? I've been doing the whole podcast circuit for my book and I've been getting a lot of questions about diversification. And hey, you're worried about the AI bubble. What do you do? And yeah, you could diversify into not just. And there's a difference between going to cash and timing the market versus diversifying away from certain segments of the market. And so if you think about dividend stocks or value stocks or high quality, whatever, but it's funny the value stocks. So South Korea, according to Ed Yardeni, trades at 8 times forward earnings. We've talked about this. The reason that the, the valuations are so low is because the earnings are so extremely volatile. And it's funny that EWI, which is the South Korea MSCI ETF, was up 240% at one point this year after the drop down to. It's over the last year. It's only up 190% of the last year. So it's funny when you look at. But anyway, I looked at the Russell 1000 value and I thought, wait a minute, because Micron has the huge earnings expectations coming, so the, the, the valuations probably look pretty good. You know what the number one holding in the Russell 1000 value is?

[Michael Batnik]

I know. It's Micron.

[Ben Carlson]

Micron.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

It's kind of hilarious.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it is.

[Ben Carlson]

So it's. And Google is in there as well. So it's. Amazon is in there. It's. Because tech is 50% of the index, it's hard to get away from it. It's really hard.

[Michael Batnik]

Here's, here's how you get get away from it. This chart does look like 99. If you compare SPLV, which is Invesco's S&P Low Volatility ETF, make a chart of that compared to the market and that looks 99ish because it's gone literally no nowhere. So this has less than 1% each in common services and tech. Literally no exposure there. It's 25% utilities 21%, financials 18%, real estate 20%.

[Ben Carlson]

But utilities are kind of tied to the AI trade now.

[Michael Batnik]

True, but this is less than 2% in tech and comm services. This is the place to hide. I'm not saying that this is a good investment. I'm not recommending it. But if you're really, really, really worried and you want like the anti, the anti AI trade, this is probably a decent place to hide.

[Ben Carlson]

My point is if tech makes up 50% of the index and you're trying to hide away from it, you're making a huge, huge bet. So it's part of your portfolio. But if you're trying to make that like that is essentially, if you're going totally X Tech, that's a huge market timing indicator.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, X Tech is nuts.

[Ben Carlson]

It's really hard.

[Michael Batnik]

That's the way you have to nail it.

[Ben Carlson]

It's really, really hard to do. All right, so shocker. Eric Balchunas, we talked about this last week. S and P500 will not fast track SpaceX. It'll take at least a year, probably more. He said, this is wild, considering every other big boy index is in 5 to 15 days. So this was surprising to people. They thought S and P was going to bend over. I listened to your talk last week on talking wealth about the whole index thing. And so I guess the, what was the guy's name? Aaron Dillon. They talked about. Yeah, it was really, it was worth listening to. But he made it sound like, listen, they take feedback. These index committees, they take feedback. They're not just doing what they want. And so there must have been enough blowback where they said, all right, fine, people don't want. Because it seemed like there was blowback.

[Michael Batnik]

That was, that was. I'm glad you said that was my biggest takeaway too. And when he said that, I was like, oh, yeah, of course, that makes sense. Like, S and P has a committee that picks the members now. It is. The rules are relatively straightforward. It's not exactly the biggest 500 stocks, but it's pretty damn close. Obviously there's exceptions. Like, like, like Tesla was an exception, SpaceX is an exception. And yeah, obviously, enough of their pension funds, whatever, enough of their institutional clients, the giant pools of money said, guys, please, please don't shove this down our throat. We don't want it. And so great. All right, we'll see what happens.

[Ben Carlson]

So my General Read of SpaceX is the general sentiment is finance is bearish, tech is bullish. That's pretty, Is that pretty fair statement to make?

[Michael Batnik]

The most part, yes.

[Ben Carlson]

So I, last week I said, listen, this doesn't bother me that much. I don't think it's going to have an impact either way. So Nick at Dollars in Data we work with said, all right, fine, let's like, try to put some numbers on this. And he looked at what it'll make up at the index and we're using estimates still. So he's looking at the NASDAQ 100. He said, SpaceX, if it's three times the float, it'll make up 70 basis points. Essentially, he said for every hundred dollars you have invested in VTI, it would be $110 in SpaceX. For every $100,000 you have invested in the QS, you'd have $680 invested.

[Michael Batnik]

You said 100. So for every $100,000 in VTI.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, every 100,000. Sorry. You'd have $110 in SpaceX. So he's saying, let's say like De Modrin says, this thing is going to price at 1.8 trillion. I think it's worth 1.2. Nick says, all right, fine, let's say it's 30% overvalued and it immediately falls back to that fundamental value that the finance people think it is. You'd lose like 21 basis points or something from the queues. 3 basis points of ETI. It's not. It's meaningless.

[Michael Batnik]

It is meaningless. I think the. Again, the anger is not necessarily, hey, I don't want to lose money because SpaceX is overvalued. I think most people that are thinking about it logically, like you just laid out, get that more of the anger is the mechanics and how Elon is seemingly forcing this right in limiting the float, limiting the supply to push up the price. I think that's probably what people are more upset about because it's. Come on, there's just. There's more important things in life to worry about than a couple of basis points.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, that. That's a good senior quote for a yearbook right there. But the contrarian in me is keep keeps thinking like, man, everyone in finance thinks this thing is way overvalued. Is it really that easy that this thing is going to be overvalued? Or is it just like, ah, he's going to pull her out of, out of hat again.

[Michael Batnik]

What did. Hold on, let me just grab this. Aaron actually emailed this to me and I haven't had time to read it. All right, so Google to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for compute capacity at XAI data centers. I didn't read the details of that people. I. But I did see people saying that like it looks the. It looks a little bit. The timing seems a little bit funny and the contract seems a little bit loosey goosey. Here's the one. Morgan Stanley sees SpaceX's revenue reaching $3.4 trillion in 2040. Now here's what I'll say, Ben, if that is even in the ballpark, even in the Universe in the galaxy. To stretch the space analogy, then yeah, okay. Seems cheap. The fin. The cause. You know what, the finance guys don't know shit about tech. And sometimes the finance guys, guys being sober. Right. And sometimes they just their, their imagination won't let them run wild. Okay, if this, if, if we are even in the vicinity of a local generational top because of the supply, the ipo, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah, this will be the quote.

[Ben Carlson]

Right?

[Michael Batnik]

Right. This will be the thing that we point back. Just like, wait a minute, did somebody really say that SpaceX was gonna have $3.4 trillion in revenue? Or, or did I make that up? This will be the quote that we look back and say, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Ben Carlson]

Are you hitting me? What are you.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

What were you people thinking?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't obvious to you? Were you guys, were you guys even paying attention to anything? We'll say? All right. There are going to be some very interesting knock on effects from this in terms of how local economies are impacted. I don't know that the SpaceX liquidity unlock will have an impact on the macro. That seems to be a bit of a stretch.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but imagine buying a house right now in San Francisco or Austin and you're competing against these people who have unlimited budget, apparently effectively.

[Michael Batnik]

So the Journal did an article about some of the SpaceX employees who are about to become overnight millionaires. And they said this one guy moved to Northern Italy. And I say this one guy, I was about to say, I'm not gonna pronounce, try to pronounce his name. It's J. Andre Lavoy, I think moved to Northern Italy five years ago and bought a hotel in Ponteba which has been, which he has been renovating.

