Animal Spirits Podcast - Are You Middle Class? (EP.379)

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

On episode 379 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: our experience at Future Proof, melt-up possibilities in the stock market, what's left for ETFs, how many people are actually in the middle class, the death of the minivan, housing prices vs. demographics, cutting the cord, why Twitter is getting worse, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Innovator ETFs and CME Group. To learn how you can gain exposure to the Nasdaq-100’s potential upside, with built-in risk management against the downside, visit: Innovatoretfs.com Access CME Group's valuable educational materials and trading tools and learn more about what adding futures can do for you at: cmegroup.com/animalspirits 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 Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com 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

Welcome to Animal Spirits. On today's show, we're talking about future proof. One week later, we already have nostalgia for it. Yes, future proof cemented itself as the best industry conference of all time. Financial industry conference. At least that's my opinion. Ben, we're getting old. What happened? How did this happen? Father time is undefeated, and we looked back at the time from between now and the financial crisis, and it shows that we're getting old. It's been a long time. We asked the question, are you middle class? Lower, middle, upper? We tried to define it for us and for the rest of the nation as well. Upper, but identify as middle. Grocery stores. Have you noticed prices are coming down? I have. It's in the data. We do online grocery shopping, so I don't notice. You do?

Yeah. Death of the minivan. Why millennials are too cool to drive minivans and why it may be forcing them into the middle class lifestyle. Stick around for more. Today's show is brought to you by innovator ETFs. Ben, NASDAQ 100. Are you familiar with this index? It's like the, it's on the S&P's corner now. It's the tech-heavy NASDAQ-100. It's been one of the greatest performing investments of all time might be strong, but I don't know. What's better? What's been better than the NASDAQ 100? 20% per year now for over a decade? It's not bad. But the thing is, the NASDAQ 100 is a bit extra spicy, a little bit more mustard than the S&P 500. So there's a lot of deeper drawdowns. Innovator ETFs has you covered if you want to

invest in the NASDAQ 100, but you don't want all the smoke of the downside. Eric Balchunas calls these ETFs boomer candy. I call them investing with guardrails. Obviously, you can't get all the upside if you're protecting the downside, but you know, you could somewhere in the middle. Yes, you get exposure to the upside up to a certain level, but you also are protected to the downside for a certain level. We've talked to Bruce Bond from any of your ETFs on a talk to book segments many times in the past.

Check out innovatoretefs.com to learn more about you can gain exposure to the NASDAQ 100 with some upside, but not as much downside. important moments, sometimes the hardest part is simply knowing where to start. That's why we're here to help. When you pre-plan and prepay a celebration of life with us, every detail will be handled with simplicity and professionalism, giving you the peace of mind that you've done all you can today to remove any burden from your loved ones tomorrow. We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at Dignitym memorial.ca. The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by

affiliates of Service Corporation International. 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 Riddholt'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. Want to get a big thank you to all of our viewers, audience listeners who came out to FutureBook last week.

Did we get a final number? I heard different take. 4,200 plus. 4200 plus. Ben, last year, when we came back, I said, you know, I feel like we sort of underhyped it. I feel like we did our listeners of the disservice, the advisor community who might go a disservice by under-hyping it. I think we did it again.

For as much as we spoke about it, I think we might have under-hyped it once again. We have a few people who said, I came because you guys talked about it so much, but you wrote a blog post saying this year felt different, and I totally agree, because if I'm thinking about the last three years of this event, and we've done, I was trying to count it, seven events in total, I think, eight maybe, you know, including the EBI and wealth stack and all those ones. And it's kind of like they've built up and compounded over time.

But the first year we did this, it was kind of like the idea sounded amazing. The people that went were like blown away like, oh my gosh, this is something totally different. And last year, a lot of the same people came back, plus some more. And then I feel like last year it locked in a little bit. I was like, oh, okay. And then this year was even bigger. it was almost double the amount of people from last year. And it just felt like, oh, okay, this thing has taken on a life of its own now.

Yeah. It totally did. And when Matt Middleton and team came to us and said, we're going to do this on the beach, there's these hotels here, there's bars and restaurants there. I feel like whatever they laid out for us, this was this year was the dream turning into a reality. Yeah. It was just, it was this huge, long, bigger than ever before. And there was, I don't know, six stages.

and there was 30,000 plus individual meetings for these breakthroughs. I mean, one of the biggest differences this year was that every session was packed. There wasn't empty stages. I'm sorry, there wasn't stages with a lot of empty seats. Not only was it packed, but there was like rows of people standing at every panel that I went to. Yes, exactly. And there was so much going on. For some people, it was hard to choose which one to go to.

We were walking to do our live animal spirits. when we were talking to Animal Spirits fans that came up to us, and you go, where are you going? Animal Spirits is over this way. They said, oh, I'm going to go watch this thing. I'm like, you know, you go the wrong way. Ben, I had no idea that you were such a third-eye blind fan. So we were not quite front row, but we were in the,

we were towards the front of the stage. And at one point, I turned to you, I'm Ben singing the entire time. I turned to you and I go, what year is this from? Ben goes, 1997, can't hardly wait. Chugs his beer and then continue singing. Okay. So, here's the thing. So, Colleen and our team also said,

I didn't know Ben was such a third-eyed blind fan. The thing is, I'm not a huge third-eye blind fan. There's nothing wrong with it. There's no shade. No, nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I did own the very first third-eye blind album, but I was never, like, a huge fan. I think it was just the nostalgia element of...

We were kids again. Yes. The audience was, the audience drowned out the lead singer. Yes, everyone knew every word of the song, and it was fun. I think that was as much fun as we had the first two years. I said this year was even more fun. I think third-eyed blind, I mean, there was an aerial shot that somebody took with a drone of people in the concert and all the people like spread out behind the rafters.

There were so many people. It was electric. My favorite part was the lead singer for third-eye blind saying, we're at a finance conference and we know nothing about finance. We have no clue, which I think I shouted out. I want to be your advisor. So it was fun. It was awesome to see so many people. And the cool thing about it for a lot of them was it was a person who came by themselves.

And they're like, hey, I listen to you guys talk about this. I came and I'm saying, oh, is someone else for your team here? No, it's just me. Yeah, a lot of people like that. It was college students and advisors and fund managers. And it was just, here's the greatest thing about it, I think. This was the ultimate online, the online world is not reality. Everyone at this conference was in a good mood.

Everyone was smiling. Everyone was having fun. And check their Twitter accounts. It's easy to be in a good mood when you're on the beach and it's sunny and, you know, people are having fun. But that's the thing is that there's so much negative. these days with almost everything online that it's so nice to be in the real world and think like, oh, the realers not like this

for most people. No. Most people are happy. They want to have fun. They want to smile. They don't want to drown out in the negativity. So after Future Proof, I got to the airport and I see Sam, Sam Rowe and Joe Wisenthal

and sat down with them, Phil Parliament, who's one of my oldest friends in the industry. and it was 155, and the Fed is about to go at 2 o'clock Eastern. I was following along. I was on my plane at that point, I think. And I had decent internet, so I was following along on Twitter. And there was, there happened to be a dude with a guitar at the John Wayne Airport. Credit to them.

