Loading summary
Transcript241 lines
- [00:00]
Michael Batnick
Today's show is brought to you by our friends at Y Charts. Ben, you know how hard it is to build a proposal for households with accounts that are here or they're getting everything in one consolidated view. Clean proposal. It's difficult, but now YCharts has their new household portfolios where you can bring everything together. No spreadsheets here and there. Boom. One stop shop.
- [00:24]
Ben Carlson
Especially when you work at a collaborative place like us, which like a lot of wealth management shops, probably where it's multiple people that are working on an account or a prospect, it is nice to have it in one place. So they also have this transition analysis that does all the tax math for you. That's a big part about transitioning. Any prospect is right, like what is the tax situation going to be if I make these moves? They have this folders capability so you're not trading emails or accidentally missing something. So everything is organized all in one easy to share place. It's just less time spending chasing around stuff and looking for data. It's nice and clean. Ychart's built it all out. So click the link in the Show Notes to learn more about these new capabilities. 20% off your initial subscription when you subscribe for the first time and mention Animal Spirits again, click that link in the Show Notes.
- [01:09]
Unknown
Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and 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 Rithol's Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
- [01:39]
Michael Batnick
Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We are here in Wicker Park, Chicago for the opening of our second HQ in Chicago. There is about 60 some odd people Ritholtz wealth employees here which is the largest gathering we've ever done and a lot of the employees, you know, we should keep track. I don't know how many, but I do know Ben, that the highest quality employees here at this firm have all come in from these announcements on analyst spurts. So allow us to make one more.
- [02:14]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, we're like our own LinkedIn here on the podcast.
- [02:18]
Michael Batnick
How do we boost this ad? Okay, we need a very. We're looking for an advisor with a very specific set of skills. We need somebody to come in here and work with our multifamily office team and this person is Going to be responsible for being the lead relationship manager for our ultra high net worth clients. Now, I don't know where the line is. I'm going to throw out a number. Ben, you could correct me if you think I'm wrong. Let's call it 50 million and above.
- [02:53]
Ben Carlson
That sounds fair in that ballpark. And you get to work with me more because I work a lot.
- [02:59]
Michael Batnick
Directly with Ben. Directly with Ben. We've got a whole team, but this is the missing part. So we are getting overwhelmed not to brag with this offering and we're really excited about its growth, but we need help. So please, I'm asking you with peace and love. We're being very specific. You need experience working directly as a lead relationship manager with these people. So if that's you, please reach out. You can go to info@ or hiringitholswealth.com or reach out directly to us. If you want us to be your first conversation. You know where to find us. Animal spirits@the compoundnews.com.
- [03:37]
Ben Carlson
All right, so I checked into our hotel today. We're staying in Wicker Park. And they always give you the rundown of the of what we got here. We got the bar here, we got this here, we got that here. No fitness center, which I'm okay with. Cause they can give me free passes to the bally's down the street or something. But they told me that on the second floor is a 90s themed bar. 1990s themed bar.
- [03:59]
Michael Batnick
Oh, shit.
- [04:00]
Ben Carlson
I guess this is just middle age where things constantly make you feel old. Oh, this person is this age. This person has a son or daughter that's this age. And everything in life is, oh, this was actually 30 years ago, not like three years ago. Everything in life as a middle aged person is designed to make you feel old. This is why people have midlife crisis. Cause they hear about 1990s themed bars.
- [04:21]
Michael Batnick
I love it. That's not a crisis. That's fantastic. I can't wait to see it.
- [04:25]
Ben Carlson
I can't wait to go. Obviously. I've got my stonewashed jeans. I'm ready to go. One more question for you. Travel related. This has happened to me twice now in my past two flights. I would like to know the rules of etiquette for when it is okay to ask someone to change seats with them. I have now been asked on my last two flights. Excuse me, could you change seats please? The first one was a gentleman who wanted to sit by his wife or girlfriend and I almost said no because I'm an aisle guy. He wanted me to change to the window. Okay, I think that's maybe a bridge too far. But it was a short flight, so I said, sure, I'll be the Good Samaritan here. I got a call today from United, and I'm thinking, oh, my gosh. They're going to tell me my flight's delayed. But they said, hey, we have a family of four. It's three kids and a mom. They need to sit together. We don't have enough seats to put them by each other. Can you change seats for us, sir? And she said, we're bringing you from an aisle to a window. Again, short flight. I'm okay with it. If it was a long flight, I might have said no. When is it okay to say no if someone asks you to change flights or seats?
- [05:28]
Michael Batnick
Every. Every time, you just say no? No, I'm only. I'm with you. Listen, I'm a pushover when it comes to things like that. I always say yes unless it's, like, a ridiculous request. I'm not going to a middle seat.
- [05:38]
Ben Carlson
And you know what they sent me? They sent me a free $15 travel voucher to spend at the airport.
- [05:43]
Michael Batnick
Boom. There you go. 15 bucks. You'll take it?
- [05:45]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, I'll take it. That can't buy you. They said it's for a meal. That can't buy a meal of food anymore. Right. You can't get a meal for $15.
- [05:54]
Michael Batnick
Not at the airport, you can't.
- [05:55]
Ben Carlson
Not at the airport.
- [05:56]
Michael Batnick
All right, let's talk about the stock market. So last week, friend of the program Warren Pies tweeted, this is why you need to incorporate a little technical analysis in your framework. Sometimes the market can see things that we cannot. Now, you know that I am a longtime believer in technical analysis. Not to make, you know, predictions about the future or any of these nonsensical technical patterns, but just very simple shit. Because Warren's absolutely right. The market does generally bottom before the news does. And I pay very close attention to that sort of action.
- [06:36]
Ben Carlson
Hang on. Cut you off. Did you hear Michael Semblis on odd lots?
- [06:40]
Michael Batnick
I did not.
- [06:41]
Ben Carlson
Okay, so he was on odd lots. And he said he's putting together this collective of his whole career, the lessons he's learned. And they said, what's, like, one of the biggest lessons that you can give us a little preview on? And that was it. He said, the stock market always bottoms before everything else. So when stocks are going down, you have to have a little bit of courage to, like, look over the Valley. So you're you're totally right. Well, we were the macro stuff is not going to the macro and the fundamentals in the short term is never going to give you the all clear. Never.
- [07:14]
Michael Batnick
Correct. I. And well it will, but it'll be way too late. So I was banging the drum on this idea earlier in the sell off. Not saying that I nailed it, although not bad. But what my point was that if you were of the opinion that the news hasn't even started, the earnings haven't even started to dip yet, you could have been right. But my point was that the stock market would bottom well in advance of that. So get used to it. So anyway, this is, this is a good topic because somebody emailed us earlier in the week. You and I have been talking a lot about the stats that, that Dietrich post that I really, that I really love to see these bread thrust like big change of behavior from oversold to overbought. That's, that's really, that's my whole jam. So somebody emailed us with a great question and they said, I'm wondering if the current breadth thrusts that have been mentioned recently are actually an aberration. I say that because this market is being driven by the whims and tweets of one person. Tariffs are announced in the market craters. Tariffs are postponed to the market shares. With such arbitrary movement caused by one person, how could technical analysis really be a keen source of market direction? And I thought that was such a great question and a fair question. Yep, it's a, it's a very fair question. So I will say this. The technical indicators right now in this current regime, listen, nothing works always, obviously, but innocent until proven guilty because the market has looked past this and the market's been right. So with that in mind, Subo Trade tweeted. Last month the S&P 500 was more than 18% below its high. This Monday the S and P was within 3% of its all time high. These quick recoveries are signs of strong momentum and tend to be bullish for stocks over the next three to 12 months. So three. One year later, there's only n equals what, seven? Not a long list. But again, when things go from super oversold to super overbought in a quick period of time, that means that something drastic happened, such as tariffs on. Oh wait a minute, tariffs off. Now the story is still being written. Who knows where this goes, who knows what happens with the court and all that sort of stuff. Fair question. But for now I am giving the market technicals the benefit of the doubt.
