What is Upper Middle Class? (EP. 422)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast – Episode 422: What is Upper Middle Class?
Release Date: July 23, 2025
Hosts: Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson
Produced by: The Compound

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Introduction

In Episode 422 of the Animal Spirits Podcast, titled "What is Upper Middle Class?", hosts Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson delve into a multifaceted discussion intertwining financial markets, economic trends, and personal finance insights. Skipping the advertisements and non-content segments, the hosts focus on dissecting current market behaviors, historical comparisons, and listener inquiries to shed light on the evolving landscape of the upper middle class and its financial implications.

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Bull Market Comparisons: Then vs. Now

Michael Batnick opens the conversation by drawing parallels between the current bull market and the unprecedented runs of the 1980s and 1990s. He emphasizes the rarity and magnitude of these periods, noting:

“Annualized return by decade in the 80s and 90s are otherworldly. That's as far as I'm concerned, the greatest bull market of all time in US Stocks.” ([08:12])

Ben Carlson concurs, highlighting the extraordinary growth rates in recent decades compared to historical standards:

“The 2000s, the 90s, 80s and 90s were 18% per year almost... over 17% per year in the 80s, 18% per year in the 90s.” ([04:58])

They discuss how such high returns were unimaginable post the Great Financial Crisis, attributing the tech and AI booms as significant drivers.

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Concentration of Market Capitalization: The Rise of the Mag 7

A major focus of the episode is the increasing concentration of market capitalization among a handful of mega-cap companies, referred to as the "Mag 7". Ben Carlson presents a striking statistic:

“The Mag 7 is 18.8 trillion, equal to the bottom 432 companies.” ([10:43])

This trend underscores the growing dominance of major tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook within the S&P 500. Michael Batnick reflects on a past prediction:

“If you asked me in 2018, would we still be having this conversation in 2025... Probably not.” ([10:23])

They explore the implications of such concentration on market dynamics and potential future volatility.

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Listener Questions: Stock Market Returns and Small Caps

The hosts address a listener email questioning why future stock market returns are often projected lower than the historical average, despite current double-digit growth rates. Ben Carlson explains the economic equilibrium:

“There needs to be some sort of equilibrium between the economy and the stock market... the economy grows at 2 to 3% a year.” ([07:18])

Michael Batnick expands on this by comparing the current market's growth to the broader economy's pace, suggesting that sustained high returns are unsustainable without causing disparities.

They also discuss the struggling small-cap sector, referencing Jason Zweig's analysis on the Russell 2000's underperformance compared to the S&P 500. Ben Carlson posits that small caps may rebound as valuations improve and economic conditions stabilize.

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The Meme Stock Phenomenon: Opendoor Case Study

A significant segment covers the rise of "meme stocks," with Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson examining Opendoor's volatile stock performance. Ben Carlson remarks on the unprecedented retail investor influence:

“Retail investors now have the ability to swarm like a beehive or whatever... it is pretty wild to see.” ([23:12])

Michael Batnick draws comparisons to pre-crisis hedge fund behaviors, highlighting a shift in market participation and sentiment. They debate the sustainability and impact of such speculative activities on price discovery and overall market health.

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Federal Reserve and Market Volatility

The discussion transitions to the Federal Reserve's role amidst current market conditions. Michael Batnick shares his perspective on potential political interference:

“Powell is the last independent Fed chair that we will ever have from now on... I don't think the markets would really crash.” ([34:29])

Ben Carlson adds that while speculative activities like meme stocks may introduce short-term volatility, foundational economic factors remain pivotal in shaping long-term market stability.

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Consumer Sentiment and Wealth Perception

Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson touch upon consumer sentiment surveys, questioning their reliability in the digital age. They reference a University of Michigan study indicating minimal disparity in sentiment between the wealthiest and poorest 25% of Americans, a trend seldom seen since 1979. Ben Carlson criticizes the utility of such surveys:

“To me, this is interesting, but it's garbage can. It's interesting in the sense that it confirms that surveys are nonsense.” ([33:09])

This segues into a broader conversation about the perception of wealth and financial well-being within different economic strata.

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Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Discussions

The hosts tackle listener questions on understanding Bitcoin beyond its role as an inflation hedge. Ben Carlson simplifies his stance:

“There are enough true believers, enough people that for this, for them it's a religion... more people that want to buy than want to sell.” ([43:35])

Michael Batnick shares personal anecdotes about embracing Bitcoin, emphasizing the importance of understanding supply and demand dynamics over philosophical debates.

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Retirement Trends and Social Safety Nets

A brief analysis of retirement trends indicates a shift towards later retirement ages, influenced by longer life expectancies and evolving economic conditions. The hosts link this to increasing federal entitlement spending, questioning the sustainability of social safety nets. Ben Carlson underscores the necessity of personal savings amidst these trends.

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Personal Anecdotes and Light-Hearted Segments

Interspersed with financial discussions are personal stories, including Michael Batnick's mishap with a phone drop during a family outing and their experiences with smart TVs and street sweepers. These segments add a relatable and humorous touch to the episode, balancing the technical financial discourse.

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Conclusions

In wrapping up the episode, Michael and Ben revisit the themes of market concentration, speculative trading behaviors, and the evolving definitions of wealth within the upper middle class. They emphasize the importance of informed investing, diversification, and understanding broader economic indicators to navigate the complex financial landscape.

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Notable Quotes

• Michael Batnick ([08:12]): “The 2000, the 90s, 80s and 90s were 18% per year almost. It was over 17% per year in the 80s, 18% per year in the 90s. Unbelievable run.”

• Ben Carlson ([10:43]): “The Mag 7 is 18.8 trillion, equal to the bottom 432 companies.”

• Ben Carlson ([33:09]): “To me, this is interesting, but it's garbage can. It's interesting in the sense that it confirms that surveys are nonsense.”

• Ben Carlson ([43:35]): “There are enough true believers, enough people that for this, for them it's a religion... more people that want to buy than want to sell.”

• Michael Batnick ([28:10]): “Buffett quote of it's investing is simple but not easy. I still subscribe to that.”

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Final Thoughts

Episode 422 of Animal Spirits offers a comprehensive exploration of current financial market trends, the shifting dynamics of the upper middle class, and the interplay between economic indicators and personal wealth. Through insightful analysis and engaging dialogue, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson provide listeners with valuable perspectives to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of markets and investing.

Transcript

[Michael Batnick]

Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute.

[Ben Carlson]

Capturing value and fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky and let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple of flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard.

[Michael Batnick]

At Vanguard, Institutional quality isn't a tagline, it's a commitment to your clients. We're talking top grade products across the board of over 80 bond funds actively managed by a 200 person global squad of sector specialists, analysts and traders. These folks live and breathe fixed income. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for [e-mail] fixed income.

[Ben Carlson]

Institutional equality in this context is meant to convey a level of professional rigor and expertise combined with low cost. To learn more, visit vanguard.com all investing.

[Michael Batnick]

Is subject to risk. Investments in bonds are subject to interest rate, credit and inflation risk. Copyright 2025 the Vanguard Group Inc. All rights reserved. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor Today's show is.

[Ben Carlson]

Also brought to you by our friends at Y Charts. I don't know if you heard the news Ben. There was a bill passed. It was big, it was beautiful and there are some things in there that our clients need to know.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, so Y Charts got right to work. Rolled out a new deck to help you tackle those conversations head on. Understanding like let's figure out how this impacts your situation. So inside this report you'll get a breakdown of the key changes, especially for the high net worth clients and business owners. Estate tax, charitable strategies. It's also visuals to help people understand why it doesn't make sense to chase the headlines on this stuff and just provide more context.

[Ben Carlson]

So click the link in the show notes to download the deck for free and get 20% off your initial Y Charts professional subscription. Tell them Michael and Ben sent you. That's what you do. New customers only.

[Michael Batnick]

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. 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. We have an announcement to make Scammers. There are fake Instagram accounts. I don't know if it's of myself and Ben and. Or animal spirits. But they're out there. And I think needless to say, but I guess not needless to say because we're doing this, they're not us. If we will never, ever, ever DM you first. Promise. I'm not in the business of DMing strangers and asking for money or telling them which stocks to buy.

[Michael Batnick]

We do not run a penny stock trading scheme. You'll be. But I mean, can we say that these bots are just trying to, you know, push the brand out further for animal spirits? They're trying to find different corners of the market. Yes, they're scammy, but they're trying to push the brand as well. Okay, isn't AI going to make this 10 times worse? Like is this where we finally get some sort of verification that you're a real human being on social media? Because otherwise isn't, isn't everything going to be an AI social media account? And then we're. Then it's going to be useless.

[Ben Carlson]

I have no comment, I have no idea about the ins and outs of bots and AI and don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

But well, obviously the social media people, they don't care.

[Ben Carlson]

That's not all right.

[Michael Batnick]

I think I've been on this corner for a little while saying that we're in a mini 1980s and 1990s bull market. So I had chart kid Matt do this quick visualization for me. Annualized return by decade in the 80s and 90s are otherworldly. That's as far as I'm concerned, the greatest bull market of all time in US Stocks. You could make a claim from like the bottom in World War II through the mid-60s. I think we did 15% per year for like 20 plus years. That probably has a chair at the table, at least not the head of the table, the middle of the table. It's a Larry David middle. But the 2000, the 90s, 80s and 90s were 18% per year almost. It was over 17% per year in the 80s, 18% per year in the 90s. Unbelievable run. And the thing about the 90s is there really weren't any major, major corrections. 1998, the mid 90s had this little banking thing, but there really, there wasn't much to in terms of setbacks either. So the 2010s and 2020s, we're looking at over 13, around 13 and a half percent per year in the 2000s, 14 and a half percent per year so far in the 2020s. This is a Pretty. This is kind of a mini 80s and 90s boom. And literally no one predicted it. Not one single person coming out of the great financial crisis could have ever said, we're going to have two decades almost of double digit, high double digit return.