And the Fed, as we know, cut 50 basis points. The market is ripping. I'm with my boys. And this dude is playing. Here comes the son. And I can't begin to describe the feelings. It was surreal. Like, truly, this fucking guy is playing,

Here Comes a Sun after the Fed cuts 50. After the greatest week of my life, it was, is this heaven? No, it's Iowa. It was like that sort of, that sort of moment for me. I think that's one of the cool things about the festival is bringing all those different people together. We had our, every year at the festival,

we have a dinner the very first night at the same place. And there's always a different cast of characters that comes. But I looked over at one of the tables was Bob Pisani and Tom Lee and Dan Ives. Legends. And just seeing the people who you see on TV or see on social media or see at other conferences all together talking in big groups, that was one of the cool parts of me. You had CNBC people and Bloomberg people and Twitter people and RA people. CNBC Pro had a big booth. And Dom Chu was manning the shit out of that booth.

I saw him talking to so many fans. Yes. Just, that's a great guy, by the way. But it was just, yeah, words failed to do it justice. I've wanted a thing about one middle-aged take here. So we found a bar in town in Huntington Beach that had live music. And I don't know why it took me to my 40s to realize this. But selling early at the bar is the ultimate move when you're older.

Like every night you and Josh and I would leave wherever we were by 1130. before things got out of hand. And I never learned that when I was younger. I would always be the one who had to stay till the end. I was a value investor. I would sell way too late. And then by the end of the night, everything gets sloppy. It's one of those like, nothing good happens after midnight.

Because I asked Bill Sweet, hey, we left the bar pretty early the last night. You know, we did a third eye blind into the live music at a bar. And Bill said, yeah, you didn't miss anything. Everyone started getting sloppy around 1230 or 1. We did third eye blind at the event. And then the guy at the bar sang third eye blind for us. Yeah, I'm a, I don't say I'll pass 11. That's true.

One of the nights you Irish didn't, Irish, and left at 9 o'clock. I didn't know. That's too early. Well, I was preparing for a heavy night the next night. Here's my middle aged take of the week. One of my favorite days of the week, my favorite activities of the week, 25-year-old Michael can't believe I'm saying this. And 25-year-old you, if you're a 25-year-old listener, you might say,

this sounds awful. No, no, no. It's great. What I'm about to describe to you, this embrace it. Sunday morning, going to the grocery store, coming home, putting on my AirPods,

listening to a podcast, kids are out of the house of Aubin and just cutting the vegetables, cutting their fruit for the week, packing it up, this, that prepare my meals. You like that? I really thought to myself,

wow, this is, this is, this is peak dad. That's a middle age guy. And then you just, then you just throw your, all your dishes into the dishwasher, like a nuclear bomb went off. Well, you should see, you should see how I pack my refrigerator. You can imagine.

Actually, speaking of cutting, cutting fruits and vegetables, I was, I was a, what wasn't even, what's the name of these knives? Cutco? You know those knives? The door-to-door sales people? Yeah. So I did that. I can't remember how old I was.

It was one summer in high school. Did you sell any? To like my friend's parents. Not really. Yeah. However, I still have those knives, and this has got to be, these knives have got to be 25 years old. I never bought myself, I never bought a set of knives. So I didn't, do you sharpen them every year?

I've never sharpened them once. And they still work good. Because remember the demo was you take out an empty pop can and you cut it in half. Yeah, they still can. Cut cut for the win. However, listen, it's been legitimately like 25 years. They're not the best knives in the world anymore. So I thought, what am I doing?

Get a set of knives. So I bought a pair of knives on Amazon. Didn't exactly break the bank. I think it was, it was like $200, maybe a little bit more for a proper set of knives. And what a difference. I had no idea that I was living in knife poverty. Having a knife that could actually cut, it's like a world's different. You're like cutting stuff with rocks.

I mean, you weren't sharpening them either. Of course they're going to be dull. Never sharpened them once. Yeah. All of a sudden, I feel like I was living in the dark and now I see the light. Get yourself a good pair of knives. All right. Quick updates on the stock market.

40 new all-time highs through the close on Monday for this year. Pretty good. 21% total return year-to-date, 34% over the past year from the COVID lows. 175%-ish, we're talking 25% annual gains from the COVID lows. Here's another one. I mentioned this before, I think, six months ago, that we were close.

From the GFC, we are now at a 10-bagger from the GFC bottom, up more than 1,100 or 1,200% 10-Bagger. The whole way up, people have been telling you the world is coming to an end. Not us. Not us. Eventually it will be. I tweeted this out on Twitter and someone said,

this is peak hubris here. You're going to have your comeuppance. And listen, we talk about the risks, too, but... What did you tweet? What did you tweet? I tweeted some of those stats.

Oh. And someone said... How is that hubris? Exactly. They're just, they're stats. Okay. People don't like it. It's the...

Anyway. Yeah, we know that the other side is... is happening, but we legitimately are. I can't even believe it. We're in an 80s, 90s bull market, ish. And if we get the AI blowoff, it's going to look exactly like that. Yeah. So Ed Yardinney said, this is from Bloomberg, Yardinney says Fed Cut raises odds of an outright melt-up in stocks. Now, the meat of the article doesn't really match the headline as much. He just said he takes his probability of a melt-up from 20% to 30%. And he says a bull market is like 80%. percent of his, whatever, his model. Again, people always talk about the downside risks. I want to talk

about upside risks for a minute. It's not out of the realm of possibilities. If the Fed rate cuts cause a soft landing, or even if the soft landing continues, and the AI bubble stuff really actually turns into something. You know, it's funny. So one investor would say get ready for the meltup and the other investor would say get ready for the crash. And both fair. Yes. It's just, it's worth mentioning, even though that, I think his probabilities are probably pretty close to reality. Well, now we have a situation where it's not just the max seven. The equal weight is at an all-time high. So what are you going to say now, tough guy?

Right? For all the people that were upset about concentration, the rally is broadening. If this upsets you, well, if this upsets you, you're probably not listening to the show, right? I hope not. We probably have some hate listeners, though. I feel like every once in a while on the YouTube, we'll get to, I'm sure we have hate listeners. Oh, no, we definitely have hate listeners. We definitely have people that listen because they're like, Michael, that troglodyte.

By the way, got another email from that guy. Can't believe that guy has people listening. What an idiot. I'm smarter than him. Yeah, maybe you are. But I don't think that there's people that listen to us who hate the stock market, who, like, want the stock market to go on. Oh, true.

You know what I mean? They're looking for the YouTube channels with the flames. Yeah, they wouldn't. They're not here. What's this bespoke stat you got here? All right. This was, what, you know, what day was this? This was on Thursday.

All right, so the day after the rate cut. Today is set to be the biggest gap higher for the S&P 500 ETF after a scheduled Fed day since 2008. Holy mackerel. You know, it's funny. Josh, we were sitting in the airplane and Josh called me and said this before we took off and he goes, why isn't the Dow up? Like, shouldn't the Dow get up like 500 points?

Like, why are they selling into the clothes? And I said, just wait until tomorrow. And I was, you know, half kidding. But for whatever reason, the next day, flames. So, uh, never trust the first move from the Fed. Is that the deal? I guess so. Interesting one from Mark Dow.

Uh, the Fed's first rate hike was March 14th, 2022. The first cut was yesterday. He tweeted this out that same day this September 19th. Over that period, the SPX was up 35% if he fought the Fed, you won. Obviously, we had, we had a bare market. But, uh, even in the rate hiking cycle, the stock market went up. I mean, 2022, 2022 sucked. Yes.

