Animal Spirits Podcast - 45 Million Rich Households (EP. 475)

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

On episode 475, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: a good sign for the bull market, semoconductor stocks crashing, why valuations keep falling, everyone is bearish about bonds, South Korea traders, how big SpaceX could get, why people keep spending money, Netflix is still dominating streaming, why there aren't more IMAX theaters and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Calamos. To learn more and get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription to take Y for a spin (new customers only), visit https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits To learn more about CAIE, visit https://www.calamos.com/funds/etf/calamos-autocallable-income-caie Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Us: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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.   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. The Compound Media, Incorporated, 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 show is sponsored by Y Charts. If you're a financial advisor, you already know the hardest part of the job isn't finding the data. It's turning that data into clear, confident conversations that visuals clients actually understand. White Charts helps advisors research faster, visualize market data clearly, and turn complex portfolio questions into client-ready insights. On average, advisors using Ycharts save around 20 hours a month across proposals, research,

and client prep. And now, with built-in AI tools, advisors can quickly service key takeaways, understand what change and why and spend less time digging through data. Whether you're comparing portfolios, stress testing strategies, or answering tough client questions in real time, Y-charts cuts through the noise and keeps your clients focused on what matters most. Learn more at Y-charts.com or click the link in the show notes to start a free trial and get 20% off your initial Y-charts professional subscription. That's your new customers only. Today's show is brought to you by Calamos. All right, let's talk

about what Calamos is doing here because it's pretty wild. We've mentioned their ETS before, but this one stands out. It's the auto-callable income ETF, ticker C-A-I-E. The pitch is simple, seeking high-tax-efficient monthly income. Last month was about 14% with much of it expected to be return-up capital. That combo seeking high-income plus tax efficiency is what grabs attention. But zoom out, autocallables have traditionally been a big bank-driven market, sold mostly to wealthy clients. Not exactly accessible. Calamos essentially packaged it into an ETF, liquid, transparent, and easy-to-access. That's a big shift. The industry's notice. The AIE has already won three major innovation awards, and it's nearing $1 billion in assets in under a year.

While most investors are chasing yield with covered calls, this is a different approach entirely. Check out C-A-I-E at calamos.com for investors who love income. 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 Redhol 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. It is Monday, July 27th. Why am I opening the show with a date? Because, usually, Ben and I record on Tuesday morning, uh, although you know what? What's the difference? We recorded out the close on Monday, the opening on Tuesday.

Same thing. Right. That's what I wanted to do to 4 o'clock. No difference. Credit to you. All right. Let's jump right into it. This is an unusual, was an unusual day for the market.

This is an interesting time for the market. And today got a little funky. So the sell-off in semi and some of the hardware-related names, all the AI infrastructure build out, all of the things that we've been speaking about over the last six months, the momentum that was severely extended. We're now on the other side of that. At one point during the late afternoon, and I assume the close was basically this. Semiconductors were down 4% on the day.

And software, the anti-AI semi-trade, was up 3.3%. Going back to 1989, we have a scatterplot for those of you who are listening and not watching. This is unusual. This is an absolute outlier of a day. Wow. I mean, that's like the stock market getting killed and bonds doing well or something. I don't know what the comparison of that. So, okay. So here's the, I just ran this too. We're on the same wavelength this week. From the highs, and this happened really quick. Micron is down 27%. Western Digital down 34%. Sandusk is down 46%. C-gate technology is down 26%. These are all the semi-conductor memory names that would be found in that DRAM port. So again, this was an easy one to call that it would happen, but I think this, to me, for all the bubble talk, this is good news. And why is this good news?

The stock market is 2% off all-time highs. The stuff under the surface, this is one of the great things about the stock market. There are some stocks getting absolutely hammered right now. And yet the S&P is basically at an all-time high. Wait, it's not just some stocks. It's the leadership stocks. Right. And the stock market is flat today.

Invidia's down 5%. Ben, look at these next two charts. That's good news, right? It's great news. Your voice inflected four octaves on that one. You are really excited. This is good news. So, Chart Kid.

Hey, you told me I'm not excited enough about short-term stuff in this stock market. I'm giving you excitement here. Lean in. All right, I love it. All right. So we've got two charts. One is the average 52-week drawdown of semiconductors, or as Ben says, semi-conductors.

and 27%. Wait, did I really say that? You always say that. You say semi-conductors. Oh, you said some I. You say semi-conductors. Okay.

So the average is down 27%. Marfell is down 41%. And then we've got tech hardware and equipment stock drawdown. So this is Western Didge, Corning, Sandisk, which, by the way, Sandisk was so freaking extended,

dude, it's in a 45% draw. drawdown. And if you zoom out more than like three months, it looks, it still looks like it's, it still looks like it's in an up trend. It basically got cut in half and it's still in an uptrend. And the last year, the stock is still up 2,900% and it's not 46%. That sounds, that sounds amazing.

That sounds fake. That's the Ron Burgundy. I'm not even mad. I'm impressed. So it is unbelievable that the part of the market that people were calling the bubble, is debubbling or deflating. And yet the market, the S&P 500, was actually up today. This keeps happening.

The equally-the-equal was up about 40-something basis. The mega-first was the Meg 7 sold off. Market did fine. Now it's a systemic. Then said, oh, well, that's because it's just the memory stocks. Now, they're selling off and the market is still fine. Now, I will say there is, there are some. The market is just a Rasputin market.

Never dies. You know what? I got to be honest. I don't know what Rasputin is or who he is. Was this like a child's tale? What is this? Who's resputed? Put it into Chad GPT.

The only reason I really... No, just tell me. The only reason I really learned about it is because Wayne Fons was the old Lions coach and Chris Bermin do said he's like Rasputin. He just won't die. They wouldn't fire him. Resputin is this guy in Russia back in the day when some big revolution happened. And they tried to kill him like five times and they wouldn't die.

They give him poison. They stabbed him, all this stuff. And he just wouldn't die. So if you say something that won't die is Rasputin. Oh, they don't realize I was talking to a Russian historian over there. That's right. Not bad. Hey, comrades.

So, so anyway. All right, as Rasputin as this market is, and it is all those things, Teflon, whatever you want to call, we've been saying this. There are things to look at under the surface that are worth paying attention to, or at least just put them on your radar. Consumer staple stocks are ripping. Coca-Cola, boring names like that. Credit spreads are widening, especially the junkier you go, getting a little bit wider. Nothing to be alarmist about by any stretch. And I think all of this is happening with the sense that maybe the Fed is hiking this week.

No way. There's no way he hikes on his first, like, first real media. Neil Dada called it today. Well, someone has to call it because if you call it and they do it like, you're a legend, if you call it and they don't do it, yeah, well, they would have. Neil Dott is a legend in my eyes either way. Okay, just because he's a Knicks fan. So, okay, so you're saying there's some, I think this is the big thing that people are trying to say.

If you and I were on CNBC right now, we'd say, listen, late cycle behavior. This is late cycle behavior, right? The market is broadening out, consumer staples, credit. Like, this is late cycle behavior. What does that mean? I don't know. We've been in the ninth inning for like 12 years. No, you're right.