- [09:32]
Ben Carlson
Price Is the thing that tells you before anything else fair?
- [09:35]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, fair. All right. We've been talking about this idea that investor behavior is improved. It's been a theme of the show over the past couple of years, but certainly over the last two weeks. And Todd Son has some charts that I think you could argue back that up. So he shows the average daily equity ETF flows and from the beginning of the year through the bottom, it was basically at an all time high, meaning people were not bothered by the dip. But since the dip, that number has been cut in half the average daily equity ETF flow. So in other words, people were not scared to run into the fire. They looted the store, they bought stocks on the cheap and they are not as aggressively buying them on the way up.
- [10:34]
Ben Carlson
All right. People turned up the dial in April.
- [10:37]
Michael Batnick
Yeah. And then they kicked their feet up and said.
- [10:42]
Ben Carlson
Everyone keeps saying just wait till this doesn't work. And I just, I don't think that's like a gotcha kind of moment that people think it is. Of course it's not going to work. There's going to be a long extended bear market, of course. But most of the time, I think, I think the whole thing with investing is make as many good high probability bets as you can over and over again and sometimes the outcome is not going to be something you like. That's investing.
- [11:07]
Michael Batnick
Buying panic is always a probabilistic good move. Obviously it doesn't always work, duh. But more times than not it does. And this idea, I'm writing about this Ben, I've got a post baking in the oven at 4:25. This idea that it's, oh, all you have to do is buy the Mag 7 when they dip and it's just been a smooth ride. Nonsense, nonsense.
- [11:32]
Ben Carlson
I agree.
- [11:32]
Michael Batnick
Nvidia. Nvidia fell, fell, fell 70% in 2022. And let me remind you that it fell, what, 35% very far back. I can remember all the way back till April, it fell 35%.
- [11:47]
Ben Carlson
People and people are, am I using this term right? I still don't know how to use it. Gaslighting People keep trying to say, like, we haven't. 2022 was an actual bear market. Now here's the thing. We haven't had a recessionary bear market since 2008. But guess what? Recessions are happening fewer and fewer. Like, I, I don't know what people want. But 2022 was a legitimate bear market. It lasted 18 months. It was 25% peak to trough. The Nasdaq was down 30%. Like you said, there was many tech stocks down 50, 60, 70% in that, in that downfall. That was a legitimate bear market. It was. I don't care. People's thoughts.
- [12:20]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, absolutely was. Ben, let me throw another term at you. I think what people are trying to do to that bear Market in 2022, are they whitewashing it? Are they making believe it never happened? Because it did happen. I was there.
- [12:29]
Ben Carlson
Okay. Whitewashing, not gaslighting. My, my wife said to me though that I stopped gaslighting me. And I wanted to say, I don't think you're using that phrase right, but I don't understand it still. So I couldn't say that to her.
- [12:41]
Michael Batnick
It sounds like you were gaslighting her.
- [12:43]
Ben Carlson
Ben, don't gaslight me. I don't know what that means. So I can't. I have no comeback.
- [12:48]
Michael Batnick
So we're going to talk later in the show. We're going to return to some of the data we spoke about last week with Mobison and that chart that we showed last week. You know that chart that we showed last week, the bear market chart from exhibit A, chart of the week.
- [13:02]
Ben Carlson
Yes.
- [13:02]
Michael Batnick
The probability of a bear market happening increases over longer periods of time. It's so interesting because you can look in that and come to two conclusions. Yes, you are going to experience bear markets. That is part of the deal, right? This is very obvious to people that have been listening. You can't have long term returns without risk with bear markets. They are part and parcel to investing. Somebody might take a different opinion and say, well, true, but if you know that bear markets and the downturns are part of investing, why sit through them? Why not maybe try and avoid them if you can? And it's not black or white. I don't want to make believe that it's either or because at our company we don't, we don't view it that way. Certainly with our clients money. One of the ways that people try and protect themselves from bear markets are they buy volatility on leverage. One of the most popular tools in an investor's toolkit is a ticker. ETF is an ETF ticker, uvxy. And Todd Sohn has a great chart showing the return of this thing over time. And it's just, it's down into the right with brief periods of miraculous gains. It's funny, even with this down to the right, you see like this 150% return, 220% return, whatever. It's barely a barely even. Right.
- [14:32]
Ben Carlson
So this is, this is a Tail risk. I'm not familiar with this strategy or this product. But this is a tail risk strategy, right?
- [14:39]
Michael Batnick
Not necessarily. I mean, ish, ish. It's in that category. It's. It's the levered VIX and it's just pure decay. But I think the point is there's been $9 billion in cumulative flows into this ETF. I don't know what's currently in there, but it's just a money incinerator. And guess what? I think people view this either as speculating or insurance or whatever. And I guess if this has got.
- [15:06]
Ben Carlson
To be insurance, like, because if you just mirrored this graph and turned it around, you'd say I want to buy that thing, which is obviously just shorting volatility anyway.
- [15:16]
Michael Batnick
I think Todd's point is long volatility, like these sort of hedging strategies are really hard to time. And I know there's a lot of quant nerds out there that are all over this stuff. And I think from what I can tell just based on the products that are available in the ETF wrapper, I think this thing has to be actively managed. I think buying and holding these products are just, you're just asking for trouble.
- [15:36]
Ben Carlson
We've talked to enough people who have options based strategies and they all say the same thing. You can't set it and forget it with these types of instruments. You have to manage around them based on what the market is doing or those individual securities. Yeah, I agree with that.
- [15:52]
Michael Batnick
All right. Somebody emailed us another email said, I feel that The S&P 500 might be about as risk free as it gets if you have a 10ish plus year time horizon. What I mean by that is there will certainly be times where it goes down. But does anyone really believe that it won't go up over the long term? I know this sounds too optimistic, but when I think of risk, I think of going down and never coming back to the same levels. Not volatility. I would be curious to get your opinions. I'm just an average investor, not a professional, so I'm sure not. Not using these terms exactly how they may be technically defined. I think this is generally correct. If you are of. If you have the ability to look through the volatility and you think about risk through the prism of will there be permanent impairment of my investment? Will I earn a return on this investment? I think that's the right framework and I know that this person is probably speaking a little bit hyperbolic.
- [16:44]
Ben Carlson
Risk freeze. But if you're at an all time high. That means the stock market has literally come back every single time. But no one was saying this in 2009, 2010, even to like 2013. Living through that. There was the S P went nowhere for like a 13 year period. Essentially you had the lost decade. So that those lost decades are. Can certainly. So I say even a 10ish year time horizon.
- [17:11]
Michael Batnick
I can't get there. I can't get there.
- [17:14]
Ben Carlson
No, I don't think I can either. I get what they're saying. It. It literally has always come back. If it hits an all time high, that means it has. But there are periods where even for 10 years, you can be in a lot of pain and a lot of volatility.
