Animal Spirits Podcast - A 25 Year Bull Market (EP. 420)

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

On episode 420 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss faster recoveries in the stock market, the potential for an even longer bull market, pros and cons of deregulation, zooming out on the dollar, why taxes never rise, a weak jobs market for college grads, life in 1776, making $250k a year and still not feeling rich, the worst housing market in America, $1,000 car payments and more. This episode is sponsored by Cache Financials and Fabric by Gerber Life. Visit https://usecache.com/?invited_by=animal-spirits to learn more about Cache Financials, who operates Cache Exchange Fund Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at: https://meetfabric.com/SPIRITS    Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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 episode is brought to you by Cash Financials, who operates Cash Exchange Fund. Ben, one of the defining features of the bull market over the last 15 years has been mega cap tech and tech in general, and one of the defining features of those companies is the way that they compensate and their employees is through equity compensation. So you've got all of these people running around with gazillions of dollars, of stock in their company, heavily concentrated. We've spoken on the show about Nvidia, how many millionaire employees they have. So these people are heavily concentrated in one individual stock.

Right, low-cost basis. So I met with the Sorkanth, who is the founder of this company, and he was at Uber. So he was looking for a way to diversify out of Uber and into a broader basket of stocks. And the way that this was traditionally done was through an exchange fund. Okay? So their flagship product is an exchange fund, but it's built for the modern investors. So this product, the exchange fund, is not new. The wirehouses used to do this, very common theme where you will exchange your fund for

a basket of diversified stocks and some other things. But it was, was and is very illiqued. That's part of the feature of it. But high fees. High fees. So he said there's got to be a better way. So they started with the NASDAQ 100 focused exchange fund, lower fees started at 60 basis points for a million, minimums for 100K, just a year after launch. The proof is in the

pudding. They're at $500 million in assets, which is pretty wild. So they have a new one, a new S&P 500 one, and an SEP 500 growth fund where they're utilizing the 351 transaction, which I think we spoke with MEP about that, to help employees or help people, not just employees, to help people with concentrated positions, get more diversified. So they're working on this with our friends at Alpha Architect, and I'm bullish on this, but the proof is in the pudding. $500 million and not a lot of time. So if you want to learn more about the exchange fund, hit the link in the show notes. Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life.

Fabric by Gerber Life is a term life insurance you can get down right from your couch all online on your schedule. You could be covered under 10 minutes with no health exam required. I mentioned, I think my original life insurance policy is coming up pretty soon because I did it when my daughter was born. She's 11 now. I did a 15-year term policy. So I clicked through a bunch of stuff

with Fabric by Gerber Life last week. Very easy. It's all you can do it on an app. You can do it on the desktop. It's very simple. You put in all your different stats. It's easy. 5-8, bench 190.

1-90. Come on. Give me a little credit. I don't do bench much anymore. So my days of benching and squatting are past me. Same. Anyway, it's such a much easier process in the first time I went. When I literally had to drive downtown, go to this glass building, go into a boardroom, meet with someone, fill out paperwork, and then they could tell me, here's your, you know, so it's just much easier.

So join the thousands of parents who dress fabric to help protect their family. Played it in just minutes at meetfabric.com.com slash spirits. That's meetfabric.com slash spirits. M-E-E-T, Fabric.com slash spirits. policy is issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states prices subject to underwriting and health questions. 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 Bridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, last week you mentioned that people said we don't talk about the stock market as much or enough. Is that true?

Or did somebody say that? People, one person. All right. Well. They, people, yeah. Well, let's talk about the stock market. shall we? That's it.

All right. As improbable as it might have been just a couple of months ago, we're back at all-time highs. Unbelievable. The Walsh Journal has this great chart showing the quickest recoveries to an all-time high following a decline of at least 15%. And by golly, Miss Molly. Is this number one? Yeah. Look at that.

It's getting faster. I've been saying this for years. Chartkin Matt made a scatter plot that shows that there is a symmetry in stock market declines to all-time highs, meaning the longer it takes for the stock market to bottom, the longer it takes for it to reach an all-time high. Which intuitively makes sense because generally speaking, the longer. the bare market takes to bottom, the deeper the decline is. Okay? So it makes sense there. But what you'll notice is, and I had to make two versions of this chart. So the first version of this chart shows just the number of days. So the number of days to the bottom and then the number of days to the ultimate high. So it shows peak to trough, then trough to peak. Exactly. So for example,

in 2025, it took 48 days to make the low. And what is that, 80 days to make the, is that 80? yeah okay uh then i had to make another you're a bad eyesight person i really am then i have another uh i had to make not to brag better than 2020 over here i'm the only person of my family who doesn't have some sort of glasses or credit to you uh super power i had to make another version of the chart where i said just remove the days and just show me the year and so i think what you'll notice is uh 2020 and 2025 both v down or not v down just a straight down, straight up.

And we've spoken a lot about this. Is this just going to be the norm moving forward? Now, I don't know about that. I think 2020 was a very, very specific sort of decline in recovery that was fueled by, obviously, a bazooka of monetary and fiscal stimulus specifically. And the 2025 was also a unique one in the sense that it was an exogenous impact of new policy that got walked back. So I say that to say that, whoa, say to say, uh, if we have myself to introduce myself. If we, if we have another bear market, if and when we have

another bear market, that is more, um, of a traditional recession. 2022 on here looks pretty normal. Exactly. Exactly. So if we have another one of those where it's a traditional recession and earnings decline, then sure, like the V is not the norm. It just, It did happen twice in the last five years. My thinking is that we haven't outlawed longer term bear markets, but more of the corrections will be of the V nature. I think they're going to happen. That's my thought is those bear markets are probably going to be pretty similar.

The corrections themselves are going to happen quicker. Maybe, but maybe. But they are a function of what causes the bear market. Right. So I looked at the drawdowns in where we were. So the NASDAQ 100, I think these are total returns. So, but it's close enough. If NASDAQ was down 23%, the SPP was down 19, and up the emerging markets in European stocks,

which are down like 14 or 15%. From the lows, the queues are now up 33%. This is through yesterday. This is through Monday. We're recording this Tuesday morning. But even emerging markets are up 26%. European stocks are up 25%. And then the SMPs up 25%.

It's a pretty darn good return. Remarkable. For how many months has it been? Yeah. Three months, essentially? Yeah. Pretty crazy. We're three months from Liberation Day, right? Yeah. So what I like to see is I look inside the bull market, unlike you, Ben. I actually peel the layers back, lift up the hood, see what's going on.

Kevin Gordon tweeted 7% of Russell 3,000 members. Listen, I don't like to go in the hood. I make this joke all the time. I got my other change last week. They show me the dipstick. What does it mean to me? Yeah. 7% of Russell. 3,000 members made a new 52-week high at the end of last week, which is the highest so far year-to-date. It is not just the mag-7 names. In fact, it is definitely not just the mag-7 names. You are seeing broader participation in the areas in which you would like to see it.

We are seeing financials breakout. We are seeing industrials breakout. So this is healthy. This is exactly what you want to see. I'm not making a prediction about the future. Not saying that the pullback can't start today, which, you know, I guess we feel appropriate, given that we've gone straight up. But this is a very, very healthy bull market.

