Animal Spirits Podcast - $525k to be Happy (EP.336)

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

On episode 336 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: why people keep spending so much money, long droughts between new highs in the stock market, the best upside AI hedge, intelligence vs. pessimism, denominator blindness with inflation, most Americans are better off, why people are unhappy at work, when it will be a good time to buy a house again, and much more! Thanks to Victory Shares for sponsoring this episode. Learn more about their Free Cash Flow ETF at: https://advisor.vcm.com/products/victoryshares-etfs/victoryshares-etfs-list/victoryshares-free-cash-flow-etf 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 Spirits is brought to you by Victory Shares, the Victory Shares free cash flow ETF. VictorShares wants to know our value index is measuring the wrong thing. Finance 101, I learned this in school. The value of a company is a present value of future free cash flows. Correct? Okay, so free cash yield is a key fundamental metric. Measures companies' ability generate cash, indicating financial health, we all know this. Victory Shares believes they have a better way to measure both value and quality. So they think the traditional free cash flow measures, which everyone knows, maybe falling short, and they have an improved approach for evaluating free cash flow. So, for example, not just looking at trailing measures, but forward estimates of a company's

free cash flow as well? Right. So they're saying that, like, past free cash flow, you may be like overlooking future growth. And that's where they kind of marry the two approaches, I think. So they're looking at free cash flow and a growth filter to remove companies that have weak growth prospects. So high-quality companies, trading at a discount, fairable growth prospects. Speaking of that, you know, their largest sector weighting is healthcare. And I would certainly say that that fits a bill of things that are out of favor. Yeah, interesting. Okay. So see the link in their description for more. Check out the Victory Shares, free cash flow ETF. 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 Ridholt's 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.

Before we get into the show today, talk about Thanksgiving, a review, maybe been as altered his thoughts. I don't know. We'll find out. On November 29th, the day that this comes out, actually, at 2 o'clock Eastern for financial advisors, we're having our second pilot episode of the Smokshadow. This time on the show, we've got Flourish Cash, which is a company that helps advisors help their clients earn more on their cash in their checking account.

And I don't want to step up too much of the material, but I just want to say one thing. There is a feature on Flourish Cash that a watch. allows you to every two weeks, you could set like a balance in your checking account. So let's just say that you want to keep $10,000 in your checking account. So if you've got more, money will get swept out of your checking account and going to this high-yield savings account. I like that feature. And if you have less, let's say that you've got $6,000.

It'll pull $4,000 from this seamlessly, automatically every two weeks. Cash management is so hot right now, right? Especially, I think, for clients, this is something they're finally paying attention to. This is a good timing for this. So Flerish Cash is available only for clients of financial advisors. And the Smok Show, episode two, is also only available for financial advisors. So hit the link in the show notes if you are interested in hopping on the live show at 2 Eastern. All right.

So, Ben, how was your Thanksgiving? My Thanksgiving was good. I had a nice Thanksgiving. My only thing about Thanksgiving, I didn't say it was bad or overrated. I just Christmas is better. I believe you said, eh? You know what the best part about Thanksgiving was? is the next day when I could finally appreciate, like, looking forward to Christmas.

That was it. Listen, man, I've had to watch the... So you're doubling down. You're doubling down. The only good thing about Thanksgiving is looking forward to Christmas. Listen, we hosted, we had a good day with family. It was great. We wore our Tropical Brothers shirts because that's what we do in the holidays.

I told you to do... Did you do it or not? I forgot. Okay. I think you went out. Yeah, but then you can look forward to Christmas. That's the best part of Thanksgiving is it's like a back-to-back holiday. I'm just saying Thanksgiving can't hold a candle in the wind of Christmas.

That's all I'm saying. Well, I can't speak up there, being that I don't celebrate Christmas, unfortunately. It looks like the greatest holiday of all time that I'm not taking part of. Fair. You're cash on the sidelines for Christmas. But I feel like some Jews have adopted the Christmas celebration. Why not? It's not like most of the people celebrating are religious, right?

Here's how would Jews celebrate Christmas? We eat Chinese food. Yeah. That's what I did, too. Okay. So the economy is so terrible right now that we had the busiest day ever at airports in the USA from TSA. This is, I guess Sunday was the busiest day ever for screening from TSA.

People was almost 2.9 million. People show the pictures of the planes. I've never been in the airport for Thanksgiving. It looks like a nightmare. I don't think you could pay me to travel on Thanksgiving like that. No way. We drove a little bit from Detroit. And even that is traveling on Thanksgiving.

You couldn't pay me to go to the airport. Carl Continia, Black Friday, Shopper set an online spending record per Adobe. Why is Adobe reporting on this? That's a good question. Are people printing out their receipts on PDF? I'm a bit confused. I don't know. So anyway, the things are so bad in the economy right now that everyone's just traveling and spending money to cope.

I think that's where we're at. Fair? I'm being facetious. All right. What else do we got here? All right. So, that is interesting. Isn't this a thing, though, that we probably hit a new Black Friday record every year?

That's a good question. Barry used to do a post every year about... Oh, that's right, like 12 years in a row. How bad economists were predicted retail sales? That's true. About Black Friday. Oh, Barry... That's right.

Where was Barry's Black Friday post this year? It's like a tradition. So, do we break the record every year? I don't know. It's a good question. I would assume for the most part. I broke the record for most emails ever in my inbox saying this is the biggest sale ever, 40 to 50% off. Apparently inflation, we had to reprove for one day because literally everything

was 50% off everywhere. Did you buy anything? Yeah, a few clothes. Nothing special, a pair of shoes. I don't know. I don't know. Remember how, can you believe that people used to get up at like five in the morning and go shopping at an actual physical store? I think that's still a thing. Really? Probably not, probably not as common as it used to be or not as big of a deal as it used to be. But I mean, that was a thing. That was a back in our day. Yeah, but back in the day, back in the day, you can get a $2,000 TV for $1,100. Like, yeah, you go to the store for that, for sure. Yeah, but now you can just get one because it's a Friday.

So, Carl Kintaneda tweeted a chart from Deutsche Bank. There are more global cuts coming through than hikes, which is the first time that's been the case since January, 2021. 24, this is really going to ramp up, don't you think? This has to. I think, like, the global hiking cycle is done. You know, we haven't, you and I haven't really discussed this. Do you think that the Fed is going to cut rates in 24?