Definitely. It was, it was awful. It was a terrible, terrible market. But it is looking at it this way, stepping back and zooming out, it's surprising. If you sold, if nobody actually does this, but if you sold the first rate hike and bought the first pause,

you probably did very well. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. Not bad. So the other day, we talked to Rich Byrne from Benefit Street Partners, who's owned by Franklin Temple. Great energy on that guy. Yeah, he was,

We could tell right away he was going to be on our fucker book this week. Rich is one of those balds that gets on camera and you're like, I like this guy's energy. And he delivered. You, we got off the, we got off the Zoom with him or whatever. And you said, and I said, that's a great, he, that's just a Wall Street kind of guy. He's got some experience. What did I say? You said, Ben, that guy was probably as old as us going into the financial crisis.

And I said, no way. What do you talk? No, no, no, it was not. And then I did the math. I thought, oh, wow, 2008, it really is, like almost 20 years ago now, almost? Yeah, that guy, do the math. He's probably, you know, he's probably around your age when he, you know, turned the GFC.

Yeah, which, that's what you said, and I said, no, we're talking about, but it's true. So Carl Kingtony tweeted this out. He tweeted out a Wall Street Journal headline from the day that layman teeters on the edge of collapse and Merrill Lynch got sold and AIG was seeking to raise cash. It was September 15, 2008, which is. like the height of that crisis. And he was saying, kid born in this date are now old enough to drive. That is a trip. Wow. Yeah. It's been a long time. So that period left so many indelible scars and on so many people. And I talk about this on our podcast, how that, to me,

that was like a formative moment as an investor. But there's a lot of people now who are going to have like zero recollection of that at all. On industry, a show that you literally sold at the bottom, by the way, because I agree the first three episodes weren't good. Peerpoint, the investment bank, is teetering. Like, they're having their GFC moment. Okay. All right. We'll see if I get back into it.

You bottom-ticked it. I've got a other stuff to catch up on. It is what it is. All right. There is, J.P. Morgan did, they do their guide to the markets, Dr. Kelly's team. They do a bunch of other stuff. One of them. Guide to Retirement, I think, is one of them?

Yeah, guide to financial planning. I think they did one recently. They did a guide to ETFs. Oh, I didn't see this. There's some great charts. that I want to run through. One of them is, it's a stacked column chart of ETFs and mutual funds and shows the assets and the percentage. Stacked column chart. That's a pro move. Needless to say, the share of ETFs is climbing every single year and look at, and then on the bottom pane,

they show net flows of ETFs and mutual funds by year. And of course, ETFs, it's been up only, positive flows for the last decade. Mutual funds, on the other hand, last three years and four of the last five have had outflows. Look at those outflows in 2022. So Balchunis has nailed this. When people are able to take losses in mutual funds,

which are primarily actively managed, these are ones that are having net outflows, they go into index funds. Bare markets are devastating for active managers. When they're able to harvest some losses or, yeah, that's a massive number. Next one, they show U.S. equity, ETF, AUN breakdown. So cap weighted is 73% of the pie.

Factor is 19% of the pie. And factor are things like value and growth and momentum. And then active is 8% but growing. Look at the right chart, Ben. It shows the percentage share in 2019 versus today. Market cap went from 71 down to 61 because active went from 9% to 29%. Kind of wild.

That's the growth area, huh? 9% to 29%. And then the next chart shows active ETFs take market share. We're looking at active U.S. ETF flows by year, and then the percent of ETF flows. And this is quite impressive.

It's getting year-to-date 30% of all flows are going into actively managed products. The buffered ones, which we opened the show with, are a big, big portion of that. That makes sense. And which is interesting to see, many of the active fund managers are just resting on their laurels and squeezing out the juice of actively managed mutual funds for as long as they can?

A lot of them are also, to that point, a lot of them are also, I'm using air quotes, active mutual fund conversions. I think dimensional's in that category. Yeah. They're more factor based than active, but point remains. Okay, on that note, Todd sewn at Stratigas has a chart showing the monthly ETF launches going back to 2010. By the way, I had no idea that Straticus was bought by Baird, like five years ago.

We met a few guys in our booth at Future Proof about this. Okay. I don't think I knew that either, actually. News to me. Over 100 launches this month. He says 27 of mutual fund conversions, but still, off the charts. Look at all these ETFs. 100 this month?

A lot of these are the single stock stuff, the levered stuff. But nevertheless, I mean, we keep finding new ways to create new products in the ETF. So Jason's Wig had a piece, and it was titled, What's Left to be ETFed? And kind of saying that, like, there's been so many leaps forward. And he was saying private equity, that's the next thing, right? It's Apollo and Blackstone and KKR are trying to figure out ways to package private credit or private equity type funds in ETFs. I got to be honest. I'm not sure how this is going to work. I don't either. So this is from our friend West Gray. And this is in the Wall Street journal, it's just great. He says, if you're trying to put illiquid shit in an

ETF, it's never going to work. That was, that was, Wes from Elf Architect. And can I push back a tiny bit? And Wes is someone that I have immense respect for. So this is nothing against him. But a lot of bonds are fairly illiquid. So like high yield, for instance? Yeah, like they don't, they don't trade in the, they don't turn over, but the ETFs of these bonuses. There's a market for them at least. That's true. I get the worry is you can't gate an ETF. Like you can only take 5% of capital out every quarter. I'm sure they'll figure out ways of, I don't know. I wonder if I would love to see how this is going to work because I don't see it either. I wonder if ETFs bring more transparency into active markets. In other words,

let's say that giant asset manager XYZ has an ETF that tracks one of their private vehicles. and the ETF is down 27% and the private vehicle is down 2%. I wonder if that forces transparency and firm investors to say or regulars to say, hey, come on, this is clearly not close to reality. That's true. I'm sure they have a plan, but I'll be curious to see what it is. Yeah. Yes.

Okay. Balchunis tweeted, in my humble opinion, investors would rather access in liquid assets like private equity and credit in ETFs and deal with discounts and premiums than in an interval closed and mutual fund. So, for example, HYD, what is HYD? How you doing? That's a high yield one. Okay.

HyD traded at a 29% discount in 2020. Since then, it's remained very popular, even growing with $1 billion in flows. I think at this point, investors trust the ETF price and ecosystem and incentive to to give them a fair deal. Not to mention, we all know the expense ratio is going to be way lower than those other vehicles. That would be something if flows move from private to ETFs. I don't think that happened. I would say that this is going to be, I would take the under on whatever level you would set for AUM and flows, at least to start. Yeah, I agree. So we had a company-wide dinner

in Huntington Beach at, what was it called, Dukes? Cool spot. And Joe, John Money was there? Jill Schlesinger. And I was talking to her, and we talked about the Fed, of course, because that's what finance people do at dinner? And she was saying, what do you think they're going to do? This is before they made a move, obviously. And I said, I think they should go 50. I think they will go 25 just because I think the human nature element, they don't want to admit they're wrong. And I was wrong. She said, I kind of agree with you. I was a little surprised that they went 50. I'm not going to lie. Why would going 50 make them admit that they're wrong? Wrong about what? wrong about the fact that they should have just started cutting earlier.

By going 50 the first time, to me that's an implicit, you know, and credit to Powell for doing this, basically saying, listen, we're, it's a, we want to show the market that we mean business, but it's also, we probably should have gone 25 at the last meeting in July. Could be. I still don't think it's too late, though. For what? For this to help, potentially. I do think, whatever.

If everyone says that the raising rates was on a lag, it's. It's not like lowering rates is going to all of a sudden fix things, but I think it's more of a psychological signaling mechanism. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree that the impact is psychological, if nothing more. And guess what? It better help because markets are acting like it's going to help. Yes.

