Animal Spirits Podcast - A Mania Is Brewing (EP. 431)

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

On episode 431 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss bubble behavior from tech CEOs, the AI inflection point, S&P 10,000, panic selling, $7.7 trillion in money markets, the two-speed economy, most IPOs are terrible investments, how to bring down mortgage rates, the demographic housing battle, youth sports and more. This episode is sponsored by Nuveen and KraneShares. Invest like the future is watching. Visit https://www.nuveen.com/future to learn more. To learn more about KraneShares’ KOID ETF visit, http://kraneshares.com/koid/?adsource=koid 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

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Review the prospectus for risks and details. Investing involves risk, including loss of principle. Coyd is distributed by SEI Investments Distribution Company. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk. talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any

investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spurts with Michael and Ben. it is Tuesday morning 8 a.m. Eastern 6 a.m. Mountain time? Canadian Mountain time? I think. I'm in Banff

with two Fs. So I'm not like a you know I'm not a ski person. Hold on. That town there's an N before the F, right? It's N, not N. Yes. Two Fs. I'm not like a ski person so I don't know what to compare it to but I guess Aspen, Jackson,

hold something. It's a beautiful town with ski chelets and hiking and mountains and gorgeous. What are you doing there? I am here to talk to a group of wonderful Canadian financial advisors, which we had a ton of that future proof. Yeah, we did. What are you going to be talking about? I'm just going to talk about the future of financial advice. And it's funny, the Canadian advisors, I feel like they're being a little modest, but they say, listen, we're anywhere from three to five to seven years behind the U.S. when it comes to our advisor space, and we want to kind of learn from you guys what the best practices are. So that's what we're talking about in the mountains. It's a beautiful spot for it. So I'm excited. We are, we're prepping for speaking of future

proof, the Miami one, which a lot easier to get to for East Coast people. So I expected a huge turnout for the second annual event there. we're talking about potential musical acts and who am i excited all right we're just going to pay up for them i guess like we said last week all right so this feels like the i don't know i it's never it's hard it's hard to figure because you said last week you say everyone and you mean like yourself or but it just feels like we've turned a corner where i don't know how you could look at the behavior of companies and not think this is some sort of bubble that that's kind of my feeling that. But it's not, this is not investor behavior bubble. I feel like this is

bubble activity brought on by the tech CEOs. I feel like they're the ones who are pulling us kicking and screaming into this, whether we want it or not. Yeah, this week was an inflection point with Oracle and the debt that they're going to take on fueling this to like the next level, which we're going to get into in a second. But Penn, you mentioned like it's more of a company led bubble, not an investor-led bubble. This is not a corner of the market that you concern yourself with, but there are a bunch of

unprofitable, in many cases, even pre-revenue companies that are going literally vertical. Aklo, for example, it's a nuclear company or a potential nuclear company. They have no revenue.

They're not even like, there's not even revenue on the horizon. I was listening to the call the other day, which a lot of it was signed, so I sort of skimmed a lot of it. but the stock is up like, I don't know, 1,500 percent over the past year, something crazy and a lot of like the quantum computing stocks. So that corner of the unprofitable and in many cases pre-revenue slice of the market

and Occo is now a $20 billion market cap, that is definitely bubble behavior. But it hasn't spread to the $493, for example. So it's weird because it's like a retail bubble in the small corner of the market and then the hyperscalor lead bubble with the middle companies just like not sucking wind. but sort of, you know, neither here nor there. Nobody cares about the weird thing. We talked in our ad read about crane shares, has the robotics ETF. That stuff hasn't even really seemed to happen yet.

I don't know how far off that stuff is from being a real thing. But it feels like the AI bubble behavior is just going to hand a baton over to the robotics bubble at some point. So me saying this feels like bubble activity is not me trying to say like, all right, that's it. You know, no, no, no. No, I know you're not saying that the bubble is near its end. And then, of course, nobody knows when the rides get to end. I guess enjoy it while it last and maybe it lasts for another decade, like literally nobody knows. But I would say that the news that we got this week or last week it started with Oracle and Open AI, that partnership.

And there's a big wrinkle in there that we'll get to in a second. I would say that this is like the seventh inning of a baseball game. Now, the inning might go 20, the game might go 22 innings. But this was a definite like inflection point in the story. So put some meat on the bones, as they say. But hang on. So my feeling is that these tech CEOs, I don't know if they all get together and talk about this stuff, but it feels like mutually assured destruction where, listen, we're

all, either none of us are going to do this or all of us are going to do it. And if we're all going to do it, you're going to invest in you, I'm going to invest in you too and you're going to invest in me and he's going to invest in you and she's going to invest. Everyone has to invest in each other. And it's like, it's kind of like a friend pact where you all took a pact that this summer we're going to do something. And if you don't do it, sorry, you know, you have to jump off the bridge with us. Like American Pie, but for tech dorks. Right? They all took a pact, it feels like, and it's like I'll invest in you, but you have to invest in me too. And that, it feels like it's just

we're moving deck chairs around, but it just happens to be hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. By the way, my brother, uh, I have a brother that was born in 1999, the same year that American Pie came out. I doubt he ever saw it. If you're of that age and my brother is, oh my God, 26. Watch American Pie, damn it. How about this? That was the first, that was the first ever

millennial movie. Yeah, I believe that. Was that? No, wait, it wasn't 99. Was it 99?

It was 99. Because I was a high school senior at the time. So like blinded up perfectly for me. Yeah. Okay. My take is that was a first ever millennial movie.

Yeah, I think that's right. All right. So Mark Zuckerberg said on a podcast last Thursday, if we end up misspending a couple of $100 billion. That was their market cap, not too lucky ago. I think that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously.

But what I'd say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side. He said the risk is probably, yeah, not being aggressive enough. Yep. So Adam Parker has a chart showing total cap X of the top 10 spenders compared to their dollars. And it's, yeah, it's up and to the right. And here, all right, so to me. This is the main point in framing where we're at today. So, Ben Thompson has a blog called Stratory.

He's one of the foremost authorities on tech and innovation. I always think that his substack sounds like, or his newsletter sounds like Will Ferrell as George W. Bush. Oh, because you listen to it sometimes? Yeah. Uh-oh. All right. So he quotes this guy, Doug O'Loughlin.

There is no way for Oracle to pay for this with cash flow. They must raise equity or debt to fund their ambitions. Until now, the AI infrastructure boom has been almost entirely self-funded by the cash flows of a select few hyperscalers. Oracle has broken the pattern. It is willing to leverage up to hundreds of billions to seize a share. The stable oligopoly is cracking. The implications are profound. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google can no longer treat AI infrastructure as a discretionary investment.

they must defend their turf. What had been a disciplined, cash flow funding race may now turn into a debt-fueled arm race. That's a vibe shift if I've ever seen one. Welcome to the next, the newest phase of the capital cycle. I believe the Oracle quarter achieves something more elusive than just revenue. I believe Oracle has just sparked the elusive animal spirit to life. I believe that for me, Oracle is the quarter that we will remember in history. Wow.

Was there one other thing in here that I want to pull out? compare the spending of the big three with that of Oracle. Oracle is going to go negative free cash flow to win. And it's likely that incumbents will respond. I believe it's time for technology incumbents to start spending a lot more. And most have already indicated they will. So I read this over the weekend and I slacked you and Josh, buy everything. This bubble is about to go nuts.