Definitely. I think, wow, I would lean towards yes, more than no if I'm doing a grant to protect. But yes, I mean, like, probably in March. And I don't think it has to be because the economy is cooling. But I think if inflation continues to fall, that they kind of have to, don't they? Why? Just because those rates are no longer necessary? Yeah.

Mission accomplished? I think that would be a mission accomplished thing. So last week we spoke about how long it's been since we had an all-time high. You wrote a post about this that we didn't include last week, so I wanted to just bring it up. It's been 470-something, maybe 480 days. And this is, according to you, the fifth longest streak since, at least since 1950, is that right? That was my calculation. The other ones, and the other ones are kind of crazy because,

Oh, wait a second. You know what I just realized? You came to the Michael side. You now use trading days instead of, you used to use calendar days, which to me made no sense. No, that's because the data I have is only trading days. So, yeah, you're right. I flip-flop on that. That's fair.

Okay. But the craziest ones here. Fifth longest streak ever? Wow, that's kind of. If you look, there wasn't a new high from 1968 to 1972, and then you had new highs. And then a year later, you had another bear market and then a lot. long drought from 73 to 80, and then the same thing happened from 2000, 2007, you had like a few months of new highs and then a crash again. So those periods were really both like

13 years or something. Yeah, the new all-time high doesn't even count because it was for a second. Yes, it happened. It was a blip. You came all the back and then you crashed again. All right. So do you want to say like 1968 to 1980 really? And then 2000 to 2013? I mean, yes, in 2007, you made new ultimate highs, but it was, I think, for, I don't even know if it was for a couple of months. But how about that? That's what I'm saying, that those periods are on. And it's funny because a lot of people as like a, we're long-term officinados, we're long-term optimistic about the stock market. People will like shove this in your face, like, see, the long-term doesn't always work. And my retort to that is always like, this is just part

of investing in risk assets. Like you can't get the good returns if you don't have crappy periods like this. I think it goes hand in hand. I think a lot of people have sort of swept under the rug that we took our medicine in 2022. Yes. And looking at 2023 returns in a vacuum, like Amazon's up 75% and all of these mega cap. It's like, yeah, they got annihilated in 2022. Right.

They've basically gone nowhere if you look at a two-year period. This is, I think Google and Amazon, I'm pretty sure both fell 55%. Yeah. I mean, in videos down almost 70%. It's like, yeah, you look at these crazy returns here. On Facebook as well. Was Facebook down 70? Close to 80 probably.

Good one from bar chart here. S&P 500 is up almost 5% since the Federal Reserve hike on March 17th, the first hike on March 17th, 2022. There have been a total 11 hikes while raising the rate from 0.25 to 5.5. I mean, obviously we had the drawdown in there, but it is crazy if you think just in terms of rates. Like, remember everyone said, like, listen, higher rates using just the discount factor has to mean lower stock prices. And it did for a little bit. But I'm sure. Well, how about this?

What if the market fell in anticipation of hikes and now it's rising in anticipation of cuts? So it's not like the market is adopting these 5% rates forever or ingesting them forever. It's looking forward to 3% or whatever the number is. Maybe. I just think that the rate mechanism thing, like it's not a, it's not like a scale that goes like this up and down where it's not always that easy. That's my whole point. Oh, you know what I notice? I was looking at this chart the other day

at the S&P 500. You know what I see on here? I see a V. I mean, the past couple of weeks have been a V-shaped rally. Oh, from the quick 10% correction we had. From that 10% correction where we closed below the 200A.

So remember you said V-shaped rallies are over. Are they back? They're back. I mean, I'm not predicting. I'm just saying, that's a V. That is, yeah, you're right, that's a V. It's been a while. Whatever happened to your Deep V t-shirt

that these were all the time, remember? I'm glad you asked. Boom. Well, actually, no, no. You're talking about, like, the Haynes Vs. I had to retire those. Yeah, they were pretty bad. Let's be honest.

Well, listen, you graduate. You know, you grew up a little bit. He had, like, an accordion neck on a lot of those. All right. Okay, really good set of charts from Apollo. They have this, like, 180-page deck on the credit market. The credit market outlook, and they say a default cycle has already started. So they say U.S. speculative grade default rates are already rising.

They show from when the Fed started cutting to these default rates, and they've gone from, I don't know, below 2% in some cases. And they're looking at loans and high-yield bonds. And they are now 4 to 6%, I guess. So the defaults on these, again, speculative debt is rising. So I'm guessing this is like the worst. I don't know if that means subprime or what. But anyway, he also shows the yield.

invest in grade debt is yield around 6.8% now. High yield is 8.5. If you had to pick there, doesn't corporate debt seem like the better choice there versus high yield since spreads still haven't really blown out? Because look, I mean, the next chart shows this. Credit spreads are not pricing in a recession. I don't, do people have, like, lines in the sand on these things where they realize, like,

because they always say, like, the Fed funds futures are not pricing in this or not pressing in that, or the credit spreads are not. What's the line in the sand for this is pricing and recession? This is not. Do we have one? With the level of yields? Yeah. I would say it's probably the spread, no?

That's what I'm saying. But they say the credit spread are not pricing in recession. That's what the weird thing is. I think investment grade yielding 6.8% is more attractive than high yielded yielding 8.5. Okay. A good point, though, brought up by our very own Bill Sweet on this. So a lot of people are saying, like, why would you invest in stocks when you can get

almost seven percent in investment grade. And it depends where you hold that money if you're going to compare that to stocks. Because if you're holding money in a taxable account, as Bill says, you pay taxes on stocks later besides dividends or sales, but you pay taxes on bonds now. So making a comparison of bonds to stocks, I know this is a dorky point, but it's worth making. That makes sense? Yeah. You can't compare bond yields to stock returns unless we're taking taxes into account. All right. This is a crazy chart for us. from Joe Wisenthal, NVIDIA's parabolic revenue growth. And they already had like an unbelievable run.

And then their quarterly revenue growth just skyrockets. And I feel like a lot of investors are constantly trying to prepare for the next risk. Like what's the next Black Swan? What's the next recession? What's the next shoot a drop? I don't think anyone really, maybe you don't have to prepare for like an upside risk. But don't you think AI is a huge upside risk if you're, conservative or defensive investor?

