There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett (EP.411)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast – Episode 411: "There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett"

Date Released: May 7, 2025

Hosts: Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson

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I. Hosts' Personal Updates

Timestamp: [02:59] - [04:22]

The episode begins with Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson sharing personal anecdotes about their health and daily lives. Michael mentions dealing with throat issues, while Ben discusses a septum problem that required medical attention. Their light-hearted banter sets a casual tone for the episode.

Notable Quote:

• Michael Batnick [03:12]: "I've got a little something. You're a throat clearer."

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II. Reflections on the Berkshire Annual Meeting

Timestamp: [04:22] - [07:58]

Michael recounts attending Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting during a T-ball game, highlighting Warren Buffett's enduring sharpness at age 95. They discuss Buffett's ability to handle live questions effortlessly, citing a memorable interaction about Portillo's Hot Dogs.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Batnick [06:12]: "Buffett was like, I do like hot dogs, but I don't think we own that one."
• Ben Carlson [07:14]: "He talked about how he drinks, like, five cherry Cokes a day and he's still fine..."

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III. The Uniqueness of Warren Buffett

Timestamp: [07:58] - [14:44]

Ben emphasizes that Warren Buffett is a "one of one" investor, drawing parallels to Michael Jordan's uniqueness in the sports world. They discuss how Buffett's disciplined approach and avoidance of social media scrutiny have contributed to his unparalleled legacy. The conversation touches on Buffett's investment philosophy, including his focus on businesses where cash flow exceeds the initial investment multiple times over.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [08:43]: "Buffett made it the thing that I think it's almost impossible these days for rich and powerful people to stay out of their own way."
• Michael Batnick [09:42]: "He never really made himself look like an idiot, that is the thing that I think it's almost impossible these days for rich and powerful people..."

---

IV. Market Outlook and Recession Discussions

Timestamp: [14:44] - [39:48]

The hosts delve into current market conditions, discussing volatility, drawdowns, and sentiment indicators. They analyze the sentiment polls showing unprecedented bearishness among institutional investors and contrast it with retail investor behaviors. Ben introduces analogies comparing market reactions to training a puppy, emphasizing the cyclical nature of investor behavior.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [24:00]: "The contrarian play is to go against everything. Because the barons had their big money poll..."
• Michael Batnick [33:03]: "TP to say you can have your own opinions and feelings about the market, but you just can't act on them."

They further explore the probability of a recession, debating varying definitions and the likelihood based on current economic indicators. The discussion highlights how divergent views and data can lead to conflicting market movements.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [38:21]: "Three out of every four. I think 60% chance is a pretty good way to go."
• Michael Batnick [39:16]: "That's recency bias. If the market was lower, you would not be saying this."

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V. Real Estate vs. Stock Market Experiences

Timestamp: [39:48] - [52:58]

Michael shares his personal experience investing in real estate to diversify his portfolio, contrasting it with the ease and liquidity of stock market investments. He recounts purchasing a rental property in Long Beach during 2020, the challenges faced with tenant turnover, and the complexities of real estate transactions compared to stock trades. The conversation underscores the differing time commitments and risks associated with each investment type.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Batnick [50:06]: “The time at 95 years old. Think about the mental state of most people at that age.”
• Ben Carlson [52:17]: “Quickly the transactions take place in the stock market versus real estate.”

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VI. Additional Topics: Crypto, Tariffs, Media, and Alcohol Trends

Timestamp: [52:58] - [59:50]

The hosts briefly touch upon the cryptocurrency market, noting Bitcoin's correlation with risk assets and its role as a potential indicator for market movements. They discuss the impact of tariffs on industries, particularly the entertainment sector, referencing recent policy debates and their implications.

Ben shifts the conversation to societal trends, highlighting a decline in global alcohol consumption among younger demographics. They debate the social and psychological effects of reduced alcohol intake, considering both positive and negative outcomes.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [46:02]: "Bitcoin was the first one to start railing, so it didn't really decouple from risk assets. It just led the charge."
• Ben Carlson [57:12]: “...30% of Americans in their 20s did not drink in the previous year.”

---

VII. Recommendations and Closing Remarks

Timestamp: [59:50] - [67:05]

Michael and Ben conclude the episode by discussing recent movies and TV shows they’ve watched, sharing personal opinions and reviews. They emphasize the importance of spending money on experiences, as illustrated by Michael’s recounting of a luxury family trip to Europe. The hosts also acknowledge their production team, praising their efforts in managing the podcast’s audio and video content.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Batnick [42:55]: "I'm a spender."
• Ben Carlson [43:46]: "But if you're spending on experiences like this... enjoy some of your money."

They wrap up with light-hearted banter about sports fandoms and the upcoming episodes, maintaining the podcast’s engaging and conversational style.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [66:43]: “Shout out to our compound media team.”
• Michael Batnick [67:05]: “Animals, spirits.”

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Key Insights and Conclusions

1. Buffett’s Irreplaceable Legacy: Warren Buffett’s unique investment approach, disciplined focus, and avoidance of public scrutiny have cemented his status as an unparalleled figure in investing. His ability to generate significant cash flows from investments distinguishes him in the financial world.

2. Market Sentiment Complexity: Current market conditions exhibit high volatility with unprecedented bearish sentiment among institutional investors. The hosts suggest that contrarian strategies might be beneficial given the extreme pessimism prevalent in the market.

3. Recession Probability: There is a nuanced debate regarding the likelihood and definition of an impending recession. While some indicators point towards a potential downturn, differing definitions and recent economic resilience make predictions challenging.

4. Investment Diversification: Real estate offers diversification but comes with increased complexity and time commitment compared to the stock market. The hosts advocate for understanding the distinct nature of each investment type to optimize portfolio management.

5. Societal Trends Impacting Markets: Declining alcohol consumption among younger generations could have broader social implications, affecting aspects like community engagement and personal relationships. Additionally, policy changes such as tariffs continue to influence specific industries, notably entertainment.

6. Value of Experiences: Investing in experiences, such as family trips, provides lasting personal value that contrasts with the financial returns of traditional investments. The hosts emphasize balancing saving and investing with spending on meaningful experiences.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Michael Batnick [06:12]: "Buffett was like, I do like hot dogs, but I don't think we own that one."
• Ben Carlson [08:43]: "Buffett made it the thing that I think it's almost impossible these days for rich and powerful people to stay out of their own way."
• Benjamin Carlson [24:00]: "The contrarian play is to go against everything."
• Ben Carlson [38:21]: "Three out of every four. I think 60% chance is a pretty good way to go."
• Ben Carlson [52:17]: “Quickly the transactions take place in the stock market versus real estate.”
• Ben Carlson [57:12]: “...30% of Americans in their 20s did not drink in the previous year.”
• Michael Batnick [42:55]: "I'm a spender."

---

This detailed summary encapsulates the core discussions and insights from Episode 411 of the Animal Spirits Podcast, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't tuned in.

Transcript

[Michael Batnick]

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[Ben Carlson]

What's that?

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[Ben Carlson]

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That's true, but I'm talking specifically about how do we quantify your ability to take risk. Y Charts did that. They launched Risk profiles. It's a new way to align your clients risk preferences directly to your investment recommendations.

[Ben Carlson]

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[Michael Batnick]

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[Ben Carlson]

Yep. They have these intuitive visuals that just, they go to the why behind your recommendation. That's the whole thing behind it. Right. Like there's a million different portfolios we could put together. Here's what you own and here's why you own it. Click the link in the show notes. Learn more about risk profiles. Get 20% off your initial White Charts professional subscription when you start your free White Charts trials through Animal Spirits. New customers only. Hit that ycharts.com for more. Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done right from your couch, online and on your schedule in 10 minutes. You. I think last time I did a fabric read and I said, hey, listen, my insurance for my, my life insurance is coming up soon because I started it, I got a 15 year term coverage. Right. And I didn't know if I needed to have another one. Guess what? I ran through the fabric app for getting a review and it literally took me seven minutes to go through the whole process. What are all your measurables? What's your health history? All this stuff. 57175 long walks on the beach. I'm not 175. Come on, man. But it was very easy.

[Michael Batnick]

You know what, you're right. I'm 175. You got to be 162. You have more muscle than I do, obviously.

[Ben Carlson]

162. Probably. Yeah. So the whole process was very easy. It's like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna email you your quote. That was it. In and out. I like that. I'm an efficient kind of guy. Right. Join the thousands of parents who trust fabric to help protect their family. Play today in just [e-mail] spirits. That's meatfabric.com Spirits policies are issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Prices are subject to underwriting and health questions. 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.

[Michael Batnick]

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I'm going to be doing some throat clearing on this episode. Forgive me. I've got a little something. You're a throat clearer.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I've got allergy stuff. I had to go see a doctor about it even.

[Michael Batnick]

Really?

[Ben Carlson]

I have a septum issue. I've always had it. Yes. So they had to give me medicine for it.

