There Are Too Many Rich People (EP. 421)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast Episode 421: "There Are Too Many Rich People"
Released on July 16, 2025
Hosts: Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson

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Overview

In Episode 421 of the Animal Spirits Podcast, hosts Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson delve into the pervasive theme that there are "too many rich people" and explore its multifaceted impact on various sectors of the economy. The discussion navigates through market behaviors, corporate financial strategies, the bond market's struggles, the influence of AI on employment, cryptocurrency dynamics, and evolving real estate trends. The episode is enriched with insightful anecdotes, expert opinions, and engaging conversations that provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of current economic landscapes.

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1. The Surplus of Wealth and Its Implications

Ben Carlson introduces the central theme of the episode, asserting, “There's too many rich people,” and examines how this saturation of wealth influences different economic sectors.

• Impact on Consumer Behavior: The abundance of wealth among high-income individuals affects spending patterns, luxury markets, and the accessibility of premium services.

• Real Estate Market: The influx of wealthy buyers drives up property prices, leading to increased competition for high-end real estate and contributing to housing affordability issues for the middle and lower classes.

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2. Navigating the "Nervous Rally" in the Stock Market

The hosts discuss the current stock market rally, characterized as "nervous" rather than euphoric.

• Market Sentiment: Michael describes the rally as lacking enthusiasm, stating, “We’re experiencing a nervous rally,” highlighting underlying uncertainties despite the upward trend.

• Corporate Stock Behavior: Ben notes, “The stock market can't even bother to care,” referencing recent tariff-related news that had minimal impact on market movements, indicating a disconnect between news events and stock performance.

  Ben Carlson [04:46]: “Infinite Jim Cramer came out with a new acronym last night that is going to apparently take the market down.”

• Investor Confidence: The discussion suggests that excessive wealth among investors may be contributing to a complacent market attitude, where traditional factors like tariffs have less influence on stock prices.

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3. Corporate Financial Strategies: Buybacks and Dividends

The conversation shifts to how corporations are managing profits, emphasizing buybacks and dividends.

• Shareholder Returns: Michael highlights, “Over the last 12 months, they have returned $1.67 trillion in the form of buybacks and dividends to their shareholders.”

• Changing Dynamics: Ben explains the shift from dividends to buybacks as a more tax-efficient method of returning profits to shareholders.

  Ben Carlson [11:32]: “But you can't look at the dividend yield anymore as a meaningful indicator of anything because there are just more buybacks than dividends.”

• Implications for Investors: The hosts suggest that these strategies, while beneficial for shareholders, reflect a broader trend of corporate prioritization of returns over reinvestment into the business or workforce.

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4. Bond Market Challenges

Ben explores why the current decade stands out as the worst for bonds.

• Negative Real Returns: The hosts discuss Ben's analysis showing that, on a real basis, bond returns have been historically poor this decade.

  Ben Carlson [18:09]: “Yields are higher now. People went into T bills to hide.”

• Investor Discontent: Despite these challenges, bond investors remain relatively unfazed, possibly because the stock market's performance overshadows the bond market's difficulties.

• Long-Term Outlook: The conversation touches on the potential long-term effects on pension funds and insurance companies that rely heavily on bonds.

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5. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Employment

AI's transformative role in the job market is a significant topic of discussion.

• Job Transformation: Jensen Wang from MSNBC suggests that AI won't necessarily eliminate jobs but will create a scenario where those who utilize AI thrive over those who don't.

  Ben Carlson [37:24]: “He said it's not likely that you lose a job to AI. You're going to lose a job to somebody who uses AI.”

• Productivity vs. Workload: Michael and Ben debate whether AI will lead to increased productivity or simply more work, concluding that AI might make us more efficient but also push us to work harder.

  Ben Carlson [38:09]: “But now there's so much more time to work.”

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6. Cryptocurrency Market Dynamics

The podcast delves into the evolving landscape of cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin.

• Market Cap Insights: Michael remarks, “Bitcoin is $2 trillion. Does anyone care?” highlighting Bitcoin's substantial market cap relative to other assets like silver.

  Ben Carlson [38:45]: “I almost, I, I consider it like one of the big tech stocks.”

• Corporate Adoption: They discuss the increasing adoption of Bitcoin by corporations and the strategic moves by figures like Michael Saylor to drive Bitcoin demand.

  Michael Batnick [40:19]: “He pulled forward demand in bitcoin by getting people to copy him.”

• Grayscale's Moves: Michael mentions Grayscale's efforts to go public and the ongoing demand for Bitcoin despite market fluctuations.

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7. Real Estate Trends Amid Wealth Saturation

The hosts analyze how the concentration of wealth impacts the real estate market, especially concerning generational shifts.

• Boomers vs. Millennials: An article from Business Insider is discussed, noting that baby boomers own a significant portion of U.S. real estate, which raises questions about future market dynamics as this generation declines.

  Ben Carlson [43:24]: “This is money. But it was interesting.”

• Inheritance and Market Transition: The potential surge in housing availability as boomers pass away is examined, along with the challenges millennials face in entering the housing market.

  Ben Carlson [46:15]: “Or millennials who got boxed out of the housing market will just live in their parents' house.”

• Future Outlook: The transition is expected to lead to an increase in rehabs and possibly stimulate new real estate investments to accommodate changing demands.

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8. Lifestyle of the Wealthy: "Feeling Rich" Despite High Earnings

Michael and Ben reflect on the psychological aspects of wealth, illustrating how even high earners may not feel affluent.

• High Expenditure vs. Income: Ben shares a story of a couple earning $600k annually who still feel financially strained due to high expenses like student loans and property management costs.

  Ben Carlson [26:16]: “He has a rental mortgage. He owns a rental house, and he pays a property manager for that.”

• Relativity of Wealth: The discussion emphasizes that wealth is relative, and high incomes do not always translate to perceived financial freedom.

• Empathy for the Wealthy: While recognizing the challenges faced by high earners, the hosts argue that their financial struggles are minor compared to those with lower incomes.

  Michael Batnick [31:02]: “I don't want to hear any complaining, but I understand.”

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Notable Quotes

• Ben Carlson [04:46]: “Infinite Jim Cramer came out with a new acronym last night that is going to apparently take the market down.”

• Michael Batnick [11:29]: “Get involved, people.”

• Ben Carlson [18:09]: “Yields are higher now. People went into T bills to hide.”

• Ben Carlson [26:16]: “He has a rental mortgage. He owns a rental house, and he pays a property manager for that.”

• Michael Batnick [31:02]: “I don't want to hear any complaining, but I understand.”

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Personal Anecdotes and Recommendations

Throughout the episode, Michael and Ben share personal stories and recommendations, adding a relatable and engaging dimension to their discussions.

• Technology and Gadgets: Michael recounts a frustrating experience with his TV, illustrating the challenges of modern technology.

• Movie Reviews: The hosts discuss recent films like Superman and reminisce about classics like Jaws 2, offering their perspectives on their impact and quality.

• Podcast and Media Recommendations: Ben recommends Andy Samberg’s podcast, "Good Hang with Amy Poehler," and shares their thoughts on various media consumption habits.

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Conclusion

Episode 421 of the Animal Spirits Podcast presents a thought-provoking exploration of the repercussions of an increasingly affluent society. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson adeptly navigate complex economic themes, providing listeners with valuable insights into market behaviors, corporate strategies, and societal shifts. Their balanced discussion, enriched with personal anecdotes and expert analysis, offers a nuanced understanding of how the proliferation of wealth shapes our economic and social landscapes.

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Listen to Episode 421: Animal Spirits Podcast

Transcript

[Michael Batnick]

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Y Charts new feature. They've rolled out guided workflows across the platform. What is that? I'll tell you. These are high impact tasks such as building dashboards. I love my dashboards. Customizing portfolio views and navigating their tools way more efficiently. At Y Charts, they're all about saving time, increasing confidence, and obviously unlocking the full potential of this powerful platform.

[Ben Carlson]

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[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, tell them we have 20% off. Just tell.

[Ben Carlson]

Maybe you're training a teammate. You know, we've had new people come on board and use wide charts.

[Michael Batnick]

Ben. This is like the the episode of Seinfeld where no one Kraber tells George to go to the glasses store. Tell them Kramer sent them.

[Ben Carlson]

That's right. Anyway, so guided workbooks means quicker onboarding, fewer support questions, and more time spent actually using the insights that grow your book. Great for financial advisors. Click the link in the show notes. Try guided workflows for yourself. 20% off that initial Y Charts professional subscription.

[Michael Batnick]

Tell them Kramer sent you.

[Ben Carlson]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

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[Ben Carlson]

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[Michael Batnick]

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

[Ben Carlson]

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, every week you and I do a lot of preparation for the show by filling a Google Doc. As regular listeners know. I wonder how many pages we have this week.

[Michael Batnick]

29. Kind of like 29.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, but sometimes it's just like a buffet of anecdotes and articles and charts, and it's just a jumbled message, and we kind of just jump from topic to topic. And there's a little bit of that this week, but there's one resounding theme that I noticed as I was trying to fill the dock and refill it again this morning and put some more stuff in. And the theme is. And I think this is. This is like one of the big trends in just household finances and maybe of the economy in general. Hang on.