[Ben Carlson]

It also said this guy left the company in like 2015. So he got his early shares and bounced.

[Michael Batnik]

His stake is valued at more than 2020 million. This is a great quote. I don't want to just die with a pile of money in the bank. Love it, love that mentality. But this guy's buying a hotel. So this just be like all sorts of like bizarre things that happen as a result of like a giant windfall of money. Ben, we've spoken, we've spoken a little bit about this company, Hyperliquid. We mentioned Patrick o' Shaughnessy's company, Colossus did an incredible profile on, on that company. So you could see where SpaceX is trading, let's say hyper liquid. SpaceX. So hyper liquid is a blockchain Based company that brings markets. 24, 7 markets and anyone can make a market. And it's, I mean the company is really, really on fire. SpaceX. So the, the, the IPO is priced at 120 I believe, right?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. I'm pretty sure it's 120 bucks. And SpaceX is now currently trading at $158 a share on this, on this thing. And there's, there's volume, dude, the 24 hour volume. Take a guess.

[Ben Carlson]

I was going to ask that. What's the volume?

[Michael Batnik]

Take a guess.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know.

[Michael Batnik]

5,000,118. Okay, $118 million. So you know what? That's enough for me. I mean that's the price. Honestly, $118 million in volume, that's good enough for me.

[Ben Carlson]

In 24 hours, the volume when this thing trades is going to dwarf that by 20 times. What are you talking about? That's nothing.

[Michael Batnik]

That's enough. $118 million worth of value. You don't think that's enough to make a market? 118 million bucks?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know.

[Michael Batnik]

I know.

[Ben Carlson]

Is it? I don't, I don't know. I have no idea. I'm not a market maker.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm speaking pretty confidently about something I know very little about. But I don't know, it seems, it seems like a lot of money to me. Okay, 158 bucks a share is where it's currently trading on hyper liquid.

[Ben Carlson]

So my, my thing that I've said for a while now is the market only has time to worry about one thing at once. And that, that could be a boom, it could be a bust. Right? We only, we only have time for one risk or one fancy object. Do you remember it feels like a year ago now that gold and silver were like the biggest story. Remember silver going nuts at one point at the end of January. Silver was up 64% on the year. Gold is up 25% on the year. Now both are either flat or negative. Silver's down four and a half or four percent on the year. Gold is effectively flat on the year.

[Michael Batnik]

Hmm.

[Ben Carlson]

Does that not feel like six cycles ago that happened. That was like the biggest story. And then we just kind of move on and forget about it.

[Michael Batnik]

I think that's one of your best insights that you've been. I don't know when you first said that, but it's, it's so, it's so true. It's so true. Remember private credit?

[Ben Carlson]

Right? We moved on.

[Michael Batnik]

So Cliff Water just reported that they got, I think they had 14% redemption requests in the first quarter and 17 in the second. I think that's what the number was. Who cares? And I, I know people care, but like, there's too much other shit to focus on.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, people.

[Michael Batnik]

And right now all the attention is on, is on SpaceX. But that was, that was, that had all of our attention. And now, now who cares? All right, this is a great email. I wanted to share a funny story relating to Michael me mentioning. He writes down the reasoning whenever he decides to buy or sell a stock. I've always done the same. I don't trade very much, but I do research on really anything and everything because there's a price. I'd buy almost anything. Back in April and May of 2025, I was looking at Micron in the 70s and 80s. After some time, I decided not to buy it as I felt its product was a commodity and it would be easy to compete with them. Plus, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So anyway, last week I bought a picture frame and put that sheet of my notebook in my office just to remind myself how absolutely stupid I can be. All I can do is laugh at myself. Everything is so clear in hindsight and sometimes all you can do is laugh. And the sooner you, you, you, you are honest with yourself.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

The better of an investor you'll be. Maybe now is a good time to share my next story.

[Ben Carlson]

So wait, so just this guy said he. Look at micron in the 70s and 80s. It's now 970 a share.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Just so we know. Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. So it turns out, Ben, that markets are efficient.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait a minute. I just, I, I wanted to say this. You guys sold Nvidia in like 2018, man. Selling your Knicks tickets early.

[Michael Batnik]

Don't say you guys, it wasn't.

[Ben Carlson]

Sorry, your, your ticket partner sold Nvidia in 2018.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

As I was looking at all the stories, I'm sure. Okay, go ahead.

[Michael Batnik]

So time in the market is hard in, in, in the stock market and, and in the, the sports ticket market. All right, bear with me. This is going to take five minutes. I, I told the story before a week or two ago, my friend, a lifelong friend, we have been through many sports battles together between the Giants and the Knicks. He sent me a screenshot of us selling the tickets and I said, what is this? And he said, we spoke about this. I don't remember speaking about this. I would not have sold the tickets. Okay, so here's how, here's how the season tickets work. Everybody sees the prices, but all right, back up. This is the hottest ticket in the world. People are really upset. There's a lot of like econ spillover into what's happening. And this is very simple. And I don't want to sound like a dickhead because it's easy for me to say because I'm not getting locked out because I do have tickets. All right? So I'm not trying to sound insensitive, but this is supply and demand. Like, I don't know what people are so up in arms about because this

[Ben Carlson]

turned into like bitcoin, essentially. They're not making any more tickets.

[Michael Batnik]

Not making any more tickets. So the Garden did bizarrely release 500 tickets both on Sunday at, at 10am and then at 2pm and then they released another batch, a small batch yesterday before the game that was very bizarre. But there's only 19,000 tickets, okay? And the, the, the Garden is sort of like the Federal Reserve, maybe more powerful. They can set prices, but then there's a whole market outside of them, right? Like how the mark, the Fed controls the short end of the curve. So the problem is this, like friends of mine were like, this is bullshit. I've been a lifelong fan and I can't get in to see my team play for less than $9,000 a ticket. Okay? But if the tickets were $2,000, then there would be 3 million people that wants to buy 19,000 tickets. The, the, there is, this is not,

[Ben Carlson]

this is not an economy wide story.

[Michael Batnik]

No. Supply is meeting demand. Okay? But anyway, but all of those, all of those prices that we saw to bring it back to my story, all of those prices, all the screenshots, they were bullshit. I could list my house for $4 million. Nobody's going to buy it.

[Ben Carlson]

So you could have listed yours and you wouldn't have sold them for ten grand or whatever.

[Michael Batnik]

They're exactly. All right, so let me come back to reality. So the way that my tickets work, I'm in, I'm in the lower bowl section, 109, row 20. They're good seats. They're not amazing seats. They're, they're certainly good enough. Better than good enough.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I was, There was a. Good seats.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, good seats. My face value for this for per ticket for the season is like 225, something like that per ticket. Round one was 380, not terrible. Round two was 550. Round three, it starts to get jacked up to 750. And the finals, it's 1350. So you know, it's, it's not an insignificant amount of money. It's a lot of money. Before this, before the series started, as I've now said five times, my friend sent me a screenshot. What he. What he had hoped for was that we would sell our tickets. We made a $3,000 profit, and he thought that we would trade down and go in the. The 200s, right? And he thought that essentially we would get paid 500 bucks to go to the game, right?

