Animal Spirits Podcast - All In on US Stocks (EP.392)

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

On episode 392 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: healthy corrections, rate cuts vs. the stock market, terrible sentiment towards foreign stocks, the crack cocaine of the stock market, addiction in the information age, deflation in China, AI eats the world, houses are getting older, new vs. used cars for your kids, everyone is drinking Guinness, and much more! This episode is sponsored by 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 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 Subscribe to The Unlock newsletter: https://www.advisorunlock.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's show is brought to you by Our Friends at Whitechart. As we wind down the year, this is reflection season. Ben, is it not? It is. You think about getting sentimental? Where you came from, where you might be going. I am getting a little sentimental towards white charts. One of our longest, probably our longest, not probably.

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of mind. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect them and their family apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash spirits. It's meatfabric.com slash spirits. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We have to

issue a retraction or in Sal governoriali terms, a traction. Last week on Animal Spirits, we took a stroll down my memory lane and told my story, David Rosenberg, and one of the things that we said on the podcast was, I'm going to quote you, Ben. Ben said, if you would have listened to what he did, you would have lost 60% of your money or something like that, some ridiculous amount of money. And that quote was untrue, and it was based on a note that we had shared, a chart that we had shared, and shame on you, Ben, and me for that really the, for that really the fine

print and actually describing what the chart said. So here's what the chart said. Let me quote the source. We didn't explain it enough. Let me quote the source. We measured the impact on an investor deciding to shift the dollar from equities to diversified government mortgage-backed and corporate bonds after reading the post-2010 comments. To be clear, this isn't about whether the Armageddonists at some point became more optimistic. This chart is about the opportunity loss for investors that acted upon seeing their comments at the time.

So when you read that, you're like, oh, that's not exactly what I thought this chart was showing. But it's a good lesson. And there's a lot of lessons in here. One of the ones for me. And by the way, so we did a podcast with David Rosenberg so that we can set the record trade and he can scald us a little bit and explain, you know, some of the calls that he's made over the years and put some proper context around this. But we let him set the record straight in his words. One of the takeaways for me is that there is a big difference between. what you see, or there can be a big difference, between what you see people say in

publications, whether it's TV, radio, newspaper, whatever, and what they're actually doing or what their actual strategy is because, you know, you see something and you sort of forget about it, right? And you forget about the fact that, in this case, this person is publishing daily, and you see them here and there, and there could be a wide disconnect. Before you make decisions based on what you see somebody saying, understand. there could be a big difference between what they're saying and what they're actually doing. Yeah, and it's the same thing with people who go on CNBC

and say, we think this is going to happen or a bear market or a recession or a bull market, whatever it is, and their portfolio could be positioned totally different than what they're saying. Well, also, or they change your mind. Yes, exactly. And they're not necessarily coming back on every time they change your mind.

Yes, agreed. Anyhow, so we did a podcast with David Rosenberg that should be dropping at some point this week. All right, this is a big week, Ben. It is the holiday season. It's Christmas season. It's a great season. You said your favorite.

Too cold for me to be my favorite time of the year. I don't even mind the cold weather because we're playing outside. I hate winter after the Christmas and New Year's season. You hate when the snow turns brown. Yes. But I love it's, we've had a decent amount of snow here. It looks immaculate. See, like, I've been to warm weather climates around the holidays,

and I just don't think that Christmas lights look the same when you're in nice weather. Like Christmas lights are on a palm tree. It looks pretty, but it's not the same without the snow. Agreed. Right? Are you hating on Christmas in California? No, no, no.

Trust me, by the time January something comes up, I'm ready to move to California and get out of Michigan. But in December, with the white snow and the Christmas lights, that's a vibe you can't, that's unmatched. All right, so there has been, speaking of vibes, there's been a big vibe change in the market over the last week, has or not? or from last animal spurts to this one? A little vibe change, don't you think?

There's one bad day. No, I don't think that. I think that last week we were talking about everybody is too optimistic and there was a million signs of froth, a lack of wall of worry. And now, you know, a week later, we're dealing with like 13 straight down days

for the Dow. Remember last week I was talking about a lot of the internal damage and you were like, What are you talking about? No offense. By the way, again, another credit to my Y charts, screens being better than yours.

I'm actually in the market. One of us said, you're on the market. One of us finished off the show last week saying that market needs a comeuppance. We need a quick little slap on the wrist to remind people what risk is. We got that. Okay. This is a healthy situation.

All right. So anyway, let's not move the goalpost. What I was saying is that the things have done changed. I'm moving the goalpost. You're spiking the football. I'm not spiking any football. I'm just saying things have changed up the last week. Have they not?

Why are you? Things have changed. Yeah. And again, we had a little air pocket there. And I don't even think the reason mattered. People said the Fed because they're not going to cut rates. I think it was just that people were looking for an excuse. And I think it was a good, healthy thing to happen.

Yeah. Stock market is still up 26% this year or something. So I feel like there's like there's a, I'm more to the side of like, not, not, you're the side of like nothing matters. Everything is a fit, the narrative type of thing. And it doesn't even matter. of like, well, some things matter. So you might be right, that this is insignificant.

So my point is that the, so the big worry is the Fed is not going to cut as many times in 2025 as people would have assumed. And every time that's happened during this, during this cycle, that's been a good thing because the reason they're not cutting is because the economy remains strong. So in my mind, this is a positive development, not a negative. If the Fed was going to say, we have to cut eight times next year because the economy's slowing, that's a bad news to me. So I'm looking at it as so that, and I'm saying it doesn't matter.

I'm saying it does matter, but it's a good thing. And the market selling, I think that was just an excuse. That's my point here. I fully agree with you there. Before, so we, so when was the Fed Presser? It was last Wednesday. And selling accelerated Powell might have lost the narrative or Larson control a little bit. At least that's what the narrative was.

But before that, or maybe that morning, my dad sent me a screenshot of the newspaper in the New York Post. That's where my dad gets his financial news. news from this looks like it's from 2008 it does but remember i said uh newspapers physical newspapers are going to die with the boomers credit to my dad he already made the shift my dad's already uh reading on the iPad oh he didn't cut this out for you and send it to no this is it's a it's a screenshot your dad still sends you physical newspaper clippings he's he's definitely made the shift to the iPad although you know what my dad will

bring over physical newspaper clippings so i guess he's 50 50 anyway This was a Dow or Dow out. Again, this was before, I think this was Wednesday morning. So before the wheels fell off, so to speak. Worst Skid since 78 on rate fear. And so the Dow has had a, what, like a 12-day losing streak? One of the longest on record. Okay.

That happened. And what's the sell-off, though? What's the drawdown? Oh, it's not bad. 5%? It's not bad. 5% or 6%. Yeah, it's not bad. So it was a very orderly sell-off.

