Animal Spirits Podcast - 2024 Predictions (EP.341)

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

On today's show we discuss 2023 market performance, a bunch of 2024 predictions, our favorite historical stock market return series, the high quality of restaurants, paying off your mortgage early, the downsides of behavioral finance, Ben's most cynical take of the year and much more. Thanks to YCharts for sponsoring this episode! Our very own Nick Maggiulli is joining YCharts' webinar on January 11th, to explore evolving market themes and potential challenges of the new year, register here:https://ycharts.zoom.us/webinar/register/2817032549945/WN_IJfo69YuQNC4l3q4MenvZw Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spears is brought to you by our friends at Y Charts. Our very own Nick Majuli. We were just giving Nick some props because he had a funny tweet. So credit to you, Nick. He's joining Y Charts in a webinar, January 11th to explore the evolving market themes, potential challenges for the new year. Get a comprehensive recap of 2023. Product releases. What's on Nick's radar for 2024?

Just keep buying. Just keep buying. Nick's good with charts, good with data. To register to secure your spot on our show notes. and 20% off your initial subscription. It's a new year. Start with a resolution. More charts and wide charts.

New customers only. And, yeah, link in our show notes. Go to Y charts. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Redholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon

for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We're recording this on New Year's Day, January 1st, 20204. Happy New Year to you, Ben. Happy New Year to the listeners.

Talk about a couple of hustlers working on New Year's Day. Well, you know what? Robin said, why are you working? Nobody works in New Year's Day. I said, well, first of all, I don't take days off. It's Monday. What are you talking about?

Why is this a national holiday? Why is this a national holiday and the Monday after the Super Bowl? Can we swap those things? Can we swap out? Let's work on. New Year's Day has to be a national holiday. Think about how many hungover people there are in the world right now. 50% of adults are hungover right now.

There's no way anything would ever get done. What happens if New Year's Day falls on a Wednesday? I think next year it's actually on a Friday. or New Year's Eve is on a Friday. But then the two weeks, swap it out. Swap it out. Whoever controls the calendar,

just swap it out. Let's take off. There's two weeks where everyone just decides, we all collectively agree, there's not a lot getting done right now. Yeah. Except for podcasts. And personal responses to personal emails.

So our doc is way lighter than normal. We said last week was a light work week. So today's show is going to be a little bit less frenetic than usual. We've got 70. We got a lot of meat in the bone for your predictions. And I include some predictions as well. I put together my prediction list in like 30 seconds. Okay.

So it tells you how much thought I put into it. But I think I'm going to be right in all of them. We've got 17 pages down from 44 last week. But before we get into all of that, Ben, are you, I think, I'm pretty sure you're not. But are you a resolutions guy? No, absolutely not. Okay. So here's how we think about resolutions.

Resolutions are like fad diets. They never were. Yeah. Resolutions are for people like me, for the weak-minded, people who are lack discipline. Yes, it's lifestyle changes. That's my. And we need, we need an arbitrary date new year, new me. And guess what? I am a resolution guy. I don't take it too seriously. Hang on. I'll get there. I don't take it too seriously. I don't like write them down. But in my head, I'm like, yeah, I'll go to, I'll go to a diet for 10 days. Okay. However, it sounds like a perfect resolution. I am the people who, I don't want to, I don't want to put myself in the same camp as the people who

make fun of gym people the first day, like, oh, look at all the new people at the gym. I don't like those guys. That being said? No, I'm just saying I'm saying I'm not a resolution guy, but don't put me in the camp of the people who make fun of the first-timers at the gym. That's like first-time investors who are investing in meme stocks. I say, however it gets you into the fold. So here are my resolutions that I have a good chance of doing better in my predictions

and on my resolutions, but here we go. I want to eat better, generally speaking, which you and I are, the reason why we're recording this on, Monday is because we're going to be in Kansas City tomorrow, our usual recording day. I might not eat so great there. We'll see. I know you're a healthy person. It's hard to eat when you travel.

Resolution number two, less alcohol. Eat better. I'm going to call you out. Say you're going to eat better. What's your plan for eating better? Just to eat better. See, it's not going to work. This is where resolutions fail. You have no plan of attack.

I have no plan of attack. Zero plan of attack. Number two, less alcohol. I was thinking about making it a dry January, but. I see I'm an excuse guy I'm a huge excuse guy I let myself off the hook I'm going to

I'm going to Vegas in a couple of weeks I can't I'm not going to not have a cocktail in Vegas although And then let you drink less Only on the weekends I don't drink during the week

I only drink on the weekend That's my usual I'm not a week I don't drink during the week really either Unless I go out on Thursday Okay See there it is another excuse

Resolution number three I want to read I want to get back into reading New Year Old May more learning I want to learn again. It's been too long. Get yourself a Kindle paperweight so you can easier, you hold a bunch of books.

Nah, I'm sorry. I'm a physical book guy. I just am. Okay. It's just easier to read on it. Yeah. I do want to read some books. So I'm glad we got your resolution that you're never going to follow through on.

Right. We'll check back in 30 days. All right. Let's get into it. So, 20203 is over. The year is over. Good year for the market. Great year for the market.

Holy cow. 203 was a really good year. Here's what I got. I did this, I did a little post on comparing and contrasting last year. S&P 500 up 26%. NASDAQ 100, up 55%. One of the best years ever for the NASDAQ 100. Do you know the inception date for the NASDAQ 100? I looked this up recently. I didn't even know. 1986. 1986? Yeah, it's 86. 6040, if we're talking treasury, like 10-year treasuries, S&P 500 is up 17%. Russell 2000 up 17. All these other parts of the market had a huge comeback the last two months of the year. Mid caps are up 16%. This is a surprising to me.

International stocks were up almost 19% this year. Emerging markets only 10%, but still, basically across the board, double-digit returns. And the weird one was Treasury. So 10-year treasury bond started the year. I got a chart at 3.9%. It dropped to 3.3%. Got as high as 5%. Ended the year right where it started back at 3.8, 3.9.

And so your entire return, if you held a 10-year treasury, was the year. So you made 4%-ish. So all that movement, and then you just earned the yield, and that's it. I'm still thinking about my resolutions. I mean, who doesn't want to be healthier in 2024? Of course, everyone. Yeah, sure. Don't listen to me as an a naysayer.

I think you can do it. I'm a basic bay. I'm like everybody else. Okay. All talk, no action. You know, it's interesting. So bespoke has this table with, like, all the asset classes. Natural gas down 64%.

Wow. That's going to leave a mark. At least UNJ, the ETF, that trend. I don't know how closely it tracks as actual natural gas, but gold is up 12%. It's a great year. So you mentioned midcaps or small caps. Small caps were flat on the year through November 9th, and they ended the year up 17%. Wow.

What a hell of a rally. So from November 9th through the end of the year, they rallied 17%. So S&P 500 value, occurred in this book, was up 22%. So even value stocks did pretty decent. Hmm. That's impressive. What a year. What a year?