[Ben Carlson]

Predicted it. Duncan, we're going to.

[Michael Batnick]

I still remember I went to a ton of institutional investor conferences in the right coming out of the great financial crisis and all of these foundations and endowments and pension funds were investing from the fetal position. No one wanted anything to do with risk. There's no way anyone could have possibly foreseen this was coming. And obviously the tech AI boom was the big driver. But this was literally out of left. Which I guess is a good lesson for what comes next. Maybe like, who knows?

[Ben Carlson]

So in that vein, Ben, we had an email. Hey guys. They always say the stock market has returned 10% of the last hundred years, mainly with the old school industrial companies. Why does everyone pencil in 4 to 5% returns just because the markets are high? So he's. He. This person spoke about productivity. But for the sake of keeping this short, we get right to it. Why doesn't anyone think annual returns over the next 25 to 50 years will probably be more like 13 to 15%?

[Michael Batnick]

That's a legitimate question that.

[Ben Carlson]

No, it's not.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so hang on. Like in theory it's a legitimate question, not in reality, but. So I looked. So that since 1980, again, probably one of the best runs ever, we had the lost decade in there, which is kind of like a reverse middle finger. 12.1% per year since 1980 and 4 out of 5 really amazing decades. Yeah, I had to pull a quote here. This is Charles Dow. I think he said it in 1902. Ish. It is always said that while preceding booms have not lasted this time, there are unique circumstances which will make prosperity permanent. So this is definitely a bull market question. Yeah, obviously.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

What's your simple answer to why this can't happen? Why we can't have 15% annual returns for 25 to 50 years?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, no, it is a fair question on the surface, but the reason why it's not possible, and I'm not saying that this can't continue for longer than we thought because I would have given you the same answer five years ago. So I don't know when the 12 to 14% compounded returns end. Hopefully not for a long time. But there needs to be some sort of, some sort of equilibrium between the economy and the stock market. And we know that the economy grows at 2 to 3% a year.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, real. Yeah. We're not going to have like 12%. The stock growth.

[Ben Carlson]

The stock market just can't be growing at that pace because it will be 5 times, 10 times, 20 times, 100 times bigger than the, the economy. At some point it would eat everything.

[Michael Batnick]

It wouldn't. Yeah. The imbalance, it.

[Ben Carlson]

So for that reason alone, cannot go on another 50 years. I was, despite the product, pretty comfortable saying that.

[Michael Batnick]

How about this? The, the people who've been saying 10% annual returns are a thing of the past. That's what people were saying throughout the 2010s. This is the new normal. This is expect lower returns going forward. Could we still get 10% annual returns? Yeah, we could for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, but the thinking big time, like, listen, higher profit margins, more efficient. AI is going to supercharge that potentially. Yeah, but it would. The gains would be so large and the stock market would be so big. It would be like 10 people sitting on all of the wealth. And. Yeah, it just, it's impossible.

[Ben Carlson]

Remember the book scale?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Great book, by the way. Jeffrey West.

[Ben Carlson]

And there was talk about the anatomy of animals and how there are limits to how big something could grow. Because if an elephant was whatever, 100ft long and, you know, 90 tons, just like the, the, the physics of the bones, just, it just, it couldn't work. And the same thing is true for the stock market.

[Michael Batnick]

I thought one of his most interesting things in that book was he said, why do companies and businesses die, but cities survive like big cities rarely fail.

[Ben Carlson]

That was a great book.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. I was reminded of my favorite tweet that I've ever sent.

[Michael Batnick]

I feel like people still comment on this all the time. And we, we litigated this in real time. Was this a chart crime or not?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so I, So anyway, forgive me, whoever, I can't remember where this came from, but whatever. All right, so at the time, people were. There were some people that were very upset because they misread it. They interpreted. They didn't read what the tweet. They just looked at the chart and the chart shows the market cap of the top five companies in the S&P 500, which was 4.095 trillion.

[Michael Batnick]

It is kind of funny to think.

[Ben Carlson]

Which, by the way, now, and it compares it to the bottom, the bottom 282 companies in the S&P 500. And so I immediately was like, hey, wait a minute, this is today. Why would people say this is a crime? A chart crime? There's Nothing criminal about this at all. And I'm trying to be objective. I know this is my work. But if you looked at the chart and misread what I wrote, then that's on you. That's not on me.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. You explained what it is. People would say, well, you have to have the other piped for the rest of the other, then make your own chart.

[Ben Carlson]

This is my tweet.

[Michael Batnick]

True. It also was funny. So you did this seven years ago? I guess so.

[Ben Carlson]

This was from July 2018. And.

[Michael Batnick]

But the fact that these same five companies are still the biggest is. That's kind of crazy.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So it's Apple. It was Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. And believe me, we were there. There was people saying that this could not continue.

[Michael Batnick]

Way too concentrated. Yeah, there's no way this can keep going.

[Ben Carlson]

And, and listen, I'll put myself in that camp. If you asked me in 2018, would. Would we still be having this conversation in 2025 about the Giants versus the rest of the. I probably would say, I don't know. Maybe, but probably not. All right, anyway.

[Michael Batnick]

Or at the very least, one of these companies is going to drop off.

[Ben Carlson]

So in 2018, it was equal. The top five were equal to the bottom 282. They're now equal to the bottom 411. That's insane. They were equal to the bottom 282 and now they're equal to the bottom four 11. So I had, I had chart kid make this. Just bring it to life a little bit prettier. The Mag 7 is equal to the Max. 7 is 18.8 trillion. That's equal to the bottom 432 companies.

[Michael Batnick]

Thing is, you could also, I think Berkshire Hathaway is a trillion dollars too. If you put that in there, it's even. I, we're, you know, adding stuff to your charts here, but the numbers are getting insane.

[Ben Carlson]

Here's. Here's from our friend Todd Son. Nvidia and Microsoft are almost as big. Not quite, but almost touch and tips with the staples, the energy stocks, health care and utilities. All of them. All of staples, all of energy, all of healthcare and utilities. Nvidia, Microsoft is right on their tail.

[Michael Batnick]

It's kind of amazing that these sectors made up almost 50% at the bottom in 08 because they're the defensive ones. Also, I looked at this before. Of the top companies, I think I had the data every five years from S&P or something like six out of the top 10 companies in 1980 were energy companies coming out of the 70s. And now that whole sector is, what, 2 or 3% of the total?

[Ben Carlson]

How does the market feel to you? Feel. Feeling a little frothy.

[Michael Batnick]

We're getting to pockets of frothiness again. I feel like we're starting to have, I would say, 20, 21 conversations.

[Ben Carlson]

I would say, like, Remember, like, the Django jeans? Like the. Like that. The huge pockets. Like, the pockets are. They're getting baggy.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, can I just. Can I just ask. I asked you before we got on. I just wanted to make sure you didn't have chocolate on your chin or something. Did you fall off your skateboard or something?

[Ben Carlson]

That's actually. That's a good guess. I mean, you know, I don't skateboard, but it was a similar accident. I. I was in the swimming pool. I did a dive off the diving board. And not to brag, I got pretty high and I came down like. Like this instead of like that. And I didn't. I didn't hit my chin. I didn't, like. I didn't, like, bang my face. But as I glided, as I. As I do on the bottom of the pool, my chin rubbed against the.

[Michael Batnick]

You're way too old for that kind of injury.

[Ben Carlson]

Why?

[Michael Batnick]

That's the kind of injury you get when you're like, nine years old.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I didn't even realize that it happened until somebody said, your chin's bleeding. It's like you got a dart in your neck.

[Michael Batnick]

I tell you what, I. I still enjoy a good diving board, too. I'm not gonna lie. When my kids go to the pool and they ask me to come in, it's like, all right, excuse me.

[Ben Carlson]

Dude, I've seen you dive off pools. What are you talking about? I've seen you dive off the side of the pool without a diving board. So don't. Don't too old me.