- [17:26]
Michael Batnick
Yeah. So if you have the right mindset, you're probably best off with this investing mentality. But to think that it's risk free is a bridge too far.
- [17:38]
Ben Carlson
Yes.
- [17:40]
Michael Batnick
All right, back to, back to this research piece from Mauboussin that we hit on last week.
- [17:47]
Ben Carlson
Did you actually read it or did you chatgpt it?
- [17:50]
Michael Batnick
I actually read it. I have, I will Admit I have 4 pages left.
- [17:54]
Ben Carlson
AI needs a verb. Google it. They needed their own verb. What is it? ChatGPT. It doesn't sound cool enough.
- [18:02]
Michael Batnick
Nah, an A.I. it doesn't work. I don't know, we'll think about it. Or maybe somebody will has an idea. So the big takeaway for me was almost. Now with this data, not to, not to nitpick, but they used, they included stocks with a market cap of a million dollars, inflation adjusted. That's, that's very small. I would wonder what happens if you get rid of some of the, you know, nano cap stocks. But be that as it may, the takeaway is, I think it was like, damn it, I'm remembering exactly what it was. Is it like 60% of stocks on this list all get cut in half? Almost all stocks get cut in half eventually.
- [18:43]
Ben Carlson
Right. It's. That's not out of the ordinary.
- [18:46]
Michael Batnick
Now there's a difference between the thinking that I have with individual stocks versus the market. I think that individual stocks, if you know this and think about how difficult it is to predict the future, forget about sitting through, because all that we've spoken about up until now is just price action just sitting through this. But the reason why these stocks get cut in half is because there is really something either either temporarily or permanently impaired with the business. And obviously most of us here are not professional investors doing deep analysis, so we don't really know. And even if you were, think about Netflix Bill Ackman, obviously one of the most prominent investors of all time. He sold Netflix at the bottom, and I'm not dunking on him for it. They looked like they were in trouble. They were shrinking. It was the first time ever. And it was like, all right, maybe that's as good as it could to get. He sold Netflix at the bottom. Is Netflix up four times since he dumped his stake?
- [19:45]
Ben Carlson
More, I think, I think Netflix has fallen 70% either three or four times in its history. Like just these massive, massive crashes.
- [19:54]
Michael Batnick
So you're not, you're just not. Unless you're an insider, you're not going to have the conviction to hold these stocks while they're down 60%. How could you? Why would you wait?
- [20:03]
Ben Carlson
Isn't the advice like, if you're going to bottom fish like this, isn't the advice to treat it like a VC portfolio where instead of just trying to pick one stock that's down 50 or percent, you got to pick a handful of them and hope that a couple of them make up for the ones that don't come back? If you're going to do this, isn't.
- [20:18]
Michael Batnick
That the, that's, that's, that's, that's one way to do it for sure. I would say my rule, because you do know I like to pick bottoms. I can't help it, but I never catch a falling knife. I always, always wait for the stock to stabilize and at least attempt to either build a base or, or put, put in a higher low. I never buy stocks that are in free fall, ever, ever, ever. You can't do that.
- [20:43]
Ben Carlson
Mr. Technical analysis. Today I have rules. This is fair.
- [20:50]
Michael Batnick
This is great. So two, two quick points that I want to take up from the post. Researchers study the behaviors of retail investors regarding stocks they currently own. So speaking of bottom fishing, they found that investors are roughly 50% more likely to buy more shares after a stock of a stock after it went down versus when, when it went up 50%. More likely, Ben, to buy a stock that's going down than going up. The psychological rationale is that the lower average cost reduces the investor's reference point, mitigating the likelihood of suffering from loss aversion. This work found that averaging down did not benefit the returns of the investors who did it. So we, we just touched on that. The other, the other point that's interesting is they studied turnarounds. So fundamental turnarounds. A downturn is defined as, and they cite data from UBS salt. A downturn is defined as two years of returns on investment Below the cost of capital following two years of returns on investment. Above the cost of capital. A sustained turnaround is three years of returns above the cost of capital following the downturn. So the study concluded that only 29% of companies had a sustained turnaround and nearly one half had no turnaround at all. So price is right. Most stocks, once the business starts deteriorating, most of them are not Netflix. Most of them do not turn around.
- [22:13]
Ben Carlson
That's that research about the loss aversion. That's why I think loss aversion is like the most important behavioral concept to understand for investors. Just that whole, I'm going to wait till it breaks even or I'm going to keep buying as it goes down to make yourself feel better. And that's why momentum is such a hard factor to follow, because it's counterintuitive. It doesn't feel right in your brain to keep buying a stock that has gone up, even though a lot of times that's the right thing to do.
- [22:38]
Michael Batnick
I have gotten, I don't want to say good at it because that's an overstatement, because it's really hard. But I have discovered a small ability to add to winning positions, which. It sounds like a joke, like, yeah, I mean, obviously buy more of what's working. It's really hard to do.
- [22:56]
Ben Carlson
This is why I'm out of stock picking. I'm retiring.
- [23:00]
Michael Batnick
Dude, you're right. Honestly, it's. It's such a goddamn waste of mental energy. Like, it really is. It really is.
- [23:06]
Ben Carlson
All right, let's talk about rates real quick. I have a question for you. You know the Louis CK bit where he talks about something really bad that's happened in history, like the fact that in Egypt they use slave labor, but they built the pyramids. Like, okay, that's really bad, but maybe you know that one.
- [23:20]
Michael Batnick
Maybe. Yes, of course.
- [23:22]
Ben Carlson
So listen, going into a recession is awful. People lose their jobs, businesses go under. But maybe, like, do we need a recession to right size people's brains in a lot of different ways? I don't want a recession. I think they're terrible. If we can avoid them, I think we should avoid them at most costs. But I do think people need a gentle reminder sometimes what actual bad a bad economy feels like, because I don't think people know what it. I think people have just forgotten. There's like. So I mentioned this before that I think the next recession is going to get weird. And I did listen finally to your Rich Bernstein talk with Josh, and he kind of mentioned a similar something in A similar vein. Like, I think the reactions in the next recession are going to be like, it's going to be hard to predict because a lot of people just haven't had them in their adult lives. Like, I lived through recessions when I was a kid or a teenager and I didn't even know they were happening. Like, you don't. I don't think that stuff registers to you unless something bad happens to your family or you hear a story. But when I, when you were growing up, did you ever know what was going on in the economy or the markets?
- [24:27]
Michael Batnick
Never. Ever?
- [24:28]
Ben Carlson
No, I never came up in my household. I never looked at it on the news. Maybe it's just.
- [24:33]
Michael Batnick
Hang on, hang on. What are you talking? Like, give me, give me an age cut off. Like before you were 15 years old?
- [24:40]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, for me it was before I graduated college. I didn't pay attention to anything economically related. The markets, like, the rest, that stuff was all just. It didn't exist to me.
- [24:51]
Michael Batnick
Did you.
- [24:51]
Ben Carlson
I didn't know.
- [24:53]
Michael Batnick
Did you know that there was a dot com bubble and that it burst?
- [24:58]
Ben Carlson
No, I had no idea. I literally did not pay attention to the stock market at all.
- [25:04]
Michael Batnick
I don't think I did either. In fact, I had a. I had a family member who was. Was young and made it during the dot com bubble and then got rugged by the burst. And even then, like, it didn't register that there was like, economic activity going on that was like, interesting.
- [25:23]
Ben Carlson
See, that's the difference between now and then. You could be so naive to anything back then.
- [25:28]
Michael Batnick
I would not.