[Ben Carlson]

You. You're shorting him, essentially.

[Michael Batnik]

Correct. He got caught naked. So it. And then we compounded the problem. So we sold our tickets too early, and simultaneously, we. We bought back into early, and then simultaneously, we waited too long to sell. So it was jab, jab, knockout punch. All right, so we sold those tickets in 109 for 4400 for game four. And then we bought in 111, so even more diagonal. So worse seats. We bought Those for. For $7,500 a ticket. All right, so now we're in the hole already. We're in the hole already. And then for last night, for last night, we paid $8,000 a ticket. 8,000 actual dollars a ticket for section 200. Okay? So now. Now we are working with our broker, who was. Bless him, he was so patient. We were really being a pain in the ass because the amount of anxiety that we felt, because now. So now we need to sell these, our original pair, the seats that we own. We need to sell game three for $12,000 apiece to break even. And when I say break even, I just mean no worse off than we would have been financially, meaning we spent 1350 a ticket. All right? So to get back to square one, albeit with worse seats, but to get back to square one financially, we need to sell each ticket for $12,000. Now, we listed them for $18,000 first, because that's what the market was pricing at. That was not the clearing price. That's what they were listed at. There was no transactions there. Now, it's easy to say in hindsight because we didn't know, but we just kept lowering them. And my friend and I were texting each other back and forth like, we don't want to, like, harass our broker, right? He's like, but we're watching it all day, dude, on Sunday. All day on Sunday. It was so stressful because now we're like, oh, no. If we're like, if we sell them for, like, 7,000, like, we're going to take an absolute bath to be in worse seats. Now we're turning what should be like, A blissful moment of, like, Zen, like euphoric Zen. Being in the finals, it is. It is beyond stressful. So I. So I go to sleep on Sunday night, and at this point, the tickets we wanted them to sell already, obviously, I wake up on Monday at 4:45 in the morning and they see they still haven't sold. And now I'm like, it's 4:45 and I'm just staring at the space. And my friend texts me. He's like, are you awake? Like, neither of us could sleep. We were so anxious about selling these tickets. So finally I said, jason, I'm giving you the 10 o'. Clock. That's my. That's my line in the sand. We're not gonna be the last to sell these tickets. Like, I'm just gonna just. He text me back, like 20 minutes later, dude, we just sold your tickets for $9,000. I'm not gonna take a commission. Thank you. This guy's a mensch. But I felt like I was beat. My head was held underwater and I just caught like a gasp of air to breathe. The amount of, like, relief that I felt anyway, this was a giant cluster f the amount of stress. So it. So ultimately, where it shook out was we ended up paying $2800 per ticket instead of 1400 per ticket. But once it was done, I said to my friend, all things considered, anybody that I know who's a Knick fan would put a knife in my throat to be able to go to both games for $2800. Still a lot of money, but not $11,000.

[Ben Carlson]

True, but someone paid more than the annual contribution limit for a Roth IRA for your tickets.

[Michael Batnik]

Which tickets? Oh, yes. $9,000 a ticket. 9,000. Freaking dude. I spent. I spent $8,000 for section 200. Now, it was sort of funny money because I was using the proceeds, right? Like, it wasn't like, coming out of my pocket.

[Ben Carlson]

But this is not an economy wide story. This is a. The Knicks haven't been here in forever and rabid fan base and lots of money in New York.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, yeah. So a lesson in efficient markets.

[Ben Carlson]

Lesson learned. Don't sell early for Finals tickets, man. Okay, speaking of IRAs.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, oh, oh. What one part of the story that I omitted. So I was with Matt Middleton and Chris Cherry from Future Proof. We went to the Watch Party for game. Game, Game two, I believe. And we're at Roberta's, which is a pizza joint, a classy pizza joint across from the Garden. We're upstairs having dinner and drinks, and I'm talking to Matt and he's like, oh, you have season tickets. Where are they? So I said, 109. He goes, what row are they? I said, 20. He goes, no way. He took out his phone. He goes, what seats are they? Middleton's. Middleton bought my seats. Matt Middleton bought my seats. What are the freaking odds?

[Ben Carlson]

So he timed it good.

[Michael Batnik]

He got a cherry on top. So the, The. The. It was his brother in law that bought the tickets and it wasn't me that sold. So Matt and I didn't transact with each other. My partner, Matt's brother in law. Anyway, supply and demand and timing the market.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I'm sure you wanted it to be a sweep. I'm happy if this thing goes seven because I'm enjoying the basketball, being a, A, an observer from the outside, of course. Not having a dog in this.

[Michael Batnik]

Of course. So I will be in San Antone for, For game five.

[Ben Carlson]

All right.

[Michael Batnik]

I was hoping for a sweep. Obviously I don't. Would rather not travel, but the spurs are tough as shit. They're a really, really good team.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I think it's been a great. I think it's been a great series so far. Enjoy. One other.

[Michael Batnik]

One other. I know, I know. I'm. I'm grabbing the mic a lot, so forgive me, but one other thing. I think now is appropriate time to say this. Last week, I gave grace and gratitude to the world. Just like, acknowledging that, like, life sucks a lot for a lot of people. I had. I had years of blackness in my personal life. And I'm. It's. I'm enjoying myself, right? Like, things are good and it's. It's nice to be grateful. And I'm not like, the most spiritual religious person in the world. In fact, not at all. But it is sometimes funny how the universe works. So on that day, later that afternoon, the backstory is such. I had work done on my house a year ago when I moved in. And the person that did the job was a referral. He got referred into me from a friend of mine. So I texted him, hey, work looks great. Thank you so much. How do I pay you? That was on September 2nd. I never heard back from the guy. I'm saying to my friend who referred him, he didn't get back to me. Is this weird? He's like, oh, yeah, he did the same thing to me. He just. Whatever. Just like a few months gone by and he didn't, you know, he eventually came back to me. Like, all right, that's a little bit weird. Noted. So by October 30th, it had been basically two months. I'm. I. I texted him again. I said, hey, as much as I would love to not pay you, I owe you money. Like, you did a job. How do I pay you ghosted. I got a text last Tuesday after we recorded the pod. Hey, it's so and so from so and so's office. What's your email address? We're going to send you an invoice. And I reacted. I reacted. I said, this is really strange. Who does business this way? I haven't heard from you for a year and you just text me, like, what's your email address? You owe us money. They're like, oh, well, I'm sorry, we're just trying to get paid. Like, I know, but this is bizarre. Like, who does business this way? And she said, you seem pretty upset. I said, yeah, I am upset. Tell him to call me. And now, had they said, hey, saw this through the cracks, we're trying to get more organized, I'm pretty sure I would have just said, no problem, it happens. But I just thought it was weird that there was no acknowledgment of it or anything. Just, hey, here. What's your email address? You owe us money. Like, I tried to pay you twice.

[Ben Carlson]

Business must be flush if they're not seeking out people for a year, huh?

