Animal Spirits Podcast - A Confusing Year (EP.284)

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

On today's show we discuss the impact of interest rates on business formation, the opposite of stagflation, why there was no spillover from the crypto crash, why the S&P 500 is not the economy, why remote work might bring down rental inflation and much more.   Find complete shownotes on our blogs...​ Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense​ Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor​ Like us on Facebook​ And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.​     (Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, received compensation from the sponsor of this advertisement. 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. 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.)​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Y Charts. Michael, just yesterday I was using the Y Charts comp tables. Okay? I mentioned this before. So this is where you can pull up an index or a group of stocks, and you can break them down by characteristic. So I just pulled up the Russell 3,000, which is basically the total U.S. stock market from this year. And I wanted to see what the year-to-date returns were, because I was looking at some stocks that are just gotten hammered this year. Here's what I found.

One out of every six stocks in the U.S. stock market has down 50% or worse this year. So this is not like all-time highs because a lot of these. Stocks peaked last year. This is just this year alone. One out of every four stocks is down 40% or worse. Alternatively, one out of every four stocks is also positive on the year. 25% of stocks are positive this year, 75% are down. That's actually higher than I would have thought. What do you think? 25% of stocks up this year? Well, energy, healthcare. What else is on the list? That was pretty much it. Year-to-day return is negative 16%. I also found, I think it was something like 10% of stocks were down 60% or worse. It's a really high number.

It's a huge, huge, wide range of outcomes this year, is what I'm saying. We're getting to the end, where we get to do a little mental reset. I'm preparing myself for year-end pieces and lessons learned. It's coming. Okay. If you want to learn more about Y charts, they were still kind enough to give 100 of our listeners free access to their professional platform until December 16th. You still have time for that.

Wait. A hundred people haven't grabbed that yet. I'm insulted. Maybe they have. I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. Click on the link, just in case. You can't confirm that it hasn't been filled up.

I can't confirm or deny. I don't know. I didn't ask them. So anyway, go to whitecharts.com. Tell them, Animal Spirits, sent to you and get 20% off your initial subscription. 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. Michael Battenick and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions

and do not reflect the opinion of Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Ritthold's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. It is a sick Lee time in my area. What about you, Ben? You got a lot of sick little kids running around? Yes, for the last two weeks.

Everyone on our houses had something. I think maybe it's nationwide. It's going global. Got two kids downstairs. I said, if you need me, I'm unavailable for the next hour. hanging out with Ben. Daddy's podcasting it. Your Do Not Disturb, sign up. Tell me everything that you need right now, because I will be unavailable with peace and love. Here's the Cheerios, the goldfish, the movies. Logan's watching Simon. Kobe is watching God

knows what. Did they get into the Santa Claus movies yet? Because they got a new Santa Claus series on Disney plus. Oh, did you watch? Is there a new Christmas story? Yeah, I don't think I can watch it though. Okay. I don't think you can make a remake a classic like that. What about I saw Will Ferrell and your boy Ryan Reynolds thing? Did you watch that? I made it five minutes. I can't do it a musical. Oh, okay. I'm a huge Ryan Reynolds. I can't do musicals. It's not my thing. For the show today, I thought about wearing my Mike Francesa Christmas sweater.

Is that Christmas sweater or is it a holiday sweater? In other words, is it too early if I wore today. Would that a bit of faux pa? Yeah, you got to wait until after Thanksgiving. Okay. I thought so. All right. So last night, Ben, I was in the hospital. Okay. Again. Monday night is my basketball game. But it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Is someone else blow their Achilles out? No, a friend that I play with. he's got shoulder problems. He's got that, what do you call that? It's a loose shoulder. I call it a loose shoulder. It's rickety. It's come out four or five times.

It's like Mel Gibson and lethal weapon where he can separate his shoulder. Actually, I was thinking of Tommy and best and the best. So I drove him to the hospital. He's like walking like this. It was awful. I was trying to be a good supporter friend, but there's something really you could say when somebody's excruciating pain. So he separated his shoulder, basically. Yeah, it's just a lasty situation. Your time is coming. Mine? To getting hurt, playing basketball. Trust me, it's coming. Don't cast that on me. Sorry, it's true.

It's going to happen. We get to the hospital. I put him in the wheelchair, and as I'm wheeling him in, one of the gentlemen who, I guess, welcomes patients, said, are you, Michael? Big fan of the compound. Nice. Yeah, recognize it at the hospital.

However, it took them legitimately like 45 minutes to get him some pain medicine. That's tough. And he's like, I'm trying to find a doctor. Can you get him some Tylenol? Anyway, he's okay. But it's never good being in the hospital, ever, ever, ever, unless you're having a baby, I guess. The secret to getting in front of the line of the ER is telling you have chest pains.

They have to see you right away to see you have chest pains. That is a good life act. I don't know that. That's how you hack the ER. So we're getting until the end of the year. We've hit reset in the markets. We've hit reset in the economy. I feel like a lot of people are reflecting on the ramp up we had in this huge bull market,

and all the other side in the bear market. And I think people are trying to reflect and figure out, did we go wrong somewhere? Because especially for the technology stuff, you had just this amazing utopia period. And now the other side of it is layoffs and destruction of money. And I think people want to figure out, what did we miss? What's the reason for this? And a lot of people are now saying it was all interest rate story. Yeah, that's true.

Low interest rates created this whole thing. Low interest rates gave us Uber. They gave us Lyft. They gave us Airbnb. Are you going to take the other side of this? You about to take those out? I want to just say that I don't think interest rates are ever. I think we went through a huge period of technological change, and I think that the iPhone

was the really big thing here. We had a lot of technological change in a short period of time, and I don't think interest rates alone can help with the creation or destruction of companies. Just think about this. I'm not saying interest rates didn't play a part. They certainly did. I don't like the zag. You're overthinking it.

Venture capital funding has nothing to do with interest rates. Startup firms are not borrowing money. Venture capital investors are not borrowing money to invest in them. There's no leverage involved. That's all capital, okay? Looking for returns, but that has nothing to do with interest rates. Okay, I want to Wait, hi-in, no, stop right there. It has nothing to do with interest rates. Of course it does. When bonds are yielding zero, people go seeking for alternatives. Come on. I don't like this rewriting the narrative. No one goes from bonds to venture capital. Okay, but listen to this. They're not replacing their money market funds with venture capital, but everything is pushed out on

the spectrum. But I'm just saying, I don't think you can say none of these companies would have been founded if it wasn't for low interest rates. 1965 to 1979. Interest rates average 7%. They went to a high of more than 10%. These are the companies founded in that period of high and rising interest rates. Best Buy, Rite Aid, The Gap, Wendy's, Bedbath and Beyond, Starbucks, Atari, Golden Corral, which, I mean, buffets.