[Michael Batnick]

We talk. We talking recent themes or.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, this is a theme that's been growing. It's just. There's too many rich people. I think every category, we have something. And I want to sort of weave all these stories together and then at the end, give a grand sort of thesis here. But that's. That's just. My takeaway from this week's trend is that everything is sort of coalescing into. There's just. There's too many rich people, and it's having an impact on a bunch of different ways and sectors.

[Michael Batnick]

Can I. Daniel, you mind making a meme here? I want. I want the meme of the guy pointing into the mirror. Put Ben's head on him. And the caption is, you're middle class.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, that's not bad, but. Right, go on, we'll get into this. No, I'm gonna. I'm just planting the seeds here. That's where we're going. We're gonna take you on that ride today on the show. And then at the end, I'm gonna tie it in a nice, neat bow for you. That was a teaser foreshadowing.

[Michael Batnick]

I love it. Well done. All right, here's another theme that we've been discussing. I'm gonna describe this rally as a nervous rally. It doesn't feel euphoric. And as I'm saying that, I hear the voices in the back of my head, the listeners that I'm making up and the listeners that might be real. Michael, what are you talking about in nervous rally? Are you seeing xyz, Bitcoin, the AI bubble? I mean, you don't have to squint to find pockets of what's bigger than excess. Can such a thing exist?

[Ben Carlson]

Infinite Jim Cramer came out with a new acronym last night that is going to apparently take the market down.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, it certainly. It certainly seems like there is. If you just were looking at price, for sure, the chase is on. Okay, like last night, I took.

[Ben Carlson]

But doesn't that always happen off the Lows. The whole chase is on thing where we always get a massive bounce from bear market. Big correction.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but, but, but, but it always happens before all time highs. You bounce and then it's like then what? Right? Like let's see how it behaves over the next XYZ days, weeks. But the market won't give back anything. We had tariff related news on Friday or I can't remember when market was down for a second.

[Ben Carlson]

The stock market can't even bother to care. Pretend to care about Trump was talking.

[Michael Batnick]

About tariffs are back on Europe and Canada over the weekend at 30%. I think there was a story futures. This was Saturday. So who knew what futures were going to do but they did nothing. Market was up yesterday.

[Ben Carlson]

The stock market does not think those tariffs are coming otherwise. Right. The it just doesn't believe anything anymore.

[Michael Batnick]

So I was at, I was at the movie theater last night. Took Logan to see Superman and imax. We'll talk about that later. And in the theater while I was in there, there was a massive, massive rainstorm. Torrential downpours which was sorely needed because it was. It's been humid as, as anything over the past couple of days.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a middle aged dad comment to make. Well, really needed that rain.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm gonna tie it back. We did need that rain. And guess what this market needs. This market needs a little rain. The Vix is at 14. Everything's going up. If you're not making money right now, I don't know what you're doing and we could use a little slap on the wrist and maybe we'll get it or maybe, maybe we won't.

[Ben Carlson]

So you want like a healthy 5 to 7% correction.

[Michael Batnick]

We need it. We need it, baby. All right. So getting back to the nervous rallies on.

[Ben Carlson]

The funny thing is is though that the things that people think we need, like we rarely get them on time. Right. It doesn't. It rarely happens like that.

[Michael Batnick]

True.

[Ben Carlson]

You know we could use here and it never. That doesn't happen.

[Michael Batnick]

So we spoke about the Stax index from Schwab last month and we got an update last week and it's more of the same Ben. So here we go. I'm s Tax.

[Ben Carlson]

You always, you always mess these things up every time there's a, there's an ETF or you always try to say a letter and then the word afterwards and you always screw this up. My mom always messes up sayings like you're like my mom in this, you know, like she can't ever get the Saying. I guess you're kind of like that.

[Michael Batnick]

You're talking about Kweb and Caleb.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. All right. Guilty is charged.

[Ben Carlson]

But what do you. What did you call it? The grain of sand instead of a grain of salt.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Take it with a grain of sand.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. This from Schwab. As The S&P 500 index set new record highs in June and climbed more than 5%. Schwab clients gingerly dip their toes in the water but stayed cautious. The Schwab Trading Activity Index S tax climbed for the first month after three straight declines. But by less than 2.5%. And not much Bev. Not much above May's two year lows. So of course we've got a Rip Warren bull market. And at least Schwab investors. Now, maybe Robinhood investors are different, but Schwab investors are being ginger.

[Ben Carlson]

I was getting ready to pull the Robinhood chart on you. And tell me that people are nervous.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, okay, you know what?

[Ben Carlson]

Robinhood is up over the last year.

[Michael Batnick]

300%.

[Ben Carlson]

350% in the last year.

[Michael Batnick]

Nvidia set new highs in June, but Schwab clients sold.

[Ben Carlson]

Robinhood is up 127% in three months.

[Michael Batnick]

Don't tell me. Sir, I am a market watcher. Okay? This might be news to you. This Robinhood stock. It's not news to me.

[Ben Carlson]

I bought at the IPO. Damn it. I should have held on through that 95% crash. And then I would have been. Then I would have been made whole.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so Nvidia said.

[Ben Carlson]

You remember that? When we had the whole thing and I brought the ipo?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, Are they bigger than. Are they bigger than Coinbase yet? Or not? That was my other thing.

[Michael Batnick]

Mistakes were made. Coinbase hit 100 billion. I think Robin is right this neck and neck. All right, here we go. Ben, clients.

[Ben Carlson]

Robin has eight. Sorry to keep interrupting. Robin is at an 88 billion dollar market cap. Now, where did it go public?

[Michael Batnick]

At 10,554,554.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no. Was it that? All right. Anyway. The AI giant. So clients sold shares of the AI giant by a large margin for the second month in a row. Infotech was the biggest net sell sector on a dollar basis for the fifth month in a row. Are you listening to me? For the fifth month in a row, Technology stocks were the most sold component sold sector at Schwab. Which is. Which is the second largest or largest asset management custodian on the planet. Okay, so it is a nervous rally with pockets of euphoria for sure. And maybe, maybe not. Maybe this is. This is what is keeping a floor under the rally, is the fact that people are just not being let back in. And that is what happens in a bull market. It doesn't let you back in. And that is where. That is why the chase is on, because it won't let you back in.

[Ben Carlson]

It's almost the Isaac Newton thing, too, of the people who did sell or have been selling. And then it keeps going up. Then they go, oh, shoot, I got to get back in. Right. Isaac Newton did it with the cell C bubble. That's. That's what happens, too. That's why the chase happens. Because you know What? I'm up 40% in seven weeks. Take some money off the table here.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And then. Then for the next two months, it goes up again. You go, oh, crap, I got to get back in now. Yeah, I can't wait.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. All right, Ben, we. This is another theme on the show that we've been talking about not recently, but forever, about how we need more people in the stock market. I mentioned listening to Bernie and Rogan last week, and a lot of IR cast on our corporate overlords get in the stock market, people. And I know our listeners are in the stock market. So this is, you know, I'm preaching to the choir, but it's for the shareholders, okay? And we need more people participating in the stock market. So S and P, Dow Jones indices for the 12 months ending June 2025, the net dividend rate. This is not just the. Increased by $44 billion. I had chart goat Matt, make us a chart of total buybacks and total dividends. So what are these greedy corporations doing for their shareholders? I'll tell you. Over the last 12 months, they have returned $1.67 trillion in the form of buybacks and dividends to their shareholders. $1.67 trillion. Get involved, people.

[Ben Carlson]

So I saw. I completely agree. Obviously, I saw. I saw.

[Michael Batnick]

I thought you said it.

[Ben Carlson]

Leave the stock market alone, people. But I saw someone the other day trying to say, like, this is the lowest S&P 500 dividend yield since 1999. And we know what that meant. Right? That was. But you can't look at the dividend yield anymore as a meaningful indicator of anything because there are just more buybacks than dividends. You have to add these together for the buyback yield. You can't compare dividend yields now to the past because buybacks are a form of dividend. They're basically the same thing, just in a More tax efficient manner. All right, speaking of owning stocks, and I completely agree, why try to fight the corporations who, you know, are really good at making profits and becoming more efficient over time. Just own them. So Sam. Sam Rowe pulled this from Savita at Bank of America, and she says the US Isn't exceptional, but corporate America might be. Corporates have either adopted or dropped out of the index. Moreover, productivity gains have kicked in since COVID necessitated by the onset of labor inflation. They show productivity going back to the mid-1980s, and it just keeps going up into the right, much like the stock market, give and take, here and there. But I totally agree with her that, and I think I've been trying to make this point for a while. There's a lot of things about America that are not exceptional anymore. Our politicians are not exceptional by any means. Think about the politicians we had in the past. Teddy Roosevelt and FDR and jfk and some of these people, Abraham Lincoln. And you go like, these people were like superheroes walking amongst us. We do not have that anymore for either political party.

[Michael Batnick]

Can you imagine if Teddy Roosevelt was on social media? He might have upset a few people.

[Ben Carlson]

He would've got canceled.

[Michael Batnick]

By the way, in the exceptional category, you forgot to mention movies.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, yes. Not exceptional anymore, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Still exceptional.

[Ben Carlson]

No, no, I told you, there's not many eights. But I agree with this. Our corporations in the stock market are the one thing that we are probably most exceptional at besides spending money.

[Michael Batnick]

Can I pat myself on the back if you allow me? Thank you. One of the earliest articles I wrote pushing back against the Caped Crusaders, and.