[Michael Batnik]

I. I thought I did the right thing by even proactively saying I owe you money. It was, it was, it was like, not. It was not 400 bucks. It was like a decent amount of money. So he calls me and he said, you know, I was really taken aback by the way that you reacted. Now, I didn't curse or anything like that. Like, I'm not, I'm, I don't, I don't treat people that way. That's like not my, that's not my mo. But I was, I was stern. I said, yeah, Tom, call me. I am upset. You know, I'm. I'm a local guy. I've been in this community for years, and I've just never seen anything like this. I, I did a job for you and I gave you an interest free loan. I'm like, I know, but I'm a business person, too. And I just think it's weird that when somebody tries to pay you, you just, you just go some. I just, I think that's weird behavior. I'm sorry. And he goes, well, you know what? I've been running around for the last six months taking my six year old to the oncologist. I'm about to cry. And I was just like. It was such. It was such a gut punch.

[Ben Carlson]

You never know what someone else is going through. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

It was. So obviously, I'm just, like, trying to calm down and. And I could hear how upset he was getting. You know, his lip was quivering, and it was just. It was rough. And it was a good reminder. Like, you hear people say this a lot and you don't really, like, take it to heart because you people go on with your life and whatever, but really just like to try to be nice and. Because you never know what somebody's going through.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnik]

And you people usually don't experience that because 99 times out of 100, who cares? Everybody's going through some. And 99 times out of 100, people are just being jerks and whatever.

[Ben Carlson]

But there are some people who are going through real. And you're like, oh, geez. Okay, that. That explains your mood or your reaction or. Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

So it just. It was one of those things that I hope that I know I will. I will take with me forever and ever, because it really.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. It's a good reminder. Yeah, I agree. All right. I got no transition from that.

[Michael Batnik]

So I just wanted to just.

[Ben Carlson]

Just try to. You're right. It's a good. That's a good way to frame life. Okay. From the Wall Street Journal. Gen Z can't get enough of Roth IRAs. All right. From the last 10 years, a share of all individual retirement account owners who are under 30 years old has doubled from 5% to 10%. This is great news. Total IRA contributions from Gen Z grew 65% in the first quarter of 2026.

[Michael Batnik]

Fantastic.

[Ben Carlson]

I looked at this from the Federal Reserve. This is corporate equities and mutual fund shares by age under 40. It's up threefold since 2020. The ownership of equities for people under 40. This, this boom in the 2020s has been such a great thing for young people getting involved in the markets, and it's because fees are lower.

[Michael Batnik]

But just wait, Ben, until 1937 happens.

[Ben Carlson]

I heard from people what happens when we have a 60% crash.

[Michael Batnik]

It is so tiring. I'm so sick of it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, if we have a bear market, then what. What do you mean, if we have a bear market? That's, that's, that's what happens in markets. You have bare markets, right? What, they're going to lose some money and learn some lessons and move on with their life and buy stocks at lower prices?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, exactly. I think I. It's okay to like Take good news for what it is. All right, From Bloomberg, Katie Greenfield. Vanguard V hits $1 trillion in assets for the first time. This is the first ever. And they show that the inflow is this year. So it's had like 70 billion of inflows this year, which is nuts. So Bloomberg says this is, this was once thought unimaginable for the ETF industry, which is kind of crazy because there's so many different S&P 500 index funds. Right. There's not just this. SPY still has a ton of assets, too. There's a lot of different. So it is kind of crazy that this is the one that did it. Yeah. SPY has 770 billion in assets under management. So it's crazy. But you counteract this with another one from Bloomberg. All right. Retail Investing Trader Room. Individual share of stock trading in stock has doubled since 2010, so from 10 to 20%. So it's kind of weird to juxtapose the fact that there's all this money in Vanguard. There's all this money going into Roth IRAs for young people. Right. That is reasonable investment behavior. Right. These people are doing good stuff. And then you have this stuff there that says there's 20 already SpaceX length ETFs that have been filed and those will get eaten up. People will invest in them. They're already, there's already filings for anthropic and open AI. I'm sure it's three times SpaceX and three times anthropic and all of these things. And I think it's hard for people to have both of these ideas in their head at once.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

That people can be behaving responsibly and irresponsibly at the same time.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. There's people that are drunk and throwing up all over the dance floor, and there's people that are at home asleep on their couch. Who made, who made the analogy with the market about, like the church in the casino? Was, was it Buffett? I can't remember.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, yeah. That is above one, I think.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Find an LM to do it for us.

[Michael Batnik]

But I, I, I, I've been saying this, you know, Josh and I have been having this conversation a lot of that. I think, I think the degenerate behavior is really distracting people. Like, they're focusing more on that than they are SPY flows or VOF flows.

[Ben Carlson]

Exactly. And those are the things that matter. I agree. This is interesting. On inequality, I had never seen this. So you and I have shown this chart before of the fact that the Middle class is getting hollowed out, not because people are getting poorer, but because people are getting richer. Right. People are moving from the middle class to the upper class. In the upper. Upper class. Right. In the rich. So I think it's what, 36% of families were. Middle class in 1979 went down to 31%, but that's because the upper middle class grew from 31%, from 10%. So these guys did this piece and they wrote about New York Times. But this is interesting. The share of wealth held by the middle class fell 8% in 2022, from 24% in 1989. So middle class wealth fell a ton, but share by the upper middle class also fell from 39% to 50%. This is of the pie. Right. So this is not that their aggregate wealth fell, it's that their share of it. That's because the share of wealth to the top group, just 3% of families more than doubled, rising to 53% from 26%. So this is the hard part about wealth inequality is that everyone is getting better, but the pie is getting bigger. And the question is like, does it really matter that the. The middle class is not being held out? They're moving up, they're getting richer. Does it really matter? I guess in the grand scheme of things, that just the top 1% or the top 3% or whatever it is is getting. Having so much more money.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

And my only answer to that is, like, politically it matters probably more than anything else.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

Like, it's not. It's not like this is taking away from other people in some way, but politically, this is the problem where there's too much power in the hands of too few people like this. I think that's where the big problem is.

[Michael Batnik]

It feels like things are being taken away.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. That just that that number was shocking to me that the 3%, top 3% has seen their wealth double in the middle class. Their share fell.

[Michael Batnik]

Think about what Elon and Bill Gates and Bezos, like, think about what their wealth alone, just those three people, does to this chart.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

[Michael Batnik]

You know, like, because Elon's going to be worth a trillion, it's kind of

[Ben Carlson]

hard to wrap your head around it, though, right? All right, why don't you read this email and I have a defense for myself.

[Michael Batnik]

No, I. I want to. I want to do this with some data.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Right. I don't want to.

[Ben Carlson]

Like, I have data.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. Somebody emailed Ben a couple weeks back. Ben's defense of today's economy versus the 1970s put me over the edge. Any review of real numbers show that today's economy is objectively worse on big ticket items like housing, health care and education. To say otherwise is logic defying, which

[Ben Carlson]

was not my point, by the way.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. By the way, I read this wrong. I think, yeah, he's right on that. Housing, healthcare, education. Okay, sure, televisions have gotten cheaper, but you need to watch them while living in your parents basement. Who does? Yeah, I mean, come on, everybody's living in their parents basement. The coup de gras in all this is that Even though the 1970s were challenging, it was mostly afforded on one salary, not two that most young couples need today. Shocking Boomer analysis for bed XOXO xl Long time fan. So I said, you mind if I read this on the show? And he said, please do. I love you guys. I said, I assume you're, you're a young person. And this threw me for a loop. And the guy said, no, I'm 54 years old and also a 6 year fan so I could take the heat. This person was born in 1972. Does their perspective of the 1970s hold any water?

