Animal Spirits Podcast - Ben's Bearish (EP.406)

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

On episode 406 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: auto tariffs, binary outcomes on Liberation Day, rising uncertainty, why household debt is going to rise, the Mag 7 bear market, the pros and cons of buffered ETFs, the bottom 50%, PE in 401(k) plans, a diverging housing market and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts. Register for the YCharts x Nick Maggiulli webinar here: https://ycharts.zoom.us/webinar/register/6017424930774/WN_pt05FhS_SW2Q0dbtqFi8Bg Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at Y charts. Our very own Nick Majuli of dollars in data fame. Just keep buying. teamed up with Y charts and we'll be doing 29 years of market data. They didn't want to round up to 30. So looking at four different rebalancing strategies to see what the best approach is. I would say horseshoes and hand grenades, but I'm sure Nick ran the numbers perfectly here. For an advisor looking to understand rebalancing, portfolio allocation, improved performance.

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I use it for all sorts of different stuff now. Yeah, I'm using it. Yes. I asked last week, give me the- Wait, did you just become a tech, bro? AI is integrated in my life so easily. It's just give me the annual returns for the U.S. housing market going back to 1990. Boom, done.

Calculated. Here they are. That's really, yeah, it's really nice. Really cool. 20% off your initial subscription. If you go to Whitecharts and tell them Animal Spirits sent to you, whitecharts.com to learn more. 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. I don't know why it took us so long, but there's a new category in our doc and that category is tariffs. Long overdue, huh? Well, I hope it's short-lived, but it seems like at this point, it might not be. So we've got a lot of stuff to go on here.

Let me pull a Ben Carlson. This is something that you say frequently. All right. Whatever the outcome, but I mean it this time. Okay. Whatever the outcome is, it will have been, it will have seemed so obvious in the future. In other words, if Trump and his tariffs really nuke the economy, there will be a lot of people screaming rightfully so he was telling you he ran he campaigned on this you thought he was joking

he was telling you he's going to do this right that's outcome number one yep outcome number two which we saw a glimpse of last week and a small glimpse of last night where he said he's going to be very kind on the tariffs or something outcome number two is this is all 19 dimensional chess he creates the chaos that he can't claim the deal negotiating tactic so that he can claim victory. Okay, so if that happens, and this is behind us, it will equally be, you fucking idiots, you fell for it? He's a markets guy. He's a real estate guy. He's a rich guy. You think he's trying to nuke his wealth? Did you really, how stupid are you? And I feel like it's binary. It I was going to, binary is the word I was going to use to. And

everyone is going to pretend like they knew it all along, too. All right, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm like sort of, I don't know, I'm afraid to stick my neck out on the line, which I think I kind of have been. I'm in the second camp. I don't believe him. Sorry. That this could look, I could look like an absolute jackaloon. I just don't, I don't believe it.

I'm starting to fall more in the former camp because I can't believe it's gone on this long. Yeah. Well, how about this? My confidence in that has certainly shifted towards the middle. Like, maybe he really does. That's the surprising thing to me is how long this has gone on and how he keeps doubling down on this stuff. And you're right.

We're going to go through a bunch of numbers here about what these tariffs could do. And then in a month, it could be all meaningless because it could be just no and void. But I think we have to still look at what the impact of this could be if it happens. Because if he keeps his foot on the gas or the break, whatever you want to say, the outcome of this is not going to be good for the economy. Correct. All right. So let's look at the numbers. All right. So last week, he announced, again maybe, that there are 25% tariffs on all imported autos, right?

That was the announcement last week that sent the market diving on Friday. I thought the auto stuff was relatively new. Okay. So here's Neil Dutt's take. He said, the United States import roughly $300 billion of vehicles per year. That amounts to roughly one percentage point of GDP. Thus, 25% of that implies a quarter percent hit to GDP. Speaking of cars, according to Bloomberg news, car repossessions surged last year to the

most since 2009, a sign that mounting consumer stress is reverberating throughout the economy in 2024, roughly 1.73 million vehicles were seized. That's up from 16% from the year prior and 43% compared to 2022. The rise in auto loan delinquencies appears to be a lagged response. to tighter conditions. Now, I also, not dismissing the data, but I think you have to also factor in the part that people went fucking crazy.

Excuse me, excuse all the F-bombs. People went crazy in 21 and 22, buying things that they couldn't afford. So I think that's part of the story as well as overall consumer stress. Do you agree? Yes, but here's what's going to happen if these tariffs sit.

So Dan Ives said in a research note that Trump's auto tariffs will cause pure chaos for the industry. and add five to $15,000 to new a car prices. He says, and I quote, the winner in our view from this tariff is no one. And the thing Trump said, listen, I don't care if prices on foreign cars rise

because then people will buy American cars. That's a direct quote. Yes, that sounds great in theory. Here's what will happen, though. If one automaker raises prices because they're getting tariffed, you think the other automakers are just going to keep their prices the same? No, they're going to raise prices too, and they're going to make it up in margin.

So does this mean that I'm reneutral? Newing my crappy Jeep? What do I do? Is Toyota off the table for me? Well, that's the thing, though. It's hard to know where because the parts are getting tariffed. So it's not like you have any very few. It's, you could have a Honda car that's more made in America than a four because of where the parts come from.

Hey, let me ask you a question. Is uncertainty the same today as it always is because the markets are always uncertain? Well, it depends because we have the binary outcome thing, right? But here's the thing On Liberation Day Tomorrow, on April 2nd We're recording this in April 1st Happy April Fool's Day

I mean, let's say he says Here's my plan But is that plan set in stone No, it's I'm very curious to see how the market reacts It's either going to be up or down A lot, I would think And not just down the middle

Here's the thing on, you mentioned The Repossessions and stuff on cars I looked at this chart kid Matt created this for me How Americans Spend Their Money on average and housing and transportation make up 50% of the total. Transportation is like 17%. It's a whole kit and caboodle. Here's the thing that, so this is a huge part of household budgets.

Here's what will happen. If tariffs raise prices for cars and vehicles 5 to 15,000, wherever it is that they're estimating, people will extend, we're going to get like 96 month loans. People are going to say, I want this payment that I was paying. So extend the, we're going to get like 10-year car loans. Buy now pay later for cars? Honestly, that's what's going to happen.

You're going to get extended car loans much further because people will say, I'm not going to cut back. I'm not going to drive a Toyota Camry like Michael. I'm going to buy the same SUV and I want the same price, but extend the loan. That's what's going to happen. And that's going to be really bad for people. It's a highlander, sir. That's a Toyota. But don't you think that's where we're headed, though, if this happens?