The bulls have earned the benefit of the data on some. So here's another, what I think is good news. So the momentum factor had just one of the craziest runs it's ever had because through April, momentum stocks, and I'm using the I-Share's Momentum Factor ETF, MTUM, through April, we're down almost 10% on the year. Then three months later, we're up almost 40% on the year. And now it's up, so it went from being negative to up 40% in three months. And now in the last month, it's gone from a gain of almost 40% to a gain of now

the year-to-date gain is 20%. So this feels a little more healthy. This is more normal. The gains that we were seeing through April were clearly unsustainable and not, we're not, that's not like Captain Hindsight. Everybody at the time was saying, this is unhealthy. Like Micron growing up 30% a day, this is abnormal. It pulling back is very normal.

Every time it seems like the market is just going to like just rip and just like, okay, fine, let's do this. You want to really do this? Let's do it. It doesn't happen. There's like, there's something that happens where investors just have enough sense to go. Let's not take this too far.

I feel like there's a natural governor on the upside. and for as much nonsense mania as there is, like the market is acting a little bit sober, which is nice. Another one from duality research, we keep highlighting, the forward P.E ratio for the S&P keeps falling. Can I say something?

Hold on. I'm sorry to cut you off. The word sober just triggered an experience from me. Okay. So this is my second flu game of the year, flu podcast of the season. I'm sick. I'm like 80% better,

but I was in bed all day yesterday morning today. So all day from Sunday until today. I got out of bed at noon today. And I slept like a dog. I think I slept for 20 straight hours. I'm watching a show called The Westies. What's that on?

It's a brand new show on MGM Plus. And I said to myself, MDM Plus, you're really slimming it, huh? It got recommended to me by four different people. I said, I'm not, I can't sign up. I can't sign up for another streaming. service, it's enough ready. But because I already pay for shutter, it was, it's $3 a month. All right, fine,

give me, give me the last news. Um, it's about the build out of the Javitt Center. And J.K. Simmons is head of the Irish mafia. And he's going to war with the Italians, Gatti and Castellano. Anyway. Decent? Yeah, it's pretty good. It's actually quite good.

Um, okay. It's funny. You always say that you'd never get sick, but once every three months, you're in bed for like 24 hours straight. Okay, but in between those three months period, I'm never sick. I only get sick when I am. I don't know. I'm the one who never get sick. I want to knock on wood here, but like I don't just get taken out for like 48 hours in a row from a bug.

I feel like that happens to you all the time. Well, there is a severe bug going around the northeast and not just that lettuce bug. There's also E. coli in one of the camps. Oh, that's right. That's what happened. You just ate Taco Bell. No, no, no.

Is that what happened? Anyway, I'll share more in the show later. But I did get food poisoning or some sort of stomach books. So I threw up five times yesterday morning. It was horrendous. Projectile vomiting. Well, this 4P ratio looks like it's projectile, right? I didn't tell you, let me just finish why I even went on this tangent.

You said the, I said the word sober. So there's a scene in the Westies where they're drinking. And this is the Irish, you know, they drink a lot. And I was almost nausea. I almost had to fast forward. That's how sick I was. Like the look of the watching them take shots at Jamestson almost made me throw up again. That's a shot that never goes down smooth.

Irish whiskey. Oh, come on. You and I have had plenty of shots of Jameson together, have we not? Yeah, but it never goes down smooth. That's what I'm saying. I love drinking it, but it never goes down smooth. Pagan Whistle before a next playoff game? Always goes down smooth.

All right. Anyway, sorry, back to the 4P. I was saying the 4P is also puking. It just keeps going down. And it's not like you can say, oh, stocks are so cheap. But I don't know. The 4P ratio is not that much higher today than it was on the Liberation Day lows. Then it was trading it 18 times forward earnings today.

It's 19 and a half. It's kind of unbelievable because the stock market is up. How much since then? Quite a bit. Quite a bit. A lot. So Liberation Day lows as well as the war sell-off. Right.

That was a thing that happened, right? For like a week? I don't know if this is more bullish or like, I think this is interesting. I don't know if there's like signal in here. For the, for the four P.E. following? Yeah. I'm not going to look at this chart and pound the table on, like, further upside because the PE is coming down.

I think the P is coming down because the market is saying we don't believe the A. I just think it. Yeah, well, that obviously that's part of it with memory stocks. I just think it's hilarious that for years and years and years, people have been saying the stock market is overvalued and now valuations are falling. It's just kind of interesting to me. Although I subscribe to the notion that for the market as a whole, valuations really don't matter.

Unless we get to like a 50 PE, I don't think valuations matter anymore. They don't. They really don't. I know it sounds like heresy. Yeah, they don't, though. They don't. Yeah. All right.

IPOs, this is from Torsten Slack. IPOs have underperform the market since 2019. This is the three-year buy-and-hold market-adjusted IPO. So it takes the IPO and then compares it to what the market did. And every year, the IPOs are getting just slaughtered this decade, just massacred. And I know people keep talking about the reason that we're not having more IPOs. I know we're having some big ones this year. the reason of all these companies are saying private longer is because of regulations and rules

and there's so much private capital, blah, blah, blah. I think one of the other reasons is they know they're all overvalued. 100%. And if they go, if they go public, they're going to, it's just going to, oh my gosh. That's such, I'm so glad to said that. What a great point. This chart is an indictment on private market investors. It is.

There was too much money that flowed in and valuations got taken way too high. And the public market said, uh-uh. Nope. That's, it's kind of crazy. chart kid Matt and the team at Exhibit A. They did this, the average IPO, and I think they did this, how far back did they go? Oh, 99. The average IPO, it's kind of funny.

It has a little pop, falls a little, then it comes up, and then it just falls in. Then 12 months after the IPO, the average IPO is down 30%, 12 months after the IPO, which is kind of crazy. And he put SpaceX chart on here, and that huge pop immediately is up 50%. Now it's down 15% in total, but it's down how much from the highs? is 45% or so. And this thing's getting killed every day. I looked at this. It's down 14 out of the 18 trading days in July.

So almost every day, SpaceX goes down this month. It's pretty wild because everyone who said this thing is obviously overvalued was right almost immediately. But now what happens? I don't know. Did you happen to listen to our episode with Ron Barron on TCAF? No, you know, my podcast consumption

is in a bare market, because on the weekends, I'm just outside the whole time, and I have to catch up during the week. Okay. So he's a Tesla guy, so he's obviously bullish on SpaceX. Is that fair? So he's an Elon Musk fan. To say the least. Elon Musk made him $30 billion. Or him and his investors, $30 billion. I think I'd be a fan, too. So what Ron Barron has been able to do, I think he has the number one performing mutual funds since 2003, something like that. And like 95% of his funds are in the top decile or something crazy.

And a lot of it is due to his investments in Tesla. He's made, he made 27 different investments in SpaceX. Anytime people want it to cash out, he's like, great, I'll take it. So this guy's a- He's been along for the ride. He's a long, long-term investor. Right. He invested in Wynn for 27 years. Like he is an unusual cat that he's able to stay invested in these companies for so long.

He did say that he thinks SpaceX could 20 to 30x over the next 10 to 15 years, which is a 30. So I, so, all right, 20X over the next 10 years is a 35% Kager. At one and a half trillion dollars, it seems highly unlikely. So he's saying it's like in 30 years, it's as big as the economy is today. I mean, whatever, crazy. Yeah. Anyway, that was, that was an interesting conversation. Does he also think that Tesla and SpaceX are for sure going to merge?