It really was. Last year, I said, here's the two outcomes. 2023 is a continuation and things keep getting way worse and we have another double digit down year. Or it's a really, really good up year. And that's what we had. It's a really good up year. Mm-hmm.

I think that's 80% of the time after a really bad year. You should probably expect a pretty good year. It's hard to think that way, but that's... Well, you know the book that we've... You've mentioned a million times it was a very good year. It looked at the 10 best years in the stock market. And most of them came after a very bad year. Okay, so I want to get into this one of your predictions next that I wanted to poke holes in, but then I looked at data and I couldn't. So you said, no recession stocks gained 20% again. And I thought, it just doesn't seem likely with stocks already gaining 20%.

But then I looked through at all the periods when we had a string of really good returns, like, you know, high double digits. And it happened a lot. I got, I think, 15 of these strings of really good returns. And this is not just two years. You see this little table I put in here? 1942 to 1945, up 20 percent, up 25 percent, up 20 percent, up 35 percent, up 25 percent, same thing. Ninety-nine to 1999 is the outlier. That's every year was up 20 percent or more. But you don't have to go back that far. In 2019 to 2021 was plus 31, plus 18, plus 28. There's a lot of these periods where you have a string of really good returns back to back with each other.

So your prediction of 20% up year doesn't sound that outlandish. And it probably makes more sense than the opposite. If you're taking a probability from using historical data, if that's worth anything. So going back to 1950, the SP gained 20% 19 times. It was higher the next year 15 times. 10 of those 19 years, it saw a double-digit gain. I think it gained 20% I don't know four times five times after a 20% year you know what I should have done you know what I should have done with my prediction list I should have given like a

confidence level right like with 50% being the baseline of just listen this is a coin I'm just guessing maybe 50% is like the guessing well what's your favorite prediction on here that you you feel most confident about um you know a lot of these are really just like completely made up, obviously, that I don't... Here's the one I don't understand. Hold on. Well, I'll tell you all, Lance. I'll tell you.

Okay. Money stays in money market funds. You're most confident about that. So there's $6 trillion. I think next year, I think $5 trillion. Well, next year, it's $5 trillion. That's a pretty big drop, though. That's 15% or so, almost 20%.

That's a big... I mean, I don't think all six trillion is going to stay. But I think at least $5 of it will. Okay. That's a hedge. That's a Long Island hedge. Oh, speaking of, no, no, somebody, somebody, so I tweeted like 10 things that I think will happen in 24, 24 that almost certainly were, or something like that. And somebody on LinkedIn said, that's a Grand Rapids Hedge if I've ever seen one.

That's pretty good. So here's what, here's one I don't get. You said Apple gets dropped from Magnificent 7. How does it get dropped? Yeah. Just meaning it underperforms? No, well, you know, I almost wrote about that. Like, I don't know who the official arbiter is of the Magnificent 7.

But you're just saying Apple's going to underperform. Yeah, big time. Okay, that's fair. Robin Hood gets acquired. Who's going to buy Robin Hood? I don't know. Morgan Stanley? Goldman Sachs, one of those kind of places?

No, Goldman's out of that business. They're not doing anything. Okay, true. It probably would have been better if they would have just bought Robin Hood instead of sinking all the money into that they did. I just feel like, financially, it's a fairly attractive deal. Like, it's not, it's not, I don't,

the numbers are in the post. Is it like $600 in revenue, per account, and it would cost you $200 to buy it or something like that. And the average account balance is like nothing. It's like $4,000. But you have the customers. So if you can find other ways to generate revenue from those customers and maybe make it a serious service, upsell, whatever, cross-sell, acquiring that base of customers

is very difficult. I feel like the companies that make sense as takeover targets, it never happens. The ones that you think, like, this should get taken over. That's my only rebuttal. I don't really have a good rebuttal. Here's the one I don't agree with on you. You said inflation gets to the Fed's target. The economy overheats, inflation picks up, which would be interesting.

My prediction is it's going to be a boring economic year. Oh, I like that. I like that. Relatively is going to be relatively subdued. I think the volatility is going to be sucked out of the economy. We've had such a volatile economy for years. I think it's going to be pretty boring. You know what?

You know what? I should have, maybe instead of like percentages, I should have given, like, in betting terms. So, like, for inflation, gets to the Fed's target, the economy overheats and inflation picks up. What would it take me? What would the odds need to be for me to bet on that? I would say, like, plus 600, plus 700. So in other words, there's like, I don't know, a 12% to 15, a 12% chance of that happening. Speaking of, speaking of, I looked at my, I had the best weekend I've ever had in betting. Okay. Starting with the Dallas Cowboys. You know, I've been, so I get, so Fandul does like a Spotify wrapped type of thing where it's like the team,

And I bet on the Lions all season. I did pretty well with that. But that's actually a really bad idea to do the rap because how many people end up huge losers? Yeah. Well, it doesn't, I don't think it shows you the dollars. It just shows you, like, teams that you bet on the most. So I bet on the Lions a lot this year. And I never bet on the Cowboys this year.

And now it's a horseshit. Pretty good against the spread, actually. Yeah, the Lions got screwed royally. The Lions got screwed big time. Big time. I take that as a moral victory, though. When you're able to be outraged that everyone knows you should have won, I don't know, it's kind of a moral victory. So anyway, I was looking at my fan duel account.

I think I've done pretty well. So since my fan deal started, I've bet $58,000. I've made $58,000 in bets. Okay, in total. Here's how much I've won. So out of the $58,000 in bets that I've placed, how much do you think I've won? Or said differently, how much do you think I lost? How many times have you made contributions to this account?

That I don't know. Like, how many times have you gone back to the ATM because the black jekular wipes you out? That I don't know. But just, I made $58,000 in bets. lifetime. How much do you think I've won? I don't know how to do the calculation on this, because I don't know the new money and old money. No, no, that's not what I'm asking you. I've placed $58,000 in bets. Out of the $58,000 in bets that I've placed in total, how much do you think my total lifetime winnings are? 40. 55. Okay. So that's really good. So for

every dollar that I bet, I've made 95 cents back. That actually is pretty good. That's really good, no? Credit to me. Especially with all the parlays and junkie stuff that you do? That's impressive. Yeah. Thank you. I was very proud of myself. Okay. Not bad. All right. I don't know if I just took the opposite of you here. You said Bitcoin hits 100,000. I'm going to go the opposite. I'm going to say Bitcoin, it's a sell the news moment and it crashes. Because I don't think that here's a thing. I think that it's binary. It's one, it's got to be one or the other of those two. Either it's a sell the news moment when the ETF hits or it does go to 100K. I don't see it. I don't see a middle ground really. And maybe that that's

an easier prediction. But I think I think Bitcoin is going to crash. 40% this year. All right. So for Bitcoin to go to 100K, I guess I would need, so that's a double, more than a double. I would need like plus 400 for that, maybe. I really should have done this.