You could say that. Right. Here's from Tor. So, again, I think the Fed not hiking, the fact that they keep pushing rate hike, because remember the rate cutting was going to be, what were we supposed to have in 2024, 6 or 8 maybe? Yeah. It was originally, and then it got pushed out and pushed out. So I think the fact that they keep pushing it out for a stronger than expected economy,

to me, that remains a good thing. Now, the other side would be no, no, no, no. If it's inflation coming back, then it's a bad thing. And Torsten Stock from Apollo says, the strong economy combined with potential for lower taxes, higher tariffs and restrictions on immigration, has increased the risk of the federal up to hike rates in 2025. We see a 40% probability at the federal raise interest rates in 2025. For investors, it is starting to look similar to 2022, too high inflation, rising rates, and falling stock prices.

I don't think you can make the 22 to 22 comparison because rates were so much lower back then. I agree. We have a much bigger cushion now and a margin of safety. But I don't think that's, you know, can we just lay this out here? Can we come up with a new term for bingo card? Because I think that's played out. To me, I'm sick of the bingo. Like, no one actually plays bingo.

Let's be honest. All right. So, what do you suggest? I'm looking for suggestions here. I'm sick of using no one saw this on their bingo card. Okay. Okay. I can get behind that.

It's enough already. I agree. But we need to come up with a replacement term. Okay. I'm just putting it out there. We'll have a brainstorming session. But I don't know. I don't see.

I think something would seriously have to be wrong for there to be rate hikes. Okay. Oh, yeah. If you, how about this? How about this? If you knew that there were rate hikes next year, what would you say that does to the stock market? Because I would say that would be a very bad thing.

Yes, I think you'd have like an air pocket. Yeah. Woosh. Like, it would be, it would not be good. Yeah. I would say, I'd say, bear market. Like 10 to 15% correction minimum, probably. I'd say 15 to 20.

Especially for how well things have gone the last couple years. I don't think people, yes, it would be sell now. Because think about what? what would have to happen for them to raise rates? Yes. Inflation would have to really accelerate. I mean, that's the thing, like I said a couple weeks ago, the volatility of inflation, that's the thing that has been sucked out.

And it's so funny to me, people keep saying, like, the Fed is not at Target yet. The inflation is 2.6 or 2.7, like, I don't know, horseshoes and hand grenades. Close enough. Damn it, I forgot to grab this clip. Remember we had this way back machine. Did I put this in here? Because I was thinking about, like, how high rates would have to be. or I'm so yeah how high inflation would have to be for the Fed to start to raise rates again

oh okay and that's a good so what what do you think like 4% maybe 4 or 5% so I was reminded of somebody sent us this clip I'm looking for it yeah I didn't put it in here so when we spoke to david Roseberg he's like I'm sure you guys have had plenty of bad quality in your career and it was this was this is one of them um somebody was listen to our podcast from years ago we'll find this for next week and I said something like I don't see rates ever going back above 3% or something like that. We were definitely on the, we had a lot of conversations

about what if rates don't rise? And I think our reasoning was actually... Which sound. It was the market. No, but the reason was we've taken on trillions of dollars in debt. There's no way they can raise rates and make it worse for the debt.

But then I guess the inflation obviously outweighed that. But that, I think that reasoning made sense. So, yeah, that would not be good. Anyhow, Kevin Gordon tweeted, stunning. The number of FOMC participants saying there are upside risk to core PCE inflation rose to 15 in the December SEP, largest jump ever from meeting to meeting. So that's not exactly comforting. On the other hand, how many times as a Fed official has been wrong this cycle?

Predicting rates, inflation, unemployment, they've been wrong. They've been just as wrong as everyone else. When they put these forecasts out, they're never right. They're literally never right. So a chart kid Matt looked at the internals in the market. And he said, we are seeing a capitulatory bear market low type oversold readings in the middle of a strong bull market, which in my view is very bullish, right? To have like this sort of a violent shakeout in a bull market is definitely needed, healthy, all that good stuff. So there was Matt has a chart showing the percentage of S&P 500 members with an RSI below 30, which is the technical level for being oversleaders. old. And we got up to 31% most recently, which is where you were at near the bottom in 2022. Now, the difference between now in 2022, obviously, is that 2022 was you were already

in a bear market. Back to my point about cycles happening faster. We had the Japan shakeout earlier this year where the VIX spiked to 50 or whatever it was in a single day. This is the thing that is different about markets now, is that we see these things happen on like a one to two-day basis that would have taken six months in the past or something. Yes. And then the day after, one day last week, you had a huge, huge advance where a lot of like the internals started to snap back the other way. Sentiment Trader tweeted, or Daily Chart tweeted via Sentiment Trader, so the Via Via-Vio.

What a roller coaster ride. The S&P 500 has swung from its worst breath day in months to its best within three recessions, not many losses looking at over the next three to six months. So the wipeout, followed by the wipe in, my wax on wax off version of market analysis has been pretty good. By the way, speaking of wax on wax off, they're making a new karate kid with Ralph Machio and Jackie Chan, a movie. I did see that. They're beating this. This is going to be the next three to five years, which is just movies for our generation, remakes of 80s and 90s movies, and I guess I'm, I guess it's better than nonstop superhero movies.

I'll take it. It wasn't the thing at like 25 of the top 25 movies this year were all remakes, essentially, or sequels? There's no more ideas. I mean, that's not true. That's not true. There's a lot of new. I mean, didn't they just make like six seasons of the Credit Kid TV show as well?

Right. So they're really cashing in. I'm not seeing this movie. I have no interest. No, no. I didn't really go beyond karate kid, too. I think that was it for me. The one is still a classic.

One is a classic. Two was pretty good. Three was, eh. Was two the guy with the ponytail? I believe so. He was good. Like fake Steven Seagal? Just Johnny Lawrence is one of the best 80s bad guys ever, though.

Put him in a body bag, Johnny. Yeah. All right, we got an email. This is definitely not me asking for direct investment advice. Why not put every dollar into a Schwab personalized index? That is the S&P 500 minus Apple and Vindex. in Tesla. So it's just a normal index, but minus these three stocks that anyone can see are overvalued. So they're asking the direct indexing thing, which allows you to pick and choose. It's funny,

they said they actually asked perplexity about this. So the worry is these big stocks have run up too much. They're overvalued. I want out of them, but I want the SEP. This is almost one of the problems with these types of, and this type of customization is just going to grow in popularity in the years ahead. What's a problem with this? what's the problem with it trying to guess these individual components and assume that like all three of these stocks are going to fall at the same time but the rest of the market's going to be okay wouldn't this is getting too cute for me why wouldn't you just buy an equal weight yeah or buy a midcap or something to underweight these instead of trying to pick and choose the names and what says it's kind of like the the yield curve the yield curve does not move for the same maturities at the same direction what's to say that apple invidia and tesler are all going to fall at the same time it could be one of them because of the earnings event it could be none of them you know i think it trying to get too cute with this thing. And then what happens if these three are the only ones that go up and you do this, then what do you do?