[Michael Batnick]

So on Friday night. Yeah, on Friday. I said, man, I'm having a horrible allergy attack. I'm allergic to pollen and, you know, the seasonal stuff. But then I laid down at night, I was really feeling it, and I got. Got some nose drippage. I said, this doesn't feel like allergies. It feels like a cold. You know what? This story sucks. Let me just stop. Let me just stop the story. Let's just.

[Ben Carlson]

You do get sick a lot, though.

[Michael Batnick]

Do I? I don't think you're sick.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Seems like you're sick all the time.

[Michael Batnick]

Robin thinks I get sick all the time. She is the most. Robin is very. She's a great wife. She. I'm in Boston tonight. She let me go to the nick, but she has no sympathy for me. When I get sick, she doesn't want to hear it, which is fair because I'm a big giant, giant baby when I get sick.

[Ben Carlson]

I feel like when you're an adult, you don't deserve sympathy for being sick. If you just have a cold, you don't deserve sympathy from anyone.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I don't want sympathy. I just want her to acknowledge. Yeah, you're sick. She doesn't care.

[Ben Carlson]

My wife always gets mad at me for showing a lack of sympathy, too, but I don't want any when I'm sick. When you're adult, you just have to. Like when you're the kids, you have to wait on them hand and foot and you have to be very nice and, oh, I'm so sorry you're sick. But when you're adult, like you don't get sympathy from anyone. You have to power through.

[Michael Batnick]

So over the weekend, I took advantage of Berkshire's annual meeting to take a walk during Logan's T ball game. Using an excuse. Got Buffett. It was. It was five hours long, at least on the quarter app, it was five hours long. Half of that was. Was a break.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, a kid's T ball game is about that long. Baseball is the most brutal sport. As a parent, don't you think that's not great?

[Michael Batnick]

So. But I got through three and a half hours of it, so I got. I. I think. I think I got through most of it. Did you listen to it?

[Ben Carlson]

I did.

[Michael Batnick]

Or you. You're a Cliff's notes guy. You don't. You're not a Buffett guy.

[Ben Carlson]

I did the Cliff Notes. I did the clips online. Everyone was sharing, and it seemed like a victory lap kind of thing. It was funny how some people were like, whoa, Buffett's stepping down. I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

What do you mean, victory? Like, I'm think. What do you mean?

[Ben Carlson]

Just like, it was a victory lap just for his whole career. People were celebrating. It was. I thought it was very. It was very nice. You know, people were sharing the. His compounded gain of like 5.5 million percent or whatever it is, which is just absolutely insane. It is kind of like when. When someone's grandparent dies and they're like 92. You don't. It's not, like, shocking. So they were 92 and they died.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. I feel like I should take the mic. No offense. I put in three and a half hours. You did not.

[Ben Carlson]

So I did pull some quotes, but have at it.

[Michael Batnick]

Thank you to me. Well, there's so many big takeaways. I don't wanna say the biggest one. I just have some notes. He's so Sharp at age 95. It is absolutely insane. The recall, the math, the fact that he took nothing but live questions, like, off the dome unprepared. A matter of fact, one of the live questions had me dying. Somebody asked. It had to be a Chicago guy. Like, hey, you bought Portillo's, The. The hot dog stand, right? They do roast beef too, I guess. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Amazing roast beef. The Italian beef there is amazing.

[Michael Batnick]

And so Buffett was like, I do like hot dogs, but I don't. I don't think we own that one. And I immediately googled it, and it says Portillo's. I said, who owns Portillo's hot dog? And it said, it's owned by Berkshire Partners, which is a Private equity firm based out of wherever.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, that's right.

[Michael Batnick]

And I'm thinking, like, that guy definitely went to the meeting telling all his bros, like, I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna find out why he bought our hot dogs.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, that's tough. He gets to the mic, and then that's the question he asks.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but it was so funny. Like, even the way Buffett answered, he's like, I don't. He's like, I know most of our companies. I know we own a lot, but I don't. I don't think we own that one. I don't know that one. Turns out they don't own that one.

[Ben Carlson]

It is kind of amazing. Him and Munger both live. So munger was, what, 98 when he died or something?

[Michael Batnick]

99.

[Ben Carlson]

And Buffett is. Yeah, 94. 95. And he talked about how he drinks, like, five cherry Cokes a day and he's still fine, which is obviously a little bit of a survivorship bias. But. So I think the longevity piece is. He talked about, well, it may be happier people live longer or something.

[Michael Batnick]

I buy that.

[Ben Carlson]

Such a DNA roll of the dice, though, don't you think?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. So I've been talking with Phil about, like, health and taking care of myself and stuff, and I'm, like, so conflicted because, yeah, I probably enjoy food and booze a little bit too much, but I do feel like it's so much DNA, you know? Like, obviously there are things that you could do at the margin to make yourself healthier, but I feel like. Feel like your fate is preordained.

[Ben Carlson]

You're just gonna roll the dice.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know. The dice has been cast as far as I'm concerned.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, that sounds to me like you're just giving yourself a free pass to eat and drink whatever you want, but.

[Michael Batnick]

Is that what it sounds like?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, so Buffett is a one of one.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnick]

He. There will never be another like him. At one point, he made the comment about never having institutional investors. Now, not to say that there weren't institutions that bought a stock, but the way that he built Berkshire over. Over the years.

[Ben Carlson]

Here's the other thing. Here's the other reason there's never going to be another one of him. I think of it kind of like Michael Jordan didn't come up in the social media era, so he was scrutinized, obviously, by sports writers and such. But he. He didn't grow up with that kind of spotlight where he had to be on all the time. And it's just a different era. If you watch all these billionaires tripping over themselves and making themselves look like idiots on social media these days. The fact that Buffett made it this long and never really made himself look like an idiot, that is the thing that I think it's almost impossible these days for rich and powerful people to stay out of their own way. The fact that he did that for so long makes me respect him even more.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, remember baby Buffett? Was that the COVID for Ackman?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Well, there was Ackman and there was David Einhorn and there's been tons and tons of this is the next Buffett. But that's the big thing.

[Michael Batnick]

You know what I mean? As Ackman is to Buffett, as Jerry Stackhouse was to Jordan.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, or her.

[Michael Batnick]

No offense, Detroit, but.

[Ben Carlson]

So I pulled a few quotes here. He still has some good quotes. He just says they asked about the stock market. He says nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, next month. But they spend all their time talking about it because it's easy to talk about. It has no value. I think it does have value because it's interesting and entertaining, but that's where it has to end. And this is why I think the idea of you can have your own opinions and feelings about the market, but you just can't act on them. Right. You know, I've been feeling very bearish lately because of the trade war, but I didn't act on it. And I think that's the. That's the thing he's saying is like you can have all the. All the opinions you want. Don't use them to think you know what's going to happen next in the market. Right.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. You know what? I always love when he talks about investments that he's made where the cash flow is now larger than the investment. That is so badass. For example, he said that they're now earning, I can't remember the numbers. Significantly more. I don't know if it's 10 or 20x more in earnings on their investment in Geico than their purchase price. Imagine paying $100 for something and in the future it's kicking off $2,000 a year in cash flow.

[Ben Carlson]

Wasn't that the idea that they make more in dividends on Coca Cola than they did for the purchase? Something like that. Right. Because he's been holding it for so long. He talked a little bit about trade. Maybe you can give me more color. But he just basically said we should not use this as a weapon. We should do what we're good at. Everyone else should do what they're good at. Was that basically he didn't go into it too much, did he?

[Michael Batnick]

That was it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. And I love how he, he always says he sings the praises of capitalism and just saying that, like I liked this part. He said capitalism in the United States has succeeded like nothing you've ever seen. It's a combination of this magnificent cathedral which has produced an economy like nothing the world's ever seen. I can't talk. And then, then it's got this massive casino attached. And he said it's very important in the United States that the next 100 years make sure that the cathedral is not overtaken by the casino. I thought this was a really good point. The people he's. I think he's kind of, and maybe you can correct me since you listen to the whole thing. I think he's kind of getting into the financial nihilism aspect of it. Like you can't view all of this stuff as it has no meaning. There's earnings and profits and dividends and all this stuff. That stuff matters, not the day to day stuff people are paying so much attention to. Is that what he was getting at?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. People lose sight of the fact that what are we doing here? We're actually investing in businesses.

[Ben Carlson]

Any other takes from the. Your three and a half hours. That's a long time. How many games did your son have?

[Michael Batnick]

No, well, I didn't. It wasn't. I listened to it over the weekend in several times Arenas. I listened to it while I was doing the dishes. I listened to it while I was driving and this and that. Two times speed. That's right. He was talking about the volatility of the last 45 days. And he wasn't poo pooing it, but he was just putting it to context, which is I think what I was trying to do. Relatively speaking, it was nothing. It was fast. Somebody had a good take today. I forget who tweeted this has ever been a 19% rise and fall. Now we're not back to all time highs, but without any fiscal stimulus or Fed intervention.