But anyway, the reason why I don't think Bitcoin is going to be a sell-the-news event is because Bitcoin is just supply and demand in terms of what moves it, right? There's going to be way more demand than supply. People don't sell Bitcoin. generally speaking. Like the diehards...

And how does it crash all the time? That's a fair point. That's a good point. But, but, but... So it's not to say that it can't... It can't have drawdowns. I'm not saying that. But after the ETF news and stuff subsides,

what is what's left? What's next? Well, that I don't know. That I don't know. Of course I don't know. I don't know any of this. We're all just guessing. I think the 100K guess,

that would be way more money comes into these ETFs than previously thought. So advisors allocate to them, BlackRock puts a 2% allocation on Bitcoin into all their models. And it's like, well, it's a real thing. And that would be the bull case.

It is going to be interesting to see. Let's assume, again, making this up, I don't know, in the first 60 days, $5 billion comes in. Is that reasonable? I don't know. Yeah. What happens after the initial wave of buying? That's true.

Okay. So your other one was Amazon gains 25% because they've been underperforming. What did you say? For the last five years, it's underperformed? or pretty much market performed? Amazon has underperformed the S&P 500 since 2000, over the last five years. I made a chart showing how long it takes in between Amazon's all-time highs, and this is by far the longest stretch.

It's gone 624 days without making... Besides the 99 peak, right? Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You're right, you're right. I'm sorry. I just went back to 2009. So over the last 15 years, it's gone like double the longest. previous streak of no all-time highs.

Okay, so you also said, Microsoft is going to be the first $4 trillion stock. Right now, it's 2.8. That's a pretty good, that's a pretty good year. That's like, that's like a plus $1,200. Based on nothing other than mean reversion, here's my mean reversion predictions for the year. TLT outperforms SPY. That would be basically the 30 year goes from 4% to 3%.

That's like a 20% gain, essentially. I really don't see that happening. My thought there is interest rates went too high to the upside. They're going to overcorrect to the downside. So this is just a pendulum bet. I think tech underperforms. I'm going to say, you could say that every year just for betting on mineral version. So that would mean value overgrowth. I'm going to say the dollar falls, international outperforms the U.S. and EM outperforms U.S. That would be the call that no one would think is possible. So if the Fed lowers rates, the dollar falls, and all these other places find the outperforms. perform tech, and these tech stocks finally underperform a little bit. Not the same are crashed, but they finally underperform. That'd be my prediction based on mean reversion. The reason why I don't think that's likely is because 2024 is going to be the year of AI. I know that's like a very, it's a very normy sort of thing to say.

But all the stuff that we saw with Nvidia and all these things, it only really just started. The chat CBT boom that started in November of 2022. Did you watch The Creator yet? No, how was it? It's AI war. It's going to be us versus AI. It's not bad. So that's, I just, I think, listen, I'd love for you to be right.

It'd be very nice if tech would just let other people take. So here's the other one. I feel like my predictions look like they're going against yours. And I didn't, I actually didn't read yours before I put my predictions on. But I said the Fed cuts three to four times and some of that cash on the sidelines is going to move. I think people are going to get, I think some of that cash on the sideline is going to go, way, way, wait. CD rates are dropping. Money market rates are dropping.

I need to do something. And I think if you said, if it wants from $6 trillion to $5, that's a big move. Fair. So maybe that is at Long Island hedge. Do you think the money that is in money market funds came from stocks or bonds? Because I don't. I think it came from checking accounts. But if it's in morning market accounts, that means it's in the system now.

It's, like, ready to be invested. I don't know where it came from. Not necessarily in the system. If you move this to a high-yield savings account, that's not in the system. It's not like on your brokerage account. Yeah, but if it's been a money market account, that's in the system, like invest. It's going to chase bonds or it's going to chase stocks or dividends something. I think it's cash.

Okay. And maybe it was just money markets were all that money was waiting forever because money rates were at 0%. Even if it's 3% people will be happy with that. Maybe you're right. One thing in my list that I think was underdiscust is the rise and fall and rise again of Netflix. Did you read that part?

No. Sorry, I didn't. That's okay. So Netflix, this little time. company 10 years ago. Remember when House of Cards came out and now it was like a, oh, wow, look what Netflix can do. Yeah.

Like they can make like legitimate shows. And for years, the big studios just sort of ignored streaming. And then during the pandemic, work from home, Netflix, the stock was just a monster. And all of these companies finally realized they capitulated it. They were way too late. Yeah, Netflix had the valuation that they wanted. Right. So then they chased Netflix.

And the analogy that I used was they were like the cars that piled up. Like they were chasing Netflix going 100 miles an hour. They all crashed into each other. But wait, let me just finish the story. So then when Netflix reported they lost subscribers and Netflix fell 75% or whatever it did, all these companies that were chasing it late got killed. And now they're all dead. And Netflix is now the king.

And Netflix was in a really precarious situation just a year ago. And now it's over. The streaming wars are over. Netflix won. Everyone knows it. Who do you think number two, by the way? I think Amazon. I think Prime Video is a pretty great service.

I mean, it has to be HBO. What has to be HBO? Number two. HBO is number two. No way. You think Max is number. Not a chance. You think Max is the-

movies and TV shows that they produce, definitely. In terms of the streaming wars, you think Max is number two? Yes. In terms of quality content, definitely. I'm not talking about terms of quality in terms of like who's winning. I don't know. It's hard to say because Amazon doesn't care about it as much. Well, now they do.

They're going to start charging for if you want to continue to watch Amazon Prime. Guess what? I'm paying $2.99 a month for ads. Without ads, it's $3.00. Huh? I'm paying it. Oh, I'm definitely paying it. But to your point about Netflix, it was down 75, 76% at the worst of it. And I think it bottomed in spring of 2022.

And now everyone pretty much agrees that they won. Like, it's crazy that they had to go through that. And then they still come out the winner. I'm saying the rise and fall in rise again. It was like sort of underdust. So they're still 30% below their all-time high, which was, to be fair, in November 2021, when things in tech stock land and meme stocks went ballistic. But you're right.

It is how many times they've had these 70, 80% falls. It's happened three or four times, I think? So my point is, my prediction was, I don't think there's a lifeline for Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery. I think that they might get smaller. They might sell off some pieces. Lucas Shaw reported that. It's going to have to be the, yeah,

we're going to sell this network and that network. Yeah, get rid of this, get rid of that. They're not merging. Yeah, I mean, it seems like they should, but maybe eagles won't allow it to happen. All right, so good, there weren't any in here that blew me away your ideas, but I thought you had some good predictions. Yeah, I would, I'm, here's a prediction from my predictions, three out of ten.

Okay, you're not feeling good about it. The vibe covery begins. I'll go with that one. Oh, because, because, so I was going to go against a grain on this, but John said, you know, we're like very anti-annicated on this podcast, but John said something. Our producer John said, I didn't get a rent increase this year. Yeah. Did he say for the, he, John lives in New York, he said, for the first time my life living here, my rent didn't get increased.