Put it back in, wait? I think it's just, again, this level of customization I think is going to continue to grow. A lot of the ETF people are very anti-direct indexing. And you and I have worked with this stuff for a long time and know that it's probably a better tool for financial advisors and wealth management firms that it is for individuals. Yeah, I agree with that. So it's never going to be as big as ETA.

But for wealth managers, there's a lot of different things you can do with it. All right. I tweeted this out the other day. I said, in 20 years of managing money, I've never seen more dismal sentiment for international stocks, value stocks, or valuations in general. And I am a big believer that sentiment is never a timing indicator because everyone told me you could have said the same thing for the last five to seven years. That's true.

But I think that in the last three to six months, the dam has broken. And I've never had more conversations on this. I've never heard more people about this before. I just think people have finally thrown their hands up and said, all right, fine, I'm done with this stuff. I can't do it anymore. And I don't really blame people because of the cycle we've been in for 12, 15 years now and constantly hearing international stocks are cheaper, their dividend yields are higher, why own anything besides tech? I completely get it. I guess, I wonder if part of my thinking on this is shaped by the fact that I came up in the early to mid-2000.

for my career, and no one wanted to own U.S. stocks because we had a lost decade, and emerging markets were amazing, and European stocks did better, and small caps did better, and value did better. And I remember in the early to mid-2010s, the whole idea was the U.S. economy stinks. We had this new normal, and no one was predicting that the U.S. was going to be the biggest, baddest economy again, and that U.S. tech stocks were going to take off. It was bricks. People wanted to invest in all these other countries, because that's the way.

where the growth is going to come from, right? Everyone wanted the emerging markets coming out of the great financial crisis. No one was doubling and tripling down in the U.S. like they are now. But on the other side of that, you and I have always talked about that Peter Bernstein story against the gods, where he says from the 1800s to the 1950s, there was this signal that worked every time. And it was, I wrote about this week, and it was when bond yields are approaching or above stock yields, that's a sell signal for the stock market because in the past, people had to be compensated to invest in the stock market because they thought it was too risky. So dividend yields were higher than bond yields forever. And anytime it even touched, it was actually a great sell signal. Bond yields slightly went above stock

yields in like August of 1929, like two months before the top. So it was a great sell signal when people would sell stocks until dividend yields got higher than bond yields and then they'd buy them again, right? And this was like a wonderful signal back in the day. And all of a sudden in like 1957, 1959, it stopped working. Bond yields went above stock yields, and Peter Bernstein writes about how seeing this relationship that was ironclad in the markets

flip forever, totally changed his view of using the past to think about the future. And so I guess what I'm saying in this long-winded diatribe here is that it would be foolish of me to say because there's been cycles in the past would mean that they have to come back in the future.

Because some things change for the good and the differentest time forever. So I wouldn't want to ever say, like, no, the U.S. tech stocks can't be the new thing. Because what if large-cap growth is just the new small-cap value, and that's the premium. Whatever the premium small-cap value had in the past, large-cap growth has now.

Fair? I guess I'm both sides. Where are you landing right in the middle? I'm still a diversified investor because I think the one true thing about all market environments forever is that they're always in forever cyclical. But I'd be, it'd be stupid to say that, like, maybe technology has changed things forever.

Yeah. So I wouldn't be pounding the table on either end here. I'm with you, Ben. I'm pounding the middle because I echo everything you just said. I believe in diversification. Believe in global diversification. I believe that this is what diversification is. There's always something that you're like, why am I doing this?

That's what it means. But I'm also sympathetic to the idea that maybe it's different in this time, famous last words, and that may be these structural changes in our culture, in our markets, render historical analogs completely useless. Yes. It does worry me how confident people are that U.S. stocks are the only game in town. And what scenario could we possibly see that stocks outside the U.S. could upperform? That kind of stuff.

Well, so that's a question that, I mean, that keeps coming to our inbox. Yes. I think we got a few of these this weekend. Could you imagine a scenario in which U.S. doesn't continue to outperform? And again, not a timing thing because the fundamental or the valuation discrepancies have been widening for the entire decade. And we could have had this conversation every step of the way. So, yeah, it's hard. We don't know.

If you're looking for a catalyst, it's two things. It's the U.S. government messing up policy somehow and the dollar finally falling over. Because if you look at the dollar going back to the 70s, it's up and it's down. It's up and it's down. And it basically has gone nowhere in the last 50 years. But we've been in a hard charging up cycle. So the dollar being strong. And the other one is just the AI bubble, if it is a bubble popping.

Because the whole thing is European companies and they don't have as much tech exposure. So if there was an AI bubble and it popped and these companies all got dinged 50 or 60 percent, I'm not saying European stocks wouldn't fall too, but they're not going to fall as much. So how about this? To that point, Kevin Gore to tweet. the 10 largest stocks in the S&P 500, NAV, represent 39.9% of the indexes market cap. So 40% for the top 10 stocks.

Is now the time where you want to go all in on this? I don't know. You know, could this be 50%. It seems like a lot of people are going on it. And Colin Roche had a good piece at Discipline funds where he said, no, no, no, global diversification is working. So he looked at the returns going back to the 1970s. He looked at these are real returns after inflation for all you inflation people.

And he said U.S. stocks done 6.6% per year after inflation, foreign stocks have done 4.3%. All-world, combining them, whatever the market caps were, has done 5.5%. And his whole point is global diversification worked. Right? If you didn't go to extremes, you got almost 6% after inflation. Would you have done better going on to the U.S.? Of course you would have, looking back on it now. But the point is that you had their yin and yang, and it worked out pretty good, being in an all-world portfolio for that 50-year period. Yeah, but charts like this, And I don't disagree with Colin. I'm just saying charts like this don't change anybody's mind.

Like, right? Like, oh, true. Yes. I don't care. I don't care if you started 55 years ago with what the returns of dollar look like. Look, I started 12 years ago and I've seen nothing but U.S. outperformance. Why would I not put all my money here?

The funny thing is, is my tweet going kind of viral for that. It was probably pretty even. I scroll through the responses before it started getting, you know, psychos like usual. But it was a lot of people saying, yes, this is true. I'm worried about U.S. valuations. diversification still rules versus other people saying, no, you're an idiot, technology has changed of it. It was a pretty even, there wasn't like, all right, one more thing. I had Die Hard on a guy

last night because I watched holiday movies over the holidays. And Die Hard was a screaming sell signal for Japanese stocks. How did no one think of this at the time? It was came out in 1988 and Holly McLean works for a Japanese company? Like, how was this not a screaming sell signal for Japanese stocks? What were they doing back then? Well, they were not podcasting. Where were all the anecdotes? We would have been all over this. Right? If the internet exists, I'm sure people would have been throwing out heaters.

I still can't believe that Bruce Willis is 32 when he filmed Die Hard. He looks so old. 32 years old. He looks like he's 55. Explain it. Is it just sunscreen? What is it that made people look so old back in the day? Did everyone just smoke in sunscreen, no sunscreen?