[Michael Batnick]

Ah, that's true. I think I did a flip one of those times.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, off the side. If you had access to a board, you kidding me? You'd be all over it.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, from. I guess this is getting back to the person who asked, why couldn't the growth continue? And again, I understand why someone asked that question, because we've seen it already, right? For the past 15 years or whatever. JP Morgan, in their guide to the markets, looked at the capex from the hyperscalers. So this is Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. And they look at the amount of capital spent and then the percentage of operating cash flow. And this was single digits as recently as 2012. Again, getting back to no one being able to predict this that's part of the reason why, obviously. So now we're looking at, we're tracking at a third of operating cash flow as a percentage. No, sorry, 50. I'm reading this wrong. You know, I'm not going to lie. My brain has a hard time looking at two different scales on a chart here. 50% operating cash flow going towards this from, I don't know, 10% in 2010 or 12. The amount of money that these companies are spending is getting to mind boggling amounts. It's not like they're just resting on their laurels and returning money to shareholders. They are in some cases, but most of it is it's being put right back into the business. So getting back to your pie chart of all the. What is it? The Mag 7 is as big as the bottom 432. Jason Zweig has a piece that small caps are cheap. Since the beginning of 2014, the S& P has grown at an average of 13.2% annually. The Russell 2000 index of small cap stocks has gained just 7.2%. I think he said this is kind of a historically wide margin of S and p over Russell 2000. Jason says many people seem to be throwing in the towel this year. Investors have pulled $12 billion out of exchange traded funds investing in small cap stocks. According to FactSet. Meanwhile, they've added 150 billion to large cap stocks or large cap funds. Nvidia alone is 65% more valuable than all the stocks in the Russell 2000 combined. So this is kind of like back in the day when Tiger woods was the best golfer in the world. You'd say at a tournament, am I going to take Tiger or am I going to take the field? I guess you could say the Russell 2000 is kind of the field at this point. Here's his case for why these companies and we've heard all the cases for why these companies should continue to underperform. But here's his case for why that it's a decent bet that they're going to be helped. It's worth remembering that most of the beneficiaries of the Internet boom weren't the online providers, but rather the consumers, manufacturers, healthcare service and materials company that use the emerging technology to streamline their own operations. If the AI boom unfolds the same way, smaller companies could get a bigger boost in the giants. Like you could actually make these smaller companies more efficient. Thoughts? And then I put a chart from exhibit A in here looking at the forward earning forward valuations and I guess that's the, that's the big thing about large cap stocks now. They just trade at a premium to small and mid because duh, of course they do. But that's, that's a new, relatively new thing. Your thoughts?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't have strong feelings on what's going to work better going forward.

[Michael Batnick]

Here's my take. I think one of the reasons international stocks boomed so much this year is partly because the sentiment was so low and the valuations were so low. All it took was a little bit of less bad news for them to go crazy. And the same thing will probably happen with small caps. The valuations are so beaten down, no one wants to own them. And because there's a margin of safety built in, it's not going to, it's just going to take a little bit of interest rates to come down a little bit or some piece of news for these stocks to go nuts. That's my feeling.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Yeah. How about this? At some point we will look back on a conversation like this. Like what could cause small caps to outperform, but there's no doubt in my mind that at some point they will.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

Like there will be a year where they're up 19 and large is up 4. I mean, I would think that's probably going to happen at some point.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. All right, let's talk about the meme stock stuff first. From Scott Galloway's newsletter. Do you remember there was actually legitimate debates going on between finance people that what happens if everyone just indexes? Where is the price discovery going to come from? Where are we going to get the liquidity? Our market's going to be totally, you know, insane at that point. From Scott Galloway. Q2 2025 was the biggest trading quarter in history. Retail investors bought more stocks and ETFs on a net basis than any other six month period of the past decades. JP Morgan posted its second best quarter ever. Citibank had its strongest second quarter in five years. Remember Citibank used to be a thing. Used to be one of the top 10 companies.

[Ben Carlson]

I used to, I was good. I was a temp at Citibank.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh really? My alma mater, Goldman Sachs logged the most trading revenue in Wall street history. Together the five largest banks pulled in 34 billion in trading revenue up 17% year over year. It's great year to be the middleman. Brokered stocks are soaring. Charles Schwab, Coinbase and robinhood are up 29%, 61% and 174% year to date respectively. I guess we don't have to worry about the Price Discovery thing anymore. Huh? But is this, is all this trading really helping Price Discovery that much? Or is it making Price Discovery even harder? Right. Do we actually need less trading? How's that for a hot take?

[Ben Carlson]

That's a terrible take.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm kidding. Well, think about it though. Back in the day, there was far less trading volume than there is today. Was there a really big problem with Price Discovery? I guess you could say that it was easier to fish, you know, shoot fish in a barrel for certain investors. But let's talk about Opendoor, a company that I think you and I bought when it first spake.

[Ben Carlson]

I definitely owned it. Yeah, 100% I owned it.

[Michael Batnick]

The story made sense. Opendoor came out and it was, hey, the ibuyer thing was we're gonna make it easier to buy and sell your home.

[Ben Carlson]

By the way, there's no alternate universe. But if there wasn't the insane housing market that we experienced post Covid with the run ups and prices, like, who's to say that this wasn't a viable model?

[Michael Batnick]

Me, I just, I think we. Because Zillow tried it to. I agree. The, the, the testing ground for this model was the worst, absolute worst time ever. But I think we learned real estate is so local that you can't just input numbers into a model and then decide what a house is worth. They showed that they were like vastly overpaying for these houses. Yeah, people were saying like they're buying these houses and there's a, there's a mean dog next door or something. No one's ever going to. But at the time, the, the business model idea sounded right. And then the stock fell 95%. It was one of those meme stocks. It shot up immediately. I think you and I got out pretty quick. I might have even made some money on the stock. So it's been going up like crazy for the past two to three weeks. Eric Jackson, who has been on TCAF before, right. Once or twice he put out a note saying like, this is the next Carvana. Carvana fell 95 and then rocketed all the way back up and oh, wait.

[Ben Carlson]

A minute, wait a minute, hold on. You're missing one part of it. Eric was on TCAF talking about buying Carvana before Thousand X. Yeah, he put this tweet up last Monday when open was at 80 cents. And I swear to God, if I didn't need cash for a real estate purchase. I was very close to putting money in here. Only on the thesis that like, I don't know. He was right. Last Time.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, he's got some cachet, right. He's not just a person spouting out. So he. I think his. His whole thesis, though, was fundamentally driven. He said, listen, the revenue numbers that people are projecting are too low. I think they're. The company's gonna make more money than people think. And then it got picked up on Reddit or whatever, and now it's been going crazy. Yesterday at one point, it was up 100% during the day. And then at the end of. In the last hour or something of trading, it crashed 40%. And it's up. It was at one point up 800 this month alone. So this thing went banana. If you look at the chart of it, it's nuts. It is a huge spike. A massive drought on them. Like a little turn up. But that little turn up at the bottom, that eat. That is like an 800 gain.

[Ben Carlson]

Can I say something? Eric is now getting into it with, like, the meme community.

[Michael Batnick]

Ah.

[Ben Carlson]

And he's, you know, spurring on encouraging. And he says he has a price target of 82. So I. I don't think that he's like, looking to, you know, bring people in and then dump it. That's like, not what I think is going on here. But he is engaging with the crowd. And I'm kind of reminded of the scene in Spider Man 2 where Doc Ock is. Has like the little thing in this that's like creating the power of the side. He's like, I can control it and it does it and it crashes it on him. I wonder if Eric is biting off more than he could chew.

[Michael Batnick]

So this. So I think it's up 20% again this morning or something. We're taping this on Tuesday morning. This is a sub $4 stock. And he's saying what, he's an $82 price target on it? Yeah, that'd be a little bit more room to run. Let's see.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, here's my take. Here's my take.

[Michael Batnick]

Hang on. Joe saluzzi says that US stock market traded 20 billion shares today. Lots of price discovery yesterday Open was responsible for 10% of the volume. Almost 1.9 billion shares.

[Ben Carlson]

Wow.

[Michael Batnick]

Unbelievable. I saw this is not a big company.

[Ben Carlson]

Luke Kawa tweeted that Open share, open share, open, open, open door did more volume than Microsoft yesterday, which is hilarious.

[Michael Batnick]

And this is a sub $3 billion company. So it's a decent sized company. It's not, but it's not huge. This is. What do you think about all this stuff?

[Ben Carlson]

Here's what I think, here's what I think. If David Einhorn got on stage and did a deep dive, fundamental pitch for open and why the stock was undervalued, I think it would have maybe gone up 1%. So the fact that hedge fund managers and in fact that's my opinion. I don't, you know, I can't prove that. But this idea that retail investors now have the ability to swarm like a beehive or whatever or piranha attacking something, it is, it's pretty wild. It's pretty wild to see.

[Michael Batnick]

It's obviously not going away. People thought 2021 is a blip. Once the speculative activity slows down, this won't happen anymore. The funny thing is, coming out of the great financial crisis, you talk about the hedge fund managers, they would get up at what's that conference Iris Ms. Or whatever and they would talk about a company and this was Ackman too. Amman and David Einhorn, they were talking about a company they're shorting and that's. That stock would immediately get killed. Right. That was, that was the mentality back then. Let's look for something to short. It's the complete opposite now. And why I think that the 2020s is like the risk, whatever appetite from everyone is just totally different now. We're in a different ball game. And with the Internet, I don't see. I just. The information age, I don't see this kind of thing completely going away.

[Ben Carlson]

No way. This is not, this is not. Yeah, this is not. We're not going back to the way things used to be. No way.

[Michael Batnick]

So when thinking through like the Fed's decision. We're going to talk about the Fed in a little bit. What matters more? A bunch of people speculating on Reddit about MEM stock.

[Ben Carlson]

Dude, when people say that, like when people post to try to open, it's like, lol. The Fed has a cut. It's. Dude, what are you talking about? Yes, the Fed does not care about speculation and open door or what matters that more?

[Michael Batnick]

That or residential. Residential construction coming to a standstill because mortgage rates are 7%. What do you think matters more?

[Ben Carlson]

Right, right.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you think it's too cute to say, well, people who can't afford to buy a house are taking the down payment they would have spent and they're speculating in the stock market. That's too cute. Right?