Absolutely. I mean... Looking at a chart like this? ChadGBT was unveiled in November, right? So, 2024 is really like the first year? Is that going to slow down or stop in 2024? No. So I think we've talked about this before, but like, if you had to have an upside hedge,

doesn't it just have to be the NASDAQ 100? Is that the easiest simple answer to like spread your bets a little bit so you can be sure to take part? in this? An upside hedge? Or, I mean, the, what would you, if you thought, like, there's a 10% chance that this goes into a bubble or goes, like, what would you, what would you buy? Because there's, there's not that many AI stocks, right? I mean, obviously, Nvidia is, is an answer. But if you don't know who the winners are going to, isn't the NASDAQ 100, the simplest answer? So let's say. So Apple and Microsoft, that's 22%. Amazon's another 5. Invita is 4%.

And then Facebook is another 4%. Yeah, sure. I don't know. Just a thought. So 2022, so 2020 is the opposite of 2022. It's a mirror image, right? Large cap growth got destroyed in 22. Value did well.

High quality did well. Monster comeback. Valian stocks did well. Now it's true. Exactly. So investors are always fighting the last war. Like this is one of the permanent pictures. How many people do you think did the opposite?

Did the George Costanza and did the. opposite, and it hurt them. So, like, they missed out, they were in growth. They missed out on the value, high quality stuff. And then they thought, you know what? Maybe we should go to that because inflation's here. Oh, a lot. It had to happen some people. A lot. Hedge funds, yeah. Meaning like, you chased tech in 22, got crushed, rotated into dividends after their good performance. Absolutely. I mean, that's, sometimes that's just the way it goes. All right, so Bloomberg had a great chart. $60 billion net inflows into dividend-focused U.S. E.E.D. in 2022, which is a record, and effectively zero inflows today.

This is just an astounding collapse. And we talked about how, like, interest rates impact stocks. Well, dividend payers are getting annihilated, at least relatively speaking, relative to what you could have earned just in the index, because those are really competing with investment-grade bonds and cash. The funny thing is, again, this is like fun with numbers, but if you compare it the start of 2022 to now, everything is probably relatively close. Like value versus growth, dividends versus non-dividends. If you look at the two-year period, the full two-year period. It's probably

pretty close. I wonder what the, remember we talked for a long time about the call option stuff, how after 2022, a bunch of people put all this money into call option strategies. I wonder if those, if the money into those is slowing down as well. Into selling calls. Yeah, because a rip-rising, you know, up market like this year is, is a year where that kind of strategy is, Bound a lag. It sounds like you're sending, it sounds like you're sending out the bat signal to Jeffrey Ptack. Speaking of,

Jeffrey tweeted that the meme ETF is closing. Hey, did you see the money yet? No, I don't know if I'm going to see it. I don't know if I need to. We lived through it. What, what, what are they going to show me in the movie that I don't know? You literally lived through it and watched it every day.

Did you see it yet? I did not. Like, I do feel like there, we're jumping, like, I'm surprised that there hasn't already. there's going to be an AI movie probably about what happened with OpenAI and Sam Altman. And like, I feel like we're at a rush to make everything that happens now immediately a documentary in a movie. And I don't think it needs to be since we live it on social media when it happens. Yeah.

That's a personal opinion. Anyway, so the meme, the round-tale meme ETF is closing. I kind of can't believe. So Jeffrey tweeted a chart of the meme ETF versus ARC that I don't mean to be disrespectful here, but I mean, I don't know what. Let's say, ARC is the meme ETF. It tracks it. Not quite one for one, but damn close. Didn't that get a decent amount of money, too?

Remember the Dave Bintmo ETF? Did that one close to? That's a good question. I don't think that meme investing is something that anybody would say that they do. But yet, you know, the chart is true. Okay. Someone sent this to me. It's a new study showing that higher levels of financial optimism are associated with lower levels of cognitive ability.

and the idea, and it shows, like, the higher your IQ is the more pessimism you have, and the lower your IQ is the more extreme optimism you have, like the polar sides. I would buy that the people that are, like, too smart are understandably very negative in the world. Yes, because they're more educated and they know what's going on. Yeah, the world is a scary place and it always has been. This is why I think we have a negative bias to us now, because in the past, people were just unaware of all the bad crap that was going on in the world and didn't it wasn't just inundated with it all the time. And now that you know bad stuff goes on, it's way easier to be

negative. You know who I would put in this category? And I'm a fan of his work. So I don't mean this in a bad way. But Ben Hunt, I don't know that he would necessarily describe himself as a pessimist. In fact, I don't know that he would. But he is so gosh dang intelligent and seems to, at least, you know, according to his Twitter feed, like, seems to this view rationally, the world is a very scary place. And I agree with that. I just, I think it's easier if you're a really smart person to be cynical.

And I actually read this study, because it's not just as simple as this graph. They were saying, like, being, like, overly optimistic all the time, naively can get you into trouble with your finances. Like, in terms of, like, you think returns are going to be so good that you don't need to save a lot. So that, but my thinking about this is, like, if you're going to go one way or the other,

having a bias towards optimism is actually the smarter strategy, even if you don't have a high IQ. Because it's more common-sensical to be... I mean, there's... But reckless optimism is just as dumb, if not worse.

Because that's what you blow yourself up. Reckless optimism is way better than reckless pessimism. How is that? But how could you be a reckless pessimist? I don't know about that. How can you... There's tons of reckless pessimists. But a reckless pessimist

would either be just missing out on stocks, just sitting in cash? Yes, there's tons of those people. I'm going to put all my money into gold and bullets and canned goods and... Yeah, but would you rather miss stock market returns or blow yourself up? Think about how big the audience is for zero hedge. Think about that. That's reckless, pessimist.

Like, I do think that there is this bias towards that and, like, I'm smarter than everyone because I'm pessimistic. Like, that's totally a thing. Well, yeah, I mean, optimists just look delusional. Like, you don't see the risks. Like, there's plenty of people with a high IQ. Like, give me the 100. 120 IQ person who has the good temperament and is long-term optimistic versus the person who's

got 160 IQ and like, I'm too smart for everyone. Like that, that again, bringing back to Buffett, I think Buffett went from being like underrated to overrated to like now underrated again because the fact that he never turned into a cycle, think about how many hedge fund managers these days. You talked, told, you kept sending me passages from the Dalio book about he's predicting their depression every three years. Buffett never went down that road. He stayed optimistic his entire career and guess what? He was right. But every other one who becomes a big investor these days eventually turns pessimistic and has to talk about how bad things are. And he never did that. Warren Buffett is underrated. It's a little bit of a take, but it's kind of true.

