Animal Spirits Podcast - A National Housing Emergency (EP. 428)

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

On episode 428 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss rich people everywhere, why this isn't like the dot-com bubble, the markets don't care about bad vibes, junk bonds are on a tear, there are more ETFs than stocks, Reddit loss porn, American exceptionalism, what would actually fix housing, the S&P 500 is outperforming private equity, 7 year auto loans, the 9-9-6 lifestyle and more. This episode is sponsored YCharts and Fabric by Gerber Life. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only). Sign up at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at: https://meetfabric.com/SPIRITS Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Meet Fabric.com slash Spirits. M-E-E-T, Fabric.com slash Spirits. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson

as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own. opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and with Ben. All right, so summer is officially over. I know we've been saying this for a couple weeks now, but at least it's officially over for me. My kids started school today.

The beach is closed. We are closed in the chapter of the summer. The last week for me felt like 15 days. I was thinking like, what? Why, uh, well, it's not a, no mystery here. I was off on Friday, took the kids to Newport, Rhode Island, never been there. One of the takeaways, or one of the things that struck me in Rhode Island, and this is true, I guess everywhere, or in a lot of cities, but especially maybe

in Rhode Island, there's so much money in so many different places. there were, there's just yachts all over the place on Rhode Island. Just mega, gigantic yachts. And there's old money there. Yeah, that was the Gilded Age place to go. Like, that was the place to be. So we went for the, there's a cliff walk. You see all the mansions.

Do they still have the Vanderbilt house there? The Breakers is there. So, uh, Cornelius II built that house in 1896. He died a year later. and I guess there's still money there, tons of money. I'm assuming it's not new money because who in the world can afford a $50, $100 million boat?

The Vanderbiltz famously, their money disappeared. Was it the third generation? Where it was gone to the fourth? I think by the third generation. And he was like the richest person alive back then. So I keep talking about audiobooks. I was listening to the tycoon, the first tycoon, I'm sorry,

which is one of the biographies about Vanderbilt. And when he died in, and sorry, we'll get to the show in a second. When he died in 1890, no, 1877, he was, if his estate was liquidated, he would have had one out of every $20 in the country. So 5% of all money was in the family. And then it was gone three generations later. So I was thinking about this, are we going to have these things where family money goes bust in three generations, like, I don't think so. I think people are much smarter.

First of all, they don't have 10 kids, so there's that. I mean, just Nvidia, that'll power you for generations to come. I think the, like, the second or third generation can still screw it up, but not to that degree. There's way too many smart advisors and strategies. And, yes, it's it's all professionally managed. You can't, you can't spend on, you can't, like, waste a 50 billion So I read the one that Fortune's Children, which was about the fall of their house of Vanderbilt, and they talked about how the parties they used to had, they would literally light dollar bills on fire for cigarettes. Like they just, they would, and they would spend like two to $500,000 on a party. And back then, that, I mean, that's a lot of money now, obviously.

Back then, it was an insane amount. So they like, they were literally letting money on fire. I don't, yes, I agree. It's hard to see that happening. If anything, the Vanderbilt's, just be stronger, more powerful now these days? There was one part of the book where they're talking about when they first put the income tax in.

And the top 1% in New York City had 61% of all income. And that was like even underreported they estimated. Wow. So we're going to talk about inequality today. But yeah, capitalism. So long story short, you got a house in Rhode Island. Yes, of course.

Anyway, just blown away by the amount of wealth in Rhode Island, but also like it's, you know, every major city has yachts everywhere. Everywhere to go with this. It's every coastal city, I should say. There's probably not yachts, no offense, in whatever Idaho. Okay. I thought you're going to make a Michigan joke there.

No, yachts are water vessels, and there's no water, there's no yachts. Still the greatest, greatest book title ever for investment book. Where are the customers yachts? Yeah, that's a good one. All right, I'm ready for future proof. As you can tell, we take, we're, we had there on Saturday. Everyone else will come Sunday, I suppose. Our live animal spirits is Tuesday.

I think toward like that very end of the conference. So it'll go live animal spirits into a happy hour that we're hosting. Right into Bush. Right into Bush and Blues Traveler. So that will be, that's going to be an awesome, awesome day. When is the compounded friends? What day is that? Monday.

So coming up from the beach yesterday, we were listening to, I was listening to Bush, getting ready, getting the juice is flowing. The bush is flowing, if you will. And I keep saying, I'm like, do you know this song? She's like, no. I was like, how, I don't understand.

Are you not a child of the 90s? How do you not know this song? And she made a very fair point. So 16 stone the album, which I remember very well. I was nine years old. She was eight years old, but she was the oldest child of two.

It was her and her younger sister. So if you're eight years old, you probably don't, you weren't listen to that album. I, on the other hand, youngest of three, I'm sure my brother and or my sister had that album, which is why I was familiar with it. But it was a fair rebuttal. She's like, I was eight years old while I was listening to not Bush.

Leave me alone. My introduction to them was the, they played a live show at the MTV Beach House. Remember they used to do that for the summer? MTV would just move all their VJs to a beach house and they would do, they play the song from there. VJs. That was a thing. All right, let's get into the market.

This is from the Wall Street Journal. U.S. stocks are now priser than they were in the dot com. era. Someone sent us this and said, hey, I'm up in arms about this. This is a click-paid headline, and it probably is a little bit. But they show that the price-to-sales ratio for the last 12 months is actually now higher than it was in the dot-com bubble. I price-to-earnings ratio is not even close. It's funny. I don't know anyone who really subscribes to price to sales as like a metric to follow, maybe for some individual companies, but I don't think anyone follows it at the market level. Well, in 2021, it was a decent proxy, although you could have used.

anything for how crazy things were, whereas like the percentage of stocks that are over 50 times price of sales. Like that was a... That's true. It does seem like it's more relevant. But I just this is not the dot-com. As much as we keep talking about like, oh, the potential for an AI bubble, this is not the dot-com bubble. There are so many differences between now and then, just the fact that the companies that are leading the charge and have the high valuations, they make a ton of money. And the companies back in the dot-com bubble did not make any money. They were still still like forming businesses. These are more, these are mature businesses and they still, their stocks can still get hammered if they overspend and it doesn't deliver. But this is not

like that. I would say, yeah, price of sales without talking about the operations of the business and the margins, come on, get out of here. But I think we would agree. There are a lot of similarities and there are obviously a ton of differences. Yeah. Right? Like in ways, in ways, in ways it's not too, too dissimilar. But if you're saying like, this is the dot-com bubble end, there's going to be a bust where the NASDAQ loses 80% of its value. Come on. So there's a quote from the article that said,

at one point or another, valuations tend to matter. And the expectations baked into those valuations matter. And those expectations are getting to be so dramatic. It'll be very hard to meet them. That's a fair quote. Yeah. And you could have set up any time in the last seven years, probably.

And that's why this stuff is so hard to time. because what's priced into the market? I don't know. Yeah. Well, a lot. A lot. In Video on their call last week, Jensen was saying that they are estimating $3 to $4 trillion in data center spend, AI infrastructure spend by the end of the decade.