[Ben Carlson]

Didn't even have enough time to do it, did we? I'm sure in the past, just not in recent history. Did you read the Jason Zweig piece on how there's never going to be another Buffett?

[Michael Batnick]

I didn't tie if it earmarked. I just didn't get to it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, this is very good. And he talked about not only is. Does Buffett have like a computer for a brain. And he's one of the smartest people ever. And he's got the temperament and he's got the whole package as an investor. But he also says as a young investment manager, Buffett would wander through his house with his nose in a corporate annual report, practically bumping into the furniture, oblivious to the comings and goings of family and friends. While his kids played at an amusement park, he would sit on a bench and read financial statements. Buffett was there physically, but mentally and emotionally, he was off in a world of his own, fixated on tax loss, carry forwards and amortization schedules. So Zweig is saying, listen, Buffett, this is the, one of the only things he cared about. He put all of his time and effort to the detriment of his other relationships and basically saying, like, if you're going to emulate him, this is the kind of stuff he was put on this earth to analyze businesses, yeah, pick stocks. And he did that to the detriment of his own, his own relationship sometimes with friends and family. And Zweig was saying, that's one of the reasons there will never be another Buffett is because this is all he cared about, really.

[Michael Batnick]

So I forgot to mention, this is actually the top of my list that I skipped over. He said that he thanked Tim Cook who was in the audience, and he said it's the only earnest call that he listened to. And I was thinking, huh, so interesting, me, who fancies himself the modern Warren Buffett? I listen to a lot of earnings calls last week and the reason why I listen to the earnings calls is I get a lot out of them. And I was thinking some of the value that I got on the earnings calls last week, I listened to Starbucks, I listen to Spotify, and I thought, hey, wait a minute. As I saw the after hours market reaction, I'm listening to the calls and I'm thinking, these aren't that bad. I mean, very different companies. Spotify probably just, you know, the stock triple, it's a big deal. It was down a little bit in the, in the, in the pre hours, but the mark, the earnings call was good. They, they delivered. Listening to the startup is called Brian Nichols. I texted Josh, I said, because I was thinking like, do I sell? I believe this guy and the numbers weren't that bad and I believe the story. And I listened to him. Now obviously I'm kidding me versus Buffett. But his thing is he doesn't need to hear the story. You know why? Because he's read every financial, every annual and quarterly report of these companies that he follows for the last 20 years. He doesn't need to hear the bullshit spin from the CEO or the cfo. He sees the numbers, he doesn't care.

[Ben Carlson]

He doesn't care what the spin is. Right?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. He doesn't need to hear the story because the story is in the numbers and that's all he needs. So just a remarkable investor. The biggest losers on the planet are the Buffett haters.

[Ben Carlson]

Like, I'm sorry, trying to be a contrarian. I agree.

[Michael Batnick]

Is he a perfect person? Is he a perfect investor? Get a different hobby.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. I also wanted to mention the Alex Morris book, Buffett and Munger Unscripted. I've been going through this thing and the way that he set it up is so great because there's all these different headlines and it's really easy to go through and find what you want. So I've been looking for anything on like, like time horizons and volatility and we had him on the pod a couple weeks ago. If you missed that one for talk. Your book, it's great. The book is really, really helpful. It's, it's all of, all of the meetings and him and Munger talking. It's really, really good.

[Michael Batnick]

I chart can make this for us. They have a lot of cash on hand. I don't know what the number is. It's a lot. And on an absolute basis it's a lot. But even if you adjust it for a percentage of their market cap, it's a lot. It's only been higher at the, in, in 2020 and in 2005 and he got a lot of questions on this. And there's a, I mean there's a lot that goes into it. Number one, a $10 billion deal doesn't do anything for them. It's hard to put money to work at that size. But it's also true that he is waiting for a fat pitch and he spoke about how you can't time these things. He doesn't know if he's going to get a great deal tomorrow, next month, next year, in the next five years. But eventually there'll be a pitch for them to swing at. And right now they're just not finding anything of size that they can put to work.

[Ben Carlson]

So I think about this in real estate terms. If you're someone who, who is buying like multi million dollar houses, if you're shopping, your, your shopping list is very small. There's not a lot of multimillion dollar houses out there. I guess depending on where you live, that's the same thing with him. And one of the things I read today on this Buffett and Munger unscripted was he was talking about how Ben Graham never had, he didn't, never wanted to be Buffett or Munger. He wanted to keep his partnership small. And they were saying that his partnership was like $12 million. And Buffett was saying Graham didn't want to build a behemoth huge thing like we wanted to. He wanted to keep it small because he just found it interesting. And his life goal was never to be like one of the richest people alive. It wasn't really a game to him. So I don't know. Don't you think the fat pitch thing, they're going to be waiting for a very long time? Like they're it just at that size, they're one of the 10 biggest companies in the stock market now.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I don't know what type of pitch they're waiting for. I mean these are ridiculous examples but like Nike is down 70%. Disney's was down 50%. I mean there's, there was a million things to swing at. Now I'm not saying that those are the right businesses for them, but doesn't.

[Ben Carlson]

It also seem like the fat pitch thing doesn't work as well anymore because markets move so much quicker. Like he didn't get time to buy. Remember in 2020, he didn't buy anything he was selling.

[Michael Batnick]

Now hold on, there's like, I'm going to write a post about this, I think if I, if I can get to it. But I was looking at the, the returns of stocks over the last three years and there's a lot that are down a third or worse. Like a lot. How about a lot of opportunities?

[Ben Carlson]

How about this though? It was easier to find fat pitches back in the day when Buffett was just starting out than it is today. Way easier.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, there was things when he started that was literally trading less than the tangible assets.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

Where you could buy, where you buy a company, liquidate everything, buy it for a dollar, liquidate everything and get a $20. That, that those days are long gone. I mean, obviously.

[Ben Carlson]

So of all the Buffett numbers of outperformance, I think he has outperformed, Berkshire has outperformed over the past 10 years. You can see I put the chart in here. It's, it was basically neck and neck for a while and just recently it kept going up while the market was going down. But the fact that he outperformed over the last 10 years when value investors basically became extinct, I think this is honestly one of the most impressive things he's done. The fact that he outperformed in a concentrated market that was driven mainly by a handful of stocks and tech stocks. The fact that he timed that so well to buy Apple and outperform the S and P is kind of amazing at that size because he always says size is the enemy of outperformance.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, it wasn't him who pulled the trigger on Apple, but nevertheless, the fact that Berkshire performed the last 10 years is wild. The craziest out of them all is this. I think MEB is one that I first saw tweet this. And it's hard to believe that it's true that if Apple fell, I'm sorry, if Berkshire fell 99% today, it would still have been outperforming the S&P 500 since inception.

[Ben Carlson]

That is kind of mind blowing. Yes, it'd be kind of painful if you were a shareholder, but yes, that's a good one.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, let's talk about the stock market. Bespoke tweeted.

[Ben Carlson]

People keep saying that now is such a. People have been saying this is a terrible time to be a long term investor and a great time to be a trader. I don't know if I agree with that. I know that the volatility thing has been good, but this has been such a whipsaw market. Do you think traders are getting killed too if they're not just explicitly betting? I don't know. All right, go ahead. I can't imagine trying to guess this market is all I'm saying.

[Michael Batnick]

You're not a trader. You wouldn't know. The S&P 500 is on a nine day win streak. It's been more than 20 years since the index had its last nine day win streak. Me too. I don't get it.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so I looked at the drawdowns at the lows. So the S and P, this is closing was down 19%, the Nasdaq 100 was down 23% and the Russell 2000 was down 28%. Now the Russell's down still 18, the S&P is down 8 and the Nasdaq 100 is down 10. And we're, we're recording this Monday afternoon. We had to move our schedules around because Michael had to go see a Knicks game. Hardcore fan, man. You, you sent me a text the other day of it was game six against the Pistons and Brunson hit the three to, to seal the deal. And what did you do? You punched a light on accident and it broke In a bar.

[Michael Batnick]

There was like, a bunch of lanterns above me, I guess, and I didn't see it, and I jumped and I punched one and glass shattered everywhere.

[Ben Carlson]

And they didn't try to kick you out or like, say, hey, dude, the.

[Michael Batnick]

Bartender gave me a pound.

[Ben Carlson]

He didn't. He didn't care. Huh. All right, so I. I'm not a big fan of the whole American exceptionalism as a phrase. I just think that it's kind of. I don't know, it's kind of disrespectful to the rest of the world.

[Michael Batnick]

But can I take the other side of that?

[Ben Carlson]

Go for it.

[Michael Batnick]

We're maniacs.

[Ben Carlson]

That's part of it. I just like the name, I guess. Okay, go ahead.

[Michael Batnick]

I was at the airport today, by the way. I am. I'm in deep trouble. Tangent. There's a real ID thing. Do you know about a real id? Is this a New York thing or is this a countrywide thing?