S&P 500, $10,000, then $5,000, or something like. that, maybe. Boy, it sure feels like that. And as people who try to be level-headed, it feels weird for us to say this kind of thing. But if you look at any financial history book, that's what it would tell you. The great point in that piece is that, you're right, all this spending before was just from their cash flows they were making from their businesses, which was so huge. It didn't really matter that they could invest in this stuff. They haven't even really pushed their foot on the gas pedal. Like if they want to, they could really ramp this up and say like,

all right, we're bringing everyone into a new era regardless of how you, you feel about it. And obviously the hard part to figure out here is like how far ahead of expectations get and when does the market want to return on this capital and blah, blah, blah. We're all gassing. But man, this is, this is a hell of a lot of fun, Ben. So. Yeah, because eventually it's going to, it's like you said, it's some fringe companies now. But this is going to eventually, bring other companies into the fold. This is not just going to be the top 10 stocks in the Mag 7 forever. Other companies, and it's not just going to be tech stocks. It's going to be other companies using these AI tools where you're going to have some companies say, you know what,

we're laying off 20% of our workforce because we're going to see productivity gains from AI. There's going to be a company that's going to do that, and it's going to shoot up 20%. And it may not work, but that's kind of stuff. That's the stuff I'm, is like the second and third order effects that's going to happen at some point. You know, there's, countless examples over the last 10 years where we could look back to and pinpoint moments of us literally laughing at how big the numbers were. When Apple got to a trillion dollars, right? Like that was, the music was going to stop. I mean, just magically it was just going to stop at a trillion. When you think about the spending of the hyperscalers, 300 billion, 500 billion,

we're going to look back. We could look back in three years and say that was quaint. Remember when they were spending $400 billion and it was just funded by free cash flow? And yeah, like when and where and how and all that sort of stuff like nobody knows so we're just going to document it in real time and do the best we can um there is a there's a new high in the weight of of market cap in the s mp 500 for invidia and apple now up to 14 percent which is it ain't nothing ben oh you know what it's probably time for me to update the pie chart isn't it the weird thing is it feels like apple is not participating in this stuff not of the ai piece right oh i did i did i did just i did just i did just

You know, I'm so oblivious. I just ordered the new phone. There's a new model. Do you know about the new, that there's a new model? Yeah, I see the headlines and such. Okay. Well, I only just saw them this week.

It gives you like 3% more battery, probably. I don't know. I ordered one last week only because my iPhone was like breaking because I'm an idiot. I didn't put a case on mine. And I just like cracks all over the place. But the iPhone 17 is in high demand. Like Josh told me he tried to order one yesterday. And it's not, that's backdated to like October 17th or whatever.

But yes, they are behind in the AI stuff. Anyway, hang on. I got one more thing from bedcom. And he interviewed Bern Harbar a while ago. Remember he had that new book on Bubbles. And he said, this is Hobbles do. What Bubbles do is they create one of those clusters in time rather than space where this is a time where everyone is doing this thing. And so this is the time to do it.

If you know that people are building other elements, they're building parts of the infrastructure that your thing needs to be built on, then it's actually less risky to build. So Amazon was a less risky business because AOL was mass mailing their disks and telling everyone get on the Internet. Then AOL became less risky business because Yahoo is giving you stuff to find in the Internet, blah, blah, blah, eBay. And that's what led to the whole internet stuff. So that's the reason all these companies are doing this because, listen, if they're all doing it and we're doing it, it's like we're going to make this a thing.

And AI is going to, I guess the one thing I would try to say is that like what if just they, Zuckerberg is right and they overspend by a few hundred billion dollars. And AI isn't this thing that transforms our lives now. It may be it just slowly but surely becomes a bigger piece over time. I've rejected that part. I think the coming transformation is inevitable. I'm saying what if it doesn't happen in the next five years?

What if it's more like a slow thing where it's like in the next 10 to 15 years life changes? But it's it doesn't, it's not like there's this point in time where it's like, oh my gosh, life is so different. It happens. It's more of a slow burn. I think it's going to be more overnight. I think that we're going to wake up one day and say like, wait, I don't think it's going to take 10 to 15 years. I think that's a possibility that that. A lot of this stuff. I think it's easy to point out a million different risks.

No, in a bubble, it's easy to think, like, life is going to change forever overnight. That's what bubbles make you do. That's why I'm trying to temper it by saying, like, because everything we got from the dot-com bubble happened, it just didn't happen right away. Remember? Everything that they wanted to happen and more happened, but we had to go through the dot-com bubble, and then YouTube came along, and then all the other stuff, and it took some time. Things happen so much faster today. But that's why this is a really fun time to think. through, though. That's why people get caught up in this stuff. All of these companies that get to

a hundred million and a billion dollars in revenue, it happens so much faster. It just, it just does. Like, we've seen that chart a million times. And I keep seeing these people saying, listen, it's not going to take 15 years. I keep seeing people in the tech world say, listen, there's going to be a company with one person that's going to be like a billion dollar market cap. Yeah, I believe it. Everything they do is, is AI base and it's one person running the company. Maybe. All right. Max 7 from Bianco, New High. the S&P 500, they're 35%. Where does this stop?

Don't know. We'll see. All right. Another derivative of this story is data center energy consumption. Zuccotti tweeted, tweeted this chart from Bank of America. U.S. data center energy consumption and as a percent of total U.S. power demand. 4 percent in 23, 4.2, 4.5, 4.9, 5.5. At what point do we get the AI backlash?

of people saying, wait, why is my electricity bill so much higher? Someone's going to be on that corner. That's going to happen. I saw a lot of people tweeting about that this weekend. People are sticking their claim there. It is funny, though, that technology is usually deflationary. But as of now, you could make the case that this AI bubble has been inflationary because it's led to higher mortgage rates and it's led to higher electricity costs.

How about that? How has it led to higher mortgage rates? If these companies weren't spending, I blame Mark Zuckerberg for higher mortgage rates. rates. If they weren't spending all this money, there's no way rates would have kept been so high. Oh, because the economy wouldn't be as strong. Yeah, I'd buy that. Yeah. Um, okay, valuations. Who cares? You want to talk about this? That is true. Uh, it's just, it's showing that like the, the rest of the market, to your point, has not come along at all. So the equal weights trading at 17 times. I don't know how you could look at that and say this is a, a crazy bubble.

Dude, valuations don't matter until they, until they do. I know, very profound. Yeah, you're right, but I guess throw them out of the window. But it's, it's not, my whole point is that valuations can get a lot crazier if this thing is going to go. They're not crazy, though. That's the thing. We're talking about the story. We haven't, like, in, invidia's, what's Nvidia forward earnings? It's under 30, I think.

Yeah, that's if you put all the, those are rookie numbers. What does this is bubble for hands? They probably, I think they trade it, yeah, let's call it an average of 28 or 30 times earnings. I think max seven is a little bit over. It's not crazy. It's not insane. That's the point. it could, we still have room to get insane. That's the, that's the point.

Remember, um, remember April? Like, I feel like, it feels a couple years ago. Life is moving so fast. We just like whitewashed the fact that we had like a massive tariff tantrum and a really quick bear market. Um, so we have this chart on exhibit A for advice.com for advisors. What if you panic sold and missed April 9th? Now, we mentioned this when we first share this chart. Obviously, I would maybe said that there's one person on the planet Earth that sold on April 8th, saw April 9th up 10% and said, oh, shit, I'm going to buy on April 11th, right? Like, nobody did that.

There's got to be a Reddit post out there that someone who did that, but you're right. That is psychotic behavior. I can't imagine the type of maniac that would have panicked and then panicked a day later. Just doesn't happen because obviously the feeling of like this is. fake. I missed it. All right, whatever. Anyway, the point is this. If you did that and were psychotic enough to go all back in the next day, the S&P is up 13.5% year-to-date. Whoa, it is? Well, if you miss that one day, you're up 3.7%. Buy, comma, hold. Or trade like your life depends on it. By the way, could you listen to

the Thomas Sosnoff? T-Caff. I did not yet. Okay. I was another busy weekend to be with child sports. What a vibe on that guy. Just great energy, great feedback from the audience. He was a lot of fun. I mean, based on the hat alone, yes, the guy has a vibe in the hair, right? Yeah. All right, somebody emailed us. I'd be interested in your take on this info and advice on how one of you find. Did he make you want to become a trader again? No, I don't have time for that. And I've done that. Like, that's a whole, that's a, for me, that's a, for me, that's a slippery slope, my friend. You know? It's true. You're telling me before you get on that, you're not even going to sports.

scandal anymore this year, maybe. You're like turning over a new leaf. Well, I lost, all right. Wait, we shouldn't say that because you and I are going to Vegas in like six weeks. Yeah. So I said to myself, I was going to deposit money for the season into my Fanduil account. And when it's gone, it's gone. That's what I was, that's my plan was. And it just so happened that life got busy for me. So I bet I lost 500 bucks on the Eagles. Who did they play opening night? Eagles Cowboys, right?