Finding the middle ground, right, is probably the best approach. The stock market is biased to go up over time because earnings per share go up. I don't want to participate in the growth of the economy of capitalism. However, I have to do so in a measured way to make sure that I don't, you know, do it. You have to manage risks. But I'm saying if you're going to be biased one way or another, give me optimism all day long. You know, I heard a new war. I don't know that I agree with that. I think, because I really do think that you could be like a reckless optimist as well and get in trouble. I'm saying if you're picking one of the other, give me optimism every day of the week. Sure. Okay. There was a good, I heard a good, they were telling norm jokes on the

Fly on the Wall podcast. One of the writers, they're each doing their own norm bit, and he said, I'm a pessimist, but I see the glasses half full. I just think it means I have bowel cancer. Anyway. I saw Norm reel on Instagram over the weekend. I can't finish a joke, but it was... That's the thing.

His delivery is part of the thing. It was a weekend update, and he reported on when Lisa Murray-Priceley and Michael Jackson broke up because she, whatever, and he is, do you know, Do you know me that part? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Classic norm.

All right. So you wrote, what investor would you want to meet if you had the chance? Oh, okay. So I did an interview last week with Morningstar Indy, actually. They asked me some good questions. And they said, what investor would you like to meet in person if you had the chance? And this wasn't like a take answer, but my answer was like, I don't have one, really. Because, and that's not being like a contrarian or anything, but like, I don't know.

Like, most of these people are not people that I want to emulate because they work 80 hours a week. Their personal lives are probably crap. You know, most of the really well-known investors, I would rather meet a regular person who's got it figured out and has led a balanced life and still figured out how to retire with a healthy nest egg. Is that fair? Like, is there anyone you would want to meet? It's funny you ask, because my trainer asked me this yesterday as I was trying to get my back better. any what's the one investor that you wish you could have in your podcast and I said huh that's a really good question my response was similar to yours I it took me a while I was

like I that's a lame super lame answer but Buffett and then I was like I don't I don't know Buffett is the last of his kind I feel like I mean people pay to have lunch with them and stuff but there's got to be a better answer I mean I mean maybe Bogle he was alive, but I don't, there really isn't someone that I'd say, like, I'd bend over backwards to meet this person because they would give me so much wisdom that I'd be able to take forward. I just don't think it exists. Ramp capital? I'm kind of a never meet your heroes kind of person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaking of heroes, the Barry Sanders doc? Oh, it's my recommendation. And speaking of there will never be another. Okay, save it. I got it in my recommendations. I got a lot to say on this. Okay. All right. You saw this piece from Bloomberg going around about inflation. So, Dan Greenhouse tweeted the link to this, which, by the way, not to brag. I literally wrote this post a week ago, did I not? Yes.

You said prices are everything. Yeah. And yeah, and you, yeah, you showed, because, yeah, you showed. I showed cumulative inflation. Salad dressing. Yeah, which is, so I'm not saying they took this idea. A lot of people don't mind. But maybe they did.

Maybe they did. Anyway, so Dan Greenhouse tweeted, you simply cannot convince people that inflation is coming down when this reality exists. So my whole point on this, like people. People keep really getting mad at my, like someone told me they're unsubscribing last week because I said higher prices don't make me mad. And the whole thing is like, if I said higher prices made me mad, I'd be a hypocrite. That's my whole point.

Like people like you and I should not be complaining about higher prices. That's all I'm saying. People in our position, we don't have the right to complain. There's other people who do. But here's my problem with this, it's denominator bond. So it says it now requires $119.27 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford to the $100 before the pandemic. groceries are up 25%.

It has all these numbers. And then on a very little side on the very corner of this piece, it says hourly and real nominal wages are up 20%, but it says real wages have hardly budged. So it shows nominal wages up 20%. So if we take that 20% figure of wages,

this is a denominator-blindness thing and apply it here, you would say water and sewage up less than wages. Pets up less than wages. Major appliances, up less than wages. Rent. up the same as wages, groceries, up a little more than wages. If you applied that same logic and inflation adjusted these things like you do with wages, they wouldn't look as bad. And I think that's the problem of the media that I have is they have denominator blindness. They're adjusting

wages for inflation. They're not adjusting these prices in the same way. They're not putting it on the same wavelength. They're showing real wages have barely budged, but prices are up 20%. guess what? Wages are up 20% too. That's the problem I have is that it's a footnote to say wages are up as much as a lot of these prices. That's a great point. So you can't, you can't scream about higher prices and then also say real wages have barely budged because, yeah, real is net of inflation. Exactly. So I'm not, again, I'm not saying prices are, higher prices are good. I would rather have lower inflation and much less volatility in the economy. But I'm just saying you can't head it both ways. Yeah. So Nate Silver weighed in on on the disconnect. And he has a great chart

showing consumption versus inflation. And he said, and he used an example of like DoorDash or Uber Eats and just how like things just snowball and just everything. It's not just that things are more expensive, but people are also spending more. Luxuries become necessities. He wrote, it's not just that the fixed basket of goods was getting more expensive. They're also putting more in their baskets. And I think the TSA data is a good example of this. And there's a million good examples of not just people, not just prices going up,

but people just buying more shit. Black Friday is a great example of this. It wasn't just, I also think the quantity, like the number of purchases was up as well. Yes. people feel like they deserve to spend more money. But the prices, it's like, ah, these prices, but I'm still going to buy them. I still think the weird thing to me is that the government gets so much more blamed than corporations. I'm not blaming inflation on corporations, but the fact that I put the profit margin chart in here again,

the fact that they were able to raise profit margins as inflation went to 9% is kind of ridiculous to me. And I'm surprised that no one, that there isn't just more scorn on corporations for not causing this, but taking advantage of it. So margins came down a little bit, but they're going up again. Yes. I also wonder, how much would lower mortgage rates really help this? Help what? I still think the young people slash first-time homebuyer cohort is the one who has the biggest gripe against the economy. Obviously, there's interest rate-sensitive parts of the economy that are hurting as well.

But I really understand young people. If you missed out on this window of 3% mortgage rates and a 50% climate housing prices in such a short time, how you would be really pissed off. and I think you deserve to be. If I was a politician and I'm trying to pull a lever to get sentiment better, I would say, hey, Fed, start buying mortgage bonds and get us back to 5%. I think that would help with consumer sentiment. If I'm pulling one lever, obviously people would rather have deflation or something, but that's, again, that's not going to happen.