[Ben Carlson]

It'S probably not around anymore, that old article, because your old Tumblr account got taken over by an Indian porn bot and they had to get rid of it.

[Michael Batnick]

That's a true story. Should we tell that story real quick? Because people are like, what are you talking about? So our friend Phil Pearlman, who I love dearly, had a huge impact on my life and Ben's life. And now we're all, you know, because.

[Ben Carlson]

He got us introduced, the two of us together.

[Michael Batnick]

Did he?

[Ben Carlson]

Our first dinner together in New York. Phil brought. Phil made it happen.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, no kidding. Do you remember where it was?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. All the New York restaurants.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so this is. What year are we talking about? 2014. Phil told me to. So Phil was at. At Yahoo. And Yahoo had bought Tumblr, which was like the substack of its day. And they had this great idea where if you put the. The cash tag in like aaplan Your article would feed into the Apple feed. So anybody that was searching Apple there was, like, the news stories, your article would be there. Boy, did Yahoo dropped the ball on that one. They could have.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, my God. Mismanaged, to say the least. Anyhow, I was. So Phil encouraged me to write more, to which I owe him a great debt of gratitude, which for which I can never repay. Love you, Phil. And one day I was in Barry's office, and I get back to my office, and I see a million DMs from people that don't ordinarily DM me. I'm not a. That's. I mean, that's a lot. And I'm like, whoa, what is this? And so what happened was my Tumblr got hacked by some sort of porn account. And I'm not talking professional porn. These were amateurs at best, quite graphic photos. And so every. And they were. It was updating every three seconds, tagging Apple and Microsoft. And so the Yahoo servers got attacked by a porn bot, a Michael Batnik porn bot. And then I got an. I got an email from the editor. I'm like, dude, this isn't me. Okay, what do you want me to do?

[Ben Carlson]

And you had to, like, lose your.

[Michael Batnick]

Blog, basically, you do something. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that that was the. That. That shut it down for me anyway. Oh. So the post that I wrote. The post that I wrote, which was not on Tumblr, we could still find it, probably. We're talking 2015, 2016, maybe. I said, one of the reasons why companies are earning the valuations that they are these days is the revenue per employee. And I compared, I believe it was Facebook, to the first billion dollar corporation, which was U.S. steel. And U.S. steel was earning, you know, a $40 per employee in revenue. And. And Facebook was like, you know, 37 bucks or something. Something loony.

[Ben Carlson]

Michael Semblas has 20 years of eye in the market. And he did this retrospective where he looked at some of his most important charts and calls over the years. And the one that you and I have talked about the most, I think that I just wanted to highlight again, is just the fact that the stock market bottoms before anything else. And he did this great thing where he went back to the Great Depression and he showed, like, bank failures versus the Dow. And the Dow turned up way before bank failures stopped. And he looked at European equities in the 2010 crisis, bottoming way before the unemployment rate. And all these different. The financial crisis with defaults and savings and loans crisis with high yield spreads and all these different examples. It's a great run of charts. And then he did this other chart that has got all these different symbols on it. It looks a little bit like the Illuminati, you know, like the stuff you see in a dollar bill. But he, he did all of these things and he shows when these things happen, you know, from the beginning of the recession and all these different financial crises and how stocks are almost always the very first thing to go. And he was saying, this is one of the biggest lessons that I've learned over the years is just that stocks start to move before the news ever does. And this is one of the hardest parts about calling the bottom because even in the last, in April, I don't know, I mean the news didn't get completely better, right. You had one or two headlines of Trump saying, yeah, maybe I'll back off. But like there was still a lot of uncertainty when that the stock market bottom same thing in 2022 with inflation.

[Michael Batnick]

Also, also, also a corollary to this is also makes it difficult to call the top. Because now that we know this lesson, we are very quick to say, like we're very quick to suggest that the stock market is always all knowing and forward looking. And while it is true during all of the bear markets, the market goes first, it's not always true. Like the market has predicted non of the last three recessions, whatever the line is. And this is a feather in the cap for technicals because the fundamentals, they just don't help you if you are, if you are trying, if you are of the, if you are inclined to time the market, you can't do it with fundamentals because to say that they're backwards looking is.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, you could still be getting good news at the top. It could just be less good news. And you go, wait, why is the market rolling over? This is, this is still pretty. They're still growing. Yeah, at 15% just not 20 chart kid. Matt at exhibit A has consensus earning expectations for s and P500. And look at this thing just continues to go up and to the right. This is something so obviously no one believes tariffs are gonna be as high as anyone. Like that is just people have completely just ignored that at all. Like the whole, hey, we're do 30% tariffs on like that, nobody cares. Right? It honestly does seem like that. All right, here's a piece that I wrote this week. I thought this was kind of interesting. I looked at, I think 2000 and 20s are the worst decade ever for bonds so far. So I decided to kind of test this theory because someone wrote me like, hey, I've owned TLT for the last 20 years or something and I've been getting just slaughtered. So I decided to look at this and I looked at nominal returns by decades. So I did this for 5 year treasuries, 10 year treasuries and long term treasuries, which is like 20 plus year, because I think there was a few years in there where like 30 year treasuries went away. And anyway, 20 plus years and on a nominal basis, you can see these are some of the worst returns. But you have to look at this on a real basis because the 70s and the nominal returns were pretty good. So I did this on a real basis. And you look at this, the crazy thing is that real returns for bonds were negative, basically the 40s through the 70s. But look at how bad real returns are this decade. There's not another decade that comes close to being as bad as this. And so my question was, why aren't more fixed income investors freaking out about this?

[Michael Batnick]

Is it just because you know the answer? Right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I do know the answer. It was a rhetorical question. Yields are higher now. People went into T bills to hide. Yeah, I mean, if you sat through a 50% drawdown in TLT, and the thing is, TLT is still, it's been down 40% since October 2022.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, I don't, but I don't think you touched on the answer. I think the answer is it's the stock market. Well, the stock market is glossing over a lot of the pain in the bond market.

[Ben Carlson]

That's true. But I think part of it is too that just you see higher yields now, so you don't care as much. Right. So it's like, okay, yeah, that happened. But now yields are 4 or 5%, so it's fine going forward. And also I just think, I think if you didn't move some of your money into T bills or short term Treasuries, then you just weren't paying attention when those yields were much higher. I'm just trying to play this like the. Think about if the stock market had fallen 50%, well, three, three years later it was still down 40%. Yeah, that's TLT.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And obviously, well, you can hold bonds to maturity and these are long dated assets that pension funds and insurance companies use. And it's still, it's kind of wild to think about the fact that like this, this really has been the worst bond market that we've ever Seen ever.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, yeah, good observation. You're absolutely right, Ben. During COVID and in the aftermath, there was. There was a lot of turmoil in the job market. Good turmoil, I guess, because it was the first time in a long time that it was labor over capital.

[Ben Carlson]

Remember all those fast food signs we were showing all the time? The best way, $20 an hour at McDonald's. Holy cow.

[Michael Batnick]

The best way to get a job. The best way to get a raise was to switch jobs. And that was the big thing, right? It was like sticky wage inflation. And if that continued to rise at the pace that it did, then we were in for a world of pain. And it's come down dramatically now. Obviously, if you do the cumulative effect, it's still not nothing. But this is heading in the right direction.

[Ben Carlson]

It's funny that you think this is heading in the right direction because a lot of people would say no, the other thing was good news, this is bad news. But from like an economic market perspective. You think this is good?

[Michael Batnick]

No. 8%. 8% wage growth is not healthy.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. Some people would disagree with you.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I don't think so. Because the people that were the recipient of 8% are job switchers, probably on the bottom half of income. And those are the people that are most disproportionately hit by higher inflation.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but they got. They had the best, best inflation adjusted income gains too.

[Michael Batnick]

You think the bottom 50% are thrilled with their economic situation? Looking backwards, are they ever.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm just saying they got the biggest real inflation adjusted income gains of any cohort.

[Michael Batnick]

True, but we know it doesn't matter because people don't think in real terms. They think in sandwich terms.

[Ben Carlson]

That's true. I'm just saying, if you're looking at this, I agree with you. Like unemotionally.

[Michael Batnick]

Unemotionally.

[Ben Carlson]

The Fed chair and economist would say this is a good thing. All right, well, the human wage inflation is going down. Most normal people would go, this is a bad thing. I want my wages to continue to go up by a higher percentage.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but the human being knows this.

[Ben Carlson]

Is a bad thing. You're financing brain this. Okay, Mike Sicardi, chart of the week.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm not financing brain this. This is real shit.

[Ben Carlson]

You are. I would rather see people earn more money. How's that? I think that's a good thing.

[Michael Batnick]

Dude, every. This country is upside down because of inflation. What are you talking about? It doesn't matter that people got real wage gains. They're still paying $14 for a Chipotle bowl.

[Ben Carlson]

But that you just said it. They got real wage gains, inflation adjusted.

[Michael Batnick]

It doesn't matter.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't, it doesn't to their psyche.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. And so that's everything. That's the only thing that matters. Matters how people feel. That's it. That's the only thing that matters.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, we're not going to re litigate this. All right. This is the chart from Mike Zicardi. Household leverage liabilities to net worth is the lowest it's been in 50 years. This goes back to 1960 from J.P. morgan. This is kind of unbelievable. So we had a huge everyone levered up to the hilt heading into the great financial crisis. Obviously you can kind of see why that happened. But now that households have repaired their balance sheets to a degree, which brings us back to 1970s levels or something like this is the whole thing. Even if we have a downturn in the coming years, households have the ability to lever up if they need to.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Is this the 1937 analog? Where does 1937 fit into this chart?