So there's 45 million Americans who rent. And not getting a rent increase is huge. Also, there's a, there's a guy on Twitter, gas buddy guy. One of his predictions for next year was that gas is going to be, I think it was like $3.40 a gallon. And that would save like $35 billion more in Americans' pockets than the previous year. That is true. If you, even if your rent got increased. 20% two years ago or something. If it's flat now and gas prices are down, the recency bias of that would go, okay, things are actually feeling a little better for me in my pocketbook, even if you're comparing it to three years ago, it's not. Okay, so are we good with predictions? Yep. I think I went through all of mine. Yeah. Boring year economically,

that's the one that I'm planting my flag on. I think we've had so much volatility in the economy and people are going to assume that continues, and I think that this year is relatively boring. and maybe the markets are more exciting than the economy for the first time in a while. That would be wonderful. I would love a boring economic year. All right, a couple of, I just want people to know that the annual update charts of performance are becoming hot and heavy from me in the coming weeks, get prepared for it. Wait, wait, what's coming?

Just, I love updating now that calendar your charts to 2023 are done. I'm going to be updating a lot of that stuff. I have so many charts that I love to update on an annual basis. Drew Dixon at Albert Bridge Capital had a good one. Dow Jones Industrial average 1896 to 2023 total return. So he breaks them out by desiles, up 10%, 20%, 30, right, all these different ones, and he breaks them down by year. Look at all of those up 20%, up 30%, up 40% years. And there's very few years where the Dow over this period has lost 20% or more or 30% or more. It's pretty, the fact that this,

the left tail stuff is very tiny compared to the right tail. That's the story of investing in the stock market. The big years more than outweigh the big up years more than outweigh the big down years. People are very, at least in this country, specifically, very resilient, very good at fixing things, very ambitious. That's my one long-term optimistic thing is people generally figure stuff out in this country, right? I've got more on that later. Hey, Ben, so... Wait, forensic quarter did the NASDAQ, same thing. The NASDAQ composite. which goes back to, what, 1979 or something?

No, 75 maybe? 70-something. And it just shows the, so 38 out of 52 years of positive returns, 73% of the time. The NASDAQ composite, this is not the 100, it was up 45%-ish in 2023.

Fourth best year ever. Which is crazy to think about, right? Did it feel like that? It's hard to say. The NASDAQ has had more big, bad down years, down 40, 50, 30%. So it's a wider range there, but still, the green outweighs the red. Wait, I just want to just stick on this for a second. We just lived through this.

We just lived through 2023. And both of us are not like, yeah, it felt like one of the best years ever. That is true. It didn't feel like that. And I think part of it is because people have been hammering home in our heads all year that, oh, it's just these seven stocks. So it doesn't really count. But who cares?

In 50 years when looking back at the data, is someone going to look back at 2023 and go, geez, the NASDAQ 100 was up 55%. Eh, but, but no one's going to care. The return is the return. But this is why, like oftentimes history, one of the greatest quotes ever. I think it was from the French guy. Mandelbot?

Yeah, I think it's from him. Oh, no, maybe it's from Adam Smith. History tells a rather bloodless tale, I think. Because, like, to your point, yeah, you look at this, you say, wow, 20, 23. Everybody must have been thrilled that they made 50 or 45% in their tech stocks. Not really. Yeah, it didn't, it never felt like there was euphoria or like people are going crazy and there was all this fomo. It never felt like that.

And maybe it's because it was those huge gargobes. Ganschwin stocks. Well, this is why you need, this is why you need context. Because 2020, so 2023 was a better year for the NASDAQ composite than 2020. The difference is that 2020 was full of like SPAC stuff and crypto stuff and NFT stuff and like stupid shit. Yeah, more speculation. So that felt way more bubbly.

Interesting. Ben, we're recording this on Monday. Who do I bet on for the Rose Bowl? Is it the Rose Bowl? Is Michigan playing Alabama? Is that the Rose Bowl? Yes. They do the playoffs still in.

So by the time this era, as people will know, my heart says Michigan, of course, because I'm a Michigan fan, my head probably says Alabama. I would take the Alabama money line if I'm really being, if I'm taking motions out of the equation. But also, maybe that's just trying to do a reverse jinx. This is why I don't bet on my teams, though. But if I'm logically saying to you, I would probably take the Alabama money line. And I hope I'm proven wrong. Oh, wow.

No, the Wolverines are minus 130 and Alabama's plus 109. So Michigan's favorite to win by It's like a one and a It's a pickum basically But yeah So money thinks that Michigan's gonna win

Good luck to you Okay This is a great charge I'm nervous The Big Ten is like The Dow or the S&P And the SEC is like the NASDAQ 100

100 yeah Yes So that's I got like 3M and it's like 3M or IBM Going up against Nvidia It's tough

Yes Okay This is a great chart from the Washington Journal. Estimates of interest income generated by money market funds. Ah, but my gosh. From 2009 to 2016, it's essentially zero. So we made $300 billion in interest last year. So this would back up your prediction of money's going to stay in these money market funds,

because, again, maybe it was just a catch-up from all these years of 0% rates, and that money would have been in money-marked. market funds, if not for yields being so low. Because I mean, don't you think, I don't know, if it goes from 5% to 3% really quick, maybe people freak out, maybe I'm coming around to your idea that even if it's 3%, people say, oh, that's still better than zero. Because, dude, how often do people check their money market funds? You kind of, not that you forget about it, but it's not like you're seeing like,

it's not like you're seeing your interest payments every day where you're like, oh, man, I was getting 5% and now I'm getting three. I just think mentally it's a different thing. Hey, I wanted to share the start with you. This is from Tom McCullen. He tweeted, people laughed and criticized me when I first posted this year. Just as I laughed at it years ago when I first built it. This is in 2009.

And yet it just keeps on working. QE interferes with it sometimes, but then the relationship gets back on track again. And what we're looking at is the Dow Jones Industrial Average versus New York City precipitation. And the gist of it is that when... Come on. Come on. When it's wetter than normal. I can't even tell what, I don't even know what's going on here.

Hold on. Is it drier in the normal is bearish? Wet is bullish? Okay. Thoughts? Hard to argue with the chart. I mean, this was, remember the, all the early behavioral finance books would have the thing about churning butter in Indonesia in the stock market or whatever?

I give them credit for, I don't know how you would ever figure this out in the first place. So I give him credit for the form fitting. Dryer is bearish. Dyer is bearish. Listen, I'm not saying that Jim Simons was using, was using this data specifically.

Ah. But sometimes, like, just weird shit works. You'd think, though, that if it's wetter than normal, it would be more bearish because that people are in a bad mood. Wasn't that Josh's theory that when it's sunny out versus rainy? Because I would think if it's wet outside all the time, or maybe it's raining you're not doing as much as a better. Counterpoint.

counterpoint, if it's drier and you're outside, who cares about the market? That's fair. I do wonder how people in California ever get into the office to do stuff. Again, this is not just torturing the day. This is waterboarding the data to find this. So I'm impressed that he was able to figure this out in the first place. Hey, if it works, it works. All right, we're going to get to some emails that I've been sitting in the dock stale for a couple of weeks.