Was it Eagles Cowboys? So I teased it to Eagles minus two and a half. I think they went by four. And I teased the over under down to 44 and a half. Now, I was telling Tom Sosson of this. I don't do like plus 400 bets, all right? So the Eagles were favored by four. I bought it down to two and a half.

The over under was like 48. I bought it down to 44. And now it was basically even money. So they scored 41 points in the first half. there was that lightning delay that lasted for like an hour. I fell asleep. I woke up. The Eagles won by four points, so my spread was good.

In the entire second half, Ben, they kicked one field goal. They scored 41 points in the first half. They scored a field goal in the second half. So my over under, that was 44 and a half. I missed by half a point because they only scored a field goal in the second half. So I lost 500 bucks on that. And then week two, I don't remember where I was, but I just, I haven't gambled in the last two weeks. I said to you before we started recording, the Giants are a piece of shit organization.

I'm only wearing this hat because it's closest hat available. I might take the season off. I might just check out. I am so disgusted with this team and I'm numb and I'm mad and I'm bitter. I didn't watch a chief scheme. I saw it for like three seconds. I have no interest. I have no interest.

This was a good time for you to be moving. You know how they've done those studies in the past? Terence Odine did this study where he got a hold of brokerage information and showed how bad people aren't actually trading stocks. Like, and the results are worse than you could ever imagine. I would love it if someone could dig into the Fanduil, Draft King's data. I got to imagine that. Treasure trove.

There are so many awful, awful betters out there. The loss rate has to be probably even bigger than most people think. Oh, my God. So, anyway, so I might take the season off. I might just check out. So because of my audio book addiction, I'm no longer listening. I've swapped one addiction for the other. I'm not listening to Ringer podcast anymore.

So I, like, loosely am following the NFL, but not really. But I wonder by week seven, I'm like, yeah, I don't know what's happening, which is a hell of an about face for me because I've been obsessed with the NFL my entire life. You're transforming before our eyes, you know, listening to audio books, no more gambling on sports. I am, I am. But it's really because the giants are trash, trash, trash, trash, and I'm going on Sunday, which is I can't wait to boo.

I only go to boo. Speaking of bad betting, and sorry for the tangent. I know a lot of people could not give one less of a shit about my... Yeah, let's talk about your fantasy team after this. Yeah, no, I know it's very riveting. Black Rabbit, the scene where he, where Jason Bateman is gambling, like, people gamble like that, maniacs. Yes.

Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Those people have issues. Do you want to talk about this passive stuff or not? Yeah, so real quick. I know we've beaten this horse's death, but I thought this is just worth mentioning. All right.

On one hand, passive investing is low cost, but holds broader long-term systemic concentration. risk per slack. That's Torsten Slok. But on the other side, you have historically underperforming active management with higher fees. With the more expensive active manager potentially avoid the systemic concentration risk and earn their fees plus some in avoiding the full impact of a significant systemic market correction or would they be subject to the same challenges than the investor would just pay more for the same outcomes. So he included a chart from Torsten Slack that shows almost 55% of ETFs and mutual funds are passive. Now, sort of your 25% in 2012. If there is a market

market-wide meltdown that follows the path of the dot-com bubble where tech is the epicenter and the hyperscalers burst because they're overspending and investors preference change and all the promises didn't come to fruition, then yes, I would expect a lot of active managers who are underweight to significantly outperform. How many of active managers you think are still underweight, though? I feel like so many of them have been pulled into this. Okay. Well, I do think a lot are still underweight, Ben, given how many of them are still underperforming.

which sort of, which is in stark contrast, which one I'm about to say, which is that active managers set the weightings. So I don't know exactly how to square that circle. But yes, I would expect the underperformance to catch up dramatically if there were a tech lead meltdown. Would you agree? Here's the thing, though, you don't need active managers to do that for you. You can invest in value stocks, high quality stocks, dividend stocks, small caps. All that stuff is probably going to do international stocks is not going to get hit nearly as bad if this hyperscalor stuff blows up. So you don't need active managers to diversify for you. You can do it yourself these days. We are, I think Jonathan Clements would smile to hear us say that. Jonathan

Clements, rest and peace, passed away earlier this week. He was a longtime columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I think he gave the baton to Jason's wag. Right. I think Jason took over for him. Yeah. So yeah, I read all the pieces. Jason wrote a nice piece about him. He wrote his own piece kind of going through his life story. He was the nicest guy. Sixty-two years old. I think I really always respected all him was that he was a stick to your guns kind of guy. He never like wavered and said like, well, what about this and what about that? And let's look at all the sides of this thing. And he was, he had his beliefs and he stuck to them. And he almost like, for his readers, he was like, no, you're coming along with me and you're doing this too. And I got a lot of

of really nice emails from him and traded and talked to him occasionally, even over the last year, as I was going through a period of grief, I traded emails with him about what he was dealing with and just the nicest guy. And he handled it with such, the whole period was such grace. It was really, like, really inspiring to see. Yeah. So rest and peace to Jonathan and obviously condolences to his family. I only had the pleasure of meeting him once, but he was definitely a wonderful person and helped countless readers along their friends. financial journey. Okay.

All right, let's transition to investor behavior on the opposite side of what Jonathan preached. All right, retail and balance. This is from daily chart. All right, here's this via via via via via for you, Ben. Goldman Sachs via zero hedge via daily chart book for me. Largest weekly inflows since December of last year. There is definitely, there's definitely animal spirits in pockets in pockets of the retail world. And it's so weird. We keep talking about this, this dynamic and the dichotomy in the

markets of, like, um, the American Association of individual investors and the Schwab S tax report that are sort of like showing, you know, no signs of euphoria. And then, um, this corner of the market, retail traders like going absolutely berserk. Well, how about this? From the Wall Street Journal, $7.7 trillion in money markets. How do you square that? Yeah. Well, I think, I think. If you look at the assets in money market funds, that chart, that to me, looks like, oh my gosh, this is a crazy, like bubble-like behavior or whatever. Maybe we're throwing that term around too much. But it's, it's, there's a lot of different things that you have to, your brain, like the cognitive dissonance is really easy right now. You have to hold several

ideas at the same time that are in, that are in conflict with one another. Yeah, gold at all time highs, money market funds at all time highs, but also the crazy AI bubble stuff. How do you, how do you square all that? And the slowing economy. We haven't spoken about that yet and rate cuts. Eh, stock market doesn't, doesn't care about the economy. True. True. Yeah, it's an interesting time to be a market observer and participant. So Nicola says the NASDAQ composite may have just made a new high, but it is nowhere close to our simple rule of thumb to identify unsustainably high prices. A double is a bubble and it's not been a double. But it's so funny. You see, you see like there's so many different charts that people are like complacency, euphoria, mania, why aren't people chasing? Is he saying it has to like double over the course of a year for it to be sort of bubble like?

or what's the rule? Yeah, he's showing that this is, this is nothing compared to the prior manias. Right. So even though those, those unprofitable or in cases pre-revenue names that we mentioned earlier going bananas, a lot of names have gone sideways. The 2022 thing is the hard part to square with this. The fact that a lot of these companies fell 40, 50, 60, 70 percent. That's the weird thing here.

But that was kind of before that was before chat GPT, really. Yeah. Chad JBTBT stop that from it. So it's. So the SEP is going to 10,000. I can't, I won't dare to put a year on that. Let's just say it happens in our lifetime, but I think it's, I think this bull market takes it there.

Needless to say, there will be corrections and bare markets. It's not going to be a straight line. So wait, how much that, that is so from current levels, which is, I don't know, $6,700 to $10,000. So you're talking about a 50% move higher or so. Not even. I'm doing the math here. Is it like 35 to 40% higher?