[Ben Carlson]

I just, is it still 1937? Yeah. It ended in 2015 and it started again in 2020. This is, this is just it to me. And this is why I just betting against the US consumer, like I would need to be given a very, very good reason. I have, and I have an anecdote here. In my neighborhood, you don't have this a lot in Long island because a lot of your houses were just built in, I don't know, the 50s and 60s probably. But in my neighborhood, it's relatively new and a lot of three car garages. And I'll be taking my, I take my dog for a walk all the time and I'm going to zero car garage.

[Michael Batnick]

Not that I'm complaining, but we don't have garage. That's right.

[Ben Carlson]

You have a big mudroom. This is the trade off you've made.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, the jackass who built my house built a garage so narrow that you can't fit a car in there. You could probably fit a toy truck in there.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, definitely not, not a big truck. Right. I, I, so I, my point I'm trying to make is I've seen three car garages and people have the garages open where they're doing stuff in the summer, especially where they have so much stuff that they can literally fit one car into a three car garage.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Because their stuff just surrounds it. And this, this is what you're up against. If you're betting against the US economy, people who have three car garages so full of so much stuff that they would rather park their car or truck and in the driveway than, like, have less stuff. Right. All right, last week, this is my first foray into this. I tease at the beginning rich people who don't feel rich. I wrote a blog post about this as well, and I had a guy who reached out and said, all right, I'm going to get a lot of heat for this on Twitter, but I'm going to share anyway. And so he shares all of his stats, and he gives me all of his money. And he said he makes a base of 300. He's got all these different bonuses of a quarterly bonus, an annual bonus. He must be a software salesman or something, because it's all kinds of bonuses. But he says him and his wife make, like 600 grand. And he walks all his expenses. He's got really high student loans. They pay like five grand a month. But he gives me his mortgage, his car payment, his utilities, gym, apps, food.

[Michael Batnick]

What stands out in here, all this stuff?

[Ben Carlson]

Well, he pays $500 a year for a bug guy. He has a dog. But here's the thing. He also has a rental mortgage. He owns a rental house, and he pays a property manager for that. So he says, Listen, I make 600k a year. I have a rental property, and then I put away like, 60 grand a year between investment accounts. You can see how it feels tight even as I approach 600k because of my wife's and my student loans. And we have five kids. Five kids.

[Michael Batnick]

Obviously, bro, you're saving $62,000 a year in investment accounts.

[Ben Carlson]

That's the thing. So I think this person's doing great.

[Michael Batnick]

I understand they might not feel like Donald Trump, but $62,000 a year in investment accounts.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Plus he owns a rental property. So I think that. That's the idea that. I think people had this. So this is the one that got me. So he said, every year I do my own tree maintenance, chemicals, lawn care, pesticides, mulching, and that's a decent lump sum. I think maybe there's this idea that, like, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, that, like, once you hit a certain point, like, you just pay somebody to do everything for you, and that's not really realistic. Listen, if you own. I think if you own another house, whether it be a vacation property, a rental house, you're wealthy. If you have the ability to own two properties.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, this person has money.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, but he talked about doing his own stuff, and I just wanted to bring this back to Myself, because that's what I like to do here.

[Michael Batnick]

Of course.

[Ben Carlson]

Listen, as a man of the people, I don't have a big mudroom like you. So we realized, like, our mudderm was way too small. And as opposed to like trying to reconfigure me to it, we decided to get like a locker set for our. Because our kids sports stuff is just out of control. Right? The shoes and the cleats and the bags and backpacks and coats and everything. So I got some lockers on Wayfair and I probably could have just paid the Wayfair. I don't know what you pay them to assemble it for you, but it's these huge lockers. You know how they look, right? One for each kid. We have three kids. So my dumb ass is in the garage last night because we're gonna put them in our garage because we don't have enough room in our mudroom. And I'm putting it together, you know, with an allen wrench.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And a screwdriver for these huge things. And I'm sweating my ass off because it's 90 degrees out and I'm in the garage. And sometimes there's trade offs in life where you have to do some stuff yourself.

[Michael Batnick]

You can't pay somebody to put together a Wayfarer chest. That's. That's beyond the pale.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. You just have to do it and suck it up. It took me forever to open the box and put everything up. And sometimes you just have to do stuff yourself. And today I feel like I have like a. I don't know what the, you know, carpal tunnel or something from doing turning stuff. But can I just.

[Michael Batnick]

On the, on the, on the rich people stuff. Yeah, it depends where you live. I feel like that's the thing.

[Ben Carlson]

That's. That's all. That's the response I got from so many people.

[Michael Batnick]

We're always talking past each other. $600,000 in one place you could live like a king. And $600,000 in another place you could. It just depends.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Everything is relative, right?

[Michael Batnick]

It's a lot of money wherever you live. Okay. Let's be real.

[Ben Carlson]

It is.

[Michael Batnick]

But relatively speaking, it might not be. And that's the reality of life.

[Ben Carlson]

So here's one that I will give people that. And sometimes maybe you and I are too harsh on people that like make a lot of money. And it is good to see both sides. But I think there is a certain level you reach where you get that level and it feels like you're getting screwed. So Bloomberg did this thing. They did an analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges. So they're looking at some really good schools here. And they show that many cases middle class families making between 100 and 300 earn too much to qualify for meaningful aid, but too little to afford college out of pocket. They said the Squeeze starts at 150k when families are expected to fork over 20% for tuition at 270k of income, families are expected to pay about $61,000 a year. Most schools cut off financial aid at about $400,000 a year of income. And they have this graph here. It shows. And so you can think if you're, whatever, however you want to say, upper class or right next to upper class. Like if you just hit that level and then you get no help at all. Because below those levels you get a ton of help. Like the average discount for college from the sticker price Ron Lieber did this is like 50%. No one pays sticker except for like international students and rich people. And if you are just at that threshold of being rich, but not like super rich, I'm sure I can see going, geez, yeah, I'm getting hosed here.

[Michael Batnick]

So I, I think I'm actually very empathetic to people with money and the realities that having money is expensive. Right. Like, I'm, I don't. I love.

[Ben Carlson]

It is a funny way to put it. Having money is expensive. It's true.

[Michael Batnick]

It is. I love success. I, I celebrate it. I don't begrudge these people. However, I don't want to hear any complaining.

[Ben Carlson]

That's the thing.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, like, nobody wants to hear that shit because this Palestin compat, whatever problems these people have. Palestin comparison. Anybody with, with $60,000 household income would trade their problems for their problems. So I don't want to hear it, but I understand.

[Ben Carlson]

You can, like, act like a victim. Yeah, I totally, you can say, like, listen, it's not as good as people think it is, but you can't say.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, keep that shit to yourself.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, that's my. Yes, that's the point.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, I just want to shut this out. My, my jet ski insurance went down by $105.

[Ben Carlson]

You must be a good jet ski driver, huh?

[Michael Batnick]

That's a lot.

[Ben Carlson]

No, that's not bad.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so I threw this depreciation.

[Ben Carlson]

Schedule on a jet Ski.

[Michael Batnick]

I top ticked the shit out of my jet Ski.

[Ben Carlson]

What does that mean?

[Michael Batnick]

I bought at the very peak of the market. I can get.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh yeah, that's Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I can get a new Jet Ski now for what I still old, what I still owe on my 4 year old jet Ski.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh. Because there was like a shortage of supply and whatever.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. So here's a math problem that I asked ChatGPT to solve for me. I said, if, if $4 million represents 5,000% growth of X, what is X? And now I'm thinking might be like, well, if you could just do this at the chat cbt, how is anybody learn anything? Right? And it spelled out the equation and how you do it in very simple CFA like terms and magic.

[Ben Carlson]

This is the stuff. I can't wait for my kids when they have a question. I want to help them through it, but I also want to put it into this and have them show the steps.

[Michael Batnick]

But so that's the thing. There's a lot of, remember the show, are you smarter than a fifth grader?

[Ben Carlson]

Right. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

There's a lot of stuff where you might know the answer, but solving for it and learning and teaching is really difficult. Is magic.

[Ben Carlson]

I really do think AI tutors are going to be like a huge, huge help to young children, especially people who can't, Families who can't afford a tutor or don't have time, the parents don't have time to help their kids. I think it's going to be wonderful for those people. All right, let's talk about the whole pay package thing. You talked a little bit about this, but I feel like the resounding conclusion already from everyone in the tech field is just listen, Facebook is going to win. They're spending the most on AI engineers. All the good engineers are going there. Mark Zuckerberg is cutthroat. He's going to win at all costs and Apple is screwed. Do you, do you agree that that's kind of the consensus now?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes.

[Ben Carlson]

And I feel like people are making conclusions way, way too far in advance and way too soon. Listen, would I, would I. Are there better odds on this happening? Yes, I'm, I'm, I'm just thinking through the human nature aspect of this, of what happens to all the other employees at Facebook that go, wait a minute, you're paying these 12 people this much money and we're, our department's getting a fraction of that. Like, are we sure this is going to go like, remember those super teams, the NFL? Remember that one year the Eagles got like 10 Pro Bowlers?