[Ben Carlson]

That's, that's. Yeah, delete that from your brain.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I thought so. All right, Exhibit A, chart of the week. Go to exhibit a for advice.com to sign up. People who are signing up are loving it. They're using it with their clients every week. There's a chart of the week. This one, this one is interesting. So I'm going to talk about the 90s again. So it talks about ages, age shapes our perception of risk, and it shows your current age and how many bear markets you've experienced.

[Ben Carlson]

Let me just. Let me just give a quick Exhibit A plug. We have this for advisors. 70% of people that start a trial and exhibit A are converting to paying customers and shout to Matt and Eric and Airmen. Those guys are doing incredible work. Less than 3% churn. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible numbers.

[Michael Batnick]

People who sign up love it. So they show the number of. Of bear markets by age. And obviously, the longer you've been invested, the more bear markets you've hit. I think one of the reasons that investors are more comfortable now with risk is because there are more corrections. Like I said, there weren't many. Correct. There was no Correction from like 1990 to 1997 in the S&P 500.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah, black was a pretty big deal.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, I'm talking. I said 1990.

[Ben Carlson]

I know, but you're acting like people that investing in 1990 don't know about Black Monday or weren't investing in Black Monday.

[Michael Batnick]

So, mo, the majority of stock investors.

[Ben Carlson]

That's true.

[Michael Batnick]

Bought their first shares after 1995. It was a very small amount in the 80s. So my point is, the reason people were so freaked out by the 2000s is because they didn't have a lot of experience with this stuff. We've now had three bare markets in the course of this decade alone. People who invested in bitcoin have sat through 70, 80% crashes on multiple occasions. I think that's one of the reasons people don't freak out anymore is because they're more used to them. Whereas in the past you had this long, long period where people didn't have this stuff to live through.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. And that's why so many people. I wonder if people in the late 90s, like, legitimately thought or at least behaved as if it was never going to end. And I think. I think people now know that, you know, it will end, it will resume, it will continue. It'll set.

[Michael Batnick]

Will you at setbacks and you deal with it. Yeah. All right, so this is from Buco Capital. Someone tweeted. Everyone has been taught, which I think is completely absurd, that investing is easy. And Buco Capital says, and I think there's obviously a little bit of tongue in cheek here. He Says he's exactly wrong. Investing is easy. Buy the 500 best businesses in the world. Enjoy your life. Play with your kids. Buy the dip, Never sell. Be an active member of community. Double your money roughly every seven to 10 years by doing nothing. Investing is easy.

[Ben Carlson]

You think Buko is being facetious? I don't.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, okay. Maybe he's being totally. Here's the way that I would phrase this. I would never say investing is easy. I would say investing is simpler than it's ever been. That's a simple form of investing. But there are always going to be periods where it's not very. There's no way anyone can live through the 2005. Huh.

[Ben Carlson]

Like April 2025.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, that was. There was certainly.

[Ben Carlson]

Dude, you were the most badass you've ever been.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. And I was still buying stocks.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I know. I'm just saying, like, that was not. Not scary.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, of course. Yeah. We had a. We had a. Our president was literally trying to tank the market. That was kind of scary. But I'm talking about the 2000 period. There's no way anyone lived through that and go, ah, this is easy. Right. And so there are. There's still gonna be, I would say, 75% of the time. It's easy. How's that? Yeah, but those other 25% are still gonna test you. But I would say the Buffett quote of it's investing is simple but not easy. I still. I still subscribe to that. And the other thing is, it's really hard for people to just do this, Put money into something, and then go live your life and not be tempted, because there are a million different things to invest in these days. Well, why. Why am I not invested in this? Well, this person got rich doing this. They look at how quickly they got rich. That's the hard part.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, yeah, that's the nice part. I would and will never say investing is easy because forget even about, like, the. The bear markets and stuff. But to your point, the temptation. I mean, there's always. There's always something trying to distract us from.

[Michael Batnick]

But investing is simpler than it's ever been. All right, another email about the sign of the times. You guys keep talking Hood Robinhood, obviously, and maybe to trim after this run. I bought this in March for about $37 a share in my Roth what's it at Now. And believe strongly in the future for them, obviously easier after 180% gain. Tell me I'm crazy to just leave this alone foreverish. It is now 50% of my Roth but still only 20% ish of investable assets. Not asking for financial advice. I wrote it back. I said, hey, does this make you nervous that Robinhood is 50% of your Roth IRA? And he replied, not really. I'm 40 and have two kids in private school. Parents help a bit with that, but no. I kind of learned over the years to just be hands off and let winners ride. Okay, if I give back 20% after a run of 1,000%? Oh, well, my 401k and traditional IRA are all indexes, so I just try to single in during major pullbacks, ride that beta for a bit, and level back off into V and qqq. But Robinhood feels different in the moment. Go figure.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, this is. This has nothing to do with Robinhood. By the way, I love how he ended the email not asking for financial advice.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, okay, good disclaimer.

[Ben Carlson]

This is not a statement about Robinhood. We've spoken about this many, many, many times in this podcast. Most stocks suck and most stocks eventually die. Most stocks are not worth buying and holding. And what do I mean by that? There's a stat that I've. That I'll repeat. 70%. No, no, no. I'm sorry. 40% of all stocks in the Russell 3000. This is from JP Morgan's Agony and the Ecstasy of Stock Picking. 40% of all Russell 3000 stocks from 1980 have had a 70% decline from which they never recover. 4 in 10. Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

And Robin Hood's The Opposite. Robin Hood fell 90%. And it did recover.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So again, Robinhood is an outlier. It's done incredib.

[Michael Batnick]

It. It fell 90%3. Two years ago.

[Ben Carlson]

So most stocks are not worth buying. Most individual stocks are not worth buying and holding forever. Now, maybe Robin Hood will be the Nvidia. Not literally Nvidia, but maybe Robin Hood will be the one. I have no idea. But just keep that in the back of your mind.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. A concentrated position like this, you're. It's a way for you to make a lot of money and lose a lot of money. And you just gotta figure if it's 50% of my Roth or 20% of total and it gets cut in half and it stays that way for three, four, or five years, how am I gonna feel?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Now, if you say to yourself, guys, I get it, and I'm comfortable with that because of the reasons I just laid out then, more power to you.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. But I would say more people are comfortable taking that kind of stance now than they have been in a long time. In the market.

[Ben Carlson]

But it's also not irrational because if you are, let's say, doing all of the other things. Right, right. With your 401k and just saving in, in indexes and whatever and you want to get a little nuts with some individual stocks. Okay, cool.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, yeah, just go in.

[Ben Carlson]

Because it is also true that you can have a hundred bagger and if you get one of those, it can change your life.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. All right. Sean sent us this. I think this is from Data Track. It's the University of Michigan.

[Ben Carlson]

It's from Paulson.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, sorry. Looks like a data shark chart.

[Ben Carlson]

Right? It does.

[Michael Batnick]

So they look at the consumer sentiment by wealthiest 25%, less the consumer sentiment of the poorest 25%. It's crazy that we have the ability to look at through this data like this. And this is from SEAN. In the 25% wealthiest feel nearly the same as the 25% poorest. On the survey responders sentiment among the rich is only 3.3 points better than the poor, which is lower than 98% of the time since 1979. That's kind of wild to me. Do you mean the stock market booming? I just, I, I continue to think you can't trust sentiment readings.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. To me, this is, this is interesting, but it's garbage can. It's interesting in the sense that it confirms that surveys are nonsense. Especially now.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. I think now they've. The Internet has broken surveys forever.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Even though we'll still probably use them. All right. Walter Bloomberg last week tweeted this was going around on Twitter for like a half hour. People said, all right, Trump's following Trump's firing Powell. Like sources say, I don't know who these sources are, but if it's, Listen, if it's in all caps, you pay attention. Right. I think I tweeted this. The all caps guys, they're wrong like 87% of the time. Right. But they don't care.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, but like I think this is. He's just pulling from a feed.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, I know he's not. He's not. Yeah, but a lot of people were saying, like, listen, Trump is going to fire Powell. And then they went to a news conference and Trump said, no, I'm not going to fire him. He's done in like seven months. Anyway, here's my take that I've had for a while now. I say Trump is, or Powell is the last independent Fed chair that we will ever have from now on. People are going to say, no, you know what, we need to control this somehow, and I think this is the kind of thing where even if, let's say Trump did fire Powell, people were saying, listen, stocks are going to crash, rates are going to spike, the dollar is going to crash, confidence is going to be gone. I actually think the opposite. I think you'd probably get an Elgo driven thing for like a couple hours and in the short term things would be fine. Problems would be more like longer term. Is there a trust faith issue? I don't think the markets would really crash.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't think they should at all. Why, why would this be the thing that crashes market? Who cares? Oh no, we've lost, we've lost political norm. What, how does this impact Nvidia's earnings? Nobody cares.

[Michael Batnick]

And let's say, if, let's say presidents in one, whoever parties in office does kind of semi control. The funny part is that Trump did elect Powell. I think the Fed matters most, by.