This is one that came in when I was talking about the price of dog food. This person did the data for me. He's had a 30% increase in two years in dog food. Okay. Because people pay anything for their pets. All right. Here's another inflation thing I want to talk about. So we were in Northern Michigan visiting my parents for, we had like a late Christmas

with a family. And when I grew up, there were like, I don't know, four restaurants. And you were happy if a chain restaurant came to town. So I'm from a small town in Northern Michigan. There's 30 really good restaurants now up there. probably and new ones popping up all the time and one of our favorite one, people always ask me if they're going up, they're like, where do we go? So we have a pizza place

called the filling station. It's an old train station that they turned into a pizza place. Oh, wow. And it's a really cool place and I talked to my wife after I'm like, do you remember how bad restaurants were when we grew up? Like, good rest, nice restaurants, even just regular old places were just not a thing. Like you were happy if like a Chili's or an outback came to your town.

This is me speaking from someone in the Midwest. But now there's these niche restaurants popping up everywhere. So even if the prices are higher, how do you account for the fact that there's more choice and more high-quality restaurants than ever than we had than we were growing up?

Doesn't that feel the same way to you? Yeah. So there was the Chili's that came in by the Roosevelt Raceway for people along the island I know what I'm talking about. And like maybe the 90s, I don't know when it came exactly,

but that was like a kind of a big deal. You're absolutely right. I also, I think like most people, like I never, I don't think I even went to a steakhouse until like, I don't know if I ever went to Peter Lugar's growing up now that I think about it. I don't think I ever went to a steakhouse

in my 20s. And same thing with beer. My dad used to drink butt heavy when we grew up. I remember we'd have a fridge full of butt heavy. Now all the beers you have, the selections you have everywhere you go. Every place now has its own brewery or their own kind of beers in a million different flavors. Everything is everything.

I was in Target the other day with Robin and the boys. And there's a section with water bottles. Like, you know these things? I'm holding up like this big giant junk. There's like a section of these. There's so much choice. It's ridiculous. There was a craft beer section in Target.

You know what else was in Target? Maybe I am at a touchband because there was a section for Blu-ray DVDs. Oh, I saw you. Send us that picture on Slack. I just, I can't believe it. I don't, they're not there by accident, right? They're not like, they must be there because people are buying them. You sent me that, and I thought I had to drive my mom's car, and I didn't have a hookup

for, I didn't want to go through the process of hooking up her Bluetooth to my phone. So I had to listen to the radio. I was just driving from her house to the hotel we're staying at. And I had to listen to the radio. And it just made me, yes. And so I use the Apple Carplay all the time. It made me think, like, wait a minute, radio is still a thing. People listen to the radio still.

In the commercials and the not choice, not having the choice of what you want to listen to, it's hard to believe it almost still exists, but obviously it does. So, like, who's buying Jackie Brown for $35? Am I taking crazy pills? Is this still happening? Jackie Brown, the movie's 25 years old, more. Yes, spend two months on Netflix and you get a million choices. It is hard to believe.

It's crazy town. All right, here's an email I came in. Just wanted to flag something I'm sure you're aware of, but that I'm not sure you've mentioned on the podcast. Home Mortgage Loan Amendments. No, I was not aware of this. Listen to this. My wife and I bought a home in 2019 and did two loan amendments as rates fell in 2020 and 2021. Rather than sign a bunch of papers or pay to refinance,

we just started an online refinance process at Alley or something to get quoted rates, then asked our lender to match those rates. We had to sign one page, didn't pay anything, and our mortgage rate dropped half a percent each time. The length of the mortgage didn't change. We just pay less each month. We may have gotten the best deal we could have if we refinanced, but it was an easy and free process.

How about that? It's like price matching for a recent, for a new mortgage? I've heard of this, but I didn't know how easy it was as a process. to do. Obviously, I've never done it before. If you can do it for free, yeah, I guess it's worth looking into. I never knew this, though. I love it. I mean, what a great idea. Value Ed. Thank you. All right. So there was a tweet over the weekend that got a lot of traction. Somebody tweeted SFR underscore investor. What does SFR stand for? Single family rental. Okay. My dad's friend had a $300,000 mortgage on his house with a 3.25% interest rate.

he just paid off the balance so he doesn't have a house payment. He loves Dave Ramsey. My heart hurts. I saw this one. So people have struck... This is a dumb decision. This is a dumb decision.

It's really dumb. Here's why. It's not... People are like, well, peace of mind. And I get that. I really do get that. This is behavioral finance gone too far. Seriously.

You can't put a price on peace of mind. Well, sometimes you can. sometimes you can. This is a dumb decision. The reason why it's not just that you can get 5% on cash, although certainly that's part of it. But why would you give up the liquidity? Yes. You could lock in a 30% treasury for 4% right now and have it be liquid. You're earning a better rate of return and it's liquid. And you could change your mind. Like it just, why would you give it liquidity, optionality, and more money? Now, listen, if you if you have, if you have, have a lot of money and you're like, you're just flicking away the $300,000 in debt,

you just don't want it? Okay, fine. You know what I mean? Like, if, fine. But for most people that do need money, like, so for example, this was, this was a tweet, one of the responses. I've seen a couple of older individuals dig into savings to pay off a low rate mortgage, only to struggle with lack of liquidity and now stress over groceries for those arguing

it's about sleeping at night. come on like if if you're in that situation where you're so averse to debt that you do that and now i mean it's just this is this is more or less black or white like there's a little bit of gray a very small slice but the majority of the comments are like good for him you can't put a price on on comfort it's like yeah well sometimes you can you can yes yeah sometimes the behavioral finance stuff i'm sorry it's taken too far and people people rely on that crutch of psychology too much. Sometimes you have to actually look at the spreadsheet. Sometimes the spreadsheet numbers matter, and they should matter. It can't always be about your feelings. Ben and I are very

in touch with our feelings. Listen, I cry a lot. I'm very emotional. I'm an emotional person. But sometimes the numbers trump emotions. And this is a clear case where giving up liquidity when you could earn more in money market funds, it does not make sense. Just does not make sense. Yes. I'm totally with this guy about his heart hurting. It's a bad idea. Yeah. All right. This was an interesting one. How couples meet in the U.S. This survey goes all the way back to the 1950s. And this is the story of our society. It's just online, being online. So online started at zero, obviously, and then went over 50% and everything through friends, work, bar, family, whatever, plummeted. Just gone. I don't know what the ramifications are of this. If it's just, this is what the world is right now,

but it has to mean something. Oh, it means everything. Well, talking about our choices of restaurants and beers now, your choices of a mate now have risen exponentially. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. You just say a mate? A mate, yeah. You know, finding a mate.