Forget your opinions. I don't care. Just look at what investors are doing as a whole. And interestingly, there's been a lot of talk over the last decade about the impact of index funds and propping stocks up and making sure that the tide is just going in the same direction. And I don't want to dismiss that entirely because I think it's very difficult to say that all of this money coming into the market in that vehicle is not impacting.

prices in certain areas. I'm sure that it is. But it is interesting to see the dispersion within the Mag 7. So Bespoke has this chart showing the change year to date. And there's Apple, Tesla, and Google big time lagging. And there's meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia. So the Mag 7, they're breaking up. They're not just doing the same thing. So this is all semantics because it doesn't really matter. But I think you could make the case that this is, I don't know, year 15, year 16 of a bull market, I guess it would be year of 16, and we've just had minor corrections along the way. The one long-term bull market people always talk about is the 1980s and 90s. But if you look historically, like from the bottom of World War II,

which I want to say was 1942, 41, something like that, the stock market bottom way before the end of the war. Maybe it was 43. But from like 1943 to 1966, call it, we had like a 20-plus year bowl market. And there were some bear markets along the way, but there was never like the cataclysmic one that really threw people. That didn't really happen until the late 60s, early to mid-70s. He had a couple of those. I think it's possible we could just be on like a 25-year bull market. Yeah, why not? We have these quick whipsaws back and forth along the way. This is like obviously contingent on AI. But I think we're in the range of that happening. How about that? Could this be a 25-year bull market. Would that mean like...

Yeah, we're in year 15. Why not? I do think that it's... We'll never know, but if Chad GBT did not come out in November 22 to save the day, you could make the case that the bear market would have ended. The secular market would have ended. And this gave it a second set of the

legs. Don't you think you could have done this for so many different times in the bull market? Well, if that didn't happen, then this would have happened. And if that didn't happen, it's... That's like the whole... Like, well, if the Fed didn't step in, then we would have been out 80% in the great potential crisis. So, I feel like that thing, that whole thing of, like, us getting saved continuously, that's just what happens.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know the AI is like an outlier, but- You're 100% right. It's like looking at the Super Bowl winner and saying, well, this balance and that tip-passed, yeah, everybody who wins the Super Bowl has some luck, and every bull market, by definition, is bailed out for various reasons. Yeah. All right, I want to tell a story. Okay.

And I'm going to relay this to investor behavior. I feel like you've told a lot of stories about driving lately, so I'm going to tell a kind of of a driving one. So I was, I have a running path I do. I go for a jog at work around lunchtime. And there's a hill I come up. So I like running up the hill because it's good for you, right? Cardiovascularly. Is that a word? And I'm coming up the hill on my run and I see this teenager in her car and the car is like kind of stopped sideways on the road. And she's got like her head and her hands in her head. And there's a guy on the ground with a motorcycle. He obviously, I think what happened is she had backed up, not seen him because it's a hill. He must have been coming

up on his motorcycle as she backed her car out of her driveway, the motorcycle guy had to basically lay his motorcycle down. So he's on the ground. She's got her head in her hands, calling someone, I'm jogging up, and I kind of run over, and I got my headphones in, I take him off, and hey, is everything okay here? And the guy obviously was in a world of pain, not like really seriously injured, but he was in pain. And he's got his leather chaps on and stuff, and he gets up, and I notice he's got no helmet on, right? He just got smoked by this car. And he's, he's limping away, and he's kind of shaking out the cobwebs, and he picks his bike up his bike is all messed up and he walks it over and he kind of sits on the curb and just

takes his big deep breath. He's like, I'm fine, man, I'm fine. She's calling someone, just get out of here. All right. I hope you're, you know, hope you're okay. And I just thought, I can't believe, so this is a Michigan thing. There's no law about wearing motorcycle helmets in Michigan. It's kind of, I think there's some insurance reasons for it. Um, but if you ride your motorcycle, you can ride it without a helmet on. And part of me thinks that is insane. Like, How could we, isn't that crazy? Like, there's certain states where you don't have to wear a motorcycle helmet. On the other hand, if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet on, that's your choice, right?

You're the one putting yourself at danger. You're not really putting anyone else at danger when that happens, right? It's up to you. And I just kind of got thinking about, like, that's kind of what the world we're heading into financially. Is a world where no one has to wear a helmet on their motorcycle. because the cycle, the pendulum of deregulation goes from one end to another. So in the 2000s, there was massive deregulation, and that caused a housing bubble, and it partially caused the Great Financial Crisis.

And then after the Great Financial Crisis, when we saw the subprime lending stuff, we said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we have to rein this way back in. And people decided, like, we need way more regulation to save people from themselves, because obviously we can't have that happen again. And then that went way too far, and we've obviously over-regulated, and now we're going back to the deregulation. And I just think in the coming years, like that, there's going to be a lot of those accidents

where people have to lay their bike down where, like, it's going to be the wild, wild loss. Robin Hood last week said they're going to do tokenization of private company securities, right? We're going to get private equity in 401Ks that we've been talking about. The ETF stuff that's coming is going to be absolutely insane. Well, and then open AI chimed in and said,

whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not our equity. Well, right. But I'm just, from the regulation perspective, I'm just trying to think, like, where will the next financial crisis come from? And I think it's going to be something like this that we probably don't know for sure. And that could be five, ten, fifteen years in the future or something? When you say crisis, do you mean a crisis that takes everything down or do you mean just like a pocket of things that wipe certain investors out? I guess it could be either one. All right.

So where's it coming from? I don't know. But something with this, see, the thing is like, in terms of deregulation, I hope that if we're going to deregulate everything, that it really gets to the housing market more than anything. Just make it easier, a blanket, something, making it easier for cities and municipalities to build. Make it easier for home builders to build. Can I throw out a policy idea?

Because you know me, I'm a big policy guy. Why not make mortgages transferable? Now, I'm sure there is very good reason why not to do that, but that would help. Yeah, it does seem like there's a lot of stuff in the housing market. The thing is, I think deregulating financial products and financial services usually, only benefits, it benefits more the asset managers and the investment manager than it does the

actual end retail investor. Oh, there's no doubt about that. Right? Why do you think I own these private equity companies? Yeah, exactly. So I just think that, and the thing is there's going to be people who say, I don't care. Like, this is good for me. So we talked to Life Abraham from public and that podcast come out on Saturday, I think.

And he walked us through this new tool they have that is unbelievable where I think it's called generatedassets.com. It's not on public yet, but it's going to be, where you literally type in, listen, I want to own the Mag 7 or the S&P 500 minus the Mag 7, take out utility. You can basically tell this thing any strategy you want, and the AI will immediately put a back test for you, and I guess eventually it's going to be investable. And so I think there's going to be products like that that are going to be amazing for individual investors.