- [25:29]
Ben Carlson
I would, I would pay attention to politics. Every four years when the presidential election would come up, I kind of pay attention. And that was it. So today, today you cannot be naive because everything is just shoved down your throat. Okay, that was my recession rant. Torsten Slok chart of the week. He shows.
- [25:46]
Michael Batnick
Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. I don't understand the point of the rant.
- [25:50]
Ben Carlson
It's just like, do, do we need. Do certain people need a reminder of. There's people complaining still. People always complain that this is terrible and that's terrible. And I don't think people really know what a bad economic environment is.
- [26:03]
Michael Batnick
Oh, okay.
- [26:04]
Ben Carlson
I don't want to be that guy.
- [26:06]
Michael Batnick
But I mean, you're. This is a little bit. Pucker up, buttercup.
- [26:12]
Ben Carlson
I just, I think people need a reminder like, oh, that's a recession. Okay. I definitely didn't want that. Okay, so spreads are still very low, barely budging still. So they're not worried at all. I Think this is interesting. Sometimes markets make no sense. So I was looking at TLT the other day. Still in a 43% drawdown, people are worried about rates normalizing. You know and I compared it to shy which basically had zero drawdown. When the rates rose, I think shy fell 3 or 4%. That's the 1 to 3 year treasuries. If you look at the rates now, a three year, two year treasury is at 4%. Call it in a 30 year is at 5. So you get 1% extra right now over yield in a, in a 30 year. People are worried about that. But you literally just had to live through a 45% drawdown to get that extra 1%. Does that make sense on a risk reward perspective to you?
- [27:02]
Michael Batnick
Wait, I feel like. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, I have to. This is a yellow flag. Why you're not. Because you're. What about price appreciation? I mean, come on, just think about.
- [27:13]
Ben Carlson
This from the perspective of risk and reward though. Why. Why aren't 30 year yields way higher or why isn't there a way bigger spread right now? I know this is. Things are normalizing and it's taking some time but that, that trade off makes absolutely zero sense to me.
- [27:28]
Michael Batnick
Why you would own long dated bonds versus short data right now. Well, because the Fed.
- [27:33]
Ben Carlson
Well, I'm saying why isn't the spread wider? I know that you buy them and yields fall and then that's when you make up for. Just seems like there should be a bigger bang for your buck yield wise to induce you. Maybe that's why rates are rising, because people aren't being compensated for it.
- [27:51]
Michael Batnick
Well, on the investment grade side, that makes more sense to me.
- [28:00]
Ben Carlson
Okay, Just a thought. Sometimes markets are weird, that's all.
- [28:06]
Michael Batnick
All right. Speaking of weird, obviously Jamie Dimon is. This is not even. Nobody would debate that he's not one of the greatest bank executives of all time, certainly the greatest living leader of any bank in America and the person that anybody would want leading the biggest bank in their nation. That being said, he's doing it again with this doom and gloom Talk. So in 2022 in June, he said, you know, I said there's storm clouds, but I'm going to change it. It's a hurricane. While conditions seem fine at the moment, nobody knows if the hurricane is a minor one or superstorm Standy, you better brace yourself. Dimon told the room of analysts and investors. JP Morgan is bracing ourselves and we're going to be very concerned with our balance sheet. All right. Of course JP Morgan should be concerned with their balance sheet. But that was in 2022. And now last week he said, you are going to see a crack in the bond market. Okay? It is going to happen. The US Is headed for a reckoning. And I'll tell this to my regulators. It's going to happen and you're going to panic. I just don't know if it's going to be a crisis in six months or six years now. Maybe he's right. I mean, obviously I hope he's not right. I'm sure that he would hope he's not right. But why keep saying this publicly?
- [29:23]
Ben Carlson
I have an idea here. And you know, I hate the boy who cried wolf stuff like that. Stuff. I feel like every six months it's Jamie Dimon warns, Ray Dalio warns, Paul Tudor Jones warns. Like, I want to issue a warning one of these times. But you know how when you were little and your dad would make you get to the airport three hours early and constantly warning people, we're going to be late, we're going to be late. Like, is he just doing this as, like, just a reminder to himself and his employees that, like, we have to be ever vigilant. There's always the possibility something could break. And he's constantly doing the boy that cried wolf on purpose?
- [29:57]
Michael Batnick
No, I don't think so.
- [29:59]
Ben Carlson
Okay. I don't really know. Okay. So the tariff stuff last week, I can't believe we got to keep litigating tariffs, but I guess they're like literally litigating them. It's a court thing that said first they're illegal and then they're not illegal and there's appeals. And I hope we don't just have to keep arguing about them going back and forth. But James McIntosh at the wall Street Journal said, listen, the most likely scenario is just a muddle through, Right. Tariffs will probably slow growth, but they're not going to kill stuff. And the tax bill will probably be okay and things aren't going to be crushed now that we've kind of backed off. He said the US Economy can probably muddle through as long as the government keeps out of it, which it sounds like the government does, but isn't. I don't know. Is that now the baseline? I feel like the baseline has shifted 12 times in the last month.
- [30:47]
Michael Batnick
I think the baseline is now no recession, things are back to normal. Yeah, there'll be some tariffs somewhere.
- [30:52]
Ben Carlson
But this, the Atlanta Fed data come out this morning and remember, it had a big crash last month and it finished slightly negative. And again, These things are not all knowing or all seeing, but they're directionally right. And now it's saying over 4% real growth for Q2.
- [31:12]
Michael Batnick
The prediction markets, the odds of a recession are crashing.
- [31:18]
Ben Carlson
Well, obviously if the growth is going to look like this. Can you imagine being a contrarian all the time and constantly trying to make these predictions? Just wait. This is gonna, you know, the MAG7 is gonna. Is done for and the US economy is done for and I just can't imagine that. It's a lonely life.
- [31:36]
Michael Batnick
Not for me.
- [31:38]
Ben Carlson
All right, did you read, did you see all the stories about the Federal Reserve's new financial wellbeing survey? I like this stuff.
- [31:43]
Michael Batnick
I did not see this.
- [31:45]
Ben Carlson
This is what I. Okay. 73% of adults reported either doing okay or living comfortably financially. Pretty similar to recent years. But it's the high of 78 in 2021. Then they do the one where they ask, how do you feel about yourself? I'm fine. 73% of people say, again, I'm doing okay or good. But just 46% say the local economy is doing good. And just 29% say the overall economy is doing good. That really cratered since the pandemic. So this is the. I'm doing fine, but the economy stinks. And this really happened during the pandemic?
- [32:23]
Michael Batnick
Yes, it did. But it looks like it's rebounding, especially the local economy. No, a lot of it.
- [32:31]
Ben Carlson
This is, this one's interesting to me. It says 27% of adults consider themselves to be retired. And then they asked how many people actually consider themselves to be on track to retire? And I think 35% of people among non retirees said they're on track to save enough for retirement. Is this just the thing where even if you're doing really well, you probably don't feel like it? Cause remember I shared with you an email, we got a question from someone and they said, hey, does it make sense to have a financial advisor for someone who's in the middle class like us with two to three million dollars? And these people were not being tongue in cheek, they were being serious. And maybe they live in San Francisco or New York or something, and to them they feel middle class. But is this just the thing where no one ever quite feels like they're totally prepared for retirement?