Gold and Corral. Wait, what does this have to do with anything? Nobody's saying that companies aren't. Dude, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, AutoZone, Home Depot. Nobody say companies don't get started when. interest rates are high. It doesn't halt business creation. People are saying the only reason that these companies made it is because low interest rates allowed them to offer free money. It's true. Ben, there was three billion dollars I was put into Byrd. What's the company worth

now? 100 million bucks. But no one borrowed money to put that. Here's a thing. Every time there's a period of technological change, people throw money at stuff. This happened going back to the 1800s of railroad stocks. This happened every time in the 1920s when there was all this new retail stuff and cars coming on board. Every time there's a technological change. change, this stuff happens and it has nothing to do with interest rates. That's true, too. In the 1990s, interest rates were 6% or 7% the entire decade. What is the technological change for a scooter? The GPS? I'm not defending. No, but you can't say that this smartphone didn't totally change and give us the option for a million different businesses. Without the

smartphone, there are no scooters, there's no DoorDash, there's no Uber. I'm saying we had a period of technological change that coincided with low interest rates. And I know that the cost of capital matters. it does matter yes people can do crazy things when interest rates are high of course but we're seeing it right now should I invest in I don't know sales force or should I just put my money in one year notes and get 5% of course it matters yes it does but I don't entirely disagree with you that crazy shit happens absent low zero interest rates but I think that for the current regime that we're coming out of my whole point is low interest rates were a huge portion of the equation It's a lazy argument to say that low interest rates caused everything.

I don't think you can say that it caused everything. It caused most of it. I think you could say that. I do. It was 6% interest rates when the tech bubble happened in the dot-com era. I'm saying when technological change happens, people don't care what interest rates are. They will rush into that no matter what. Also true.

All right. What was the technological revolution? You don't think that we've seen a massive technological change in the last 10 to 15 years? The iPhone was massive. It allowed everything to be built on top of it. but that was kind of a long time ago. That was the entire 2010s. We were dealing with that new ecosystem.

That's what I'm saying. I think that was a bigger impetus for change than interest rates. What was the big breakthrough technology in 2018 to today? Other than TikTok. The pandemic was the biggest. Think about the vaccine. That was not a big technological breakthrough. I think the pandemic was the big thing.

Think about it. Mortgage rates were low before the pandemic started, and we didn't have a crazy housing market. Then the pandemic happens. And then, so I'm saying these things, be part of it, but they're not the match that gets things started. There's always something else. The human nature thing doesn't care as much by interest rates. When companies can borrow for 100 basis points over a 10-year treasury that's under 1%, they get lazy. Of course, but I'm saying

the lead up to that, the whole powder keg that happened, was not all low interest rates. It was the gasoline on the fire. Now explain Japan. This is the first time I've ever used that. I'm just saying Japan is at low interest rates for 40 years. Nothing like this. Moving on. Where do we move on to? Got to talk about the Fed. We're talking about interest rates. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Forgot about this. Kathy Jones, this was, man, I'm losing track of time. When was this? Was this on Monday? No, it couldn't have been on Monday. Anyhow, last week, Bullard talked about a potential for a 7% Fed funds rate. The market responded big time. So to your question about will the market

look past the Fed, will they not believe him? I'm not saying that this will always be the case. Eventually, the market will call the Fed's bluff. But the market responded directly to Bullard talk that the yields went up, stocks fell. It was like an instant reaction. I'm calling bullshit. There's no way we ever get to 7%. I mean, unless the next three inflation prints go back up. You could call bullshit, but I'm saying in the past few weeks, we were having the conversation. Will the market believe what the Fed says or whether it look past it? I'm just saying we have our answer for now. The 10-year bond is at 3.8% today.

If the Fed goes to 7% on short-term bonds, we will have never seen an inversion like we're seeing today. There's 1% chance we see 7% rates. Because if that happens, then we're going into a depression or something. There's no way. No, no, no, no. There would have to be so many more hikes to get there. I'm sorry, but there's no way that's ever happening.

If we get to 7% of the Fed funds rate, the S&P is going in 2000. I'm sorry. If we get to 6% of the Fed funds rate, every, had governors out of a job because there's no way that happens. I'm sorry. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'm sorry, not in this instance. All right. Stop apologizing. Sam R at the T-K-R. Is it T-K-K-R? Is it T-K-K-R? Is it T-K-R? What did you say it? T-K-R. T-K-R. It's capital T-K-R. Now I'm sorry. That has to be ticker. Okay. Regardless. Don't make fun of someone because they can't pronounce a word because that means they learned it reading. Big fans of Samarrel here. He always has stuff in his,

either charts or data in his or a take in his newsletter at SubSAC, which I think you should subscribe to, that I always kind of go, I wish I would have thought of that. Here's a good one. This is from BlackRock, it looks like. Yeah. So he talked about how he's comparing the S&P in the economy. He's saying the S&P is more about the manufacturer and sale of goods. US GDP is more about providing services. It was interesting. More than 60% of S&P 500 earnings are from goods, whereas the other 40% are a little less than 40% of services. The U.S. economy, on the other hand, is basically the opposite. This is a great one. 30% goods and then 60% services and then 9% other, whatever that means. The whole thinking of, you talk about the stock market

gaslighting us about the economy and not understanding and being off kilter. I think this whole goods and services thing is a big part of it because we've seen the inflation piece go from goods to services recently. And I think that's why, because of this makeup of the stock market and the economy, I think that's why it's playing tricks on us a little bit. This would have to be services. So my wife wants to get a mud room in our house. And I said, in this economy, we don't have a basement. And so when we come home from upstate or anywhere, we just take our shit off and dump it right in the... Of course. Is that called a foyer? I don't really have a foyer, but is that what it's called when you walk into a house?

Yeah, over the entryway. But yes, no, I agree. We have a very little mudroom. And the one thing we say about our house is, man, we wish we had two times as high. Because kids have so much stuff, especially in the winter. We have three kids. They all have snow pants and boots and hats and mittens. But so our contractor gave us a quote as if it's still 2021.