There's going to be other stuff that comes out that's going to be people shooting themselves in the foot. What was that, what was the options ETF with Draft Kings? Yeah, there's going to be a draft king. We spoke about it last week with Jason Zawak. There's just a seemingly unlimited demand from investors for these sort of yield products that have a nominal distribution of 80% or whatever. A yield max ETF selling call options on draft kings is like the ultimate YOLO, put it all

together, sports gambling, options, yield. I just, it would be great if we could just strike a good balance between, right? Like, we're going to protect people from this stuff. We're going to let them be fine in here where I think now we're, entering the wild, wild west for the, at least for the foreseeable future. And I think there's going to be really good stuff that comes from this probably and really bad stuff. Yep. Anyway, do you think, do you think Powell's been vindicated? We're getting more strong data. The odds of a recession peaked at, geez, almost 70% a couple of months ago on, what is this, on polymarket.

Now we're down to 21% chance for a recession. You're looking at the Fed's decision in July to cut. and they're not going to. What do you think? Was he right? I think Powell has been a very good Fed chair, and I think most of what they've done in the last three or four years hasn't mattered at all. I honestly think people give them too much blame or credit for what's happened.

I think the situation, the cycle playing out like it did, they raise rates from 0 to 5%. It didn't really matter. I don't think that... Well, when you say it didn't matter, it mattered to... the housing market and what what did it not matter to it matter to the economy because the housing market didn't bring the economy down i think as far as like the whole soft landing thing i feel like that was preordained i don't think powell could have really done anything that really would have stopped

that what if he took rates to 8% well okay come on the extremes but i'm saying based on what they did it's like people are are arguing about they should have cut or raised three months earlier or six months earlier not like then it would have held i don't think any of that really would have mattered Yeah, like the mind, on the details. So, sure, I guess, vindicated, but the vindication is we haven't, when's the last time we've had a soft landing conversation? The soft landing happened. Like, there's no more conversation.

People can't talk about it, is it a soft landing or a hard landing? The soft landing happened a long time ago. Now, like, now what? Right. But so, what did it get to, Polly Market? 70% recession odds or something? Mm-hmm. I guess it's funny at the time that probably made sense.

remember I was saying like recession is your baseline if we would have kept the tariffs on and I guess we'll talk about that in a minute I guess the boy who cried wolf is back on that 70% odds of recession at that time actually were legitimate I think so do I yeah based on what was happening at the time mm-hmm so what do you think is it was pal vindicated or I still know I mean not in my opinion I think he should have cut okay I again I'm not like pounding the table on it I keep seeing people saying, like, stocks are at all-time highs. Why do we need to cut?

That's ridiculous. The stock market is not the barometer for what the Fed should or shouldn't do. Exactly. I agree. Let's talk about the dollar. This is from Torsten Slack. He did a whole presentation on the dollar what's happening. So we've talked about this.

The dollar is down 10% since the beginning of the year. It is kind of funny, though. The dollar is basically back to where it was in early 2024. Because you had a huge spike in the dollar in the fall. I guess when people thought Trump's America's first policies we're going to do. So we've just essentially round-tripped. Yeah. So it's like, right?

Now what? And then he's got this great one. And Cali is. You know what? This is a great chart because we've shared charts about the weakest start for the dollar to a year since 1973. And if you just go to. Yeah, zoom out a little. Yeah, zoom out.

Yeah. Callie's talked about this before, but he talked about the dollar as the world's reserve currency. This is the, so the FX transaction volume, the dollar is 88% of it. So this is it. If the dollar is not the reserve currency, what is? There has to be an alternative. Don't tell me Bitcoin. It's got to be something.

It's not the euro. It's not China. So something that always makes people really mad is the government debt stuff. And you talked about Steve Isman a few weeks ago saying the deficit and government debt is all people just posturing and trying to look good for TV cameras or whatever. I've heard from my entire adult life, listen, government debt is too high, we have to raise taxes. Taxes have nowhere to go but up, right? I've heard that my whole life. In my whole adult life, taxes have done, nothing would go down. So the economist has this piece on the impact of the big, beautiful bill. I guess we're calling it the triple B now. And they show some of the savings,

but the costs are obviously immense. And obviously, the biggest one is just extending the 2017 tax cuts. And it is kind of funny to me how they do these. So you look at one of the next charts, they show like, here's the forecast out to 2050. It's like, listen, every four to eight years, we get new tax policies. So how can you possibly, and it's showing, you know, debt to GDP going from 100 right now to 175 or something because of this. But it's funny, interest payments has a percentage of GDP is going from, I don't know, three and a half to five and a half percent. To me, that doesn't sound that egregious. Obviously, it's much higher than it's been historically.

But I don't know, that increase. But my point is, like, we always, we keep hearing people complain about this stuff. But obviously, no one really cares to do anything about it. Because all we do is keep cutting taxes. So why do we keep having these soapbox rants about the deficit and government debt if no one's ever going to do anything about it? Well, neither party is motivated by it because under every presidential term, the deficit gets wider and wider. Because who's going to raise taxes?

It does seem to me like raising taxes on the rich is the easiest thing to do. But for some reason, I think rich people are like a deity to certain segments of the population. And it's like, no, we've got to leave them along. For whatever reason. Because the, we should have the numbers here instead of just making it up. But we'll get to this next week, what the top 1% pay. But is it like 40% of all federal income tax? Yeah, but we're all.

also lowering taxes for business ownership and the wealthiest people own all the businesses. That's so it's, um, so bringing corporate tax rates down is, is helping them too. I just, I would have assumed raising taxes on the wealthy. I agree. It's, it's like a disproportionate amount of the tax revenue comes from, um, the top taxpayers. But I, I, I just wish we would stop having these, these soapbox things every four years from different, you know, it's right. It's just, it's just, just shut up about it then.

If you're never going to do it, shut up about it. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the young people and the intersection of them in the workforce with AI. We got an email from a college professor who said, your intuition is spot on. I've been in career development for over a decade. In the job market for recent college grads, it's the worst I've ever seen, including COVID. It's particularly tough for business school grads, entry-level white collar roles and fields

like accounting, finance, marketing, or disappearing. Many recent grads are taking jobs that don't require a degree, often in the service industry, sales, or gig work just to get by. Frankly, this trend is deeply concerning, and I don't say that lightly. Well, I'm not sure we'll see a sustained period where the unemployment rate for college grads exceeds that of non-grads. The gap is closing. And that alone is alarming.

And in concert with that, we got another email. This one crossed my feed today. Two branches of our armed services met their recruiting goals three months early to the tune of 30,000 recruits. 20% of them have some form of college degree. Take it from someone who knows. This is what you find at the intersection of desk. and zero employment prospects.

Food for thought, maybe someone out there knows better, but this seems to be a very strong recession indicator. All right. I'm going to continue to zag on this one. I'm not saying these fears aren't real and that young people aren't having a harder time. But what if we're just working off an insanely hot job market? So the guy in the first email said he's been doing this for a decade,

and it's the worst he's ever seen in a decade. That's because we've had an insane, we had a really hot job market heading into COVID, and then COVID supercharged it. I'm going to reject. So what if we're just working off an insanely, like look at, I'm going to reject that. I'm going to, I put this chart in here again. This is the unemployment rate, again, age 20 to 24.