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, consumers will change their habits if they get laid off, obviously. Yeah, but short of that, will consumers actually change their habits? Are parents going to stop buying Suburbans? It would probably just be more debt. Probably not. That's what I'm saying. It's going to be more debt. So, all right, Dallas Fed Energy Survey. So I read all of the quotes in there, and it is gnarly. These people are not happy. This, so this quote reminds me of the Billy Bob Thorne line about

what's the perfect price of crude. Yes. All right. So this is from an executive of public true. Yeah, here is. Okay. The keyword to describe 2025 so far as uncertainty, and as a public company, our investors hate uncertainty. This has led to a market increase in the implied cost of capital of our business, with public energy stocks down significantly more than oil prices over the last two months. This uncertainty is being caused by the conflicting messages coming from the new administration. There cannot be, quote, U.S. energy dominance and a $50 per barrel oil. Those two statements are contradictory. At $50 barrel per oil, we will see. the U.S. oil production starts to decline immediately and likely significantly.

This is not energy dominance. The U.S. oil cost curve is in a different place than it was five years ago. $70 per barrel is the new $50 per barrel. And this was like a relatively tame one. These people are pissed. Right. And they're talking about how the cost of all they're doing business is going up as oil prices are falling. Yeah.

So with the, I mean, the uncertainty is creating a freeze in terms of corporate planning. How could it not? It has to be. That's the biggest worry, obviously. Now, the other side of it here is Torson Slocke says, listen, the debt thing, we've repaired our balance sheets. People are in a good position. Like the private sector is in good.

People are so worried about government debt. But government debt, guess what government debt allowed us to do? It allowed households to repair their balance sheets. Yeah. So can I move the goalpost a little bit on some of the stuff I've been saying? Although I don't know if I'm moving goalposts. If we do get a recession, Of course, all this caveat, nobody knows, but this chart makes me feel pretty good about the fact that if we do get one, we are moderately well positioned for one.

Households are, yes. Households are. So Torson Slock has a chart that shows the debt as a percent of GDP by sectors. And everything's going down. Non-financial corporate, financial corporate, households, everything except the federal. government, which obviously is going up into the right. Right. So Americans have de-levered and should the economy, not just slow down which it is,

but should it contract, I would expect a shallow recession. And this is also why debt for the household is going to increase. Whatever happens with the economy, I think, if it just normalizes or if it slows down, people will be using more debt if rates fall. Yeah. I think that's a pretty easy one to predict. right? Yep. So I think Wall Street takes a huge L on this.

However, however it works out into your binary point, Wall Street was wrong on the way that this has worked out for Trump so far, which is kind of crazy that we're, I don't know, three months into his presidency. So this is- Would you say like Wall Street was wrong, but I would extend it to say everyone was wrong? Who would be able to have predicted the outcome,

at least of the market? Well, it's true. A lot of- Four months into his administration. A lot of voters would have said, I want the 2016 to 2019 economy. That's what I'm voting for. I'm sure that's what a lot of people thought.

And obviously, that's not what they're getting so far. So this is from the day after the election. Wall Street salivates over a new Trump boom. This is from the Wall Street Journal. And then this is a few days ago. Corporate America's euphoria over Trump's golden age is giving way to distress. Again, this happened in five months, essentially. Very quickly, they're kind of saying, wait a lot of.

a minute. And I think Jamie Diamond is like the perfect one for this. So Jamie Diamond in, this is like two days after the inauguration. This is from CNBC. Jamie Diamond says Trump's tariff policy is positive for national security, so people should get over it. Has there ever been a CEO who is more successful, who is also more wrong in headlines? I don't think anyone is wronger than Jamie Diamond in headlines while being also one of the greatest CEOs we've ever seen for this cycle. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. I mean also. Think you like a molegan on this one? Maybe. Would he like a mulligan?

Yes, probably a little one on that. Because, I mean, they didn't think that we're going to, like, listen, I think most people thought, hey, listen, we're going to put some strategic tariffs on China. But the stuff with Canada, that is the thing that is, that could have long lasting impacts. And those are the kind of things that make me pretty worried. And I'll say this, I'm more bearish now in my brain, my heart, whatever, not in my actions, my feelings. I'm more bearish now than I have been in 15 years. I, this is what I'm going to say. Really?

I haven't been this bearer since the great financial crisis. I'm like where things could go cascading into serious problems. I'm not saying that's going to happen. This is how I feel. Maybe I'm overestimating or I've just been trained over the years, overestimating the resilience of the U.S. consumer and our corporate behemoths. Yeah, I have faith that corporations will, whatever. whatever happens, corporations will adjust. I just think that there's so much going on right now

that has the potential for long-lasting impacts. Here's the thing. A lot of people have been shoving it in my face saying, Ben, you always say the president doesn't matter to the stock market. This proves you wrong. And the reason that I have always said that is because I never thought we'd have a president who would try to make the economy and the stock market go down, seemingly. So if I've read a ton of history on the Great Depression, and the crazy thing about it is, the Fed and the economists and the politicians essentially made it 10 times worse. Like they didn't cause the Great Depression, but they made it way worse through their policies and actions.

And my thinking is, well, we're never going to have that again. There's never going to be a politician who tries to implement policies that are going to hurt the economy on purpose. And that's what it seems like he's doing. And so that I never figured we would see this. Do you think that there could be a 10, 15% hit to corporate earnings? possibly, although I don't know how much of it just gets passed through to consumer. But, like, absent that.

But don't you think that the premium, the valuation is the piece here? What if investors just say, I'm not giving the U.S. stocks a premium anymore? Yeah. I think that's the worry. Google is trading at, I own Google, at low 20s next year, high teens 26 estimated earnings. I bought Nvidia yesterday for the first time. Never owned that stock before. I don't know.

Maybe I'm underestimating how crazy. do all this shit is. Like, I don't like it either. Um, and I think that the uncertainty is getting extremely exhausting. The lack of a plan, so this is from political, uh, Wednesday's decision to slap the auto industry with 25% tariffs, while expected in some fashion in the near future, the announcement came together so last minute that the White House wasn't fully prepared and had a delay afternoon programming as they sought to finalize the plan. And so this is from that same, this is from someone in Trump's inner circle, they say. Um, for him, if the economy tanks, then fine, the economy tanks, because the president truly believes that it will rebound

and the countries will give in because they can't withstand the pressure from the U.S. As far as political blowback, number one, the president is not running for re-elections, so where this may have been a political concern for the first term, it's not a political concern now. Number two, we're probably going to lose the House in midterms anyway. If that really is the feeling, like, I don't care if this tanks, then that's where things get out of hand. That's where I'm worried.