That's in the price, right? Like, it's out there. That's in the price. Matt made this great chart showing that the surprises are coming down on revenue and earnings per share for the quarterly reports. Obviously, analysts were a million light years behind and they caught up. And the expectations for these stocks, like consensus, EPS estimates, and revenue estimates are insane.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot baked in. Yes. We're having the same conversation again. Hi. It is what it is. Okay. This is a good, good stat. from bespoke, the S&P just rallied

25% over 100 trading days for the 12th time in the last 70 years, Ben. So one of those had to be COVID, obviously. Yeah. Yeah, that's not. Three months later, it was higher every time. To your point, I'm sure these are all coming out of bare markets. I mean, obviously, yeah, 75, 80, 80, 206, 7, 91,000,

yep, 99, 09, 2009, 20. All right, so three months later, it was higher every time. So sample size of 12, 100% hit rate, we will see. But as we point out all the time when I'm using bespoke's data like this or Ryan's data like this, behavior of the market. Like there's a reason why stocks were up this much, right? Bad news. Overdone.

Boom. See you later. So great chart from Exhibit A that kind of follows this. And it looked at the symmetry and declines in recoveries. And it just showed that, like, the, the pace of the decline tends to match recovery. And then they showed the one in April, which kind of... So this is, like, the average path... Sorry, excuse me.

So this is the average path 12 months before and after a bare market lows. And it looks like a V, obviously. But it tends to be, like, the coming out of it looks like going down. No, it also looks like a V. Oh, nice. Yes. Rocking a V-neck for people that are listening. All right. Remember, like, five years ago, that was your thing.

All you wore was white V-Nex. That was, like, that's all you did. That was your, that was your steep jobs. Undershirts. I had to graduate those. But this one is following that, that script kind of to a T, but also, it looks like coming off a little faster than average. But remember the whole thing that was like, well, what a V-shaped rally.

V-shaped bottoms are just dead. But those, they've always kind of been alive, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, it's great stuff. I think it makes sense. All right, Ben, you have a little tick on your throat. Let me tell you something. We've had sick kids for the past week, so.

Every time this year, at least it's happened once before, so I'll go with every time. I get a little sick. And I found this guy on Instagram, I guess he's a health influencer, Dr. Mayo, 07. So I see this video. It's on my algorithm. Like, this looks disgusting. I'm going to try it. to get rid of, to clear your lungs.

Because I have, I get, like, something that I get, like, a pre-cold where you feel it and you get a little bit of mucus, but it never really blossoms. Maybe I have a strong immune system, not the brag, I don't know. You're sick all the time, man. I don't know about that. I am? Well, yeah, you're sick all the time. All right, maybe I am.

Half an onion, two clothes of garlic powder, two chunks of ginger. This sounds like you're trying to fight off vampires. At a glass of water. It was heinous. But guess what? Sounds awful. I could breathe in that fully without coughing. That's a placebo effect.

I don't think so. All right. Found a guy on Instagram. Sounds like. Hey, listen. Don't argue with the results. All right. Another inside the market behavior of stocks over news chart data from sentiment

trader shows. what happens after 17.5% of discretionary stocks record a 52-week high? Why 17.5%? It's a very specific number. It is. Because this works, but just go with it. You could ask him if you want, why 17%. What does he say? Higher, one year later, every time but one. But your point is that discretionary stocks are doing well, which, so I guess some of my little theme here going through the dock this week is the markets don't care. Like, people are worried about a lot of stuff, but not the markets. Like, do you see any, any worry coming from the stock or bond market right now about anything? Yeah. Where? Where is their worry? In the 30-year. 30-year bonds around the

globe are breaking out to multi-decade highs. So that's where the row is. Okay, but look at this, look at this story from Wall Street Journal. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Okay. Hang on. Just one one more point about this discretionary stuff. It is specifically odd that we are getting a lot of news and anecdotes about the labor market slowing and the consumer pulling back a little bit. And yet, discretionary stocks are doing so well. Yeah. The markets don't seem to care that much.

So this one from the Wall Street Journal, junk bonds are on a tear this summer. Investors are piling back into funds that buy junk rated corporate bonds and loans. And they're saying this is despite the fact that defaults are rising a little bit. But they show junk bond yields, which I didn't realize junk bond yields spiked to over 8%, but have fallen in April and fallen ever since. They're back down to like six and a half percent. The spreads are really low. They also show the private credit stuff just up until the right.

The money managed by business developing companies, which make private loans to small and mid-sized businesses. This is the private credit stuff. Jumped about 33% over the 12 months ending in June. Obviously, that's to meet a lot of investor demand as well. but people aren't worried about credit. The bond market is not... So you say the 30-year, I still think,

isn't the bond market just kind of normalizing? Like, getting it... The yield curve is becoming uninverted or whatever the word is? I don't know. I don't... How is this normalizing?

If you look at the spread between the 2 and the 30 or the 5 and 30, whatever, it's been up into the way for a long time, but you have global 30-year bonds, yields breaking out. I mean, that's where the worry is. Okay. I mean, I don't know. I still see the tenure at 4.3%.

Yeah. That doesn't seem to concern me. It's weird that you see the 30 years breaking out, but not 10 years. It wouldn't, if inflation is that big of a worry, is it, I don't know. I'm not a bond guy, but that doesn't seem to make sense to me. Last week we talked about value being dead. Someone sent me a chart or sent me some figures, and I looked them up. I think I sent this to you last week.

over the past five years. Now, maybe this is cherry-picking because this goes to 2021 when, like, the meme stock top, but whatever, it's five years. It's a long time in the markets. DFA International Small-Cap value and U.S. Small-Cap value

are both beating the Q's and the S&P. Over five years, small-cap value. U.S. and, I think the international one is the one that surprises me the most. So an advisor sent these numbers to me. Yeah. It's kind of wild, right? Yeah.

It still work, like Undertaker. Hmm. All right. Did you see the story from Bloomberg? I did see the story from Bloomberg. Okay.

More ETS and stocks. A lot of people said this is insane. But I thought Samuro had the best take on this. Did you see his take on this? He said there's more

recipes than food ingredients. I like that. It should be this way, probably. Yeah. Even though there's a lot of stuff out there that should not exist. Like this shouldn't be a cause for concern.

This is, there's going to continue to be. be more and more ETFs. There will never be more stocks than there are ETFs for the rest of time. How's that? These lines will never deconverge. Yes.

That I agree with. I mean, single stock ETFs and there's going to be way more stuff coming. All right. This is a good thread, someone sent us. Kind of touching on this, we talk a lot about behavior getting better for investors. And we also asked about, like, how much. of the options trading is, like, degenerates versus how much is people finding income or hedging.

And I think the one thing that will never go away is people who, like, light themselves on fire, investing their money. That, did you look at some of these? No. So this zoomer on Twitter did a post, and it showed this guy who went from $40,000 down to $600, trading options, obviously.

And they pulled these all from Reddit. And they show Robin Hood screenshots. So people actually are sharing this with Reddit. Like, hey, look what happened to me. I blew myself up. This person was down $120,000. Another person was down $60,000. And this is like all the money they had.