[Ben Carlson]

No, of course not. Not when you're. I don't remember. I don't have visions of the economy when I was 6 years old or something.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay? Now in fairness, we have no, we have no visions of the economy from the 1970s because we weren't there.

[Ben Carlson]

But so my, my whole thing was the. There's no way that you can say the sentiment should be worse today than it was in the 70s. The 70s was objectively worse as an economy. He says, no, no, no, you're wrong. So guess what? I wrote a whole chapter about the 70s in my book, okay? I did a chapter called the Great Inflation. Right. I did a lot of history on this, okay? I just have. I just have a couple things I want to read from my book. Okay? Combination of factors including excessive government spending, the Vietnam War, supply chain issues and oil price shocks contributed to unprecedented inflation in the 1970s. Okay? From 1968 to 1981, the inflation rate averaged 7.5% per year. It ended the year with double digit inflation three times 1974, 1979 and 1980. There wasn't a single year in the entire decade when inflation came in below 3%. In eight out of the 10 years, the annual inflation rate was above 5%. This is the craziest one to me. From 1961 to 1982, the USA was in a recession for one third of this dreadful period. Okay? 1/3 of the time over a 13 year period or something. The US was in a recession.

[Michael Batnik]

What was the unemployment rate? It was 10%.

[Ben Carlson]

It got to 10% as well.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. There was three recessions between 1973 and 1982. It was brutal. Brutal economy was. That was. My whole point is that you can't say that the economy today is worse than that. You just can't.

[Michael Batnik]

No, no. Yeah. And you're not saying that. I don't know if he's saying that because it sounds like he's talking about big ticket items, like yeah, maybe the housing situation is worse.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. And you also had 18% mortgages by the end of that. So anyway, tell you what, 54 year old guy who called me a shockingly boomer analysis. Send me your address, I'll send you a copy of the book so you can read about it. All right. This is a fair question. Someone posted me the other day, okay. I wrote about how AI is flattening the world in some ways. In terms of international stock markets. South Korea and Taiwan and China and Thailand are all outperforming the NASDAQ over the past year or so, like crushing them. And this guy says to me, okay, fine, the US is spending close to 10 times more on AI capex than China is, but their models are only a nose ahead of China's models and they are closed source. How can that possibly be justified? At a minimum, the US should be three to four years ahead. And I said, give me a source on this, I need some, I need to back it up. And he said, all right, fine. This is from Jeffries. China's AI industry has reached a milestone where its top models outperform at 90% of US levels, but they're spending 82% lower than US peers such as AWS, Microsoft, Google and Meta.

[Michael Batnik]

So what's, so what's the question? The question is why aren't our models more ahead or.

[Ben Carlson]

No, the question is like, are the returns going to be there for these big companies, the hyperscalers, if China is able to do this now, the thing you would say is, well, it's kind of circular because China is just stealing from them. Right? So China can't really get ahead without stealing from them, I guess is the point. The question is like, are these, are the US investments going to pay off for the hyperscalers if China can just replicate this stuff to 90% of what they do? And I guess Kai Wu said, listen, the code is not the moat. Think that was his point. Like these hyperscalers are not going to have a mode on this stuff. It's not going to be like the other stuff.

[Michael Batnik]

I think the opportunity said that we have to monetize these models is just way greater than China for example. And this might be, this actually might be a very ignorant statement because I don't really know what the deal is in China. So. But what I was thinking is think about the monetization of reals, for example, like given that China is a state run country, I'm guessing. Actually you know, I don't need to guess. Totally ignorant here I was.

[Ben Carlson]

They started TikTok.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So see I caught myself, it was interesting question. Caught myself saying something. Hey, credit to me, I caught myself making shit up. Hand up. Yeah, I don't know the answer.

[Ben Carlson]

This is interesting. Couple charts. This is from the Financial Times. This showed since agenic AI came the number of app releases is through the roof. Right. It became easier to build your own app. The question is like how many people actually have good ideas? And it shows that the app reviews are right where they were and apps with significant usage have actually dropped. So all these new apps are being created. People have ideas and no one is using them. Bob Elliot had this other thing where he showed weekly ebook releases when ChatGPT releases, there's a ton of new ebooks because people guess what, you can use AI to help you write. It's not helping. There's so much like scientific paper submitted took off like a rocket ship. Same for lawsuits. The question is like where's the quality? If there's no quality and everyone just has crappy ideas that they're implementing, like what's the point of it? And I think there's going to a

[Michael Batnik]

lot of spaghetti being thrown at the wall.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, that's the thing. You still have to have some quality. All right, I'm still getting used to this. I do this thing every year in my blog where I do the best books I read every year. I did my favorite fiction book, my favorite non fiction. So I took all those blog posts and I uploaded them to Chat GPT and I said I need some new fiction books. I'm, I'm, I'm the well is run dry. Got nothing to read right now. I need something new. Whatever I'm trying to read, it's not taken with me. So I took all my books that I read, look at all my fiction books, give me some suggestions. So it gave me like, like a bunch of suggestions. But this is, I'm still getting used to it. They recommended straight man by Richard Russo. And it says, this is ChatGPT Talking, one of the funniest novels I've ever read. I just. I looked at that, and I just. I can't.

[Michael Batnik]

That's good.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm still getting used to this.

[Michael Batnik]

That's good.

[Ben Carlson]

The fact that AI is talking to us like a person. Did AI really read this? I guess it's. I don't. Kind of. I don't know. I thought. I thought that was kind of funny.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, let's do crypto for a second.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Did you read this thing from Joe Eisenthal?

[Michael Batnik]

No.

[Ben Carlson]

He wrote a piece at Bloomberg about the crypto winner, and he said, 12 reasons why this crypto winner is worse than ever. Okay. And he's saying, like, basically, you can no longer say we're early crypto. Twitter is dead. Institutional adoption already happened. The regulatory environment is already as favorable as it could possibly get. AI boom is crowding out access to electricity. There's a growing concern about quantum computing. He goes through all this stuff, and he said the biggest one, which he talked about last week, is AI is taking up all the mental share. Mental market share. A few years ago, maybe if you were a smart tech person, crypto seemed like a cutting edge. That's no longer the case. Here's the thing that I think is the most disheartening for crypto is crypto was a risk on asset. Okay. We've shown that it's not a risk off asset. It hasn't helped hedge against anything, but it's risk on. And that's the weirdest thing to me. Now that we are fully risk on in a tech boom and crypto is not keeping up, that's the thing that would have me the most concerned about this.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Yeah. There also just seemed to be just a bit of apathy, because what is. What's the next catalyst? It's. It already. It all already happened.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I do. We do say this. Every time there's a crypto window, they're like, what? What could pull it out of this? What's the next tail? But now it does feel like there after the ETF came out, like, what else was there? There's nothing.