I can't believe we would ever let it get to that point. That's where you're coming from. The fact of the matter is nobody knows, right? And I don't act on my feelings, but I'm just saying if I can see a scenario where this thing gets out of control, that's that worries me a little. I think that's a higher percentage chance that I ever would have ascribe to this situation coming into the year. Yeah, fair. Okay. Well, listen, certainly you're not alone in that camp.

What did Colin have to say about tariffs? Well, he kind of goes through this back and forth on answering all the, the, you're not alone in that camp. pushback from people who say, maybe we do need tariffs. And he says, well, Americans will just buy from U.S. firms now. And he says, Americans will have fewer choices because the government reduced competition and consumer options. This will drive up prices, especially when U.S. firms realize they have more pricing power due to the government's manipulation of the market. That's true. That's what I'm saying. Automakers, if they're the last one standing in the U.S., like U.S. made autos, those prices are going up because they have more power now. He says,

well, we need to reduce the trade deficit because we're getting ripped off. And he said, we're getting lower-priced goods and higher margins in foreign countries get our income and investment. This is a pretty good deal. Joe Wisenthal had this idea where he said, the one way to think about any relatively open trading block is that by allowing more specialization and focus, the economy can build out more complex market objects. If you want to have autarky, I can never say that word in America, you could probably do it, but good luck building out any advanced complex industry with so many resources dedicated to manufacturing kitchen mitts or microwaves. Wait, what was that, what was that word you just used?

What? Autarkre? Where is it? Autarki. Like having everything just made here. And so the idea is that, sure, we could make everything here if we wanted to. But why don't we let other countries do that that have lower cost labor? And we can specialize in more complex things and build cooler stuff here.

Oh, there it is. That's what we've done. I found it. A-U-T-A-R-K-Y. Yeah. Got to be honest. I've never even seen that word before. Well, I've only seen it in recent months.

Basically, like, being self-sufficient. Okay. By the way, Ben, you're getting scared about bearish on the market. I just want to say that for people listening, especially younger people, you should be on your hands and knees praying for lower prices, assuming that you're contributing to your former K. I'm still a long-term bull, even if I feel uneasy about the short-term on what possible could happen.

And if you are later in life and you don't have 40 years ahead of you, and you're scared, take less to us. That's always reasonable. So here's a question for you. Should the stock market be down more? Because I've come into this year, and we think through what the bad news is. So we've got bad news from tariffs.

There's been bad news on the AI front, right? The deep seek thing was kind of the first shot off across the bow. Coreweave. Microsoft said they're slowing down data centers. The core weave thing to me is crazy that we could have an AI. Like, I was promised a dot-com bubble. So we could have an AI company go public. and they lower the price and lower the price and lower the price and then essentially the first day, it does nothing?

Yeah. I would have believed that six months ago, would you? So here's my take on the stock market. And I've been talking a lot about like the market seems to be unperturbed, relatively speaking. And I think my point is you would expect, given where stocks came from, the back-to-back 20% up years, the 15% compounded for the last 15 years, you would expect this to be weighing on the market much more than it is. So I have been thinking, like, if the market's not that concerned, I'm not that concerned.

And when I say not that concern, here's where we are. So the S&P, the Mag 7 stocks are getting killed. And I think that is adding to why people are really anxious. It's because most people own at least one or seven of these stocks, right? So all of these Mag 7 stocks are in a bare market with the exception of Apple. Some are down a lot. I looked at this yesterday. This is through some point in Monday.

Apple is down 15%. Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook all down around 20%. Google 25%, and video is down 30%, Tesla is down almost 50%. So this is something people have been waiting for to happen for a long time. So if you're, if you've been concentrating those names, it cuts both ways. But this has been a really painful year. The S&P 493 is up half a percent this year. That's pretty crazy.

So yeah, I would expect it to be significantly worse. And maybe we get there. but right now it seems like the market is still too optimistic. The market thinks that this is a negotiating play. How's that? Right. So, I mean, I feel like a broken record, but like I defer to the market. Doesn't mean the market's always right.

And these are not like my feelings of, oh, I'm bullish and I have to the risks. I'm just saying the market for now seems to be looking past it, relatively speaking. Now, somebody can say, idiot, what are you talking about? Look at the max, okay, I get it. I'm just saying, like, in general, I would expect, given how shocking all this tariff stuff is and the uncertainty, I would expect, to your point, Ben, for stocks to be down a lot more. Yeah, the S&P's down, what, five or six percent year-to-date?

I mean, give me a break. It's not a lot. I know it's not fun. I'm not minimizing it, and, you know, people are scared I understand, but it's just, it's just not that bad. Yeah, but I also think that if he doesn't blink again and says, no, I'm doing 20% tariffs across the board around the world. I think there's an air pocket situation potentially. I agree. Yeah. So if on tomorrow, he goes hard on the paint, we could be down another 10%

next week, like until next time we record. Yeah. So Torson Slok did another one that you used, and it was basically like stock market performance after a 10% decline with a recession and without a recession. And without a recession, obviously, most of the time it just comes back pretty quickly with a recession much longer. So I think that is the, that's the thing. But I also did a follow-up post on this because Warren Pyes broke out all of these lines. And this is one of those charts that is not like misleading in the sense that Tors and Slok is trying to mislead you. The average doesn't tell the story. Is that it?

No, the average. So Warren Pyes broke it down and showed the path of all non-recessionary and recessionary. And it's spaghetti. Okay. Like it really is all over the place. Right. But yes, generally speaking, of course you would expect if, we don't get a recession, this will have proven to be a great buying opportunity.

Yes. Probably. And my level of bearishness would level out because this is all self-inflicted. Yeah. Right? This is not a financial crisis situation that- But that's my point of why you can't get too too bared up because this can be undone so quickly.

And if it does, getting in is getting back in as a hard part. So to that point, this is a point that I'd be, you know, be it over the head a million times, but Nicholas Cole has said it best. He said, getting out is easy, but getting back in is hard. I've seen every major market low since the 1980s, and none of them were even remotely obvious, right? So, yeah, get out. You're scared.

He's going to tank the economy. Like, this is an obvious get out. When do you get back in? Because the bottom is going to look black as shit. Like, it's going to be so dark. Yeah. And people have obviously gone to a dark place already, maybe myself included. But again, I have more faith in corporate America these days and their ability to handle these

situations than I do are politicians. How's that? Yeah. I have more faith in the stock market than any institution in our country. All right. I want to talk about AQR put out a piece a couple of weeks ago rebuffed a closer look at options-based strategies. This is Cliff and his partner, Daniel Villalone.