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, yeah. Sean Jackson, Michael Vick, team those guys.

[Ben Carlson]

Is there a chance that something like this happens at Facebook where it's like, hey, we assembled the dream team. But everyone has different agendas and they've already made a bunch of money. And is there a human nature component where this just goes wrong? No, that's, that's all I'm trying to consider. You think? No, it's, I mean, these people are robots.

[Michael Batnick]

It's fine, perhaps, but where are they going to go? They're still getting the best pay package at Meta.

[Ben Carlson]

But is giving someone the best pay package really the best? But I don't know. That's, that's a question I'm asking. The other thing is I, I'm just. No one's giving up the smartphone, that app, for your Apple smartphone. Right. And the AI has to get to you somehow. Why is Apple still not the best way to do it in some form? Maybe they're not going to extract as much value as they did from like the App Store. But even if Apple's behind an AI, I think pouring the dirt in their grave seems a little premature. That's all that I'm saying here.

[Michael Batnick]

All right.

[Ben Carlson]

I think that, I think people are jumping to conclusions. Anything has happened yet.

[Michael Batnick]

My naive opinion on the situation, from things that I read, is that Apple corporate culture is just nothing like these other companies. They are set in their ways. It's very rigid.

[Ben Carlson]

They're not funny. Dilemma.

[Michael Batnick]

They're not fun. So it's hard to pour dirt on the grave of the greatest company of all time that has a three and a half trillion dollar market cap.

[Ben Carlson]

That's all I'm saying.

[Michael Batnick]

But they're not.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, history would, history would tell you this happens all the time.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but they're, but they're not growing and they haven't grown for years and they're not. It doesn't look like they're in the game at all. So. But if the only reason, the only reason why you would say it's premature to pour dirt on their grave is just to be a contrarian because there's no signal that they're doing anything fair.

[Ben Carlson]

But who has made the best hardware of the last 30 years for everything?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, hardware. So hardware is not the game anymore.

[Ben Carlson]

But it's gonna, you're gonna need to deliver the AI through good hardware.

[Michael Batnick]

And by the way, their only growth channel is software.

[Ben Carlson]

But isn't, I mean, maybe that you just say, hey, like the hardware is the commodity, it doesn't matter. But somehow in the transition period, the AI is gonna have to be delivered to us somehow. If you're gonna have your own AI assistant, you're gonna need the hardware for it.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, if Johnny, I'm Sam Altman unveil something that is as mindbreaking as they might be working on, then it might be time to worry about Apple. But yeah, no, listen, they're fine.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so visual capitalists did this thing like what are people asking ChatGPT and nearly one third is software development questions. It's interesting, they said the biggest gainer though is economics, finance and tax up by more than three times in the past year. And then the second ones are like AI learning and history. And so I'm sure if you compared this to Google, this is a way more highbrow level of what people are looking for from this thing. It's just interesting to think about the stuff that people are asking. It's not the junky stuff that you ask Google. But the funny thing is most people probably ask more junky stuff than they do. High brow stuff.

[Michael Batnick]

The average person. Sure.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, right. All right. Jensen Wang was on MSNBC on Morning Joe. I don't know if you saw any of this interview. He did this whole thing on AI and just how. Listen, the people who use AI are going to be the ones that thrive. He said it's not likely that you lose a job to AI. You're going to lose a job to somebody who uses AI and you probably say like, oh, that's what the guy who's developing AI would say. But I just think that, and I think you're on the team, like AI is going to steal everyone's job and we're all going to be doing nothing.

[Michael Batnick]

What?

[Ben Carlson]

A little bit. That's kind of your corner, dude.

[Michael Batnick]

That's not a little bit. AI is going to steal everyone's job and we're all going to. No, I'm not.

[Ben Carlson]

AI is going to steal your girl. But here's the thing. I keep thinking about all this stuff that we've gotten in the past 20 years or whatever, 25, 30 years that has made us way more productive and way more efficient. Internet, email, zoom calls, smartphones, all this stuff has made us way more efficient than we ever could have been before. And all it does is make us work more. Right. It hasn't made us work less at all.

[Michael Batnick]

Exactly. Because now there's so much more. There's so much more time to work.

[Ben Carlson]

Now this is what AI is going to do. It's. There's going to be steps that you take with AI that you never would have taken before. Like people are going to be checking every single email, every single presentation, every.

[Michael Batnick]

Like they're going to work my add. I love it. Give me more.

[Ben Carlson]

But I, I just. The AI is going to do the same thing. It's just going to, it's going to make us more efficient and it's also going to make us work more.

[Michael Batnick]

Good. I love work.

[Ben Carlson]

That's my, that's my conclusion. All right, let's go on to crypto. What do you got here?

[Michael Batnick]

All right, a few things. Bitcoin is $2 trillion. Does anyone care? I mean, I know some people care.

[Ben Carlson]

Deeply, but I feel like we've kind of moved on from the market cap thing of it. It's kind of. So you did this chart here. It's kind of crazy that bitcoin is the same market cap as silver.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

It's.

[Michael Batnick]

It's bigger than levered loans. It is probably going to pass us small cap equity. It's 2.4 trillion. Small caps are 3 trillion. This is.

[Ben Carlson]

I almost, I, I consider it like one of the big tech stocks. Like once all those companies started hitting trillion dollars, people stopped worrying and caring about their market caps. Right? Yeah. When they hit a big round number and Nvidia hit 4,4 trillion, we celebrated. Or yay. Fun. But I feel like people don't care as much as they used to. When Apple hit a trillion dollars, it was enormous news.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And then you get used to it. I feel like that's. Maybe that's how it's happened to bitcoin. It's also crazy though, that Crypto X Bitcoin is 1.4 trillion. I just keep coming back to the idea that so many people even in crypto thought, well, bitcoin's not the thing, it's everything else. But bitcoin really is the thing.

[Michael Batnick]

Why can't there just be another Bitcoin Was like a dumb thing.

[Ben Carlson]

People said, yeah, I'll just make another one.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So we talk a lot about. And Balchunas is the goat at this and his team about showing the data with Ibid and all of the other crypto ETFs. And I think they're about to hit a hundred billion dollars, which is, which is wild. There's just, there's still a lot of demand for bitcoin and it's not just coming from ETFs. Bitwise has a chart showing corporate Bitcoin adoption quarterly, Bitcoin holdings up and to the right. And of course, most of this is strategy, but there's, there's others. Mara has.

[Ben Carlson]

But this is the thing that you. This is the innovation Michael Saylor did is he got other companies to do this. Like him doing it. Got other companies to do it and in turn increased the demand for bitcoin.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Like you, you. And I saw him in Miami speaking at Future Proof.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And some of the things he said were legitimately insane. And Bobasani was interviewing him and it's like it sounds like a person they pulled off the street to talk about crypto, but. So the stuff that he says sometimes sounds so insane and crazy. But what the. What he's done, he has pulled forward demand in bitcoin by getting people to copy him.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know if I wrote this a year ago, six months ago, he. Yes, he sounds crazy, and maybe he is crazy, but he's hardly stupid. He called his shot. This is what I wrote. He called his shot. He leveraged, literally the volatility of bitcoin as a feature to create this escape velocity and this flywheel effect for issuing more shares. More velocity, more. More options, more demand. And it worked. And it continues to work. And I am definitely not saying that it is going to work forever. I don't own the stock. But there is, there is and continues to be a whole lot more demand than supply for bitcoin. And that.

[Ben Carlson]

That's been the most.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't. I don't know. I don't know what changes that.

[Ben Carlson]

The story of Kryptos from its infancy is just that the narrative behind it and what it will be able to do is constantly changing and evolving and never exactly right. But the belief in it is the thing that always stays true. So it's like the narrative and like, it's going to do this and it's going to do that and we're going to do this with it. And even if these things don't come true, as long as people keep believing, then that the narrative behind it doesn't matter.

[Michael Batnick]

I'll tell you one thing. We got a lot more emails about bitcoin when it hit 60,000 than when it hit 120,000. I don't think we've got a. In fact. Oh, no, we got one. We got one email about bitcoin over the last couple of weeks.

[Ben Carlson]

You're right. It's just the shock value of it has worn off and now people are just used to it a little. Right. It's crazy.

[Michael Batnick]

Anyway, sign of the times. Grayscale file to go public. And you and I, I don't know if it's dropping next week. Had a very good call call with David Laval at Grayscale, who was Very involved in, in pushing the case to convert to the etf. And I don't know that I was super duper excited to have that conversation only because I was like, well, we've spoken about bitcoin before. Like, all right, guess we're doing again. And it was very good. He, he was a very, very good guest.

[Ben Carlson]

Your backhanded compliment to most of our talker book guests is I thought this was going to be boring, but it wasn't. Good. Good on you. All right, let's talk about real estate. Back to there being so many rich people. So I, I'm not gonna lie, I like perusing the, the real estate section of Wall Street Journal. And they show these like opulent houses and it's just fun to. So they showed that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's Manhattan home sold. And it was a one bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park. Look at, look at the views of this place.

[Michael Batnick]

It is just wild to see how like people with not like, not like the millionaire next door live, but like people with money live like it is.