Someone said, like, my life savings was $100,000 went to zero. Trading options, obviously. I guess a good reminder that like this stuff is never completely going away, ever. I mean, this happens obviously with sports betting all the time. Again, getting back to the tycoon book that I was listening. They were talking about speculators on Wall Street in the 1860s. Yeah, these people would have been in bucket shops back then, right? Yeah.

You know, the funny thing is, is whenever you read one of those books, an old Jesse Livermore book or stuff about the Roaring 20s, those bucket shops sounded really fun, didn't it? Oh, my goodness. It sounds like going to a sports book at a casino. Yeah. Because that's basically what it was. Imagine the characters that hung out there.

Oh, yeah, for sure. You would have loved it. Oh, are you kidding me? Yeah. Me? No, I wouldn't have, probably not, no. I would have been smoking cigarettes with a fedora covering my bald head. Hey, you know what?

Speaking of this, this, uh, let's think about this in Rhode Island. Whenever a hat blows off a bald man, it's so much worse. It always looks like an emergency and it looks like you're embarrassed about being bald. I'm not embarrassed about being bald. But if a full-headed hair person, if you're, if you're haplow off and you did the exact same thing that I did, nobody would think twice. It's like, oh, his hat blew off, he's going to get it. When a bald man's hat flies off, he's like, oh, he's shamed. Do you think the bald man scrambles faster for the hat as well?

No, but I think, well, perhaps. But it could appear that way to the naked observer. Like to the outside of observer, you're like, oh, look at that poor asshole. Yeah, like, oh, oh, he's trying to chase his hat down. But I was wearing my bucket hat and it flew right off. I had to run around. Okay, see, that's even worse. The bucket hat, flopping off.

Right, because the bucket hat especially makes it look like you're hiding your baldness, which I wasn't. I was just trying to protect my neck. All right. You have to wear the, you have to wear the bucket hat to Oasis, I feel like. 100%. Right? That's a bucket hat kind of thing.

By the future proofs, it crept up on us. My sister said, hey, do you guys want to go to the beach next weekend? Then I said, no, it's closed, but maybe come over. Let's hang out. And then I was like, wait a minute. I'm going to go to California. That's right. You'll have to forget my friend.

He's a little slow. Hi, my friend. All right, what's this email? Good email from a listener. Do you think you could tell if someone is a bull and bear after interaction? acting with them for an hour. Context. I went back to school for a master's degree last year. We had a secret Santa party where 20 classmates showed up. It was only a one-year program, so we didn't know each other very well at this point. At the end of the night, we went around

trying to predict for each other, classmate if their spirit animal was a dog or cat. This is getting weird. I think we guessed right for everyone, which we found amazing. Do you think you could do the same exercise for investors, stock market enthusiasm, enthusiast to figure out who was a bull and a bear? All right, we didn't need that context. Anyway. Easily. Easily, I could do this. Think so? Oh, yes. For just regular run-of-the-mill normal people,

civilians, if you will. I remember at a wedding, a college friend I hadn't seen it in a long time. This is probably 10 years ago, was asking me investment questions and market questions. And I immediately picked up, oh, yeah, this guy is like a zero hedge person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right.

There's only one question you need to ask to figure out if somebody's a bull or bear. What's that? I'm not going to say it. But, like, you could say, like, do you like a name of person, right? Like, are you a fan of this person, this online person? And if they say yes, then you probably know which way they lean, bull or bear. Yeah, I think we could, yeah.

See, that would be a good game show for CNBC. Like, it would be like the dating show, you know, you have one person sitting on this side. I'm sitting over here. We have three, like, bulls and bears. Like, what was the dating game? You know, just like that. And you have to guess. And we match perma bears up together.

This is wild. from T1 Alpha, just remember, no matter what happens today, 70 million working Americans will still be buying Nvidia every month, whether they realize it or not. And he broke down the top 10 stocks. And I guess he's estimated, I don't know where these numbers come from exactly, but the daily, weekly, and monthly flow into the top 10 names. So, for example, daily flow for Nvidia, $95 million, weekly. monthly flow, $475, monthly flow, $1.9 billion.

This is impressive. And it is true, but despite this fact, in 10 years, three or four of these stocks will not be in the top 10 anymore. Sure. That's the thing that, like, you think the index funds are propping these stocks up, but some of these stocks will be replaced and they will fall. I mean, index funds and retirement accounts are propping of every stock to a certain extent, at least the ones that are in indexes. How could this not have an effect? It's not to say that you're 100% right. Ultimately, fundamentals will drive which stocks are in the top 10.

Of course. And also, and also these relentless flows into the market absolutely are having some impact. How could they not be? It's so much money. If your point is there's a lot of money going into the stock market, so stocks are going up, it's not a clever point. Like, duh. Of course. If a lot of money, more money goes into the stock market that comes

out, stocks are probably going to go out. Yeah. It's just wild. I've never seen it broken out this way. This is good work. It is interesting. Okay. Wall Street Journal had a story about the vibes. The middle class vibe is shifted from secure to squeeze. And they look at consumer sentiment by incomes $100,000 or over 50 to $100 and under 50. And under 50 has been relatively low for a while. But stable. Yeah, you're right, relatively stable. This is why, so a lot of people were sharing this chart on social media

This is why I don't think this chart is that big of a deal Because look at how uneven The 50 to 100 range is It, this year alone, it dropped in April Then it spiked for two months, then it fell again And it's very noisy, right? This isn't like a three-year chart. This is a one-year chart

You know, I didn't even realize Until you said it. I didn't realize that like this starts in November at 2024. Yeah. So it's a very noisy chart. But I thought this part was funny. So anyway, with all this stuff, like, it's so dependent on where you live, right?

Middle class is not a national thing. It depends where you are. So these national numbers, middle class is $50,000 to $100,000. I think this is part of what, like, annoys people, is these definitions. I thought Pew had a good research, a Pew research had a good definition for middle class. those earning from two-thirds to double the median household income. Fine. All right.

Anyway, this quote made me laugh a little bit. Not like, ha-ha, but like, of course, it's a dumb quote. Folks that are low and moderate income, they don't have any extra money anymore. Bostic told an audience at a recent town hall meeting in Alabama, obviously. You don't say, you don't say. Is there like, there's like a weird amount of, of, I don't have virtue signaling is the right word but

an obsession about how little money lower class lower income lower income people have obviously and it's not to be insensitive but this is not

you're not making a point by suggesting that folks that are low and moderate income they don't have extra money anymore or are going to struggle to yes wow you don't say

yeah well the article was full of stuff that kind of showed how this cohort is getting squeezed This was one of the examples that made the most sense. So, United Airlines had premium cabin revenue in the most recent quarter increased 5.6% when the economy cabin was negative.

So they're just saying, again, that the high end is still very willing to spend, the lower and middle ends are cutting back. And there was a lot of different examples in it. So that does seem to be a trend that we've been hitting on lately. Yeah. Okay, but this is another thing.