[Ben Carlson]

I've heard of this, but isn't this just going to be a Y2K thing or. It's not as big of a deal as everyone says it is.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know, man. So I'm going to Colorado next week for future proof, and I don't have a real id, and my passport is expired, so I don't know what to do. I'm getting a. I'm going to. I don't. I don't know if. I don't think I have one. I just. I just order one. It takes 15 days to get here, so I don't.

[Ben Carlson]

This is gonna happen to a lot of people, though. There's no way they're gonna. Hold on this. There's no way. They can't.

[Michael Batnick]

I hope not.

[Ben Carlson]

Just give yourself some extra time.

[Michael Batnick]

Either way. My. Well, whatever. So I'm in. I'm in the lounge today. I. And people are zagging against lounges. Airport lounges. I. I can't be a bigger fan. Cannot possibly be a bigger fan of the lounge.

[Ben Carlson]

You know, I've. I've actually never been in one in my life.

[Michael Batnick]

What is wrong with you?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't see the need. It's not like I. I'm. I'm not an anti. Person.

[Michael Batnick]

Actually, you know what? All right. You know, I apologize. The Grand Rapids Airport.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. They don't have one.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Yeah, that's.

[Ben Carlson]

That's the thing. I. I'm in a small airport. I get in and I go, and I don't. Yeah, in New York, you have to.

[Michael Batnick]

That was very coastal elitist to me. I apologize. All right. The, the, the lounges are phenomenal. Just very comfortable. Free food, charging stations, good couches. It's the whole nine. Anyway, American exceptionalism. I was thinking about this. I'm in the lounge with, I don't know, a hundred people, maybe more, and everybody's working, everybody is on a phone call, on a zoom. We are maniacs.

[Ben Carlson]

It is true. People don't take a lot. And the other thing is, so I'm.

[Michael Batnick]

Thinking, so our corporate culture, the exceptionalism, it's not a moral thing. It's maybe the opposite. All we care about are profits.

[Ben Carlson]

So is the, is part of our exceptionalism the fact that we always buy the dip and just in. I'm talking about like the royal dip here. Like, we always think things will get better. We always think things will get better. And sometimes that's to our detriment because people keep saying, listen, one of these times. And yes, nine out of every ten. Nine out of every ten corrections. Ish. When you buy the dip, it's going to work out great for you. And then one out of 10, it's going to work out really, really bad for you because things are going to really crash. But I think those are pretty good odds that. Okay, not every time it's good. Of course it can't work out every time because otherwise, you know, it would be too easy. But I think the fact that we buckle up, buttercup even, and sometimes it may be the over optimism is to our detriment. I think most of the time it really helps us. I also think you were on this early saying, listen, whatever happens, people are going to say, and this, this whole thing is not over yet. Obviously there's still a long way to go to see how this plays out. But you can't say that there was nothing to worry about. Like the market forced his hand. The freak out from the markets was necessary. And here's how I look, here's my analogy.

[Michael Batnick]

I totally agree with you.

[Ben Carlson]

So we have. You.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, hold on. Ben, you. Ben, you said you tweeted like people say, oh, the market overreacted or people have reacted to the, to the tariffs. No, it's opposite.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

The overreaction is what caused him to back off.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, exactly.

[Michael Batnick]

So credit to you.

[Ben Carlson]

I look at this as do you. Have you seen the bitter apple spray for dogs? When you have a puppy and if the dog's chewing on something or the dog's barking, you spray the apple spray on them once and it kind of makes them like hit, hit them. And then all you have to do the next time is show them the bottle. You don't even have to spray them. You have to show them the bottle. We do this to my puppy. We have, right. I gave her one little spray to get her to stop chewing on stuff and now I just pull the bottle out.

[Michael Batnick]

You know Duncan's listening to this, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, is it. Hey, listen, this stuff is, it's, it's all natural, Duncan. It's organic. But so that's, I think that's what the market. That's one of the reasons I think the market is, is doing better than anyone could anticipated is, is because we know the spray bottle exists. All we have to do is show it to him next time he keeps pushing and then. Then backs off. Right. You didn't need to keep spraying the market over and over. Just had to spray it once and it already did that fair?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. So Luke Kawa looked at what the dip buying looks like and he shows that the riskiest stocks are the ones that came back in favor immediately. So it's high volatility stocks, crazy high beta stocks. And then profitability and dividend stocks are lagging. This is since the bottom on April 8th. It's also interesting. I looked at where things are from the bottom in international stocks are outperforming on the bounce, which I, I wouldn't have thought so. The EA is up 18% from the lows S&P is up 14 and the Nasdaq is up 17. I would have expect, I would, I would expect that international stocks to lag here. And obviously part of this is the dollar still, I suppose. But this is surprising, no?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

International stocks were surprising outperforming going into it. Yeah, they were outperforming going into this Liberation Day stuff and they've been outperforming coming out of it too. That's a shocker to me.

[Michael Batnick]

Ben, you mentioned this last week, but you tweeted about it and I think it's just. I want to spend another second on this. You said we've never had an actual recession in the social media era. It's going to be very weird if and when it happens. People freaking out, people saying it's fake, people who enjoy the calamity of it, people taking advantage of other through fear tactics. That will be nuts. You're spot on. It's going to be really. It's going to be a lot of things I didn't.

[Ben Carlson]

I tweeted this out. I didn't realize there's still a whole contingent of people and it's all political that think 2022 was a recession still, which is insane to me that because they thought the GDP fell 2/4, which it was actually revised and only fell 1/4. So people, there's some people who are on the corner of, hey, there was a recession in 2022.

[Michael Batnick]

Again, these are maybe, okay, maybe an earnings recession, maybe. But wait, how could there be a recession with 4.1%? What did unpleasant peak at 4 point?

[Ben Carlson]

The unemployment rate literally fell in 2022 from 4% to 3.5% or something.

[Michael Batnick]

So, yeah, yeah, that's not a recession.

[Ben Carlson]

But there. This is not just people being out of practice. It's. It's. We've never again 2020. There was so much other stuff going on and it was over so fast. If I just. Even a mild recession is going to be very weird to think about because I feel like if again, if we have like a 1 1/2% GDP decline recession or whatever, and it happens to be the unemployment rate goes to six, it's going to be very mild. But I feel like the way people react to it is going to be very interesting. I think there's just going to be an extreme range of how people handle it.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So, all right, I'm guessing you had Char could create this historical 19% drawdowns. We spoke about this last week. I pulled a Brent Hatley and pulled a citizens arrest. That's a Howard reference for you, Ben, who don't know what I'm talking about and listeners. So five 90% drawdowns. And I was looking at your menchis and it is tricky because you have to draw the line somewhere on what a bear market is. But it's not just the depth of the decline. The duration matters too. But then it's like, all right, well, was 2020 not a bear market because it lasted 23 days. That's absurd. So how do we think about adjusting for time and depth? There's got to be some sort of work that could be done here.

[Ben Carlson]

It's funny, a lot of people in my mention said, who cares? And I said, I do, because it's kind of fun to argue about. Yeah, this is what we do. Yes, I agree. Shorter term. What's the X Nvidia stuff here?

[Michael Batnick]

All right, this is wild. Since the bottom in October 2022, Japan and Europe have outperformed the S and P. If you strip out Nvidia.

[Ben Carlson]

So this isn't just mag7. This is just Nvidia. Huh?

[Michael Batnick]

Just Nvidia.

[Ben Carlson]

That's from the guide to the markets. That's a pretty good one.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Let's talk about like, what the hell is this bounce all about? And do we buy it or not? Hand up. I don't buy it. I'm not calling bullshit all the way, but let me ask you this, Ben. Well, the audience says this. Duncan pulled the audience. We are in a bear market rally or new bull market. Two thirds of the audience says bear market rally. Let me ask you a two part question. Number one, was that the low?

[Ben Carlson]

I need a decision tree.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes or no? Yes or no, was that the low?

[Ben Carlson]

Do we go into recession?

[Michael Batnick]

Was that the low?

[Ben Carlson]

Give me a time horizon I need.

[Michael Batnick]

For the rest of the year. Yes, that was the low.

[Ben Carlson]

I think so.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, do. Does the market close higher or lower from where we are today by the.

[Ben Carlson]

End of the year? Yeah, lower. That's my feeling and I'm probably wrong.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I think I agree with both of those. Which means that we've got to be wrong. All right, so Heisenberg tweeted, this is what the wall. This is what Wall street banks are saying. Goldman Sachs markets might not have bottomed. Wells Fargo could retest the lows. Morgan Stanley retesting the low end of 5000 range is feasible. JP Morgan sees S&P 500 falling to 4000. A worst case scenario. Bank of America sell the rebound in U.S. stocks.