Early 2021, no less. And I said, hey, did you not get the memo? Inflation is rolling over. Fed's raising rates. Time to lower your... So I am timing my mudroom. I told Robin, get three more quotes. There's no way. There's no way. I think my exact words were I'm not spending X to put my sneakers

away. Sorry. If the Fed raises rates to 7%, you can cut that in half by 40%. You can cut that in half almost. Yeah, I want a Black Friday deal. Sorry, not going to do it. Have you been getting all the emails? Every other email in my inbox is 60% off this, 70% off this, early Black Friday. You know what I desperately need? My best call of the year. Yeah, that was a good call. I'm always embarrassed. If you saw my pots and pans, you'd say, what's wrong with you? What are you an animal? Why they're old? I haven't replaced my pots and pans just to my wedding. which was 2013. We've probably done some of them, but...

So that's what I'm doing. This holiday season, it's going to be a luxus to remember for my pots and pans. They're expensive, too. A whole set of pans. It's not cheap. How much?

I don't know. Not cheap. It's been 15 years since I got one, I guess. Oh, you're behind too. Is your stuff flaking? I feel we've gotten a handful of new ones occasionally. All right, so it looks like we now know the answer about crypto and this potential spillover.

There's none. There are in terms of. himself, stocks that are impacted, obviously, Coinbase, I wouldn't say that's a spillover, but like Silvergate Bank, which a lot of its deposits, I don't know how much, but I think the majority are crypto companies. That stock is just getting destroyed. This is from the Allstate Journal. It says from a high water market of $3 trillion a year ago, there's been $2.2 trillion wiped out from crypto, and the stock market alone last week added $2.7 trillion dollars between Thursday and Friday. That was when we had the big update, I think.

U.S. stocks have $43 trillion market cap, global equities are at $96 trillion, basically saying crypto is not the drop in the bucket anymore, but there's no systemic risk. And I guess that's one good thing you can hang your head on with crypto. It's not spilling over into the macro. There's obviously micro problems that it's causing. But I think you mentioned some crypto companies being in trouble. I think it's probably safer at this point to own crypto and it is to own a crypto company. Well, what's a crypto company? Well, any of them, would you feel safe investing in any single crypto company right now? What's your time horizon?

No, I'm just kidding. More than five minutes. So Joe Wisenthal tweeted that Coinbase has 17% yields to maturity on their bonds now, which, who's buying Coinbase bonds? If you're investing in crypto, I don't know, man. Give them credit. What was the rest of the tweet? Oh, he said 17% yields.

Does anyone farming this? It's pretty good. So look at that. I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but Robin Hood and Coinbase from all-time highs are both down 88%-ish. They're both down almost the exact same amount from highs. and I don't know, don't you just feel like owning any company that is related to crypto right now just has the enormous blowout potential.

Yeah, well, duh. Yes. By the way, Tuesday, 9.30 a.m. CoinBass has a market cap. I think it's below $10 billion. Still feels kind of high. But the thing is... Kind of high.

No, it doesn't. I don't know. I'm just... Here's the thing. With all of their competitors blowing up, You would assume in a rational world that this would be a good thing for Coinbase. FTX blowing up, it should be a great thing for Coinbase. Their business.

Well, except if nobody's trading crypto right now. Yes. I guess it's going to have to just be crypto prices to go up for these stocks to work. But I don't know about any crypto company right now that makes sense. So the big thing this year, everyone is predicting it's going to be stagflation. That means low growth, high inflation. That's the quadrant you do not want to be in in the economy. Who's this everyone?

You keep throwing this out. Everyone says this. Everyone says that. I think that you have a boner. I don't know what I was using. I was looking for another word, but I couldn't think of any of one. I think you have a boner for these people that you're singling out. What goes? I feel like your analogy doesn't really work there, but I was looking for, I was racking my brain for a PG-13 version of the word. I'm not getting aroused by everyone. You don't think there's been a lot of people predicting stagflation this year. When I say everyone, I'm talking about the macro people. Come on, let's be honest. It's like the macro Twitter people. That's everyone. As far as we're concerned, that's everyone. Here's the thing. What if inflation keeps falling and growth accelerate? So this is from the Atlanta Fed GDP now. They put an estimate at what, 4.4% for real GDP for the next quarter. They were negative earlier in the year for a while. Yeah, I don't know how great their forecasting model is. But if growth is accelerating at the same time as inflation is falling, that seems to be the opposite of what most people have been thinking it was going to happen in terms of the macro tourist, which is everyone. You also remember, when I say everyone, it's quotes. Everyone in quotes. Come on. That's a quote thing. I think probably part of this is just a whipsaw from before when we had the negative GDP quarter. The snapback right now is probably you average those

and we have just decent growth. So Connorsend tweeted, automobiles are coming back finally. If he says if automobile sales in November, December, meet pace with October's rate, it will translate into 10% quarterly jump. For the purposes of the calculation of GDP growth, if we annualize that figure, automobile sales represent 3% of GDP. That alone would be between one and one and a half percent. to GDP this quarter. So basically, we had underwhelming car sales before. It's a huge part of the economy. If that snaps back because we finally have some to sell, then that will be a huge component of this. But I think if you just average out the negative quarters with a positive quarter, we get like an average. Is that fair? Car sales are 3% of GDP. Interesting. I don't know if I would

have guessed more or less. Which is a pretty big number. I feel like people might call car shopping in 2023. All of the cars that were bought, what if you're like, you know what? I made it. I'm on the side. I'm ready to sell out with the old and with the new. What do you think? Did you buy your car? Leased, but I got it right before things got crazy in the car market. So I probably got another 18 months or so of my lease. But it sounds like we've been four or five million new card units under what you would expect for the previous trend to be. So if those come back online, you're right. It seems to be prices should subside. man should come back. Who knew that a good car lease was an inflation hedge? I feel

extraordinarily good about what I'm paying for my Jeep. I know I mentioned this earlier in the show, but, or in a previous show. I feel like you give your Jeep payment like once every other episode now. This is only my second time. I'm very proud of that. It was a pretty good hedge until you have to roll it over again. Then maybe it's higher. All right. Call it continued a tweet. This is from Bank of America. There is no consistent pattern to economic trends right now, says B of A. The job market is hot. Consumer spending is solid, but housing is weakening even faster normal. Is this unusual? Yes. Speaking of retail sales, 1.3% increase from the previous month. Not bad, huh? People are still spending money a little. 1.3% was the highest increase since