The Wall Street Journal, there was a new poll. This is another reason why I think the sentiment ones are so hard to understand. So they look at that question is, people like me have a good chance of improving our standard of living. Agree or disagree. And this goes back to like the 1980s.

So this has been going on for a long time. And for a while there, it was 60 to 70% or so. And then the pandemic hit. And it kind of started happening a little bit before the pandemic. But this thing has crashed in the past 10 years. And now it's 20. I think they said it's the lowest has ever been 25%,

which is record low dating back to 1987. think that people like me have a good chance improving our standard of living. And I think this is just a case of social media breaking sentiment readings forever. There is a before social media and after social media. And it's completely rendered sentiment

and vibes impossible to measure anymore. But I think the pandemic broke it. The pandemic helped. The pandemic, well, this was already trending down. The pandemic broke it wide open. Yeah. And I just think that these figures

are much, much harder. I don't know how they did this, but they did an actual versus predicted consumer sentiment. This goes back to like 20 years. And the actual versus predicted, to your point, tracks pretty closely until the pandemic. And then coming out of the pandemic, the predicted what the sentiment should be based on past readings is not like that at all. Maybe I think you mentioned this a couple weeks ago, how weird life seems since then. maybe we haven't spent enough time thinking about how many brains

were just completely melted from the pandemic and haven't recovered. It just, it was a period of time that we went through and it changed us forever and some people haven't grappled with that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we spend a lot of time talking about how like a lot of these surveys are either broken

or not real life or talk to people and it just doesn't feel this way. And it doesn't matter for the market. But it definitely does matter for politics, which obviously matters a whole lot because that's where the laws come from. and people vote based on how they feel. So it definitely, it's definitely not nothing,

even if it feels overblown. Yes, that's probably the place where the vibes matter the most. 100%. Right? Because the economy, eventually the date of wins. Like, you can think what you want about the economy, but it is what it is.

But yes, it's totally... Also, not to be insensitive, but just to be objective here, we spend a lot of time talking about how the lower income consumer does not move the stock market. They're responsible for less than 1% of the earnings of the overall.

market. But as a cohort, obviously, their vote matters as much as everybody else's. And I don't know how it breaks down in terms of the number of votes. But that's where it shows up in a big way. Right. And of course, politics, local, national impact, national discourse. And maybe that's why those sentiment numbers are so volatile, right? Because people are changing their minds about this stuff all the time. Depending on what happened. All right, Roger Lowenstein had a great piece in the Wall Street Journal about why U.S. capitalism is unlike any other. And this is the thing where that last sentiment reading from the Wall Street Journal doesn't make sense. Like people like me have a good chance of proving our standard of living.

He compares us to Europe, but he said American capitalism is especially pitched toward getting capital to entrepreneurs. Last year, the U.S. registered a record 5.5 million applications for new businesses, one for every 24 households. And I don't know the exact number, but it's something like 60 to 80 percent of all small businesses don't make it. Right? They completely go out of business. So, but this is the, these are the people who think, like, yeah, my life is going to get better. If I try to do something like this and I try to start something on my own, it's going to work for me. Like, that is. Those are the bulls. Yeah, right? And this is one of the things out of the pandemic that happened that was crazy.

More people than ever decided to start their own businesses. Yeah, like, take doctor, take, take that in a million years. Take Dr. Mayo, 7, for example. Right. He just said, hey, I'm going to fix Michael's cold. Anyway, like and subscribe. And if there's any werewolves or vampires in the neighborhood, they're going to be good, too. This one is crazy to me.

He says Europe is more equal, but also poorer. Per capita income in Arkansas, one of the poorest states is greater than in Germany. Huh? Overall, per capita income in the U.S. is an astonishing 84% higher than in Europe. He said, obviously, but to his point, the lower income, he said, is way worse in America because there isn't as big of a safety net. All right. This seems like a weird stat. per capita income in Arkansas is greater than in Germany, come on.

He said... You don't believe it? No. He said overall per capita income of the U.S. is in the gap shrinks of one of just repurchasing power. But by any measure, I mean, yes, the point, it's a fair point. I just, that sounds truly unbelievable. Okay.

Grock, is this true? Okay. Ben, speaking of Grock, last week, I think, Tell me if I'm wrong here. I think when I mentioned what I was doing on McDonald's on a quarter for McDonald's, we were talking about quick service restaurants versus sit down and fast food and all that sort of stuff. And I asked the AI in quarter to make me a chart of same store sales.

And then it grabbed me, like it numbers the quotes. So then you scroll over it and it takes you to the paragraph and question what they're talking about. So I was talking about that and like through the lens of fed. The reason why I brought it up was just to demonstrate how fast AI is moving. And the email that we got a couple of weeks ago from the analyst who is being let go, all of this sort of stuff is truly breathtaking. Yeah. By the way, it's hard to cut in. I had a phone call with a guy who lost his job. He's getting interviews and he's moving on. He's going to be okay.

That person? Yeah, I talked to him. Good. So somebody emailed this to us a paper out of Stanford said, Canaries in the coal mine, six facts about the recent employment effects of artificial intelligence. I uploaded this to chat TVT because I'm not reading 57 pages. I asked for the most important points.

And literally, Ben, maybe two seconds. I think it was closer to one second. It gave me this, six key facts. That is the most impressive thing, is just how quickly, and if it takes like 10 seconds to do it, you're like, geez, this is taking forever. But most of the time, it's like instantaneous how it does it is, it is pretty fast.

So let's look at some six key facts. Employment decline for young workers in AI-exposed jobs. So early career workers, 22 to 25, an AI-exposed role, software developers, customer service have seen steep employment drops, overall employment strong by young workers' like, we know that, automation versus augmentation matters. So declines are concentrated where AI automated tasks versus augmented tasks.

Anyway, I don't need to read all six, but look at this chart from Ned Davis research. So it shows unemployment rates by education, less than a bachelor's degree, high school graduates, no college, no high school diploma. And look at the unemployment rate for college graduates. It's the only one that looks like this. It's very... Entry level jobs are in a world of pain. And I guess this is the big worry. Not that AI is going to replace every job or, you know,

make sure that we're all out of work or anything like that, but the entry level automated work. Here's the weird thing, though, with this chart that maybe I'm not reading. So less than a bachelor's degree, high school graduate, no high school diploma. To your point, though, like less than a bachelor's degree is falling. These other ones are stable, haven't moved at all. I thought the big worry was like, you know, call centers and maybe those things just haven't happened yet, but shouldn't these, this be the low-hanging fruit?

It's interesting that it's the college grads that would be impacted first. I don't understand why the people below college are not also seeing a big impact from this. Because you would think, well, those jobs can, or is it because those are more in-person, physical labor type of jobs? Also, the immigration crackdown is probably a wide lesson in a bachelor's degree. employment is falling, I guess. Good point. Okay. All right. Last week, we talked about the micro strategy. And I thought that you gave a pretty, I thought you kind of gave a defense of Michael

Saylor. You have been recently. Well, hold on, hold on. Not a defense. Not of the stock. I just think what, I think what he's doing is super interesting. Yeah, you gave him credit for it for pulling it off, essentially. It is funny, though.