We're basically back to the average of the 2000s and way below average for the 2010s, which as a millennial, you and I know, coming into that job market, most people came into the job market in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. It was awful. Ben, sometimes, and I think this is one of those times, the story is more important than the numbers. But I'm, we had an insane. mainly hot job market. Like the hottest job market we've had our entire lives. And what if we're, what if we're just working that off? That's the question I'm asking. I'm not trying to say, like, we don't have to worry about AI for the future. But I just don't think this is a,

this is a crisis level thing yet. It's been way worse than the past. Well, I, I'm not saying it's a crisis. It's a relative crisis compared to where people were a few years ago. I just think, I just think it's not, okay, how about this? Is this story going to get better or worse? Of young people having a hard time getting jobs, especially young people that are in the white-collar space who went to business school, like those entry-level jobs are just not going to be getting filled to the tune that they used to be. I don't think that's controversial. Probably.

There's going to be a transition phase, for sure. All right, we talked, I think last week about maybe two weeks ago about the multiple job holder thing. And people keep talking about this, like that was the Wall Street Journal article about Americans are side hustling like we're in a recession. And Ernie Tedeski posted this chart, which is good. Multiple job holders as a percentage of total employment. And he said, it's a pro-cyclical indicator.

That means a share of workers with multiple jobs rises when times are good. That's because there are more job opportunities and a healthy labor market. Could not agree more. You never heard about people in the great financial crisis or the aftermath being like, I'm working two jobs because they're so plentiful. It was, if you wanted to get two jobs, it was hard. Totally agree with you. All right.

I put a lot of stuff from Twitter here. and I want to just give some perspective on how good we have it before I get into something else. I was watching sinners, finished sinners last night, and I'll give my review later in recommendations. And I know it's not a base on a true story, obviously, if you know what happened. But their depiction of life in the 1930s,

every time I see the depiction of life in an old time, I just thank God how good we have it. So Derek Thompson had this cool post on Life in 1776, which is almost 250 years ago. This is the crazy one that a lot of people pulled on. Fuel is such a burden that firewood is 28% of US GDP. I don't know how exactly they calculated it, but actually that number probably sounds directionally right to me.

Nighttime darkness is such a burden. George Washington reportedly spent $15,000 in today's dollars on candles every year. Heat is such a luxury that Thomas Jefferson can't write in Deep Winter because his ink freezes. One reason perhaps why Independence Day is in July. This is a more, obviously that's 250 years ago. But this is a more recent one that I think is really an interesting point. that I hadn't thought of. Someone tweeted about the fact that they would eat pancakes in the 80s as a kid

and their parents would watch them closely on butter and serve and say that's plenty. And this guy says, people who weren't alive in the 80s always claim it was a time of plenty richer than now, but nearly 100% of people who were actually alive and conscious then, recall middle class parents engaging in bizarre hyperthrift and money anxiety that basically no one has now. My mother used to tell me to not use too many paper towels, like the individual rectangles.

My dad used to still to say, When a soap gets towards the end, like a hand soap in the bathroom, he'd refill it with water. And then you'd go to use it and you get that, like, what are we doing here? But that is a, I remember, I still remember to this day when I was younger. I was in, like, fifth grade. And we would go to Arby's, and I just wanted a roast beef sandwich. And my dad made me get an Arby's junior. And I was so ticked off.

But that was just the mentality back then of, and I feel like today is a mentality of abundance. Right? You can have anything and everything you want on demand, and especially for kids. you're right that what we grew up in was not and it didn't feel like abundance and this is another one one more to tie this in a bow here Joe Wisenstall said it's so funny that in 2025 people are still describing certain

cities as having good food no shit they all do now and that's so true you can you and I travel to some random places sometimes and I feel like everywhere we go it's like oh fantastic a restaurant oh great bar great right it's like where I live 25 years ago there was no good restaurants

now there's a million and there's 10 new good ones every year yeah All right. So I am fully aligned with the fact. I mean, this is incontrovertible that everybody says, thank God, we don't live in 1776, right? Life was not fun then. And maybe, not maybe, we don't spend enough time highlighting how relatively good we have it. I think it's good to have some gratitude as well. That's my point. I agree. It's also true that there are a lot of problems in this country. So, Nikiel Krishna tweeted this chart that, I think we probably spoke about when it came out from the New York Times showing Americans now spend more in health care than groceries on housing. So they show the share of U.S. household expenditures over the last hundred years. And a lot of it is pretty consistent. I mean, groceries way down, deflation in grocery stores, which is nice. But to me, the big outlier, clothing and footwear

has gotten way cheaper, as we know. Health care is an abomination. And there's a lot of people in this country that are very pissed off. I'm guessing that it's not people that listen to this podcast. But I was listening to, I listened to Joe Rogan and Bernie Sanders. I'm not sure why. Well, I guess it's drawing my podcast feed. I don't usually listen to Joe Logan or Bernie Sanders. But I was curious to hear what they had going on. So I listened to it. Have you ever listened to Joe Rogan podcast? Yeah. It's like, it's three hours.

I think it took 27 times to get through it. It's been along. So they spent a lot of their conversation talking about the problems in this country. And I know Bernie Sanders is like a political lightning rod. And I think he's a good man with good intentions, fighting for what's right and the inequality. I don't like a lot of his tactics, right? I don't think that going after success is the answer.

But the point is that there's a lot of people that are very pissed off. And in many ways, the system is. absolutely broken, especially healthcare. Now, I have no idea how to fix it. I don't even know what the problems are, right? This is like not what I'm into. But the only reason why I bring this up is because there was one part of the conversation. And this is something that I don't like when people do. So I'm being a little bit hypocritical here. There are people that work in a certain field that when they hear somebody say something that they don't like in the context of a three hour conversation can say, this person's an asshole. They don't know what they're talking about.

I work in field XYC. They mentioned field XYC for 30 seconds in passing. They're an idiot. I will not listen to another word they say. Right? Yeah. So one of the- Ben and Michael don't know what Palantir does. Get those guys out of here. Yeah, morons. Fair. One of the things that Joe that Bernie said that makes me upset. And it's just factually not true. And it's, it's, he has to know. He has to know it's not true and it doesn't matter because like every politician they say things to appease to their base. I get it. The thing that he said that immediately was like, wait, what? Was talking about the corporations, the rich and the powerful. And again, I agree with a lot of what he's saying. But who owns most of the stock market in this country?

What do you think he said? What is he? Black Rock and Vanguard. Vanguard, Black Rock, and State Street own 70% of the stock in this country. Obviously, it's a face pump. It's just like, and when you hear things like that, it is hard not to not dismiss everything he says, but just in general. There's enough wealth inequality stats out there. You don't need to use that kind of stuff that is.

Yeah, it's just weird that they keep saying, and it's not just him, something that is so obviously untrue. And for those of you who are listening, like, how is that untrue? If you're a newer listener, we are vanguard. It's the people. It's not Vanguard that is the corporate juggernaut, and they are, but these are index funds. It is funny that all these newer companies have said they democratize investing, Vanguard democratized investing, literally. So back to your chart about spending here.

I think the problem is that so it's amazing progress that groceries used to be such a big percentage of the budget. Now we're a tiny percent. Clothing and footwear went from a huge part of your spending to a tiny percent, right? Yeah, it's not all bad and it's not all good. But access to health care so that, like, people can just live and not die. Well, listen, but those things getting better, the vacuum has been filled by something else, right? It's health care. And I talked about this with Duncan a few weeks ago.