[Ben Carlson]

The way, did you see that he was saying that like he's not sure how he got appointed?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. And I think the Fed matters most during a crisis situation. Like, I think the best thing Powell did was keep things afloat during the pandemic when things really, like the markets really could have torn apart at the seams like the credit markets, we could have had a nastiness. So the fact that they pulled things together and kept them together during a crisis, I think that's the thing that matters most. You could quibble with, ah, they should have raised rates six months earlier here, they should have cut six months later here. Whatever the thing, I think I don't want to quibble. I think those on the edges, I don't think it matters as much as people think. I think the thing that matters most to the Fed is what they do during a crisis. And then obviously, like the Fed has never pulled a punch bowl away too early in a, in a bubble situation. Like they've, they've never done that. They've shown they've never done that. So I don't know. Like, would, would this just mean more volatility in the rates markets and in the equity markets? Probably. If, if. Because guess what?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't think, I don't think the stock market would care.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I'm saying if, if the President is kind of telling someone in someone's ear because you've heard stories in the past about Nixon yelling at his Fed chair and his Fed chair tell him to get lost in shoving matches and stuff. The President has tried to control the Fed chair in the past before. But if The. Let's say the President does have control or the Congress or whoever is in power and they just. They keep rates lower than they probably should be. Does it. Does it just introduce a little more volatility in the markets? Is that the end game?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't know. I saw somebody, like, asking what's going to end the party this time.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, that was me. I asked that.

[Ben Carlson]

No, no, no. I saw this on Twitter.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Particularly the Memeier areas of the market.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Like in 2021, it was obvious. It was. It was aggressive. Rate cuts just suffocated these companies. Right.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, there was no rate hikes. Hikes mean.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, what I say.

[Michael Batnick]

Cuts.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, my bad. Suffocated these markets.

[Michael Batnick]

But this is happening with rates at four and a half percent.

[Ben Carlson]

No, but my. The point is, the next move in rates is gonna be lower.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

So it's gotta be something that's an economic slowdown. I guess.

[Michael Batnick]

That's. That's the thing. That's the thing. None. None of these. A meme. The meme stock stuff has never lived through a recession. In a recession, a lot of these companies fall 80%.

[Ben Carlson]

No, they did in 2022. I mean, to me, that was a recession for these stocks.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but I'm saying in an actual economic recession, these stocks will all fall 70 or 80%. That's what will happen.

[Ben Carlson]

But again, I think these stocks did experience. These companies experienced a legitimate recession.

[Michael Batnick]

What do you think happens to Bitcoin in a recession? Is Bitcoin down 50% in the next recession? Yeah, probably. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense to me. All right. From Colin Roche, I guess we'll talk tariffs. A lot of people. I've seen a lot of people say, like, see tariffs, they're here. And they didn't cause inflation and they didn't cause a recession. Everyone who was worried about them is wrong. But Cullen says. Cullen calls them the teeny tiny tariffs. So he says in the first six months of the year, we've incurred 86 billion in total custom duties. That's like tariff revenue brought in in 2024. In total, we brought in $82 billion. So he says we're on track to double the custom tariffs, but that's just not much in the grand scheme of things. He says back in April, when the tariff banter was at its peak, the administration was saying that they could bring in $3 trillion, and that's why the market panicked, because that's a colossal tax increase. So he's saying, like, if you just go by the Receipts, not by what people are saying, not by the tariff rates that people are saying in letters. The numbers haven't increased all that much because we're not bringing in that much revenue. So we haven't done them yet. And that's why the market doesn't care. Because, yes, some prices have probably raised. And that's. That's a. But in the. It's a drop of the bucket in terms of the economy. $82 billion or $86 billion in the grand scheme of a $30 trillion economy doesn't matter.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know what the number would have to go to make it make an impact, but it's a lot, lot. It's a lot higher than it currently is.

[Ben Carlson]

We haven't gotten a lot of emails about bitcoin, which is kind of interesting. Like, there was much more. Did we talk about this last week? That there was much more fervor when Bitcoin hit 60 than when it hit 120.

[Michael Batnick]

I think we got a lot more emails when the ETF came out.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. All right.

[Michael Batnick]

Anyway, yeah, you're right. It's. It's because. It's more. It's because crypto is becoming tradfi. That's why it's. It's becoming just more accepted, I guess.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So somebody wrote in the subject line, was still trying to understand bitcoin. I've been in the market for a few years now, and I would like to think I've built a pretty sound foundation for someone at my age of 27. I genuinely enjoy following the market, but I've never really understood bitcoin. The fact that it was created by some mysterious guy named Satoshi. There's no clear use for bitcoin. Imagine trying to explain to your grandfather, so this is a modest creator, no central authority, no real use case. But trust me, it's worth 120,000 coin. I'd love to have some exposure, but I just don't understand it. Can you help the listeners make sense of bitcoin beyond it being a hedge against inflation of the dollar? Isn't that what gold is for? At least I could touch things with gold. Right now. It still feels like one big myth that everyone's just decided to believe in.

[Michael Batnick]

And I saw someone tweet last week, like, people just created a bunch of numbers and now it's worth $2 trillion or something. When you break it down to its core components in those terms, it does seem like. Wait, what? Yeah, that still is the. That's. That's a part. A Lot of people at the beginning always have trouble wrapping their head around. Wait, so we just decided this is worth this and now it is?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. All right, so my answer to that is. You know the scene in Dune 2 where Javier Bardem screams, I don't care what you believe. I believe that's how I think about bitcoin.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. It's a religion. It is.

[Ben Carlson]

And what I say, like, I. I don't care what you believe. I believe. I'm saying, like, that's what the bitcoiners would say. That's like me. And I definitely don't want to convince anyone of anything about bitcoin because that's for you to decide on. And certainly at 120,000, I'm not like, yes, buy more, because it's going up.

[Michael Batnick]

But for me, I can't wait for the Photoshop of you in the Javier Bardem dune thing. Can I be chalmet in that one?

[Ben Carlson]

Maybe it's just for me, it's always been about this. It is for me, supply, demand. That's it. I have not.

[Michael Batnick]

You're an Econ 101 guy.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, I've been saying this for how long? There is more people that want to buy bitcoin than people that want to sell bitcoin.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. And then this, this guy would come back and say, well, why don't they just create another bitcoin?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Why don't they just.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, the thing is, they kind of tried. Remember litecoin and like bitcoin cash and.

[Ben Carlson]

Bitcoin is a 2 trillion dollar asset.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a brand at this point.

[Ben Carlson]

It is a brand. And you can't just make a new brand. Why doesn't a company just make a new Netflix? I mean, maybe a ridiculous comparison, but. All right, anyway, getting back to the supply demand, because I don't care to have the philosophical debate. I don't care if you think it's an inflation edge or whatever.

[Michael Batnick]

I guess at this point I don't.

[Ben Carlson]

I don't necessarily believe any of that, but I don't care what.

[Michael Batnick]

But if you don't get it yet, you're probably never going to get it.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, listen, if I am this person and I've watched bitcoin go from 10,000 to 120,000, I'm not like all of a sudden be like, oh, yeah, now I'm going to buy.

[Michael Batnick]

Right, exactly. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, shit, now I get it. Now I know why I showed some, like, you can't have the mental flexibility to do that because it's Just too self destructive.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. And we said like if you didn't love it at 60, you shouldn't love it at 120 either.

[Ben Carlson]

So bitwise has this chart that shows new bitcoin supply since spot ETPs launched versus Bitcoin purchased. And it is over 2 to 1 in terms of Bitcoin purchase just by the ETPs. To say nothing of Spot, to say nothing of treasury and Michael Saylor and all that he's doing. Here's this chart from Todd. So and showing the huge swing from Bitcoin and ETH outflows in early April in the first quarter to $11.7 billion in.

[Michael Batnick]

So how much is in the Ethereum ETFs now? Do you have any idea?

[Ben Carlson]

It's a 25 billion. I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Anyway, so for me, I don't. I'm not here to explain to somebody why they should, shouldn't buy bitcoin. Again, I don't care about the philosophical discussion, but there are enough true believers, enough people that for this, for them it's a religion. And there are just more people that want to buy than want to sell. And at some point there will be an equilibrium.

[Michael Batnick]

But I had the same feelings as this guy when I first started learning about it. And I'd say 2017 ish is when I really started. Like, okay, when that, that first thing happened and instead of banging my head against the wall, I just bought some. Just a little bit. I didn't buy a lot, I bought a little bit. And I don't know, the first time I bought it was at like $3,000 or something. And I didn't put a lot of money in and I just had to do it just to like schmuck insurance, whatever. You want to say that it made me feel better about watching the madness around it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, yeah, me too. And not, not here to defend that I'm not a technology person, but like to say that, oh, it's just like this made up thing like. Well, I mean the blockchain, the bitcoin blockchain works really well.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Unhackable so far. Obviously.

[Ben Carlson]

It just keeps working and that's not nothing. All right.

[Michael Batnick]

It would be kind of hilarious though if, if I got so smart it just hacked bitcoin.

[Ben Carlson]

If I got so smart, why wouldn't hack the Federal Reserve? Why wouldn't it go after your bank accounts? Why wouldn't it hack Schwab? Why would it hack bitcoin?

[Michael Batnick]

Because bitcoin. Hacking bitcoin would be way more funny that'd be way more hilarious to the Internet. Right? True. All right, this one's from Datatrack. Nick and Jessica, they show. We've talked about this a little bit. Remember we, we. So we talked to David Lavalle from Grayscale about this. Like, and a lot of the crypto people we've talked about said, listen, we think volatility in bitcoin is going down or it will go down. And Nick and Jessica at Datatrack say says it has become less volatile. This favors incremental adoption, but also suggests future returns will be lower than historical norms. So this, they show the rolling 100 day standard deviation of daily returns. And this has gone down a lot. It's funny. Remember that 2017 period? That was nuts. It was rising and falling 20% in a day. That was like the first real bitcoin craziness when retail or people actually talked about it. But this makes sense to me at whatever $2.5 trillion that volatility would decline and also returns would decline. All right, is the Midwest recession proof? I ask you this recession proof?