Claudia Somm at Stay-at-Home macro had a piece called Americans Better Off. And she really, I think she kicked the hornet-nest, again. People are mad at this. but I thought she had some really good charts in here about like what's going on. And the wages after inflation are good again, showing the bottom tier with the highest highest, so from 2020 to 23, the bottom tier after inflation is up almost 5%. The top 25% is actually down 2.4%, which is surprising. The bottom 50% had a gain.

The top 50% actually lost money to inflation, which is surprising. But this real personal consumption expenditures, this is just goods and services, this is the chart. It's it's slightly after inflation above trend when we were spending before. And I think this is the whole thing is just, I mean, this one, this one Nate Silver was getting at. Yeah. People, people, people just aren't changing their habits or they change their habits and then they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, people can't take stuff away. The other one, overall debt burdens for households are currently near record low. So this is debt to income and debt to net worth. Both still remain pretty

low. So I know a lot of people that want to say like, oh, of course everyone's traveling on Thanksgiving or spending money on Black Friday because they're going into credit card debt. The data on debt doesn't quite show that yet. And I'm sure there are obviously our households who are going into more debt. Guess what? Consumer behavior will change on a dime if we get layoffs. Don't tell me people won't stop, won't keep spending. That's been my whole thing. It's going to, it's going to, it's going to change consumer habits. I don't think people are just going to, because inflation aside, I don't think people are going to say, all right, we're going to buckle down. It would have to stay high for a number of years, I think.

for people to bucking down. So you definitely think the Fed is cutting in 2024. Where are you with the recession watch for 2024? Yeah, you're now. Second half story, can I say that? I would still lean like 60, 40, no. I think there's still a possibility. If the Fed steps in and cuts a little bit

and, again, if we could get mortgage rates down and prop up housing activity to offset some stuff that's slowing from higher rates, I think that would help a lot. So are you saying that we can declare victory in higher rates, that's not going to be the thing that causes a recession. It's going to be something else? No, I think it's way too soon to say that. Yeah, I think it's too early to say that. I still think the higher rate stuff is affecting stuff on the margin, but it's going to be a bigger

and bigger part of the margin as we go forward, don't you? Because it has to slow corporate investment in everything, right? It's just a way higher hurdle rate to do stuff. And I think eventually, the longer they say hi, the worst it is. All right, so oil, Carl Timothy tweeted oil is down 7.1% this month on pace for the second straight monthly loss after losing 10.7% in October. And Bloomberg got a piece. Oil is down, U.S. gasoline prices, excuse me, are down for 60 straight days. How come people aren't like celebrating this? We only pay attention. It was the same thing with eggs. Remember, egg prices went skyrocketed and people were like so mad about it. Then they go back down and everyone's like, eh, whatever, eggs.

I think this is just the way it works. We talked to Sal from Tukrium again. It's going to talk your book next week. And he said he thinks like $50 oil before $100 oil. How many people would have had that on their bingo cards? Zero. My question is like, is this like idiosyncratic to the oil market? I don't know anything about oil and energy and gas prices.

Or is this reflective of weaker demand for energy, meaning that recession? Or is this just China? Like, what's going on here? Probably a little bit of old. That's the two sides. If you wanted to look at everything positive or negatively, you would say higher oil prices are bad because it means less money in the consumer's pocketbook. Lower oil prices are bad because that means demand is slowing and we're going to recession.

That's if you wanted to look at the negative part of it. And both sounds smart. Yes. All right. I also think there's something to people just being unhappy these days. So the Wall Street Journal has one. Why is everyone so unhappy at work right now? and Americans, by any measures, by many measures, are under happier at work than they have been in years.

Despite wage increases, more time off, and greater control over where they work, the number of U.S. workers who say they're angry, stress, and disengaged, there's climbing. Meanwhile, a bamboo HR analysis of data from more than 57,000 workers shows job satisfaction scores have fallen to their lowest point since early 2020 after a 10% drop this year alone. This is the part that gets me. People chafe against being micromanaged back to offices, yet they also find isolating aspects of hybrid work, hybrid and remote work. this is like you can't like you're never going to be happy then I don't like it when they make me come back to the office but I also don't like being alone when I work at home

guess what those are your options so I think I think some people just like being unhappy well come on this is this is like you're never going to win no no no I don't I don't know if I bought that for this one so they they as they do

they found Lindsay Leasman And Lindsay is 38 years old. And she said that she soured on her job after having to return to the office two days a week earlier this year. Pre-pandemic, she would have been happy working three days a week at home. She says, quote, it would have been a dream come true. End quote. Still, her team's in office requirements seem like going backwards and made her feel like that her professionalism and work quality were in doubt. That's the going backwards part.

So when Jeff Mackey said people miss the recession or people miss the pandemic, I think there's a lot of legitimate. Yeah. I think there's a lot of legitimacy to that. I don't think that this is an example. And I do think that people like to complain. We said this last week. I think in this example, what Lindsay just described is the idea of going backwards and knowing how good you had it. And then it's a drag. I think that's impacting people's psychology a lot. Yeah. I mean, everybody that I talk to is like, I have to go back four days a week now. I don't know if I could do it. I might look for a new job. I'm surprised workers aren't revolving. I'm surprised workers aren't revolving. though and pushing back. But like people aren't coming together and saying, no, we're not coming back for that many days a week. So look at this chart. Employee satisfaction tumbles. I really do think that this is a lot of this is get back to the office. It is funny that the highest level was in 2020 during the pandemic. I think Mackey might be on to something that people secretly really miss the pandemic.

Everybody loved working from home. And when I say everybody, if you. you didn't like working from home, you don't need to email us. I'm just saying generally speaking, people preferred working from home, despite all the challenges. This is the human nature thing. You can't compare yourself to pre-2020 you and say, I would have been thrilled with working from home two days a week pre-2020. But now that I'm working from home two days a week, and I was working from home five days a week, I can't be happy. Exactly. You've tasted the nectar, and it's very sweet. Here's another thing. Long-distance relationships between bosses and staff

might also be an issue. Nearly a third of workers at large firms don't work in the same metro areas or manager up from 23% in February 2020. That's wild. If you have no physical interaction with your supervisor and you're not getting that positive reinforcement, I don't know. Doesn't that sound, I can look at this the other way and say that sounds like amazing in some instances. How many people hate their bosses? This is not black or white. That's a fair point. Anyway, I think what's not in dispute is that there is life before the pandemic and there is life after the pandemic for so many, so many charts and so many different areas of our lives. Yes, but it's, imagine telling someone as crazy as that time was, like,

you're going to miss this someday. At the time, everyone said, you're nuts. No way. Yeah, because people felt like they were being trapped. And in many cases, they were. If you were one of the people in pandemic who was stuck in a small apartment, maybe with young children. Oh my God, it was probably a nightmare. Okay, I did an update on the layoffs one since we still have layoffs in the dock here. Eventually, this is going to happen.