[Ben Carlson]

So the contrarian play here is to go against everything. Because the barons had their big money poll, their money managers are more bearish today than they've been in nearly 30 years. So they go back to 1997 and they find 32% of respondents are bearish on the outlook of stocks for the next 12 months. And they said that's higher than it's ever been even in 2008. Which shows how sentiment readings are just so off the charts now. So yes, if you're looking for contrarian magazine indicators, bearish sentiment polls, all that stuff, fade Wall Street. The contrarian play is. No, this, this is actually going to have legs.

[Michael Batnick]

And here's another one from super trade. 48 and a half percent of consumers is from the conference board now expect stocks to fall over the next 12 months. That's the most pessimism since October 2011. So nobody is really buying it. Who knows?

[Ben Carlson]

It's just.

[Michael Batnick]

It just seems hard to believe that.

[Ben Carlson]

Except retail investors, Maybe the Robin Hood, I don't know, is the Robinhood crowd. Does that count as. Is that a contingent now?

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, yeah, okay. Is it a contingent? But I haven't listened to the Robinhood Earnings call yet, which I'm going to get to. But I listened to cme, which is a stock that I bought after being tired of staring at it go up every single day. And they were asked on the earnings call about retail. It's a huge part of their story and Robinhood specifically. Huge part of their story.

[Ben Carlson]

So this is institutions in Wall street versus retail. That's where we're at with this round.

[Michael Batnick]

There's different parts, there's different part, there's different all sorts of. But within retail there's all sorts of different cohorts. All right, here's a good one. Another one from Super Trade. So The S&P 500 was up seven straight days while under the 200 day moving average. Now I don't know if the numbers change after being up nine straight days. Whatever. Point is if you go out, oh, this is so short term. My bad. He's looking one day, two days, two weeks, one month later. All right, disregard. I apologize. I thought it went out further in time. Results are mixed. But it's only a month. Who cares?

[Ben Carlson]

So this is from JP Morgan said retail traders on net bought $40 billion in April, surpassing last month and setting a new record for largest monthly inflow ever.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow. Good for them. Bobo is not so stupid.

[Ben Carlson]

So remember the Peter lynch quote spending like spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would a refrigerator. Like he said, most people spend more time researcher and refrigerator to buy them to do a stock. This is from the Wall Street Journal, Mark Hulbert. So median investor that from according to these professors at New York University, the median investor spends just six minutes of research before buying a stock and a bulk. The bulk of that already short research time is devoted to pursuing a price chart of the stock's recent performance and often just the current day's trading session. So they said that they looked at this data by studying clickstream data, which is like browser history of these. I don't know how they got all this stuff, but they looked at several hundred investors and they looked at the websites they visited and what they looked at and how long and it was six minutes. And they said they looked at over 60,000 hours of Internet use. So I guess that's a lot. Do you think that's in any way accurate? Because I feel like for a lot of people it probably is.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

You see the opinion of someone online or on financial television and you kind of buy into it and do a little quick perusal just to make yourself feel better and buy.

[Michael Batnick]

I buy that.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I Totally do.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. Remember three weeks ago, yields were spiking, dollars were dumping, stocks were dumping. It was pretty, it was pretty scary cocktail. Not a great taste. It was a malort cocktail, if you will. Turns out people start running on bonds. Bank of America Global research is showing that we just had the biggest four week inflow to treasuries since 2023.

[Ben Carlson]

So rates got up to whatever 4.5% and people said, all right, that sounds pretty good to me, I'll buy it. That makes sense. I think Matt Klein kind of nailed it. We talked about this a couple weeks ago and he said what if a lot of this initial movement right now is just offsides positioning and people are getting right sized.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, let's talk tariffs. So Torres and Slok, I don't know where the survey comes from, but they were asked what our firms going to do in response to higher tariffs. And the number one response, both manufacturing and services companies was they're going to pass a cost increase through the, to, through to customers. The lowest response was relocating production or.

[Ben Carlson]

Services to the US So about what you expect, right?

[Michael Batnick]

It's not going to happen. It's just going to make prices go up.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. And there's going to be a lot of big firms that get carve outs and a lot of little firms that probably don't. I think that that's kind of where I think it's falling. All right. I do think it'll be interesting to see how this period is viewed through the lens of history. Maybe some people don't care, but I do think people are going to look at this and go, I've been saying for a while now that people are going to think about the economy in 2023, 2024 and be nostalgic for it very quickly if all this stuff keeps happening. But this is interesting from the economists. They talk about the golden age and they say of all the golden ages, the greatest is here now. Of all the progress of the past 10,000 years in raising human living standards, half of it has occurred since 1990, which is just kind of mind boggling to think about it. But it actually kind of makes sense when you think about what's happening, Internet and stuff. And they're saying like the trade war is possibly taking some of that back. I don't know how much. Obviously that it seems like a little bit of a stretch, but I just think in some ways people don't realize how good we have it. And when you don't have a lot of problems, sometimes you just make Them up on your own.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I think Duncan polled the audience, Ben, he asked will the stock market be higher or lower than it is today? Without looking, what do you think the respondents was votes? Over a thousand votes. So pretty healthy.

[Ben Carlson]

I bet pretty close. Like 60% say lower.

[Michael Batnick]

That's what I would have thought. 65% say higher.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, okay, that, that makes sense. That makes sense with history though, I guess.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, optimistic audience.

[Ben Carlson]

We were down in 2022. We're up in 23 and 24. So you'd have to say 2025 and changing. My answer is going to be higher because on average three out of every four years we're up. Final answer. We're up. End of the year. All right, so I want to talk about the Doge stuff a little bit. So Michael Semblis did a piece on I final answer.

[Michael Batnick]

You just changed your mind just like that. Just because you just went with the audience. That was it.

[Ben Carlson]

I thought all the prob. I'm going probability based. I'm not going feelings or trade wars or anything. I'm probability based. We're only down what, 5% on the year now? 6% changed my answer. I didn't, I didn't do. I didn't stamp it before.

[Michael Batnick]

Very open minded.

[Ben Carlson]

Double stamps, a triple stamp. All right, so Michael Semblas did this thing on, on the Doge cutting of government spending. And he's been kind of all over this from the beginning. And he was one who said initially, listen, unless you cut defense spending or Social Security or Medicare, it's not going to move the needle. Here's why I think the Doge thing was actually good in some ways. So this is on polymarket they have this thing, how much spending will doge cut in 2025? And it's an 80 or 90% chance that it'll be less than $50 billion. So a very, very small amount. They were promising $2 trillion in cuts or whatever. Obviously they looked at the books. Here's why I think Doge is actually a good thing and maybe a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. I'm shocked they didn't find more waste to get rid of. So maybe that's actually a good thing that there wasn't like this big huge thing that they could point to and go, can you believe what we're spending money on here? And obviously they cut some things that made people mad and they cut some things that maybe should have been cut.

[Michael Batnick]

But that's a good point.

[Ben Carlson]

The fact that they couldn't. They almost did an audit, I guess, and realized, like, actually, we know what we have to do to cut it. It's just, will people allow it or will, you know, government officials jump on that grenade or whatever it is? But the fact that they didn't find anything that was like, what have we been doing here? I think that's actually a good sign that, okay, maybe the resources haven't been. We know those big, huge things. How do we fix them? Or how do we get people to want to fix them?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, good observation, Ben.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, thank you, Michael. Building me up today. Kelsey had the recession odds this year up to 75 chance last week. And this is, I think, on the day the GDP report came out as negative. And I think it's down a little since then. Okay. I think it was down to 60s or something. I feel like for the betting odds, that 75%.

[Michael Batnick]

That's high. That's too high.

[Ben Carlson]

Three out of every four. I feel like percentage is just people's mind. Like, when you see it's going to, you know, there's a 60% chance of rain here. If you see 60%, you think it's definitely going to rain.

[Michael Batnick]

75% means I spent too much time at Scubana Boy. If it's. If it's not 80%, you're not faking me out.

[Ben Carlson]

I think 60% chance. So this is this year. I think 60% chance is a pretty good way to go. I think that's a pretty good line in the sand for where we are right now.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, how would you say there's a 60% chance of a recession and the markets could be higher by the end of the year?

[Ben Carlson]

Because I think there's going to be some very confusing results when it comes to the stock market and the economy. I think they're going to be totally. I think sometimes we're going to get economic data and the stock market's going to fall. Sometimes it's going to rise because they're going to think Fed cuts. And I think we had a 20% correction like that. And I think there's just going to be some very confusing and weird behavior in the stock market. Is that fair or is that too cute?

[Michael Batnick]

That's recency bias. If the market was lower, you would not be saying this.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe. Because again, it could be the fact that the market's saying, show me an actual economic slowdown. The data hasn't shown it yet. I'm not going to go down more until you show it to me. That could be it, it's worth mentioning the ember like results is not just 2, 2/4 in a row of falling GDP growth. It's personal income.

[Michael Batnick]

That was never a thing. I feel like I wrote about this seven years ago.

[Ben Carlson]

It was never the definition.

[Michael Batnick]

Jason Zweig wrote about this, I think in the, in the literal, maybe. I don't know if it was the 90s. I feel like he did. It was never two consecutive quarters. It was like a, I forget what the language is. Was it a, a general decline in overall business activity measured.