Because that seems to be the, he doesn't think so? I don't even think we ask him that. 83 years old, Sharp is attacking. You know what? You know what? One of my big takeaways from Ron Barron. He's 83? 83, super sharp.

The recall that he had telling us stories about him growing up. He, like I, I don't know if you know this about me, huge eye contact guy. Okay, I can see that. I'm not a big eye contact guy. No, you're the anti. When I am having a conversation, I am looking into somebody's soul. No, but, I mean, that's, you have my attention. I look at, and he, he, he challenged me.

He was a, he was right in the center of my. You guys had a stare off, okay. Yeah, no, it was just, I feel like we got to know each other from the eyeballs. And then you uncomfortly looked away. You had someone has to look away eventually. I think he blinked, actually. I got to be honest. I think he blinked.

All right. Let's talk about something that everyone is bearish on, I think. And this is, when I say everyone, I know you always give me crap for that. But I had two, I think the consensus take now, you can correct me if I'm wrong here. From the pundit class, from the investor class, everyone is bearish on bonds right now. Is that fair to say? You would know better than I would. Okay, I'm in everywhere.

Okay. So I'm going to point out two conversations I had of the past week. And I've been hearing this same story everywhere. And I'm not saying these people are wrong. I'm just saying I always feel a little uncomfortable and everyone is so consensus on something like this. So I talked to Urien Timmer last week for asset compound. And he says, listen, the biggest risk to the market right now, one of them is rising yields, bond yields. And that could because inflation is high and because the Fed could have to raise rakes and all these things.

and he's saying we're in an age of fiscal dominance. This whole idea of the rates falling for 40 years is over. Now it's inflation is going to be higher because of higher deficits, higher government debt, all these things, right? I went in this other local podcast last week. Caviad Emptor. I think I said that, right? Emptor?

Mitch Staples, a guy. He used to be the chief investment officer at Fifth Third Bank. Now he works at this place in Grand Rap, it's called the Red Cedar Investments. And he kind of made a similar case as Urient. He's a bond guy. He made the, he's like, listen, inflation higher. anything long duration is going to get smoked. Like, this is not a great environment for that.

You have to keep your duration low. And, again, I'm not saying these people are wrong. I think they probably, I would lead more towards them being right in terms of the higher inflation thing sticking and all this, but I just feel like with bond yields being so much higher, it would have really surprised me five years ago if you said, or 10 years ago, if you said, listen, bond yields are finally going to be at 5%. And everyone's going to still hate bonds. like what that that would have been surprising to telling someone that in these in the zero interest rate

world that we lived in like hey yields yields are finally going to be juicy enough but people want to like you know get something finally and no everyone still eats bonds that's surprising to me yeah so what in what under what's what would have to happen for these people to be wrong just a recession that would do it well i think listen you have to be an idiot to just completely dismiss those spheres. I guess my question to them would be, rates have been high for a while, at least high by by recent historical standards. What would it take for the risks to emerge because of higher yields? Is it the 10-year going to 5.5% or is it just higher for longer is ultimately going to impair X, Y, or Z? The question I asked is, are you surprised that yields aren't higher given all the

spending this happening. And the answer was, yes. Like, it takes the market sometimes a while to adjust the new environment and maybe yields, the new yields should be high, which obviously is not great for things like mortgage rates. Does it take the market a while to adjust? Or is, or is this like the economy to adjust? Yeah. Well, that's a good point, too. But if you look at the bond market for the past five years, and I put this chart in here, I understand one of the reasons why people hate bonds is because they've just been so horrible. So I looked at the last five-year. returns for bonds, total returns for the ag, which is, you know, a benchmark for almost everyone, and then it would be like that would be like a total index fund for most people in bonds.

The three to seven year treasury bond, 20 plus year, then seven to 10 year, right? And so over the past five years, the ag is essentially giving you nothing. Same thing with three to seven year treasuries. Ten year treasury, seven to ten year treasuries, you've lost eight percent of your money in five years. Long-term bonds, you got smoked. It's like 33 percent down. And add inflation on top of that, it's even worse, obviously. So the fact that the, you know, the sentiment around bonds is bad, that makes sense. If you were looking at a loss five years for stocks, everyone would hate them too. So that part makes sense to me. Can I pull a bank Carlson here? Yep. Nobody just owns stocks. I mean, nobody just owns bonds. So if you look at a return sort of a 60-40 portfolio,

probably still above average. Yes. Yeah, you're right. It's, it's, stocks have done the heavy lifting. And I just think the fact that yields are so much higher just gives you a built-in margin of safety that you just did. We already took the biggest part of the pain. Zero to five was an enormous amount of pain for bonds. So now it feels like if it's going to be painful, it's a death by a thousand cuts, whereas before you got pushed off of a cliff with no parachute. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The worst is behind us. Again, I'm not saying I disagree with these people. I'm just saying like where could they, where could this consensus now opinion? It seems like consensus by a lot of very smart people.

Where could that be wrong? All right, let's talk about South Korea. This is, this is wild. Let me just read this. Did you read this piece? This was really good. From Reuters. Li Song Ho watched the nearly 300 million won, which is around 200 grand.

Fortune he built with a 500% margin loan evaporated in just four weeks in May. But he plans to borrow again and return to the market at the moment he has enough capital. Ady boy, Lee Sung. Addaboy. The 24-year-old South Korean University students in Seoul briefly turned the 20 million won he saved during the mandatory military service into a 15-fold windfall, all by tapping, quote, a tiny circle budded on his trading app that instantly unlocked five times leverage.

Violent swings in South Korean stocks triggered a cascade of forced liquidations by his brokerage, wiping out the gains. Within weeks, his account had fallen below his initial investment, leaving him under such strain that he said, I literally could not breathe. But I'm sticking to margin loans, Lee said from his studio apartment. barely larger than a parking space next to an empty, Habiki whiskey and unboxed electric fan, gifted by his brokerage after he qualified as a VIP client.

This is really good. What? Okay. Lee said, since stocks are volatile assets, that volatility, if it moves upward, allows for rapid wealth creation. If I add five times leverage,

I can build wealth five times faster than the others. This guy's, he's not the only person doing this. No. Legend. I love how they had to, like, put them down by talking about how big his apartment was. Yeah. Come on.

Love Blobo, Reuters. Five times leverage. There was a data point going around a couple of weeks ago that there was 500,000 South Korean accounts that were liquidated. Do you remember what the number was? I don't remember the number, but it's, they had to put some curbs on this stuff in South Korea in terms of the leverage ETFs. And it sounds to be, this feels like crypto to me, where the crypto accounts just get taken

out because the leverage is so high, I can't believe that they're allowing five times leverage for an account that size. For any account, just by hitting a, that's crazy, right? Why not six times? But here's the thing. 10x that shit. Why stop there? As these other countries learn about the stock market.

And there's, some of these, a lot of these other countries, I talked about this with Josh State, actually, where a lot of these other countries don't have nearly the ownership we have or like the institutional knowledge of the stock market because there's been just more time here to gain that knowledge. I think they're going to supercharge these cycles. Kind of like crypto. The crypto cycles all happen faster, right? The boom and the winter and the boom and the winter.