I just, I'd said before a couple weeks ago, I was glad I didn't have to live through the camera, social media phase when I was younger. I'm glad I don't have to live through the online. Just people constantly, remember the hot or not.com came out and you're rating how people look on the internet. That's essentially what online dating is for most people, right? Obviously, yeah, they're, you know, activities and hobbies and I'm glad I don't have to subject myself to that. I think we saw, I think we saw peak social media.

What do you think about that? What do you mean? So there was an article in the Wall Street Journal headline. We aren't posting on social media as much anymore. Will we ever? billions of people are, billions of people access social media monthly, but users are posting less and favoring a more passive experience. In an October report from Data Intelligence Company Morning consult, 61% of U.S. adults respondents

with a social media account, so they've become more selective about what they post. The reasons are varied, but they just say that the fun of social media has fizzled. I hope so. This was interesting. This would be positive. The head of Instagram said in July that users on the app, spending most of their times in DMs. All of the French sharing is moving in that direction.

There are more photos and video shared in DMs than there are shared in stories. That's crazy. So they just have to find a way to push advertising into DMs somehow? So more photos shared, more photos and video shared in DM than there are in stories. Interesting. Well, isn't it the power law thing of the biggest posters get the most response and engagement? and if you were posting and no one was responding to, you were engaging with you, what's the point in the first place?

Like, are kids still, our kids still? They really never were. But kids aren't creating Twitter accounts. Right. No. We're like the last, it's basically old millennials and Gen X or young Gen X that are still carrying the day of there, I think. This sounds like a positive to me.

It's very positive. I love it. I'm all for it. Here's a note I got in the mail yesterday. You've been randomly selected for a random act of kindness. this is what we do here at the credit union. Please enjoy the extra $50 for the holidays deposited into your max checking account on us

from the mortgage servicing department. That doesn't happen in a recession. Now, you could say maybe that that's the sign that a recession is coming. The bank's just literally handing out money. I thought this was a joke, but I looked in my account, $50. Hmm.

Just, I guess that's what they, they just take that out of their pool of ATM fees and such. Speaking of not recession, I think the Transcoe tweeted, somebody tweeted this. Carnival Cruz, they said that, they just had their best Black Friday period ever or holidays. Remember people thought cruises were going to die in the pandemic?

They're bigger than ever. Booming. Speaking of Black Friday, I watched Thanksgiving by Eli Roth. Horror movie about Thanksgiving? That was a good one. What do you think about the haunted swing pool movie coming out? I mean, I'll say it. Okay, of course you will.

Night swim? Yeah, I looked right up reality. I was on the bank website today looking up. They were talking about 15.1.1. 15% 12-month CDs, which just seems pretty good considering the Fed's going to cut. Like, I would lock that in. Wait, what did you just say? Oh, 5.15.

Sorry, 5.15. Yeah, I mess that up. What do you? Okay. 5.15, not 15. That'd be a little high. So the 12-month CDs are still over 5%. 18 months was 5%.

But then you go to 24-month, and it's down to 3%. But I don't know. 18 months at 5% if you're locking in right now, not too bad. Especially if the Fed is going to cut for in the first six months of the year or something? Not bad at all. Right? All right. multiple YouTube comments last week

talked about you you need to get a suburban because you have a dog you might get another dog you got kid stuff multiple people said I have the solution Michael needs to get a minivan

I would love to it's half the price of a suburban probably you have those deep dugout trunk space automatic sliding doors the minivan is your solution my wife just won't let me

that sounds about right sounds fair I actually I did I did text my car guy, I'm not getting, they're just, they're so expensive. That should be the, that should be the slogan for people, for Tahos and Suburbans and Wagoners, it should just be, just pay up because you're not going to get a minivan. Be honest. That should be their slogan. We're not a minivan.

Yeah. Maybe if cars, if the prices come back down, but like, they, they're outrageously expensive right now. Yes, minivans. So someone also said, rooftop car device for $500. That's not bad. Remember the, the rooftop car carriers thing, things? I don't know how to put that on. That is a great idea. That is a really good idea. That's true. You probably don't.

Ben, this is an interesting take. Talk on it. Okay, my most cynical take of the year, I tweeted this. What are the odds that OZempec results are faked? A drug that can make you eat less, crave less, lose weight, stop gambling, butter your nails, and drinking. It's either one of the greatest discoveries ever

or Elizabeth Holmes 2.0 in the middle ground. I just was throwing the Maltov cocktail into there, and a lot of people wrote it back to me like, hey, listen, man, I did it and it worked. I lost 15 to 20% of my weight. I have a brother or a sister or a wife or a husband who did it. I got hundreds of responses to this. A lot of people also said, listen, idiot, these drugs have been in the pipeline for a while.

They're just slowly but surely getting better. But when this stuff first came out, and I obviously don't really believe they're fake. But that's, if you're taking the extremes, this easier is a miracle drug that can control our willpower. Or it's fake. Or the middle ground is obviously there are some side effects and stuff that are going to be coming down. Is it like super expensive? That's the thing. It's $1,500, but it sounds like it's going to be coming down. Wait, what do you mean? It's $5,500 a month for it or something. It's, and I heard it's going

to come down to 100. I don't know. The willpower stuff to me is, I've initially poo-pooed this Ozempic thing because, like, I figure my baseline assumption is all diets and weight loss miracles are just fads and not going to work forever. It won't last. But this one sounds like it's, the stuff about the other stuff people are saying, like I don't eat as much sugary food or salty food. It's pretty crazy. And am I, is it a little too early to start worrying about an I Am Legend scenario where we're just all turned into zombies because of these drugs? Is that possible? But don't you, so if you're, if you're, if you really can control your willpower with a drug,

do you then, you take that for six days a week, but on the seventh day you take the anti-willpower drug so you can enjoy yourself? Why are you saying willpower? It's not willpower. Doesn't it just suppress your appetite? Well, yeah. But it's also saying people are gambling less, they're drinking less, they're stop biting their nails. People are weak. I am weak. I have no willpower. I can't stick to something.

I'm pathetic. I just, if this stuff actually works like they say it does, this is, it's like a miracle. Yeah. Hey, speaking of I Am Legend, I saw like a trailer, but it looks kind of fake for I Am Legend, too. I think it is fake. I think someone actually made that. Okay. Well, maybe they are doing an Iron Legend, too.

Maybe you're right. Well, I was poking around... Oh, it says two days ago. Nah, it looks fake. You think so? Okay. We'll get the movie stuff later. I just want to finish this.

So, the transcript tweeted, McDonald's dominates competitors and marketing spend. We invest over $4 billion every year marketing our brand, three to four times more than our nearest brand-de-competitor. Our marketing scale ensures that our brand maintains high top-of-mind awareness, which drives customer affinity and frequency. I was thinking about this because I walked out of Penn Station the other day. And outside, there's like these giant digital billboards.