Anytime you talk about something like this, the crypto people will come in and be like, you guys still don't get it. I do get it. And I thought, but someone sent me this article from CoinDesk and it talked about what Jim Channes is doing. I think, I forgot to mention this. So he called it financial gibber. So he, he obviously is I believe. He just said the company offers nothing unique beyond winning Bitcoin.

And so Chano's strategy is he's going short micro strategy long Bitcoin. Well, if you look at a chart of micro strategy divided by Ibit, it is very much at like, key potential support. It hasn't outperformed all year, which is interesting. I think that, so he's just saying, listen, the premium is going to shrink.

And to me that is a, yes, as opposed to like trying to short micro strategy, this is a way more reasonable strategy to me. Yes. If you really don't believe in it, that this is going to last. Yes.

If you short micro strategy outright, that's wild. And he thinks all the other firms doing this. He's had 100 other 40, 140 firms worldwide are doing this. these treasury strategies, that will cause a premium shrink. And that, to me, seems like a reasonable bet. I don't know.

Yeah, same. But I was on Coin Desk and looking at this story, and another story came up. And it says, rich Bitcoiners are reportedly spending BTC on luxury holidays. Does this really make sense? So I guess there's a story in the Financial Times. People are now allowed to spend crypto on private jets and taking yachts and these really nice hotels. And people are spending their crypto. And this article was like, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Is this the right thing to do? Remember the Bitcoin pizza guy? He spent 10 Bitcoin on a pizza or however it was. And does it really make sense for these people to spend this money? If you have $50 million of Bitcoin, yes, spend it. What the hell? And it's like, well, we don't know for sure. If the bull market continues, then maybe not.

It's like, guess what? If you have enough Bitcoin and crypto to take private yachts and private planes and, yes, it's okay to spend someone to enjoy it. What is wrong with people? Yes. Counting your Bitcoin is not going to make you happy. I think there might be more to life than that, Ben. Yes.

Wow. Okay. All right. So there was a report last night. Trump weighs declaring national housing emergency. Besson told the Washington Examiner, quote, we're trying to figure out what we can do. And we don't want to step into the business of states, counties, and municipal governments.

We may declare national housing emergency in the fall. all, I mean, there is a housing emergency. What the solution is, again, this is like adds in my purview. Can they, can't they buy mortgage bonds and just get the spreads down a little bit? That's the thing, though. What could they actually do that would fit? Because the whole point is, depending on estimates, we're three to five million housing units short. That's what we've underbuilt in the past 10 or 15 years.

So I guess, yeah, our solution to almost everything is just more debt, and it would be, okay, we'll lower rates. But would that really fix the housing emergency? Would that make it, I mean, it would decrease the monthly payments, but wouldn't it just spur demand? It would unlock a lot. The demand, it would unlock a lot of supply too. I'm not saying that would fix everything, because you're right, that we are underhoused. Prices would probably go up again, no. That's, that lowering mortgage rates alone is not going to fix the housing emergency if it really is. The thing is, he said, they don't want to get into the business of states, counties, and municipal governments. That's what they would have to do. They would have to say, blanket, we're going to make it easier for home builders to build.

Cut through all the red tape. If you do this, we'll give you a government-backed loan to build houses. That's what they did in the 50s. That's how they got all those middle-class houses from the people who came home from the war. The government literally backed the mortgages. And they took all the risk off the plate of the home builders. That's what they'd have to do. Short of that, I don't see how they could fix it.

that's my thinking like what would actually help i don't know all right the wall street journal had a piece on private equity returns and it says yale's trendsetting private equity strategy is getting harder to pull off we talked about this a little last week they look at the annualized returns for the decade ending june 30th why june 30th because that's when most of these ivy leagues report and they look at the 10-year returns in 2025 2015 and 2005 and private equity continues to go down the S&P has kind of slaughtered private equity in the past 10 years. Now, here's the thing. These numbers for private equity are probably even worse than they look on here.

Because I don't ever really trust these private equity indexes because they're usually self-reporting. The returns for IRRs are not the same as compound returns for like mutual funds and ETFs. So I would always take these numbers with a grain of salt. That's funny. I was going to say these numbers actually look good. Like, all right.

Yeah, the S&P did 13, like whatever it is what it is. 9% for private equity for 10 years, that doesn't sound bad at all. But you're telling me that it's, you don't even think it's 9%. I don't. I never believe these private equity index numbers. I think because, again, they're self-reported. Like, if you have a really terrible fund, you're not going to go, hey, here, take these results,

put them in there with the other ones. So I think they're always a little lower than they look, but, yeah, you're right not. So they're 9%. But the thing is they talk about how all these Ivy Leagues are not following what David's Johnson said. And his whole thing was, you should always have at least 30% of your assets. This is for the Ivy League's in cash,

bonds, or hedge funds. And they said five out of the 10 Ivy League universities do not have that. So the liquidity crunch you mentioned a few weeks ago in Jason's Wegg's article, that's why, like these, they just did not think through that, that calculus of having something. No, it's weird about a private equity index too. Like it's not, it's obviously not investable and nobody gets, nobody gets this return. Exactly. Yes. It's in. impossible to get. I mean, some, some people would say, well, if you invest in, like, the big private equity players, that's probably essentially what you're getting is an index, because they're so big. But, yeah, it doesn't exist.

All right, I was listening to a firm's conference call because they had a blowout. Stock had a great response. So is this another one? I think last week you said DoorDash has the stock you've been most wrong about. Don't you think the collective Royal Wee was probably the most wrong about a firm as well. I was not, I was not, I'm not saying you. This is a firm that people mocked relentlessly. No, no, well, in fairness, in fairness, I think people just LOL mocked, uh, putting

Chipotle on a buy now, pay later type of thing. Yeah, but, but the whole thing of buy now, pay later, it's like, this is a fad. This is a flash in the pan. This is never going to do. Yeah, there's probably some of that. I feel like there was a lot of that when this company first came out. But I see a firm popping up way more when I'm buying stuff in my phone. Like it's, it's a button there next to Apple Pay and Venmo and a lot.

lot of cases. That's true. I use it a few times early on, but now I'm like, what's the point? I don't. I would use it on a big ticket item. If you can get 0% APR for, I don't know, a watch, for example, right? And you could, like, why would, I mean, that sounds appealing. Anyway, the gross merchandise volume up 43% year over year and a 10.4 billion dollars. Active consumers up 24% transactions per customer, up 19%. They finally reported. their first quarter of gap operating income. But this is the chart that I wanted to share. If the consumer were under any duress,

now these are, well, it doesn't matter that duration loans. I just say these are short-term loans, but it doesn't matter. If the consumer were under duress, this is the place that you would expect to see it, right? You would expect, like, a younger cohort. I'm looking at delinquency performance 30 days plus.

And they show it every year, 20, 21, 19, et cetera. Nothing here. Absolutely nothing here. I had a friend this weekend, we're at the beach, and the Great Lakes are aptly named. I'll just say that. Beautiful day on the beach this weekend. But a friend there at the beach asked me, like, where are we?