Math. Hashtag math. What, yeah. Wait, 35 to 40, my bad. All right. Do I dare do this on the internet? No. No.

It's a percent to chire. It's a percent to chire. And guess what? You tell me what it is. I don't care. I'm not doing this. But the funny, when you see S&P 10,000, it seems like, oh my gosh. But then when you do the percentage, it's like, how.

All right, it's 50%. Yeah, that's what I said. You're right. That's like two more. By the way, I'm helping my daughter is in sixth grade and she has math homework and it's stuff that I haven't thought about in forever. And she'll send me a problem. Like it's kind of funny how awesome technology is. I was on a plane last night from Detroit, Michigan to Calgary. And in the flight, I'm getting text messages for my daughter about her homework. I help her with her math homework. And I will do the problem and I'll say, hey, I'll help her like think about these three things. But then I will always like take the problem and upload it in a chat GPT just to check my work. And it's kind of amazing. I'm how many thousands feet in the air asking AI to help me with my daughter's homework who is 500 miles away from me or something. And I'm relaying that back to her. I wonder if, as I use AI more and more, specifically the LLM models, the large language model models, that's like ATM machine. Yeah.

I feel like I'm like doing more than ever. and I'm just filling the time and now I instead of I am just cramming more work into the day. That's what I think. We're not going to become, we're going to become more efficient. I think there's a name for this. There's a name for this. Productivity. We're doing more with, we're getting more, I'm getting more work done in the same amount of hours. I'm

doing, my output is at an all-time high and it's not even close. Could you really see Americans going from 50-hour work week to 30 because AI makes us more productive? No. We're not Europeans. All due respect. Love the croissants. But the cool thing is, though, like, the, it doesn't just give you the answer. It shows you how to do it. Like, for my daughter, like, I'll tell her, like, look at this and see, because she herself, she doesn't just want the answer.

She wants to know how to do it, which I really like, because she's like, no, no, no, don't just tell me, show me. And so she has to see if we ever put it in. And we do chat GPT at the end. Like, I tell her, we've got to work through it first, and then we're going to put it into the AI. And she has to see the work that it goes through. But it does show you.

It'll say, take this and start with this and then narrow it down to this. And it is pretty amazing. They're just going to grow up with that. All right, back to the money market thing real quick. You've talked forever about how that money is sticky. And I think it could be because I think it's probably mostly baby boomer money. So they interviewed people in the Wall Street Journal. Tom Ward, a 64-year-old executive recruiter in Michigan said rates going down is not going to chase me in stocks.

I really don't have a problem sitting on the sidelines. And he has 40% of his. Oh, yeah. Wait for the SPC goes to 9,000. Let's check back with Tom then. So this is interesting. This is from Brian Jacobs, friend of the show, from Aptus. anytime you have a society with more wealth, you would expect them to hold more cash.

People hold cash for the cushion, not because it's yielding higher than assets. And it could just be that like the low, the low we saw in money markets in 2010s was just the fact that rates were so low. And unless we somehow get back there, that this money, even if it gets down to 3% or 2%, probably is kind of sticking. I think a lot of people have decided, I saw what happened to bonds in 2022. I don't want that. I'm just going to hold cash in T bills, CDs, whatever that is. I think there's money markets. I think there's a lot of that to this.

Well, Brian's exactly right. And anytime you see this chart, you have to adjust. You have to adjust for a percentage of S&P market cap or something. Yes, for what, there has to be a denominator. You're right. And to your point, it's like, all right, I want cash. I have all this money in the stock market. I want cash.

And when you do that, the $7 trillion or whatever it is, all of a sudden it looks a little bit less. But that's why it's also hilarious to me that people say, just wait when the stock market rolls over because the top 10% are spending 50% of the economy. Just watch out. The economy is toast. Guess what? Guess who's going to be buying stocks when they fall?

This guy. But the top 10%. They're going to be the ones who are buying. By the way, they're not going to get nuked. Speaking of this guy, there he is in the first couple episodes of Black Rabbit. And it's the virus is spreading. You send it to me. I totally missed it.

By the way, this is not, this is, I'm just, uh, it, people say this all the time. I'm just pointing it out. It is common vernacular. Oh, you're right. Trust me, every time the dad's on the soccer side line see each other, you get one of those. Hey, there's that guy. It's, of course. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, see it all the time. All right. Um, I follow Rob Wilson on Substack. Uh, and he posts about retailers and the retailing industry. We got a report last week. Non-store retailers, which are, let's e-commerce, huge, huge growth, 2%. Is that, what is that? Month over month? Can't be, right? I think I accounted for 1.5% of this gain. I couldn't tell you the last time I bought something at a store. It's years. So I, uh, I opened up chat, GBT, and I said, make me a chart of non-store retailers.

this is a percent of total retail. Look at this chart. Two seconds. And we saw that crazy. So obviously it was trending higher. Duh. And then you saw the spike in 2020. You saw a cool down.

Now it's coming back. I mean, that's amazing that it's right back on trend. That's pretty wild, right? So because remember everyone said, okay, we're pulling all this stuff forward. We did. From the pandemic.

We did. But then it went right back to a previous trend line. Nature finds a way. Okay. It's literally a perfect trend line. So I was going out to dinner. I went to dinner. last Wednesday, and it was like a nicest restaurant, and I was wearing one of the green future

proof t-shirts. And I said, ah, shit, I should probably change by a shirt. So I was walking to dinner, and I was going to stop in Macy's and buy something with a collar. And on the way over- Dinner at a mall? Can't call it a nice place if a dinner's up the mall. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no. I was going to stop on my walk. I was going to run into a Macy's. Oh, okay. All right. In Harold Square.

Okay. So you're, okay, I got, making sure you're not walking through a mall. Not walking through a mall. Not walking through a nice dinner. Although, uh, there are, uh, what's the mall in Columbus School circle?

There's nice restaurants there. There's a difference between indoor and an outdoor mall, though, too. So. There's no outdoor malls. That's a thing? It's an outdoor mall. Outdoor mall. It's in nice places.

Okay. Oh, that is true. You're right. You're right. Uh, the grove, I believe? Yeah. Okay.

Really nice outdoor mall in Naples, Florida, we saw last year. So I passed a Banana Republic, and I feel like you were a huge Banana Republic guy. Were you not? Oh, definitely. All right. Guilty. So, yeah, I feel like Banana Republic was always like a stretch door for me, like, in high school. Like, if I wanted something very nice and I would just wait for that.

Yeah, I graduated from Gap to Banana Republic after college, I think. Were you a big Abercrombie guy? I'm surprising that I was never an abercrombie guy. You know the Vince McMahon meme of like it's three of him like like yeah having a explosion on his face in PG-13 terms. I feel like for you it was like J-Crew, Banana Republic, Hollister, what was it? No, J-Crew was always top of the line there. Oh yeah?

Okay. Oh yeah, that was always the well anyway, my point is this. Did you, I didn't even know that Banana Republic was still a store. So I went in and I bought a button up or down. We won't relitigate this, whatever it is. And it was a perfectly nice shirt. I saw the tag, $75. Ooh, 50% off.

Done. 37 bucks for a shirt. Guess who's not participating in e-commerce, that store? Those guys. What do you mean? Sure they are. You don't think people buy stuff online at banana.com? A nice shirt was $37.