Remember when AQR had the podcast? What ever happened to that? Dan was a host of it. Okay. The holy grail for many investors is a strategy that generates market-like returns, but with less risk. Enter options-based strategies, often labeled with words like buffered, overlay, and defined outcome. These strategies use options to capture the upside or downside of an asset's return

and managers who employ a mix of options can tailor an asset's risk return profile to align with an investor's goal. It's no surprise then that Morningstar's Options Trading Related category have amassed $234 billion, up from zero, like, I don't know, seven years ago, whatever it was, wildly successful. accessible with investors. However, investors should expect disappointment from these types of strategies. This is not only because actual results have been overwhelmingly disappointing, but also because economic theory says these strategies should be overwhelmingly disappointing. Of the 624 funds in these options related morning start categories, we look at the 99 that have histories going back to

January 2020. And for these 99 funds, we asked two questions. Did their cumulative returns exceed that of passive U.S. equities? Of course, they didn't. That's me, not them. And were their worst drawdowns less severe than that of passive U.S. equities? And they ultimately conclude that when it comes to buying puts, the price of admission is generally higher than the benefit. And on that, I would say, yes, agreed, 100% right.

I think the other side that I would offer, because they're right. In terms of like the math, they're right. These strategies do not keep up with the S&P by definition. some of them are not even as good as a simple 60, 40, 70, 70, 30 portfolio in here and said, like, you'd be better off doing that. Yeah, whatever replication. But I think the important point is the human element. And if these, air quote, not air quote, if these suboptimal mathematical strategies can keep

an investor invested, then that's all that matters. And they can, I think. And that is why this category has grown as much as it has. and in my estimation will only get larger. And I understand where the quants are coming from. Like, I could give people a better, I get it. But this is what people want for better or worse. Right.

Some people just don't have the ability. They want the brackets on each side, right? They want to know I got here to here. Like, it's about having you said the certainty, even though it's not completely certain, it's more bracketed in. And it's a psychological thing. I always tell people like...

So even if you only get, I'm making this up, 85% of the upside and you get 93% of the downside. that might sound like it that might sound moronic but people want that i always say that people there's a lot of people who think owning individual bonds protects them from the risks of the bond market as opposed to owning a bond fund same thing and it's the same thing and i always tell people like it's it's literally a bond fund is just a a fund of individual bond securities but if if it if owning individual bonds allows you to like stay stick through rate movements and inflation and all this stuff like that's the thing and to your point about keep growing

going, BlackRock had a new thing out saying they project outcome-oriented ETS will triple to 650 billion by 2030, fueled by growing financial advisor adoption and changing market demographics and they have this chart on your show. And it's currently, what did you say, 100 and some trillion? Wait, what? No, I said, 234 billion. Yeah, 234 billion. Did you just say 100 trillion? I bet.

One billion dollars. And they say, like, part of their reasoning for it. is more people getting older, and older people are going to want more certainty in their financial life. So to your point, could these possibly be suboptimal versus some strategy? Sure, but do people like having

a little more certainty in their portfolio? Probably, so I think the psychology wins over the math in this one. All right, Balchunis, semi-shock, U.S.-focused ETF inflows have obliterated any other key one with $137 billion, which is 85% of all flows.

X U.S. ETF hall has actually been below average. So while the headlines talk hedge funds exiting the U.S. ETF investors are on a buying spree for better for worse. Now, I think some of this has accelerated in the last couple of weeks, so it might not be all in the data. But to me, the big takeaways, people bought the shit out of U.S. ETFs in the first quarter. A lot of this is automated, and it would take a lot longer than three months of performance to change people's actions.

this stuff. Did Flows slow down at all in 2022? I mean, we had a long bare market. We don't, yeah, long. We had a bare market. What it lasts for, almost two years. I wonder if flow slowed down. I bet one of our ETF people will give us an update on that. All right. We'll grab that for next week. That's a bad signal for Jeffrey Patak. The other day, yesterday I was looking at year-to-date returns for a lot of the, you know, European stocks are up 10%. Emerging markets are up three or four percent. S&P down 6 and NASDAQ down 10, Russell, 2,000, down 10. And someone said, what about long-term treasuries?

They're doing better finally? So I looked up TLT. And it's up like 5% this year. Not bad. You know, rates haven't fallen that much. But I looked, TLT, even with income, is still in a 40% drawdown from the pandemic. Can you imagine if the stock market was still in a 40% drawdown four years later, how freaked out people would be? Such a good point.

And on a real basis, forget about it. Yeah, it's down more like 60. Crazy. Great point, Ben. Okay, this is an interesting one from Bloomberg. I want to get your take on this stat. Bloomberg says half of American households hold 97.5% of wealth, meaning the bottom 50% holds 2.5% of wealth in this country. What's your initial read on a stat like that?

I did some digging on this. My initial read is that's not good. It doesn't sound good. So I looked at this historically, at the bottom of the great financial crisis, which is essentially the bottom of the housing market in 2011, we'll call it. It was 99.4% to the top 50% and 0.6 to the bottom 50%. Wow. So the bottom 50% is actually that now is, of course, after the great financial crisis,

because most of the bottom 50%, like 50% of their financial assets are in their house. So how's it? All right. So, but my, like, my second thought is, okay, on the, surface in a vacuum. This is an alarming stat. It seems like it should. And the highest it ever was is in the 90s. The bottom 50% held 4% of wealth. So it's never been that high. So my question to you is, is this just the way things always are? Because I think of how many people automatically have a negative net worth? Because when I graduated college, I had a car loan and I had student loans. So my net my net worth was negative for probably four years after college. Like I

I didn't save a lot when I first started working at because I didn't make a lot. So my, right out of college, boom, negative net worth. So that immediately brings down the bottom of 50% because there's so many people with a negative net worth just built in. So I wonder if this number isn't necessarily as bad as looks because there's always going to be some people who just have a negative net worth. So I earned $270 in the year 2010, not to brag. So I was right there with you.

After tax? But the second place that I go to is, if you were to compare the real income, the standard of living for the bottom 50% over the last 100 years, I'm going to guess it's up until the right. And for the last five years or so, the bottom 50% has seen a huge increase in wealth. They've also got destroyed by inflation. But I do think that there's more context necessary for data like this. So then they break it down in terms of like, all right. So we've shared charts like this in the past. What does the asset makeup look like?

And for the bottom 50%, nearly half of their household wealth is, of course, in real estate. Right. In their home. And that as you go up the wealth spectrum, that that goes lower and stocks explodes, right? And I looked at this, for the top 10%, it's essentially like 20% of their wealth is tied up in the home and 35% or so is in stocks. So it's just, there's more diversification, the wealthier you get.