Like, do you think that we're going to get, like, could we get a recession in the next year? Like, when is this stuff going to, like, the tariff's going to hurt? And it just, anything could always happen. It just doesn't seem like it seems like people are still waiting for something really bad to happen. And it just feels like we're going to keep waiting and waiting and waiting. Well, I mean, come on, something bad will happen because that's the way it works. We don't know what it is. Something will happen.

Right. But I think it, my point is I think it has to be something bad to happen to force the hand of a recession. It's not just going to happen. Yeah, yeah, no, no, there needs to be an event, a catalyst. Like it doesn't, yeah, we're not just going to, we're not just going to run out of money. But that's what, that's what people thought, I think. Well, once the excess savings is gone, right, right, that'll do it. But no, no, it's weird.

It's not just going to end. We've been doing this for so long, not just a podcast, but talking about markets and this is in the record books. Like, I was thinking about that this, this period will never not have existed. I know that sounds really silly and dumb and obvious. But my point is this, for people that are, that have been following the market, that are around our age that came in in the, I don't know, 07-ish time frame coming out of that. In 2013, when we first hit new all-time highs, there's been people that have been fighting

this bull market since 2013 that have been waiting for the return of whatever, value, this, the way that things used to be. Guess what? This period of time, this bull market, from 2013 to 2025, this is 12 years. It's not nothing. Now, it's not 30 years, but whatever happens from here, and maybe there's a bear market that takes it all away and we have a lost decade. This period of time is in the history books.

Like, you know, we've read all the books for about the 60s and the 70s and this. This is a chapter. This is like a not-so-small chapter in the history of the stock market that we just experienced. All right. If this was a 1980s movie,

I'd give you one of these. Slow clap. Right? No, I, yes, I agree. We just lived through one of, this time was really different. 100%. It absolutely was. Oh, remember, oh, if this time is different, people kept saying, oh, I guess this time is different.

Yeah, it was. Yes, very. It literally was. Very, very, very, very. All the baselines for how big stocks can get and the growth rates they can have, it really was different. I remember Michael Mobeson did this piece in the mid-2010s about like, if we just put a baseline on these tech stocks, they would have to have, like, some of the highest growth rates in history to justify these these valuations.

He wasn't saying, like, and guess what, we did have that. Right. It is pretty crazy. And by the way, Mobeson is, he was 100% right. Very few people could have forecasted this that these giants would continue to grow and take market share and accelerate their margins. And if Mobeson's piece said, and I'm making this up, that there was a 3% just base rate that this could have happened, it happened.

Right. Yes. It's really wild. Okay, here's something people might be concerned about, but I think this is more of a personal... Duncan says we're jinking the market right now. Yeah. No, stop. We do this every week. We've been doing this for years. Yeah, one time. So this is one of the... And I've talked about this a lot.

I think I wrote a blog post about this. I got a question about it from someone, but Bloomberg has a piece that cars are getting so expensive that buyers need seven-year loans. And it talked about how once rare seven-year car loans are fast becoming the norm. So average sales prices for cars is up 28% in the past five years. And seven-year loans represented 22% of all new vehicle financing.

Six-year loans, once considered the upper end of the range, and almost common, 36%. So six years and up is more than half of all new loans, which is kind of nuts. And so they interviewed a few people to ask them about this. I think this is more of a personal finance issue of people have in their head what their monthly car payment should be. And they'll do whatever they can do

to get their monthly payment to that level. Now, it's not a very smart personal finance decision unless you can borrow at, I don't know, 3% or something, 4%. And obviously it says like the 84-month loan versus a five-year, you're paying on the average, you know, almost 5 grand more in interest

over the life of that loan. But I think this is just people having this idea of what their monthly payments should be. I don't think this is a sign of, like, consumer distress or any means. I think this is just people wanting to keep their line item on their budget the same. 100%. I've got a new car coming up in April.

I don't know what I'm going to do. We'll talk about it when we get there. Relax, Duncan. All right? But, you know, so I didn't put this in the dock because I know you... Yes, we've been called Tappy for like six years now. So eventually sometime it's going to happen. September.

Duncan's not wrong. September is not a great month for stocks, especially in the first year of a presidential cycle. Now, why is that the case specifically? Is it total noise? Maybe. I do think there is something about people returning to Wall Street. I don't know. It is funny how that is always a thing.

of like, well, the Wall Street traders are on Hamptons for the summer. Now they come back, then things are going to really start to matter. Yeah. I know. It's silly. But what other reason would you ascribe to September not be in a great month? It is bizarre. It does, I don't know.

I do wonder if the first week after Labor Day is a seasonally week, week. Ooh, a week week week. And also, who cares? But just like. Also, I said we needed a healthy correction. Maybe this is it. We do need a healthy correction. 5% slap.

People hate when you say that, that we need a correction. You know why? Because it's like, oh, we want people to lose money? No, we don't. I think my point when stocks get too expensive and go straight up, which, by the way, they have it. We have cooled off. So any of the excess that was in the market, like the XXXXS, we blew that foam off the top, right?

We've gone sideways for a couple of weeks. It's all good. But expensive stocks, you just have less margin of safety, right? Like a stock that's trading at 10, 12 times earnings, if they miss buy a penny, it's probably not going to go down 20% the next day. Stock training 100 times earnings missed by a penny a fall 30%. Ben, we got an email. Somebody was wondering, your friend who got cut off at 18, how'd they turn out?

Oh, good question. It's funny. I looked it up because this is a friend that I kind of lost touch with. He moved away. So he went to massage therapy school out of high school. I think he wanted to become a chiropractor, but probably couldn't afford the schooling because he did it in his own. So he went to massage therapy school first, then decided to go to college much later on.

I think he went down somewhere in North Carolina where he was. And I looked him up and now he's a chiropractor living in Texas. So he made it. It turned out well. Good for him. Yeah. Yeah. Good question.

All right. So we had a bunch of work done in our house for like the last five or six weeks and it was a giant pain in the ass, but now that it's done. But they did our floor. I love that you threw this in the dock. Well, they put new wood flooring in and, you know, there was a lot of sawdust. There was sawdust everywhere, right? But they were doing all the cutting and stuff in our garage.

And after they were done, the guys would clean up. And they just leave all their tools in the garage. And they did them in a nice, neatly fashion over in the corner. You know, we put a spot for them. But they left their huge Milwaukee leaf blower thing because they would blow all the sawdust out, right? That's a good looking leaf blower. So in the years past, I use a leaf blower a lot just to the wood chips from my dog and the kids. And I like to blow the garage out all the time.