[Ben Carlson]

Do you mean, you mean the housing or what?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, this is from Resi Club, Lance Lambert. He shows housing markets where prices are falling and he's showing different. And they're all Florida and Texas, Louisiana, most of them are Florida and Texas.

[Ben Carlson]

These are all places that are either weather driven and, or real estate that had a big run up. Right?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes, I think that's, that's the point. So he shows the one year change in metro level and it shows where things are falling. And it's the west coast and it's the South East. That's where home prices are falling essentially. And then anything in. Not much on the Northeast a little bit. But the Midwest, there's no areas, no big metro areas where prices are falling. And then he shows the prices where they're rising. And obviously in those areas prices are rising. But I think, yeah, you could say like the weather stuff, but part of it is the fact that the places that they're falling there was a huge migration of people and prices went up a lot.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

And that's part of it. So. Yeah, but I'm still sticking my thesis that the, the Great Lakes are my greatest hedge going forward. Like fresh water. You. We take our boat out to Lake Michigan and we're in 20ft of water and it's crystal clear and I can see to the bottom like it's the Caribbean.

[Ben Carlson]

Wow.

[Michael Batnick]

It's not. It's nuts. I wish I would have dropped my phone in that lake Instead of the other lake, which I'll get to in a little bit. You, you always ask, I think we had this discussion before. You always say, like, I can't get over prices of this. And for you it's some meals or like just the inflation stuff that you still have a hard time wrapping your head around. Like I get it, prices are up. But like you see this price and you go, oh my gosh, I still don't get it. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around housing prices. I go on a jog and I, and I, I go like the same route every day at lunch, right? There's a nice path and there's this house that looks like it was built in, I don't know, 50s, 60s, 70s, old, old house. I put pictures in here and it's for sale. And I, and I thought, when I get back I'm going to take, take a look at this. And you can see this. There's no modernization of this house whatsoever. This house looks like it's still from the 80s. And I look at the price and it was 425. Jeez, even for Grand Rapid, that's a lot of money. Not like a, not a hugely desirable area, just decent area. Old, old house. And I looked at the Zillow, the Zestimate history and this thing was selling for 200,000 in 2016. It's up 85% in the last 10 years. So my question to you, if you were a young person who's trying to buy a starter home and you're ready to give up on the system, would you become a socialist or would you become a libertarian? Which one would you become if you're ready to just like throw it all away and do something? Because I still can't believe that this.

[Ben Carlson]

Stuff, I would be a libertarian because that's like the, that's like the burn it all, burn it all down mentality. Socialism is like way too calm for me.

[Michael Batnick]

But you'd have to pick one of them, right? If you're like ripping your hair out. Because these are the kind of starter homes that you're going to buy and obviously, guess what, you're not going to get your dream home right away. Not everyone does the first home you buy. I still just have a hard time wrapping my head around housing prices. Do we get an update from you on your housing situation? We're going to save it next week. Next week. Okay, here's a middle aged thing that I really, really enjoy. So we're doing a home renovation right now. And we're putting in new flooring. I think I've talked about this before. We had to get the whole house ready for new flooring. Cause we're getting the whole house done, which is insanely expensive. And we just. We. For the last three weeks, we've been slowly but surely throwing stuff away. Right. All this stuff has to come off the floor, out from under the beds, put stuff up in the closets. I can't tell you how many trash bags full of stuff that I've. That we've gotten rid of and thrown away. It seems like a waste, but that is a very fun purge to do in middle age.

[Ben Carlson]

Like, I can't wait.

[Michael Batnick]

It feels so good to get rid of junk.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

That you. That just has sat there forever that you don't use.

[Ben Carlson]

I saw somebody. I saw an Instagram story where it was scanning through a lot of stuff that's being thrown out. And the caption was, this used to be money, right? Yeah, we buy a lot of.

[Michael Batnick]

Speaking of which. Oh, someone. Someone sent me this blog post, and I don't know how they figured this out. I didn't really get some math, but I'm gonna just pretend like they did their research. They say it's. It's. This is poorchoices.org 52 million Americans can't park in their own garage because they have too much stuff. They. They somehow did the back of the envelope math on this and figured out that. That many people can't park in their own garage, which is kind of crazy. All right, Survey of the week from Scott Galloway. Share of Americans who are millionaires, 8% believe they will be wealthy, 35% believe the next generation will be wealthy. 75%. And they say wealthy is defined as having a net worth of $2 million or more. This is one of the reasons that this is the American exceptionalism thing.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

We are delusional sometimes to our own detriment, but also oftentimes in the benefit of society. Right. These numbers don't. There's no way these numbers could possibly be correct.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Do the survey in Great Britain. No offense, but it's different.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes, it's true. All right.

[Ben Carlson]

Nick Maggi has a new book, the Wealth Ladder, and it's one of those books. I haven't read it yet, but I will because he's coming on TCAF this week. That is not just like, oh, another book about personal finance. It's like one of Nick's strengths is it's tangible, it's actionable. And so whether you are just Getting.

[Michael Batnick]

Started or it's not just philosophical or.

[Ben Carlson]

Cookie stuff, whether you were just getting started or you're somewhere between or even further along in your journey. Like at every stage there's something that you can apply to your life.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. And we talk a lot about this and our, our audience spans a vast number of these different ladders. Right. And yes, it's a very simple, easy book and idea, but Nick puts a lot of thought into these kind of things too. And very clear, concise writer. Nick's the man. Good stuff. Go get it. We've been talking about the upper middle class thing and CNBC had this cool thing where they actually showed and the retort is always, well, where do you live? They showed the low end of upper middle class and the high end of upper middle class. And the median by every state in the Commonwealth. Is that still a thing? Commonwealth? So they say nationwide, upper middle class households earn between 117 and 150,000 according to census Bureau. But then they break it down by California, much higher, obviously. West Virginia, little lower. New York, higher. Michigan a little lower. Pretty close to Michigan is pretty close to average actually. But you can, we'll click the link, put the link in the show notes. You can click through all of these and then it can make you feel either way better or way worse by your current situation. Again by Dragon. But the funny thing is you get the state level data and you go, yeah, but I live in this city. But yeah, but I live in this neighborhood. Yeah, but anyway, they do a good job of breaking it down by state retirement thing.

[Ben Carlson]

Let's, we'll blow through this quickly. We're getting kind of long here, but somebody sent us a retirement a summary from ChatGPT which, which basically shows that people are working longer. So it shows like the percentage of people that retired at age 65 to 69 and age 60 to 64 in 2000 to 2007 versus 2016 to today. So this shows that more people in these later age groups are still working. And so it's like, well, you know, what do we do? What happens?

[Michael Batnick]

Are we sure this is verified stuff? Can we, this is AI. So I'm not.

[Ben Carlson]

Whatever. Let's, let's just. Maybe it is, maybe it is not.

[Michael Batnick]

Really that important, but this makes sense to me. Yeah, people are living longer.

[Ben Carlson]

But so this chart from Semblist shows what does the federal government spend money on and it shows non defense discretionary spending as a percentage of gdp, which has gone sideways to down versus entitlement spending, which is straight up to the right. And here it is. There's a social safety net.

[Michael Batnick]

So you're, you're, you tying these together is kind of like Social Security is the answer. Yeah, yeah. So that's how people. Yeah. So yeah, the question is like these numbers make you think how, how in the hell are some of these people retiring in Social Security and working longer? And if you haven't saved enough money, that's the answer though.

[Ben Carlson]

Yep.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. We got three emails about my broken tv, which I was able to fix. And I commented last week on how the cheaper TVs, the picture quality is fine, but the problem is the apps, they slow down. So we had three people email us. I'll just read one. These days, smart TVs are cheap because you are the product. Once you connect a smart TV to the Internet, it broadcasts your watching habits back to advertisers. Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, buy an Apple TV or a Roku, plug it in and use.

[Michael Batnick]

That Instagram or the Kindle Fire. I use the Kindle Fire stick.

[Ben Carlson]

So I was like, oh, duh.

[Michael Batnick]

So I didn't even realize. I already. Yeah. So they're saying that, yeah, that app, as long as you have Internet, that will be the fast one.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. IMAX put out tickets for the Odyssey, which is not coming out until 2026. And I feel like, what are they doing? Like, I don't get it. Well, anyway, the one in Lincoln Square sold out in under three minutes.

[Michael Batnick]

Geez.

[Ben Carlson]

Pretty wild.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know that that I'm sure that movie is going to be good. It sounds like a book report to me just because I remember reading that book in high school or college or whenever I read it feels like homework.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm all the way in. So imax, there was an article in Bloomberg talking about how like Cinemark and Regal and Marcus are trying to fight back against how powerful IMAX is becoming with all the branding. Because people are going to theater less obviously and when they do, they want to go to one of these premier theaters. So last week, I don't know if Duncan told me hopped on the stream or if you told me after about a 24.