He was 32. That's unbelievable. She too. Yes. It's hard to believe, right? Hmm. Yeah. All right. This is a great piece from Gunjan at the Wall Street Journal. More men are addicted to the crack cocaine of the stock market. Did you read this piece? I did. This was fantastic. So she said at Gambler's Anonymous in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, one man called Options a Crack Cocaine of the Stock Market. Another said he faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading losses. One young man brought his mom and girlfriend to celebrate one year since his last bet. So she's going to these Gamblers Anonymous meetings. and saying most of them, and more of them are now people who had become addicted to the stock market. So Pennsylvania's gambling hotline has fielded more calls tied to gambling in stocks and crypto since 2021 than it did in the prior six years combined. This other place in New York, 10% of patients are seeking help for add to trading. Before 2020, there was no such patience. Is there a solution here? How do we help these people?

I don't think there's a solution because I think that what people have said in America resoundingly is, if I want to blow myself up, I'm going to do it. Just let me do it. And I think this is getting back to the cultural thing, I think this is just a cultural thing we have. I don't think there's any way to stop this. What if the brokerages said you can't trade more, you can't do more than 100 trades a month?

Oh, that would not be a bet. I mean, that's a lot. Now I guess, but I guess, but to your point, Ben, there were people say, well, fuck that. What do you mean? Yeah. Why are you going to restrict how much I want to trade? Yeah, I'm responsible.

I can do it. it. So they said, listen to this. New patients often suffer from withdrawal symptoms, including severe anxiety and depression when they first stop trading. Some start fidgeting or repeatedly tapping their fingers against a table, itching to place a trade. They talk about this one guy who's like sneaking away in his house all the time to place trades. And it's... It's sad. Yeah. And it's good to get worse. I guess the thing is, with the internet age, there's going to be a way to do this somehow, some way. And I think I don't know what the answer is to stop it. It doesn't, it's not all that surprising, I guess. But you're going to see.

stories like this about sports betting and everything else in the years ahead. So to that point, if they're going to find a way, let's just say that one app was going to say, okay, we're setting the limit. Well, the other app would say, all right, our doors are open. Come on in. Yes. Right? So the idea that we can somehow eliminate this, because it's horrible.

It's really sad. There are people who are destroying their lives and not in any way to make light of this at all or to poo-poo it. But this exists for gambling. This exists for alcohol. This exists for all sorts of things. And I don't know how you police addictive behavior. Like it's an illness.

And maybe just groups like this or the answer, I really don't know. Yeah. And again, unfortunately, with the internet and the information age being what it is, there's probably going to be more addicted people falling down these rabbit holes. Yeah. Unfortunately, just because the access is easier. So Gungent and her colleagues would have another piece in the journal. So this is on the cover of the.

journal today, the physical. It says crypto cult fuels micro strategy rise. By the way, I don't actually think physical newspaper is going to die ever because- I know. Are you going back to them here? But I do think that it's in secular decline. Like the print as a percentage of overall reading is in secular decline. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, for sure. So that's, so anyway. So, okay, so we're talking about micro strategy. There's going to be a paper at some point that's going to go, no, we're not printing physical. There's going to be a big story in the the coming decades of one of the huge papers saying, we're not printing anymore. It's all, if you want to get it online.

That's going to happen. Maybe. The dollar of, yeah, probably. The dollar value of micro strategy shares changing hands at one point in November topped every other U.S. stock in ETF, except InVIDIA. Look at this chart. They have a chart of micro strategy options volume daily. And the call options went from whatever, zero to infinity, basically.

And Peter Atwater was quoted, I thought this was good. During times of uncertainty, you see the podcast. popularity of cults, figures who demonstrate a sense of absolute clear control and direction that people just naturally fall behind. Talk about Michael Salyer there. Social media is a fixture of these investing groups, which have mushroomed into a hub of nearly nonstop chatter in micro strategy, Dan, a chat room on the gaming platform Discord, more than 4,000 members chat about micro strategy. Luntz is one of about 23,000 members in the quote, irresponsibly long micro strategy group on Twitter. I've been told, there's another quote from somebody, I've been

told you you find your tribe there. He said, I can't talk about micro strategy to anybody. I can't talk about Bitcoin without anyone saying it's a Ponzi. So, yeah. This is the other part of it is that you have the ability to put all these people together. Right. And they see one person or a couple people who have done well with this and they hop on the herd mentality. And then you have all these addicts together. Yeah, and the other part of it is, not to call everybody in here an attic, but the other part of this is that the isolation

and like the social loneliness and all that sort of stuff, people find their tribes on the internet. And it's so easy to rally around a figure or character like Michael Saylor, right? Yeah. When you saw this stuff with, he's like a magnet for attention. AMC and GameStop. And yes, I don't want to get like too deep with this.

But part of this is like, I think religion filled this void for a lot of people in the past. And now they're looking for their own religion and they're finding it on the internet. Yeah, totally. Right? Like, this is church for some people. Yeah. All right.

Switching from retail to strategists from RenMAC, strategists have never chased the market higher or harder with targets than today. So they've got a chart showing the percentage change in strategist forecast. against the S&P, and it's been the highest 12-month change ever. So if you remember, coming into 2023, I'm pretty sure consensus on the market for this year was negative.

It was very low. The S&P was... I actually think it was like 4,600 coming into the year where the S&P was-ish, and that's where a strategy thought it would end the year. So going into 24, I don't know what the average target is. Is it 7,000?

Whatever it is, a hard-about face. So I'm very curious to see in a year from now, Are we going to be like, well, obviously, the market wasn't going to perform. Well, like, look how everybody was chasing and performing and, you know, or is it going to be, yeah, they were right. I don't know. It does really seem like it was an everyone in the boat thing the last three or four months. Like, you know, and yes, that's why I think a slight, even like a slight down year in 2025, people would be like, what?

How about this? I would say consensus bowls are usually right. But when you have like this type of thing where it's like everyone turning from bearish to bullish, that's different. Yes. That is like the one concerning thing. For me, that's a, that's a yellow. That's a yellow light. Speaking of traffic. Wait, do you speed up when you see a yellow light though? It depends. So with ways, you see where the, where the, what are the lights with cameras called? you have those michigan right at the at the lights no that'll give you a ticket yeah no we don't have

those oh really huh so we have them all over that's i'm totally mistaken i've never seen no no you must because if you know about it so we have them all over the place here so there are cameras on lights so that if you go through a red light or a yellow too red uh you're going to get a ticket in the mail so i tend to so way shows you where those lights are which is kind of magic oh That is, I mean, Waze does the same thing. Remember, when you were younger, everyone had a friend who had the, what was it called that could detect cops on your car? Oh, yeah, yeah, I don't know.