February? When is the consumer going to slow down? Well, this is from the Wall Street Journal. Great question. 1.7 trillion dollars is the excess saving estimate. They think based on current spending trends, it'll last about 9 to 12 more months of spending to get the excess down. I don't think people are going to spend their excess savings and then go, all right, we're good. That's enough. Don't you think the pendulum swings further and people just spend down most of their savings to keep the ball rolling a little bit, assuming the economy doesn't slow too much? I see what you're saying, because it's very hard to be like, yeah, all right, now we're going to dial it down. You move the goalpost, so then you don't want to go backwards, but where is the

money going to come from? Credit card debt. People are going to go to debt. I think you're going to go to debt. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. Before the pandemic hit, household saved 8.8% of their disposable income. That jumped to 16.8% in 2020, highest rate ever, obviously. 2021, it went down to a little less than 12%. Now, it stands at 3%. Now, have you seen this chart crime that everyone is posting? Everyone. Literally everyone. Without air quotes. Okay. So personal savings rate versus credit card debt. And it shows the personal savings rate in the pandemic went skyrocketing. Credit card debt crashed, which was a good thing. People were paying off their credit card debt during a pandemic, which is crazy to think about. Now

credit card debt is coming back and the personal savings rate has crashed. So it's in the opposite. This is way worse than a misdemeanor. This is like a federal crime of a chart crime. Federal. I break it down. Why? I don't like it sound too nerdy, but this is a stock versus flow thing. You're taking one point in time thing versus savings rate is something that builds on itself. The other thing is, you can't just look at debt on its own. You can't look at debt unless it's in relation to something. So income or assets, you can't just look at it in those terms. So yes, this looks like a scary chart and it makes it look like the consumer is screwed. Let's look at some charts and show why this is bunk. And I think that this needs to be debunked,

okay? I'm doing a lot of debunking here. You didn't really believe me on my interest rate debunking. I'm debunking this shark crime. You did not successfully debunk. Sorry. You never believe me on that, but it's true. Okay, so look, this is from the New York Fed. It shows the type of debt in its composition over time. So you can see credit card debt is at 6%. Basically throughout time, it's still there. It's not like credit card debt has exploded as a higher proportion of debt. It's moved up with the rest of the debt. Next one. What a sheep you are. Percentage of balance, days, delinquent 90 days plus by loan type. Credit card delinquencies are falling. They're not rising. Same thing with student loans, which makes sense.

Auto loans, everything, the only thing coming up is like revolving home equity. line of credit, but credit card debt delinquencies are still falling. Not bad. Look at the number of consumers with new foreclosures and bankruptcy. Now, obviously, these numbers crashed during the pandemic because basically no one was allowed to foreclose or go bankrupt. Look at how low these are compared to history. You still have a lot of room to get back to normal for these for bankruptcies and foreclosures. Then look at the household debt service has a percentage of disposable income. That's come up a bit, but it's not even close to anywhere we saw in the 90s or 80s, which was pretty good economies as far as I'm concerned. I'm not worried about the consumer yet.

Could the consumer get in trouble in the future? Yes, but does this all of a sudden, because credit card debt is back on trend and savings rates have fallen in an highly inflationary environment? Does that mean the consumer is screwed? I don't think so. Not yet. I think you're spot on. I think what the everyone they would say is, yeah, exactly.

Look how low everything is. And once they went out of money, the artificial money that's gone, all of those delinquencies and everything that looks good now. I will not look good in 12 months, which is possible. Other counterpoint. What if inflation falling actually helps people's finances a little? People have gotten raises, and what if inflation falls and that actually evens things out a little bit if we're looking for the positives here?

Well, inflation is falling. It is. That's what I'm saying. So if inflation goes from 8% a year to 3% a year in 2023, and people have still got those raises that they got, that would seem to be a good thing to me. That'll help people a little bit. I don't know exactly how this question is framed, but Bespoke tweeted, since the New York Fed started its survey.

consumer expectations in 2013, there has only been one month where sentiment towards the stock market was lower. Probability of higher stock prices. How long in the future do you think they're looking for that? How far out? I don't know. I don't say a year. I'm making that up.

I don't know. That's a reasonable guess. Nobody thinks the stock market is going to be higher. Which is kind of what happens when stocks are falling. When stocks are rising, people think stock market is going to keep rising. When stocks are falling, I think it's going to keep falling. Everyone is a momentum trader. That's right.

When it comes to sentiment. So inflation, we're looking at the average price of gas. It's crashing, no? It's a good old-fashioned crash. We got about $5 a gallon as a national average, and it's now 360-ish. What are you in New York? We were $3.95 this morning. I haven't got gas in a while. I feel like if you did like a family feud surveyed 100 people and said, do you know what the price of this thing is? Gas has to be the top of the list. Oh, yeah. I'm going to say $3.75. Price of gas New York. Okay. This is a bit of a chart kind. So I put the U.S. retail gas price in here from Y charts going back to, it looks like, 1990 or so?

Why is this a chart crime? If I'm doing a comparison. We're now below the peak in 2008 for gas prices. Basically, for the last 13 years, 11 years, if I can do some math. No, 13 years, gas prices have gone nowhere. Not really relevant, but also true. Yes. I'm trying to give people some stats they can give their family at Thanksgiving. Hey, Uncle Phil, did you realize that gas prices are lower than they were in 2008? Hey, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? In-laws, place. Okay.

I'm hosting. You'd be happy to hear this. My one family tradition for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, Hawaiian shirts. No way. When we were young. That's a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? My brother and I hated it.

My mom would make us wear a collared shirt every year to Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner. We'd always be like, why do we have to wear a collared shirt? This is ridiculous. We're our own house. And my grandparents got us Hawaiian shirts one year for Christmas. So my brother and I, as a protest, wore our Hawaiian shirts. and we said, we technically fulfilled your duty of wearing a collared shirt.

And ever since then, we wear Hawaiian shirts to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. I love it. I might do that, too. Steal that tradition. I don't know if this is a Black Friday thing. This is probably seasonal. But I got something in the mail from Tropical Bros. Did you?

30% off? Yes. That's their Black Friday deal. 30% off. I got another quarter zip. You did? I needed the blue one. I had the light blue one.