I think that's going to happen with a lot of these individual countries as they, as their young people learn the stock market. And I think eventually it's going to be a good thing for them. As long as they don't get totally blown out and are broke and have to declare bankruptcy. I don't know if I share your optimism with Lee Sung-ho. No? Okay. Well, the fact that he's going back for more leverage, obviously, that's not a great.

sign. But I do think that these other countries, because all the bearers to entry have been knocked down, getting involved in the stock market, that's going to be a huge tailwind for global stocks in the years ahead. Because if you look at the ownership ranking, like Japan, 15% of the households own stocks versus 65% here, that's a tailwind for global equities in the years ahead. And it's a tailwind for U.S. equities, too, if they put money here. Don't do it with five times 11 maybe. That'd be my only note. Great story. though. I really liked it. Okay. Story in the Wall Street Journal. Blackstone rolls out new private market funds this time with Vanguard.

I guess this is another... So this has new offerings for individual investors follow Exodus from private credit funds earlier this year. I guess this is another case of Jack Bogle rolling over in his grave. Although people say that, and he was against ETFs. And ETSs are a massive part of Vanguard's business now. Yeah. Right? So they're going to do this through Wellington, which is actually where Bogle started. That's where he got his start. Remember the Wellington funds. gone back forever. I'll be curious to see how this does with Vanguard. Do you think this is mostly institutions that'll be doing it through Vanguard?

Do you think this will actually be individuals? This is going to be offered through, I think the article said, for Merrill Lynch investors to start. Okay. So the story is, Vanguard will manage the indexed equity and indexed and active fixed income sleeves

in the new All-Markets Fund. Wellington will provide active equity and liquidity management while Blackstone is managing all of the private assets. So a Vanguard spokesperson said the reality is markets have changed because obviously they were asked about what Jack Bogle would think, who famously said don't try and find the needle in the haystack, just own the haystack. So they said the reality is the markets have changed. The haystack now includes private markets, which our clients today just don't have much access to. By getting involved, we aspire to lower the cost and complexity of investing in private assets over time. So this is like the first, this is the precursor to having target date funds eventually hold these, right? Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's inevitable.

And I think, I think it did say that Vanguard investors will eventually have access to this. Yeah, that makes, I don't know, I guess if you're going to do this, doing it and so in a diversified manner like this makes sense. I don't know how they handle like rebalancing and such, but. I understand the argument that private markets are so much bigger now. Forget about just like the growth equity stuff. but private credit infrastructure, there's a lot of, you know, the world doesn't look the way it did 40 years ago.

All right. Let's talk the economy. I like this one from Carlisle Group. They talk about what the World Cup revealed about America. And they talk about people learning about the consumption habits here. There's some really interesting patterns here. Now, we talked in recent weeks about the fact that low mortgage rates from people really help their disposable income and their spending.

135 million U.S. households, 50 million own a mortgaged home, virtually all of which have been financed by long-term fixed rates. And so they're saying, like, that's a big hedge. And if you want to think about this in investment terms, I explained this to someone recently. Having a fixed-rate mortgage is like you're shorting the dollar. For all the people who say the dollar is going to decline forever and it's toast and you know what you want to do in that situation, you want to have a fixed-rate mortgage for as long as you can because that's short the dollar. So they say measured by the current distance between rates on new mortgages, which is almost six and a half percent, which is over six and a half percent, and the effective rate paid on the outstanding stock

of mortgages, so that's 4.3%. So you take everyone who has a mortgage right now, and what's their average rate is 4.3%. You would be paying 6.5%, 6.6%. Disposable income among these households is 300 billion higher than it would have been if mortgage rates automatically reset to market levels, as is common in other economies. So that's savings. That's why so many people have been able to spend so much money. You locked in a low rate. Now here's another one. This is really interesting. Speaking of World Cup, somebody sent this a video showing what people spent to the World Cup and what, what you just mentioned and access, what, $300 billion, it all went to FIFA. By the way, I have no idea.

Is FIFA the organization that gets the money? I don't know how that works. Well, yeah, they run the World Cup. Okay. That's where all the money went. Can I show this video with you? Mm-hmm. Did you watch this video, Ben?

I did not. It's unbelievable. How much did you spend on your ticket? $50,000. $20,000. And what do you do for a living? I'm a model. 30,000.

What do you do for a living? I'm retired. And what do you do for a living? A PE, Lingangha. 30,000. 30,000. What do you do for a living? Streamer.

Been to 2011. Not enough. There's no experience like the World Cup final. And what do you do for a living? I'm chairman of the Kansas cheese. I don't know. What do you do for a living? What do you do for a living?

We used to do to auto-tradters. We bought SAP software to the two and millions of dollars that they invited us to the game. What do you do for a living? We make welches fruit snacks. They're selling all over the... No, wait, you're the owner of Welsh's? Yes. What is your network?

You can Google me. Got hooked up with a good friend. Do you know how much they would have cost? 30,000. What do you do for a living? I'm a guest to bed. I didn't spend $1. What do you do for a living?

Eight mile. Spend anything. I am invited me. What do you do for a living? A consultant. A guest. We're really lucky. We're guests and for wives.

What do you do for a living? I work for a living. 96,000. What do you do for a living? I'm a painter of houses. 73,000. All right, you got the point. There are, there's levels to this.

Like, there's people that make a good living. There's people that have assets. And then there's people that spend $96,000 and $200,000 to go to the World Cup. Jeez. Well, Ben, all from a fixed mortgage. That's right. That's where it came from. They locked in their mortgage and they spent the difference on the World Cup finals.

I listen to this one. The total outlays of 45 million U.S. households is equal to nearly 70% of the entire Chinese economy. So they compare just the 45 million richest households in the USA. No, 45,000 you said? 45 million households. That account to combine for nearly $15 trillion in annual outlays. It's equal to three times the size of the entire Germany economy, 70% of GDP of China. This is the third of the population and has not only been insulated from the inflation shock,

but also because it has a prescenity of spend out of wealth and income. So it's just showing how much we love to spend in this country. essentially. And that 45 million households is such a big amount too. It's not like the top 10%. It's the top third or something. It's basically an economy unto itself. It's a massive, massive number. Think about how much bigger China is than us. And these 45 million households are almost as big as a Chinese GDP. It's pretty insane. Unbelievable. All right. So Google reported earnings last week. And I want to read you something that the CFO said, which is emblematic of everything happening in hyperscaler AI world.

By the way, my anchorman meme from last week or two weeks ago was kind of spot on. They're all turning on each other. I don't believe you? Open source versus closed source versus a lot of fighting. Yes, yes. They are all turning on each other. Yeah. And I have no you always make fun of me for not taking a stance, but the whole

open source versus closed source versus I don't care. Okay? I really don't care. Is that okay to have a stance? Considering that you just discovered Apple Pay, I'm not surprised you don't have a stance on this. I don't care. Okay. She was asked about their Kappex. Because they raised it again. They just reported a negative free cash flow for the first quarter, I don't know if ever, but... I think it was the first time ever at negative free cash for yes. She said, we're still in a supply-constrained environment. I think we've said this now for multiple

quarters in a row. We are seeing very strong demand, both. from external cloud customers as well as across the business. Our goal is to invest as long as we've seen an attractive return on that investment. As Sundar mentioned earlier, we do take a long-term view, so we take multi-year view at what the needs are, as well as focus on next year in the near term and building aggressively to meet those demands. As you've seen, while we have increased our capacity quite significantly over the past three years, the demand still outpaces that investment. We are just like the rest of the industry working in a supply-constrained environment. Stock's down almost 20%.