I didn't have it. But everyone had a friend who had that. And I feel like it never really worked. But Waze tells you when a cop is coming, too. Yeah. We're on the highway. Yeah. So anyhow, I was thinking about traffic.

I am, not to brag, a pretty good traffic merger in the car. Okay. I'm not one of those jackasses that goes all the way to the front. But I don't wait in line for, I'm not at the end of the line, but I respectfully, when I see my, when I see my shot, I take it, you know? Yeah. The people who go all the way to the front, like, I think it should be legal. Those are real, those are real, those are real.

It should be legal to, I think it's illegal to hit them. Scrum of the earth. Yes. No offense, if that's your, but come on, do that. No, offense. Yeah, offense. But with, with walking traffic, I'm terrible. I, I, I, I always bump into people.

No, you go, no, you go, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't, I, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't walk to the right and, right. It's like, it's, is, is it, is it, is it, is, is it, is, walking traffic. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't walk against traffic, come on, I'm not a psycho, but, oh, so you just go to the right. Of course, it's, it's, it's rules of the road. All right, I'm going to try that next time. I'll report back. Um, um, okay, uh, we spoke a couple of weeks ago. Um, uh, uh, we spoke a couple of weeks ago, about why inflation is necessary and a great alternative to prices falling? So there's an article... The lesser of two evils. There's another article in the journal about China. Prices won't stop falling in China, and Beijing is grasping for solutions.

Here we go. Chinese leaders this week pledged to do more to stimulate the economy, including by cutting interest rates and boosting government borrowing, but pressure is building on Beijing to take even more forceful action to prevent a downward spiral of deflation

that becomes self-reinforcing, potentially landing China in a longer-term recession. China's GDP deflator, a broader gauge of price levels across the economy, has been in negative territory for six consecutive quarters, a longer stretch since the 1990s. Here's the coup degrade ban. The fear is that deflation is becoming a grain to China. As falling prices sat profitability, companies could postpone investment or shed workers,

leading more people to cut back on spending. Others might put off purchases because they think prices will drop even more. Here's a quote from Pinelli B. Prime founding director of China Research Center in Atlanta-based thing thing. She said it becomes a vicious cycle. And that's it. So nobody likes inflation. Nobody likes high inflation. But it's a necessary, I don't want to say evil. It's just, it's a thing. Doesn't it seem like China is like the yin to our yang when it comes to the economy and the markets and such? Yeah. Like the U.S. is an outlier in so many ways. But China is an outlier like in the opposite direction. Very much, though. Yeah, it's very confounding. Benedict Evans does a big presentation every year exploring the macro-in strategic trends

and tech, and this year he called it AI Eats the World, they're for 2025. And I pulled out two charts that are pretty wild. And the whole thing is worth thumbing through. They showed, he shows the quarterly investment for Apple, the R&D before the iPhone launch. compared with meta-reality's labs operating loss for the last eight quarters. Okay. And to the structural point that we made earlier about U.S. tech and is it really so, so, so different this time, meaning like the way that these companies work,

the way that markets have responded to it, does it render historical comparisons completely useless? And this is a really good chart showing that to be the case. Again, it's comparing Apple's R&D before the iPhone came out, which it was, you know, know, zero, basically, compared to meta's reality labs operating losses. Okay. Just completely apples and oranges. Right.

Pun intended here? Yes. There was like a before and after. Yes. The amount of money that these companies are pouring into stuff, that is, it's kind of funny, the 2010s were like this thing where these companies don't have to invest in anything and everything is so efficient, but these companies are spending tons of money on this stuff now.

Because they could afford to. And no sector in the history of mankind has produced these sort of profits, sustainable profits, where they've been able to do these sort of things that just continue to make their moat wider and wider and wider. And potentially fail along the way and still be fine. Yeah. Right? Like Facebook had a huge stumble when they first changed their name to meta

and their stock got dinged, but it didn't really matter. They could ride out the storm. Right. So one of the big themes with AI is job displacement. and of course there will be, you know, lots of new job creation. But that's part of the worry, as always when there's a new technology that comes to market. He has a chart showing the elevator attendants in the United States. And there used to be almost 100,000 people worked in an elevator as an elevator attendant.

So before, I guess you could just push the button to go where you want it to be, somebody had to manually get you or take you where you were going, whatever floor you're going, Which is a wild concept. Do you think that was mostly at the fancy places? Or is that obviously? I don't know. I guess probably not. Yeah.

This is going to happen here. But what a wild chart, right? So in 1900, it was 20,000. It went all up to 100,000. It was like a real industry. Yeah. Dare I say sector, elevator attendance. I was thinking about this.

I'm watching 1923. So I bailed on Yellowstone, as you know, after the third season, credit to me. Good decision. But I saw a preview for the second season of 1923. So you and Josh both said, 1923 is worth watching. So I am watching it. And there's one scene, I don't know if you remember this, where refrigerators and

and launching machines, the first iteration comes to wherever they are. And to see that was really kind of cool. It was very, yes. Right? Because their reaction was like, why do we need this? And the guy's like, well, so you have time to do other things. He's like, what other things? Yes.

And now, that's all we have is other things to do, right? Right. It's nothing but other things. That's all, it's like, we complain about so many things because we have so much time to complain. Yes. In the past, when you were working for 12 hours a day on the farm, you didn't have time to complain about stuff. Yeah. Right.

Can you imagine, like, tweeting on your break from the farm? Right. Oh, what did they do? They rested. Yeah. All right. Joy Paul Tonnell, this is on Blue Sky. What do we call it again?

Skye. Skye. Skying? Skis. All right. He has a chart of America's aging housing stock. The average age of U.S. housing units. He said it's the oldest it's ever been and just keeps getting older. We don't have enough homes in this country and too much of what we do have is dated and decaying.

I think that the transition from, we've talked about this in recent weeks, baby boomers in their houses, and the years ahead are going to be passing them along to the next generation or selling them, it's going to be a way more expensive proposition for people than they realize because a lot of these houses are going to need to be updated to suit the tastes of younger people. And I'm seeing this already in neighborhoods around where I live. It's like an old 50s or 60s house, kind of like a flat ranch or whatever, and you see all the brand, they try to make like a modern farmhouse, you know, with the white and the black, and then they put the brown post on it and stuff.

And it's like an older house, but it's been updated to fit today. And it's total renovation. I think you're just going to see a ton of that in the years ahead. And buying a house is going to be way more expensive than people think because it's buying the house and renovating it to get it up to HGTV standards. Right? This is going to be a big thing because we just don't build enough new housing in this country. Yeah. So what are the implications of this, do you think?

Again, younger people getting screwed because they're going to be paying higher prices for housing that they're not going to like. and then they're going to have to pay more money to have it renovated. How? Debt, I guess. Right? All right. Jason Zweig did a story about private credit. He kind of compared private credit to owning corporate bonds or high yield and just saying how much of a party this is.