- [33:18]
Michael Batnick
I mean, come on, that's just not middle class. Yeah, but you're right. But could we just. I just want to revisit the previous chart just for a minute. The assessment of own financial well being versus local economy and national economy. Look at what happened during the pandemic, because in 2019 the gap wasn't that wide. And I feel like absent the pandemic we wouldn't be talking about this gigantic theme of everything's going to hell. But I'm okay. That's been a big talking point for the last five years. And it's a post Covid thing and it's a post inflation thing.
- [34:00]
Ben Carlson
I feel like it is possible that Covid broke sentiment surveys maybe for a whole cycle, maybe forever.
- [34:07]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, I don't know about forever, but certainly, certainly for the last five years. And who knows how much longer this lasts. But look, there is a pretty big rebound from the bottom of people's assessment of the local and national economy.
- [34:21]
Ben Carlson
All right, I have another question for you. Are you more worried about inflation from government spending and deficits or deflation from AI and is it possible? So this is like a doomer thing. Like I'm worried about AI taking all the jobs, but I'm also worried about inflation from all the government spending and deficits. But I think you have to pick one or do they balance each other out?
- [34:44]
Michael Batnick
Let me move the goalposts. I'm not, not worried about inflation from government spending, but I am. And I'm also not worried about deflation from AI, but I am much more concerned, and we have this later in the doc, I am much more concerned about the damage that will be done from AI than I am from the damage that might be caused because of our deficit. Not even.
- [35:06]
Ben Carlson
Isn't. Isn't AI the solution to all the people worrying about government spending though? And if I really is a job killer, isn't the government going to have to spend more money on unemployment insurance and entitlements and such? I don't know. So I did this thing where I looked at government debt, 10 year yield and inflation every 20 years going back to 1975. And the government debt explodes inflation and rates are lower now than they've been most of these other 20 year periods. Maybe this is cherry picking, but someone asked me last week, like, when are you actually going to worry about government debt? Because you and Michael always kind of poo poo it. And I don't think, I don't think.
- [35:43]
Michael Batnick
I poo poo it. I think that the risks are.
- [35:45]
Ben Carlson
We've just tried to calm people's nerves. But here's the thing. You can call me naive or like, but I am going to wait till the market tells me to worry about it. How's that? Like when the. Because I don't want to. This is another boy o cried wolf moment. I. I must have that analogy in my head. I told my son the story about it because he constantly does that. And then he tried to tell the story to his sisters and totally butchered it. So we're still working on storytelling, but I. This is a situation to be like. If the market really does freak out, then, then I will start to freak out. But until it, until we start seeing really high inflation for an extended period of time and really high interest rates because people don't want to buy our government debt anymore, then I'll start to worry. But until then, I, I think it's. I don't think it's worth worrying about. Is that, is that too flippant or naive?
- [36:35]
Michael Batnick
I don't know. Teach their own. That's. But that's not. But like, if people are talking about managing risk, it's like, okay, great, you're going to freak out. You're going to, you're going to buy insurance after your house burns down.
- [36:45]
Ben Carlson
But how are you going to manage risk of. What would that even look like?
- [36:50]
Michael Batnick
Well, if you're, if you're worried about.
- [36:51]
Ben Carlson
Government, how do you, how do you prepare for that risk? I don't know what it could be. Don't own treasuries.
- [36:57]
Michael Batnick
Whoa, dude. You buy gold, you buy Bitcoin.
- [36:59]
Ben Carlson
Okay, sure.
- [37:02]
Michael Batnick
No, that's the answer.
- [37:04]
Ben Carlson
All right.
- [37:05]
Michael Batnick
You think gold is going up just as just coincidence, like, people are buying gold because they're worried about the deficit.
- [37:12]
Ben Carlson
All right? I, I'm not going to worry till the market does.
- [37:18]
Michael Batnick
Fair. That's, that's, you know, to each their own. Okay.
- [37:21]
Ben Carlson
Come anywhere, dude.
- [37:25]
Michael Batnick
My dirty whites. All right. There was an article, an opinion piece in the New York times. I'm a LinkedIn executive. I see the bottom rung of the career ladder breaking and no offense, kind of a nothing burger. If you told me Chad GPT Wrote. Wrote it, I wouldn't. I would believe you. I pulled up because we have the data. It's available, the unemployment rate for people 20 to 24 years old. Now, I actually am genuinely concerned about the future of young people's careers. And we're starting to see it in the data a little bit, the unemployment rate for young people.
- [38:07]
Ben Carlson
But this is way. This is below average. Just eyeballing it, obviously.
- [38:10]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, yeah, but, but, but, but the gap between this and employed people is pretty wide and I think this will get worse. So. Not to nitpick. Totally. Although I guess I did just nitpick because I am worried it's just not showing up yet. So Colin tweeted maybe my biggest long term macro prediction. First AI will come for services inflation, then the robots will come for goods inflation. Then the government will come with Zerp 10 to 20 years max. Maybe sooner given FS. AI is changing.
- [38:41]
Ben Carlson
So he's in the AI is more deflationary camp if there's right worse.
- [38:46]
Michael Batnick
I just think like from a societal perspective mass massively job displacing and listen the tech folks will say dude, every single technical technological wave of advancement has had people. This is the boy who cried a wolf. Everything that has come has created more jobs than its displays. It's move.
- [39:09]
Ben Carlson
Yeah we have a dynamic economy. People are going to have to pay attention to the robots. And so I think the best advice here though is Josh said own the robots. I think yeah owning stocks is if you're really worried about this world you own stocks. Because how many trillion dollar companies are there going to be for robotics and AI and that sort of thing? A ton of them.
- [39:29]
Michael Batnick
So I think, I think I'm with Colin. I do think now it doesn't matter right. Like our opinions. Nobody's stopping this. It's not, it's coming. And I do think that there will be. I think that this will prove history wrong. I think this might be the, this might be the time. Maybe it won't. We'll see. I hope I obviously I hope it's.
- [39:54]
Ben Carlson
Not so it's going to make things really weird. I'm picturing the relationships and the. It's gonna make things so bizarre. It's gonna be a weird world.
- [40:06]
Michael Batnick
I mean the difference between AI and all previous revolutions, it's. I think it's apples and oranges. I think it's. I do think it's genuinely different. The power of these machines and what they could do. It's. It really is like nothing we've ever seen. So Matthew, beyond that.
- [40:20]
Ben Carlson
But then, then people will get used to it and then they'll complain about it.
- [40:24]
Michael Batnick
A record surgeon investment. A record surge of investment in information processing equipment boosted US GDP by a full percentage point in the first quarter. In other words, excluding the data center bonanza, the economy would have registered a 1.2% contraction. This chart is off the charts. It's wild. Here's another one. Mary Meeker published a 300 page report. I have not gone through all of it but I did pull out one chart that shows the growth of USA IT jobs that are AI versus non AI and non AI tech jobs are down 9% which is wild. Since 2018, AI jobs are up 448%.
- [41:12]
Ben Carlson
So our advice to our kids is going to be to go to trade school, right? Become a plumber, become an electrician, become a builder. I'm only half kidding. But those physical world things are going to be. That's going away for now.