It's also just everything, luxuries have become necessities. Think about all this stuff we have to spend on now that people did in the past. iPhones and Internet and giant TV and door dash and streamers, SUVs and huge trucks, kids' activities. Think how much more money we spend on our kids, subscriptions. People think travel is a right now, not like a privilege. And I think all this stuff that was once a luxury is now a necessity, and that just makes life more expensive today. Yeah, so yeah. Go ahead. I'm sorry. We've used these before. The Wall Street Journal has another one that says they're in the top 10% of earners. They still don't feel rich.

I'll read the first one because this is my favorite. Lauren Fischer and her husband earn about $350,000 a year. They own their home and a vacation property. They ran out on Airbnb. They throw their three children play club sports and the family often grab to takeout after games. But when they, her kids head to college next year, they have to tap student loans and hunt for scholarships. They haven't been able to save enough for the college expenses for their kids, which should be around $75,000 a year per student for families at their income level. Read her quote. When I was younger, I wouldn't even fathom making this much money.

She's 47 today. But today I feel like we're just the normal run of the middle-middle-class family. And this is the kind of thing that is literally never going to go away. So this is, and this is the top 10% of earners. Yes. And this is a very, this is not an outlier. It doesn't matter what income level you're at. It's expensive to live.

Whether you're in the bottom, 10%, obviously, that's, you know, a different story. But this is the one of the defining stories of our time. It's obviously a factor of inflation and health insurance and the out of control. A lifestyle inflation, too. It's everything. It's everything. And it's, it's weird. Because we enjoy the luxuries of everyday life, but they're not luxuries anymore, as you mentioned.

And people are sick of it. Yeah. But the thing is this is, this mindset is only going to get worse because of the information age. It's not going to ever get better. Yeah, but I also don't think that this is a case of information distorting reality. I feel like this is real shit. For some people, certainly. But there's some people who I think the top 10% of earners.

So they said more than a quarter of people whose households earn between $200,000 and $300,000 a report, they are not very satisfied or not at all satisfied in their financial situation. There's people who legitimately deserve a break. But people in the top 10% of earners, I don't feel that. I don't feel sorry for them. Well, neither do I. And I don't think that you have to feel sorry for them. I think it's just the reality of life.

Yes. It's expensive. This is why we'll always have inflation. And this is why progress will always happen because people will never be satisfied. Yes. Good and bad thing. All right. I guess we've got to talk about tariffs again.

Kevin Gordon updated the tariff rates. And this is for a handful of countries. Japan, South Korea are the biggest ones. And the tariff rates from April 2nd, Liberation Day. and July 7th are basically the same for a lot of these companies, or the countries. Is the market ever going to really, I know the market told off for a little bit yesterday when Trump made these announcements, but I don't know. Do we have to care about this again, really?

I don't care. I don't care. The market just went on a historic run. Char Kim made a chart showing the roll and return since the bottom over time, and we're up 27% in the last whatever number of days it is. Yeah. I think the other chart was 60 days, by the way. not 80. Anyhow, so the fact that the mark was down 1% yesterday, big freaking what,

are you kidding me. We did get an email from someone who said that they are a daily green tea drinker. This guy, this guy buys green tea by the kilo. So he says he buys half a kilo at a time from China. Sounds kind of badass, right? Which is true. So he makes his purchase every six months, and he said it's his first month of his liberation date. He said when we went to buy it, the company added an extra 10% U.S. government tariff charge. So he went, here's the price, but then in the end, it's an additional. And I do think that's probably the way to play this for companies. Like, instead of just passing along the costs to consumers,

show it as a tax, and that way it's easier to take off. I like that. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about real estate. Wall Street Journal has a story about homeowners who gambled on lower rates are paying the price. I feel like you and I have been very consistent in this since we started.

of this podcast. We are not fans of timing the housing market. Don't do it. Like, if you can afford, buy, if you can't afford, don't buy. Doesn't matter what the rates are. Doesn't matter what housing prices are. That's a thing. And I still remember having this conversation in like early 2021 when people said, listen, man, I'm just going to wait for housing prices to fall back like 10% because they took off 20% and they were left in the dust forever. So it's kind of crazy. They show the mortgage rate stuff here. The stock market bottomed the same month. Mortgage rates hit 6% for the first time.

And we've been there ever since. Fall of 2022, mortgage rates hit 6%. And we've basically been in a 6 to 8% range ever since then. So they say Sean and Jennifer Glocker bought a townhouse in Oceanside Community in Ponte Verda Beach, Florida in 2023. Mortgage rate was 7.6%. But they were happy with the price inspected breaks to drop below 6% within a year. then they would refinance.

Hasn't happened. They said they can't refinance so they're not carrying it any longer. They have to sell. And of course, it's hard to sell a condo or townhouse in Florida right now. And they're probably going to sell it a loss.

Plus insurance rates are higher. I would have never thought mortgage rates would have been able to stay this high for this long without impacting prices more. But this is another thing why, like, you have to make sure you can carry the interest in the debt burden. Yeah, you can't gamble on interest rates falling

to be able to afford your living situation. That's not smart. So last week I said housing probably needs a recession to like make activity back here. But our friend Logan Motishami tweeted, listen, you don't want a recession now because rates would go lower and demand would pick up and inventory still isn't back to normal levels yet. Like you want inventory. So I think he's almost saying we need rates higher for longer to have inventory drive up before you get the rates to fall because demand is immediately going to come in to fill that void. Yeah. demand will swamp supply. That's what he's saying.

That's why even, like I said last week, even if housing prices fell, I wouldn't be worried at all because all it's going to take is for rates to fall for demand to come back. Can I tell you a local story and a personal story? Let's do it. I was, I haven't been on the Zillow app in my town in a while because I am not on the market for a house. And there's no. I check it all the time. Yeah, but you know what? I was actually going to say, not just that I'm not in the market for a house, but more specifically, I'm getting less.

and less notifications of, because I've turned on. So very few homes are hitting the market, and I was on the beach the other day with a friend of mine, and I got an alert, this house has hit the market. So I look at it, it's on the water, and I said to my friend, man, this is a sick house. I would love to be on the water. And he said, well, so why don't you buy it? I was like, well, it's, you know, it's like, I, my mortgage is 2.8%. It would make no financial sense to buy this house.

And he goes, yeah, but your kids are only going to be in the house with you for another 10 years, 10 to 13 years. It's like, why would you, if you want to be on the water, like, why would you wait? And I said, you son of a bitch. You're right. It's true. So my mother died when she was 56. your brother just died at a very young age. So for me, the clock is always ticking.

And that is the way that pulled my heartstrings. Like, why wait? That's what I always say a house is not a financial investment. It's a psychic investment. So, um... Right. If you ran the numbers and you said, listen, I'm going to be able to save less money and put less money in the stock market because I'm making this purchase.