And it was Rolex, Netflix, Capital One, like all in a row. And maybe those brands were lesser extent, but certainly the McDonald's, you know, when you're like, why are they advertising? Like, it's who doesn't know McDonald's? No, that's why you know McDonald's is because they do so much advertising. Like, I know it sounds obvious, but it's face all the time. It works. Getting back to people are weak.

like advertising really, really works. What if McDonald's, like, just slowly but surely puts the anti-Ozempic drug into their food to make you crave it more? They already do. Yeah. So, also if we've tweeted, Amazon is already one of the largest ad businesses in the world at a $40 billion run rate. Now Prime Video will show you ads unless you pay $3 a month. This will add many billions to their bottom line. I tend to agree.

This is the next step. This is the next step. This is what all the streamers will try before they have to are forced to come together is more ads, which will just dampen the experience for everyone. You know, my Amazon, I came for all circle. I shorted the stock in 2011. I bought it in 2023. You just bought it at the end of the year?

I bought it at the end of the year. Okay. It's a little stretch, but whatever, start a position. Still hold Facebook? I sold Facebook. Okay. Big fan of the show. One of the best things you guys do is just be normal.

Thank you. That may not sound like a compliment, but there's not a lot of financial podcasts that I found where the hosts aren't a little robotic. That's a good compliment. Here we go. Because I feel like that's our whole shtick. We're just normal guys.

I was recently laid off and I'm just starting to network. The recruiting firm I'm working with told me I should offer something and return to the end of the conversation. So it's a two-way street. I get that. But it also just feels very awkward when they're generally established in their career. And I just lost my job. Not sure what I'd offer.

And I think most people aren't expecting that. But maybe I'm wrong. Thoughts? Other networking tips are welcomed. Yeah, that's horrible advice. I mean, it's pretty transparent. If you're looking for a job when you're talking to somebody, like, I don't know, what can I do for you?

It's like, I don't know. I think, yeah. So, what's a suggestion? Someone read the Robert Childini books, I guess. Yeah. Oh, that's right. The thing, persuasion and influence, the thing that you can offer, though, I think, I think the biggest thing at networking is just you ask the people about themselves and let them talk.

People love talking about themselves and their career path and that sort of thing and playing themselves up. I think that's what you offer them is just the chance to. talk about themselves. This isn't what anybody wants to hear, certainly not this person. I've spoken to so many people over the years about the job market and whatever. And unfortunately, everyone that, like, we've hired that's come to us, it's because they have a great personality. It's not because, like, there was, like, a tactic. You know what I mean? Like, your personality trumps everything, unfortunately, for better and for worse. That's really what it is. Right. Yeah. No one tricked us into having a conversation of them or...

Yeah, so I'm not saying that, like, there's not methods. or little tricks or tips or things like that. But it really just is, do people like you? Somebody want to hire you. True. Yeah. And if you don't have a good personality, you're not really likable.

The networking stuff's not going to go very well either. Oh, this is a great one. Hey, guys, love the Secure Act had tax incentives or businesses. So last week we were talking about, like, how come more Americans own stocks in their retirement plans? We were wondering if that was like a Robin Hood phenomenon. It got people interested. No, it turns out it's not.

The Secure Act had tax incentives for businesses to automatically enroll their employees in the plan. So employees have to opt out for the plan rather than opt in. This is a case of a very effective nudge. Nice for Congress. Okay. How about that? How about that? Using the tax code for good.

All right, Ben, I've got some pet peeves. I thought about this the other day because I had two things this week that annoyed me. Here's one. And this sounds ridiculous, but I just hear me out. When somebody holds the door for you, like unnecessarily, and I think I might have spoke about this in the past, when somebody, there's two variations with this. One is when somebody like insists on letting you go first out of the elevator or holding the door.

It's like, just go. Don't make, just leave. Don't make you weird. No, I insist. All right, fine. Very kind. But here's the other one that actually is a little bit annoying. When somebody holds the door for you, let's say I'm, this happened to me at Starbucks.

I was going to Starbucks, somebody's holding the door, and I'm like a good 20, feet away. And then they want you to hurry up to get there, right? So you got to do this. Yeah. I'd say three steps probably. Anything more than three steps? Sorry. That's a three step rule. If, if, if don't make somebody jog because you're being so polite, it's too much. Yes, I agree. It's overly polite. It's overly polite. It's sort of equivalent to when somebody comes to an appointment 30 minutes early. That's that's rude. Yes. Here's another one that had that, that, uh, it was with Chris did this. So I FaceTimed him

And he's with his family Like not just his immediate family He's up like a party With like his extended family And he picks up I was like dude Just sit just Yeah

I just don't pick up when you're When you My dad always does that So my dad will be like at dinner Out to dinner And he'll pick up on FaceTime I'm like oh I'll just talk to him He's like no no no no no no

No to you What do you be no I'm not talking to you while you're... I'm not going to FaceTime while there's background noise and the... No. Do you have any nitpicks with any of those pet peeves? Am I crazy? The door thing is a definite.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I think the reason we could do this today because it doesn't seem like either was were hungover from New Year's Eve. This is the first year probably that I can remember that we literally had zero plans. We had no plans.

The kids at the end of the night, wait, are we doing something? Isn't it New Year's Eve or something? And we had no plans, and I was perfectly fine with it. That's awesome. That's great. How did you get away with that? I think part of it is because we were up seeing my parents. We had two nights of partying and being out and about and doing stuff with the kids.

And then we came back on New Year's Eve. And so I think that was part of it. So you're just wiped. Yeah, we were wiped. So the fact that we had nothing, but I didn't mind it. And obviously that means I'm getting old, but it was actually pretty nice. That's really nice. Yeah, I don't mind you.

I can go either way. We did have people over last night. We had two couples over, and we were up. They left at 1245. It was a long night. Long night. Okay. That's late for you.

All right, Ben, I want to talk about, I want to have a question for you. The Netflix algorithm, like people say it's like gamed and stuff, which I'm sure there's an element of them promoting their best stuff. I don't know if that would necessarily be like illegal or unethical. I don't know. But the reason why I bring this up is because the movie Maestro, which, I don't know, I found it incredibly unwatchable. That's not a very important.

It's past film, whatever you want to call it. Bradley Cooper, yeah, wonderful performance. You know his problem? He tries too hard. Did you watch a movie? I started it. I still have to watch it, but I can just tell. No, you don't.

No, okay. I mean, I don't know. I watched 15 minutes. I was like, yeah, he's brilliant. I get it. But anyway. The thing is, he already had his film where he did that as a star is born. Like, you don't have to do that performance again.

Where you go so over the top. And he spent like six years studying Leonard Bernstein. But anyway, the reason why I bring this up is because it was like, when I looked at it, It's out of the top 10. When I checked originally, like, I think it bombed on Netflix. And you would think that if they were, like, manipulating the system that it would be in the top 10, it's out. I don't think they are. Okay, here's a movie you don't have to watch for sure.