- [41:29]
Michael Batnick
We're going to talk about robots in a second. But the transcript posted this. This is from Alphabet. The world is responding and adopting AI faster than ever before as one marker of progress. This time last year, we were processing 9.7 trillion tokens a month across our products and APIs. Now we are processing 400 trillion monthly tokens. That's about a 50x increase in just a year. Holy shit. So there was a great article, a really phenomenal, phenomenal article by Night View Capital talking about Amazon and their robots and how they're doing what they're doing. And I pulled this out. Over a decade ago, Amazon made a pivotal move by acquiring a robotics company called Kiva Systems. That acquisition, one former head of systems and products at Amazon Robotics told us, was based on the fact that roughly 50 to 60% of the labor costs in a warehouse were due to the time spent walking to pick up inventory. Holy shit. Automating. This was the first step. Today, Amazon has deployed more than 750,000 robots across its operations network to help fulfill orders.
- [42:28]
Ben Carlson
But it doesn't. But Amazon is still hiring, too. So it doesn't seem like it's completely. I guess it stopped them from hiring more people. But it hasn't put everyone at Amazon out of work.
- [42:39]
Michael Batnick
I mean, not yet, but it's dramatically slowed.
- [42:42]
Ben Carlson
So do you remember when Core Weave went public? And I think we talked about it on this show and I said, it's weird to have an AI company go public. And it. I think it went down or it was flat the first day and not a bonanza. And this is at the end of March. And since then it's up, I don't know, 200% or something. It's just gone bonkers. So I guess it just took some time for people to get back into the bubble.
- [43:04]
Michael Batnick
You and I had the opportunity to invest in Core Weave pre ipo.
- [43:08]
Ben Carlson
I know. Yeah, you told me about it. And I kind of. Why would we do. Yeah. Whoops. Okay, so speaking of, like, good, let's focus on the good stuff because everyone will focus on the bad stuff. So did you see this Waymo article in the Wall Street Journal? Ben Cohen? He read some of my favorite profiles. He's really good. He said Waymo. And I feel like this is the kind of thing where it doesn't get nearly enough publicity. Like, why aren't, why isn't everyone paying more attention to this? Waymo was doing 10,000 paid rides a week in August 2023. By May 2024, it was up to 50,000. In August, it hit 100,000. Now it's more than 250,000. And so they cracked a million total paid rides in 2023, 5 million in 2024, and 10 million in 2025. So they're going to do 20 million by the end of this year.
- [43:53]
Michael Batnick
Just unbelievable.
- [43:54]
Ben Carlson
It's magical. People are literally driving in cars with no one driving it. It's.
- [44:00]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, it's unbelievable. I got to go to the bathroom. One sec. All right, Ben, let's talk about real estate. So the Wall Street Journal had a headline that said home sales in April fell for the second straight month. The slowest sales pace for Any April in 16 years indicates the spring selling season is shaping up as a bust. So, Ben, for the last couple of years, the economy has marched on, while one of the biggest components of it has slid downwards, probably an unthinkable outcome. If you said, hey, there's going to be an absolute depression in the real estate market. Single family homes, at least existing homes, I should say, what's that going to do for the overall economy? Nothing really. But the housing stocks are getting murdered. Even with the incentives helping people buy down some mortgages, they're not doing so hot. Here's a quote from the Toll Brothers CEO via the transcript. There are buyers on the sidelines. One of the reasons we are favoring pace over price is because we believe this market is fairly inelastic. And to throw more incentive at home sales, it's going to hurt your margin a lot more than it's going to increase sales because the buyer is not responding. Over $5,000, 10, 15, $20,000 of more incentive. Many of them just happen to be on the sidelines. Not great.
- [45:27]
Ben Carlson
So that sidelines. This is all mortgage related. So the one chart that was flying around this week from Redfin, which was really good, it says there are nearly 500,000 more sellers than buyers. And they say that's by far, that's by far the highest number since 2013 when they began tracking this. And so they. I mean, the thing is, though, there's an easy fix to this. So a lot of people were worried about this and saying, listen, this might mean that. So we've been talking about, like the Florida real estate Market being, you know, there's way more inventory. And obviously this is, this is everywhere now, almost not everywhere, but most places. This is a nationwide thing. And so I think for the first time we can say housing prices falling makes sense because mortgage rates keep staying at 7%. But isn't the solution for this just mortgage rates get to six or five and boom, all that demand immediately comes back.
- [46:21]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, yeah, because I.
- [46:22]
Ben Carlson
The whole buyer strike right now makes a lot of sense to me.
- [46:25]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, me too.
- [46:25]
Ben Carlson
Wow, that's a crazy chart, right?
- [46:28]
Michael Batnick
Yeah. Really good. Really good stuff.
- [46:30]
Ben Carlson
Now a lot of people are saying like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. But then Logan Motashami posted the total housing inventory, like, what's for sale? And look at this chart. It is way, way lower than it's been historically. It's coming up a little bit. So the problem is that there's not a lot of sellers and not a lot of buyers. There's happen to be more sellers now, but there's, but there's not a lot of activity for either of them. So the advice that we always give is like, boy, trying to time this housing market. Good luck with that. But I think if you tried to wait for lower mortgage rates, there's just going to be a flood of buyers coming in. So honestly, I think now is a really, really good negotiating place for people if you're buying, if you can stomach the 7% mortgage rates.
- [47:11]
Michael Batnick
I think you're right.
- [47:14]
Ben Carlson
I don't like ever timing this stuff, but I think that. I think that's it.
- [47:21]
Michael Batnick
Ben, for the past couple of months, at least prior to the real pause in tariffs, I was saying the soft data is below the hard data. And if the tariffs remain on, it's hard to see the hard data not catching down. Right. It's hard to see spending not following people's moods, but it just hasn't and isn't American Express. Here's a quote again, credit to the transcript for finding this. I think that, look, consumer sentiment is in the toilet, but yet they're just complaining as they go spend. That's what we're seeing now. American Express serves premier customer segment, obviously, but it's not just them. Bank of America is saying the same thing. Visa, MasterCard are saying the same thing. People are spending and it just all comes back to the labor market. So long as we're employed, we're not going to change our spending habits, period.
- [48:19]
Ben Carlson
So this is what I'm saying. Don't you think in an actual recession the sentiment figures are going to be Lower than we've ever seen them. Yeah, they already were.
- [48:28]
Michael Batnick
They already were. Absolutely.
- [48:29]
Ben Carlson
But I think they're going to go lower than we've ever seen once we actually hit a recession because it's just been so long since we've had a real one.
- [48:36]
Michael Batnick
Hey, Ben, let me ask you a question. One out of guess how many households in the US Has a net worth of a million dollars? Just kidding. This is your chart, so I know you know the answer, but what are we looking at here?
- [48:46]
Ben Carlson
It's pretty good, right? So this is funny. In 1910, 5,000 households were worth a million dollars in net worth. Now it's one out of every six. So 22 million households are worth at least a million dollars. This is from the Hustle. Net worth is total assets minus. I don't know if this includes housing or not. It doesn't really say. I'm guessing it does.
- [49:05]
Michael Batnick
It's got. It's got to.
- [49:07]
Ben Carlson
So it's, It's. We've added 8 million households that are millionaires in the last decade.
- [49:12]
Michael Batnick
So one out of six. One out of every six U.S. households.
- [49:16]
Ben Carlson
This is why it doesn't feel special to be rich anymore. Right. But million dollars is still the. Is still.
- [49:23]
Michael Batnick
I don't know. I don't know that it doesn't feel special. I think White Lotus broke your brain.
- [49:29]
Ben Carlson
Daniel Crosby came on our podcast and he said, ben is right, Michael is wrong, which should be coming out soon. That was a good, fun talk on money. All right, this is interesting travel talk. This is from Kyle Potter. He says all three of the nation's largest airliners are charging some solo passengers higher fees than groups of two or more, sometimes significantly higher. So they looked at it and they said Delta was charging as much as 70% more for a one passenger ticket instead of two. So they're tapping into the price discrimination on business travelers. So they said going from Charlotte to Fort Myers for one passenger is $422. This fall, the same route for two is $266 a piece or even less for basic economy.