[Ben Carlson]

This is money. Money. But it was interesting. And reading the article, it was interesting. They're like, it wasn't even really that this used to be Paul Newman's place. People just wanted, you know, but it's a. So they said 3,000 square feet, one bedroom, that's big. Was listed for nine, sold for 14, 40% above asking. But then they asked the guy like the realtor who did this, he said, listen, if you were fine with having a fantastic one bedroom, you're never gonna find better one than this. What was crazy to us was how deep the market was. The irony, he said, was that the week of the showing took place, the weather in New York was terrible. It was raining every single day like monsoons. It was the worst time ever to launch something like this. It just shows that none of it matters.

[Michael Batnick]

Dude, there are so many people with money that will never have kids for which a one bedroom like this is highly desirable. And I don't know how many there are, but there's a lot.

[Ben Carlson]

So. But his. The thing that was interesting to me was he, this is a person that I'm sure deals in only rich people listings like this. And he was surprised at how many rich people showed up to buy this place. So it feels to me like this rich people cycle will never end. But I don't know, more to come.

[Michael Batnick]

It feels that way. We know it will at some point, but it's.

[Ben Carlson]

For now, it, I mean, every cycle feels like this. Like this cycle will Never end, obviously. Well, all right, good one from Business Insider here about baby boomers dominating the housing market. They own roughly 20, 20 trillion dollars worth of real estate, or 41% of the country's total value, despite accounting for a fifth of the population. Millennials, by contrast, make up slightly larger percentage of the population, but own 10 trillion or 20%. So they're gaining. But then they talk about like what's going to happen when boomers eventually die or give up their and it's saying, remember we got the email from the guy a few years, a few weeks ago saying about the basis, like his parents did not want to sell their $4 million San Diego place because when they die and pass it along, you get up that step up basis so the kids don't have to eat the capital gains taxes. So they say between 202025 and 2035, the number of boomers are projected to decline by 23% or almost 16 million people. And then the next 10 years, 2035 to 2045, it drops by another 47% or 23 million people. So obviously Father Time will have its say here. But they also said a lot of the kids who are inheriting these houses are like, oh God, I don't want this house. It needs all this work or upkeep because the parents have been living in it forever. I just think the next 10, 15, 20 years of this transitional phase is going to be a very interesting time in the real estate market.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

There's going to be a lot of rehabs for sale, I think in the coming years.

[Michael Batnick]

No doubt.

[Ben Carlson]

Or millennials who got boxed out of the housing market will just live in their parents house.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Like we've never gone through a transition like this before. I'm just curious how it's going to play out because I, I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

I want, I mean, I, I guess my, I think my take is I haven't thought deeply about this. It's, it's going to happen at a glacial pace.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Boomers will die.

[Ben Carlson]

Not going to be all at once.

[Michael Batnick]

Boomers will be dying for 25 years.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, true. Maybe we need to build. But think about, do you notice all the senior living places that go up all the time?

[Michael Batnick]

There's a lot, we were in the.

[Ben Carlson]

July, we had went to the July 4th parade a few weeks ago and there was like four senior living places in the, in the 4th of July parade.

[Michael Batnick]

Like advertising. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Survey of the week. We spoke about the drug surveys last week and Ben astutely called out that it was complete bs. Somebody emailed us. I was in middle school in the early 80s. Not to brag, but I'm old. I distinctly remember a survey about drug use that we took every year, I think, to support Nancy Reagan's Just say no campaign. My friends and I laughed about how we just said yes. We did every single drug, every single day on every single question. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, lsd, pcp, crack, uppers, downers, blues, reds, et cetera. We had no idea what these drugs were, but boy did we do all of it. That's what you, that's what you do when you are a 12 year old boy and little old lady tells you no, surveys are bullshit. Especially surveys and middle schoolers.

[Ben Carlson]

That's what my friends and I used to do. But I feel like kids these days wouldn't do that because they're worried that people are gonna. It's online so someone's going to actually read it and, and bust them or something.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, sticking with the, the people are rich. And this is, this is really not that topic, but just, you know, there's just a lot of money out there. Prime Day US retailers drove $24.1 billion in online spend from Tuesday through Friday, up 30% from 2024. And there's some funkiness with like it was a four day week. But either way, like even if you strip that out, people spent a lot of money on Prime Day.

[Ben Carlson]

I feel like we have Prime Day once a month. It happens all the time. It has to happen multiple times a year. It's not just one.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you buy anything on Prime Day? I did. I can't remember what I bought. Nothing.

[Ben Carlson]

We buy something on Amazon every day, so probably that's true.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. Somebody sent this to me.

[Ben Carlson]

The FedEx guy knows me now. I came out to get my Wayfarer stuff yesterday out of the, out of the back of his truck.

[Michael Batnick]

Hey, what's up, man? Great to see you.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, one of those. And being a man of the people, guess what I helped him with? Get the heavy boxes off of the truck.

[Michael Batnick]

You've said that twice now. Like, are you like saying that I'm not a man of the people? That's what it feels like.

[Ben Carlson]

No, we've always had this push and pull.

[Michael Batnick]

Were you, I mean, were you ever a cabana boy, A busboy, a waiter?

[Ben Carlson]

My first job, I was a busboy.

[Michael Batnick]

Were you ever a. I was a bank teller, a valet, park, bank tell. That's not a man of people. I worked with my hand, sir, for years. Don't tell me.

[Ben Carlson]

I had to count the money with hand by hand.

[Michael Batnick]

Somebody sent this to us. It's a reel on Instagram. Steve is a first time buyer got approved. $0 down. Okay. He bought a. I think it's a two year old BMW. I don't know what this is. Is that a three series, a four? I can't tell.

[Ben Carlson]

It's not even new.

[Michael Batnick]

No. $986 a month for 80 for months.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a screaming deal. And it's going to break down.

[Michael Batnick]

Imagine. All right, let me.

[Ben Carlson]

36 by month. 36, that thing's breaking down and he's going to have like a $7,000.

[Michael Batnick]

And the dude who's the dude whose account it is is the, the broker, of course. And he's like flexing for this kid. Like no money down. Oh, all right, well, this poor bastard is going to spend $83,000 just on car payments, to say nothing of repairs and maintenance. $83,000 for a 2 year old mid sized small BMW. I went to Audi this week, by the way. Needed my first oil change. God, those freaking thieves. Unbelievable.

[Ben Carlson]

You're going to spend more on your Audi than this guy did on his BMW.

[Michael Batnick]

They're like, all right, it's your first year checkup. We've got the oil change, the duster, the pollen, the fluid breaks. I'm like, all right, how much is it? $1,044. I'm like, could you please break that down for me? Yeah, it's $340 for the oil change. I'm like, just do the oil change.

[Ben Carlson]

You know, as a theme of the man doing his own stuff. I went to get my oil change for my wife and there's like an internal filter. And they showed me how they took it out. And then they took it out. Hey, they show you it's dirty and hey, you need one of them. I'm like, yeah, fine. But then they said, oh, we don't have any in stock, come back in a week. And I just put it on Amazon and bought the thing myself for $12. And guess what? I installed the filter myself.

[Michael Batnick]

That is good for you. Good for you.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, her car is probably going to blow up because I put it in backwards or something. But I did it.

[Michael Batnick]

And then they tried to get me on the. Oh, your car, your tire. I'm like, I'm like, you know, don't even tell me how much. I don't want to do it. No, the answer is no. Thank you. All right. Speaking of, let's not Speak it up. Speaking of. Nothing. It's just a lazy transition. Travel. All right, there we go. We're talking travel. Ben, there was. It's just so funny how fast things change. How decimated Delta and all the airline stocks were in the first quarter as Europeans and foreigners were not coming to the country. So. All right, I guess that's over now today in. There's so much money out there. That's from the emailer, not from us.

[Ben Carlson]

Don't you think that the sentiment stuff is just. People are willing to change their minds on stuff so fast. Like think about coming out of the presidential election. Everyone said New York is going way more conservative and then immediately they're going to vote in a socialist mayor. You can't trust people on anything they say anymore.

[Michael Batnick]

True.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't even trust you.

[Ben Carlson]

Me neither.

[Michael Batnick]

I received an alert from the airline. Would I volunteer to take the 2:30 flight instead of the 12:45 flight? I selected a bid of $600, which was the max on the app, and thought, let's see what happens. No problem for me. I can do a little work. When I got to the gate, the agent told me she could offer me $2,100.

[Ben Carlson]

Geez.

[Michael Batnick]

I didn't ask any questions and asked to sign immediately. $2,100 to take in a flight that's three hours later.

[Ben Carlson]

Wow. Imagine being a single person and airport. Take that every time, wouldn't you?

[Michael Batnick]

I'm sure I told the story about when I was in Chicago, how my flight got delayed, we deboered. Whatever. It's no big deal. I am not one of these people. Credit to me that hems and haws about these things. I mean, listen, sometimes it could be a huge pain in the ass, especially if you're stuck on the airplane. But having a little delay, assuming that you're not in the. In the airplane. Just go to a lounge, do some work. No big deal.