If I'm in CNBC after the Fed rate cuts, I'm saying, listen, the stock market is priced to perfection here, right? Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the economy. Guy Berger at Econberger tweeted a chart of unemployment versus employment. And it's a bit confusing. So let me try and walk you through this.

It's showing the unemployment divided by population ages, of population ages, 20 to 24. And he's showing 2001 to 2007, 08 to 09, 09 to, why is it broken down like this? He's showing the different cycles. So he's showing, okay, this is interesting. He's looking at the different cycles and seeing where we compare today, basically. Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out why he breaks it down the way that he breaks it down. Either way, here's what he said. Some things are different.

The job market for people in their early 20s is behaving like a pretty standard recessionary, albeit early in that cycle. Employment is falling. Unemployment is rising. Again, this is for people in their early 20s. Which is interesting. So people just getting out of college are having a hard time finding a job these days. Yeah. I don't know if it's hard time, but.

They miss the boat by what? 18 months? Let's say that it's getting, the unemployment rate is taking up for that cohort of people. It's not like out of control, but it's right. He said, but the prime working age labor market is not. Unemployment is rising, but employment is not falling. And that's 25 to 54, right? Yes. So he says in a typical labor market downturn, these have an inverse relationship. Not sure how long the sideways motion on the past year can continue. So something to keep an eye on. But yeah, this is just an interesting little nugget. so to speak. And speaking of young people, this blew my face right off my body from Lance Lambert.

Gen Z just overtook baby boomers in terms of the U.S. full-time workforce by generation. That is a great chart. You know, we've we've said the stat 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, which in fact, I didn't believe it, but some people said, no, it's actually a thing. So we'll go with it. This chart makes it look like, yeah, that is happening. The baby boomer, the baby boomers in the workforce is in secular decline, obviously. They've gone from 50 million at the peak in 2000-ish to 17.3 million today. 17, yeah. They've gone from suck to blow.

And for those of you who aren't familiar with that, go watch baseballs. Spaceballs reference, okay. I like it. I would finger you for a huge spaceballs guy. I love spaceballs. I mean, that's John Candy, right? Oh, that's right. He was barf. Yeah. Rest in peace. In peace. All right. Pew Research came out with a new middle class income calculator. You put, it says, are you in the middle class? You put in

your income, then you can pick your state in your metro area, and then how many people in your household and calculate where you fit. And now, for the U.S. at large, it's 28% are considered lower class. This is by income. And this is for adults. Fifty-two percent. percent of middle class and 19 percent are upper class. I think the, the numbers are 56,000-ish to 170,000. For what? That's for middle-income households. Upper income is 170 plus, lower income is 56 or 57,000 and below. Okay. Now, of course, you know, where you are is highly highly... No, I did this. So I did this for Grand Rapids versus New York City. All right. Go ahead. Hit me. Okay. So Grand Rapids. And they

show, they show the breakdown. So there are fewer lower income families because there's only 23%. Middle income is higher, 52% for the national average, 61% for Grand Rapids area, and upper is lower, 19% versus 17%. Okay, but wait, but that's compared to, that's compared to the nation, right? That doesn't make sure. Yeah, so there's more middle class in Grand Rapids and there's less upper class and lower class. But in New York and in the surrounding area, there's a lower middle class, lower class is average, there's way more upper class in New York, which I guess makes sense that it's because the salaries have to be higher for some people? I would think higher, lower income and also higher higher income, higher upper income.

Yeah, but lower income is right at the national average. And again, it says the U.S. median household income had incomes ranging from about 56,000 to 169,000. Nice. This is in 2022. But look at this chart. They show the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged since 1970. So the crazy thing is, is that if you look, lower income has basically been stable over time. And so what's happened is more people have moved from middle class to upper class. So that's why the upper class income has gone up so much. It's interesting.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It should be seen as a good thing, but the problem is so many people see themselves as middle class that if there's more people in upper class, it'd be like if first class was packed all the time. Right? If they made first class 20 seats instead of eight or whatever it is, first class wouldn't mean as much to you. So first class has been extended.

You ever read the star-belly-snitches by Dr. Seuss? No, I don't think so. Okay. One of my favorite stories. There's a sneeches, which is a creature, and some of them have bellies on their stars. I'm sorry, stars on their bellies, and others don't.

And the star-bellied sneaches, they thumb their, oh, my God, I'm doing it again, Ben. Thumb their noses? Thumb their noses? Is that a phrase? That makes no sense. Thumb their noses? Yes. How do you thumb your nose?

I don't know. Okay. They thumb their noses at the sneaches without bellies on their stars. So then some guy comes up to town and says the sneaches without stars, I can get you stars. Then they get stars, and then the star-bellied-s-stitcher say, no, no, no, no, take our stars off. You with me? I got you. I see what you're saying.

Anyhow. That's a good analogy. Thank you. So my question is, though, how many households are actually middle, the funny thing is that like no households actually stay their upper class? Gallup has a poll, and I think it's like 2% say their upper class, even though it's more like 20% in total. Oh, yeah?

How about this? Hand up. I'm upper class. Yes. I'll be that guy. All right. Me too. How many households are middle class but live like their upper class?

I had the car discussion together with my brother the other day because he is one of the last few holdouts that drives a minivan, and we were talking about how you just don't see minivans anymore and actually taught us from abnormal returns at who works with us, sent me an article from msn.com, which is the ultimate, speaking of buber candy website, my dad's favorite homepage is msn.com, right? Wow. I mean, you have to be over 60 years old to have your homepage be MSN.com, correct? Hold on, but let me ask you this. That's correct. We're going to come back to MSN. But I would guess that you, like I, identify as middle class.

Growing up? Just how do you view yourself today? No, we're upper class. But how do you view yourself? It has to be upper class. You can't, I'm not delusional. But mentally. No, mentally too.

You just said, you're upper class. So they had this thing about the minivan. There was a 1.3 million minivan sold in 2000. That's when it peaked. It's down 80% since then. And the whole point of the article is it's all, aesthetics and millennials not wanting to drive them and people just thinking if they're not cool. My wife refuses. I want to get a minivan ironically, but also because they're practical.

Huge, they have the huge carved out trunk. They're, they are the most, and they're, they're relatively inexpensive. So my point is, how many people that are really middle class should be driving a minivan, but instead they're driving an $80,000 SUV and acting like their upper class? Lots. That's got to be a lot of people. Yeah. Listen, don't, don't shame the people below you. That's not what we do on this podcast. So wait, what's more, though? Are there more people who are middle class that live upper class lifestyles, or are there more people who are upper class but assume they are middle class?

Oh. It might be, I would say, I would say, I would say, no, no, no, no, it's not. More upper class and assume the middle class? Okay. Yeah. I saw at Future Proof, some dude brought a cyber truck. And the trunk is wild. There's so much space.

And then you could like open, there's like a window in the back. It's pretty neat. Does it have a frunk, too? What's a frunk? A front trunk, because there's no engine. Oh, I don't know. So, listen, it's still a heinous looking car, but it's kind of cool. Okay, I can, yeah.

Kind of cool. If nothing else, it stands out. Speaking of cars, I've got my Jeep Wrangler for another year and a half. And I'm not too thrilled with the car. I like how it looks, but I don't like how it drives. Because you get like six miles on your electric charge? Yeah, like it just, it has this like, and then it'll just, like, it'll just,

like the engine will hum loud and then it'll go silent. Remember, it's a death rattle. It's called a death rattle. No, no, no, it's not the death rattle. I didn't have that. So I don't know if I got a lemon, but, but my car is, hold on, I put this in the dock. How much am I paying for my car? Five, 60 a month, I think.