And you and I have been getting all kinds of emails all the time about this stuff. So he compares the total annual expenses of private credit funds to high yield bond ETFs. And he shows that in 2023, the average expense for a private credit fund, fund was 4.12%. And that's including, I guess, they take 20% of the profits or whatever. And I just don't see how the math works for private credit. With 4% fees and borrowing rates of, I don't know, 15, 17% for some of these companies, because you're promising yields to people of 10 to 12%. How does that math work for both the companies that are borrowing at such high rates? I don't see how it all shakes out.

I don't see how you get 12% returns when you're paying 4% in fees. And then that means the company's paying 16% to borrow money. How does this work? It seems to me the bottleneck here is companies borrowing 16% can't possibly continue to pay rates that high. Yeah. I agree. I mean, part of this is probably just leverage, I guess, is like the, that's the difference. Well, I think it is my view, and this is like an hour-long conversation.

that private investments are coming in a big way. So Jason's right. There is going to be a title wave. And I think we're in the first inning of that title wave. It's early. Yeah, it's early still. So I think you could look at this through a skeptical eye, which is warranted, fully warranted, because there's a lot of opacity in here and high fees, which are guaranteed.

So certainly you should look at this with a skeptical eye. Like, why are they coming to market? What are these things actually do? that sort of stuff. But I also do think that the title wave is going to force competition and fees are going to come down probably fairly significantly in the next 10 years. That's fair. And then the other side, it would be not to say like, oh, this is a bubble. It would be to say these returns are going to come down. You can't promise these high returns anymore. That's not going to last. So I think they're coming for your 401K, which actually probably

makes sense, right? These are long duration instruments, illiquid. Probably makes sense if you're going to own them to own them in a retirement account that you're not. I couldn't touch anyway. So, yeah. Yeah, these are coming for baby boomers, too, who want to have some more perceived safety in their retirement funds and they see a yield. That's all they need to see.

10%? Sign me up. Exactly. All right, this is interesting. I'm a 45-year-old male. I'm sorry. I'm a 45-year-old married. I'm 40, this guy who's 45 months of retiring 10 years.

All right? I should have just said that. I want to know what your retirement plans are. Will you guys just put your nesting out in some safe 60, 40 mix instead and forget it? Do you plan on picking stocks in your retirement? I definitely don't plan on picking stocks in my retirement. My plan is to retire as early as possible and just go to my favorite diner every morning and research small calves to invest with a couple of bucks and keep the rest in healthy mix of index funds.

Please share with us what you guys imagined your retirement would be like. All right. So I kind of misread this at first. I thought he meant like, what do you guys plan on doing in the future, like work-wise? Not necessarily how do you plan on managing your money in retirement? which is he's more asking the latter. I think, so my retirement money is, it's index funds, right? I'm not trading my retirement account, although I do have a SEP IRA in which that's where my stocks are. But I don't think I'm going to be 65 years old or 70 or whenever I retire

actively trading stocks or like actively at being like super active in my portfolio. I just don't say it. No, my portfolio will be as simple as possible. It'll be, yeah, a mix of stocks. and some fixed income and some liquid cash reserves. Also, I'm very bad at predicting how my future stuff will feel. At 70, I might be like, I still got it. Or now I can actually focus on picking stocks. Now I actually have time to focus on becoming the next Warren Buffer or the next Paul Trudor Jones.

So I don't know. I would say that's probably not going to happen, but I've also learned my lesson over the years that I'm very bad at predicting how I'm going to feel in the future. The only thing that I can say is that I will probably have a higher allocation to equities than most retirees. I think my risk tolerance will still remain relatively high. I also don't know. I'm also pretty sure that you're just going to be in a Target Day fund.

Let's be real. You know, I don't actually own any, for as much as you talk about, I don't own any Target Day. Well, okay, that's a lie. I own Target Day funds for my kids' 529 plans. How's that? And also maybe some tokenized real estate. Who knows? Yes.

You'll be, what are you talking about? You'll be having one of those big ski masks on, and you'll be trading stocks. pushing stuff around. I might be. So, Ben, Carri-on was the top show, the top movie of the year for Netflix. That's crazy, right?

So it was the biggest, I think, yeah. Well, you know why? Because Hitman was so good, but not quite as, maybe like universal appeal as Carri-on, which was just pure silliness fun. So I watched Carri-on, and it was a rip-worn good time

and incredibly silly. Robin walked in and she's like, why is he running like that? And I'm like, because he was a, he ran track in high school, that's why. That's true. Yes, they had to mention that part. So, to me, it was like, remember the movie Phone Booth with Colin Farrell? Oh, yeah.

It was like Phone Booth in the airport. Yes. Good fun, good, good fun. Kind of movie that's been done, but just in a different place. So Lucas Shaw had this survey where he asked different people in Hollywood, like, where if you were going to sell a show to a streaming service, where would it be? And it was Netflix over all else, obviously. Netflix was number one by a huge margin.

HBO Max is the next one. Apple TV was actually the third one, and I wonder if that's because they know they'll get a lot of money from Apple. But I mean, if Carion had come out on Hulu or something, there's no way it's as big as it is. No, you're right. You know, it would have been seen by nobody. It was, it's Netflix is the thing. Yeah, it's Netflix, right. All right, Jeff Dean tweeted after 25.3 million autonomous miles driven, Waymo vehicles have an 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims compared to human drivers per mile driven. This is one of those things that the evidence is going to just be so resoundingly clear that these

things are safer than human drivers, and I still think in America we're going to fight it. It seems like this is, I wonder if this is like under discussed, underappreciated, or maybe it's just because you and I are not in an area where this exists. I'm sure people in San Francisco are like, yeah, what do you mean? Right. This is a thing that it's not even that new anymore. It's been here for a year or whatever it is. But I think, like, this is an example of, like, something that's so wild and incredible that just is under-celebrated, right?

Like, we move on. Like, oh, yeah, of course your self-driving goes. Right, yeah. Move on. It is, it's kind of a miracle. Yeah, it's a miracle. Yeah. All right.

Had to pause the podcast to send this immediately. You always buy the new, so last week we talked about, someone asked us, would you give your son or daughter when they turn 16 your old car or buy them a new vehicle? And we said, no, you always give them the hand me down. We were pretty clear on this. Someone said, you always buy the new driver, the new car. New cars have safety features that are crucially young drivers. When they don't have the experience of an older driver, they need all the braking, line spot, lane assist,

all those safety features of car. Come as you want your child to have a million airbag, is not just the one that popped out of the steering wheel. So it's countertuitive. You always get your car, your young person in a new vehicle. And obviously this is... That's obviously right. Of course it's right, yeah.

It's obviously right, but it's obviously wrong. Let me tell you. There's never been another generation when this has been the thing. Growing up, did you ever have friends who got new cars? Maybe there was like, we had one rich girl in our high school got a new car. Everyone else got beaters. I said I drove the 89 Honda Corps. We had huge massive snowstorms when I grew up.