[Michael Batnick]

I think that was a conversation after.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. A 24 is another very powerful brand. Very powerful. This may be strong, but it is the brand in independent movies. They, it's them and neon. But a 24, like are absolutely kicking ass. So Duncan told me about this service and Duncan, come on and correct me if I'm wrong where you pay like 10 bucks a month and you get access to One free new release a month. So I signed up and I got a notification. Push notification. You can see Eddington. What's Eddington? I Google it and I see Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, and Austin Butler. A sheriff in the small town. I'm in. Say no more. I'm in.

[Michael Batnick]

Hey. Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal. I've never heard of this, so I.

[Ben Carlson]

Will give my review of the movie later. But I got envelope yesterday from a 24 with this little, like, packet of whatever. I don't know what you call this, but it's just a little magazine. But check this out. It's postcards. Promotion from from within the movie. So Joaquin Phoenix plays a sheriff, but.

[Michael Batnick]

I thought it was an actual.

[Ben Carlson]

No, Pedro Pascal plays the mayor. And they go at it, and I'm thinking, like, these guys are like. This is like, genius marketing.

[Michael Batnick]

It's pretty smart.

[Ben Carlson]

Isn't that really cool?

[Michael Batnick]

But I've literally never heard of this movie before, so maybe they aren't geniuses.

[Ben Carlson]

I'll talk about it later. But anyway, thought that was neat. Thank you, Duncan. Great idea. All right. Pencil. You dropped your phone, huh?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So we were out on the pontoon, and there was a storm coming in. The kids wanted to get tubing in before it rained, so we. We whip them around in the tube a few times. I'm getting really good at. They like to do donuts in the tube. So I fire them around in a circle, you know, and you slingshot. Now, the kids weigh a little more because they're bigger and they play off. So we hustle back, and my wife and kids get all the stuff off the boat. And I say, just leave me here. I'll put. I'm always. I'm the dad. So I'm always left to put the COVID on, Right? That's a dad job. Everyone leaves me, and I put the COVID on. Fine. I don't care. I'm hustling to put the COVID on because I want to get it before it gets wet. And on a pontoon, you put the COVID on and you put these, like, sticks in the middle to hold the top up so the water. Like a house, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yep.

[Michael Batnick]

But then you have to crawl out underneath the little door to get out. And so I'm crawling out. And usually when I'm on the lake, I have this little Patagonia, like, messenger bag, and I put my book keys in it, I put my wallet in, and I put my phone in it because I don't want to drop anything.

[Ben Carlson]

When you say messenger bag, you mean, like, man fanny pack.

[Michael Batnick]

No, it's like, over the shoulder.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, it's a man fanny pack, but.

[Michael Batnick]

With a backpack behind it.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a man fanny pack.

[Michael Batnick]

I'll show you it's not a fanny pack.

[Ben Carlson]

It is.

[Michael Batnick]

Yours is a fanny pack.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I mean, mine goes over my shoulder too, sir. Except. What? Your bag's in the back. Mine's in the front. So somehow you're better than me.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a backpack you can't wear in the front. You can't wear it on your fanny. Maybe you could. So I usually put my phone in there. I was in such a hurry to get out of there. Cause I wanted to beat the rain. I had all this stuff. I have, like, an empty can here. I got this. I got a towel. I'm trying to get everything off the boat. And my phone was in my hand. I didn't realize it was my hand. So I crawl out, I get up, I drop. Hits my knee. Boom. Hits the front of the boat. My foot comes forward, not even realizing it was happening. And then plop, into the lake. And it's one of those where you just go, well, shit. And you kind of shake your head. I didn't freak out.

[Ben Carlson]

But how do you put your way back together?

[Michael Batnick]

That's the thing. And we had dinner plans that evening, so I couldn't go get a new phone. So I went basically 24 hours without a phone. And I got to say, at first.

[Ben Carlson]

Don't. Don't tell me that you enjoyed it. Don't.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I.

[Ben Carlson]

It was socialist.

[Michael Batnick]

I. I found myself reaching for all the time. When I woke up the next morning, I thought, oh, my God, where's my phone? What did I do with it last night?

[Ben Carlson]

It.

[Michael Batnick]

Actually. I kind of enjoyed the break from it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, then get rid of your phone, tough guy.

[Michael Batnick]

No. But then you realize. So I had to drive a half hour away. Because where our place is, there's not a lot of stores. I had to drive a half hour away to the AT and T store the next morning. And guess what? No carplay. Couldn't listen to anything. And guess what? No carplay. I had to write the directions down because I'm so reliant on Google Maps and Apple Maps. I got lost trying to find the store. Cause I'd never been there before. It's in a. And so you realize how reliant you are on this stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

Did you pull over and ask. Go to a 711 and ask somebody for directions.

[Michael Batnick]

Luckily, I had my Apple watch on. And I, like, I figured out you could type it into my Apple watch. Without that, I was. I was lost. And so you realize how much you. And so I thought that movie with Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts leave the world behind, where, like, all of a sudden the power grid and Internet is shut off. Like, that would. If that happened to us for, like, three days, humanity would, like, cease to exist. There would be riots. People like you don't realize how much you rely on your phone for everything these days. Yeah, people would. Would lose their minds.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I could be wrong about this, but are street sweepers.

[Michael Batnick]

But also. Sorry. Losing your phone is kind of like when you have a flight delay or something and you want to complain about it. No one else cares but you. Yeah, it's the biggest pain in the ass to you, but everyone else is like, ah, that sucks.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I have my phone.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, right. I don't care about you.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I could be wrong about this, Ben, but are street sweepers the biggest scam on the earth?

[Michael Batnick]

Really?

[Ben Carlson]

You and I were talking yesterday. I said, hold on. This is street sweeper next to me. I could. I couldn't hear you. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, hey, wait a minute. What is this person doing? If, If. If Elon could get back in there and doge out these street sweepers. So it's these. It's these big trucks that sweep the sidewalk. I mean, there's like. It brushes the sidewalk. It's like getting rid of garbage. What is it doing? Literally, what is it doing? So in Michigan, it's moving food around the plate.

[Michael Batnick]

So in Michigan, we really need these because they put dirt down on the roads in the winter. So on the side of the roads, it's full of dirt. So after the winter, they have to come through and street sweep.

[Ben Carlson]

You know what we don't have in America? Dirt.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, see, that's the problem. So in Michigan, we need them. You probably. Maybe you're right. They're checking a box that, ah, we did it.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I can't. I mean, maybe. Maybe street sweepers, maybe they do something I don't know about. Maybe they are actually sucking up the garbage. But as far as I can tell, they were moving the garbage from this side of the road to behind the truck and I couldn't hear you. All right, I want to. I want to play something for you, Ben. I was going through my notes today on my phone, just deleting a bunch of stuff, and I saw this, and I said, wait, what is this? Oh, yeah, I wanted to share this with you. I'm going to share my screen. So, listeners, I. I heard this commercial for a drug the other day and I couldn't believe it. The drug is called Jardians Jardiance.

[Michael Batnick]

Anyway, off the tongue.

[Ben Carlson]

Ben, listen to the. Listen to this. Just listen to this. And for adults with type 2 diabetes. And can you hear that?

[Michael Batnick]

Yep.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

Bone heart disease.

[C]

Jardians can lower the risk of cardiovascular deaths too.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, Jardians.

[C]

Serious side effects include increased ketones in blood or urine, which can be fatal. Stop Jardians and call your doctor right away if you have nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, tiredness, trouble breathing or increased ketones. Jardians may cause dehydration that can suddenly worsen kidney function and make you feel dizzy, lightheaded or weak upon standing. Genital yeast infections in men and women, urinary tract infections, low blood sugar or a rare life threatening bacterial infection between and around the anus and genitals can occur.

[Ben Carlson]

Excuse me. A rare life threatening bacterial infection between around the anus and genitals can occur. Now I'm out. Wait, but wait. Does it get worse or is that, let's say, call your doctor right away.

[C]

If you have fever or feel weak or tired and pain, tenderness, swelling or redness in the genital area. Don't use if allergic to Jardians. Stop use if you have a serious allergic reaction. Call your doctor if you have rash, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing. You may have increased risk for lower limb loss.

[Ben Carlson]

Lower limb loss, what?

[C]

Your doctor right away if you have new pain or tenderness, sores, ulcers or infection in your legs or feet.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, anyway, the commercial is like 20 seconds, but the disclosure, like the wrists are like what?

[Michael Batnick]

That sounded like an SNL skit.

[Ben Carlson]

That seems exactly my reaction.

[Michael Batnick]

Plus they're dancing the whole time. That's lower limb loss.

[Ben Carlson]

But this is like the. Not quite as bad, but you know, when you're. Oh, whoops, let me stop the screen.

[Michael Batnick]

Sorry.

[Ben Carlson]

When you're on the airplane and they've got to go over the nonsense of what to do and if there's like, you know, an emergency, pull the raft. It's like, what are we doing here?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I wish we could skip that.

[Ben Carlson]

Can we just skip all that? Like, so these are regulations. I need to go anyway. Lower limb loss.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, let's do recommendations. I rewatched Air this week for some reason. I just like to have a movie onto the background. It came up. I think it's one of the best business movies of the century. I watched it the first time I Liked it. Man, that's a really good movie. It's just Damon is so good in that movie.

[Ben Carlson]

Who else is in it?