[Ben Carlson]

Speaking of lounges.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, I guess you should say okay if you're with your kids, it's a big deal. So I will qualify that.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, having a delay with your kids is. That's terrifying. Our very own Nick Magiulli today had a piece and I think he pulled this from his new book, the Wealth Ladder. A little bit of he said the death of the Amex Lounge. Why the upper middle class isn't special anymore. This is really good stuff. Getting back to our themes, first of all, he calls out your Bahamar place. He says, my Baha Mar place? Yeah. You've sold it to a lot of people. He says maybe too many people. He says, I was told Bahamar was a place to go. It's an expensive resort that has a water park, casino, and lots of dining options. The only problem? There isn't enough space for everyone to enjoy everything. If you don't book ahead, good luck getting a reservation at one of their prize restaurants. If you don't wake up early, forget about getting a chair by the pool. Picture it. You're one of the nicest resorts in one of the most prized vacation destinations in the world, and there are literal millionaires scrambling to get pool chairs at 8am what the hell is going on? Nick said, I'll tell you. The upper middle class is getting too big. There are too many people who are millionaires and multimillionaires, and there simply isn't enough space to accommodate them. Why do you think the Amex Lounge is a zoo? He's right. There's too many rich people. So he says. Since 2007, the median net worth of a US household has increased from 173,000 to 193,000, up 11% after inflation. But among the top 10%, it went from 1.3 to 1.9 million, a 49% surge. This is why it doesn't feel special to be wealthy anymore, because there are more wealthy people. And this is why people who are objectively rich don't feel rich.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, because they're more rich. They live in neighborhoods where everyone's doing everything that they're doing, and it's expensive to do with everything that everyone else is doing.

[Ben Carlson]

And you go, I have this, sure. But they have that. I don't have that. And that's the thing that happens with your head.

[Michael Batnick]

That happens at every. Every level of the income scale. Yes, at every level.

[Ben Carlson]

That's the thing. It never stops.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. But even, like, even people without money, there. There's. There's people within the people without money group that are the rich people in that group.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, you're right. There's. Yes, It. It's. It never ends.

[Michael Batnick]

And you can make the case. And I'm not saying that anybody would go down, but just in a vacuum, that people there are happier, relatively speaking, than a small fish in a big pond that can't afford to keep up.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, definitely. I told this story before. I think I wrote about it in one of my books. We went on a canoe trip in college in the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan. And the guy who ran the canoe, he lived in a trailer park or in the little trailer next to the river with his wife and newborn daughter and didn't make a lot of money. He drove people with their canoes from one end of the river to the next in his bus. And one of my friends got to talking to him, and I was like, you seem to live a pretty simple life out here, you know? And like I said, yeah, I run a canoe business. I don't make a lot of money. It's basically enough to put food on the table, but I don't want for much, and we're happy out here. And I still remember, like, my friend was blown away by this wanting to go in, like, investment banking or something. And, like, he's like, maybe I should. Maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. And I was too young and naive and stupid to, like, have it even compartmentalized. But there's probably some truth in it. Like, I'm out of the rat race. I'm just out of it.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. All right. Sticking with this theme, which you, Ben, were right to point out, Wiesenthal tweeted, shake Shack says it's Dubai chocolate. Shake is the most expensive milkshake it's ever sold and that it's had lines around the block of people waiting to get it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

Remember Pulp fiction? That's a $5 shake. How much is this thing? It's $9.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. At Shake Shack, too. At a fast food place, we had a listener of the show send me some Dubai chocolate because I mentioned that my son is really into the Burj Khalifa. So he sent us this Burj Khalifa thing and then some Dubai chocolate, which I didn't really know was a thing, but kids tried it. They liked it. Not bad.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you try it?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I think it was okay. More wealthy stuff. Youth Sports are a $40 billion business. Private equity is taking notice. So they talk about how Josh Harris and David Blitzer and Harris says, I think he's the founder of Apollo. Is that right?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

So you're not quite there yet. Right. But they're talking about. Listen, they're buying up baseball camps and flag football fields and youth sports leagues, and they're creating a collection of youth sports properties. And they say that the youth sports industry, again, it's $40 billion. By comparison, movies grossed last year, 9 billion. So just saying that this is a huge. And obviously the. It's kind of apples to oranges. You're not quite there yet. And this is something that I've had many conversations about because my. I have both daughters in travel, soccer. My daughter is also on my oldest Daughter is also on a travel basketball team. So I complain about this, but I'm a hypocrite because we do it too. But it's one of those things where they. If you have your kid in the YMCA rec league and you go, oh, like they're one of the better players on the team, but are they being held back? Cause the other kids aren't very good and the competition's not good. And then, all right, let's go up to the big leagues. And then you go, oh, wait a minute, my kid's not the best player anymore. Now they're on like an all star team. And then it's like, oh, you need to get them trainers. That's why. So then we have people who have individual trainers for their kids because, well, my kid's gonna play in college someday. The Joneses or whatever it is in youth sports is off the charts.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I can't imagine it's.

[Ben Carlson]

And I understand because there's not enough facilities for them to do this stuff. So buying this stuff, I always say, like, I want to buy some farmland and build a big warehouse for volleyball, basketball, soccer, indoor tournaments, because parents would pay for it.

[Michael Batnick]

That's a great business.

[Ben Carlson]

It is. You're. There's. You're never going to have a lack of people.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. All right, Ben, we were talking, I was talking with John. John was in. Big John, our producer, was in. Was in the Bahamas. And something came up about the time that I applied to be a central banker. And this is how good my life was going in 2010. So I found the Google chat. I found it and we're going to read the story. I haven't even read this. Okay. I literally copied and pasted and I wanted to do a blind with you. So I'm going to be me and you'd be my friend. Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. I heard back from the Bermuda. This is true, by the way. This is a line for line. I heard back from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. They asked me what position specifically I am inquiring about. I looked and I'm completely unqualified. But who knows?

[Ben Carlson]

Whatever it is, it's worth a shot. Is that the person you met with the other day?

[Michael Batnick]

No, it's in Bermuda.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, oh. Do you mean like the Central bank of Bermuda?

[Michael Batnick]

I believe so.

[Ben Carlson]

Haha. That's awesome.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, pretty funny. Who knows? Worth a shot.

[Ben Carlson]

I thought for a sec that Michael Badnik. Is that what it. Oh. I thought for a second that maybe it was a main bank there that has branches here.

[Michael Batnick]

I saw it in the Financial Times, there was a position for 100k, tax free. So I thought I'd shoot a resume. Never going to happen. But hypothetically, if the job was right.

[Ben Carlson]

I would go and I'll visit you on the sandy beaches.

[Michael Batnick]

Lol.

[Ben Carlson]

So how did you. How did the quasi lunch interview the other day go?

[Michael Batnick]

He had some good advice. By no means an interview, but he said he might be able to introduce me to a few heads. Yeah, that didn't happen neither. None of that happened. Did not introduce me to anybody.

[Ben Carlson]

So wait, you actually had a meeting with someone from Bermuda?

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

No, that was. That was just. I was. I was flailing hard. Can you imagine being a central banker in Bermuda?

[Ben Carlson]

What would you have done? First day we're cutting rates.

[Michael Batnick]

Let's get everybody around the Miami Vice.

[Ben Carlson]

We're going to double the Miami Vices on the island.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm gonna fix this island up real quick.

[Ben Carlson]

All right?

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know how this happened, but, like, my TV downstairs isn't working again. I don't know if it's the wall or what. Remember my line of the tv, which I still use, but I still. I still use the line of the tv. Now there's two lines. I don't care. Not buying anything. I'm having my. Finishing my coffee.

[Ben Carlson]

All right?

[Michael Batnick]

So my TV downstairs, this is a Sony tv and it just won't turn off. And so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it turned on. And now I can't get it to turn on or off. It's just. Well, it's just off. I bought a new remote. Guess what? TV hasn't been on for four days downstairs. I don't miss it. I think I'm just gonna.

[Ben Carlson]

My son has broken like 12 remotes of ours, so I'm.

[Michael Batnick]

But I don't think it's a remote thing. I don't know what to do. And I think. I mean, at this point. I mean, at some point I'm gonna have to do something.

[Ben Carlson]

You need a new TV. Yeah. TVs are so cheap today. Just buy a new one. I've just decided I'm out of the buying nice TV game because you get a new one every three years anyway because stuff like this happens. So I'm just not buying the nice hype. I'm buying the lower quality ones now. I don't care.

[Michael Batnick]

So I did that. I did that for the boys in their playroom. The problem with, like, the cheap TVs is it's the speed. Like the apps just don't work as quickly and they degrade so fast. So I don't. I think that you're right in terms of, like, picture quality, you know, whatever. They're all. They're all fine. I think it's like a software issue.

[Ben Carlson]

Buy a new tv, man.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't want to do it. I mean, I'm sure I'm gonna have to, but. Anyway, what do you got this week, Ben?

[Ben Carlson]

Recommendations? All right, listen to Andy Samberg on Good Hang with Amy Poehler. Continuing my streak of listening to just the initial episodes of a new celebrity podcast, because they always get their best guests, their friends in the first, like six months. And then it trails off. I'm a huge Andy Samberg guy. He seems kind of guy who's always in a good mood. Well, he did. He's done TV for a while and he still. He has a podcast and he does. He does a lot of different stuff. But he was talking about how from the point that he was 8 years old, he wanted to be on Saturday Night Live. And that was a dream of his from 8 years old. And I think, gosh, my twins are 8 years old, they don't know what they want to do tomorrow. And I wonder if that's because you and I were both late bloomers. We weren't the kind of kids who. We weren't reading the Wall Street Journal or dorm room in college or something. Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I bloomed when I was approximately 29 years old.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, we were both late bloomers for sure. And I wonder what's better, like, deciding from an early age I'm going to do this and then getting it, or like becoming a late bloomer. I guess there's probably pros and cons for each, but it just got me thinking, like, my kids have no, my kids are eight. What are you kids doing?