I, I'm the last person on earth to do this. My wife and I did Barbenheimer this weekend, this past weekend. Really? So, well, Barbie's on HBO, and she wanted to watch it. She wanted to check it out first because the kids wanted to watch it. and I I didn't know what I was getting myself into I mean you'd watch it for five minutes and shut it off

I did I did okay the whole movie's like that I thought it was like going to be a more because I think it's PG3 there's a couple of wink wink stuff but it's a kid's movie no one told me it was a kid's movie it's oh it is well I mean it's just so much cheesier and over the top than I had anticipated

with the people involved to be clear this movie was not made for me this movie was not made for a middle-aged dad but I I was shocked at how cheesy this movie was I couldn't believe it so I give them credit for making a billion dollars on nostalgia and marketing

but there's two kind of movies that when they're released the movie that does huge and then years later you go wait how did that movie make so much money and then there's a movie that like bombs like Shawshank and then years later it's a classic Barbie has to be in the first category it has to years from now people are going to look back and go

how did that movie make a billion million dollars how well because nostalgia and marketing and well yeah marketing advertising and it was a social media phenomenon i think all these things i saw i probably watched 15 15 20 minutes and my reaction was very much like yours like this is not this movie's not for me my wife liked it more than me yeah but again it was not for me but i was also kind of impressed i was like i get it it was it was it was clever it was well done i guess i thought it was going to be able to have some more i was waiting for a turn and it never i don't so op and i'm I think you didn't like it. Is that right?

I didn't love it. I was disappointed relative to how I thought I would feel about it. I thought it was fine. This is going to sound pretentious. Pretentious or not. I wanted to read the book first, and I read the book that it was based on, and I actually thought reading the book helped. Again, sounds pretentious to say, but I thought it helped understand because the movie was very jumpy. So I was explaining stuff to my wife because I read the book, and it helped me, and I thought it was the best movie of the year. Like that movie should win all the awards

I thought it was fantastic The fact that he was able to take that story And turn it into it It's also gotta be one of the best cast Of a movie, I don't know, this century The cast was amazing Amazing, yeah Like some of these people that are great actors

That had like a three lines or something I just thought it was I thought it was so, so good It could have obviously been shorter But it was, I loved it It's all God, it blows my mind That we had in the span of 25 years The Manhattan Project

where we created a nuclear bomb and we put a man on the moon in 25 years. And Godzilla was in between that. Don't forget about that. But that, yeah, anyway, that's my whole feeling there is just like the fact that if they can throw resources and smart minds at something that we can't accomplish it, it's, anyway, that movie to me has to win all the Oscars. You know what? So I saw it opening night in IMAX and, you know, Christopher Nolan, the cast, the hype, the

expectations. I don't think it could have possibly met my expectations. So maybe that's why I'm disappointed. I think it's a movie that didn't have to be seen in the theater. Oh, really? Because I saw it. I mean, I thought seeing an IMAX helped. Yeah, I don't know. To me that and it was a movie we broke up over a couple nights because it was so long. And I don't know. I thought it was fantastic. So two weeks ago, I think I was like, I don't

I wish I liked the Iron Claw more than I did. And I've been, I don't know why. I've been thinking about that movie a lot. So maybe I maybe I did like it more than I thought originally. Stuck with you, huh? Okay. Yeah. I'm thinking about it. Just been in my brain. We watch when it's on streaming. All right. So, as I mentioned, Thanksgiving.

So Thanksgiving is a, Thanksgiving is a popcorn commercial horror movie. It's for everyone. If you like horror, if you're even, even if you don't like horror, you could see Thanksgiving. Not one of these weird joints like you that's just sadistic. No. No. So Tim Dylan. Tim Dillon is in it.

And he has a hilarious role. So it's clever. It's about Black Friday. Patrick Dempsey's in it? Yeah. It's about, it's about like a Black Friday type scene. where there's like a stampede and people die and then the next year somebody comes back for revenge.

So that was actually a lot of fun. Eli Roth was the director, a lot of fun. I should have called it. I know what you bought last summer. Last back Friday. Yeah. Anyway. Okay, on the other side of the spectrum.

So these are like, this is not for horror normies. I'm sorry, this is not for like normie viewers. So if Thanksgiving is like a passion fruit white claw, then these next two movies are like, Scotch. You know the meme, you know the meme of Tobias from Arrested Development? I don't think you ever watched that. Where he says, there's dozens of us.

Dozens! This is like the fans of your horror movies, because I know there are some that listen to the podcast. And they love your sadistic horror movies that you recognize. Okay. So here's two. There's dozens of you. Here's two. The dark and the wicked.

Just truly dreary. Very good. Truly dreary. Like, sort of, it was just dark. Just dark. Check it out. I think that one's on shutter. Another one. This is an old one. Bill Arts put me on to this. Eden Lake. So two people go camping and they get basically attacked by teenagers, I guess, is what happens. The two people, it's Beth from Yellowstone. Okay. And Michael Fassbender. Oh, never heard of that one before. 2008. I'm like, wait, what? So this is like right before he really exploded. Anyway, that one was super. Marley and Grizzly. Again, not for most viewers. Okay.

One more thing. Two more things, actually, real quick. I watched Manhunter, which has been on my list forever. So on the big picture, they did like a Michael Man movies because Ferrari just came out. So Man Hunter is, have you ever seen Man Hunter? No, I haven't. It's Red Dragon. Right. Right? So Red Dragon was a remake of Manhunter.

I liked Red Dragon. I love Red Dragon. So Brian Cox from Succession plays Hannibal Lecter and Man Hunter. I think Manhunter's from like the late 80s. But anyway, so I was listening to The Watchables because they did it. And they were shitting all over Red Dragon because they loved Manhunter when it came out. But they were like really nasty about Red Dragon. And I got to say, I'm sorry, Red Dragon ruled.

Ray Fines was so much better as the Tooth Fairy than the guy in Manhunter. So you know what it was like? So Red Dragon is like Janus or Joel Embed. And Manhunter is like Bob Pettit or George Miken. Yeah. Once you've seen the updated version. Yeah, you can't go back. You can't go back with time.

All right, last thing. We spoke about the trailer for a civil war and how some of the nastiness is bleeding over into the movies. There's another one coming out that looks incredible. It's called ISS International Space Station. Did you see that one? No. So the trailer, there's Russian and American astronauts in a space station.

And they're looking at the globe and they're like, oh, it's so beautiful. And all of a sudden, like they see an exceptional. explosion and then another one and then another one and it's like take over the space station because earth is ending type of stuff pretty scary pretty scary i'm in all right ben i'll see you tomorrow that's true we're going to farmcon ben and i are doing a podcast from farmcon excited to see all the the fine folks over there we just wanted to travel to get out of the house basically because our kids have been home for two weeks it's been a long it's been a long couple of weeks are ready for the kids go back to school.

Pretty much. Two weeks is a long time to get off. It's too much. All right. Personal emails, personal responses, animal spirits at the compound news.com. There we go. All right. See you next time.