And my mortgage rate is, or my mortgage monthly payment is probably going to go up 60%. Maybe it'll double. Oh, no. So let me tell, let me tell you the scenario. So my monthly payment, and I haven't run the exact numbers, but it would, it would triple, maybe, probably more. Okay. Because my current mortgages artificially low.

My house, my home, I bought it for a low price. I could sell it for a high price. The only way that I can make this purchase work is with, and fire listeners, close your ears, dorks, is with an interest only loan. Oh, yeah. And you know what? I'm going to go for it. Now, this is the only house in my town right now that is listed on the water.

It's the only one. I am not the only person that wants to be on the water. So I don't know if I'm going to get it or not. But I personally don't care. Now, it's not that you don't build with an interest only loan. It's not that you don't build equity. It's that you are paying interest only for the luxury of living wherever you live. and I am in a very good situation, thank God,

that I don't necessarily need for my primary residence to be the bulk of my equity like most people. So, yeah, in a spreadsheet, doesn't make sense. No, but life is not a spreadsheet. So I'm going to make an offer. Honestly, as a personal finance are, I sign off on this transaction because water gives you a premium to your life. It just does.

Yeah. Right? Yeah, I, I, I, I, this is one of those things where a spreadsheet would tell you like, Michael, what are you doing? But you're right, your life is, is, is another whole thing. And so like, if you run the numbers and you go, I can afford this monthly payment, even though I'm going to have to stop doing this, it's worth it for me. That's a tradeoff. So my mind changed completely because six months ago, because Robin's been wanting to live in the water. And I'm like, it just, it makes no sense.

Come on. It makes no sense. Why would we go from two eight to seven? We bought our house at a low price. We're going to pay a premium for this. It makes no sense. And then I saw this house. And then my friend said what he said,

you know what? So here's the thing. You buy the house, then you root for a recession. Right? So I don't know if I'm going to get it, but that happened. All right.

Good luck. Thank you. All right. So the worst housing market in America is Cape Coral, Florida. Cape Coral, Cape Coral. I don't know what's called. We actually stayed there last year.

Went to a water park there. Very nice. We stayed there for a couple days before we went to Marco Island for spring break. So a realtor there says, it's the worst housing market in America. I don't think it were at the bottom yet. I guess it was kind of a demand pulled forward situation. And they say home prices in that area have tumbled 11% in two years, the most of any major metro area.

But, and that sounds like a lot. Oh, my gosh, double-digit decline. The median home price soared 75% in three years in the pandemic. So even if you get a 10, 15%, and again, this is the worst housing market. in America. This is why even a small drop in housing prices does not relieve a lot of pressure for a lot of people because we had such a big run-up. And the areas that had the biggest run-up will, I'm sure, have the biggest fall in prices. But the run-up was so big, it doesn't really matter. Conquer. Everything is cyclical. I think anyone waiting for old housing prices

is, I think, I guess we've kind of moved past that. Yeah, not to beat this dead horse, but there is just more demand that supply, and it is a demographic story, and that's not cyclical. Okay. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal. Why Vanguard. Man, we are getting a lot of use out of our Wall Street Journal subscription this week. Yeah. Why Vanguard, champion of low-fee investing, joined the private markets craze.

Traditional money managers, after years of cutting fees, look to tap in to higher cost, private investments. But they did it's a long time ago, right? So I have two points here. All right, here's the lead. Vanguard Group grew into a $10 trillion financial colossus by pioneering simple, ultra low-cost investing. Its wildly popular index funds proved that people don't need expensive portfolio managers to pick their investments. These days, the company's most exciting new product is a striking departure from that playbook, a far way into the world of private markets where investors pay steep fees for access to complex deals that promise high returns. Okay.

So I have two, this wasn't, this was not a hit piece per se. It really wasn't. But it was like, oh, Vanguard sees the dollar signs. Two, two comments. Number one, they struck a deal with Harbor Vest in 2020, private equity company, well before the private markets craze of today. Yeah, because it was a big story at the time. Number two.

the best thing for end investors in private markets, I guess private equity specifically in this case, is for Vanguard to come in. Yes. Because what do you think they're going to do to fees? Yes. Vanguard will pull everyone else kicking the screening to their level or close to it. Yeah. So it's never going to be a 10 basis point business.

That is not the nature of these businesses. but there will be some fee pressure. So if you have the Vanguard option as the like this is looked at as the index or this is looked at as a low cost option, whatever it is, I can compare it to whatever else I invest in. I think that's a very reasonable, yeah, you want that as an alternative if this is the stuff you're investing in. Yep. All right.

Good one from Verdad Capital, who's been talking on private equity for a long time now. So he's still bullish? Not quite. he looked at the PE Fundamentals versus the median S&P company and he looked at the interest rates that they pay the interest as a percent of revenue EBIT down margins and free cash flow margins

and it is kind of funny that the S&P 500 just blows this stuff out of the water obviously these are different businesses right they're not invest private equity is investing in more stable I guess quality value type of investments right they're not the so the technology companies probably make a difference here Well, their investments are not necessarily growing at 40% a year.

Yes, but if you just looked at this and you said, this is the S&P versus another type of stock strategy, you'd say, of course, I'm investing the S&P out of the long. You wouldn't say, but so my question is, is it just the leverage? Is that what people want from private equity? Like, listen, I'm just getting the leveraged, whatever, small cap Russell 2000, the leverage S&P. Yeah, it's highly attractive, leveraged illiquid equity. Right. Yeah, it's good. It seems like to me like that's...

I just, what would stop a company from just vanguard saying, listen, we're going to leverage the S&P 500 of Russell 2000. And we're not going to show you the price. Regulation. We're going to show you the price once a quarter. Right? I think I would raise a ton of money. Probably would.

Like, we're not going to show you the value. But this is what we're investing and we're adding leverage on it. Right, I'd invest. I'm a hand up. I'm a sucker. I'd do it. I can't take the daily leverage on my screen. I haven't made fun of a survey in a while.

So here we go. This is from Charter. They look at high school drinking. And they look at by different age, 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. Right? And they show far fewer high schools are drinking, which I guess Gen Z is just a bunch of nerds. Like, come on, get on it. But look at this.

They show that in 1991, 55% of eighth graders, 13 and 14-year-old are drinking. 78% of 12-year-olds are drinking. That's wild. I mean, a 13-year-old to be drinking is pretty nuts. There was no way in a world in the 1990s that 55% of 8th creators were drinking alcohol. Guess what they were doing? Lying on surveys. I agree that young people are probably drinking less than they did than people in the past did.

There's no way that these initial numbers are correct. We got an email recently asking us to weigh in on the decline in spirit consumption and a lot of these... A lot of the stocks of these big companies are not doing well. Oh, they get in hand. I guess that makes sense. It does seem to be a secular, like, is this cyclical? I don't see why. I guess a lot of people have substituted with, you know, now that pot is legal,

doing the gummies and stuff. And not me. I'm still drinking. All right, quick, my quick diatribe on car payments, according to second quarter data crunched by Edmonds.com, the share of new vehicle buyers to commit to monthly payments of $1,000 or more. hit an all-time high of 19.3%, nearly one in five consumers. That is nuts.