[Michael Batnick]

They gotta get life together. They have no ambition, loses.

[Ben Carlson]

But he talked about Lazy Saturday or Lazy Sunday. It was the first viral YouTube video ever, pretty much from SNL and his. And I still remember to this day getting the email from my friend being like, you have to watch this. And I gotta be honest, I didn't get it. Like, it wasn't funny to me. I thought his other stuff, like that one, for whatever reason, and it's still probably one of the biggest, most well known viral videos. But I always liked Dick in a Box, of course. But I'm on a boat. And I told you to listen to that on your boat, didn't I? When you got it. But I still. There was A friend in Chicago the week after that came out who rented a boat in Chicago and just played that song obnoxiously on a loop all day like it was a joke. Yeah, one of those ones. Like you can't tell if it's a joke or not.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. Have you seen F1 yet?

[Ben Carlson]

No, I have not.

[Michael Batnick]

What are you doing?

[Ben Carlson]

The kids are going to camp the first week of August. Then I'm gonna see a bunch of movies.

[Michael Batnick]

So I was in the theater last night, and I was just. I was with Logan, just the two of us at a giant screen, and I'm just like, this is the best. I love being in the movie theater.

[Ben Carlson]

That is your safe space. Right? It's your happy place.

[Michael Batnick]

But you gotta see F1 in the theater. I think you could skip everything else. Like, yeah, everything else can be seen.

[Ben Carlson]

Give me your Superman. I still got more, but give me your Superman.

[Michael Batnick]

No, you can finish.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Somehow my son got into Forrest Gump, and he watched it, like, three times in the span of a week.

[Michael Batnick]

Tough museum. What about. What do you do? What do you. Did you fast forward?

[Ben Carlson]

We had to fast forward a few scenes.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

But I was thinking if Forrest Gump was released today, because when it came out, it was just beloved by everyone.

[Michael Batnick]

The best.

[Ben Carlson]

And there were some.

[Michael Batnick]

There were some, like, people that tried to zag in Forest Gump, get out of here.

[Ben Carlson]

But I feel like if it came out today, because it's a movie that you. If you wanted to, you could nitpick a lot of it. I feel like it would get nitpicked to death if it came out today. Whereas in the 90s and it came out, people just like, oh, this is great.

[Michael Batnick]

I haven't seen it in a long time. I don't think I need to.

[Ben Carlson]

Honestly. It's still. It still gives you, like, the goosebumps. Like, the. It still pulls you in. I'm like, ah, this. It probably didn't age well, and it still works. And my son absolutely loved it. Finally, one more. This is a dumb one. I thought. I got movies mixed up. My daughter and I are still seeing all the sports movies which shout out to our friends at Benchmark. Sir, I think Alex Morris pulled this up. I mentioned that my daughter and I loved watching Miracle. And one of the guys from the Team OC works at U.S. benchmark Series. ETFs, right. FM investments. And they sent us a signed jersey I just got in the mail yesterday. Awesome. Like, made my daughter's year. She thought it was the coolest. I scored some Big time. Cool points there. So that was signed USA Jersey. We're gonna get that framed. I can't wait. So it recommended Heavyweights to us after all these sports movies we're watching. And I thought it was Little Giants. I got those two mixed up.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, I love Little Giants. Heavyweights is a comedy. No.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Do you know who wrote it?

[Michael Batnick]

Ben Stiller.

[Ben Carlson]

So Ben Stiller basically plays himself a little lighter version of himself in Dodgeball in this movie. This was his Dwight Goodman initial foray. He basically played the same character as Dodgeball in this movie.

[Michael Batnick]

I can't believe you're out on dodgeball. Makes no sense.

[Ben Carlson]

But this movie. Ben Stiller was pretty funny. Movie itself was terrible. Not funny at all. My daughter still kind of liked it. Judd Apatow wrote this movie.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, get out.

[Ben Carlson]

It's a movie about a bunch of overweight kids who go to fat camp in the summer. Which, again, this movie would never be made today.

[Michael Batnick]

No.

[Ben Carlson]

Because it'd be body shaming stuff. But I couldn't believe it said written by Judd Apatow. And it was not funny at all.

[Michael Batnick]

There was a fat camp by me. It was called Camp Shane.

[Ben Carlson]

Seriously?

[Michael Batnick]

Seriously. And Goldberg from the Mighty Ducks went there.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, he was in Heavyweights.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, of course he was. So he actually went to that camp in real life.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, okay. So, yeah, I just. I just thought another movie that never been made today. It was terrible.

[Michael Batnick]

Are you super dry on shows? Because I am, and I don't mind it.

[Ben Carlson]

Super dry. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

We just finished Wrexham again. I'm still in on that show.

[Michael Batnick]

What are you fixing? What did you fix?

[Ben Carlson]

Welcome to Wrexham.

[Michael Batnick]

What's it called?

[Ben Carlson]

Welcome to Wrexham. The ryan Reynolds soccer one. Ron McClani.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so I watched. I watched Jaws 2 because I listened to the rewatchables, and it was so funny. Chris Ryan and. And Simmons were just not Ryan fantasy. We're having a great time, like, literally belly laughing, talking about the movie. So I fired it up, and I forgot that I saw it. I. I saw it when I was very young, and it completely blacked it out of my brain because it was so bad. But I remember, like, when I got to the end and. And did you see just two ever long, long time.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, it's been 30 years.

[Michael Batnick]

So do you remember the scene at the end where. Where Schneider has the. The metal electric pole and Jaws bites down and blows it up? So I remembered that part of it. So I saw it, I guess. I don't know. If I was nine years old, I had no Memory of it. But then I rewatched Jaws jaw. It's the 50th anniversary.

[Ben Carlson]

Jaws still plays. I watched that last summer again.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so they're. They're actually doing a re release in imax, which I thought about seeing, but I'm not going to now that I just saw it this week. And it's amazing how good Jaws is. Was and is. Considering that it was, you know, the first Summer blockbuster in 1975 and how terrible Jaws 2 was. I'm trying to think of a.

[Ben Carlson]

It's because Spielberg made it.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, of course. I'm trying to think of a parallel, like, in modern times, like how just an iconic movie followed by a sequel that was inexplicably disastrous.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, especially like that. I mean, they had to do the money grab for it, but you're right.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm sure it exists, but. Unbelievable.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Jaws still works. Yeah, to this day.

[Michael Batnick]

Big time. Okay, so Superman, I was. I'm not a huge Superman guy. I'm not a big D.C. guy, to be honest. And I wasn't super duper looking forward to this movie, but it was a ton of fun.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, it. It totally worked. It was. I was glued to the screen. It didn't drag. We saw it at 7 o' clock and Logan stood up through the whole time. Did he like it? Loved it. So, like, it's not the Dark Knight by any stretch of the imagination, but it was. It was really good. And there's been a lot of really bad Superman movies, so this rocks. If you have kids, I highly recommend it. When I get to the theater, this is. This is what I do. I get a small popcorn, no butter, watch my weight. And I finish it, probably. Well, depending on when I walk in, I finish it in the coming attractions. I start the popcorn and then I finish it.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm probably. I always tell my kids they can't have any of their stuff till the movie starts.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Don't touch it till the movie starts.

[Michael Batnick]

So I'm probably. I don't know. How long does it take to finish a bag of popcorn? Five minutes? Five, six minutes, Boom, gone. I asked Logan if he wanted some.

[Ben Carlson]

He said, no, you like Tom Cruise?

[Michael Batnick]

And I have, like, popcorn all over the place. I get up and there's, you know, a bag of popcorn underneath me on the seats. So in the middle of the movie, Logan told me, asked me for popcorn, and I said, it's, wait, popcorn. Finish it an hour ago. He's like, no, I want popcorn. So I'm like, dude, do you really want popcorn? He said yes. So I left mid. Mid movie to get a bag of popcorn, and I came back. Now we're at an imax. Okay. And I come back and it is one of. It's a light scene, so the theater is fully lit up. Okay. You could see everybody. And I trip up the stairs, like three steps in front of Logan, and the popcorn flies everywhere. And I laughed because. What else do you do?

[Ben Carlson]

It was funny, but did everyone in the theater laugh?

[Michael Batnick]

I don't think so. No.

[Ben Carlson]

No. I would have laughed.

[Michael Batnick]

Didn't play. I would have laughed, too. So half the. So there's half a bag left. Anyway. Superman. Good mover.

[Ben Carlson]

Smooth move. All right.

[Michael Batnick]

CF1. Damn it.

[Ben Carlson]

It's the only one I want to see. I will. Trust me. Thank you. You didn't make a hard enough sale when you gave me your review, so now we're definitely going to see it.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. You can give us an update on your housing situation next week.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Animal Spring Minds would like to know.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, my God. An hour 13 on only 29 pages. We're getting very chatty, you and I. Getting very chatty.

[Ben Carlson]

Sorry, Duncan.

[Michael Batnick]

Animal spirits@the compoundnews.com thank you, everyone, for listening. Thank you, Duncan, and the whole production team. We'll be back next week. Enjoy the weekend.