To me, that feels like a, where is it? Feels like a 3% mortgage. I think that's exactly what I pay for my car too. I think we have the same car payment. How do you get away with that? I drive a Ford Explorer and I lease. That's a good deal. Can you believe I did that without a car broker?

My car, yeah, my car is 5 to 66. Listen, did it cost me anything more to get my car the exact color that I want, the exact model delivered to my house? If you like to haggle with a dealership, that's, you know, by all means. I don't mind haggling. That's true. You're not a haggler. You might be a Grand Rapids haggler. Let's be honest.

You cannot haggle in New York. No offense. All right. Well, we'll talk about my haggling and get into. cable cutting in a minute here. All right, Ben, good news. The U.S. food prices tumble. This is a chart from Bloomberg.

The August monthly drop in online grocery prices was the largest on record. And I got to be honest, anecdotally, I'm noticing it. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it. Chipotle, I got a bowl. I'm back.

Remember, I was boycott in Chipotle? $12.35. So you think they lowered their prices somehow or what? I know they did. Okay. Or, or maybe. they got used at 12,0.35 cents. Either way, I'm back at Chipotle. I got a bushel of bananas yesterday. Is that what they're called? A bushel of bananas? Banas have always been cheap, though.

Okay. Well, maybe, maybe, you know why? I never checked the prices, but I was doing self-checkout, and I noticed it. A dollar 43 for six bananas. I got five pounds of bananas yesterday. Excuse me? Five pounds. I put two stacks. I love bananas for my kids. I have some bananas every morning in my yogurt. Dude, you have a banana problem. $3 for five pounds of bananas. I've read the book, everyone always says the fish today at the whale book, and I still don't understand it, how bananas can be so cheap.

Here's one question about the economy, and Conner Senn asked this on his Bloomberg column, are people going to be disappointed where mortgage rates end up if we get a soft landing? So Eric Finnegan tweeted this out, he's from John Burns, really good charts. He says, Paul says lower rates will bring sellers and buyers back into the housing market. In fact, more locked-in homeowners and renters are itching to move soon. They said a sharp increase year-to-date expected household movers, 18% of households expect to move in the next year, up from 13% of the beginning of the year. That's good.

A lot of people are probably expecting mortgage rates to be lower. Connors says, it will surprise some home seekers out there that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were broadly flat to a touch higher last week, even with the Fed's bigger than expected half a percentage rate cut. this is because markets in the Fed now agree that a softish economic landing, the Fed funds rate is likely to eventually fall around 3%. That limits how much mortgage rates can decline, particularly by next spring's housing season, after dropping to 6.15% from 8% in over 11 months. Those hoping for much lower rates should be careful what they wish for. A world of substantially lower mortgage rates is one of substantial job losses. So I talked about this a few weeks ago.

If we do get a soft landing, unless the spread between 10-year-old, mortgage rates shrinks, we're probably not going to get, we're not going to get in the fours by any means. Maybe like the high, mid to high fives would be probably best case scenario in a soft landing environment. Okay, okay. So unless it's going to take a recession to get mortgage rates much lower. I agree. A five and a half percent mortgage, though, is pretty good, especially compared to seven and a half. It is. But I just, I think some people are expecting, like, okay, we're back in the fours again. And that's short of a recession, that's probably not going to happen. Okay. Yeah, I would agree with that. Right. All right. Speaking of Eric Finnegan,

he was on the podcast with Mike Simonson, who we had on this show not too long ago. He has a podcast called Top of Mind, talking all about real estate. I really like it in the housing market. And they went through some demographic and housing supply issues. And so they figured at John Burns, we need 1.8 new homes over the next decade to meet demographic demand. You sent us a Are you writing a piece on it? Maybe you sent us to me and Josh Slack this morning on the fact that there's going to be huge demand because there's so many people in the 30s.

Yeah. Right? So he's saying over the next decade, we need 12 million new homes and 6 million new rentals. Okay? So it's almost 2 million homes a year, which is we barely got to 1.8 in the peak of the low interest rate,

20-21-ish area in the pandemic. Then it crashed. Immigration is a big contention point in this election. And I don't feel like talking politics here, but this was interesting to me. He says 50% of all construction labor, it's estimated, is foreign-born. So, like, we need,

if we want to have enough housing supply in this country, we need immigrants to come and take those construction jobs, basically. There's not enough construction workers to build the homes we need to fill the housing demand that's coming. I didn't figure you for an open border guy. Yeah, I was open border when I went to Windsor

every year in college for, in Canada. Because 19 drinking age. What's the best Through the border movie? Through the border? What do you mean? Like border crossing?

Sariana. Are there a lot of border crossing movies? What's Siriana? Not Syriana. Sicario, yes. Is that the same? Great scene. Is that the only one?

That's a good movie. There's got to be more than one. Scaria 2 is good too. All right. This is from Clever. They had a whole piece on... Who's clever? Boomer housing market.

It's like a real estate something. I don't know. 54% of boomers who currently own a home never plan to sell it and expect to live in it the rest of their lives. One in four wouldn't move because of their emotional attachment to the home. I wouldn't want to give up the community ties and friendship.

And a quarter say they just wouldn't be able to afford a new home or pay for the assisted living. I kind of, I don't know if directionally this is right that most boomers, I think, will not sell their home. Yeah, agree. They're just going to live it out and die in their home. Yep. All right.

How much did you purchase your first home for? This is from a survey of boomers. I'll tell you. Oh, go ahead. Two-thirds of them paid less than $100,000 for their house. All right, but adjusted for inflation. Why not? Well, it's still probably not that bad.

But what do you mean? Well, yeah, it's not, it's... One third paid less than 50 years. Yes, you're right. Inflation and... But this is going to be millennials in 30 or 40 years as well, right? I guess, yeah, 25 years, there's going to be the similar thing for millennials. The percentage that purchased it for less than 400 grand or something.

Just given the demographics, and I didn't, you're right, I didn't throw this chart in here. Maybe we'll talk about it next week. I'm still bullish on housing. Just the supply demand of balance seems structural. It's hard to be bearish. That's where I would say I am. It's really hard to be bearish on housing. Yeah.

I kind of land there, too. All right. Tile Smith tweeted from J.P. Morgan. Uh, median balances in June, 2024 were 15% higher. Balances for what? We're fifth checking accounts. Okay. Yeah, combined checkin and savings.

We're 15% higher than they have been in June 2019 for low income households. Wow. That's surprising. And 5% higher for high income households. Again, real. So low-income households are holding way more cash and they're checking. Real cash balances adjusted for inflation. Now, I'm not-

That's adjusted for inflation, too? Yeah. So I'm not here to tell you that inflation is good for the lower income, but all of these soundbites that inflation crushes lower-income people. And again, I'm not suggesting that it's good for them. The data doesn't show that to be true this time. Economists are going to have so much ammunition to study in the years ahead from this pandemic period. It's going to be one of those, I feel like there's going to be so many one-offs

that here's what the textbook tells you should happen. Here's what actually happened. I think the COVID, just throw all this out. Not much to learn here. Right. Unless there's another pandemic and we shut the economy down and do the stimulus. The weirdest economic period ever. Yeah. Very, very unusual. We talked about price gouging a few weeks ago for Harris. That was, I don't know, a terrible idea. Try to get the grocery source for price gouging. This this week, Trump said that he wants to cap credit card rates, interest rates at 10%. He said, we can't let them make 25 and 30%. This is a terrible idea, because if you did this, the people who need credit card debt

wouldn't be able to get it. Credit card usage would plunge if the banks are capped at charging 10%. Yeah. Only the highest of high FICO score people, not to brag, would be able to get a credit card. You're right. So I don't know where the line is. like obviously 30% seems punitive, but there is a line

where the banks would lose money. It's unsecured debt. Right. And there's, yeah, so it's, it would be a terrible idea. It would never work in credit. Horrendous idea. Whose was this?