Oh, yeah, you don't buy stuff from those stores unless there's a sale, and they always have a sale. They must be getting absolutely torched. I don't, that's a, pull up a gap. Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember back in the day, that was like the, I remember that was like one of my earliest, like, business memories when I learned that Banana Republic, old Navy, and the Gap are all owned by the same company. You were like, wait, they could do that? So here's a good segue, because that is like the higher, middle and lower classes of the economy. Boom. Back in the day, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Two speed economy is back as low-income Americans give up gains. We've talked a lot about this, but it's after-tax wages, changed from a year earlier, and the higher end is going up. Middle is kind of stuck, and the lower end is going down. And this is something we've been talking about for a few months now, that this is a total sea change from where we were in 2021, 2022, even 2022, even 23, when the lower end was seeing the biggest gains. There's a bunch of quotes in here that maybe you can pull from my only

big takeaway here is that there is never, ever going to be an economic environment that's going to make everyone happy. Because it was the higher end that was unhappy when the lower end was having big wage gains because it was like, hey, I own these things or my margins are getting hit. There was a white collar recession. You're right. Yeah, now it's reversed. And there's just literally, there can't be an economic environment that everyone's happy. It cannot exist. Yeah. One of the quotes in here that stood out to me was their premium cabin revenue for United Airlines was up 5.6% while the economy Cabin was negative.

Oh, yeah. Which makes sense to me. Yeah, no, but that's a really good bow on all of this. But don't you think part of that increase is the fact that they can probably charge rich people more because they know that they'll pay for it? Yeah. But there's also more demand for rich people. It's part of the same thing. You know, Josh's book was based on this.

What was Josh's book? Or his blog post. Well, he wrote the blog post coming out of COVID saying it like. They didn't want you to see that. If we gave everyone money like we did in COVID, it broke the economy, essentially. That was his, yes. Oh, you weren't supposed to see that, right? That was it.

And Josh's point was, yeah, you weren't supposed to see that. That was Josh's book based on that blog post. When everybody is winning, we all lose effectively. Like, that broke the economy. Too much winning. By the way, the Charlie Sheen, Doc, speaking of winning, it was kind of weird that it was and it was it was entertaining but they didn't like go into like why he was so insane

because he was an actor in Hollywood for I know but like why was he so damn destructive I mean they get one to it a little bit bizarre anyway um Ryan and Sony have this chart they have a proprietary leading economic indicator index and slowing economic momentum, but no sign of recession yet. What was the thing Neil Duda said about leading economic indicator?

Aren't they all kind of like backfilled, essentially? Well, this is proprietary. Okay. Maybe you missed that part. All right. What's this? You have a new substack here? Oh.

So a listener created a substack called Chartenay. Chardonnay? Yeah. It's a plan on words. Chartine. Okay. That's actually not bad. I remember someone early on said, why didn't you call it a wealth of common sense and spell

it C-E-N-T-S? I'm so happy because then I would have to punch myself in the face. No, sorry. You ever see this chart before? Chart today, that's pretty good. I've never heard that before. I'll give him credit. So I was poking around his substack and there are some wonderful looking charts.

So the one that I pulled out for today is he breaks down, he shows a bubble chart of the monthly inflation rate by decade. and he shows it's gray circles, and then the blue is the average, and then the red is the most recent one today. Isn't that wild? It is kind of funny people are talking about inflation heating back up when it's like 2.9 percent, and that is below historical averages. To your point, like, if you showed someone this chart and said,

inflation is heating up, you go, no, it's not. Yeah, I think just from what? Directionally is, but this is a gorgeous chart. I've never seen it laid out this way. us. I like the little charts. Good, good job chart tonight. Okay. Um, so I, last week, I went on a bit of a tirade about how annoyed I was from that Financial Times article. Just pure harsh shit. Yeah, that would really get you going. It really did. Because it was just, it's just so, it's just the perfect representation of everything. And sorry to pile on them specifically, because

they're certainly not alone in this. And I understand the motivations and why they have to do that. But man, it just grinded my gears because it was just such nonsense. They led, for people that missed last week, they led with an inflammatory statement about private credit that pensions are pulling back and they had it on the cover, the Cincinnati pension fund, CIO. They managed $3 billion. And then the footnote at the end was like, but not all they're convincing, but not all

they're slowing down. New York City pension, $300 billion says they're all in or, or, you know, or permanently committed or whatever they said. And the article was backward. Also, I don't blame the authors for that because the people who write the articles do not pick the headbines. The editor or whoever runs the takes the headbikes.

You cannot blame me. That's true. And also the article was backward as well. If it was telling the truth, it would have led with New York City. And then it would have said, but not all are convinced that the momentum is going to continue.

Cincinnati's, blah, blah, blah. All right, anyway. So I wanted to get that on paper, but I just, I'm moving, I felt lazy, and I just wanted to see what chat you could do. And it wrote a pretty damn good article in a second. Now, it was apparent to the reader and myself that I didn't write it. So I wasn't trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.

And at first, like, I felt like, oh, this is lazy. I felt dirty, sleazy. No, sleazy is that's the wrong word. Misleading, whatever. I didn't feel great about it. But you know what? This is just what it's going to be. I felt sleazy reading it, though, after you.

But here's the thing, though. But this is just what it's good. Like, the, the genie is out of, the genie is out of the, the lamp. And it's not going back in. But here's the thing. Like, I, even on grammarly now, so I have grammarly because I have grammarly and I still somehow get grammatical errors in my post, which I don't know how. But, and I have one guy I told you who's, for the last seven years has sent me, hey, Ben, there's a grammar error in your blog, fix it. You know what, you're right away.

You are too nice. I can't believe that you still allow. somebody to fix your grammar. It's just like, dude, buzz off. So I forgot to mention. No, he's a very nice. He never says it in a condening mean way. And then, then you tell him to buzz off, but this guy is very nice about it.

All right. I'm sure he is. Here's a thing. No, wait, no wait. You're very nice. You told me on your trip out to California that a lady next to you, was she on her speaker phone and the flight attendant came up and told her to knock it off. Most other Americans, certainly outside of the Midwest, would have turned to this woman and said, lady. Now I'm

just kidding. It would have said, excuse me, do you mind? It was a lady behind me. And everyone was doing the look behind. Like, like, and find the flight attendant said, ma'am, do you have any earbuds? And she said, no, I don't. And the flight attendant very sternly said, you're going to have to get off speakerphone now. And everyone was like, I wanted to stand up and clap. It was absolutely amazing. But here's the thing. When Grammarly gives me the things to say, and to your point, you can tell that you didn't write this. It was chat. When Gramerly says, change this from this word to this word, I always think I would never in a million years write this word. So I'm not going to use it because it doesn't sound like me. Yeah. But that's the thing. This is why the AI, like being a

commodity, if you want to stand out, you have to be creative and have your own voice now. You can't just do, because JetGPT, if you want to sound smart, is going to be smarter than you. Yeah, I think you're right. I wonder if people just start tuning out, things that are obviously written by ChatGPT. Unless it's like a news story that they want to be caught up on. But if it's an opinion piece, I don't want to read an opinion piece by Chad GPT. I don't care.

Of course not. Of course not. So Mike Shields, I'm not familiar with who that is, but our friend Alex Cantoritz had him write a post on a substack talking about you know you are like a you are pushing a lot of substacks dude i feel like this is an all-time high for michael substack recommendation i i love supporting the artists in our industry these are great creators and i pay for all of them it is funny i can remember someone at future proof asked me saying hey i want to start a substack i'm a little nervous about charging money and i said dude everyone does that now this is this is not the kind

of thing where people are afraid of it anymore like if if you have something to say and people want to read it, people will pay. You shouldn't be shy about charging money if this is going to be part of your- Is that kind of crazy? Hey, I'm afraid to charge money for my services. Now, I understand that there's a lot of things that are free on the internet, so I get that feeling. Like, we were definitely there at some point. But if it's good and if it's quality and if it's work, you deserve to be paid for your time. Crazy idea. Right. All right. Anyway, this article was about Amazon's rise in the ad business. And one of the things that we didn't mention earlier in the stock market conversation is that a lot of the stocks that are being disrupted by tech and Amazon specifically, like the

trade desk, for example, are getting smoked and are probably, unless they somehow pull a rabbit out of their hat, are permanently impaired. Okay. You mean like the college textbook places? All that shit. Yep. There's so many of them. Didn't we have a chart on the companies that are impacted by AI that are getting their teeth kicked in? Come here. So how, is that a long short ETF yet? Or it should it be? It should it be. Look this little guy. We have Temple today, right? Love you. That's a nice looking haircut he's got there.