Google is? It's down 18% draw on right now. They had a monster quarter. I was surprised at the degree of the sell-off. I think the cloud was up 82% in every year. Revenue was up, what was it, 14%, YouTube was up 24%.

Whatever. Maybe I'm getting the numbers a little bit wrong. But investors are taking a, investors are taking, they're starting to push back against all the spend. And the hyper-scapers guys are saying, we're still going.

Right. We're not slowing down. How long does this game of chicken last? I don't know. Stock market dependent. I think we have a long way to go. I don't think that Sundar is going to say, oh, shit, our stock is down 25%. We have to completely change everything.

I think if it's down 45, yeah, that's different. But we have a long way to go. Yeah. I think 40% is kind of line and saying when you start going, okay. What are we doing here? I don't know. All right. Speaking of earnings, Blackstone was asked about B-Cred, obviously.

They have $324 billion in the private wealth channel. Okay, that's a lot of money. A lot of money. And they said that redemptions were elevated in April and May, and they're starting to slow down. We really haven't heard much about private credit in a while. Once in a time blue owl has been in the news. This was bound to blow over just because it doesn't,

happen all at once. That's the thing with private markets. If it's going to be a train wreck, it's going to be a boring one. Well, I don't, the only reason why I push back against that is because there's always defaults happening and the media is so thirsty to report on this that you know it, you know things have blown over like when there, when there hasn't been any reporting about it. Crazy thing is blue all is still down 64% from the all-time highs.

Yeah, the stock hasn't bounced at all. Blackstone has bounced quite a bit. Do you still own any of these names? No. Because for a while you did, okay. No. You blew out. You know, it's funny.

I was thinking about buying Blackstone backing into it, but I do not. I do not and I did not. All right. So, there are, there are a lot of opportunities if you wanted to buy a blown out stock right now. That it seems bizarre during a bull market. The amount of companies you can buy, they're down 30, 40, 50 percent. Pretty wild. Yes.

And if you go, if you line item, the companies are getting blown up. There's all great reasons. Right. As usual. Right? Like, you wouldn't look at this time, but like, well,

why is Nike down 55%? Right. Oh, we heard about that from people, which I had to represent a little. I got a Nike t-shirt on today. And credit to me, my kids are going to camp this week,

so that's why we're recording early, recorded ass to compound early too. This is what a pro I am. I change shirts because I don't want to be wearing the same shirt in two videos as we've got to compound, right?

Is that a pro or is that a pro? That's standard. That's a standard Tuesday for me, friend. But the, I put an email in here. We don't have to read it. But everyone, a bunch of people told us and said, listen, Nike is not a thing for young people anymore.

Young people have so many more options that it's just not the brand it once was. And that, that explanation made so many people made that point. Like it's just Gen Z younger millennial people. Nike doesn't have the hold on them like it did older generations. Well, you know what? You and I, my friend, will be buying Nike's to the grave. I, it's still my favorite brand, I think. I love Nike.

So I'm so representing. and I just can't believe the stock's down 75%. Are you going to buy it? I did once, and I blew out of it. I, nah. Yeah, me either. Not interested. All right, this is good news.

More executives are raising their estimates than maintaining or cutting them. So we're looking at something called the SEP 500 EPS guidance momentum score, and it is at the highest levels in as long as this chart goes back. It's been a great earning season. So this is why valuations are falling. But the funny thing is,

when valuations are rising, no one ever questions it. When valuations are falling, everyone questions it. Of course, valuations are following, but that's because we can't trust the earnings. But when valuations are rising, people say, oh, or value the stock market is people don't question it. Yep, they're right. Stocks are revalued. Right, right, right, right. Here's another great chart from Exhibit.

We're looking at the quarterly earnings revision tracker for a Q2, Q3, and Q4. And Q3 and Q4, those are estimates. Q2 is actual end estimates. This chart looks like Matt Fat Fingered out on accident. Well, this is Google. It's all Google because, wow. That's crazy. So, Google.

In fairness, a lot of the EPS in Google is other investments and stuff, but still. So they took the estimated EPS up 10% or so on their own, essentially. I don't know, whatever. It's a lot. Because it went from 80 to 90 or something. Yeah. Wow. All right.

More of the same in terms of what financial companies are saying about their customer. This is from Capital One. Shout to the transcript for pulling this. The U.S. consumer and the overall economy remain resilient despite the high energy prices and everything. When you pick up the news every day, what would think the world is falling apart? Unless if you listen to animal spirits. Do you say the world's falling apart?

What? Oh, I got you. I got you. Took me a second. Actually, the portfolio that the consumer continues to perform, remarkably well. The unemployment rate in June was lower than in February before the time of conflict began. Jobless claims remain low.

Job creation has rebounded over the past few months. Here, here. Here's American Express. U.S. consumer spending was up 11 percent, the highest level of growth since Q1, 2018. U.S. consumer spending was up 11 percent. Now, this is the upper end of the K. Right? You definitely put, the World Cup is definitely going on the Amex card.

Oh, yeah, for sure. We continue to see good engagement from our younger customers, millennials, and Gen Z, which make up the largest share of U.S. consumer spending, remained our fastest growing cohorts this quarter. So check this out. So travel and entertainment was up 30% year over year. No kidding. The World Cup is in here.

Wait, did all those credit card companies bounce back? Remember the, it's been so long now. The Citrini report that software was going to end credit card companies? Is that the thing anymore? They didn't say it was going to end credit card companies. Remember credit card companies got dinged on those? You don't remember that? That was part of it.

I think credit card companies got dinged because everybody was going to be out of a job. And credit quality was going to deteriorate. Okay. Anyway, yes, they have. Visa is ripping, so as MasterCard. But I thought this was interesting. And I want to ask you a question, Ben. So I love how American Express always breaks this down in terms of the year-of-year growth.

So baby boomers are up 5%. They're not spending that much anymore. Gen X, 10% growth. Millennials, 14%. Gen Z, up 40%. They're now 7% of card spending. Millennials and Gen X are 31 and 36% of the total pie. Baby boomers are 27%.

Is income inequality even more pronounced for younger people? You see all these people, all these videos like the younger people at the World Cup, and you see these 20-year-olds spending $60,000. It feels like the half and the have-nots are even more pronounced. Now, I'm not a young person, so I'm making this up. But it seems like the halves and the have-nots are even more pronounced for people 25. It does feel like in the 2010s coming out of the great financial crisis, it felt like everyone was at the same playing field. And none of us had money.

The same level. No one had money. Yeah, no one was bragging about how rich they got or that makes sense. I wonder, too, if part of this is just a little base effect of 40% year over a year, where people start out low on their credit cards and they ratchet it up pretty quickly. But, yes, I do think that it seems like anecdotally, at least. I don't have the evidence behind this that young people, there's never been a wider range of outcomes

where people down here are like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to buy a house and other people are making more money they ever thought possible at 25 or something. And obviously Amex has broken through this cohort of younger Gen Zers with money. 65% of new accounts

were acquired from millennials and Gen Z's. Jeez. So it's because they like all the credit card points and Amex has a pretty decent card. And the lounge? Not me. You're an anti-lounge guy, famous. Yeah.

All right. Well, you can hold on in fairness. No offense to Graham Rapids, but do you guys have lounge? Brand new, we're putting brand new terminals in. They put a brand new lounge in. A brand new terminal? Well, they're like extending these brand, yeah, they're like redoing the whole airport. New terminals are extending.