- [50:10]
Michael Batnick
So can I say something? I'm not bothered by this. This is this.
- [50:16]
Ben Carlson
I think it makes sense. It makes it cheaper families. As a person with three kids who's paying for five tickets, I am all for this. As a business traveler.
- [50:25]
Michael Batnick
Oh, I wasn't even looking through that lens. I'm just saying, like, I don't. Is this price discrimination or is this like how businesses work? You, you buy in bulk or in this case, you spend whatever it is you get. You Pay less. That's. I don't know. Not. I'm not outraged.
- [50:37]
Ben Carlson
No, it. This. Totally. I'm not mad at this either. It actually makes a lot of sense. And guess what? The business travelers will still pay for it. Right?
- [50:47]
Michael Batnick
These are how. This is just how a lot of businesses operate. You buy more, you pay less. It's called. It's called economies of scale, I believe.
- [50:54]
Ben Carlson
So Ben Thompson had a deep dive on the ESPN streamer on Mr. Jackery last week, and he talked about how it's gonna cost 29.99amonth for ESPN and they're gonna bundle it with Disney and Hulu for $36 a month or something. And I think there's gonna be some. And he says, like, you can put hulu live with ESPN plus Disney plus for like, $83 a month. And then he kind of looks at this like, are we actually better or worse off than this? And he's looking at this from the perspective of a consumer or the sports people or the entertainment networks through the.
- [51:27]
Michael Batnick
Wait, hold on. Better, better or worse off? Just financially.
- [51:31]
Ben Carlson
Just the experience of it. And he's saying, listen, the cable providers are way worse off. He said this is a disaster to them, like, because you have to acquire customers and then you're paying commissions to Apple or Amazon. And he said, on the other hand, for consumers, way better off. You can subscribe unsubscribe. He was talking about how. Listen, it stinks. Because I think the worst part about it is you used to be able to just flip channels on commercials because there's so many commercials, but now I guess you just go on your phone. So I just think, yes, it's a little bit more of a pain in the butt if you have to have Peacock and Prime and YouTube TV and all these other things to watch all the NFL games or whatever. But as a consumer, I just think it's no contest. The access to stuff we have now is just light years ahead of what we had in the past. Even if you can't flip channels a little quicker.
- [52:18]
Michael Batnick
Okay, I'm 100% with you. Who would go back? Not me. I love Way am I paying more. Probably. Is the. Is the quality and the options a million times better? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's a bit of a pain in the butt, but whatever. Nothing's perfect. So I am way happier with the lineup.
- [52:40]
Ben Carlson
The number I never grew. This is to me, people always ask, what's a small thing that you thought was rich growing up? Well, before that, I. We were never an HBO household. If we had a friend who had hbo, I thought, oh, they are the wealthiest people on the block, right?
- [52:59]
Michael Batnick
You asked me how did I not watch the Pranos? Because my, my, we couldn't afford. I mean, seriously, my mom.
- [53:06]
Ben Carlson
I had to catch up on it. But that's the thing. The amount of access to. Because I would watch movies on USA I, we'd rent them, you know, from family video. But the, the number of the access to the amount of movies we have these days on streaming is. My 1990s brain would break being able to have that much access. It's unbelievable. Agreed. What, what's your self help book thing here?
- [53:30]
Michael Batnick
I remember last week I was. I went on a bit of a rant on self help and I think I was pretty clear that. Or maybe I wasn't. But it's no knock on the consumers of self help. It's just some of the merchants really grinds my gears. Help yourself before you help others. But anyway, it's funny because later that day, or maybe the next day, I listened to a podcast. Patrick o' Shaughnessy had this guy on, Graham Weaver, who is like almost every guest that Patrick has on, a wildly impressive, successful person. And it was funny because he was saying that early on in his childhood, he didn't grow up with a lot of money, but he discovered self help books and it changed his life.
- [54:16]
Ben Carlson
Okay, it has to be 1 out of 100 or something, right? That it works on?
- [54:21]
Michael Batnick
No, I don't know about that. I do think that for some people it is super helpful. But anyway. All right, Ben, I want to talk about trailers. So as I've been returning to the movies lately, I can't. You can't avoid trailers. Although I guess I could show up late, but I was worried. So I. I am a huge Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen fan. In fact, on this episode, about 20 minutes ago, when I went to the bathroom, we had a little bit of a Naked Gun moment, did we not?
- [54:53]
Ben Carlson
We did.
- [54:55]
Michael Batnick
So the Naked Gun is my favorite movie from childhood. It's the first time, actually. Might have been Caddyshack the first time. But either the first or second time that I remember, like, laughing beyond control that I couldn't like, control my functions. Like, my stomach hurt. So I was nervous. I am nervous about the new. The new one with Leslie Nielsen. And I've been avoiding it, but I finally saw the trailer in the theater and I got to say I'm cautiously optimistic. I like, they're doing a throwback to the original. I kind of thought it was just a complete remake spinoff. It's not. There's. There's some throwbacks in there, some references.
- [55:38]
Ben Carlson
Okay, you said Leslie Nielsen. Again, it's Liam Neeson.
- [55:42]
Michael Batnick
Oh, my bad. Liam Neeson.
- [55:43]
Ben Carlson
Similar names, but yeah, I'm kind of. I'm kind of worried about it, too. That. That's. I feel like that's kind of sacred ground, so.
- [55:49]
Michael Batnick
All right. I'm all in on the new Jurassic Park. I know the last one, really, the last two, but especially the last one, was an absolute crime against humanity. I'm all in on the new one. I can't wait.
- [55:58]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, but here's what's gonna happen. This happens every Jurassic Park. The first one is gonna be awesome. The second one's gonna be, eh, it's okay. And the third one's gonna stink. That's cycle of Jurassic park movies. The first one is gonna be good.
- [56:10]
Michael Batnick
Fine with me.
- [56:11]
Ben Carlson
Skip the third one. Second one's probably gonna be okay.
- [56:13]
Michael Batnick
Fine with me.
- [56:13]
Ben Carlson
You watch Crazy Stupid Love?
- [56:15]
Michael Batnick
Oh, I did watch Crazy Stupid Love. So it's. You know what's interesting? When you see memes for the first time that are well trodden in the cultural lexicon. Like, Crazy Stupid Love has a lot of memes in it. Holy moly.
- [56:28]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, it does. The Ryan Gosling. Look where he does this thing.
- [56:32]
Michael Batnick
Yeah. So, okay, I was very confused. Now, I won't spoil a movie that's 15 years old, but I was very confused for the first half of the format of the movie. I was like, what? Why is this? How do these stories relate in any way? And then, of course, the reveal. I loved it. I had so much fun.
- [56:50]
Ben Carlson
Wasn't the reveal the best when they all get in a fight in the backyard and.
- [56:54]
Michael Batnick
Oh, so you're going to spoil it. You're going to spoil it. Spoiler alert.
- [56:58]
Ben Carlson
Hagen. Yeah, that's a good one.
- [57:00]
Michael Batnick
I loved it. All right, let's talk about Ben. I have to say, I think you were right. You were very bearish on the Last of Us. I actually enjoyed the episodes post Killing of Joel, but I didn't hate the finale as so much as. I just don't think I care about season three.