[Michael Batnik]

And not helping matters is the fact that Michael Saylor finally sold some bitcoin. I don't even know what the story is to. To. I guess they needed money for Stretch the preferred. I don't. You know, I'm a little bit out of my depth here, so. But whatever. The point is the. The person who said, sell a kid if you have to. Don't sell bitcoin. Sold Bitcoin and then they bought a hundred million dollars worth of bitcoin.

[Ben Carlson]

Like, it's really weird. I don't get why they sold it and then bought it.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

But they're really big, bigly underwater on their bitcoin holdings. Right. Strategy.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, if you price it in dollars, one Bitcoin.

[Ben Carlson]

Still one Bitcoin.

[Michael Batnik]

It is interesting that simultaneously this is happening and this, this could have been huge news, but nobody really cares. So the largest US banks plan to launch a token. This from the Journal, plan to launch a tokenized deposit network next year and attempt to stave off threats from crypto companies that are seeking to wade deeper into their territory under President Trump. The new network will connect traditional payment rails with the infrastructure that digital assets run on. It will be operated by a real time payment network company called the Clearinghouse, which is co owned by JP Morgan Chase, bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and other large commercial banks. Here, here it is. The move marks one of the most significant efforts yet to open up the crypto world to the banking industry. It would allow tokenized deposits to move instantly across blockchain technology with 24,7 settlements. Now, we've complained about this over the years. I sure have. Why does it take, why does it take my money to go from J.P. morgan to wherever, a custodian, whatever. Like, why does it take seven days to settle?

[Ben Carlson]

Right?

[Michael Batnik]

It's because they're not speaking the same language. They have their own Rails. They have their own Rails. Like if there's an integrated network to allow settlements move faster, which I hope is inevitable. This is awesome. And it's on blockchain, but nobody really cares because it's all about the price.

[Ben Carlson]

True. That's the thing. Like, let's say they did this. Does it really help the price at all that I don't know.

[Michael Batnik]

No idea.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, this is the bottom in crypto. We just marked it right there. Okay. I want to talk about going home to God's country. Northern Michigan. I've been home the last. We had two soccer tournaments in the last three or four weeks in Traverse City, where I'm from, Michigan. It's right here. See right there on the mitten? That's where it is. And I was thinking about this a lot because I got a question from a podcast. Listener said, hey, my wife got a job there. We're thinking about moving there. What do you think? So I had a Few back and forths with this guy. I'm like a Michigan travel agent. People always ask me, like, what restaurants and bars should I go to in Grand Rapids. But anyway, this guy wanted to move to Traverse City. He asked me what I thought, and I said, five months out of the year, it's probably one of the most beautiful places on earth. Like from June to October, it's beautiful. The other seven months out of the year, it's brutal from the weather. But every time when I was 18 and I graduated high school, I wanted to get out there so fast. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, right? I mean, I feel like I'm in a fishbowl. It's a small, like, touristy town. Get me out of here. I. I don't want. And I had friends who, like, stayed in the area and settled down and had the families there. I'm like, you're nuts. There's no way I could stay in that. My hometown. I wanted out of there. It was too small. But now every time I go back there, I realize, like, oh, you idiot, this place was amazing. What were you thinking? And every time, I love it when I go back there. And I like. But now my parents. It's a peninsula. Traverse seas in a big peninsula. It's like 18 miles long. On each side there's a bay. And my parents live closer to the East Bay. And every time I go back there, I go for a jog along the bay. And this road goes right along the water. It looks like Caribbean style water, like the bluest water you've ever seen. And I see all these old houses that used to be there now torn down and built in these huge mansions, right? And the place has been discovered. And that's what I told a guy, like, listen, it's a great place to live. It's probably. It's not a great place for a job market because a lot of people who have homes there now, it's seasonal and it's really bad. So there's a story someone sent me of Petoskey, Michigan, which is just an hour and a half north of Traverse City. It's another lovely town right on the water. The cost of available homes have more than tripled since 2020, rising from $310,000 to 1.1 million again since 2020. This is like one of those places where people discovered it in the pandemic. And they said half the. Half the homes in the city of 5,800 and scooped up at out of towners who are typically only there to summer, and the question is, like, how do regular people live there? And they said that they've been interviewing people for the schools, and they have to ask, do you have housing? We've had a lot of people turn down jobs because they couldn't find housing. So these, like, beautiful places. Like, how do you have people who are teachers and police officers and firefighters and working at the shops downtown? We went there to vacation a couple years ago, and on a Wednesday, the restaurant was closed, and it said not enough staff. And so when these places get discovered like this, and this is one of the things where, like, there's no places undiscovered anymore. Like, I'm sure it's like this. Like, with San Francisco, we talk about the anthropic people. How do normal people live in these places anymore if you did. How did they come there if they didn't already live there is impossible.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it's sad.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. I don't know what the. Short of building more housing finally, I don't know what the actual solution is. Like, all the beautiful places now have been discovered by people.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, here's a pretty dark reality. There is no solution.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Michael Batnik]

I mean, this is what it is, and there's no body who would benefit from changing it. Like, nobody is incentivized or powerful enough at the government level. It just sucks. It's.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, you're right. That. That's kind of my takeaway.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, we spoke about this earlier. So Blackstone's private Credit Fund B CRED investors asked for 10% of their shares in the second quarter, up from 8% in the first quarter. It was $4.4 billion. They're going to. They're going to cap it at 5%. Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

Cliff.

[Michael Batnik]

What? We did this already. Just interesting. Nobody cares. Like, whatever. All right, it's happening. It's still bleeding, but so they're going to.

[Ben Carlson]

They're going to lose 5% per quarter for the next two years, probably. Is that fair to say? Based on, like, the. Or at least for the next year or so.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know if it's quite that clean. Because there's money coming in.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

To offset some of the. Some of the money going out. And there's, like, all sorts of credit facilities and stuff. So I think this is. This is the point of the gate. Right. It's like, maybe. I don't know how this plays out.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know if I slow it down.

[Michael Batnik]

I. I guess maybe if. Maybe if it's three More quarters and the private credit world doesn't blow up. They're like the headlines sort of slow down and the returns are still fine. Then people say, like, ah, you know what? All right, it turns out that it was much to do about nothing. I'm not predicting that, but that could slow it down.

[Ben Carlson]

The big story in the panic of 1907 was J.P. morgan. The guy told his bank tellers to count the money out slowly so they could stop the bank run. And like every day they gave out less and less money and that was a way to stop the bank run. That's like, that's what this is. All right, you've talked about your car buying situation, I want to talk about mine. You, you've got a car broker. I'm still a man of the people, do the shopping, mind my own. But I'm, I'm using, I'm relying on chat GPT heavily in the LLMs for looking at cars. And I'm, I'm, I am, I'm having enormous ticker price shock because the last time I got my lease three years ago, I had a ton of equity in my old car still. And like the transition was easy, so it was relatively cheap. Now I can't believe how expensive things are. I buying a new car and I'm doing all these price points and I'm, and I'm. ChatGPT is really, really good for giving you like, here's what you should get, right? They're, they're giving you advice on like, here's what you should get, here's what you should ask for. And I'm looking at all these cars that are on the road everywhere. I'm looking at these huge SUVs and I don't want, I told you, I don't want the big one because I want to be able to get into parking space, spot. But I'm looking at not even like high end luxury cars, just like Suburbans and Tahoes and Expeditions and Wagoneers and Lincoln Navigators and these cars all like, if you get like even a decent package on them, we're talking like 1500-2500 bucks a month for these. These are cars you see everywhere on the road. And it kind of boggles my mind. Even like the, the, I don't know, Honda Pilot and the Volvo XC90 like these, we're talking like well over a thousand dollars a month for these. And you see these everywhere. How are people doing this?