I needed the other one. I wear those all the time, by the way. I like them. Carl Kintania again, fan of the show. Or I should say, that doesn't make sense. We're fans of his. I don't know if he looks. He said, we're finally about to get deflation of food. This is price from Bloomberg. After

two years of large annual price increases, the FAL, what's FAA? Isn't Schwartz? I doubt it. The FAL food price index is about to post its first year-on-year percentage drop. Take it. Isn't the positive black swan in 2023, especially for inflation in the economy, that the psycho in Russia decides to stop the war. And because think about that's a green swan. A black swan is a bad thing. Okay. A gray swan? A white swan is not a good thing though Those things are mean Very mean

They're very mean Oh wait I forgot to tell you I speak in of swans Because they're all over the canals I took my Jetsky out In November Yeah And I went on there with boots

My wetsuit My winter coat How hard is it to put a wetsuit on It's It's really not comfortable Especially when you have to pay It's really not comfortable So wetsuit coat

Raincoat gloves I get to the dock, take out of an air pod, try and pop it in. It slips out of my fingers, and I see it in slow motion, like, do, do, do, do, straight into the water. Were you the last watercraft in the water you had to be? There was two others. So my AirPods goes on the water. Great. Need a new pair of AirPods for the 15th time.

I think I've spent $3,000 in AirPods. Black Friday deal. Oh, is there? I'm sure you can find one. I should just stock up on backup AirPods. It's, I go to start my jet ski, g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g. What did the start? Out of gas, or what?

No, the battery was dead. Ah. That was good. Fun times. So back to my green swan here. Let's say that the war ends in Ukraine. And doesn't that have to be a positive thing for energy prices and food prices, even though those things have already come down?

Well, I was looking at this the other day, a lot of commodity prices, especially the agricultural ones, are below the war levels. If you would have told me that the war was still going on today and commodity prices are crashing, I wouldn't have believed you. Isn't that one of those headline things? Like if you had the headline in advance and you tried to use it to predict prices, it wouldn't have helped you at all? That's pretty much my default setting. If you had told me this and then showed me the prices, I wouldn't believe you. It's very bizarre that the world just kind of moved on. This is a very good life lesson. So, as you know, I went to Vegas last week. And I always lose money when I bet. But I don't always take the favorite, but I usually take the favorite. And Fami told me something that is so obviously obvious, whatever the fan needs, whatever Vegas needs to have happen, like always happens. If Vegas always needs this to hit or this to hit, not always, but usually. The house usually wins. When all of the money is, and so you're saying, what game was it?

I'm like, I just don't see how the bills lose this game or pick a team. And sure enough, the other team covered. So it's the same thing in the market. It's markets. you can't possibly foresee something happening and therefore the prices reflect the fact that everybody thinks the same way that you do and then when the surprise happens it goes

the other way. And so anyway, lesson learned you know what I do from now and going forward for the rest of the season? I'm a points guy. Give me those points. I want all the points. You're taking the lions on Thanksgiving. Which we didn't talk about. How about them lions and your giants? It's the worst game in the season. By far. Beat the shit out of us. I was just saying defense of us. There's not much defense.

We have no weapons on offense. But the lines legitimately have a top 10 offense, which I'm not quite sure, which all of a sudden, Jamal Williams is Corey Dillon or something. I don't know what I said, Corey Dillon. I never have expectations for them. They're going to play the bills on Thursday. Guess what? I can't take the points. Can I?

Bills have to win. You're betting it's yourself again. We got the trifecta from Carl Kintania here. This is from Goldman Sachs. I think Sam Rowe had this too. Actually, on the Today Show the other day, they're talking about Amazon layoffs and Facebook layoffs. My wife was asking, she's like, oh, my gosh, is this it? like the recession? Is it here? Because you see all these layoffs? Before we get there, one last

chart. We interrupt the Sam Brahe-Continia show to bring you a different. This is from the sober look. Container shipping costs are down nearly 80% from a year ago. How about that? Remember it was all about Shanghai to Los Angeles? And now it's back to normal, basically. Look at that round trip. Some people are suggesting that inflation will re-accelerate in 2023, which, listen, I don't want to say anything is off the table, but that would surprise me. I guess, yeah. Nothing would surprise me at this point. That'll be a gut punch, too. Tech layoffs are not a sign of an pending recession. The unemployment rate would rise by less than 0.3% even in the inconceivable event

that all workers employed in the internet publishing, broadcasting, and web search portal industry are immediately laid off. They're showing that the amount of layoffs at Facebook and Amazon and Twitter, it sounds like a lot because they're in the headlines, it's really a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of the overall pie. It's basically nothing, which it stinks for those individuals who are getting laid off. and I feel for them, but as far as the economy goes, this is a drop in the bucket. Although I do wonder, these are high paid employees.

So even though it's 0.3% of all jobs, what percent of all spending is it? Retail spending. Can't be a giant number, but it could be 3%, 4%. Has anyone shared a viral chart on Twitter yet of Lambo sales? Because that has to be crashing precipitously in the last two years. All right. So Bob Eager comes back to Disney to save the stock that I own. I think I pulled this up.

I think maybe the Disney board read his book because that's easily one of the best business books for the last 20 years. Guess what? The market does not believe that Iger is going to turn this around. I don't really see what the other guy could have done. They made a push into streaming right as it seemed like a genius move at the time. And then streaming went from being a darling to being awful for every other streaming company. And also, Iger laid the tracks for streaming.

So this seems to be a bit of a bullshit argument, but people were saying that or some of the things that I read was that he didn't properly set expectations to Wall Street. which if he said, hey, listen, we're going to lose another one and a half billion dollars of streaming next quarter. Would the market have reacted any less harsh? Probably not. This does show how important the stock market is to something like this. That's the key point. The stock market is, it's the scoreboard. It's how we measure everything. And so the stock market might not be the economy, but it is a phrase I never got because I was about to say this phrase, is the stock market the tail that wags the dog. Sure. That works. Does that right? Yeah, we mentioned before the stock market is not the economy, but it is a very

important piece of it for a lot of companies and corporations. All right, so Disney is now like 170 billion in change. Netflix is like 125 billion in change. Disney was over 400 billion, I think. Netflix was 300 billion, so they've both lost a ton of money. Could he come in and just create like a streaming giant? Isn't this the time to do it because everyone is so down on streaming? There needs to be consolidation. Netflix, their technology matched with Disney's IP and brand. Isn't that just kind of a layup? Because Disney does not make a lot of new shows. Netflix makes too many new shows. Average that out, Disney Flicks. I don't know. Netney, Disney. I don't know. I think there needs to be consolidation in streaming. Why not put these two together?