Hope we get more flights because I'm sick of having all the layovers everywhere. But they put a new lounge in. Will I go use it? No. Oh, come on. No, because I live 10 minutes from the airport. I get up and I walk through and I'm not going to wait at the airport forever. All right.

Speaking of, I'll go down to this, Visa did this report about the great wealth transfer. And we've seen this chart before, but Jan X and millennials are ahead of boomers on a per capita wealth basis at the same age. This is real inflation adjusted net worth per capita by age. And this is just, it's hard to believe that we got to this place, especially coming out of the 2010s. So they show, people talk about this great wealth transfer. It's like $90 trillion or $100 trillion or whatever. It's just going to all go to rich kids. That's the thing.

They show that 75% of it or so is going to go to people in the top 10%. So all that wealth is getting, and they said, they looked at and they said, if the $36 trillion is being passed down, like take away charitable goods and taxes and all this stuff, it's going to be $36 trillion in the next 20 years. it's at 28 of that 36 trillion will be saved, $8 trillion will be spent. So most of it is just going to go back right into portfolios and such.

It's not going to be spent even. You know the meme like there will be signs? As the boomers start to pass away and the kids that didn't, kids, the 50, 60-year-old hour periods that inherit the money. Right. All of those start buying cars and houses and boats. That's the thing.

Or just that's their retirement plan. That will that too. I asked my wife this about some friends recently. I said, do you think, we talk about finances. I think, do you think the life that they're living? Do you think their whole plan is that they're going to get money from their parents for retirement? Because that's my thought. My wife's like, why do you ask me this question?

What do you think about this stuff? The amount of money that they're spending that can't be saving? Yes. Yeah. I'm like, do you think that their plan is like mom and dad die and we reserve their money? Well, it's ironclad. People die. It's true.

It's a better retirement plan than that. It's a really morbid. But it's like, when do you get the money? 50 or $7? Right? That changes things. That's no joke could be a really ugly life for some people when they thought they were going to You know, when they have to like, they're like,

my parents are still alive. Yes. Die already. That's grim. That's going to be a Netflix movie someday. Yeah. Right. Kill my parents. All right. Lucas Shaw. Probably one of my favorite entertainment newsletters by far.

People still watch a lot of Netflix. So he said people spend more time watching. original series from Netflix than those of every other major streaming service combined. So Netflix for original programming still gets 57% of streaming. The next highest is Prime Video at 11. It's kind of crazy because I think everyone agrees. The quality of Netflix's original stuff just kind of is not great. It's in a major lull.

They haven't had anything good in a really, really good in a long time, it feels like. The last decent thing I think I watched that I can remember was what was the Rabbit Show? Was it Black Rabbit? Oh, yeah, the Jason Bateman. And that was just fine. Beef season two was I. It's, man, it has been a minute since they produced anything remotely resembling quality. So, but listen to the people spend a lot more time watching old shows and new ones.

Viewers spend more time on reruns of TV shows than watching original TV, original film, and old movies combined. Which I guess is like, that was the old TBS and TNT strategy. Like in USA, you'd watch reruns of old. I watch Seinfeld every day. Netflix account for seven of the ten most streamed films, and they were all originals. It's kind of crazy. This is interesting. The podcasts are off to a slow start for Netflix.

Shows are getting a few thousand viewers. That's not surprising. I feel like YouTube for podcasts is just a habit, and it's tough to make new habits. Spotify. What do you mean? So. Oh, because Spotify does video?

Spotify does video now. Oh, so you're saying for a lot of people going to Netflix, it just doesn't, it's not a thing. It's not a thing. It's not a thing. You don't have to. Who has Netflix that doesn't also have Spotify? But there's a lot of people who watch podcasts on YouTube, though.

And I don't think the audience is translating from YouTube to Netflix because it's an extra step. YouTube, I think is easier. I think that's right. I think that's right. I was on the train the other night. It's still my work. I don't know. With Chris.

And I spent 45 minutes just scrolling through Instagram on Brickt, of course. And I said to Chris, this is where Netflix stock is down 50%. He said, what? I said, never mind. Because he was looking at his Instagram. Well, he's not a stock market guy, you know. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah.

So the number of hours viewed hours for Netflix is growing 1 to 2% a year. I'm telling you, man, Instagram, obviously TikTok too. Just killing. Just ruining our society. It's a magnet for your eyeballs. There's nothing more fun than scrolling through the reels on Instagram. There's never been more options to do stuff to keep your attention than today. It's just so many options.

But you're right. You do that for like 10 minutes and you go, you kind of like snap out of it. Like, what do I just do? Yeah. All right. IMAX. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has broken the algorithm,

notching our highest grossing second weekend in IMAX history with $48 million in global box office and only a mere 8% drop from opening weekend. This stand-up performance propelled IMAX to a $54 million weekend our third highest of all time and takes the to date QM on the Odyssey to $140 million, $22% global indexing, which is 73% ahead of the end.

Oppenheimer, which was at $81 million at the same point. That's wild. Think about how big Oppenheimer was. This is 73% ahead of Oppenheimer. Yeah, and Oppenheimer had the whole Barbieheimer, you know, like thing behind it. This, the word of mouth, every person I've talked to that scene is like, oh my gosh, you have to. Like, this is, the word of mouth on it is undefeated. I'm going to see it tonight.

Okay. I'm excited to see it this evening. I can't wait. I'm not seeing it at IMAX and because there was no tickets. Dude, in New York City. they're doing a showtime at 2 a.m. There was a 145 showtime, and the only seats available

with the very two in the very front. How? Who's going there? And it's still sold out for the next month or two. So I look at this. So the market cap for IMAX is roughly $2.5 billion. It's still a relatively small firm.

Like, you can have a long runway on this stock. Well, I think they're going to get bought. Okay. By the way, that is not inside information or a hunch. Like, there's been reporting. I think Bellany was reporting on this. They are...

Why would you have inside information on IMAX? Because you wear the hat? Where would you get that information from? Yeah, the hat comes with a little fortune cookie inside. All right. So, variety had, last week I said, why don't they just build more Amex theaters? Because it's impossible to get into. And a number of people have said, like, why don't they just charge more for these?

Like, have it be a market. And people are spending $1,000 CD Odyssey or something. But there's only 25, 70, what do you call it, millimeter screens? M. what do you call? 70-whatever screens that he shot on. And that's when they say, you have to watch it. there is one in Grand Rapids. Wait, hold on,

because that's what he shot, that's what he shot the movie with. Okay. But there's only 25 of them in the U.S. I think there's 45 globally. One of them is in Grand Rapids, and it was built in 2001. And so it's like,

why don't they have more? And here's what they say. Sources at IMEX confirmed a variety that many of the parts needed to build these specialized film projectors which simply no longer exist. The original design files were created roughly half a century ago,

but they were never properly maintained. As a result, IMEX no longer has complete manufacturing blueprint and much like the lost tribal knowledge of the Apollo Aerospace, very few engineers working today fully understand the systems. If AI can't figure this out, what are we building it for? AI start working on this now. Give us more IMAX screens.

Come on, Claude, what are you doing? Right? How can this be the, how can this honestly be the case? They lost the blueprints? Yeah, this technology from the 1990s. We can't, we can't. You can't reverse engineer this? Yeah, yeah.