So I took him the other day in Robinson, not too short. And they went very short in the size, but gosh, is he adorable? All right. Anyway, I'm sorry about that. My point is this, Amazon's ad business. So Mike Shields writes, backed by a massive audience, reams of consumer data and strong technological chops.

The company pulled in $56 billion in advertising. revenue in 2024 and another $13.9 billion in Q& of this year. So, Ben, the conversation earlier about what if it takes 10 to 15 years, nothing takes 10 to 15 years. Back to Mike. He said, considering that Comcast NBC Universal, which had a 100-year head start brought in just north of $2.6 billion in ad sales last year, it's fair to say that Amazon now runs the world's greatest side hustle. Dude, NBC Universal brought in $2.6 billion of ads, Amazon did 13.9 billion in the first quarter of this year. These companies move so fast, their moats are so wide. It's unbelievable. It's also funny that Amazon and it's not in the same business in a lot

of ways in television. They're in every business. These companies are in every business. So again, using Chad GBT, GBT, did you tell Chad GPD put an animal spirits thing in there? I did. I did. So this part, this part didn't work very well. At first I put it in the middle. I'm like, no, lower left. No, below the axis. I don't, not over the, I'm like, all right, it's good enough. Simple stuff, it always has hard time with, which is funny. So advertising revenue, I had, I compared Amazon with meta and Google. And obviously, well, this kind of surprised me. I didn't realize how far ahead Google was of meta, did you?

Google's at like 260, meta's at 160. That makes sense. It's such a long head start, you know? Yeah. But Amazon is coming up the rear. So then I had it show, show me the growth. It said, do you want to see the growth since 2019? So I said, sure.

Amazon's up 400% since 2019, off a much larger base, meta and Google are significantly behind. And then I said, all right, that's not apples to apples because, again, the base of these things. So I said, show me the year-over-year at revenue growth. And Amazon came out smoking, has since cooled off as they grow, and now their year-of-year growth rate is roughly in line with Facebook and double that of Google. Anyway, my point is, all this in two seconds, pretty magical stuff. all right and your other point is that it's not going to this stuff is going to happen really fast really fast dude this isn't like uh crypto where we're still waiting for a consumer use case like a killer app you know which just might never happen might or might not but this is this is coming

oh you guys talked a bit about the board ape stuff but i remember a couple years ago michael was buying some of those basketball card nfts where you own highlights whatever happened with those can we please get a full p&L breakdown uh yeah i was having a lot of fund during the pandemic. I shockingly didn't lose money on this. Was that called again? Top shot. Top shot. There you know. Or if I did lose money. At one point, you talked to buying one of those. I bought it and I sold like a month later. I was like, I feel gross. I can't do this. Yeah, it was a hell of a fun. I think it probably lasted five weeks for me. I remember I bought, I spent like a thousand dollars

or maybe two on a Devin Booker, one. And I was like, what am I doing? Um, but I didn't lose any money. So that's the P&L update. Or if I did, it was, it was nominal. Uh, all right, last week, uh, oh, last week, we spoke about all the zombie. Unicorns from 2021. Right. Waste raised huge. Klarna was one of them, right? They were at a $45 billion valuation.

They IPOed at 16 maybe. Yeah. So Stubhub, those sons of bitches, they raised that evaluation of $16.5 billion in 20201. Now it's down to $8 billion. How many people made Stubhubhub extra fee on their IPO jokes on social media? Yeah. Doug Bonaparte definitely did.

You know he did. that's yeah that's right up thugs alley speaking of that um skipping ahead a little bit of the doc so mark rubinstein net interest that's a substack one of the best wrote about uh ipos we've been speaking a lot about these lately he's at three quarters so he's talking he was talking about the zombie ones the fintech one specifically from 2021 that's his beat is fintech three quarters are trading down from their IPO, including one that went to zero, and eight that were returned to private markets at steep discounts. Robinhood is up 200%, over 200%, a firm 86, New Bank, 78, and Coinbase 37.

The average return of the other 35s, of the other 35, negative 30%. Interestingly, though, he also says that's not to say these new issues didn't create a buzz at the time, all but nine popped on the first day of trading, gaining an average of 30% while the feud that declined lost only 7% on average. Right. So if you didn't get shares, you got hosed on these things. So the fintech class of 2021, not great. And last thing on this topic, we mentioned the cost of going public.

I've never seen it broken out this way. So this was interesting to me. I'm sure there's data out there. But he said, talking about the cost of going public, chime incurred $14.8 million of offering costs in addition to $43.5 million in underwriting fees on its $829 million of gross proceeds. So that is wild note. So 15, 40, it's 5%. 5% to go public.

Okay. That sounds like a lot. A lot change should fix this. I mean, I guess 5% sounds like a reasonable number, but if you think about the dollars, my gosh. Yeah. But to my point about last week, the most I. IPOs are crap investments. That's true.

And one good one can probably dwarf all the bad ones, but there's a lot, a lot of bad ones out there. We had a reader a few years ago when I was talking about like the luck involved in holding a lot of the biggest winners. This guy said, hey, dude, this is like my strategy. I bought all the new issues or a lot of the new hot issues and I just held them all. And the ones that went to zero went to zero, but the couple that went up 4,000 percent took care of everything else.

And yeah, valid, good strategy. Credit to that guy. All right, let's talk about the housing market. I've been on this beat for a while. I said this when Trump got elected president to you and Josh, and this is from Market Watch. This long-shot move could get the 30-year mortgage rate to 5% next year, says B of A Global. So team of Bank of America strategists said that they think there's a probability that the Fed once again engages in mortgage-back security QE, meaning they buy mortgage-back bonds, which they did in the pandemic. That brought mortgage rates down way low that got them to 3% and they're saying we could see 5% by

26 midterms if Trump exerts more control over the Fed. And I think once someone gets in his ear about this, and honestly, to me, this makes sense because if that's your really concern is getting housing activity going, this makes more sense to me than the Fed lowering rates. The Fed lowering rates is not going to automatically push mortgage rates down. I agree. So I think that this actually, in pounding this to get the spread lower. I think this makes sense. I think that they probably should do this. People would be up in arms about free markets and this kind of stuff. Nobody cares about anything. Fair. But I actually think that this is a better policy than the Fed just trying to lower rates and hoping that bond yields come down. Yeah. Yeah. The housing market is

obviously a massive story in and of itself, and we're not going to cover all of it today. but one of the big stories is the decline in building permits. Kevin Gordon showed a chart of the consecutive monthly declines, and it's the highest since the great financial crisis. Now, there's obviously a lot, lot, lot more to the story, but the housing market is all sorts of impaired. The hurdle rate right now to build is too high probably. So somebody, who's sharing this chart?

I think Lenar just reported. I didn't dive into it, but Lanar was subsidizing a lot of the buyers, right, of new houses, and they were helping ease the burden of high interest rates. They were doing that, and I think D.R. Horton wasn't, and the spread between the two. I apologize to him lifting this room. I can't remember where I saw this. Yeah, I think I saw this, too.

And it's just saying that the home builder that cut back is doing way better than the home builder that went all in and was building more. And that was subsidizing buyers, which is, I guess, not that surprising, but that was really good stuff. Right. It should be the government subsidizing the buyers, not the homebuilders. Come on. Yeah. From Redfin, the median U.S. home sales price rose 2.2% year over year. The biggest increase in five months.

And why isn't 2025 on here? Is this old? Oh, the green one. 2025 is the green one. Yeah, my bad. Wild, huh? There's still at all time highs. Or right there. anything? Of course. No, of course.

Rates are high. Prices aren't coming down, right? Yeah. This makes sense, though. All right. We are getting long in the tooth, as I say. Somebody had a really good email about, what is this? We talked about this.