Was this Senator Warren? Trump. This is Trump? Yes. I mean, let's be honest. So when I was in fifth grade, we, there was a student council president election. And no one wanted to run for student council president.

So our teacher made all of us run. Yeah. Which was kind of a... So we all had to come up with a speech. And I did not want to be student council president at all. So I did not take it seriously. And I wrote my speech that the morning of, you know. And I just made it a joke.

And I promised, we're going to have candy in the lunchroom. And I was being funny, you know? And I won. All these other people really wanted it. And they did serious speeches. And I was the guy who was promising everything that was never going to happen. Did you deliver? I had to be president.

And I had to, like, go to all these meetings. It was terrible. Of course I didn't deliver. All the promises. But this is the kind of promise that is probably like that. Okay. Terrible idea. Yes.

Okay. Oh, so I finally kind of cut the cord. And I talked about this a couple weeks ago. I don't know if it's really cutting the cord because I just switched to YouTube TV. But I got rid of my AT&TUverse. After all the direct TV stuff and no ESPN, we had YouTube TV for our house up north that we used before. So we found ourselves using YouTube TV more and more at our primary residence. And finally, I guess my wife, I'm like, do we really actually need this?

Because she can get all her Bravo shows on Peacock now. And she said, no, actually, we really don't. So we made this switch to YouTube TV. I think we're saving $180 a month because all we're paying for is Internet now with AT&T. And I don't notice a difference, really. Okay. Credit to you. I would join you.

think, I don't know, I have to find that. I don't know that I could get MSG as a streaming standalone. So to me, that's the only whole time. I might have to piecemeal a few things here and there that I forget. And I also, I consolidated it too. I had, I was paying for Disney Plus and I was paying for Hulu and I was paying for HBO Max. Or not, I wasn't paying for HBO Max. Or not I wasn't paying for HBO Max. So I, I put all those three together. I got the triple bundle for Disney at Hulu and HBO Max as well. Oh, nice. Yeah, I got, you know what? I got to do some, some consolidation as well. It's getting out of control. sure that there are certain channels that I will have to add, but YouTube TV is such a better

experience. College football, my daughter and I have four games going at once. It was amazing, and you can pick which four games they are. It's such a better experience. I mean, clicking through the channels isn't quite as easy, but, you know, you don't change that often anyway. Right. Quite a few. All right, Netflix released their, I think it's called what we're watching or what we watched, which, this is new. They used to be very secretive about their data and who's watching what. Now they're letting it fly. So the top 10 titles for the first half of 2024.

What's interesting here is, are any of these... Bridgerton is theirs. Only one of them is theirs. So Bridgerton slash Queen Charlotte is number one. Suits is number two. Young Sheldon. Don't know what that is. Grey's Anatomy, fool me once.

Don't know that. Queen of Tears House. My God, House. That's an old show. Gilmore Girls, Walking Dead. avatar the last airbender. It is kind of funny how Netflix is essentially turned into USA, TBS, and TNT where people just go to watch reruns. Yeah. That's what Netflix is. You used to go to watch reruns on those channels, and now it's just on Netflix. So chartkin, Matt,

we were talking about this. I was asking him to make some charts for me, which we ended up not doing because there's just not a lot of stuff to chart here. The number one movie, by far, is Damsel, and he's like, oh, I love that movie. I watched it six times. And I said, what? I've literally never heard of it. It's the Millie Bobby Brown. I know. I know. I said, why did you watch it six times? I just, I really like it. Like, dude, have you ever seen The Departed? Why are you watching Damsal six times?

I've honestly never heard of this movie. It didn't get good reviews. What stood out to me on this list was my favorite movie, not just of the first half of the year on Netflix, but ever on Netflix. I might be missing, I don't think I am, was Hitman. I think that's my favorite movie that I've ever seen Netflix produce. Yeah, that was a good one.

And it was number 47. Yeah, that's probably one of the higher quality movies Netflix has ever done. Isn't that crazy? Wow. Okay. Under Paris is number four. Was that the shark movie? Definitely a lot of, oh, yeah, my son loved that one.

Definitely a lot of kids movies on here, I see. Boss Baby, Despicable Me, Woody, Woodpecker, Shrek, minions, a lot of kid stuff. Mother of the Bride. Don't know that one. Super Mario's. That was a good one. Yeah. People are watching the shit out of Netflix.

I'll tell you that. Disney. Consensus gurus tweeted, check out this deal Disney is running on their new service called Disney Plus. Subtrends must be stellar. So Disney Plus ran an ad that says save 75% on three months of Disney Plus. So I got Disney Hulu and HBO Max for $29.99 a month. That's the no ad, premium, whatever.

Yeah, I got to upgrade because I'm watching ads and I don't care for it. Oh, yeah. You told me your upper class. What are you living like a middle class person for in watching ads? Don't get the ads. See, this is you stuck in the psychological trap. I pay for everything. Get rid of the ads.

I do think, just getting back to it, I do think the way that you see yourself socioeconomically is how you grew up. Yes, I agree. Right? Yes. And I, yeah. So we were upper middle class growing up.

And that's probably where I would. You were upper class. Growing up? Yeah. See, the problem is, income-wise, my parents probably were, but my parents did not live like that. So I didn't even know it until I was in, like, college that, oh, my parents are probably doing better than I thought.

Yeah. My father lived like he was lower class, especially with his wardrobe. So I grew up. It was interesting. So my parents were divorced when I was when I was six. So I really did grow up with, I live with my mom and my siblings and did weekends and one night a week with my dad. And it was just different. Like when I went when I went to Blockbuster, I was able to get two movies. And I remember. once going to the diner. My mom said I can't get chicken palm because it was too expensive. So that was weird for me. But I identify more with that than the luxuries of being able to two movies at once. I agree. How you grew up is a big piece of it. Okay, AC in Europe. I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Someone sent us this. There were 61,672 deaths attributed to heat in 2020 in Europe. What? This saying that like maybe they really do need more AC. I don't know how much you can ascribe that to AC, but yes,

that's a thing. Ben, you go to Detroit a lot now? I do. A couple times a year. So, the journal wrote an article headline reversing the real estate doom loop as possible. Just look at Detroit. They showed that between 1950

and 2020, Detroit's population shrank by two-thirds. Kind of crazy, right? To be fair, most of those people just move to the suburbs. Okay. But yeah, so that's out of downtown. Yeah, but still. Right. So they said rock bottom office rents long ago forced developers to come up with other things to build. They added casinos and sports venues and restored aging theaters.

Dan Gilbert at Rocket was a big part of this. Every time I go to Detroit, there's like five new restaurants and a new hotel. They're constantly building there. It's awesome. Here's a quote from somebody said, an allegedly smart urbanist would have probably said, don't do that. Billions of dollars on stadiums and casinos. It sounds odd to say this, but in a way, their downtown looks more like Miami or Las Vegas. 20 years ago was unrecognizable for what it is today.