First of all, why would Netflix sell after this depressed price? And why would Disney lean into the thing that the street is punishing them for? Bob Iger says, my succession planning was awful. Hastings is going to take over for me at Disney when I step down in two years. Boom. Reed Hastings takes over Disney. They give him Marvel, Star Wars, all these other things to deal with that he doesn't have a Netflix. Everyone keeps saying that Andor is a very good show. I haven't watched it. Sorry, man. I'm not in any of the Star Wars stuff. Oh, you're not a Star Wars guy at all. That's right. I forgot. Nah. Sorry. All right. Explain to me the latest crypto crisis because we have, there's Grayscale, there's Genesis. There's DBG or CBG or deep. What? I don't know.

I can't tell them all apart. So just explain it to me. There's too many acronyms. I have no idea what's going on. All I know is the grayscale Bitcoin trust is at a 45% discount to NAV. And this thing is like the widow maker of crypto arms. That's about all I know right now. Where to begin?

Before we get to the DCG story and Genesis, apparently FTX was hacked to the tune of how many millions of dollars? Was it 20 million, 70 million? I can't remember. This guy's just dumping ETH on the market or Bitcoin. And honestly, I can't keep track of this. It's too much. All right.

Genesis was the biggest lender for all of the earned products for BlockFi, which we're going to get to a second, the debacle there, with GUSD, which is Gemini's product. They were using Genesis as a lender. So BlockFi or Gemini would borrow your coins or your money, lent it to Genesis. Genesis would lend it to three arrows. Three hours would go bust. And you would get, all right. Genesis was on the hook for, and apparently they were like,

the most sophisticated traders, which obviously turned out to be not true. I think Genesis lent $2.6 or $2.3 billion to three hours. Three hours blew up because of GBT and Terra Luna. And now there is a big hole on the balance sheet that they need to plug and nobody's wanted to plug it because who the hell, where is demand to borrow crypto coming from? To my previous point, who wants to invest in a crypto company right now? Nobody wants leverage right now. And who would even believe the numbers that Barry Sillbert would show? The relationship is this. Barry Sillbert is the head of a company called DCJ Digital Currency Group.

They own CoinDisc, they own Grayscale, which is the Bitcoin Trust, GBTC that everyone's talking about. And they have a few mining companies there. They're real players in the space. And they're looking for a billion dollars to plug the hole. Now it's down to $500 million. There's all sorts of speculation about. And then on Friday afternoon, they had this really weird cryptic, tweet thread about we're not going to show you our address. We're not going to show you where

our crypto is. And people went nuts. Like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? In other words, people were questioning, does GBTC even have the Bitcoin that it says it has? On this, send crypto Twitter into another tizzy. Coinbase came out and said, no, no, no, we actually do have their coins. So that's what's going on. The story is still being written. If GBTC doesn't have the coins, and listen, I think they do. It's so absurd to think that they don't. But if you're they do not, I mean, I don't want to say it's over, but to that point, everyone keeps saying that, or a lot of people are saying that Bitcoin could go to $10,000, and of course, there's no floor here, if you haven't sold Bitcoin at this point and assuming that all of the leverage or

most of the leverage has gotten wiped out, how does Bitcoin fall another 40%? And I know it easily could. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there has to be another shoot-a-drop, is what I'm saying, which might. By the time this comes out, another boot might have dropped. Do you think that GBTC is one of the worst retail products ever created. Yes, without GBTC, would all of this happen? So, okay, who got f***ed on GBT? BlockFi was way overextended. That was a big part of their profits early on. And when we say, what happened? So you would trade in your Bitcoin, you would hold it for 60 days, however long it was. GBTC was training at a premium. It was free money. Of course, when money is free, the arbitrage opportunity goes away. That's what happened. It wasn't

is block phi, it was also three arrows. The premium went negative and negative and more negative and more negative and more negative. And also, would these exchanges have gotten it so big if people could have just bought a Bitcoin ETF? Maybe, maybe not. There's no way to know. Is the 45% discount to NAV, so many people have come in there and said, why would I not buy this and immediately see a huge uptick from an arm? Is that discount in relation to people not believing that they actually have them? Why is that discount so wide? I think because there was just easier ways to buy Bitcoin. I think it's the most common explanation.

I don't know. And then so there's talk about will they convert to an ETF. Well, Gensar has to allow that. He's like, I doubt he's going to. DCG should be fine given how much fees they generate from this Bitcoin trust. And then people are talking about Reg M, which I'm trying to follow and I'm having a difficult time. I don't know if that's another sort of forced conversion. It's a disaster.

FTX is still going on. And when I say it's still going on, like we're still finding out shit that's coming out of there. He's got to be in handcuffs by the end of the year. This is an abomination. How is this guy not in handcuffs? I don't know what they're waiting for. I was maybe a little bit easy on the venture investors trying to, not giving them a pass, but just say, listen, I understand.

They're not the biggest idiots in the world. I understand how social proof works. And Sequoia is the stamp of all stamps. I get it. However, I didn't realize that there was no outside board members at FTX. And the more that comes out, the more you're like, oh, my God. The internal control, all of that. just sounds awful. People just really put all their faith in this one guy. All right, BlackFi.

Allegedly, not allegedly. This is in, which report is this? Then, with all these numbers in here, what type of report is this? Is this a legal document? Isn't that the report from the guy who took over, basically, just laying out what happened or where they are? So it says that loans received, so in this document, loans receivable of $250 million at FTX, U.S., consists of a loan to blockfi of $250 million in FTT tokens. They basically took a shit coin as their collateral, or as a loan. So blockfi was bailed out with FTX's token, which when I saw this, I just shook my head. Pretty bad. The thing is, the whole financial system kind of runs on trust as it is, but the sheer amount of trust that this guy was given where they could say, yeah, we'll take

this shit coin as money. It's amazing how many people trusted him and just kind of went at his word, Like, this guy's got it to figure it out he'll handle it. That's pretty bad. It's horrible. I didn't read this article, but there was an article in Bloomberg that people are already buying these distressed assets. What's the headline? I mean, I think there was a headline, actually.

People are already buying depositor claims on FTX. I guess there's a market for that, which is not terribly surprising. Wait, what does that mean? Like, I'll give you pennies on the dollar for the hope that I'll get more in the future. Dr. Pallag had a good take on the venture stuff, and we'll look to this, as always. But he said, given the opportunity, most of FTX's investors would do exactly the same thing tomorrow. Their job is not to avoid failure. It is to avoid missing out on the biggest success.

And that is the risk from venture capital investors point of view, from the people that are making this decision, is the risk of getting it wrong pales in comparison. Okay, so they get things wrong all the time. What percent of venture investments go to zero? 90 more? The risk of passing on a grand slam is enormous. So I'm not forgiving some of the perhaps weak due diligence. I'm just saying, I understand. And I think that if you're being honest with yourself, you can understand that.