40% of mortgages are adjustable rate. Yeah, the guy was like, dude, that's complete nonsense. And Mike, why don't you give us an update on your housing move, which I will do next week. but because there is there's uh i got some some good stuff to share but uh we're getting longer i got i got a couple charts then i'm done okay well actually skip the charts i want to go to this okay so this one i tweeted this and i got a lot of dang responses which one this is when you have finance 61% of boomers never plan to sell their homes well 76% say they're tired of being blamed for the housing market this is a survey obviously to take it what's worth um nine out of

10 boomers 88% say they don't care for remaining in their homes prevents younger buyers from entering the housing market. Yeah. Why would they? Three quarters say they're tired of being blamed for the housing crisis. It is just funny because it's like, what are they supposed to do? Where are they supposed to go? Right?

Duh. Yeah, it's not their fault. I think just the way that this survey was worded, though, is hilarious to me because they're trying for inner demographic warfare. Well, you know why I'm bored with this inner demographic warfare stuff? It's because this is always the case. This is not unique. Now, I think it's, I think it's going to get worse, though.

I think the housing market stuff is going to make it even worse than ever. Assets, retirement assets, wealth is a 21st century phenomenon largely and generational transfers. Like, so it, it's going to be worse than ever. And so it's going to be worse than ever, I feel like in the next 15, 20 years. I agree with you. I don't really want to partake in the, in the, uh, I mean, unless the boomers move into old person homes, like where are they supposed to go? Yeah, I'm not going to participate in the discourse.

It's just not that interesting to me. And I love my parents, so there. Yes. But there's going to be a lot of really angry young people that are mad at the wrong thing in the years ahead. All right. Oh, here's another chart in a day. Look at this chart.

So we haven't really done many survey of the week type diatribes recently. But one of the problems with surveys is that people don't answer them anymore to the degree that they used to. So chart today has this amazing chart title, believe it or not, no one's at home. The response rate for the BLS current population survey of the unemployment rate from January 2019 to August 2025. And he shows a monthly increase or monthly decrease and people respond to anyway.

It's down to the right. Nobody's, nobody's answering the phone. So it was 83% pre-pandemic. Now it's 69%. I can't believe that it was as high as over 80% in the previous period. It still seems high to me. Higher than I would have thought, but we know that the quality of the responses is his deteriorating, and he quantified it very nicely.

I guess the hope is that we have so much other data to go on to, like, back this stuff up that it doesn't matter that much, but I don't know. All right. Hulk Hogan, according to TMZ, the WWE Legends son, Nick, filed court documents Tuesday, team by U.S. Weekly, which says, man, how is U.S. Weekly still a publication? Oh, Us Weekly, my bad. Is it us? Us Weekly, yeah.

So his son, that was a member of his, he had a reality show. Yeah. All right, so he left behind $200,000 in cryptocurrency. I wonder what it was. Looks like a fart coin guy to me. Light coin. $799,000 in personal property. and intellectual property as well as like his bandana collection uh don't don't besmirch the hulk

as well as his right to flags his right to publicity worth about four million dollars i'm not exactly sure what that means but not a lot of money so this is saying that he was worth i don't know five million dollars wow how is that possible i guess he enjoyed his money and spent a lot of it I would have guessed he'd be worth $50 million. I would have said $20, I think. I don't know. We have to give him a couple to our European people. Okay.

Someone emailed in. In the UK, it's true that last week we talked about how. By the way, I feel bad about my croissant truck earlier on. That was, that didn't feel great coming out of my mouth. I apologize. I don't want to be. In the UK, it's true that equities only make up 10% of household wealth, but that excludes money purchases for D.C. pensions.

I think the U.S. data probably includes retirement accounts. These pensions account for 35% of total wealth in the UK. A lot of those assets are in target date style funds, so it will vary, but you could probably assume that means at least a further 20% in equities. Side note, there are relentless bid effects here, too, because we have auto enrollment with minimums of 8% of earnings going into money-purchased pensions. That links up with what you've spoken about in the past of foreign flows into U.S. stocks. A lot of these target date funds are market-cap-weighted.

So anyway, they have to put money into their pensions, and that money is getting invested in equities. So it's just not being counted as like direct purchases, but it is there. Okay. I've talked in the past about people on flights, the people you see on flights, there's a new business traveler that I see every time I fly. Okay? This is a gentleman, and usually he's in a group of three to five other gentlemen, okay? Is he drinking? Of course, when they get the bar, they have Budlights or they have Michelobotros, okay? The tall ones. they were jeans, they have boots on, they were polo shirts, many of them wear hats, and I'm pretty sure there's a 95% chance they are either owned by a private equity company or whatever

their business that they're in is about to be purchased by a private equity company, right? HVAC or, but if you start looking at the airport, you will see these guys, polo shirts, jeans that are a little too big for them, boots, and probably a hat with a really bent brim. And there's three to five of them together all the time. When you say boots, what type of boots are we talking about? like worn in boots could be not cowboy boots but you know like work-ish boots but so these guys are like they they are like people who have come up in physical work but now are in the management roles okay and they that's a new line i saw four groups of these guys yesterday i swear

to god are these like landman men but otherwise they must be because they were drinking mic ultra so they had to be and guess what i got one too because i i'm going to be billy bob now i've never I don't drink anymore. I, it's Mick Ultra. Here's a question. Will you have hair by age 50? Definitely not. I am bald. I am bald for life. Scientists at UCLA found a drug called PP 405 that reactivates dormant hair follicle stem cells, potentially enabling new hair growth rather than just slowing loss. So is it possible? We'll solve obesity and hair loss in our lifetime. Okay. Obesity, it seems check. Hair loss. If you could just take, take a pill in your hair grow back, you would definitely take it.

No, I wouldn't. I would only take the hair loss. I would only get my hair back if I got divorced. Here's why. I mean, that's the why there is obvious. Here's why. You'd have to get it if you got a convertible. No.

No. Here's why I'm out on hair. I don't want to have this conversation with everybody that I see for the next 10 years. I see a lot of different people. And there's a lot of people, oh, there he is that I haven't seen in four years. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that for the rest of my life. Okay.

I don't care. All right. We'll see. Just real quick. 37 years of America's favorite drink charter. There's some charter. A lot of people drink Dr. Pepper, which surprised me. This is like the only one that's really straight up into the right.

Actually, Fanta and Coke Zero. No, not from Coke Zero. Coke Zero. That's a thing. All right. Anyway, Diet Pepsi. It's Coke Zero. I drink that.

What are you going to do with Diet Pepsi? goes away because this thing is on the decline. Nobody should die Pepsi except for you. I drink Coke zero and Pepsi zero now. Oh, Pepsi zero. I think Coke zero and Pepsi zero better than Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi now. That's my new caffeine intake. Okay.

All right. So this is just perfect. We're moving and Robin's getting frustrated. I'm probably on my computer. I'm like, what? So Robin says, I'm doing like 30 things at once. So I very nice. said, what can I do to help? Nothing. They're already done.

That sounds about right. I have a little youth sports diatribe. I feel, so when we were growing up, I don't know that my parents ever said two words other than hello, nice game to my coaches, like football and such, you know? Right. Right. Now we have all these apps where parents can chat with the coaches and send them messages. And it's cool because they can say, hey, practice time has changed. Or the game's going to start here instead of here. So it's helpful. Hey, my son, I can't get a ride from. Can someone pick them up? So it's cool, but it's also, I think there's way too much communication because now the parents that want to complain about playing time, my son is playing football. And we've gone from flag football where there's like

five kids on the field and hey, everyone gets a carry every game to we're playing tackle. There's 11 guys on the field and guess what? There's five guys on the line. There's like a tight end. Only two or three guys are going to get the ball every game. And guess what? The parents don't like it. So the coach had to send out this thing saying like, hey, I try. I tried to set expectations at the beginning of the year. So I feel like the access to coaching has to make it way worse for coaches. Right. It's great for scheduling. It's got to be bad for people, the complaining parents.

And obviously, as our kids get older and many sets of parents have been through this before us, but we are now seeing that, guess what, the kids that are good play more. Duh. And there are parents that live in this reality and understand. how the world works and go with the flow. This kid is obviously more talented than my kid. He deserves to get the ballpark. Yeah.