And the house makes up much less. What do you think other is? Like cash? That's a good point. Must be. Yeah, because it's not corporate equities or mutual plan shares. Yeah, so it must be cash. Everyone holds a lot of cash.

But, Ben, this next chart, which I know you spoke about earlier, you do see the bottom 50%. It rises, right? Rising. The share, yeah. All right. So the rich are getting richer, but everyone else is getting richer, too, is not at a, at the same pace. You can't say richer for the bottom 50%. They're getting better off.

Richer than they were. Sorry. Yes. But I'm saying the rich are getting richer, but the rest of everyone is not, is, is making more money, too, it's not as much as they were as the rich. America has never been wealthier. Here's why it doesn't feel that way from our friend Tomlin Smith at the New York Times. And we've spoken about the troubles with surveys and sentiment, especially within the University

of Michigan survey. But nevertheless, this part of it is interesting to me. And I do believe this drives with current feelings in the economy. he breaks it out by bottom third, middle, third, top third. And not surprisingly, because the economy is, in fact, slowing down, the labor market is slowing down. The bottom third is particularly... So that rolled over much quicker.

Yeah. That makes sense to me. Yeah, the bottom third is going to feel the pain of a slowdown much more broadly. Yeah. That makes sense. All right. Let's talk about private equity in 401Ks. Bloomberg did this big piece on private equity is coming for America's $12 trillion in retirement savings. And this is the part that worries me. For the industry, the time is of the essence. After a decade of blistering growth, private firms are finding it harder to raise money from traditional pension fund clients. They're all tapped out. We've talked about this for advisors. Indominance and pensions have put money into privates for years. They're full. They're good. Meanwhile, higher rates and declining asset values have led fewer initial public offerings and sales. Investors aren't getting your money back, choking off.

the cycle of reinvestment. So the push to get into 401k's is part of a broader campaign to transform private investments from a roughly $25 trillion industry confined to Wall Street into an industry of seemingly endless growth driven by an aging Main Street. That's what worries me that the reason for the push into 401Ks and advisors is because private equity feels like their current client base is tapped out. And we like we need an exit plan here. I want to say an exit plan. I would say more liquidity. Is that like the winning of the Poon meme? Yes. I, yeah, exactly. My initial read on this is I think this is a terrible idea. Okay. I have, I have vet my thoughts are extremely mixed. Because on the one hand,

what you just said is 100% true. And I will not hear any, any, there's no counterpoint. That's true. The main client for these gigantic asset managers has been the institutional investor who are now full. Their belly is full. They're not getting as much money in as they were, they were hoping. Hey, why are we going to put money into your new fund if you haven't paid us our old fund back yet? All right. So that's over. And it's in the data. So then they went onto wealth managers and now they're eyeballing the largest pool of capital, the 401K. So on the surface, you're like, eh, not great. On the other hand, if you are going to invest in these long-term illiquid investments, they probably should be in your retirement account. Yeah,

A tax deferred account makes the most sense for private equity. I just don't think the average 401k investor is ever going to understand what these... No, neither do I. Neither do I. I think that in 15 years, I would guess, not like with a huge degree of confidence, but fairly high, actually. Who am I kidding? This would probably not go well for the average investor in these funds. Can you imagine the person who leaves their job instead of ruling their 401k over, they decided to try to cash it out?

And it's like, you can't catch this out. you're in a private equity fund. You can't do that. All right. Now, here's like one other flip side to this, is that democratizing this to the extent that there's however many trillions of dollars in 401Ks will bring down fees and will hopefully have some other benefits. But yeah, I think that this experiment is probably not going to go great in general.

Yeah, that's kind of where. But guess what? It is coming. Yeah. There's no fighting it at this point. I agree. Um, okay, surprising or no, this is another Torsten Slok one, um, who's at all time highs in our dock, I guess, 20% of households in their 40s or 50s have an outstanding 401k loan.

He shows this by, by age and by decade, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. And for everyone, it's, it's relatively high. Does that, does that number seem high to you? Very high. Very high. So 20% of people in their 40s, I would love to see like a line chart over time. Is this normal? That's what I don't know either.

So our own Blair Ducane was on, as the compound with me a couple weeks ago, talking about how she, they were trying to sell their home, but also buying a new home, and to bridge to not have two mortgages and to have a down payment, she took a 401k loan out, used it for her down payment on her house, and it took longer to sell the old house. Once the old house was sold, she could then take the proceeds,

pay up the 401k loan. She actually decided not to do that. She's going to slow pay it back to herself, because rates right now are like 8% or 9% and you're paying that to yourself, So there are times when it's not just like people are completely at their lap, you know, nothing else to do I have to take money out. There's times when it actually could possibly make sense.

But the numbers are higher than I would have thought. Same. Ben, we got an email this morning from a listener who said, Michael, this one is for you. A medium coffee door dash from Starbucks in Seattle is $21.51. Come on. So I'm taking a look at this. I'm like, hey, wait a minute. Listen to this order.

Not to Starbucks shame anybody. Shareholder, proud coffee drinker. All right. This person got an iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso. That includes brown sugar syrup, a blonde espresso, line the cup with caramel sauce, non-dairy, salted caramel cream cold foam, caramel drizzle, oat milk shots, cinnamon powder. Again, to each their own. That's a $10 coffee.

That's a lot of stuff in there. There's a, the SE, I guess a Seattle regulatory response fee. What in the world? What the hell is that? That's five bucks. The service three is three bucks. The tax is two bucks and he tipped a dollar. That's 21 and a half bucks for coffee.

I don't feel bad for that person. I don't think he's asking for sympathy. It's just like a. If you're getting your, macchiato, espresso, venty, whatever, with 12 drips of caramel, I'm a caramel guy. You're a caramel guy. It happens. In a private taxi, then you probably should be paying 20 bucks.

But how is it caramel if there's an A between the R and the M? I don't know. None of the words in the English language makes sense. All right. This is probably the best thing I've read in the last couple weeks. So the last decision by the world's leading to think around decision. This is from Jason's Weig. And he talks about Daniel Kahneman, who passed away last year at age 90.