[Ben Carlson]

They look at employment and income and personal expenditures and retail sales and industrial production. All these different six categories or something. Plus if you look at, if, if that is the definition two quarters in a row, then we didn't have a recession in 2020 because it didn't go down for two quarters in a row. It went down for one quarter. All right. And I continue to believe so. This is another one from the guide to the markets. JP Morgan shows total assets versus total liabilities. And total assets is like 190 trillion. Total liabilities is 20 trillion. This is the margin of safety for people. And even if assets get hit, if we got into recession and assets fall whatever, 15 or 20%, there's still a huge, huge margin of safety for most consumers. And that is why you think like, I don't know what the financial crisis level would have to be if the tariffs were just so high. It caused some sort of panic. I just, I don't see it being terrible. CNBC says it's still inequality of consumers. So they're saying that low income earners and this is all your credit card calls you've been listening to lately. I feel like you've been on the credit card corner a lot. So they're saying low income earners are cutting back according to all the credit card lenders. So they're looking at like Lowe's and TJ Maxx and then American Express and JP Morgan that those spenders which are higher income are continuing to spend and increasing their spending. So here's the qu. I. We keep saying, what's going to get people to stop spending money? It's like, oh, recessional, Job loss.

[Michael Batnick]

Job loss.

[Ben Carlson]

No, but what causes rich people to stop spending? That's different.

[Michael Batnick]

Nothing. No, no. Well, that's not true. I don't, I don't mean that.

[Ben Carlson]

Is it gonna have to be like, is it gonna have to be seeing their friends get like, what? I don't know what it, what, what is gonna make rich people stop spending money and going on Vacations and buying expensive stuff. I don't know what it is.

[Michael Batnick]

Job loss.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. And seeing friends lose. I don't know. All right, great email here. Do you want to read this or me? You read it. You're a better reader than me.

[Michael Batnick]

I landed in the States yesterday after a one week trip to Europe while taking one's family, two adults, two children, to Europe doesn't quite reach the not to break standard. Yes, it does. Both of you have preached that money is not only to be saved and invested, but also spent as a natural saver like Ben. This is difficult for me. I have not looked at the total damage. But we flew business class and stayed in a luxury hotel there. It is not to brag. This is a tremendous amount of money that wasn't required, but made the trip above and beyond what it otherwise would be. I'm still comprehending the numbers, but I'm quite certain in 30 years I won't care and will remember the trip fondly. Yeah, great, great stuff. You know, it's so interesting where, where the money feelings come from. Is it nature? Is it nurture? I'm a spender and I didn't grow.

[Ben Carlson]

Part of it is personality based in, in how you grew up. Right.

[Michael Batnick]

But I. Not that I didn't grow up poor, but I didn't grow up going on to. There was no plane vacations for us. We didn't go to. I, I didn't go to the Caribbean until I was an adult. But I am just not. Maybe I'm just not risk averse. Maybe I'm risk seeking. I don't know, I don't know what it is, but I, I'm a spender.

[Ben Carlson]

But it's good to hear this from people. That saying, like we're not telling people to go blow all your money and just be crazy, but if you're spending on experiences like this and he was saying, like, our kids are getting older, we're not going to be able to do this very much longer. And yet it's painful to, you know, pay off that credit card bill or whatever it is, but you're never going to forget that trip.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a shame. And I'm context. I know I'm. This is a first, this is a champagne shame. Okay? But for people that have money that can't spend, it's like, what are you doing?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, right. Enjoy it.

[Michael Batnick]

That's what it's for. It's a tool to enjoy life. You. We're gonna die. Enjoy it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I think we are. Yes. You're A spender. I'm a saver. I become more of a spender because of, you know, life events. And this is one of the things I just. I'm. I feel very strongly about. Enjoy some of your money.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So I got somebody asking me to send them an autograph book, and I. I keep putting it off because. I apologize.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm a procrastinator with. With too many things in my life, and I couldn't. I was.

[Ben Carlson]

Is there an Uber for mail? I. I always do this, too, where I'm. I'm sending books to people. There should be an Uber for mail. Like, hey, we'll pick it up for you and send it off to you. Because going to the post office is such a pain in the butt.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, I did go to post office once, actually, matter of fact, and it was. There was a line I left. So anyhow, I Googled. So there's a. There's a Gemini tool now in your.

[Ben Carlson]

Inbox, Mr. Big Time. Can't wait in line, huh?

[Michael Batnick]

I cannot wait in line. I said, find me addresses, because I know that they gave me their address. So boom, two seconds, found me the address. All I said was like, find me an address in my inbox.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, that's pretty cool. So I can't remember what I was typing in on ChatGPT the other day, but I think I put maybe a doc we were looking at and like, hey, come up with some questions here. But it also said, would you like me to take this outline that I just prepared for you and turn it into a PowerPoint presentation? And I said, yeah, sure, let's take a look at it. And it was very rudimentary in that it wasn't. It wasn't very formatted very well or anything. But then I took one of my PowerPoints. I'm a very simple PowerPoint person. I don't make it all pretty and stuff. I keep it very clean. But I said, hey, take my PowerPoint and make it look better for me or offer some tips. And it didn't do a very good job of it yet, but someday it's going to be like that, and that's going to be amazing. Like, hey, take this PowerPoint presentation I did, that's very simple and basic, and make it look way better.

[Michael Batnick]

And something is coming soon.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, that is coming. All right, let's talk about crypto a little bit. So we had this discussion two or three weeks ago, and you were asking the question, is Bitcoin decoupling from Risk Assets, or is it leading US out. And I think you were the first one to say, like, what if bitcoin is leading us out? Because it was just a few days where it decoupled from the nasdaq. And if you look at this, this is the last three months of bitcoin. This is IBIT versus the Qs and credit to me, yeah, bitcoin didn't really decouple from risk assets. Bitcoin was. Can you say canary in the coal mine? Because that's the opposite. Because that's like bad stuff coming. What's a good analogy for carrying the coal mine? But bitcoin was the first one to start railing, so it didn't really decouple from risk assets. It just led the charge.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Which is kind of interesting. All right, so I was in Marco for spring break a few weeks ago and I'm a middle aged guy. So you put stuff into Zillow, Right? Let's check out the neighborhood, check out the houses around here. And once you put a new place into Zillow, they start sending you off emails all the time. Hey, look at this house. And look at these, these emails I pulled all from like yesterday. $300,000 price cut, Marco Island, $225,000 price cut, $55,000 price cut. I'm seeing these all the time now. Is there a real housing slowdown on the west coast in Florida?

[Michael Batnick]

On the what? Well, on the west coast of Florida.

[Ben Carlson]

So not in the east coast.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I don't know. I don't. I'm not a Floridian real estate expert, but the west coast is getting bombed with hurricanes.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm sure that's part of it. And the insurance is part of it. There's probably a lot of demand pull forward too. So if you look at, I just pulled up Case Shiller Miami. This is since the start of the pandemic. Case Shiller Miami housing index is up 81% and the national housing price index is up 54%. So maybe some of this was just pulled forward. But I'm sure you're right. Part of it is just the insurance stuff, the hurricane worries. Maybe a lot of baby boomers pulled forward their purchases then. And so I just think if, if you are, you're in a way better negotiating power as a buyer than you've had in, I don't know, 10 years maybe. It's a long time since you've had this kind of power.

[Michael Batnick]

Buffet was asked a question about real estate versus stocks and I love this answer so much. Just bear with me. It's it's two and a half minutes, but it's worth listening to.

[C]

Well, in respect to real estate, it's so much harder than stocks in terms of negotiation of deals, time spent, the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership. Usually when real estate gets in trouble, you find out you're dealing with more than equity holder. But there have been times when.

[Michael Batnick]

Large.

[C]

Amounts of real estate have changed hands at bargain prices. But usually stocks were cheaper, but they were a lot easier to do. So Charlie did more real estate. Charlie enjoyed real estate transactions and, and he actually did a fair number of them in the last five years of his life. But he was, you know, he was playing a game that was an interesting game too. But I think if he asked him to make a choice when he was 21 and he had to either be in stocks exclusively the rest of his life or lose, stay the rest of his life, he would have chosen stocks in a second. There's just so much more opportunity, at least in the United States, there's so much more opportunity that presents itself in the security market than it does in real estate. Than in real estate. You're dealing with, usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns maybe a large property, they've had a long time, maybe they borrowed too much of money against them, maybe the population trends are against them, but to them, it's an enormous decision. When you walk down to the New York Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business, totally anonymous, and you can do it in five minutes and the trades are complete when they're complete. In real estate, when you make a deal, big deal with a distressed lender, you know, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase. I mean, then people start negotiating more things and more things, and it's a whole different game. And a different type of person to some extent enjoys the game. We did a few real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 9, but the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent and probably better and securities, there was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every, every sentence is as important to the person. And, and in stocks, if somebody needs to sell 20, 000 shares of Berkshire or something and they call us and the price is right, it's done in five seconds, and, and it closes all.