I like to keep a nice, clean garage. And I got these cheapo, this cheap old black and decker one from, Amazon. It was probably 80 bucks. Yeah, of course I would, but the thing stinks. It doesn't work very good. And I used, they had this Milwaukee blower and I used it a couple times because they left it there. And I just thought, oh my gosh, this thing is 10 times more powerful than mine. And so I went on Amazon and it was probably, I don't know, triple the price of my Black and Decker. But it works 10 times better. Sometimes it makes sense to pay it for quality and not be a cheap ass. That's a great looking leaf blow right there.

amazing. I mean, right? Look at that. It looks like it could power a jet or something. It's amazing. All right, Ben, we've been in a bare market for TV shows, although, thank you for the platonic wreck. Oh, you like that? Well, I fall asleep every night. Robin watches, and she's giggling. By the way, me falling asleep has nothing to do with the quality of that show. Okay. My bedtime has been getting earlier and earlier and earlier to an embarrassing level. I've been sleeping at 9 o'clock the past couple of weeks. What time do you get up in the morning. Are your earlier eyes or now? Not really. 615, 630. Okay. But I wake up to a bunch of text message. I wake up to a bunch of text messages and people are like, why doesn't he text me back? It's

like 915. Passed out. Blame it on the sun. Okay, so what do we got coming? All right. So, yeah. So what I was saying is that shows have been in a bare market. Big time. I made the point on Twitter. This might have been the worst pop culture summer this century. No fantastic shows, no, like, groundbreaking movies, no huge sports moments. Like the last two months, literally nothing has happened in pop culture besides the royal wedding. Yeah, it was not a great summer for movies. I had fun, but it was definitely not great at all. Right? There wasn't one movie you go, oh, yes, classic. Weapons. All right. I can't put horror movies in the classic genre. That's just me. If anybody...

watched Alien Earth. Let me know how it is. I saw the first two episodes and I haven't picked it back up. Not that I didn't like it. I just haven't watched it yet. Didn't they like squeeze the juice dry on that yet? The alien stuff? I didn't love the last one, Romulus, but I still, it's one of my favorite things. All right, anyway, there's a new crime thriller from the mayor of East Town. The HBO original series follows an FBI agent, Mark Ruffalo, on a mission to end a string

of violent robberies led by an unassuming family man, Tom Pelfrey. I don't know who that is. It's called Task. And I can't wait. Who's Tom Pelper? Isn't he the guy from Ozark? There's also a new Ethan Hawke show coming to Hulu. So I'm, yeah.

You know? Oh, was he the nephew? I don't know. He's the brother. He's Laurelini's brother, wasn't he? Yes, but more shows are coming. You know those... Help is on the way, is what we're saying.

You know those articles that say, like, here's everything coming to these streaming networks this month, because every month it changes. I love those articles. Yeah, I read those all the... And I come up a list. I want to watch that. All right.

Jack Raines had this thing this morning on Young Money, and it talked about how young people aren't going to Burning Man anymore. It's only older people, and they say all the Bay Area Zoomers have exchanged alcohol and ecstasy for lifting heavy and 9-96 work schedules. So here's 9-96, I'd never heard it before. So someone said the current vibe in San Francisco is for young people. No drinking, no drugs, 9-96, work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week.

lift heavy, run far, merry early, track sleep, eat steak and eggs. What is happening? I don't like this. The 996 thing is the biggest one that throws me is just, if that's your whole life. Wait, no drinking, no what else?

Let's see. No drinking, no drugs. Track your sleep, eat protein. I just think the optimization thing can be taken way, way too far. You still have to be a young person. Like, I feel like these young people are going to totally regret not living life.

This feels, is this real? Is this real? I know, I'm sure this is happening in San Francisco. I believe that. I mean, that's the thing. Maybe San Francisco isn't real life. Yeah. And that's just, it's a, that's a place unto itself.

But I do think young people, if they don't enjoy their lives, they're going to regret it someday when they have way more responsibilities. All right. Let me ask you this, Ben. In the year 2025, how come we can't get good self-service? You know what I hear every time I'm on the phone? Or God forbid I try a video. Michael, Michael, Michael, you're breaking up.

Michael, you're breaking up. And I'm like, I'm on the cross-isand Parkway. I'm in New York City. Why can't you assume New York City does the best? Why can't anybody hear me? I don't know. Is it the AirPods or is it the cell service? No, it's a cell service.

Okay. That's a good question. I've been cleaning. Like, you know, in the old horror movies, you used to like, you try to start your car and it wouldn't turn over. But that doesn't exist anymore because cars just start. By the way, it turned over as a very old phrase. I was about to say that.

I only learned what that meant when I started watching with close captioning. Right? Like, you don't have to worry about that anymore. And that should be the thing with cell service now. Like that, the whole, you're breaking up should be a thing of the past. Come on. How am I breaking up? It's 2025.

Speaking of quality, Ben, paying up for quality. I'm paying up for quality. Quality sucks. So thank you to somebody who emailed me. You know, I saw this email exchange in our inbox. And I wanted to, I should have roasted you on it. But it was the most middle-aged thing I've ever seen. It was like, this guy offering you socks, which socks you should get.

And you're writing him back and going, oh, my gosh, these socks are amazing. And I'm going to, it was a whole email exchange about socks. I immediately spent $300 on socks. Why? I have no more socks. I threw out, as I'm prepping for the move, I threw out all my old socks. And my socks, I have Under Armour slash Nike socks that are easily, I don't know, six years old. Like, there's no reason to be wearing socks that are six years old, right?

here's what I do. The thing I don't spend up on like the really expensive socks because I feel like after two washes, they don't feel expensive anymore. So it's new socks. So on Amazon, I have a subscription. Every six months, I get a brand new pack of socks. Send to my mail. I throw the old ones out. I put the new ones in. Because new socks feel amazing. Anyway, I wore a pair of socks, not like ankle socks. Sox that go up to your calf or whatever. Not super high, but with a pair of shoes that have typically, or historically grated on the back of my ankle, guess what? Comfort, no blisters, pay up for quality. All right. Well, that's good for future proof because there's a lot of walking that goes out there. Yeah, so I feel very good. You're not bringing your Jordans, I hope. Very, I'm not bringing my Jordans. Very good about my new socks. What else? What else? What else? All right, this is very random, and it happens very rarely, but nevertheless, it always annoys me. It probably happens to me once every two months. You ever type and you look up and you've been in all caps for 30 seconds? Yeah.

Is there a way to just control Q, uppercase, select, where you could just change it to the lowercase? It would be easy if it auto-corrected for you. How weird, do you think Walter Bloomberg is shouting in his own head as he's typing because everything he types is all uppercase? But I feel like he's pulling from someplace, right? He's not actually typing. I know.

He's not a real person. All right. So yesterday, we were driving home. We tried to get one more day on the beach. And then we had to drive home because my son had football practice. It was his first, I'm a very proud father because it was his first day they could hit each other and tackle football. He had the crunch of the pads. He's not shy, right?

No, he's not shy. But it was funny. It's third and fourth grade, and he's like one of the only third graders on the team. And I asked him, how did it go? He's like, oh, I totally trucked this kid. I'm like, well, how about you? He goes, oh, yeah, I got demolished. These guys were hitting me so hard.