And it turns out he decided to end his own life. and Jason, and he emailed people to explain the decision. I guess he went to Switzerland where you can administer the shot yourself, whatever it is. And Jason is trying to go through because he was friends with Conman. They worked on Thinking Fast and Slow together, which I think is not reported on enough. The fact that Jason Zweig was essentially got started with Dana Kahn and thinking fast and slow and editing and helping. And I think they kind of split ways at the end and didn't finish it together. but, and so he, Jason's trying to figure out, like, this guy spent his whole life studying

decision-making by human beings, and he decided when he was 90 years old, his facilities were going to be going down very quickly, he wasn't as mentally sharp, he didn't want to get to the point where he could see that happening to himself and had to be a burden other people, and he decided to end his life at 90 and said, at 90, you know what, I'm done. And honestly, thinking through this, and I've been thinking about death a lot lately, obviously, his decision makes a lot of sense to me. That was my reaction. As a loved one, you've got to be thinking, like, hey, we get a few more years together.

Like, this is crazy. I totally get not wanting to go through that period where someone's having to get you out of bed in the morning and help you go to the bathroom and help you shower. And he decided, like, I want to go out before I get to that point. And I've lived a great life and I've lived for 90 years and that's a long time. Yeah, 90. It's, I get that. I mean, it's enough.

My dad has said for years that, like, once. he's in his 80s, he's like, he's, he's good. Like, he doesn't need to go past that, which is kind of crazy because he's coming on an 80 in the next couple years. But he said that for years. Like, I don't need to live to the point where I'm, like, incoherent and I need you all to take care of me. I don't know if we spoke about this on the pod.

Sorry to totally derail this conversation, but at your brother's funeral, there was like, collage's pictures, and one of them was of your dad shooting a basketball with, like, you know, the shirt up and whatever shorts. and the socks. And we said, see, that's what a dad looks like. Right? Like, that's what a dad is supposed to look like. That's what our dad's looked like.

And I was thinking about this last night. So... By the way, my dad has one of these silkiest smooth jumpers you've ever seen in your life. Really? I mean, he could sit in the driveway and just swish after swish after. Yeah, Eddie had a wicked jumper. That doesn't go away.

No. He could still fill it up. So last night I was watching Glenn Gapes. Gary Glenn Ross, just the first 15 minutes, I fell asleep. Because I saw the play last weekend. It was on Prime Video, so I fired it up. Been a minute since I saw the movie. First of all, a couple of observations.

I kind of forgot that the Alec Baldwin scene was so early in the movie. And I also, I don't know that I forgot, but I was re-reminded of, holy shit, one of the greatest five minutes in any movie scene ever. Like, really and truly. His speech? Yeah. It's one of the all-time speeches. It's incredible.

I was also reminded of the fact that back in the day, a lot of dads were salesmen. And yet no idea what they did or what they sold. But they went into the city with a briefcase looking like these guys. And they sold whatever it was, real estate vacuum cleaners, flyers, whatever it was, they sold shit. And then lastly, there was one scene where they did the bonaca thing for our younger listeners. That's a math spray. Remember that thing? Yeah, you don't see that anymore.

That's right. You don't see that anymore. So it was the and then like the innovation was, remember they had like the little thing of the tube? That was like the huge disruption. Oh yeah.

So Bonaca got disrupted by the little listerine things. And then that got disrupted by like the tabs, the things that you just put on your tongue that dissolves like acid. I always thought, but not,

I always thought it was Jim Carrey and Dumb and Dumber who was the end of the mouth spray. Yeah. So anyway, getting back to Connman, sorry. Okay. No, I just,

someone said, he interviewed Philip Tetlock who said, I've never seen a better plan death on the one Danny designed. And so thinking through, like, was this a good decision or not? Like, to him it was, ask me again when I'm 90, I guess. But I actually understand what he did here.

And that was, I said my brother, his whole thing was I'm not going to just wilt away. And I totally am on board with that idea, even if other people would be against it. I'm always uncomfortable talking about how I'm going to feel in the future, especially at age 90. Yes. I mean, because the truth is, you really have no idea, not a gosh, darn clue how you're going to feel. about your life in the future. No. But where I am now, I understand it, at least.

So, all right. Remember how this was going to be the crypto presidency? I do. So this is almost cherry picking because if you looked from election day, it's not as bad. But just going from inauguration day, Bitcoin is down 20%. Ethereum is down almost 50%. And Salon is down almost 50%. So you'd say, well, look from actual the day of the election.

And it's probably more of like a round trip. But this is the interesting thing to me that baby boomer gold is still a better hedge than millennial gold. So over the last year, gold is up 19 or 20%, Bitcoin is down 10 or 11%. Whoa, this is year to date. Oh, sorry, year to date. You're right. Okay. So gold is up almost 20%, Bitcoin's down almost 10%, or more than 10%.

You're right. I'm going to create a discharge too. So in times of turmoil, gold is still where people turn, not crypto. And I don't know if this will ever change. Because crypto is a long time. But for now, Bitcoin, it's a risk asset. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, over the last year, gold is up 40% or something. So, yeah, the, the, like, analog, the mental framework of thinking about it as digital gold still makes a lot of sense to me. But it doesn't behave like gold. No. That's a good, yeah. For better and for worse. All right.

From Redfin, who's now owned by, who bought them? Rocket. That's right. They're buying a bunch of companies. By the way. Well, it's with Isaiah Stewart, speaking of Detroit. The guy's an animal. We're bringing the bad boys back.

You're just scared to play them if you're the Knicks, right? I'd be a little nervous. Somebody tweeted this, but the only time I've seen clips of that guy are fighting. I've never seen him, like, there's never, I mean, there's never been an Isaiah Stewart highlight. He's basketball. He'd be the guy that you hate from another team, but you love him when he's on your team. Of course. Is he good?

I don't know. He fights a lot of people. So all time high for median monthly payment, which makes sense. So this is taking the median price putting on. the current mortgage rate, it's up 5% year-over-year by far the highest. This to me is nuts. Yeah. And this chart is devastating.

So from 2022, the start of 2022, we've gone from $1,600 to $2,800 for the median monthly payment. If you're buying the median price house at prevailing market rates. Doesn't, I mean, doesn't add up. It's, wow. No, it really, it really doesn't. From the Wall Street Journal, homebuyers are starting to come off the sidelines, even as rates, prices stay stuck.

And they interview a bunch of people and going through their decisions. And someone said, listen, you can't pause your life for what rates are going to do. People finally throw out their hands. And this is not everyone, obviously, but activity is coming back slowly

but surely from people who are going, what am I waiting for? I've been waiting for two or three years for rates to come down. They haven't done it yet. Let's just rip the bandit off and go. Why am I waiting? Two other good quotes.