What are we doing? You bet. What's that? Unbelievable. I'm going to see it in a, in a nice lounge. I got the Dolby at least where I can feel the, you know, whatever. They might cut off this much of the screen. I'll be okay with that.

Yeah. Now, listen, I didn't see an IMAX. I had a great time. But I really want to see it in the IMAX, but I have to wait until September, I suppose. Yeah. Okay. So, um, we had a retirement party at RWM on Friday on Friday. Tony and Dina Isola.

So Tony and Dina joined us in, were they here before you or did they come right after you? It was not long after me. There was like a cascade of people that happened in the next six months after me or something. So 2015. Yeah. Great advisors,

even better people. What was the name of Tony's original blog that we had to be like, you have to change it. It was like malice. For all. Yeah, malice for all.

So Tony and Dina joined us. They were here, I don't know what they were, the 11th, the 12th employee, whatever it was. They were first 15. We're now, we're now 90 people, something like that.

And they have an incredible story. So Tony was a social studies teacher. Is that right? Yeah, he was a history teacher for, I don't know, 20 years. So I think Tony started on Wall Street, hated it, said these are not my- Commodities trader, yeah. Yeah, these are not my people. I want to go do something meaningful in this world.

So you want to be a history teacher. And I think he did that for 15 or 20 years. In the city, too. Okay. Yeah, New York City, he was a teacher. And Tony could not believe the rampant abuses being heaped on the teachers, the unsuspecting teachers, buying all of these high-priced, horrible financial products for their retirement accounts. And at one point in time, Tony said, I got to do something about this.

I found my second calling. So him and Dina, and they had been giving, they had been advising people at casually about, you know, common sense investing, index funds, buying and hold, that type of stuff. He said, I got to make a difference in this world. I got to do it again. And so Tony and Dina started an official business and they started taking on clients. And their mission was to save the teachers. So Tony's blog, Malice for All, which is obviously insane, came from a good place

where he said, I will not let this shit stand, not on my watch over my dead body. Are you going to sell these people variable annuities? I think for a while, he was, he was like running a, they were running a financial advisor firm at night while he worked during the day. And then finally had enough people come forward to like, all right, we can do this as an actual business. So yeah, you're right. It was a total labor of love. It's a really cool story. So anyway, we threw this party for Tony and Dina. And it was really lovely. They're just incredibly wonderful people. And Tony, in his wise words, said to me, your money is growing and your time is shrinking in terms of like why he wants to, you know,

move on to the next chapter of his life. And I just love that. Your money is growing, your time is shrinking. Yeah, he said he wants to like enjoy his time now. They're in their 60s. He wants to like enjoy retirement and do it now while he's healthy and yeah, great people. Crazy that we have people at our firm that are retiring though. Yeah. Yeah. Been doing this for a minute, Ben. I guess so. All right, story time. My kids went to, there's a place in town here called Michigan's adventure. It's like a, it's not Cedar point size. It's like half of that. So they got some roller coasters. They actually have the biggest, largest, largest, wooden roller coaster in America.

Get out. Which is not very confidence-inspiring. Like, you look at all these old boards. How was this thing staying together? So, anyway, my wife took them there. I worked during the day, and she said, hey, the park stays open until 8 o'clock. Meet us there at five and surprise the kids. So I surprised the kids at the water, it's half roller coasters and stuff, half water

park. So I met them at the water park. And then I'm going to go ride some roller coasters for them at the end of the day. And so did that. And one of the things you learn about water parks is that I swear at water parks, 50% of the parents have tattoos now. On their legs. This was not a thing when we grew up. Parents did not have tattoos.

Maybe like someone had a dad who was in the Navy who had like the anchor on his arm or something. Right? And it was like really faded. But this is the thing now that you notice that like all the parents have tattoos. It's kind of shocking how many there are. I guess it's just a way to express yourself now. Interesting. Anyway, we go on this big roller coaster. Again, it's the biggest wooden roller coaster in the world. And it doesn't look like to be that hard.

like big drops, you know? And it's all it is is up and down. It's way faster than it looks. It's called like Shiver My Timbers or something. And my son George and my daughter Libby, you know, get it? Yeah, that's great. My son George and my daughter Libby are sitting in front of me. And you've seen the videos of people on rides where they pass out and the whole body

goes limp, like this, you know? Every drop George passed out. And he'd go on the drop, he'd pass out. And then he'd wake up and he put his hands in the air. And he'd pass out. put his hands in the air. Wait, are you saying, like, literally? I don't know what you're talking about.

You've never seen those videos of someone passing out on a ride before. Like, the ones that shoot you up in the air and, like, the adrenaline or the blood flow to your head or something makes you pass out. His whole body went limp and he passed out. This happens to people. Yeah. I thought you were like, I thought there was a metaphor. Were you freaking out?

No, it was hilarious. This happens to Pete. Okay. I've never seen that before. And I'm like, Libby grab it. And she thought he was kidding. I'm like, no, his body was little limp. But then he'd wake up and he put his hands back in the air and smile like.

He had no idea this was happening. No clue. Unbelievable. Yeah. So after every ride now, he's like, you have to make sure I don't pass out. All right. I'll watch you. All right.

Recommendations. I had no idea. All right. So, as I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm like about 80% better. I'll be 100% better tomorrow. We had visiting day on Sunday. Woke up at 5 in the morning, was on the road at 6. Visiting day started at 10, which is totally not a lot of the story.

Was visiting day one time of summer? Is it multiple times? It's one time of summer. Okay. All right. So it's a seven-week camp. And you visit them, I guess it's four or four weeks into it. And it was great. It was really, really nice. I had a great time. I, Kobe told Robin that he wants, oh, actually, let me ask your opinion on this. He told Robin in confidence. There was a secret I couldn't hear. He wants Colon. Okay. So we are actually going up again next weekend, which he is, I'm annoyed. He's nine years old. He's nine years old.

I'm going up next weekend for rookie day for Logan. So I said to the director, I said, dude, come on. You have my kid for seven weeks. You're going to ruin two of my weekends? You're taking two of my weekends? Right. So we're going up next weekend for Logan. What is a starter Cologne?

I have no idea. I've been out of the game for a while. I'm not a, I stopped wearing Cologne probably after college. I don't know. I don't know. I know you're the wrong person to ask. Can I tell you something? Like an aquedizhou or something?

Or maybe even like an Abercrombie one for him or something, just to get him started. I love Cologne. And I don't mind. I like when people smell good. I don't really wear Cologne myself. I don't really either. I feel like that's the kind of thing you stop once you get married, right? No more clown if you get married.

I wear like here and there from going out, maybe. Anyway, I have to buy Cologne. So do you think he ran into other kids who Duncan says get him some brute? I'll put him in his chest. So Bobbin told me and I asked him a few minutes. I said, hey, Kobe. you have any girlfriends? He said,

he's like, no. He said, but I'm going to prom. I said, oh, who you're going with? He goes, I don't know. I don't know her name. What do you mean you don't know? He was, I don't know. She just, I said one word to her.

I said, what word did you say to her? And she asked if he wanted to go to prom with her. And I said, sure. And I said to she. This is a camp thing. They have prom at camp. Camp thing. Okay.

So that's why he wants his clone. Yeah. I don't start him off with deodorant first, maybe. Then clone? He doesn't need your end. He's... But I'm saying if you... Anyway, so that was Sunday, drove home, went to sleep.