The thing is, though, that FOMO element is real. You expect to have failures in venture capital. The thing that institutional investors hate and that venture capitalist hate because their egos are so large is headline risk. And headline risk that makes them look like idiots. So that's why they may say, like, oh, we have to invest in stuff like this. But in the future, people are going to be much more cautious, I think. They don't want to have egg in their face again in doing something like this that turns out to be a fraud.

Yeah, this is bad. I'm not forgiving it. I'm just saying, I understand. Okay, mortgages, real estate, weakest home buying conditions on record, which is not terribly surprising. Although I'm seeing a lot of houses in my neighborhood lists for under 700. A lot of houses. Did your neighbor drop their price again yet? It's a good question.

I sure hope so for their sake. There's not a lot of houses on the market, but the ones that are on the market, it's just sitting and sitting. and sitting. I've seen many houses for sale for months and months and months now, which obviously was not the case before. 675 is still the price. But I made this chart, I looked at the 30-year mortgage minus the 10-year treasury rate, and we're pushing up against resistance. Meaning can't go much higher? Meaning, the difference between the 30-year and the 10-year is 3%. It has only been that high in 2008 and in 1986. And I think the only way this comes back down is that the Fed's steps in and buys mortgage bonds again.

I think it's going to stay elevated, potentially, for a while. Until demand comes back for mortgages and people can refinance and that sort of thing, I think it could stay elevated for a while, unfortunately. This is interesting. There was a new paper put out about the short and long run effects of remote work on U.S. housing markets. Here's the key takeaway. We show that even though remote work has increased rents in the short run, they're likely to decline going forward in the long run may end up lower than pre-pendemic levels.

So they talk about the fact that you see a shift away from like central business districts of large cities, people not needing to live there anymore, where housing is constrained. And if demand falls in those places and goes to other places where there isn't as much demand for housing, that you could actually see the long run impact be lower rental inflation because of remote work. Does that make sense? So we could actually see lower rents because there's not going to be as much demand to live in cities anymore because people can work remotely. And that could lower rents overall. The jury is out. I think it's too early to tell. The idea makes sense to me.

And if they then could potentially change office buildings to accommodate more apartments because you're not going to need as much office space, it's possible. So the fourth quarter is the most important quarter for retail companies. Because of holiday stuff? Yeah. Consumer-focused stocks are having a disproportionate percentage of their revenue in Q4, which is actually only increased in the last few years. So we're seeing companies warn, at least you listen to Target's called, what's going on there? I don't know.

There's a huge disparity. Actually, dang it, I ran the numbers here on all these retail companies, and I forgot to put this into the dock. There is such a gigantic disparity in how retail companies are performing. It sounds like there is a big opportunity for companies, for management to differentiate themselves from one another. Doesn't it seem like with the amount of markdowns they're going to have to do that, the results are probably not going to be that great at the fourth quarter?

That's what I'm saying. And companies are getting out ahead of it. So, for example, let's look at Target and Walmart, who seemed to be. going in different directions. And maybe there's the case that some of the underlying things in the stores are different. Like I think Walmart relies more on groceries, for example. But be that as it may, year to date, Target is down 30%, 32% and Walmart's up 5%. It's a big spread for what are very similar companies.

I think Walmart is the trade down company. In inflationary times, you spend way less at Target and way more on Walmart. Because Target is more discretionary. Target is more expensive too. And Walmart is more staplety stuff. Yes. That makes sense. I know that not.

There's no way, no, Walmart and Target are not the same thing. I know. I'm not judging, but have you seen the people difference at Walmart and Target? Yes. I'm just saying. All right. This is from the low-s-call. The Midwestern elitist.

We got a lot of Walmarts here. And also, the self-checkout lanes at Walmart literally never work. The average age of homes in the U.S. is over 40 years old and roughly three million more homes built during the housing boom in mid-2000s will be entering their primary modeling years by 2025, saying that the remodeling wave is coming. that's still got legs. And I think that makes sense, especially for younger millennials. If they're not able to afford a nicer, newer home, they're going to want to renovate an older home. This is bearish for my mudroom. Well, try to do it before 2025, then. That's when the wave is

coming, they say. Oh, somebody tweeted this. This is very interesting. There was an article. It was a discussion with Jack Welch and I think it was Malcolm Gladwell talking about what he did with his children. Listen to this, Ben. I want your comments, your takes, your thoughts. in all of our many discussions, the only time he spoke about his children was when he told me that he loved them to pieces, but that he had made a mistake when he gave each of them a bunch of GE stock when he first became CEO. Because the stock had performed well, they each had something like $50 million in company shares. Although two of his four kids went to Harvard Business School and one went to Harvard's Graduate School of Design, they all quit their jobs disappointing their father. They turned out differently than I'd hoped. We're close, but they got too much money. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have given it to them. a father reflects after a lifetime on his trouble relationship with his children and concludes that he should have adjusted their compensation. Yeah, I don't think you should give kids 50 million bucks right out of the gate. They're probably mad at him because it crashed 80% since 2000. They held onto it. Also, remember the book contest we did where we had to read a bunch of business

books and then give our thoughts on them? You bowed out and I stayed into it. So this is a book of Jack Welsh. Remember we did like the book contest, the best business books? So this one is, yeah, you bought out and I kept going with it. Thank you. I took one for the team. The man who broke capitalism, how Jack Wells gutted the heartland and crushed the soul of corporate America and how to undo his legacy. Oof, harsh. This is one of the top books, too, I guess, and it was a bestseller. Remember how beloved he was in the 1990s, though?

Yes. Well, no, but I've heard. Yeah, but I'm just saying how history can be changed after the fact. You mentioned Bird. Wait, hold on. Before we go there, I just want to say, I just got an anecdote. I got a dote. This was the end of an error for me, Ben.

Okay, what era is that? COVID is officially over. How? Because I got the notification. I am done paying for my Peloton. Did you do a four-year plan? No, it was probably three years. It was three years.

I think mine's four years. I think I'm still going. And when's the last time you used it? I really didn't need to get back on it. I'm embarrassed. It's been too long. I'm using it more now that it's so cold outside. I can't run outside anymore because it's too cold and hurts my lungs.

So I've been using it a lot more. I'll let you know when I pay mine off. It's like paying off student loans. Okay, this is from Allison Griswold. She did a really long thread on bird. So e-scooter company Bird is trading at 24 cents to share after telling investors on Monday that its financial statements over the past two and a half years should no longer be relied upon and there is substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a growing concern.