Average payment is $756. One in five people signing up for $1,000 or more car payment. Okay. But that makes sense when you consider that the average is $756. How is the average $756? How? 8% or 10% car borrowing rates. Right?

It's funny, we don't talk as much. People talk about mortgage rates all the time. no one ever talks about the borrowing rates on auto loans because I guess you're not borrowing for quite as long, but it adds up that, you know, 8 or 10% on your auto payment. From the New York Times, here's a good thing. Gen Z is not drinking, but they are saving. New York Times says Gen Z is great at saving for retirement. Brinley Beckman is 23, but she's already thinking about retirement. She teaches ninth grade biology at Shelton School in Dallas and contributes 3% of her salary to an employee-sponsored retirement fund. and she hopes to increase her contribution by 1% per year. I want to start saving early because the more the money sits, the more it compounds, the more it's going to grow.

Amen, Brinley. Way to go. They say 20% of Gen Zs are saving for retirement, and they're contributing to 401k plans at higher rates than millennials did when they first enter the workforce, which makes sense. It also shows more Gen Z women are saving than Gen Z men. And they had another thing in this story about how the women are more likely to put into like the Roth IRA or the 41K, and the men are more likely to open a Robin Hood account.

And guess who's probably going to do better in that situation? The men. Probably on an average basis, but not in a median basis. How about that? Because you'll have a couple outliers? Probably neither. They'll be way more zeros than thousand percent returns. No offense, dudes.

All right. Tyler Cowen at the Marginal Revolution wrote about the new baby, what do they call? The Trump accounts or something? They're giving each baby $1,000 that it's born. Is this happening? Is this part of the bill or what's going on? here. As far as I know, right? All right. Well, this is awesome. So you get $1,000 that you're born. So he says, I guess employers can also do a contribution. I don't know how that's going

to work. But he's saying, let's say you get the initial $1,000, and between the employer and the parent, you had another $1,000 year. I think it's capped at $5,000 a year. He's showing the, after 18, 25, and 65 years, like how much that $1,000 grows to. So I think 18 years, 7% returns probably a pretty good starting point. That's like $36,000,000 that you could earn. Um, this is the thing with not only healthcare costs, but student loans and buying your first house and renting your first apartment. Like, this totally makes sense to it. And imagine when, uh, private equity gets in here. Well, in that case. Even high returns. All right. How many movies you did you see this week? Um, so I was thinking about this. So now that Kobe is away at,

at a sleepway camp, I, I have much, it's much easier for me at night to go out. So I, isn't it, isn't it amazing how much more efficient you are with your time when the kids are away? So our kids are our grandparents last week. It's insane how much you can get done without kids. And I guess that's probably why all the hustle people like don't have children that talk about their morning routines and such. Because you just have so much more time to fill. Why would you not rub banana peals on your face and dip your head and ice if you don't have kids? So I thought about seeing Megan 2.0 last night. And this is interesting. because the first Megan, which is a horror movie about a robot, did very well,

relatively speaking, for a horror movie. It's one of these Jason Blum movies. And the second one bombed. And it didn't get bad reviews, but I had no interest in seeing it. And so he came on the town to talk about, like, he wanted to talk to Matt Bellany about why it bombed. Four weeks before the movie came out, they thought that it made. might have potential to do better than F1 at the box office, which is hilarious.

But it goes to show that even experts that track these things very closely have no idea, I was speaking with Josh about IPO pricing and how is it sometimes that they're so wrong. And I made the analogy, I'm like, dude, how much data do scouts have on quarterbacks, like scientific data on arm angles on whatever you can imagine. Right. What's a hit rate? 25% maybe if they're lucky.

They just don't know. So he was talking about why Megan Baum did it. You know, they could speculate. But like at the end of the day, you just don't know. And he said, that's the old William Golden line about movies. Like, no one knows nothing. Yeah. So why does some work?

Some doesn't? He doesn't know. I had the broker in my house just like, hey, like, what do you think we can get for this house? And he was like, these are the comps. but I don't know. Like, we could list it here, and it's a range of probably here on the floor and the hot.

Like, we don't know. It depends. Anyway, I didn't see Megan, but, because the times didn't work out, but the point that you made is, yeah, I have so much free time. I could say it tonight. Might say it tonight.

So I saw Jurassic last week, and you know how much I love dinosaurs. Do you know how much of dinosaurs? I didn't know that. Maybe we never spoke about this. But like a lot of them. Does anyone hate dinosaurs, though? I don't think so.

Dinosaurs have to have the highest approval rating of anything. Yeah, I don't think so. I remember being a little boy in the library, sitting on the floor, it's like looking at dinosaur books. I love dinosaurs. And so when Jurassic came out when I was eight years old, I was like blown away, as was every other... I still remember going to the theater to see it.

We got interviewed by the local newspaper after we came out to ask us what we thought of it because it was such a big deal. And what do you say, two stars? Not realistic? I can't remember. I loved it. My son wants to go see Jurassic World so bad.

Okay. Whatever the name is called. So I love these movies, and as listeners know, I have a high tolerance for dog shit. The last Jurassic World Dominion was horrendous, and I remember saying in this podcast, everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. Yeah, that was really bad. And unfortunately, I feel the same way about this one. Ooh.

It was two hours and 15 minutes. The plot, which I guess is besides the point, but it just felt so nonsensical. So nonsensical. like that's the best they can do. A lot of the dialogue was horrendous. A lot of like the parts where they played the music that are supposed to like give you goosebumps just felt out of place and awkward and weird got no bumps. Now I will say the dinosaur scenes. Fantastic. Some of the CGI stupendous really was into that. But I wonder like did I age out of Jurassic? And I think they aged out of me. I don't think like I just think it just got so bad. But

It doesn't matter because... They ran out of ideas, probably. He's got a 52 and Rotten Tomatoes, so it's not doing that. The audience doesn't like it that much. It sucked. Scott Mendelsohn, who's sub-sec I subscribe to for box office stuff, said, Universal and Ambulance Jurassic World Rebirth proved dynamite over the long holiday weekend, netting $91.5 million over the Friday the Sunday portion of a $147 million Wednesday

to Sunday launch, with $318 million worldwide. have the biggest global launch of the year. The biggest global launch of the year. And it stunk. And word of mouth, because it's getting bad reviews. Word of mouth didn't. 6.3 in IMDB, not great. Word of mouth didn't matter.

The theater was full. Full. Oh, by the way, it was, how about this? Maybe this is too much detail, but it's my podcast and I'm talking. Worst movie experience in my life up there. I saw it in Lindbrook Theater on a very big screen, which was great. But for some reason, the theater was, was completely full. Like, I don't know if there was an empty seat. And the average age

was call it the young teenager. And they were talking the entire time. And I couldn't tell whether the sound was coming from the screen or around me. It was like ambient noise the entire time. And also it was one of those theaters where the seats move up and down, as most do. But the gears on the seats were so loud. So it was like, ooh. Yeah. Needle of WD 40. Yeah. You hold that the entire. So anyway, it just sucked. But here's what did himself. I hate going to a theater that's full of people. It was packed and there was clapping at the end. Like it was a lot for me. So they did the trailers and then they did like, all right, we're at the movies.