[Michael Batnick]

The time at 95 years old. Think about the mental state of most people at that age. So I haven't spoken about this on the podcast because I didn't want the. Yeah, scrutiny, whatever I bought a rental property in 2020. And for me at the time, the decision was my entire life is in the stock market, my entire livelihood, my earnings, my career, my liquid investments. So I decided I was going to buy a piece of real estate to diversify. And I got very stupid lucky with the timing. So I bought a house in Long beach in 2020. And the obviously real estate has gone bonkers. And I've. I got super duper lucky. I had one tenant and you had.

[Ben Carlson]

A 3% mortgage, right?

[Michael Batnick]

2.875. Not to brag. She was wonderful. Never missed a payment. And this year I said, I assume, I said, I haven't heard. I assume we're good for next year. And she goes, no, actually, I'm moving out. And I said, okay. And so I made the decision, I spoke to Rob and I said, let's sell it. I just. The reason why, a couple of reasons. Number one, I pulled forward 20 years of returns, like the purchase price versus the sale price. I would have taken me 20 years in a normal market to get this sort of return. Number two, and more importantly, every single time I got a text message from her, my you know what went into my throat. And thank God there was never anything major.

[Ben Carlson]

Didn't you have to replace something, an AC unit or something? Didn't you have to do something?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, there was leaks and AC unit. Yeah, all sorts of things. And I did wonderfully well. I listed the house in April and I should be in contract now, but even still, there's three months without any tenant. So that's three months where I have to carry the mortgage, which is not great. So I ended up doing like, I think 25% compounded for five years on the, on the transaction point about how.

[Ben Carlson]

Quickly the transactions take place in the stock market versus real estate. And he's right. You sign a contract and then it's like, hey, our inspector found this. Let's knock a little bit off the price and let's the back and forth. That's. That's why most real estate investors end up just being buy and hold and don't want to do transaction because it's.

[Michael Batnick]

A pain in the ass and the transactions are expensive. So listen, I don't want to spike the football because God knows what they're going to find in the inspection. But the thing that I've learned after doing this is you either, you either like really do it, not, not, not, not to be a professional as a career, but you either really do it seriously. And you're like, all right, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to buy five of these things. Whatever. I'm going to get a group of money together and do this, and we're going to have a management team.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Hire a property manager, Right? Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Because otherwise you get an imagine. Not a matter. You get a I got a text message on vacation.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

Hey, this. This. I'm like, I don't. What do I know? I can't fix anything. So it's not to say that stocks are good, real estate is bad. I don't want to give that impression.

[Ben Carlson]

But it's a different ball game.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a totally different ball game.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, look at this tripod. I pulled this out. I saw somebody tweeting about Estee Lauder. The company's in an 80% drawdown, and wouldn't you know it? What a coincidence. Not. The stock has followed the earnings per share almost to the T. Because to Buffett's point, that's what we're doing here. That's what we're doing. And the reason why I am and remain optimistic, and hopefully forever will be, I hope, is because we are maniacs. The citizens of this country are maniacs. We are greedy. We move the goalposts. We are never satisfied. And while that can be psychologically sad, perhaps, and damaging for individuals, for all of us, it's great because we all want to make more money. And ultimately that shows up in earnings per share, shows up in profits.

[Ben Carlson]

So who's the winner if Estee Lauder is a loser? Because I've been looking at this lately because my. My daughters are now into, like, the skincare game. I don't know if they found this on YouTube, influencers or what. My daughters are all about buying. They. They love going to Sephora, so anytime they get a birthday or something, now it's, hey, I want a gift card to Sephora so I can go buy lotions and sprays and whatever skincare stuff. And it's crazy to see my daughters at this. This is just what the girls are doing now. And I had to look to who owns Sephora, and I think it's.

[Michael Batnick]

It's lvmh.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, LVMH owns them.

[Michael Batnick]

And they're getting killed, too, by the way.

[Ben Carlson]

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's in a pretty good downturn too, huh?

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so there's 100% tariffs on foreign movies. If I was a better writer, I would have nailed this joke already. But I said to you, there's a Coming to America joke in here somewhere.

[Ben Carlson]

Ah, yes, I got, I got. Yeah, the guys in the barbershop wouldn't like it. So this is from Bloomberg and they say Trump's post, he posted about this on Truth Social Fell meetings that he had over the weekend with Jon Voight and his manager. Barclay says if this is deployed on a wide scale, it may end up harming the very industry it's supposed to help, especially given that the US Exports three times the amount of content that it imports. And then the wall waitoffs came out today and I'm sure, hopefully Tom Cruise put the call in. I think he could save us from these. The White House says no decisions have been made. We're exploring all options. Who gets, who gets a carve out here? Guy Ritchie movies gets a carve out. I hope the parasite guy gets a carve out.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, wait, Denis, any.

[Ben Carlson]

Any sort of brick.

[Michael Batnick]

Actually, you know, most of the best directors are. I don't know about most, but the two that come to mind, Denis and Christopher Nolan, foreign directors.

[Ben Carlson]

What are we doing here?

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I thought tariffs were about national security. What the is this nonsense? You're going to mess with my imax.

[Ben Carlson]

And I saw, I saw Netflix and Disney are down today. And I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

Cardiff Garcia posted this from. It says the industry generated a positive balance of trade in every major market of the world. $22.6 billion in exports. It's a $15 billion trader plus. Just stop with the nonsense. Can we stop with the clown show already? Good grief. How about this? This is good news. Amazon, MGM is test driving a new romantic thriller with speed duo Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. I'm in.

[Ben Carlson]

Wow. Okay. But it's not a speed reboot. It's just another. Yeah, Speed two was just a travesty. I can't believe they made it without him.

[Michael Batnick]

You know what? Credit to me, I never saw that movie.

[Ben Carlson]

It's on a cruise ship. I rewatched the original Speed lately. It still holds up. I watched it a couple months ago.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a perfect movement. Yes. No fat.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, from the Economist. You and I have talked about this before. Sobriety is taking over the world. The amount of alcohol. The amount of alcohol consumed globally is probably in decline for the first time in history across rich countries. Many members of Gen Z born born after the late 1990s are shunning alcohol entirely. 30% of Americans in their 20s do not did not drink in the previous year. And I know that there are problems with alcohol, health related problems, domestic violence, alcoholism. There are a lot of bad Things that come with it. I think the fact that people are drinking less is a bad net negative for society because the whole socializing thing of. I think it helps get people offline and it makes. Puts people in a better mood. It relaxes them. They actually.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, when you need alcohol to have fun, Yeah, I do.

[Ben Carlson]

So they said. A 2012 study found that alcohol increases social bonding. And they found that people who frequent a pub feel more engaged in their community. They have higher life satisfaction. And this says it is not a stretch to say that alcohol has played a big evolutionary role in fostering human connection. I think one of the reasons young people are unhappier is because they're not connecting with each other as much anymore. Alcohol is the way to do it. You know, that alcohol helped me find my wife in college. If I was not drunk when I met my wife, I probably wouldn't have gone up to her. So I had this move. We had some friends were watching Cops. Remember the show Cops? I don't know if it's still on even. And can I just say, I know.

[Michael Batnick]

This is your story, not mine, but Cops is my favorite show of all time. Back to you.

[Ben Carlson]

Really? Well, it's certainly got one of the best intro songs ever. So anyway, a police officer pulled a guy over. The guy was obviously drunk driving. And the police officer sticks his hand in the window. And he goes, breathe in my hand, sir. And the guy goes. And he blows. And he goes. Like this cop smells it. And he goes, okay, sir, you're wasted. Please get out of the car. And so me and my. Every time we would go out, my friends, me and my friends would do that to each other. We'd say, breathe in my hand, please. You're wasted. And that's the move I did on my wife. She was standing there at our house party. And I said, breathe in my hand, please, ma'am. And I smelled it. And I said, you're not wasted enough. Go get some more drinks. And great line. That's how I hit him up. Yeah, that's how I hit on my wife. This is from the Derek Thompson thing. He says, every drink of alcohol takes five minutes off your life. But also every one minute of exercise adds five minutes to your life. And that's why I diversify. Think about it. It's called balance. People remember the part in, you never watched Seinfeld, but him and Elaine had this argument trying to figure out what percentage of the population is good looking. And Elaine says, I don't know, 25% in. Jerry said, no Way. Have you ever been to the DMV? He says, probably 4 to 6%. And then Elaine says, okay, 95% of the population is unattractive. How are they getting together? And Jerry says, alcohol. Anyway, that's a good line. Speaking of alcohol, remember in Landman, I think one of my favorite bits from Landman was Billy Bob saying that he used to be an alcoholic. So he stopped drinking. But he drinks like 10 MC ultras every night. And the bartender says, you drink MC ultras? He said, give me 10 bourbons versus 10 MC ultras and see which which one of version of me you like better. I had never been a MC Ultra drinker, but I usually drink heavier beers during the winter. And watching that show, I started drinking Michelob Ultra. Lately I wanted like lighter beers for the summer. And I gotta say, I. People, judge me all you want. It's a very refreshing beer.