And guess what? I learned to drive way more conservatively. I didn't have anilocks brakes. I would hit my brakes. You know, and so guess what? So there are studies that show that analogue brakes actually increased the prevalence of, it saved like fender benders, but it increased the prevalence of single car mess up. Have you been in a snowstorm before?

and you see a massive trucker SUV just fly by you. And you go, oh, my God, what I mean? And then, like, three miles down, you see him in a ditch somewhere. Yeah. So I think it's made drivers more brazen. You're absolutely right. Yeah. So sometimes the safety features, obviously, if you're a parent, you look at this,

you go, of course I'd get my child the car with all the safety features. But also, what if all those safety features make them drive like an idiot? So I can see. That's ridiculous. But isn't this how. No parent is doing second level thinking with their child safety. But isn't, isn't this how luxury is becoming a little bit of? necessities, though? Like, people say, like, I can't afford to live anymore. There's people who

should be doing better off financially that aren't because of this kind of line of thinking. Right? But, yeah, but are you going to tell a parent, no, don't make your child as safe as possible? Of course not. Here's another email that we got in cars that I will bend the need to. Your car advice to give the old car to your 16-year-old and buy a new car for yourself a spot on. However, Michael said, putting too much money, $10,000 on a car is way too much. If you put down that much money and the car gets totaled money is gone. In my opinion, there's just false and terrible advice. This is what insurance is for. If you total the car off the lot, you'd get the 10K from insurance and the insurance company would pay the bank the rest. The bank would never

lend you the money without getting improperly insured. Okay. So, I guess it makes sense. Well, how about this, though? Yeah, I guess it's six of one, half dozen the other than you you're putting a big amount of money into a depreciating asset, but either way, you're going to be spending more on the month, you know, I don't know. By the way, speaking of emails, I want to do better for the audience. So last week, I got a little bit salty with somebody in the inbox who said that I was so frothy and all that sort of stuff. And I want to say this. Our inbox is a safe space. Okay. So if you, if I or Ben, let's be real, probably me. If I say something that you don't like and you want to let us know in the inbox, I will not air that in public, okay?

If you have a gripe with something I say, I will keep that between you. Add this to the Michael email etiquette list. keep that between you and me. I should not have, I should not have gotten defensive on the podcast. So I apologize. Hand up. I will do better. I will never bring your dirty lunch to the air, but I do reserve the right to change my mind. Okay. This is like the opposite of Festivus. This is like the mea culpa. Festivus is when we air our grievances. Well, I'm trying to do that time of year. Listen, I'm trying to grow. I'm trying to do better. Okay. Ben, if you just get one percent better each day, compound, uh, Twitter thread.

et cetera, motivation, hashtags. Hashtag, Marcus Aurelius. All right, this, you know when you see something you're like, oh yeah, why doesn't that exist? Somebody tweeted, Apple is developing a smart doorbrow with advanced facial recognition that would let you into your house using face ID. Duh, why the heck doesn't the ring

just let you in when it sees you? Why can't you just do this? Because you have a key. I don't know. Is it really necessary? Oh, it's necessary. So I have a keypad on my door. Yeah, we have a keypad in our garage, too.

Yeah, but why do I have to do, boop, boop, boop. Wait, did I just give it away when my code is? No, why can't I just see your face and open the door and the door unlock? I don't know, because what happens when the internet in your house is down and you can't get in your house anymore because you don't have a key? There's an override. Okay. It seems like a cool feature, but it also seems like it's way too complex.

How? I don't know. Is it necessary? Is it necessary that I drink my own urine? You're doing the dice thing too much. No, but it's sterile and I like the taste. All right. You know, it's the kind of thing that you, here's the thing, though.

It's the kind of thing where you'd use, like, you have friends come over and you'd show them. Like, look at how cool this is. And you probably never would use it. What do you mean? You just literally look right in and it. I don't. Maybe it's because I... You thought the Apple wallet was too complicated at first.

Sorry, maybe it's because you turned your garage into a mudroom. I have a garage, so I just go, I hit the door in my garage door, and I go into my garage and I walk into my house through the garage. So I never use my front door for anything. So I can't get into my garage. This is so annoying. When they built the mudroom, you know there's like the motor on the garage? By the way, that isn't necessary that I drink my own urine. That's from Dodge, it's a line from Dodge Bowl. Okay. So if you're like, what the hell did Michael just say? It's a line from Dodgeball. So when they built the mudroom, the wall backs up against the motor of my garage. And so there's an app in my phone that lets you, open your garage door on your phone, right? I'm sure you have one too. I'm sure most listeners have one. But in order to reset it, you have to like, like scan the QR code on the back of your motor. And I can't get to the motor because it's pressed up against the wall. So I don't I don't know what to do. See, this is the problem with technology. It's so annoying.

If you just had the old garage that you could just lift up on your own, you'd be fine. And so yesterday, Robin was getting annoyed because the kids were out playing in the snow and they come in and they take all their dirty clothes off right in the front door. And she's like, this is what the mud room is for, but we can't get in because the garage. you're an idiot. And I was like, I don't know. So you have the motor

and you can't use it. You just got to make your garage door, just put a door on it. Take the garage door off, put like a regular door that you walk through. You know how much garage doors cost? They're like a fortune. Really?

I don't know. They're like, I think they're like a couple thousand dollars. I'm saying just put a regular door on there. Let me just put a regular door. Have someone come in, put a door, wall it out, door. Like, cut a hole in my garage?

Yeah. Yeah, why not, right? Well, but then how are the- If you can't open it anyway? Oh, that's a good point. Just put a door on there. Like, it's another door to your house, and that's your side door to your mudroom.

But that's weird to just have a door in your garage. All right, let's move on. All right. From the New York Times, friends sent me this. We had a little Christmas gathering this weekend, and I got a bunch of beer, and I'm not a beer snob. I get the common man beverages.

I had a four-pack of Guinness. You know those Guinness draft ones? Yeah. And it has the little nitrous thing in it, and it pours great. So we were drinking them, and my friend said, oh, you've got to split the G on this. And I said, what's split the G mean? And apparently, if you go get a Guinness now, it's this hot Instagram thing, TikTok thing, but obviously I'm middle age and don't know these things.

It's a big thing that Guinness took off this year because there's a thing where, you know, you get a Guinness at a bar, and they give you the Guinness glass, and it says Guinness on the top. And the point is, and so it's probably a third of the way down or so, which is far and away the best draft beer you can get in a bar, right? Like, you look the coolest if you're holding a Guinness. That's true. There's no cooler beer to hold than a Guinness. That's true.

And so what you try to do is on your first sip, you gulp it down all the way to it says Guinness and you have to get where the middle of the G is. So if you do that, you win a free beer. Oh, I like that. That's pretty, we've got to try New York when I come in a couple weeks. Okay. So they say that apparently, so it says you can spot some Guinness in some unexpected places across New York City, including Mexican restaurants, diners, and natural wine bars.