Everybody silenced their phones. And then another trailer came on the screen. I thought, is it a projector broken? What's happening? It was a teaser for The Odyssey. It's like maybe a minute, maybe less. Cannot wait. Did you know that that Bernthal's in it?

I did not know that, but that actually improves it in my eyes now. Okay. I don't really have an opinion. on the Odyssey. Either way. Just, you're going to see The Odyssey and you're going to love The Odyssey. All right. I forgot to mention this last week. I the two

the second to last time I was in Chicago, I watched a working man. And the last time when I was on the plane, I said, hey, did I just watch this movie? That's got to be Jason State the movie. Dude, I have no memory of it. And that's my type of movie. That is my type of movie. I watched it two weeks prior and I have

zero memory of it. Okay. And speaking of airplane movies, I'm ready to call it best airplane movie star, maybe of all time as a stretch, but like, for my- Give me a range of when the movies took place. For my money, this is the best working- When was this person the biggest movie star? I want to guess. When did he peek? Yeah. He might still be peeking. How about that? All right, so you're just going to say, Gerard Butler? Yeah. Who is it? Okay. You're too easy. So I watched

I don't know how this one missed me I watched London has fallen I was kind of like sleeping through it It doesn't matter Probably saw 40% of the movie Awesome Awesome movie That was like a sequel to the White House

Is Falling, right? I think those might be different movies Pretty bad All right so anyway I wanted you to just give me a minute And let me run through Girard Butler's resume

First of all And this is not an airplane movie But the Phantom of the Opera You don't know this about me Huge Phantom of the Opera guy My parents took me when I was six, so I've extreme nostalgia for that, for that Broadway show. I never saw it. Let's move past it.

All right, it starts in 2006 with a little movie called 300. Zach Snyder, maybe you heard of him. Then he's done law abiding citizen. You know that one? Jamie Fox. I remember that one. Okay. How to Train Your Dragon, whatever.

That's not for me. The animated one. All right, machine gun preacher. Olympus has fallen. I guess that's the first one. That's one I saw, yeah. London has fallen. He had a really bad rom-com with Catherine Hegel in there somewhere.

By the way, now mind you, yeah, it's called The Ugly Truth. There's a million movies in between that are pure trash, but whatever. We don't talk about those. Machine Gun Preacher. Geostorm. Den of Thieves. Greenland, Plain. Den of Thees, Pantara, and most recently, How to Train Your Dragon, the live-action movie.

Gerard Butler is in the Hall of Fame, maybe even in the Mount Rushmore of movies. Okay, so we saw How to Train Your Dragon. My kids really wanted to see it. Your review helped. I went to see it. I think it's the first time I didn't take a nap in a movie with my kids. Right? It was very good. He was good in it. I'd only seen bits and pieces of the cartoon. My son knew everything that was going to happen because he'd seen the cartoon, but I thought it was just really, really well done. It was a huge upside surprise. I had no expectations. My kids loved it. It was, it was, yeah, it was a very good movie. I have one last one. So you mentioned time in my hands going to see movies.

The Megan 2.0 didn't work out last night, so I decided to fire up another horror movie that came to my radar thanks to arts. That's Bill Arts. A clown in a cornfield. It's an It's an IFC shutter production. And, you know, cornfields are scary.

I'm not a sure. That sounds like an AI made movie for sure. I was, yeah, it does. I was too scared as a child to see children of the corn. I think I watched it with my eyes closed, but I don't think I ever got through. This was very creepy. Too scary for me.

There's something very scary about the cornfield. Anyway, this movie was pure trash, not even so funny. It was bad. Just terrible. It was like if ABC family made a horror movie. It was terrible. So for my horror fans out there, you could skip clown in a cornfield. All right.

How to Train Your Dragon is one. We watched Sinners. It's on HBO Max now. I'm just, I'm at the point in my life where I don't even wait to rent movies anymore. wait until they're hit streamers. That's how old I am. And so my wife had literally no clue what this movie was about. I knew, like, a little bit.

I tried not to read too much about it, but I knew essentially what it was about. And this is two different movies in one. The first hour is a certain movie. The next hour and 15 minutes is another movie. And I told my wife, I'm like, there's a turn coming at some point. I don't know when, but it's a turn coming. And she was like, wait, what? And

that was just a really good movie. It was just really, really well done. not even a nitpick if I could make like a suggestion I still I don't really ever know about the twin thing the same actor playing the same role I know why they did it

I thought they probably could have just had Michael B. Jordan and have an older or younger brother played by someone else but it was still like it worked it was kind of crazy how flawless it was with them both in the movie I feel like the only times it's ever really worked with the same actor playing twins

is adaptation with Nicholas Cage I don't ever see in that one Charlie Coffin movie. That's a really good movie. I love that movie. Love that movie. And then the prestige, but that's kind of more of a hidden twin kind of thing.

That's one of my favorite movies ever. Is that like corny to say that? No, very good. I rewatch it recently. It's still pulled up. But Sinners was just, I mean, that's a 7.6, probably 7.7.

Just a great movie. And it, again, it was two movies and one. So people are people going to say, wait, how do you just say that's a really great movie and give it a 7-6? I think in the high sevens is a very,

good score. So do I. Right? Listen, to get in the eights for me, you've got to like really be rear, you know. You reserve eights for coming of age movies. It's hard to get an eight. I'm a tough grader on movies. Little Miss Sunshine.

That's all right. That's a decent one. But listen, there's not that many eights anymore. That's the thing with movies. There's a lot of eight TV shows. It's not a lot of eight movies. Like the bear was an eight point seven. Why are you still watching that?

Just bail. You don't need to watch it. They're doing another season. Season four, I finished it. Terrible. Awful. Garbage. Did we talk about tires?

We did. Okay. All right. We did. I liked it. Watch tires. All right. I left a lot of that show.

Oh. You know, last episode, did we wish people a happy Fourth of July? I don't think we did. Well, I hope you had a happy, how was your Fourth of July? Good? All right. Good. Me too.

Weather was amazing. Well, it could be bad. All right. Thank you to Duncan and the whole squad on the production team. Thank you for listening. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. I don't want listening.

Lawrence, yeah, yo. Y E, I'm sorry. Yo, yo, I apologize. Anyhow, he is on Twitter. His handle is more to that. He wrote a book called The Inner Compass. I got it. Cultivating.

Okay, there it is. Cultivating the courage to trust yourself. And it's only 100 pages or so. not to brag. My inner compass is perfectly calibrated. I trust myself. I'm not going to read this book. But I did read the first five pages

and I even put in pen a line that was excellent. Maybe I'll bring it on the show next time because I don't have the book next to me. But it is, it looks good. He also sent a little, his little figurine, which my daughter took. I read this book in, like, one sitting. It's very, very good.

His writing is so clear and concise and well done. It's self-help without, is it self-help? It's just, it's not bullshit self-help. Yes. It's not meditate. Yes. His writing is very good. So yes, great call.

Okay. Get the book. All right, Animal Spirits at thecompannews. Thank you for listening. Hope Paul as well. Take care of yourself and each other. Shout to Jerry Springer. Bye.

See you next time. Go ahead.