That's awesome. I love to see turning on stories like that. It's very cool. All right, there's random. I don't really have much to say on this, other than this just is like a mind-blown staff from Greg Zuckerman via Bloomberg, via via. Novos sales of Ozempic and Wegovi, we govi, I don't know. Or so high.

On track to hit $65 billion by the end of 2024, they will soon surpass the drug maker's entire research budget for the past three decades after adjusting for inflation. Do you think everyone has a doctor now that, prescribes this stuff to them. 65 billion. It's unbelievable. It's kind of like before weed was legal. Like, I had friends who would go and get a doctor's note for having, like, glaucoma or something.

Isn't it, do you think it's got to be so easy to find doctors to prescribe this? Because I think it's supposed to be for people's certain health conditions, but it doesn't really matter. Yeah, no, I think, you know the meme where the security guard is just barely patting people down? Yeah. That's this. Okay, this is from Twitter. Breaking X, which I'm not going to call it X.

Twitter is about to remove the current. block button, meaning that if an account is public, their posts will be visible to block users as well. And Elon Musk says, high time has happened. The block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing the public post. Hang on. What is this?

If an account is public, meaning you're not. So if you block someone, that makes them so they can't see anything from you anymore. But now they're going to change it. So if you block them, they can't respond to you, but they can still see your posts. Oh. And I like the ability. I don't want. A block is get out of my life.

You are no longer able to see what I write because you are an asshole. So the Financial Times had this thing that says Twitter user numbers have declined significantly over the last year falling, especially steeply in the U.K. So it's down from, it's down like 30% in the U.S. and U.K. over the past year in terms of number of users. I've always had a pretty good filter. So the political stuff, even though it's annoying, doesn't get me that bad because I just, I block all that out and I have a pretty good filter. But I've noticed lately that the number of spam ads is out of control. Really? You get the spam ads?

No. It'll be like a picture of someone's feet or something. And I'll get like 12 of them every time I scroll. And so I feel like that stuff. And then the paying the users to tweet, I think, has made it. That gives you all the thread boys and people just posting the same videos over and over again. So I do feel like the experience of Twitter has degraded a lot in the last like 12 to 18 months. Sorry.

I'm still there. Okay. I still follow. I feel like the right people. But the experience is getting slowly but surely worse. I'm still all the way there. as much as I hated. I can't, I can't lie. I'm there. Yeah. All right. Story time.

I can remember when I said this maybe a year and a half ago, we had to put our dog down. It was a terrible experience. Hey, but at least you're upper class. And I said, my wife forever said, let's get another dog. Let's get another dog. I know some people who get a dog right away. Or their dog is going to die and they get a puppy before the dog even dies. I didn't want to do that for what I just didn't I don't know And my wife has been pushing me the dog

My kids have wanted a dog forever And my wife has handled the whole thing And I've just kind of like she's getting getting on me Because she's like why aren't you more excited about this And I'm thinking through like all the responsibilities of it And I just I didn't want to put myself out there again You know? It's like I was burned once

Yeah, I got it I had a hard time And I knew what would happen I knew right when we get the dog I would melt And that's exactly what happened We got a new dog on Friday and, like, all it takes is sitting on the couch and the dog lays next to your leg.

Yeah. It's like, that's all I needed. And the kids- They were manufactured to love us. There's nothing quite like it. Yeah. And this is a really good dog so far. She's really calm and chill because my kids are not at all.

And they're just so excited and they're taking responsibility for letting her out and helping feed her. And, yeah, it's cool. So I knew this would happen. My wife was getting mad at me. because I wasn't excited going into it. And I just needed, like, to thaw my frozen heart, basically. Yeah, I got it.

I can't wait to get a dog. I'm probably going to get one in a year unless I see one. Yeah, I needed the buffer. Now I'm back. Also, okay, based on last week's show, I am running again now. How are you doing? I was kind of tight-lipped about it last week because I really honestly didn't know what happened to my knee. You, like, asked on stage, and you're like, why aren't you talking about this?

And I really had no idea what happened. So I tried to jump through some plans because there's all these people in my way from sidewalk to sidewalk. and one of these like triangle blue agave something plants pierced my knee and two of the guys that we work with Patrick and Matt saw it happen and I and I blood started gushing down my knee and I tried to like run it off and I herky jerky kind of and they there are you okay Ben and I saw Schwendi that later that night he goes I thought you blew your ACL out man

that's how bad it looked and so I didn't know what I did and I looked it up and said like if you come into contact one of these plants it can lead to like skin irritation and swelling and my whole leg went numb, like immediately. It was a very weird experience. Well, I didn't know. I thought I blew my knee out. But I think I just, I'm, it's still a little sore, to be honest.

I'm icing it every night, but it's a, I'm back to running again. Oh, wow. I told my wife, but I don't think she believed me. Because it's kind of, it doesn't make sense. So, yes, I'm back. Well, glad to hear you're on the end. All right, Ben, are there, I feel like you're, I feel like you've experienced this. Are there people in your orbit friends or dad friends or whatever where you never had the conversation of,

oh, what do you do for a living? And you've known them for like 11 months and now you can't possibly ask. Or same thing with like their name. You can't think, I'm sorry. I know I know we spoke. What's your name? There's like a smallish window, right? Well, the job thing, that was a whole, that was a running joke on friends with Chandler.

No one knew what he did. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you have that with you? obviously. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's several people. I'm curious, but it's too late to ask.

I would say most... I guess I could find them in LinkedIn, but... Most other parents, like, it's kind of funny. The thing they want to talk about most is just their kids. Don't you get that feeling that parents just love talking about kids in the kids' sports, in the kids' schools, and that's what they love to talk about. I went out to dinner with three other couples on Friday night, which I hate going on Friday night, but we did.

And the wives talk about. the entire time, the entire time. And there's some dead air with the dads. You know, we're just eating, uh, eating the salsa, whatever. And I'm always like, what are they talking about? And it's always the kids. Yes, it's parenting. It's what are you doing with this? What, yes. All right. Speaking of, I had, um, I had a, I had a tough phone call last week with somebody who reached out. They're, they're, this is a young person. And tragically, his wife was diagnosed with, with the brain cancer and, you know, don't know how long she has, but it's not looking good. And he reached out to ask me if I had any, any advice about how I dealt with loss or, you

know, for his kid who's much younger than I was. And I didn't because I wasn't, you know, I was 25 when my mom died. I wasn't seven. But I bring this up just to say that life is so short and unexpected tragedies happen all the time. And I think most people, most people, especially people that like didn't lose a parent at a young age, go through life acting as if you're going to live forever. And this is just a PSA, you're not going to live forever. Enjoy your life because my uncle used to always say something about like life like

this is not a dress rehearsal. And it's true. You only get one chance of this. So I think a lot of the stress that people are on under a daily basis, now I'd probably take it to extreme where I'm like overly aware of the fact my mom died when she was 57. And so maybe I overdo it in terms of the activities

that I, that I do or don't do. But things strike quickly. You got that less and early though. Yeah. Thank God. Well, not that God. But yeah, life is short and enjoy yourself. Well, we got a question on that.

We get these questions and ask the compound occasionally. A couple weeks ago, it was my wife just got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We don't know. It's a pretty bad diagnosis. And it's weird how many of those uncomfortable conversations you have to have in finance. And I can easily talk about the finance aspects of it. Like I can, you know, because we've had those conversations with clients before, right? Client is going to retire a week before retirement or selling a business something that they die, right? So we've had these uncomfortable conversations before. And I can handle the finance aspect of it. The other personal stuff of it, having those, that's a lot harder, obviously.