So I wish you could do cut off the pandemic stuff because you put that in the chart, it just takes it. So I looked at this, the actual numbers, the current level of layoffs that we're at, in 2007 to 2019, we never got lower than the current level of layoffs at any point in there. Wait, I'm sorry, say that one more time? So from 2000, pre-pandemic, this only goes, the data goes back to 2007.

2007 and 2019, we never got lower than the current level of layoffs. So I'm saying layoffs are still lower than they ever got pre-pendemic in the first. Oh, interesting, got it. So layoffs are still very low. So that's my question. That's my question. People are not getting laid off, really. So what, there has to, does there have to be a catalyst?

Are you saying what causes this finally? Yeah, I'm saying what, what's going to be the spark? Maybe there doesn't have to be a spark. Maybe the interest rates really do take two years to filter through the economy. This is the weird part about it because usually a recession is caused from excess in the economy and then the Fed raises to take those excesses out of it. But if you want to define excess, wasn't it in the housing market? And the Fed already kind of snuffed that out.

So you're right. Like, what else is going to go totally overboard unless it is just the Fed keeping rates higher and that eventually just cycles through? and it's a slow, slow death by a thousand cuts. I don't know. All right, so we have no new highs in the stock market yet. We're close. We're within, like, spitting distance for the NASDAQ 100 and the S&P 500.

But we do have new highs again as of this morning. Case Schiller, National Home Price Index, is up again. New highs in the housing market. Annie Lowry at the Atlantic had a piece. And the headline, I thought was a good one. It will never be a good time to buy a house. And she's talking from personal experience. She said she moved to Brooklyn.

I can't even imagine how expensive. It would be... She moved to Brooklyn or from Brooklyn? I think she moved to Brooklyn and tried to find a house and said it was just laughable. It was never going to happen. What do you think the feeling would be if we picked up all seven million people in New York and moved them to, like, Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan or Indiana? How different would they think about prices and inflation?

Because, I mean, New York was already dealing with, like, everyone complains about high prices now. If you're a New Yorker, you've already been living with... high prices for your whole life if you lived there. Like New York has already been a step above everything for prices. So I'm saying like, how many people eventually go like, all right, I'm out of here? And that's been happening a little bit, but that migration you would think with unaffordability has to be skyrocketing. So interesting stat from this one. At this time, 15 years ago, real estate agents had 2.2 million vacant housing units available to show prospects. That number has dwindled and dwindled and now sits at 732,000, despite the country having added

30 million people to its population in that time, which is kind of crazy to think about, 30 million more people in 15 years. I do agree. Like, I don't, I think that if rates come down, I don't know that home prices are going to skyrocket, and then it might have been a bit much when I said that a couple of weeks ago. I think we just need more activity. That's my point.

But the prices have been reset. Home prices are not going to come back down to what they were. No, you're not getting pre-pandemic home prices again. She says, it's not going to be a good time to buy a house for a long time. How long? I put that question to a few housing economists and real estate experts. their response, who knows, a decade. Maybe in 2030, we could come, we could start to see some relief. Derrell Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin told me. Relief, what is, what does,

what do they mean by relief? I think it means like... In terms of rates or prices? I think it just, yeah, like prices a little bit, like, and that's the thing, it does seem like now, this is something that we all have where we think the current scenario, the situation is going to last forever, and it never does. Like, people in 2010. Wait, wait, wait, I might take the other side of that. For the current, for the house, for the house, situation that exists today where when what year is it where I think it was 21 when the economy reopened and people started putting their houses on the market that there was like 20 buyers for every listing right I think that trend will stay in place for at least a few years because of

the 75 million millennials yes and so here's my take on this I think demographic to our destiny in the housing market and I I said this like six years Go. Millennials in the 2020s are going to be buying houses. There's going to be a shortage because of the, it wasn't like, that wasn't like some great call by me. That was just like math. And in the 2030s, we're probably going to see more supply than demand because most of the millennials will have bought a house that are going to buy a house. And some of the boomers on the margin are going to be selling more. And so I think in the 2030s, it seems like a long time to wait. But I think that's when it's going to have to happen for it to like really shift where supply is going to like seriously outstrip demand for. a meaningful period of time. So the stress in buying your home in terms of competing with a lot of other buyers, I feel like that's structural for at least a few more years. Maybe through the end of the decade. But I just think if I think lower rates would help in terms of like just getting more

activity and having like having more options to buy, right? And in resetting those those monthly payments a little lower, even if prices rise a little bit. All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about a dumb survey that went viral over. the weekend. More and more. What's that?

There's more and more of these. Empower survey. Wait, before you get into this, someone, someone tweeted me or emailed and said, like, don't you guys understand how, like, surveys and sampling works? This is how it works. Like, we understand sampling. Our point is that, like, the way that you ask a question, like, sampling makes sense. You have to, you can't ask literally everyone in the country to come up with, but you,

the way that they ask questions and the way that people, the sentiment acts, like, Those kind of surveys can be messed up, and they're not reflective of reality, even if the sampling thing works. We're not saying statistics doesn't work. We're saying sometimes the way that these surveys are conducted are not accurate. So here is a great example of why surveys are bullshit. 59% of Americans believe money can buy happiness. Bullshit. If you were asking people honestly, I'm going to say that number is like 98%.

yeah that's true and the actual number of people that can buy happiness for are you kidding me 59% so people answer how they think they're supposed to answer in many cases of course money doesn't buy happy give me give me a break because people always say money doesn't buy happiness right exactly exactly um okay so they asked the price of happiness for your desire net worth and millennials are so far beyond everything else when you compare people's answers versus their actual net worth. So the gap is sort of hilarious. But the thing that really made people go nuts

was the annual salary by generation to feel happy. And so for all people, it was $284,000. I don't know what the median salary is in the United States. Ben, do you know that number offhand? I don't want to give a number and embarrass myself. It depends. Household is like 70 or something. Individuals, it's like 50s-ish, 60s, something like that.