- [57:21]
Ben Carlson
No. I thought if you're a TV critic, you say penultimate episode. That felt like a penultimate episode, not like a second to last. It was the way it ended. I was just like, wait, that's it. I thought it was.
- [57:32]
Michael Batnick
So let me ask you, are you going to watch season three or are you jumping?
- [57:35]
Ben Carlson
No, we'll probably watch. But I needed to Be in the meeting.
- [57:40]
Michael Batnick
You're part of the problem. You're talking about people complaining on the Internet. You're going to complain about the last of us and then watch it. Shame on you.
- [57:47]
Ben Carlson
I know, but why would they not kill Joel at the season finale of the end of second season? Why would they not have that be the cliffhanger?
- [57:54]
Michael Batnick
Yeah. So that's a fair critique. All right. I. I was mildly down. No spoilers. I was mildly down on your Friends and Neighbors. Even though I enjoyed the heck out of the show, I just didn't love some of the choices they were making. I thought when it got a little too serious, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a fun light show. This is not what I signed up for.
- [58:14]
Ben Carlson
You could pick that show if you wanted to.
- [58:16]
Michael Batnick
Yeah. I very much enjoyed the finale, which is credit to them. That's hard to do. I like the finale.
- [58:20]
Ben Carlson
All right. I thought the show got better as it went on. I thought the last four episodes were all great. Again, you could. I'm not gonna nitpick this show. There's a lot of plot things where you go, wait, why? But I love this show. I thought it was so entertaining. I thought the finale was great. Great. They set it up perfectly. I. I really, really like the show.
- [58:39]
Michael Batnick
You know, the. The. The nitpicking, I guess, sort of the plot. It's not besides the point, but I was watching the last episode. I said, throbbit. I said, hey, wait, who killed Paul? And she was like, what do you mean? We. We don't know. That's what we're trying to find out. I was like, oh, did we fight?
- [58:59]
Ben Carlson
Good thing you're paying attention. I watched two streaming only movies this weekend. One of them was Mountainhead and hbo. Have you heard about this one?
- [59:08]
Michael Batnick
I heard it was very bad.
- [59:10]
Ben Carlson
Okay, so it's the guy from Succession made it. And if you're a very online person, you probably get some of this movie, but it's about a bunch of tech billionaires and them being really out of touch, and they come together for a retreat in a mountain house, and they're all friends and there's inside jokes, and they do a really good job of satirizing and skewering the fact that these tech people only care about the, like. I'll be honest, I'm a little worried about the, like, morality of AI and how these tech behemoths are going to handle it. Like, I don't trust them to, like, think about humanity when they're creating these things. I'm a little nervous and they do a really good job of that. Other than that, though, it's not worth your time. I'd give it a 5.4. Just.
- [59:50]
Michael Batnick
Okay. Did you see. Did you see Mission Impossible?
- [59:55]
Ben Carlson
No, I didn't yet. No, I. No. 3 soccer games this weekend. I'm a soccer dad. No time for movies.
- [60:02]
Michael Batnick
Understood.
- [60:03]
Ben Carlson
And then I watched Nona's on Netflix. Did you watch this? The new Vince Vaughn one?
- [60:11]
Michael Batnick
It was just slow. I fell asleep after 20 minutes. It was slow watching.
- [60:15]
Ben Carlson
No, it's like a kind of like a My Big Fat Greek Wedding kind like that kind of movie. Vince Vaughn isn't really funny in it, but it's just a feel good movie. It's one of those that's like, I don't know, it's a 6.2 and it should have been a streaming only movie. I'll leave it at that. Like, it was kind of sentimental, way too long, but not bad. And then the only other thing I got is I did finish the town finally. Or the studio you asked me to do. And then I. Matt Bellamy was on it, which I listened to his podcast. So I listened to the interview.
- [60:43]
Michael Batnick
Hang on, hang on. How great was Cranston in the finale?
- [60:47]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, Bryan Cranston is. He was. He was very good.
- [60:50]
Michael Batnick
Movies. Does that make you laugh?
- [60:53]
Ben Carlson
But so Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberger created the show and have worked together forever. Run the town. And I thought it was funny that they said, they did the awards show one and they said, listen, studio executives, as rich and powerful as they are, they really do want to be thanked. Like that's a real thing that people have asked, will you thank me in your acceptance speech? And I thought about this from the perspective of leadership positions and companies. I remember someone told me this early in my career, like, listen, people want the responsibilities and they want a better job title and they obviously want to make more money. But if you just say thank you or give someone like a pat on the back and say job well done half the time, that's all they want is just to be recognized. So I thought that was good. Like, I thought that was good career advice. Like, people, sometimes people just want to hear that they, they see you doing, seeing them doing a good job and just let them know about it.
- [61:38]
Michael Batnick
Cannot agree more.
- [61:39]
Ben Carlson
I thought that was. That was interesting.
- [61:43]
Michael Batnick
All right, I got two more. I watched on the, on the Airplane, by the way. Just credit to Delta. All the credit in the world to Delta. Their movie game is so phenomenal.
- [61:52]
Ben Carlson
Always way better than the other ones.
- [61:55]
Michael Batnick
So I watched Novocaine, which is a very forgettable but fun, violent movie with Jack Quaid. And I wrote. I raw dogged it. Ben. I had no idea what it was about. Didn't read the description, but Jack Quaid is one of these people that can't feel pain.
- [62:18]
Ben Carlson
Ah. Okay.
- [62:19]
Michael Batnick
And so I had no idea where it was going, but I kind of like him. But it went somewhere. It was fun. Do not watch it on your couch. It is. That's not the. That's not the setting. It's a. It's a throwaway, violent movie for the airplane. Okay. And then lastly, I think you told me about this. I finally listened to Larry David was on with Dana Carvey and Spade on Fly on the Wall. And Dana Carvey is so goddamn funny. And to hear Larry, like, just beyond the ability to stop himself from cackling, I mean, what a talent Dana Carvey was. The young people don't know about him, but he was one of the absolute stars of SNL in, I guess, the early 90s.
- [63:02]
Ben Carlson
If he came out today, I think he'd have a way bigger career. Somehow they would have figured out a way to get him something on streaming. Or is it.
- [63:08]
Michael Batnick
Yeah, he'd be. He'd be as. As big. The. The impressions that he does and the range. He's brilliant. Really, really, really brilliant.
- [63:13]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. He should have been in the YouTube era of the YouTube social media era. Yeah. Okay. Pre thanks to everyone who's coming out to the live show in Chicago tonight. Can't wait. It's going to be fun. What else do we got?
- [63:29]
Michael Batnick
And thank you. I'm excited to meet our future employee. So reach out to us if you think that. What's so funny?
- [63:37]
Ben Carlson
No, that's good. You're thinking positively. We're going to get someone who's going to fill this role for us.
- [63:43]
Michael Batnick
You got to. And speaking of thanks, we don't say it enough on the show. Thank you, Travis, for hanging back and producing the show. Thank you, Duncan, John, Daniel, Nicole, Sean, Rob, Keith, Graham. We miss anybody.
- [64:00]
Ben Carlson
That was like your acceptance speech. I'm sure someone is going to be mad that you didn't thank them. And thank you to you, the listener. We always appreciate our audience. I love the emails that get us that understand our line of thinking, our line of humor, and we. I feel like we get a lot of those, so we should come in. Animalspiritscompoundnews.com we'll see you next time.