All right. So that's where I shine, not to brag. I'm very comfortable having those conversations because, you know, I lived through something bit, but I was on the phone with a stranger crying because it's just, it's horrendous. There's nothing, there's nothing positive to say. And it's hard to find the right words, but hopefully this person got something out of the conversation. Yeah, maybe that's the point is that there, there is no perfect thing to say. It's just you be there for someone. Yeah. I guess, my one thing, the one thing that I tried to leave him with is that as impossible as it feels like at the time, time really does heal all wounds. Now, you never got to completely

heal from a tragedy like this, but if you felt the same level of sadness a year from now, three years from now, five, your body would shut down. You wouldn't be able to function as a human being, right? Yeah, you would die. So the mind and the body heals because you have no choice. And so that's just, that's what I would say to anybody that's going through is that eventually, as impossible as it sounds, eventually, you'll be okay. All right. No, let's just get off this horrendous topic and onto some recommendations. So Michael Antonelli came up to us after the show when we were talking about movie recommendations for the airplane. He said, guys, Oceans 11 is the best airplane movie of all time.

And you know what? He's 100% right because the number one thing that you want from a movie on an airplane is fun. You want to have fun. We got another email with a great recommendation of the Italian job. That's a perfect airplane movie. You could tune out.

It's background. It's fun. You've been there before. You've seen it before. Just a chef's kiss of a recommendation to Michael Antinelli. Okay. I want to make the case

for going to the theaters. This is a weekly occurrence for you, I feel like. I'm making the case and not just because I own IMAX. I saw Civil War in the movie theater. Okay, so I was circling it on my plane, but it's not an airplane.

movie. I couldn't force myself to watch Civil War on an airplane. No, it's really not. I saw Civil War in the movie and it's not the most fun movie. It's not the most action-packed movie, although the action scenes are gripping. But it's a type of movie that you need to be locked in for because, again, it's just not that exciting. So if I saw, so I saw Civil War in the theater and I had a hell of a time. I really enjoyed myself. In the theater, I'd give it like a solid 7-6. So, ramp texted me about how much he hated Civil War, and he's telling me why he didn't like it. And then Benny Markets slacked me that he thought Civil War was a two out of ten.

And yeah, if I saw it on my couch, I'd probably say, that's it. It's on HBO Max. I'll have to give it a try. But so. It's not quite a, it's really not a couch movie. I do agree, though, that. There are couch movies and there are theater movies. And there's, there's an overlap with the Venn diagram, but sometimes they're completely, there's no overlap. You, you are susceptible to the premium of the movie theater, though, sometimes. Susceptible. You make it sound like it's a bad thing. Well, I'm saying sometimes you're viewing the movie

theater lenses on a movie, and it inflate, you're giving it a premium valuation. That's what the theater does. Hello! Hello! That's why you go to the theater, because it is a premium experience. Okay. You have to be able to separate the quality of the movie from enjoying the theater, though.

I can. I have Absolutely, I can't. I'm conceding the fact. I'm going to have to watch this movie to see what I, give me, give you my ID score. You're welcome for lowering your expectations. Okay, somebody sent us two recommendations, and they both look, they both look great. I only saw the first one, and it was, I want to say it goes as far as great. Hell of a good time. It's called the last stop in Yuma County.

Tell me if you like the premise, Ben, this is a slow burner of a movie. This guy is in like New Mexico, absolutely no man's land, pulls up to the gas station. He's out of gas. Next gas station, 100 miles away. Don't worry. The tank, the gas station has no gas. The tank is coming to fill up the gas station. Go to the diner next door.

He goes to the diner next door. Two guys show up. They're looking for gas. They go to the diner next door. These two guys happen to rob a bank earlier that day. So the diner starts to fill up. I think it gets about eight people deep. And let's just say it's a slow burn, slow burn,

and then boom, the powder keg explodes. Fun move. So this is a. bunch of different stories and characters come together and then it all at the end kind of it's not it's not it's not it's not quite that they're they're really sharing the experience in the diner but it was a it was a it was a it was a good one uh i took my kids lastly yes i took my kids to the theater ben because i want them to enjoy the premium experience of the theater we saw my kids actually love going to the theater too we saw excuse me we saw transformers one

awesome oh i didn't know it was out yet my son's really excited about that uh it was on par with, like, the Ninja Turtles movie. It was really, really good. So Transformers 1, it's the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron. And it's a, it's not a cartoon cartoon, but it's sort of like... That's good, because I needed that holes filled in, like, where they came from. Yeah, yeah, seriously, I was dying to know. But, uh, strong recommend.

Strong recommend. Okay. The only thing I've watched recently, besides all the movies on my flight, uh, was the Sopranos doc called Wise Guy in HBO. And it was a doc about David Chase, the creator of Sopranos. And I was late to watching Sopranos. I watched a number of years ago, I think, just before the pandemic. And I said Gandalfini is the best performance and its best TV character of all time, Tony Soprano.

Like, there's some holes he could poke in that show. Some of the other actors aren't always the greatest. But he, his performance is the best. And the whole point of the doc is that, like, James Gandalfini and David Chase, the creator, and the show Sopranos, and their lives were all sort of intertwined. And they had some demons. and like a lot of the people that were writing for the show had bad experiences with their parents and stuff

and here's my take. Permabairs are terrible for investing advice but pretty great for entertainment purposes. Oh, that's a good take. Right? Like, David Chase comes off as it's just sort of depressed, just the weight of the world is on them at all times, and a lot of times that flows into creativity.

Gandalfini, too. He was a very tortured soul and died at a young age because of, in part because I think of how he reacted to getting the show. Here's another thing. AI will never be able to create the best art.

I feel like Netflix is going to be creating AI in the years ahead and they kind of already are. Did you watch that perfect couple show? Leibb Schreiber and Nicole Kidman? No. I saw 20 minutes. I said, I don't really want to watch this. It feels like they took White Lotus and said, let's make our own Netflix version of it. So it's just, it's not

very, my wife and I'll finish it, but it's not very good quality. It feels like something AI would make, like let's try to make White Lotus, but Netflix, because there's all these actors and actresses and you know, but... All right, no offense to my dad who I hope isn't listening, but he keeps telling me to watch

and I'm like, eh. It's like, yeah, it's just, it's not... It's just okay. But all the writers for Sopranos took their personal experiences and put him into the show. Like, the mother of Tony Soprano was based exclusively

on the mother of David Chase, the creator. And the same thing was super bad was created because Seth Gould... Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, that was their high school experience and they embellished it, obviously. So my whole thing is, like, AI is never going to be able to create

the best... art. It all comes from personal experiences. You just met, you're right. You just mentioned super bad. It would be remiss if I don't mention incoming for a seventh time. You saw incoming? I watched it. It was funny. The ending was a little eh. Well, who cares about the ending? It's hard to end one of those movies. But yes, it was, it definitely was a throwback to a lot of the, hidden a lot of touch points, but the teacher was the one great edition. I want to make students a thing. So I've gotten so many texts with friends about it. So

Phil Hubert texted to me. He texted me, dude, it's so good. I think my wife liked it more than me, and I fully expected her to hate it. Yeah. My wife liked it, too. It was a very good high school party movie. They don't make those anymore.

So. I don't. All right. If you're a Sopranos fan, watch Wise Guy. It was very, very good. Okay. Keep the emails coming. Again, thank you to everybody who came to Future Proof.

If you didn't go this year, hopefully we could see her there next year. Animal Spirits at the Compound News. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.