Yeah. But yeah, it's obviously that the number is ridiculous. So anyway, Boomer said 124,000, Gen X said 130,000. Gen Z said 128,000. And inexplicably, Millennials said 525,000. This chart looks like a giant middle finger. So I don't know exactly how to explain this. Which would put you in like the top 2% of all incomes.

Probably top 1%. Maybe even more. I don't know how to explain this. Do you have any thoughts on... No, I can't... There's no way that millennials really feel this way. I have no explanation for it. All right, here's another reason number four million why surveys are bullshit.

How much time have we spent over the last couple of months? And I think we're going to... I think we've reached peak animal spirits talking about the disconnect between the economy and people's feelings. Can we say that we're going to pair back on that thing? Yeah, there's nothing else to... At this point, it is what it is. Yeah, we're not going to retire this thing.

There's a million different variables and, yeah. I promise this will be more or less the end of it from us. But they asked a question, the state of American happiness today. So, okay, we spent the last couple of months talking about how miserable people are. And yet, they ask, at home, people say 80% overall happiness at home, overall happiness, overall happiness, 75%. So, okay, so this survey is a 75% overall happiness

and in other surveys it's like 14% of Americans think that their personal financial situation has gotten better since Joe Biden took office. How do you explain the gigantic gaps in how people feel based on various services? What if they ask the state of happiness on Twitter would be like 3%?

Social media, 5% happiness. 75% overall happiness. Oh, cool. guess people are happy? Is that what we're trying to say here? Or maybe surveys are kind of bullshit. Yes. Or just broken. All right. The Wall Street Journal had a piece about fighting with money that a researcher did. Research found when partners disagreed on mundane expenses, such as grocery bills and shopping receipts, they tend to have better relationships. But if you fight about like

bigger things, like contribution to household finances and that or perceived irresponsibility in spending, that's particularly detrimental. So fighting a lot of, the little stuff is actually a good thing because it means that you don't have the big stuff. If you're really fighting about the big stuff, that means there's probably something else simmering under the surface that you want to get. True. If you're, if you're really have money issues, you're probably not bickering about the small stuff. But if you bick around the small stuff, it's actually like a luxury, right? Because you don't really have anything to complain about.

Do you and Rob never fight about money? No. Not really? No. Robin is pretty far removed from our financial. situation, not because I don't try and bring her in. She just, she doesn't, she doesn't really care. And I'm pretty sure she has no idea how much money we make. My always part in the same, same boat. I got a question for you personal finance wise. Okay. Why do we still have ATM fees? If you go to an ATM, it is not yours, you pay like a $2.50 fee. And then your bank charges

you like $2.50. I know some of them, why does that still exist? That seems, that's ridiculous to me. They have to pay like $5 to take out $20. That's great. Yeah. Is that just, we just do it because they can? How much money do you think they squeeze out of the consumer's pocket a year? It's got to be billions. It's got to be billions.

It's ridiculous. I just, I did that this weekend. I'm like, they just charged me $5 for $20. I, for the most part, never pay ATM fees. I always go to a chase unless I'm in like a casino. That's what I usually try to do as well, which you can actually usually find one of those, but what's this Bill Gates thing? You know who doesn't have personal finance problems or money problems? Walter Bloomberg tweeted,

Bill Gates earns nearly $500 million in annual dividend income. Well, that's because he had something else simmering under the surface because he got a divorce recently. So him and his wife must have been fighting about the big stuff, not the little stuff. He received $464 million in U.S. dividend income from his investment portfolio so far this year. Yeah, but just that for inflation, and was it really? Yeah, yeah. Okay, Dave wrote this about our deep impact thought last week. Ben, in the deep impact scenario, there's a 90% chance of meteor hitting the earth.

I would take every penny I could possibly get my hands on and leverage along with reckless abandon. If I'm right, I'm rich, if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter. Pascal's Wager. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's a good point. That's like the dark caching thing, like if there's just the Cuban missile crisis, right? Yeah.

All right. One more random thought here. Tell that story real quick. So wasn't it the Cuban missile crisis and someone said, sell all your stocks, what happens if there's a nuclear war? And our cash and said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You go buy hand over fist. If there's a nuclear war, who cares what your stocks do? If there's not a war, you're going to be rich because the stock market's going to come back. Right. Which is pretty good. All right. I saw an old truck with some rust the other day.

Think about it. You never, back in like the 80s and 90s when you were growing up, you would see cars with rust on the road all the time, like super rusted out. You never see cars with rust anymore. I saw it, and it was surprising to see actual rust. Like, I feel like we, we've done away with rust on our cars somehow through the power of technology. Cars don't rust anymore, or people just don't hold them long enough. That's a great point. No, I think paint has improved. I think we've spoken about this in the past.

My mom back in the day drove a Volvo with, like, the back seat where your, like, knees were like pressed up against a glass, basically, and you're, like, driving backwards. The station wagon. The station wagon. Station wagon was the SUV of the 1980s and 90s. How dangerous was that in the grand sign? long. Yeah, probably couldn't have been great. We used to drive, my parents used to drive a conversion van and the bench is on the side. Wait, what the heck is that? Like a big van, like a, you know,

you'd, you'd assume a person is trying to get little kids into it with his candy kind of guy. Why did they drive that? Was it for work? I have no, for kids, and the benches had no seatbelts. We had no seatbelts in the back. We just, like, we're flying around when I was a little in the 80s. What did you have eight siblings? I don't, I don't understand why they drove that car. I have a good question. I have no. idea. This is like before minivans were around. The minivan came around in like the 90s and that changed everything. Late 80s, early 90s probably. All right, recommendations. You mentioned bye-bye Barry on Amazon. I watched it. He was my hero growing up. I loved this. And the funny thing is,

is I remember when he retired early and walked away and I wasn't mad at all. I totally, it was like, I totally understood it. That's incredible. You weren't mad? You weren't mad about inflation. You're not mad about Barry Sand. You're just, you're an even killed sort of guy. How are you not mad? Because the lions were so inept at running that franchise that I totally understood it. I was like a, I don't know, a sophomore high school. Okay, you're very much. He was my hero. I, obviously, I was not compared myself to him, but like I tried to be very, I practiced spin moves.

I will say. And you played, you ran in the Silver Dome? I did run in the Silver Dome. He was my hero, and he has the greatest highlight reel of any football player in history. I don't think it's a close second. Not even close. There's never been anyone like him before or, and there never will be.

Like, the moves he made were there's never been anything like him. You know why? I felt bad for him from being on the lion. I really did. His body was like a sports car. It was so low to the ground. And his thighs were enormous. And his balance was insane.