Are we going to buy scooters in Houston? Do they have scooters there? I guess we have to. They must. Before going public Vs back, Bird raised $2.1 billion from private investors. Bird is now worth just 3% of all VC funding in the company. Holy cow. Definitely nothing to do with interest rates.

No way. I'm sorry, but you bring scooters back in the 1920s. you're going to get a bubble from that. It's happened any time. This is the kind of thing that didn't make sense when it happened. There's some things where you go, like, maybe this could be as big as people are saying, a scooter company being worth billions and billions of dollars never made sense. Correct.

Did you know that HBO lost $3 billion last year after spending $7 billion in content? I'm starting to get really sad about all these losses for streaming companies because it's going to mean worse content for us. No, no, no. It's going to be less content, not necessarily. worse. Well, true. Yeah, maybe it'll be easier to keep up. As a Netflix shareholder, they could stand to do a few less shows, am I right? Yes. Do we really do a new crappy show after new crappy show? By the way, how great is the bad guy in White Lotus who is a dead ringer

for James Franca? Ah, he's awesome. Yes. He plays that character perfectly. All right, this is a great chart. And it's maybe emblematic of how television works or how it used to work anyway. Somebody tweeted, just learned the series finale of The Walking Dead airs tonight, which will finally complete this incredibly funny and informative graph. So we're looking at U.S. viewers per episode and one, two, three, four. It peaked in like season four or five. There was a comeback in season six, but it's just been downhill for... It was a really good show for three seasons. Then it went off the rails. But so this is what happens, unfortunately. They milk shit until there's nothing else to milk. Yes, it became a huge show. And honestly, it's not starting to go down,

but this is what's going to happen with Yellowstone. It was an awesome show for three seasons. Was I right? First two episodes. I didn't see the third one. That's it. My least favorite character now is Beth. Just tone it down a notch. You don't have to be so tough all the time. This might be my last season. I'm going to give it the full season, but if they don't turn the ship around the map. They're going to milk the show for as long as they can because it has so many viewers now, and the quality is going to continue to go down. Guess who won't get milked? This guy.

Okay. I'm still in. All right. Recommendations. I watched Nope. It came out on Peacock. A lot of people didn't like that. After that came out, I think you compared. Jordan Peel to M. Night Shyamalan, which I thought was a very good analogy. I actually kind of liked it. I went into the low expectations. I kind of liked it. Well, my trash is your treasure. Listen, you're welcome because I do the heavy lifting. I go to see the movies. You keep blowing my expectations. I keep lowering the bar and you keep stepping over it. Listen, to reiterate, if you went into Nope with the expectations that I did in a movie theater, you probably would have been mildly disappointed. And I left Nope, kind of like I left us, a little bit confused.

just like, wait, did I like this? No, I didn't. There were certainly a few parts of it where I'm kind of like, what was the point of that? But I am a huge alien movie fan, and I think the best part about alien movies is that, oh yeah, like aliens coming. I think the buildup

to seeing and finding what the alien is and where they come from, that's my favorite part. I actually think that movie reminded me a little bit of signs, and I think that was Emmight Shambon's last decent movie. No, listen, nope was fine. It just, very high expectations. It wasn't a bad movie. The thing I didn't get the monkey scene.

What was the deal with a monkey? Exactly. No, seriously, what was the deal with that? They could have just totally done away with that, and it would have been fine. Another one good on in HBO, a simple plan. Have you ever seen this movie? That's been on my list for literally three years. Okay, it's probably a better idea than a movie, but it's Bill Paxson and Billy Bob Thornton.

And Sam Ramey. I'm not spoiling anything here to say the whole thing is, is three guys. Don't, don't, don't. No. I haven't finished it. Do you start it? I watched the first thing, yeah. It's a great movie of what would you do in this situation?

Three guys find, $4.4 million. in a plane that is crashed in the woods. And then it's like, what would you do in that situation if you found a huge bag of cash? And it's everything that happens from there. And I think it's a great movie. I watched Blow Out with John Travolta. Wait, wait.

A Simple Plan is a great movie? It's a very good movie. Good to know. I liked it. And the ending is not what you think it would be. Okay. Blow out with John Travolta, early 80s movie. I actually liked it.

It was unrewatchables. They'd never heard of it before. Never heard of it. It wasn't bad. It felt like it could have been a movie that was kind of made today. They would have to update the technology a little bit. Finally. Wait, wait, wait.

Is there anything you want to say about the movie other than you watched it? Is it a comedy? Is it a musical? It's a conspiracy thriller. Oh, okay. I'm in for that. It's like a 1981 movie. A lot of stuff doesn't age well from those usually, but I thought it actually aged okay.

You know what aged really well? How about John Travolta fellow bald? He looks great. You think so? You don't think so? He always has like different wigs on and stuff. What are he talking about? He's a bald.

He went bald. He wears wigs. Still? No, he's bald. Look at him in his movies. He wears wigs. Well, in movies. He's been wearing wigs.

wigs for like 15 years. Dude, he went bald. Have you not seen? But then he goes like the Oscars and he's wearing a wig. No. Find me a picture of John Travolta. Google John Travolta wig. You'll see a million photos.

Not post baldness. Yes. He's been bald for a long time and he wears wigs. No, I understand, but he came out. He came out of the closet as a bald. But then he still goes back to the wigs. I don't think so. It's true.

Look it up. All right. What do you got? So I finished RRR, which is on Netflix. Can't be a Netflix movie because it was too good. What does it stand for? Something. Revolution, Revolt Rise, I don't know.

It was... It's an Indian movie, right? Fantastic. It's like a fantasy adventure is maybe not the right. I put it on my list. But it was one of the better movies I've seen in a while. It was just good, clean fun, top to bottom. Neil Brennan has a new special on Netflix called Blocks.

Oh, he does. Okay. Not quite as good as Three Mikes, his previous one, but still worth watching. he is a talented comedian big fan of his three mics is awesome credit to cobia and Logan keeping it quiet this all time i don't even know what they're doing down there that was impressive let me go find out all right happy thanksgiving to everyone out there happy thanksgiving i'm still anti-thanksgiving meal i really wish we'd just do steaks and get rid of the turkey what do you do the regular stuff turkey stuffing but there's a reason you'll need it

once a year it's not that good that's not that good all right animal spirits pod at gmail com see you next time Thank you.