Compared to my siblings and all of our friends who are homeowners, it was not the best time to buy, Jamil said. But I think the best time to buy is when you can afford it. She had it. By the way, that's a great line. We spend a lot of time like poking fun, not of these people, but at the media outlets that just pick random people. This was the article that I read. I was like, these are really smart people and really great, great quotes. Level-headed. Yeah, that's, I totally agree with that. The best time to buy is when you can afford it. Here's one more. I'm sure

looking back, there could have been a better time or alternately, there could have been a worse time. The question was, is there something we find that we think is worthwhile to take that leap of faith. So these people are being very sober about the situation. I'm sure they've been waiting for years. Things aren't changing. And if they can do it, they're going to make it work, even if it's not, like, quote, the best time or the best investment. You've got to move on with your life. And people need more space. Hopefully they can refinance in a couple years if one rights fall. So we always talk about national housing prices, but housing is obviously local. And I think we're getting to a point where we're seeing a pretty big divergence. So this is another from Cal Smith. And he

posted this thing from someone in northern Virginia, which I never knew was called Nova. Did you know this? Okay. N-O-V-A. So this person said, I listed my home in the 996 colonial in a nice neighborhood. By Sunday afternoon, we had nearly 50 potential buyers resulting in seven offers, all of them over-asking and most of them non-contingent, done by Sunday night, closing with no, you know, all this stuff, no appraisal deal. And this person saying, I've never seen it like this in 30 years of living here. He's like, they say you can't, you can never tell it's a bubble when you're in it, but man, if this doesn't qualify, I don't know what would. So that's in Virginia.

Bill McBride says in Miami, there was... Hold on, just on that point. Bubbles need to pop. And it's hard to see what causes real estate prices to go down significantly, given the demographic tailwind. There's still so many more people that need to buy. Yeah. And maybe he's saying the activity is a bubble, but listen to this. The other side, Bill McBride says in Miami, there was 1,440 single-family homes and condos sold in February.

At the end of the month, there were more than 17,000. thousand active listings for over 12 months of supply. So the average supply for the country is like three and a half months. For Miami, it's 12 months. And he's saying, ouch, and someone asked him, why is this? And he said, well, remember that condo building fell a few years ago? Like, so insurance rates are jacked up because they have to have a higher emergency fund and there was just too much buying there. So the Wall Street Journal says that, here's, they say, the divergence is playing out in places like Wyckoff, New Jersey. Did I say that right? Wickoff, Wyckoff? I think Wyckoff. ever been in New Jersey, even though you live in New York? There's like a hard line.

People from New York and New Jersey. We're cousins, but we don't congregate. We're a four-bedroom ranchers on the market for a week in early February with dozens of offers. The winning buyers contracted to buyer for about 200,000 above the roughly 1.1 million asking price. But in Miami, a six-bedroom with a grand staircase in a pool, it set on the market for nearly two months without a firm offer. The sellers cut the price recently by $9,000. And so they give this chart of median days on the market. And in places, like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, it's staying on the market a lot longer. And the whole point is that we're finally seeing some divergence where some of these places that went nuts. And to be fair,

places like Miami, that's where the prices went way up, way faster. And so it makes sense. And again, the insurance costs arising. But we're getting back to a point where the location matters more, a lot more than the national housing industry and what's going on there, which good or bad. I think in certain places, like, you're going to be able to give some great low ball offers. If you're moving to Florida or Austin or some one of these places and you're giving a low ball offer this spring, I think you're going to be in a wonderful position as a buyer. Not so in the Midwest and other places. Hope so. All right, moving on to some streaming stuff. So there was an article in the information

about Apple TV Plus. There's some newly revealed numbers. The service is losing more than a billion dollars annually. They have 45 million subscribers. A billion dollars sounds like a lot of money it is, but I can't imagine Apple gives too much of a shit about a billion dollars. One of the people said that Apple has spent more than $5 billion a year in content since launching Apple TV Plus. They trimmed their budget by $500 million last year. Isn't that coach change for them? What's that?

Yeah, Tim Cook is taking a horror look. But Apple TV is blown up. So Ted Lasso is coming back. Severance was wildly popular. I'm on episode six, by the way. I'm watching it. I have no idea what's happening. Not a clue.

Dope Thief is one of one of the shows that I'm very much enjoying. And my new favorite show on TV of all TV is only the two episodes. But did you see episode two of the studio? Yes. Let's say that for recommendations. I want to talk about the studio. They also had this movie called The Gorge. Did you watch it?

Not yet. I'm going to. I watched it. It's almost kind of like a horror thriller. It was like just okay, but I'd never even heard even talk about it. It was Miles Teller. Yeah. And the girl from, what's her name, from the Queen's Gambit?

Yes. Ania, Taylor, Joy, something. She's got three names. Here's something I've noticed about streaming lately. I want to get your take on. But Apple's going in. Like, there's a lot of quality stuff coming out of the company. They're like Junior HBO.

When my wife and I watch a show now, every episode, they give a recap of here's what's happened before on this season or this, like, I feel like you used to get a recap at the beginning of the season and that's it. Now they do a recap every single episode. I'm ins to skip. Do you skip? Of course. My wife's like, why did you skip that?

I wanted to see. I'm like, we're watching the show. I know what happened, and she'll, and she likes it. But do they do this now because people are on their cell phone so much, and they forget what happened in an episode? Yeah. That's it, right? Yeah.

They do it for every episode. I don't need a full rewind of the season, two episodes in. Yeah. I hope not. All right. Question for my kids. My kids love picking songs and listening to music in the car and telling Siri what to do.

The other day they asked me on the way to McDonald's for breakfast. Who has the greatest singing voice of all time? What is your answer? All right, I have two answers. One man, one man. Yep. All right, man, Freddie Mercury. Okay.

One man, Whitney Houston. All right, I said Whitney Houston. I feel like that's a pretty. And I said Marvin Gay, Whitney Houston, or Aretha Franklin, maybe. But I think Whitney Houston is, especially for people our age, that's the easiest answer. It's a layer.

Because it's the right answer. All right. I got more questions last week about my sweater than anything market related. So I wanted to just give a shout out here to Marine Layer, who should be giving me a sponsorship at this point. How much was that, buck, $1.60? You know, it was on sale? I sent it to a few people.

It was on sale for 118 maybe. They have great stuff, big fan. I love that place. Okay, story time. At my office, I have what is called a lake out of my office. It looks more like a pond, but it's one of those office lakes, you know? There's a little lake outside, and there's all these Canadian geese that congregate on there. And they always annoy me, because I hear them outside of my office just quacking all day.

Because they, like, quack at each other, you know? But when I go walk to my car, sometimes they'll be sitting there, and they'll be on the sidewalk, and they'll just hiss at you. You know? They're nasty. They're nasty. And so the other day, I'm walking out, and I'm talking to my wife and have fun about something, and one of them is 20 feet away for me. And all of a sudden it takes off flying, and I think it's just going to take off flying.