[Michael Batnick]

I've never had one. You know, we should obviously say, listen, there's some people that are terrible alcoholics.

[C]

Oh yes.

[Michael Batnick]

Horrific, horrific drugs.

[Ben Carlson]

I know people. Yes. I'm just saying on a net, positive net society level for young people. It can really mess your life up. But I think if it inhibits your socialism, socializing other people, then it's a bad thing.

[Michael Batnick]

I truly believe that you're preacher to the choir, you know, he's convinced me.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, recommendations? Why don't you go first?

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. Somebody emailed us about your friends and neighbors, which has taken a turn for the sideways. I mean, I'm still into it because you know, it's a good husband and wife show. Robin enjoys watching it with me, but it's not. The last two episodes have been really not terrific. Which is fine. I'm still enjoying it. But somebody emailed us, so spot on.

[Ben Carlson]

I just love the money aspect of it.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, it's fun. Somebody said, doesn't this show seem like an example of a Hollywood taking a feature length movie script and stretching it out into a streaming series? It's got a great hook, but holy hell does it turn into a mess by mid season. 20 years ago this was would have been a 2 hour $30 million budget drama comedy starring Harrison Ford and Nick Cage. Something like Magic Men. And he goes on. But yes, 100% right.

[Ben Carlson]

I agree that a lot of shows these days should be movies.

[Michael Batnick]

So Ben, did you watch Black Bag or did I put this in here?

[Ben Carlson]

I did. Okay, so Black Bag was on Peacock. I watched it too. You watched it too? Okay, so I had heard good things. It's funny. I watched this with My wife. And I was going to say, you shouldn't watch this movie. So I'm going to give my review. Then I want to hear yours, because I was going to say, you shouldn't. So it's Michael Fassbender, who's played a spy a lot lately.

[Michael Batnick]

It's Steven Soderbergh movie.

[Ben Carlson]

It's a Steven Soderbergh. His movies. You can always tell it's a Steven Soderbergh movie. I thought my wife was, like, kind of unsure and kind of came around at the end. I really liked this movie. I thought it was great, like, the whole guessing who is the double agent, who is the. In the fact that a lot of the spies were paired off together like Mr. Mrs. Smith style. It wasn't like the greatest spy movie ever. I enjoyed it.

[Michael Batnick]

You now tell me why you think.

[Ben Carlson]

I didn't like was a little slow. You couldn't really tell what was going on. Most of the movie. It was kind of hard to follow. I just thought for a spy thriller, it was a little slow and a lot more dialogue than action.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm really glad to hear you said it, because I was thinking it occurred to me. But maybe it's not just me. You know what? You know, when they asked the fake interview question, tell me one of your weaknesses. I'm terrible at following movies. I think I had no idea what was going on, but I enjoyed it. I mean, but also, maybe it wasn't just me because it was pretty confusing. The first 30 minutes, I was like, the hell is going on? Am I supposed to be following this?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, they don't hold your hand. It was very confusing.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. But then even, like, I can. I don't even know that I know what's going on. The Mission Impossible movies.

[Ben Carlson]

No, a lot of times you don't. No. But they have action there to help. Right?

[Michael Batnick]

All right. So it's not just me because I found myself oftentimes with movies like this, I don't think I know what's going on.

[Ben Carlson]

No. This was a hard one to follow. Did you like it or not?

[Michael Batnick]

No, I did like it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. It was. It was hard to know what was going on. I think that's why my wife didn't like it either. She's like, what's going on? And I had to, like, kind of pause it. Like, actually this and that person and Pierce Brosnan still kind of got it. I liked it.

[Michael Batnick]

I liked it, too. But. Yeah. What would you get to me, it's like a. It's a 7:2 oh, yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

I was gonna say like a 7 probably, but, yeah, that works. So my. My kids, maybe take them to the Minecraft movie this weekend. My twins, they're seven. There'll be eight next week. And this movie was. Do you take your kids to see this yet?

[Michael Batnick]

They saw it twice. Both without me.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. It was just off the rails. But, I mean, it's not one of those, really. I thought Jason Momoa was actually kind of funny, and Jack Black is obviously got very good kid energy. I just love the recency bias because we got out of the movie and I totally fell asleep for like 20 minutes. Those big recliners with the heated seats, you know, like, deadly. See you later. My son is elbowing me about stuff, and I'm. What? But I just love the recency bias in kids because my daughter, we got out and she goes, that was the best movie I've ever seen. Favorite movie of all time. Yes. All weekend she was saying, it's the best movie I've ever seen. It was great, and it was just ridiculous. How about this? You talked about miniseries or TV shows that should be movies. How about a movie that you know is bad? It's like a 5.7, but it has two or three good scenes in it that make you laugh. I have one that I watched again, so it's called I Give it a Year. So it's with Rose Byrne. And it's got a. And it's got a. That guy in it. It's got the Simon Baker guy.

[Michael Batnick]

I love these shitty comedies. I do.

[Ben Carlson]

It's a dumb. It's Anna Faris is in it, and it's like this couple gets married on a whim, and then they decide, like, they're wrong for each other, so they actually both find other people that they're more meant to be with. But there's two really funny scenes where they go to a work party and the husband gets drunk and the wife is too embarrassed by him. And then there's a thing where, you know, I won't spoil it. Anyway, there's two really good scenes in this movie, and I think the one scene you would find it's a little vulgar for people who are not into vulgarity, but I think you would find it very funny.

[Michael Batnick]

I believe you. Okay, so now I told you, I've been eschewing trailers as much as possible. You can't not watch when you go to the movies. But I like to roll outdog movies these days. Like, I saw. I saw one with Dave Franco. I just saw a tweet I'm in. I'm not gonna see the trailer, but I'm gonna go watch that movie.

[Ben Carlson]

The new Spike Lee Denzel movie. Looks amazing.

[Michael Batnick]

Not gonna watch the trailer. I'm just gonna go see it. You posted it. I avoided it. I'm gonna go see the movie. So on the flight over from New York to Boston, it's only a 30 minute flight, but American Airlines always sucks, which is why I don't fly them very often.

[Ben Carlson]

Do they ever have screens in their planes?

[Michael Batnick]

No. No.

[Ben Carlson]

Didn't think so. I've never been on an American flight where they've had a screen in their plane.

[Michael Batnick]

And the Internet never works. And so the Internet was working this time, so they had a wonderful movie selection. So credit to them. Problem is, movies weren't working. What was working was the trailers. So I watched like 50. I watched the Dude 2 trailer. God, what a movie that was. I watched. I watched like 15 trailers.

[Ben Carlson]

You could probably kill half hour just watching. I did.

[Michael Batnick]

I did. It was. It wasn't bad.

[Ben Carlson]

That makes sense. All right, let's give a shout out to our production team here.

[Michael Batnick]

I want to give a shout out to my wife.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. For letting me go.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, she's a great wife.

[Ben Carlson]

Robin is my defense.

[Michael Batnick]

I've been. I've been a Nick fan my entire life, and I've. We've been bad for so long.

[Ben Carlson]

Did she know that you broke the light the other night?

[Michael Batnick]

I think I told her.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

And as much fun as I'm having for finally being competitive, it makes me really sad that I, like, I had 20 years of just pure misery and I never stopped watching or going to the games.

[Ben Carlson]

Think about me, man. I was a Lion. I've been a Lions fan my whole life.

[Michael Batnick]

That's true. That's. That's torture.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, let's give a shout out to our production team. We. We. We've got how many people on the video audio side now? Four people, right? Yep. Duncan, John. Travis.

[Michael Batnick]

Travis.

[Ben Carlson]

So we're getting videos up on Spotify now where you can watch the video as you listen to the podcast and pick and choose. The videos are up on YouTube much faster now. They're up on Wednesday mornings. Not too far. Unsung heroes, not too long after the actual podcast. So we're. We're humming along here.

[Michael Batnick]

Cranky.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. I got. When I gave my speech last week in Columbus, I had a few people ask me, like, well, how do you do all the editing and. And audio and video? And I said, we don't do anything, Michael. And I just have the software and the mics and everyone else behind the scenes does it for us. And it's great because they know what they're doing and they're pros.

[Michael Batnick]

Absolutely.

[Ben Carlson]

Shout out to our compound media team.

[Michael Batnick]

Feel like I had something to say to you that I was saving for the show, but guess I didn't. Maybe I did. Maybe I'll remember next week.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. Good luck with the game tonight.

[Michael Batnick]

Celtics in five, but maybe we sneak one in tonight.

[Ben Carlson]

Sounds about right. Animals, spirits.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, the compound news.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, See you next time. Don't get.