And then there are parents who live in an alternate reality who are just, I don't know if not great people is too far because they're just, you know, they're, they're children and they want to do what's best for them. But this is not what's best for them. Just get over it. Relax. Come down. And they're, yeah, naive, I guess.

Yeah. Okay. Last thing that I didn't consider is one of the, this is not a subtle detail as we talk about like us drinking back in the day and enjoying our partner. days, somebody said they were born in 96, their wife was born in 01. And he's like, listen, there's a big gap between us in terms of like technology, even though it's only five years. When I was in college and when we were in college, certainly, there were no phones. Like people weren't recording every detail. And that changes obviously everything. If you

had to worry about what somebody was going to put on TikTok the next day, dude, my behavior, I would have gotten canceled to oblivion, uh, uh, uh, every. time I drank. You know what I mean? I would have been a different person. Instead of hearing from my five friends, hey, the thing you did last night, it was embarrassing. Like, oh, I forgot about that too. Imagine it's like, see it? The whole school can see it. Yes. It would change everything. So that sucks. I agree. That would totally change your behavior. It's like living it in a reality show all the time. Yeah. So that was like a lipo like, oh yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. I get it now. All right. So I, we watched, you mentioned Black Rabbit a few times.

We watched it. Listen, it's a, it's a very cliche show. The, the brother. the brother who's the black sheep comes back and the, um, you know, the restaurant stuff. I feel like every restaurant show or movie now has to have the one night where, hey, the Times critic is coming and it has to be perfect. But having said this, so it is a little cliche. I only saw two episodes, but I'm all in. I love the Black Sheep brother. It is a little cliche.

I think Jason Bateman is underrated as an actor. No, he's good in everything he's in. No, he's not underrated. Everybody who doesn't like, who doesn't love Jason Bateman? But I feel like he seems like he's kind of just playing himself, but he, he's always believable in every single part he plays. He's fantastic. I don't think anybody would say otherwise. He's properly rated. Jude Law's American

accent, but... Oh, really? I was going to say, I thought it was very good. He's deeply British. I don't think he slips in some... Anyway, so they're trying to get money to pay off these people that they own. And they've got to come up with $20,000 a week to pay these guys off, otherwise they're dead. Jude Law doesn't

have a 401k or IRA he can tap. Nothing. At that age? I guess he works in the restaurant business. Anyway, I like it. It's It's, it's a little cliche at points, but I still, I'm, I'm all in, obviously. I'm watching it. Was that a Grand Rapids Hedge? What was that?

You like it? There was like a hesitation of your voice. You like it. It's cliche, but you're all in. No, you're all in. Yeah. So here's the thing. It's a seven point, seven out of ten out of eight out of ten.

I feel like if you want to be prestige TV, you got to be eight at a ten. This is a seven out of ten. But it's still enjoyable. I started the paper, which is the offshoot of the office that's on Peacock now. There's an offshoot of the office? Like a new one? It's like a new office. Okay.

It's like, so it's the same format as the office of like the mockumentary. And Oscar from the office is on it, playing himself. So it's like, say, hey, we did a documentary on the office paper place. Now we're going to do a new one on a newspaper that's dying. And there's a handful of actors and actresses that you've heard of. And it has the same vibe as the office, like the feel of it, you know. And it's not nearly as funny, obviously. It's, and it's stealing some stuff.

But it got me to laugh a few times and it's a good background show. Okay. So not terrible. Table pounder. Finally. Robert Redford passed away last week, I think, and for whatever reason, I'd never seen Butch Cassidy

The Sundance Kid. I've always heard it's one of the best Westerns ever. Have you seen it? Fantastic. Yeah, okay. I'm usually a, okay, it was because it came out in 1969, and I'm usually like a, ugh.

And right when it started, I was like, oh, it's going to feel old. But those two guys, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, I think Newman was in his 40s, Redford was in his 30s. They were just oozing charisma. And it's like, oh my gosh, we do not have actors like this anymore. And I thought the only thing we've had as a modern comp would be once upon a time in Hollywood with Brad Pitt and Leo, who were older at the time.

But it's, I thought the first, like, hour of the movie was, like, unassailably good. I thought the end, it kind of drifted away at the end and slowed a little bit, but it was really, and it was written by William Goldman, so it had to be good. Okay. I will definitely watch it. It was good. And you got me listening to an audiobook somehow, and I decided I have, I have 10 biographies that I've started to pick up and started and started and stopped. and started and stopped. And I said, you know, I'm just going to listen to biographies. And so I listened to Hamilton by Chernow. And wait, did you finish it? I'm three quarters of the way

through. How long would have taken you to read that book? Oh, so long. And I got it on a 1.75 speed. And the thing is that you said that you stopped listening to some podcasts. I have sports podcasts and pop culture podcasts and then market podcasts. And I'm realizing like, wait, do I want to listen to this dumb podcast or I'm going to listen to the audiobook? And I'm finding myself choosing the audiobook more and more. I haven't listened to a podcast. I haven't listened to a podcast. in a month. I'm going to go on a hike later in the mountains here, and I'm going to bring my AirPods and listen to...

The thing I picked up from the hand with the book, and I'm not... Obviously, he had his run of popularity, and I'm way late to this, but just how young those guys were and how impressive they were. And they would be shaking their heads and rolling over in their graves

at the politicians from both parties these days. Because they were... Obviously, they had their flaws, but they were such high character, intelligent individuals. Integrity. They had it. Yes, they would look at the politicians of today and go,

I can't believe this is what we have to choose from. These two poo-poo platters, this. So anyway, that's what I got. You're welcome. I, too, I'm listening to a biography. This might shock you. I'm listening to the power broker, and it's 66 hours on one-time speed,

so I don't know how long it's going to take me, but this will probably take me three weeks. That's the Long Island guy? What's his name? So Robert Moses built New York City and the surrounding area, Long Island as well. Everything. Built at all.

Okay. Oh, you're not watching Task on Max? Of course I am. Okay, we didn't mention that. I think the movie has really buried me. That and Future Proof getting behind in work. My calendar is, my head is spinning. So I've only watched one episode, but I'm excited to watch more.

It's good. All right. Last thing. I popped on Field of Dreams the other night. I haven't watched a movie in full in 20 years. Like, why would I? I know that movie, like, the back of my hand. I saw when I was four in the theater, not to break.

And the scene that I popped in on was Kevin Costner with the fake gun in his shirt. And of course, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The chemistry between him and James Earl Jones was ridiculous. So I only caught 10 minutes of it. What a dumb movie. Only in the sense that the plot is so insane. It really shouldn't work.

The fact that they were able to turn that into an all-time, all-time, all-time, great. All-time classic. So the scene with go to distance when they're at Fenway, it's so dumb. It is so dumb. And it never occurred to me because I saw it when I was, you know, a baby. But God, what a movie. It's a movie that really shouldn't. I watched it with my daughter last year.

It shouldn't work, but it still does. All right. I got to show it to my kids. I'm going to cry at the end, obviously. I got a little teary eye at the end. I'm not going to buy. All right. So an hour in 16 minutes.

This might be a new, new record for us. I didn't even know this would be a long podcast. So with that, I want to thank Duncan and, and John and Nicole Daniel and Travis, the team is going above and beyond. We are doing 19 podcasts a week, Graham and Rob, of course, too. So in addition to that, we are full steam ahead on Talking Wealth, the show that we're doing for advisors. It is now on its own audio feed, Spotify, et cetera, called Talking Wealth, we understand that

advisors probably don't want to sit in front of their computer watching an interview. So if you wanted to tune into that content, but you don't have time to watch it, you can now listen to it instead of audiobooks. So check us out. We're not talking well, and we're doing one or two conversations every week. Talking David Blanchett last week. In and around the industry. That was very good.

Very good. So, all right. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Happy New Year to my Jewish brethren and sisterin. Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. see you next time.