It flies right at me, and it's doing its wings at me like this. And it's hissing at me. It's like five feet away. And I'm like, hey, get out of here. You know, I yell like, hey, jerk, get out of here. So then later in the day, the same day, this same goose is about 100 yards away as I'm walking to my car. He takes off again. He's coming straight at me like a train.

you know it's the same goose. I mean, it's got to be. And then he does the same thing where he flaps his wings at me. And he's like doing this thing. And here's a thing, Canadian geese are useless. Would I be out of order if I just stepped on his neck? Like, is that fair? That's what I wanted to do. I'm like, you come at me again. I'm going to step on your neck. What are these things for? They're not cute. They hiss at you. They're mean. They're crap everywhere. Yeah, the green crap everywhere. Yeah, awful. Am I within my right? So just step on his neck. I felt like... They're horrible animals. They're the worst. Yeah.

So what did you do? Did he run? I just yelled at him and kind of took a step like this and then he kind of hissed at me and then we went our separate ways. But I don't know if someone else made him maddened early a day or maybe he didn't like my sweater, but just came at me like a bullet.

Yeah, Canadian Guise. No good. Not a fan. I put a tariff on him. All right, recommendations. You mentioned the studio. I was very excited about this show because I read an article with Seth Rogan and one of my men's magazines,

his GQR Esquire. And here's my initial take on the show. I don't like it as much as I wanted to like it. And I think it should have been a movie instead of a show. Did you see episode two? I did. Okay, that was, come on, that was incredible. I think it's a little too over.

Here's the thing. I think satire works better in a movie than a TV show. Wow, harsh critic. I really wanted to like this show. It's got everything I want. It's got great cameos. It's about Hollywood. But don't you love being in Hollywood?

I do. I think it should have been a movie But it's only two episodes Wait too early to say I'm gonna keep watching it But I'm surprised I don't like it as much as I wanted to I'm very surprised I love it I'm so happy

And I hope it doesn't the bottom doesn't fall out But I freaking loved episode too I thought it was masterful Okay My daughter is reading She's in a book bowl for school Where she had to read all these books Before a certain date

And they have a test on it or whatever And she wanted to make sure she got And one of the books was a baseball book. And they talked about all these old sports movies in the book. And so she had a list. She said, I want to watch all these sports movies that they list. And so we created a list. A field of dreams is out there.

That's our next one. But we watched Hoosiers with my kids. Tell her I saw it in the theater when I was four. That's true. And we watched Hoosiers. Overrated. Oh, whoa. Sorry.

It aged so well. And at the end of the movie, when they won, my kids, my twins got up and started clapping. They were so happy with the movie. And I feel like if you make a movie about the 50s or the 60s from like the 80s or 90s, it always ages well. That movie still rocks. Obviously there's some cheesy parts in it, but, and I got one more. Somehow I got sucked into, do you ever get sucked into Tubby?

No, I don't think I've ever been on it. Okay. I got sucked into a bout last night, which is a Demi Moore and Roblo Romcom from the 80s. 80s? Okay, I never heard of it. Not bad. But they're talking at the bar, they just go to the bar and it's a, you know, it's got all the beats of most rom-coms. Will they, won't they?

They're going to break up, but they're going to back together. But they're at a party and this woman goes, it was actually the lead in Big with Tom Hanks, the one who jumps in the trampling to them. Can't remember her name. Oh, she's great. She's in it, too. She said, she's in it, she still works. She's talking to Jim Belushi, and she says, are you worried much about Western civilization? It's collapsing in case you hadn't noticed.

And I thought, I guess that's just what everyone thinks. So I know people think that's happening now, but that's what every generation thinks. True. That's all I got. Speaking of old, getting back to Cahneman, Scott Glenn and making an appearance on White Lotus. Did you watch White Lotus this week? Yeah, I didn't know what that was his name. The old guy?

He's 86. Okay. Still looking good. Old and not looking good. Bobby D. The Alto Nights bombed. Supposed to be horrendous. I mean, he's doing too much stuff.

He did that Netflix show, too. I like that Netflix show. Okay. Me and you are on separate wavelengths on TV shows lately. Did you watch that show, The Zero or something? I don't love it. I was entertaining. Half an episode.

Six episodes. Yeah. Yeah, so the cinema is in not a good place at the start. The first quarter was a disaster. And it's not looking great. So we watched you and I, the trailer, for the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie from Warner Brothers. They gave him $140 million to make this.

It's called One Battle After Another. Now, I've discussed multiple times that I'm more of a description guy. I don't like to see this trailer. I don't like spoilers. Just I'm in, I'm in, I'm out, I'm out. I'm not watching this movie. So I said, you know what? Let me see the trailer.

It looks horrendous. It doesn't look at all. I'll still watch it because Leonardo DiCaprio, but it doesn't look great. Do you agree, though? The trailer looked like pass. I immediately slapped you guys and I said, I'm shorting this, I'm shorting this movie. Putting an immediate short on it. The film people will say they love it because they have to say they love all Paul Thomas Anderson movies.

But it's not going to be good. It looked awful. And I'll still watch it. So you know what, you know what took the prize for the latest weekend in terms of box office gross? What do you got? A Working Man, which is a movie that I had never heard of. I'm guessing you never heard of it. Oh, no, I saw the preview.

It's all reliable. Jason Statham. Jason Statham. He's like a construction. guy, but his background, he's actually, right? Listen, after he's capitalizing on the success of the beekeeper, Jason Statham still plays. But you know what's interesting? I've never seen his original old movies.

That's the thing. He's fantastic in Lockstock and two smoking barrels. So that one I saw, but like all of his series, the mechanic and all the others, I've never seen those. Okay. I liked him early in his career. But, yeah, he's a new Liam Ease, I guess. Just keep cranking out action movie there exactly. exactly the same. Yeah. Works. All right, Ben. Anything else? What's the market doing today?

You know, markets down a little bit. Down 90 bips on the S&P, we'll say. We'll say. Are you still saying no bare market? Yeah, I'm still saying no bear market. All right. I totally agree with your binary outcome thing, though. Everyone is going to pretend like they knew exactly it was going to happen after it happens. You know, no one knows now. Yeah. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. We're all just guessing. All right. Animal Spirits at the Compound News.com.

Email us, personal emails, personal responses, mostly from Michael, sometimes from me. I've never seen with a backward hat on before. I used to exclusively rock him backwards hat. Okay. Back in my bald days. Looks good. See you next time.

You know,