[Michael Batnik]

Right? It's not like, there's like, it's not like one Person in your town has a Wagoneer?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. They're everywhere. You go to a soccer game, the whole parking lot is full of them. And so anytime you tell we talk about what kind of cars we're thinking about or getting, people are apt to say like, oh, you idiot. Don't get that it's a piece of crap. Get this. Or this is actually the version of this, what you should get. And so I told you a few weeks ago, I can't. I looked at. I went and looked at Alexis and I'm like, I just. My kids destroy the cars. Like, I can't do it yet. Maybe, like when the kids are older, I'll get something nicer. So I'm gonna get like a Kia. I'm like trading down. I'm getting like a Kia Telluride, which is pretty nice car.

[Michael Batnik]

Those are nice.

[Ben Carlson]

They're nice. They look nice. It's like a step down version of like a Hyundai, essentially. But the guy told me, we can't keep these on the lot. They're selling so fast. We can't keep them here. Maybe he just says it's hilarious that

[Michael Batnik]

like, $54,000 is like the affordable car.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, exactly. That's my point.

[Michael Batnik]

I think, like, that was like the affordable one when we were, I don't know, say in high school. What did $55,000 get you? Like an M3.

[Ben Carlson]

An unbelievable car that. I guess that's my point. And again, I don't want to drive an SUV anymore. I would love to drive a sedan, but I have to because we have kids with sports. We have big benches and chairs and we have carpooling, and so I needed more room anyway. The sticker price shock was totally real for me though.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it's crazy. All right. Stick with personal finance. It's funny what people get up in arms about. Guys, I am listening all the time. Something driving me crazy wanted to send over. I am 53 and guess what? I am considering early retirement. And guess what age. 55. Good for you. Ben continually says on the show, I don't know why everyone says says 55 for early retirement. Do you continually say that? I feel like I've never heard you say that.

[Ben Carlson]

I do. Because people look round. No, no, because every time we get a question about early retirement for asset compound, people say they want to return. 55.

[Michael Batnik]

You said. Okay, well, anyway, this person is. Is up in arms, Ben, but he has a point. For Anyone with a 401k, it is not that complicated. The rule of 55 allows you to access 401k money without penalty. I don't think it should be surprising that without that, with that out there, people consider 55 for early retirement if they can afford it. All right, good for you.

[Ben Carlson]

We've talked about the rule of 55 many times on Ask Compound, by the way. And the thing is, I'm having people in their 30s tell me this. So this guy's like, not many people know about this rule of 55. Come on, man. No one knows about this.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, anyway, I asked Claude about it, and it gave me, whatever, a bunch of paragraphs I copied and pasted to Bill. Sweet. I said, is this true? And he said, yes.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, we've talked about it before. Bill is the one who schooled me on it. I didn't know about it either, really.

[Michael Batnik]

I guess my point is, like, just, you know, just chat and Claude giving you pretty rock solid answers on personal finance stuff. It's cool. It's obviously, you know, a potential threat to advisors, but it's making for a better, better, better informed consumer. It's good stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

It's great. Yeah. The thing that we've been talking about is if you're an advisor, you're going to have to deal with a better

[Michael Batnik]

informed consumer, which I think, I think most advisors are, like, good.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. It's easier.

[Michael Batnik]

Kitsas has said this. Like, I used to spend time educating people on a mutual fund. I don't want to do that.

[Ben Carlson]

Honestly. We've had thousands of conversations with people over the years. The hardest people to have conversations with are people who know absolutely nothing because you have no idea where to start. Sometimes, like, you feel like you're starting from square one. If someone is actually understands and you just have to fill in the details, that's an easy conversation for us to have. We do that in our sleep.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Wait, you're right. You're right.

[Ben Carlson]

So I've been doing the podcast tour for my book. I've done a lot of them, and it's interesting. I'm noticing, like, themes and stuff, but I had two conversations last week that really stood out to me, and both of them were dealing with guys who are 80 years or older. So I was on. Jeremy Schwartz has a podcast with Sierra Sex on radio called behind the Markets. And he brings on Jeremy Siegel every week to talk for, like, the first 15 minutes. They have a podcast afterwards. And I think Siegel is 80 years old. I think he's 80. I looked. And his love of the markets, like, we just had to, like, wind him up and let him go. He gets so excited to talk about the markets. The guy loves the freaking markets. And talking about the economy.

[Michael Batnik]

He's like a child. It's so great.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. He's so excited. And then I talked. I was on Robin Farzad's podcast with Paul Merriman. Paul Merriman is 83, I think, and he's still teaching people about investing and saving. He has a podcast. He has a newsletter. He teaches people how to, like, save and invest. And seeing these guys in their 80s still do what they love, that, to me, that is the dream. I know there's a lot of people who have the dream of early retirement. We talked about the guy before. I get questions all the time from people about, I want to do the fire thing because I hate my job. And I think if you actually do find something you love to do and you're still doing it, that is the dream, to me.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And these guys still love what they're doing at 80 years old. And I think, to me, that's a dream. I know other people. Other people would say, you're nuts. You think I'm going to keep doing. Keep working that old. But that, to me personally, that's the dream.

[Michael Batnik]

I agree. And the thing about dreams, Ben, is everybody has their own dream. Am I right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, exactly. And it's okay. That's okay. That's what makes the market.

[Michael Batnik]

Siegel is just a phenomenal.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. It was really fun to talk about market history with him.

[Michael Batnik]

You know what else was really fun? I went to the movies on Friday night.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

And I saw Obsession.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. That's the other YouTube movie, like the one one last week, backrooms of the YouTube movie.

[Michael Batnik]

So backrooms was. Backrooms is a YouTube channel, whatever it's called.

[Ben Carlson]

I guess I didn't realize the extent to which people had already been watching this as a show on YouTube. And that sort of built an audience, which is really smart.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

But I didn't. I didn't realize the extent of that.

[Michael Batnik]

So I believe the director's name is Kari Barker of Obsession. He did. He's done. He did like, a short horror movie called the Stair, the Chair, which was very good. I watched that. And he has another one called Milk and Cereal with an S that is also, I believe he released on YouTube. So anyway, he is a director that has put his stuff out on YouTube. So he was a known entity. And this movie, Obsession was. Was made for $700,000, give or take, whatever it was well under a million. And I sent this to. To the boys who I talk movies with. This was on Friday night at seven o'. Clock. This movie's been out for. Is it two full weeks? Three full weeks. Look how many seats were available. Full, basically full. Now, this is my type of movie. It was so fantastic. I'm not giving anything away. It's in the trailer.

[Ben Carlson]

Is this horror movie that I would like or not? Or is it like.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's not deranged.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, there's some horror movies that I don't mind watching. It's not too deranged. I don't like the deranged stuff.