[Michael Batnick]

Ben Affleck. It plays Phil Knight. Jason Bateman is in it. Chris Tucker is in it. It's just really, really well done. And I think, because it went straight to Amazon and it was around the pandemic, I think. But I think if we're looking for best business movies of this century, I have the founder, Moneyball, Margin Call, BlackBerry.

[Ben Carlson]

I love BlackBerry. I can't believe how much I think.

[Michael Batnick]

Ayer is in the same class of those for best business movies of this century. So we have the movies that are the shows that we. That are filler shows, right? You're watching a show, you like, you binge it and then you have a filler show. Like in between days of the week when this show's not on, I'll watch this show. And for us that was Dave the Jackal. And now for whatever reason, there's just no new shows. I guess all the streamers decided like, ah, we're not gonna put any new good shows on. So we went back to Dave the Jackal.

[Ben Carlson]

I like the breakfast.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So we. Yeah, it's kind of nice for the summer, actually. Remember in the past when they would just. Shows would not be on all summer and then you'd have to wait till the fall for a new show. That was fun. So we got back in the day of the Jackal and we didn't not like it. We just like, ah, we never got pulled in and now we're three quarters of the way through and it's. It's a very good spy assassin. It's really well done. Like guys shooting from 3200 yards away for a kill.

[Ben Carlson]

Is it.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, season two, you said no season one.

[Ben Carlson]

Did you say you're rewatching it?

[Michael Batnick]

No, we started it, we watched a few episodes and now we got back in and we're almost done with it. But it feels like a movie in a lot of ways. It feels like a kind of assassin. Remember there was the Bruce Willis Jack Black movie. All right. Finally they had It's Complicated on rewatchables. And I can't imagine you've liked this movie.

[Ben Carlson]

I never. I don't know if I heard of it.

[Michael Batnick]

It's complicated. So it's Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski. Came out in like 2009. It's a kind of rom com they do not make anymore.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Never heard of it. It's A movie about divorce. But for some reason, movies about divorce usually work. For some reason, that dynamic.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So this is a couple who got divorced, and then they come back to have an affair together, even though the husband has remarried. And it's just. It's not. It would be way cheesier if it came out today, but there's a scene where Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep are exes and they. They happen to be at the same bar and they're eating food at the bar and drinking and it's one of the, like, best chemistry scenes that I've ever seen in a. In a movie. It's. They're so good together. I don't think it's a Michael movie, but I haven't seen that movie in a while, and it's really, really good.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

They don't make. They don't make them like that anymore, that kind of movie.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, what do you got?

[Ben Carlson]

All right. It happened to me, Ben. I'm an audiobook guy now. You know, the first audiobook I ever heard was the Hot Zone, which was a book that I listened to on cassette about the Ebola virus. This was what yours is. I don't know, midnight 93. I was on a car trip. I was on a car trip. And that's what we used to do when we took car trips. We would listen to audiobooks. So I just don't read books anymore. I don't. I don't. I was gonna say I don't have time. I don't want to dedicate time to reading books. Okay? Like there. I am a. I am a hyper productive person. I am never, like, lounging. I am always doing something, and I don't want to sit down and read a book. I have. I've officially admitted it to myself.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm a fiction only guy, but I read right before bed.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay? I can't do it. I just will not happen. It's that part of that chapter of my life of reading books. For now, it's on pause, okay? I'm not saying I won't ever read books again, but for now it's on pause. All right? But I do love books, and I miss books. So I was on my Spotify account and I saw an audiobook section and I was like, okay, let's see what's up. So the first book that I saw or one of the first titles that I saw is called Best Movie year ever how 1999 blew up the Big Screen. So I started listening to it, and because I'M always listening to something, whether I'm shopping or walking or driving or like, I always am listening. I don't know how many hours I listen to of stuff a week, but like, hey, why don't I get audiobooks in the mix, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Like, that's a great idea for a book, by the way.

[Ben Carlson]

So I'm enjoying the shit out of it. The only problem with the Spotify audiobooks is that there's no chapter details, there's no text. So I think I have to switch to audible because I do want to be able to like highlight.

[Michael Batnick]

Right, all right, Yep.

[Ben Carlson]

So anyhow, I'm listening to the movie, I'm listening to the book, which does sound weird. I know it's not the same thing, but I don't care. And I wanted to take you through the list of 1999 movies.

[Michael Batnick]

So I'm looking at this right now.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, hold on. Stop, stop, stop. This is, this is my show, okay? I had chat gbt give me a list of the movies in 1999. I said, grab me the top 100 movies of 1999 by rotten tomato scores and sort them by release date. Okay? So I don't know if this is 100% accurate. Maybe there's things in here that we're missing, but listen to how crazy this is. All right, we're going to start in March. Ben of 1999, how old were you in March 1999 and 1999?

[Michael Batnick]

I was a senior in high school, so I probably went to see half of these in the theater.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. I was 14. All right, cruel Intentions and Analyze this came out in the same weekend. All right, this is all in March. Then we got the Iron Giant, which I never saw, but then. But was a big hit at the time. Then we got the Matrix. And I have to be honest, hand up, I wasn't impressed by the Matrix at the time. I thought it was overhyped.

[Michael Batnick]

I've never been a Matrix guy, but it was the, the effects were. I was impressed with those.

[Ben Carlson]

14 year old Michael was not impressed. So anyway, the book goes, it does a deep dive on like the different character, the, the story of how these movies got made and the actors and the what if some of that sort of stuff. All right, then we move on to April. Man, April slaps. Go. A movie I never saw, but, oh, I love Go.

[Michael Batnick]

I still rewatch that to this day.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Three Kings. Love that movie. Office Space and Entrapment.

[Michael Batnick]

Moving on to May.

[Ben Carlson]

Moving on to May. We had Election. I never saw that one.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you Reese Witherspoon. Yep.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay. Matthew Broderick. So in May, you had Election, the Mummy, Star wars and Notting Hill. Not a bad month. In June, Austin Powers, the Spy who Shagged Me. Tarzan. The General's Daughter. Saw that one, Big Daddy. And Wild, Wild West. Did not see that piece of junk. In July, the Blockbuster month, we had American Pie. Absolute classic. That started the teen comedy stretch. The Blair Witch Project. I saw that in camp. Scared the shit out of me. The Haunting, which was terrible. Saw that in camp as well. And Runaway Bride. Then in August, the Sixth Sense, the Virgin Suicides, American Beauty and the Insider. All right, I'm going to say something out loud that I might regret. This has shaking me to my core, Ben. So the Sixth Sense. I know for a fact I saw that on opening night with my dad. I'm positive of that. Okay. That's not a movie you forget seeing, but I thought I was in fourth grade, like, in my. In my head. In my head, I was, like, in fourth grade. And I went to school the next day and, like, I was in music class when I told people about that. That never happened.

[Michael Batnick]

I didn't see that movie until it came out on video. And it was never spoiled for me. That was the 1990s.

[Ben Carlson]

True.

[Michael Batnick]

There's no way a movie like that could come out today and not be spoiled.

[Ben Carlson]

But anyway, when I thought about that, about me misremembering where I was when I saw the Sixth Sense, I started thinking, did I actually see Kevin Field of Dreams? I know I saw Field of Dreams, September, Double Jeopardy, south park, the talented Mr. Ripley and Sleepy Hollow. Then in October, we had Fight Club, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich and Eyes Wide Shut. In November, we had the World Is Not Enough in Toy Story 2. And then in December, the Green Mile and Stuart Little. How nuts is that?

[Michael Batnick]

Wow. So you also had movies like.

[Ben Carlson]

And what? What did I miss?

[Michael Batnick]

10 Things I Hate About You.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Monster.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, that might be the best movie year ever. You're right. I saw most of these in the theater.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so here's what I get.

[Michael Batnick]

It might have intrigued me enough to read this book. Actually, no, listen to it.

[Ben Carlson]

Here's what I did not see this week. I did not see. I know what you did last summer. Apparently, it was just pure dogshit. So thank you, I guess, for saving me a trip to the theater. All right, so that movie, Eddington. It's an Ari Aster movie. He is a writer, director. He did Hereditary and Midsommar, which I enjoyed the shit out of both those movies. Eddington was not for me. Unfortunately, Eddington is.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a horror movie.

[Ben Carlson]

No, no, no. It is a film, that's for sure. It was too long. It was. It was a real grown up, mature movie. I'm just going to have a good time. So if you're like a film goer, I think the critics will enjoy this more than the audience. Like there are parts of it that I enjoyed. It's just not for me. That's okay.

[Michael Batnick]

All right.

[Ben Carlson]

So. All right. We went long again. We're streaking.

[Michael Batnick]

You read off every movie from a certain year. It was worth it for me. It brought me back down memory lane. I still remember seeing a lot of these in the theater. All right, exhibit A for advice for financial advisors. Also financial advisors. Check out the unlock. Got more stuff coming. Are you still doing it every single week?

[Ben Carlson]

Actually, we're rebranding. We're going to call the channel Talking Wealth. So Josh is hopping on this week, but yeah, we're cooking over there. We are doing advisor focused content industry stuff.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, I'm recording with this week is Bill Bengan, the, the, the one who came up with the 4% rule.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, wow, very cool.

[Michael Batnick]

He's got a new book coming out. All right, email us animal Spirits pod at the compound. New. Wait, what is it? God dang it. Animalspiritscompoundnews.com and thanks everyone for writing in listening following, leaving reviews, subscribing, all that stuff. See you next time, Sam.