It is the fastest growing import beer in the country based on bar restaurant and brewery sales over the last year, Colonnaw, Nielsen. The numbers are completely bananas right now, says Orrin McGonagall. Oh, man, that guy owns an Irish bar, huh? Owner of the Dubliner, a two-year-old pub in Boston. In 2023, his bar sold more Guinness than any other bar or restaurant in the city. Purchasing volume with a stout is up 60%, 6,3% to meet rocketing demand. Here's the, here's the great thing about Guinness. It's basically like a Miller-Light. 4.2% of alcohol. It's about the same strength as Bud Light, and it has 125 calories, later than Madela. The counterpoint, do are people drinking multiple guineasasas?

Gen. I? Because I can only have one. It is hard to drink more than one. But yeah, you get it at a bar and you have to chug it down to split the G. And guess what? Guess who did it in the first try? Sean. This guy. Nailed it. Sean would probably do that. Happy birthday, Sean, by the way. I took my kids to get a haircut this weekend and I saw some poor balding bastard get the Michael treatment with the mirror. And I started getting cold sweats just for him.

I'm thinking like, I wanted to say to the bar, but like, come on, he didn't stop doing that. He knows. Yeah, or just hold the mirror way further back. Like, uh... It's like a rearview mirror. I'm pretty sure full-headed men don't get the mirror treatment. Just saying. No, no, every time.

They got to show me the back that it's like straight or whatever. All right, fine. Maybe you're right. But, but for the, but for the balds, how about you just, how about you just take a pause? Yeah. Don't show them back. Yeah. Has there ever been a history in the history of, a time in the history of baldom where somebody said,

uh, hey, wait, mind holding the mirror to the back of my head? Right. Yeah. I want to see the different angle of it. No, no bald has ever asked for that. Do you remember the infomercials in like the 1990s of that round pole peel guy who would do the spray stuff on his hair to cover a bald spot? It was literally like hair spray or a spray paint.

And he would just paint his hair and be like, see, you can't see the bald spot anymore. So I bought, what was, I bought a rogue game back in the day. How long do you stick to it for? I did it like three, three days. I was like, I'm on, there's no way. A for effort. There's no way. Plus, it, like, stunk, and it, like, matted your hair down.

This is the worst product ever. Okay. I could use a blow dryer to fluff that hair up. You use a blow dryer, obviously. Oh, yeah, I use a blow dryer. Yeah. Kind of wet-looking hair. All right, recommendations.

I watched the first episode of No Good Deed on your recommendation. Excellent cast. There's probably, like, ten people that I've seen other shows in movies before. The quality of Netflix shows is still a little lacking Yeah, it's not HBO. Yeah, it's not HBO, but just from the first episode, it's about real estate, which is interesting because it's very timely. So here's my financial lessons from this show, even though it's about like there's something mysterious going on and all these other stories coming together. We'll see if I stick with it.

But here's some of the financial lessons. Number one, don't be house poor, right? Rare amount are with house poor. He has no money besides what's tied up in his house. Number two, you need diversification, right? They have one asset, financial asset at their house. and they're stuck, right? Number three, he needs a home equity line of credit, right?

Dennis Leary gets out of jail. He needs 80 grand, and he's extorting him. He has no way to get 80 grand. Guess where you get it from? Home equity line of credit on the house he won. Right? He has no he lock. Number three, there's a lack of housing supply.

There's this one house everyone wants, right? All 10 of these people want to buy this one house because there's a lack of housing supply. Right? And finally, there's the one couple where the wife is pregnant, and they have to take help from the mother-in-law to buy a home because they can't afford the daycare versus a mortgage payment, right?

This is where young people get hurt again. So there's a lot of financial lessons in this show. They really are, and think about it through that lens. Of course I did. We'd finish the show last night, and it was like a, I'd say a B-minus. So do I stick with it? You don't have to.

Okay, I kind of get that feeling. One other thing. I would like there to be a Christmas Pop Culture Hall of Fame. All right, to do it. So I think you have to vote it because there's holiday classic movies and music that has just already been inducted to the Hall of Fame. Like we know what the classics are. So when new stuff comes along, someone has to vote.

Like, is this a classic or not? Right? Because I'm nominating the ringer did a story about how the holdovers is already a classic. And I tend to agree. Come on. Really? It's a very, I watched it again this weekend, man. It's a very good movie.

I know it's slow. That is like the definition of not a rewatchable. I've ever watched like three times. I really like that movie. So, like 1994 was a great year because the Santa Claus came out with Tim Allen and All Wend for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey. I thought you were saying like Pulp Fiction and... Yeah, so those two...

Shawshank. Those are an immediate entrance into the Hall of Fame, right? It's funny, my two daughters are working on a dance that they learned on YouTube for All I Want for Christmas is You. And that's all they've been doing for the last two days is working on the dance moves of this song. It's very cute. But I nominate from the 2010s Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson. That goes into Hall of Fame.

I never saw that. No, it's a song. Oh. But like there's a new, there's a song from the last couple years by Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani. It's kind of catchy. But that one, no, you didn't make it.

Sorry, not in the Hall of Fame. Okay. So that's my idea. Chris is Hall of Fame. Okay. Every five years we hold a vote. All right, make it so. Okay.

Wait, did you tell me that you're watching Landman? I did get into it. We're two episodes in. Okay. Good call. I like it. Just wait until you get more into it. The first two are like not even that great relative to...

I've always been a fan of Billy Bob. I feel like he always kind of plays the same cantankerous character, but in a good way. It's fantastic. I took Logan to see Sonic 3. My kids are becoming cinefiles. They love going to the movie theater. My kids do too. My wife takes them all the time on breaks and stuff.

And what? You still won't go? Why are you boycotting the theater? No, a lot of time, like if there's a break, like on Christmas break, like today they're going to see Mufasa, but I'm working. Okay. Sonic 3, quite good. Okay, Sonic 2 I thought was a little, eh. I didn't see the first or the second, but the third one was pretty good.

But how did you know what was going on if you didn't see the first two? I mean, it's not, you know. Is Jim Carrey the bad guy again? Because he's been the bad guy in all three movies. It seems like it's got to kind of run its course eventually. He's the bad guy twice. He plays himself and his grandfather. Okay.

Yeah, it was good. Okay, listen. everyone. 2025 was a good year. I hope it was a good year for you, too. You mean 2024? Yes, that's exactly what I meant. I hope 2025 for everyone

as good, if not better, than the last 12 months. We know you have a lot of options to listen to, right? As somebody who listens to a lot of podcasts, I can't listen to every podcast that I want to listen to them, and neither can you. So the fact that you chose to ride with us means a lot.

So from Ben and I and Duncan and the whole team, thank you. This is kind of like Ocean's 11. Like, did you practice that today in the mirror? No, how is it? Very good. Okay, thank you. What is Brad Pitt? Yeah, very good.

We appreciate it. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. See you next time.