On Monday, I woke up at 5.50. My brain just woke up and I walked to Starbucks. And I was actually happy I woke up really because I have a lot of work to catch up on. Friday was a retirement party. Saturday I was out all day. So I felt like I had some things to catch up on. One, spent a couple hours before we went to the beach doing some work. So I was happy.

Took a walk to Starbucks. and got outside and I just felt my stomach turn. And I ran into the bathroom and it's project aisle vomited. Now I made it into the toilet. But it was really weird and I felt better. I didn't really think anything of it. I just thought maybe I just eat something funny. Came home, laid in a lounge chair.

And I took my AirPods out and I did my case with me. I just put my AirPods on the top of my phone. Rue, my one and a half, old boxer, went to get my AirPods. And before I could, like, react, she hit one of them bounced onto the ground right into the bottom of the pool. So that's my 11th pair of AirPods, I suppose. Could be 15 at this point, just chewing through AirPods.

And at that moment, I felt my stomach turned again, ran inside and more projectile vomiting. And at that point, I said, I don't feel good. I'm going to go lie down. So over the next, like, hour or two, I threw up, like, two more times. So I threw up four times between 6, 30, and I guess around 11. I thought you were looking a little more slender there. You know what? You know what's funny?

You should say that? I've been, this has been a really poor diet summer for Michael, like all the other summers. And I went on the scale yesterday or today, and I had to lose some weight, right? I didn't really eat anything, just been throwing up. Nothing. How's it possible? Not even a single pound. It's impressive.

Anyway, why am I oversharing all of this? because I was in bed yesterday and I got to do some watching. Now, I was so tired yesterday, just drain it. And I didn't even feel sick. I feel okay, I'm just tired. I slept like 20 hours in bed yesterday. But I did watch a few things.

I tried to throw on, I tried to throw on Massus of the Universe, the He Man movie. I watched it with my kids this weekend. My kids loved it. Okay. Loved it. I couldn't make,

I have four minutes into it. I said, no. It's, yeah, I was in and I probably watched half of it with them, because I grew up on Heeman. Of course. I have the power. It felt to me like it was one of those Thor movies. It felt like a Thor movie. Well, they kind of like poked fun, but it was also out in some other dimension or my son,

he loved it. Okay. Can't wait for number two. Loved it. All right. Well, anyway, I got four minutes in and I said, this is definitely for George. It's a kid movie. This is for George, not for me.

I also made it, I made it about 25 minutes into Mortal Kombat. too. Also just really bad. Not quite as bad as... Not surprisingly. All right. I did watch a full movie. I watched Pressure. Pressure is with Brendan Fraser plays Ike Eisenhower. Oh, it's a D-Day one, right? Yeah. So this is a true story. Apparently, we won the war because we have better meteorologists. At least that's what legend, that's what they say in the movie. So the movie is about the 72 hours leading up to D-Day and one meteor is battling another meteorologist, should we or should we go? Because weather conditions have a lot to do about, you know, when you're storming the beach.

And this is a great, sick and bed movie. That, to me, sounds like they've run out of World War II ideas. No, dude, this is very good. Okay. It's a very good movie. A great sick and bed movie. Maybe an airplane movie, but might be too boring for that. Under no other circumstances of what I watch it, because it's not exactly the most riveting concept, but it was effective.

They did great. And that was about it. Other than that, I just slept all day. But I forgot to mention this last week. I watched Tuna. You're familiar with this? No. So Tuna is sort of, it felt like a Saffty Brothers movie because it was sort of chaotic, like Uncut Jems a little bit.

Okay. And it was sort of like, it reminded me of panic room a little bit. I'm not quite sure why. Okay. Maybe because there was break-ins. Anyway, Dustin Hoppin is in it. very random. It's about a guy that has like this special supersonic hearing. And so he could break into safes because he could hear like the click, click, clicks. I'm interested. Pretty good.

Yeah, pretty fun. Pretty fun. I think I rented it on prime. Okay. All right. My wife and I watched Disclosure Day this week. Did you see the theater? No, because Josh ruined it for me. Josh said it was terrible. It's the kind of movie that you'd be glad you didn't see it in the theater. So it's got a 6.6 on IMDB and I think that's being generous. And I didn't hear a lot of, the preview made it look awesome. Like if you just watch the preview, you go, oh, this is very interesting. It was just, the movie was kind of a mess. Like, it starts out and it's just like it feels you're in the middle of a movie. And then there are some parts where you go like, oh, that's interesting, because it's an alien movie. And it's, it's just, it has a great cast. It's got Emily Blunt,

who I love. It's got, uh, the guy who's Prince Philip or Prince Charles. and the, I can't remember his name. It's got Colin Firth and all these different people. Great cast. And it felt like a Netflix movie. Like it felt it was just very, yes, that's the best I can say. It was very disjointed and it got done. My wife and I were like, whew.

Wait, hold on. Let's not gloss over the fact that this is not a Netflix movie. It was actually done by quite a famous director. Yes. And you know what? I think I'm going to give, this is his Jordan on the Wizards. I'm going to pretend like it didn't happen. All right?

This is Michael Jordan on the Wizards. Didn't happen. Oh, man. I'm not even going to watch it. Nah, it was quite bad. I just, even like the, yeah, I was really, again, there's parts of it like, oh, that's kind of interesting. But it just, it was, it was all over the place and it just hit with a, like five minutes into the movie, I go, oh, no, oh, no. You can just tell.

Oh, no. I had to watch the whole thing. Listen, he gave us Jaws in Indiana Jones. I'm not going to fault him. Nobody's perfect. And I think that's why there wasn't a lot of critical pushback on the movie because he gets a free pass. And I'm okay with that.

The guy gave his jaws. E.T. He gave us E.T. Close encounters. This, I mean, this was probably like a 5.9 in my, in Ben's scale. Just, uh, poof. This one, you like, you'd go, man, I'm so glad I didn't see that one at the theater. Some movies you have to see the theater. This one, you did not.

You know who I am seeing tomorrow? What's that? I'm very excited. If for nothing else because of my love for I love you, man. Going to see Rush. Wait, what's that? The band. Oh.

Oh, okay. The scene where they go to the concert. Yeah. And he's licking his bass or whatever. Yeah. I didn't know. Rush was still, is it the deal where like half the band's really dead and they've replaced them? The drummer's dead.

Who knows? Okay. I don't know. I'm very excited. Okay. All right. Good stuff. All right, you did it.

Credit to me. We don't, we don't miss shows. That's just not what we do here. We show up. And every three months, Michael has a flu game. Stop it. I'm relatively healthy for a pretty unhealthy person. Every time this happens to you, you say you never get sick.

Duncan's going to back me up here. You had this three months ago where you were in bed for 24 hours again. I did have the flu this winter. I did. All right. It happens of the best of us. I think we need to ask

for Cologne recommendations for your son. I think like an aqua dejo. You know what's a really good one? I believe it was pronounced aquadigio. Maybe. You know what's a really good one that you wouldn't think is that the Johnny Depp one,

whatever his one is, Savage or something. It smells really good. Okay. You said you haven't worn a Cologne since college. Get back into the game. telling you try it. The truth comes out.

Savage. Do it. All right. Adable Spirits at the Compowd News.com. Personal emails, personal responses. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.