And I'm like, are you okay? You know, you didn't mind? No, it's fine. I got hit really hard. So we had to leave the beach We had to drive him back to practice So we had to go through the Burger King Drive-thru To get him some food before his practice

And we'd go into the Burger King Drive-thune There's a big van in front of us And we pull up the pay and the van is in front of us Waiting for their food And the lady in the drive-thru window goes I don't know if you want to pay for your food or not We're like, what do you mean? She goes The van ahead of you got $130 worth of food

It's like nine value meals It's going to take a very long time to make So you're going to sit here and wait forever And we said, well, we're kind of kind of in a time crunch, we have to get on the road, so we just left. Like, don't you think her response should have been, you know what? We're going to sneak your meal in real quick here. Give it to you and let you get out of line.

Yeah, of course. Instead of telling us. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Do the right thing. Thank you. Yeah.

I was going to wait for that. We did a ghost tour in Newport. And I don't know why. My head, I thought it was like one of like these ghost walks where like, you know, it's scary and people pop out at you, like a Halloween. Spook tour. Oh, was it? Old cemeteries?

it was just a girl telling stories about, I don't know, I wasn't listening, but there's nonsense. And she was like, if you take pictures, you might see like an orb or something like that. So like the boys were taking pictures like the whole time. Like, oh, I think I see somebody. Anyway, the point is this. There was three women on the tour. I'm going to guess they were mid to upper 20s, 27 to 30 years old, is. and they were taking it seriously

and they were like we better see something and I wanted to like I was so confused I was like what are you doing here what are you actually doing it was so bizarre

but people will always fall for that how many of those shows are there about ghost hunting I guess there were otherwise normal people like they seemed like very normal people but they were

seriously looking for ghosts but there are people who totally believe in that stuff I guess Okay. All right. Recommendations. I only got one this week. Okay, go ahead. So we rented Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, finally. We saw the previous one in the theater, and here's my take as the biggest Tom Cruise fan there is.

I tell my son all the time. This is the best action star of all time, obviously. This movie didn't need to be made. Like, they could have ended it on a lot. The last one was great. I mean, there was good stunts in this, but it kind of felt like a, you know, a, you know, a farewell tour, I guess, for Tom Cruise, even though he might make another one, I guess. I just, the whole AI thing being the bad guy, I feel like it's going to get so overdone in the next five to ten years.

And that just doesn't interest me at all, having AI, right? The story made no sense at all, right? Like, it was hard to follow. I mean, I guess the storylines were sort of besides a point, but in this one, it was so convoluted. I had no idea what was happening. It just, to me, felt like they kept extending the last movie when they could have just ended the movie.

easily at the end of the last one. It would have been a great send-off. Listen, it was entertaining, and the stunts he does obviously are amazing, but it totally unnecessary. And I'm a Tom Cruise guy, as you know. Yeah, I agree. That's where I take.

All right. I'm sorry in advance. I'm going to be annoying about audiobooks. I just am. Not going to try and convince you the listen, but I'm going to be talking about it what I've listened to because this is my podcast. In Rhode Island, because I'm an early riser,

my kids sleep forever. How late are we talking? I came back to the hotel. So I don't know why I woke up at like 530. So by 545, I'm out. And I especially, you know I like to walk when I'm in new places. That's like my thing. So I walked out the hotel at about 550, got a Starbucks, and I was just walking.

And I got back to the hotel at 840 and they were still sleeping. Wow. My point is, I had a lovely morning. I'm walking for three hours, listen to my audio book. I had a great time. And because I am listening on 1.8 times speed, what's great about, now I have three different devices, Audible, Spotify, and Libby. Spotify, you get 15 hours a month. Libby are free books, and Audible obviously paid. So if Libby doesn't have something because you have to order it,

and if I've used up all my Spotify, then I will buy books on Audible. So with 1.8 times speed, Tycoon, for example, this is a giant book. I believe it's on my shelf. I never read it. It's 28 hours long, but at 1.8 times speed, down to 15 hours. So guess what? I walked three hours on Saturday and Sunday, whatever day it was. I'm almost done with the book. See, you should be an Instagram influencer doing this. So now... I live three days and every one day you just did. Yeah, I 10x that shit. You're living one day a week a day. I live four days a day. Anyway, all of these books that I've been meeting to get to, the power broker, the Lyndon Johnson stuff. I am... That is true because some of those biographies, it's just, you look at it and you go, oh, my gosh.

You just say no. So there's an Eisenhower one that I want to read, a Truman one that I've been meeting three. Guess what? Those all would have waited until my retirement. I never would have gone into these books, ever. I've started probably like seven different biographies and made it through the first two chapters and just stopped them all. So one of the books that I listened to and finished was a book called Tough Jews, which I guess popped up after I read the other one last week. And this was a book, actually somebody else bought me this book, too.

I never read it, never would read it. But it was great. It was a lot about, like, the early Jewish gangsters. And, of course, there was a lot of overlap with the Italian gangsters in the mafia. So in the book, they mentioned the movie Once Upon a Time in America. And I said, you know what?

I've tried to fire that movie up before. And I just, I watched him as well, I'm not watching... I don't even know what that is. What movie is that? I've never heard of it. So Once Upon a Time in America, it's Sergio Leone. It's his last movie, matter of fact. It's 1984.

And it is... Once on time. Listen to this cast. De Niro, James Wood, Joe Pesci has a small role. Jennifer Connolly, she was like A-Nish, she has a small role. Treat Williams. Who else is in here? Danny Aiello, William Forsyth, Bert Young.

So the main stars are De Niro and James Wood. I've never heard of this movie. James Woods. You never heard of Once Upon a Time in America? You've definitely seen the poster where it's like the kids with the Manhattan Bridge in the background that it's like the, 1920s. Okay.

Maybe. Must have escaped me for some reason. Okay. Well, it's three hours at 47 minutes and it is,

it is a slog. I mean, there's whole parts that feel like, I don't know, five days to watch. But it felt like I watched a marathon.

I felt like a sense of accomplishment at the end. So it is good. Not worth watching. Oh, okay. No, it is good. Is it worth it?

Yeah, probably not. I mean, three hours and 47 minutes. My God. What else? What else? What else?

I believe that's it. Oh, wait. One one last thing. There's a documentary on Netflix called Unknown Number, The High School Catfish. Is this on your radar? My wife watches all these. I don't really watch this stuff.

Ask her about this one. Okay. The reveal, I won't spoil anything, is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It is so mind-bedding. I can't stop thinking about it. Is this more than one episode? No, it's like an hour. Okay.

Just one thing. It's one thing. All right. Anyway. All right. I think we're done. This felt like a long week, a great week. Had a great time.

Got Sally's pizza on the way home, the New Haven, Connecticut pizza. Great stuff. So you're saying that you're saying that you have another time hack. You cut your audible time in half, but by going on vacation, you extended time, made time feel longer to you. Yeah, it was time dilation, totally. Okay. Everyone comes to say hi to us at Future Proof.

Plus that and I'm drinking onion juice with garlic clothes. Come on. Yeah. I hope you have some gum, chase it with a gum. Come to hi to us at Future Proof. We'll be around. Come to live Animal Spirits. It'll be fun.

See you then. And next week, we'll be our live show. You'll be able to hear, right? Yeah. Animal Spirits atcompanetNews.com. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time. Thank you.