And he bounced off tacklers and he had breakaway speed. Like, you're right. There was never, there's never been a football player like him. Yeah. So I thought it was really well done. I thought it was really funny because he was probably the most humble superstar. not probably, the most humble superstar of all time. A person like that couldn't exist today.

No. And his dad wanted all of the limelight? Yes, it's a good story. He's definitely a unique guy. But there was, I remember, like, I remember when he retired and there was, like, why did he do? I mean, this is not a great mystery. Like, he was just done. Yeah.

Oh, I take a picture of this. Um, the, because the season in 1998 where he ran for 2,000 yards. Oh, wait, I thought I took a picture of this. Hold on. Let me just Google this. So, Barry Sanders, 1998 game log. So in 1998, when he had 2,000 yards rushing, which had only been done at that point.

I think Walter paid it at the time. I don't know. And OJ. Maybe only OJ. I can't remember. It was just OJ, yeah. Okay. But anyway, so in the first two games of 1997,

1998, he rushed for, for 33 yards in the first game and 20 yards in the second game. That's right. 53 yards in the first two games. So 53 yards in the first two games. And then these are the... So 2,000 for the next 14. So listen to the rush of yards for the next 14 games. 161, 113, 139,

107, 15, 105, 105, 105, 105, 108, 2167, 138, 184. Yeah, one of a kind. Unbelievable. The dock was so good. It was really good. I was looking to watch a Thanksgiving movie besides planes, trains, and automobiles, because, of course, I watched that. And I found a suggestion was funny people, which I don't know if it consists of thanks.

They have a Friendsgiving in the movie. Okay. It's a long movie, so it's not really a Thanksgiving movie, but it got me thinking. That was like the end of the Judd Apatow line. You know, it was Sandler and Rogan and Jonah Hill and Aubrey Plaza. Leslie Mann and Jason Schwartzman and Aziz. We don't have those ensembles of comedies anymore. Maybe it'll come back someday, but I feel like my whole life we've had ensemble comedies.

where young people are coming up. You know, in the 90s, it was Sandler and Farley and Chris Rock and all these people in Spade. We just don't have that anymore. Shit, that movie's like 15 years old. Came out in 2009. Oh, my God, we're old. Well, you know why?

Actually, I don't know. This is not the reason why. Well, they don't make comedy, it's number one. Right. But they could never pay a cast like this. Right. That's what I'm saying. You have to find them young.

Maybe the young people now are just going to TikTok or YouTube or something and not being actors. don't know. I feel like the first half is a lot better than the second half. Yes, the movie trails off. You can watch the first two-thirds and you're good. Okay. So, there are movies that you've seen a million times, Forrest Gump, Shawshank, all the Rockies. And I think the reason why, at least for me, is because they were on TNT and USA. And back in the day. All the time. All the time. Before streaming existed. Yeah. And I guess now it's like, you know, HBO is like casino is always on. I've seen that a billion times.

times. But I very rarely will stream a movie to rewatch. I'd say 97% of the movies that I watch are new to me. Okay. I rewatch movies all the time still. Okay. So I decided to rewatch Prometheus and Alien Covenant. I guess because we were talking about Ridley Scott last week. F***ing awesome. I know I love those movies. Because I've seen Prometheus a million times. Alien Covenant was way better than I remember. That was pretty decent. Yeah, because it was a lot of the same characters, too, right? Or, I mean, FastBender was in it. Way better than I remember. All right, somebody emailed us. Gentlemen, I've never emailed into anything in my life, but I watched when evil lurks last night, and I had to make this my first. I loved it. However,

there were five scenes that will haunt me for the rest of my life. My wife thinks, my wife, who thinks I am insane for watching this stuff, constantly ask me, how do people come up with this? Doesn't that disturb you? What is your response to that? I had a similar experience with my wife when I was watching Speak No Evil, which really and truly hurt to watch. How many different horror movies who watched the word evil in the name? A lot. Speak No Evil. There should be a warning. Like, this will upset you. It was like that upsetting. And my wife, had a similar reaction. It's a really interesting question.

Like, why do people, myself included, enjoy watching things that are like seriously disturbing? I think because everyone has like 5% of them that is a little disturbing and just wants to let that freak flag fly. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is because I hate, I hate to say that I get pleasure from watching it because it's so, some of this stuff is so demented. Like there was a scene, I might have said this, there was a scene in when evil lurks where like I literally had the reaction. to, like, close my laptop and, like, chuck it. He's like, what, do it? I don't know. Can't explain it.

I can't either, because I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, one more thing. Speaking of the Barry Sanders thing, you, so you, you, you, you tweeted over the weekend that there's nothing like college football. And I'm not here to shit on college football because growing up in the Northeast, it's just not some that we do. Like, like, there's not. Right. I understand. New York doesn't have as much of a college. New York is a pro sports.

Well, there's no, there's no colleges here. I mean, there's, like, Rockers and St. John's, I guess. I get it. So my, so my, and I know people are super, super passionate about college football, my question to you would be, isn't it difficult or confusing to follow in the sense that isn't there so much turnover because players just don't stick around that long? Yeah. No, that's a fun.

Yeah. Jerry Seinfeld said you're cheering for laundry, but. Okay. Is that, like, the fun part of it? Like, rooting for, like, the new freshman? Yeah, it changes. And it's just the, the, the past. pageantry and the emotion and the amount of people that like get into it. And it's like every

week means like everything. Because if you lose one game, you're kind of out of the playoff picture or whatever. Do you know the players on the field or do you mostly root for the team? No, I know the players too. But it's both. But I just, I grew up with college football was the biggest thing to me. I think that's that's part. Plus I rooted for the lion. So it was not like they, they were always so terrible that it, you know, they came second for sure. How, how, Let me play this. So on Thanksgiving, I bet on the Lions. And they didn't win.

So did I. Never bet against your team because he lost twice. You bet on the Lions? Yes, bad idea. So Logan was in the playroom and he was, he was crying. And I didn't know why. So I walked in. so I watched like myself

I watched the ring to see what he was crying about I think he got stuck in the little room but listen to this so Logan and I'm screaming at number and I'm scared on you you hear that that's pretty good

holding so Logan is in a little crying and I'm screaming at number 75 for the Packers was clearly holding and the refs missed it. Clearly. All right. Time to give up from gambling.

All right. One more thing. You know what? I'm going to like to say it. Where do people email us? Animal spirits at the compound news.com.