[Michael Batnik]

I would not classify this as deranged. The plot is such. This sort of losery kid has a crush on a girl that he works with. He's afraid to tell her. He misses his opportunity. He's like, I'm such an idiot. I had my chat. Blah, blah. He makes a wish. He finds something in a store. It's like a. It's, you know, it's a chachki. It's called One Wish. Willow. You break it, you make a wish. And this wishes, I wish that she would love me more than anybody in the world. And his wish comes true. And it goes just off the rails.

[Ben Carlson]

His wish needed some context, huh?

[Michael Batnik]

Yes, it goes off the rails. And it was. It was fantastic. It was so.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't mind the premise. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll check.

[Michael Batnik]

It was such a good movie. Did you like. Well, maybe in the same sort of like universe as Talk to Me. Did you like that one?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah, I saw that one.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. I thought you did. Well, anyway.

[Ben Carlson]

Anyway, I just. I love the fact that young people are going to. When I grew up, that's. We did that every single Friday night. If we didn't have a game going on or something. We would go to the movies, my friends. We would meet at the movies. We did it every single week. And we. It didn't matter what we were seeing. We would see something. I love that young movies again.

[Michael Batnik]

That's what's happening. Because the theater was packed, dude. And it's just great. It's. It's so he man came out at a flop. Master of the universe, not a surprise. Scary movie had a really strong opening. Obsessions of back when we're still going strong movies are. Are having a real moment. A real moment. This was interesting. Okay, Guess what?

[Ben Carlson]

I guess I did used to watch Horrible. I wouldn't saw all the Saw movies in the theater. You know, I used to watch these back in the day. So this is like still going.

[Michael Batnik]

This is elevated horror. It's like, it's thoughtful, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's well done. So there was a guy in front of me in the front row and it was full of kids. And like I said with, with back rooms, nobody was on their phone. Like, people are genuinely enveloped in the movie. Did I use that word right? I was about to say enveloped.

[Ben Carlson]

Sure.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know, I feel like I'm like, maybe whatever. There was a guy in the front row who's, who's had his phone out and I see him scrolling. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, this movie is rocking ass right now and you're scrolling on your phone. So there's one violent scene in the movie. Like, well, there's a few, maybe two. But there's one particularly. Whoa. Violent scene in the film, in the movie. So this guy who had been scrolling, he gets up right after that scene and he walks out and I see behind him, his child gets up and follows him. And the kid was 11 or 12. Now it is, it is weird because from my 41 year old vantage point, I'm like, this guy should be arrested. Like, that was some scarring for life. Like, that was so, so, so inappropriate. My dad took me to say 8 millimeter when I was like 13. And I saw all the horror movies when I was like, I don't know.

[Ben Carlson]

You know what Tarantino said in his book? He said he used to go see movies when he was like 5 years old. And he said his mom one day said, I would rather have you see it here than watch the news. Anyway, that's good. So I. We started the second season of four seasons on Netflix. I think that's the show. You originally recommended me on Netflix. So it's Tina Fey, Will Forte. I'm a huge Will Forte fan. I think he is hilarious, like, subtly funny. Colman Domingo is one of my favorite newer actors that like, he's became an actor as middle age. I love him. And this is not a show that would be on HBO from a quality perspective. Right. But for some reason I really enjoy this show. The way that they approach friendship and marriage and middle age, I just really think that they tapped into that perfectly. Probably because it's written by Tina Fey and she's so talented. But I really, my wife and I really enjoy this show. Are you watching season two or not?

[Michael Batnik]

No, Robin watched his one without me.

[Ben Carlson]

I thought you watched. I thought you were the one who told me to watch this show.

[Michael Batnik]

I think I did. I said you would like it. I watched the first episode.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I really enjoy it. So it's on Netflix and each show is like, each episode is a half hour. I think there's six or eight episodes. And the way that they do it, the show is they have two episodes each for one season and one vacation. So every time is like either a holiday or vacation.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, that's good format.

[Ben Carlson]

Which is really. Yeah. Which works. I finished your Friends and neighbors last night. Season two. The show went a little bit off the rails at the end, like a little over the top. But then they always kind of bring it back. And I feel like that show still with the family stuff, really works. And so I'll watch season three.

[Michael Batnik]

It's great.

[Ben Carlson]

A little off the rails.

[Michael Batnik]

Happy to hear that. Did you finish Halfman? I know I keep bringing it up,

[Ben Carlson]

but what that show, that's kind of. Show that kind of sticks with you in the back of your brain for a while. Like, oh, my God, what did I just watch?

[Michael Batnik]

Now that was depraved.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, but just. I. The. The performances in that show, I thought it was really, really well done. But yes, very depraved. Not depraved. My. My daughter and I are still plowing through 90s romcoms. Okay, so we did like Notting Hill, My Best Friend's Wedding, you've Got Mail in the last 10 days. And every night I'm. I'm going to milk this for as much as I can. Cause my daughter says, hey, can we watch another rom com tonight? And I know in a couple years, she's going to say, cause she's 12 years old, she's going to be like, get out of your scram, dad. Yeah, I'm already getting some of that. But it's just the 90s Rom com, just the vibe of them is hilarious because they wouldn't work today. The vibe of them wouldn't work because they would just get destroyed. So like Notting Hill, Hugh Grant works as a guy who works at a travel bookstore. All they do is sell travel books. He's like this beautiful, charming man, and he works at a travel bookstore. And while you were sleeping, Sandra Bullock takes tickets at the subway in Chicago or whatever. And I just think it's so funny that they have like, these beautiful, charming people in these, like, whatever jobs. And it's like, no, a beautiful, charming person doesn't have that job.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, of course not. Naughty Hill is not a. Hill is such a good movie.

[Ben Carlson]

I. I'm like man and I. So we watch you've got Mail last night too. And I've been, I had to explain my, my daughter like how AOL worked and you've got mail and stuff. But Julia Roberts was so good in that movie. I was like, how did she not, how did that not carry over to her in like her 50s or something? Same with Tom Hanks. Like they, those two both peaked in the 90s and early 2000s and never kept it going. I would have bet a million dollars they both would still be making like fantastic movies today.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Hard to keep it going. Anyway,

[Michael Batnik]

watched Michael Jackson documentary. That was fun.

[Ben Carlson]

So my, my daughter went to see

[Michael Batnik]

the movie and I know it's getting, it's getting weird. My kids, like Logan wants to. Logan is always asking us to print stuff. He wants us to print like Michael Jackson things from the color. And I'm like, what do we do with this?

[Ben Carlson]

Like what, what obligation do you have as a parent to. I don't know. Anyway, on that note.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Email us, Email us all of your 70s, your economic takes. He's sweating them away. Don't worry.

[Michael Batnik]

You know what I love? I love that we get emails like the like the 70s Philly guy and the 55 year old guy and people are like playfully dickish to us.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, they don't mind like in it. We don't mind either.

[Michael Batnik]

No, they're fans and it's, it's, it's love. So I, it's. We love it. So thank you.

[Ben Carlson]

We appreciate, we appreciate any pushback. Animal spirits. The compoundnews.com we'll see you next week.

[Michael Batnik]

Don't get.