Animal Spirits Podcast - Dunking on Doomers (EP.338)

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

On episode 338 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: good news on the economy, why the stock market loves lower inflation, did Elon Musk help kill inflation, getting bullish on consumer sentiment, Netflix won the streaming war, Rich Dad/Poor Readers, timing the housing market, and much more! Thanks to YCharts and the College for Financial Planning—a Kaplan Company—for sponsoring this episode! Secure a copy of "The Top 23 Charts of 2023" deck and remember, get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you tell them we sent you (new customers only): https://go.ycharts.com/the-top-23-charts-of-2023?utm_source=Animal+Spirits Learn more about the Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist program (CRPS) at: https://www.kaplanfinancial.com/wealth-management/crps 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.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   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. Wealthcast Media, 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. Why Charts has a special gift just in time for the holidays, their final research piece. Top 23 charts of 2023. I'm hopeful it'll include some of ours that we used last week on the webinar with them, right? Because I think we did a webinar, Best Charts of the Year with Y charts. Got some good feedback from some people that liked it. Michael was mad at me because I was using up some good Animal Spirits takes and said, save them for the show, but I couldn't. I had you give them to Y charts.

Do you remember what the Zing? You did have a few Zingers. I wish I wrote about Well, we talked about the soft landing And I said that We already landed the plane once And now we're getting ready To take the next flight.

It's a connection, right? Oh, it was a layover. It's a layover, yeah. Yeah, it's a layover. I got some other ones. 2023 was the great layover? Ah, there we go. So, yeah, the first landing already happened.

So check out the link in the show notes. Top 23 charts of 2023. Remember 20% off Whitecharts professional subscription, if you tell Manuel Spirit sent to you. You ever see the terminal? Yeah, not bad. I didn't care for Tom. Tom Hanks is actually not very good at accents.

That's one of the things he's not good at. That's a layover movie, right? Yeah, he's stuck in the air. It's actually not a bad movie. That's pretty good. Anyway, new customers only, link in the show notes. Go see Y charts. Today's show is also brought to you by the College for Financial Planning.

Ben, do you know what the new contribution limits are for IRAs in 2024? Seven grand, is it? $6,500? It went up, I know. I don't know. You know why? I'm not a chartered retirement plan specialist.

Okay. You should know these things, if you were. Advisors with clients who are small business owners will likely have questions related to 401K plans, increase credits for startup costs. I don't even know what that is. Roth IRA treatment for employer contributions. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff. There are a lot of different rules for this kind of thing.

It can be tricky. So the College for Financial Planning, which is a Kaplan company, offers a chartered retirement plan specialist professional designation that helps you gain expertise on all of these sort of issues. We always say the best way to stand out in the advisory world, which is more competitive, is have a niche. So they have 11 different designations at the college financial planning. We got the CFA. There's other routes to go as well if you want to focus on some other niche, not niche, niche. You can do either. Nitch or niche.

I'm a niche guy. It's kaplanfinancial.com. There's a link on the show notes for both of our websites. Check it out there. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions.

Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. In the intro, we were talking about the chartered retirement plan specialist destination from Kaplan. There was a very brief moment in time where I thought about doing the CFP. Is this post-CFA or when you're debating between the two? No, no, no, no, no. This is post-C-C-Fa. I think there's a good, I think I gave it a good five minutes. I just said, nah, not from me. Every time I talk to a group of young people and they ask, MBA, CFA, CPA, I tell people, if I was doing it today, I probably wouldn't have gotten the CFA.

I would have done the CFP, because I think there's more demand in the years ahead for people who understand and know financial planning than know how to invest a portfolio. That's indisputable. However, what was that word again? I don't know, and disputable. All right. And that's true, and it's good advice, but I'm not really interested in personal financial planning and personal finance stuff. That's fair. I'm thinking it through the young person lens of I'm trying to separate myself or.

Oh, what's better, what's better for your career? Well, it depends what sort of career. Anyway. So I remember when I was, when I was coming out of school, my dad was trying to talk me into going to accounting and getting my CPA because that, it always meant there's jobs there, right? But I hated that. I didn't want to. I had friends who were in that and they'd do the busy season and tax season, and

they hated themselves. So I didn't want to go that route either. Yeah. Anyway, it's Tuesday, December 12th, and we had a lot of economic data come out over the past week and a half. I'd say good data. Yeah, good data. On Friday, we got the jobs number.

I know certain people don't like good economic data anymore. Call me crazy. Maybe I'm contrarian. I like good economic data. You know what? You're too focused on the negative. You're stuck in the doom or dunking zone. I'm being sarcastic.

I can't tell. I can't even tell anymore. I'm losing the plot. I'm losing the Ben Carlson plot. Okay. All right. All right. You tweeted, the U.S.

unemployment rate has been less than 4% for 22 straight months. This is a Ben Carlson special. That's the longest stretch below 4% since the late 1960s. The unemployment rate never got lower than 4% once in the 1970s, 80s or 90s. And then you have this great, did you mean? make this meme or did you take this? I guess this is a, well, there's a meme. No, I pulled this. I pulled this meme myself. This is a Ben Carlson special. I didn't steal this from anyone. I just, I just typed in, little guy pushing big guy. And this is a, really? Yeah, yes. And I created this

meme myself. Wow. You don't, not every day that you see the birth of a new meme. All right, good for you. So there's a, there's a picture of a little boy pushing, uh, a sumer wrestler. A sumer wrestling. You know, I don't know if we discussed this on this podcast or ever, but my mind broke a little bit. Did you know Yoko Zuna was Hawaiian? He's Samoan? I never really got into sumo wrestling. Sorry. No, the WWF. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. I remember that guy. Okay, yeah. He was Samoan, not Japanese. Okay. I mean, they play characters. It's fake. Just so you know. I used this joke once before that. I was in wrestling in like the Hulk Hogan, Roddy, Roddy Piper days back then, Jake the Snake.

My brother telling me that wrestling is fake. This is back when it was WWE, not WWF, or WWF. What's it now? WWA. Yeah, so back when it was WWF, I said, like, the Santa stuff I never really got to me before. But like, when I found out WWE or WWF was fake, that was like, I couldn't believe it when my brother broke that news to me. I was shattered. I couldn't believe.

I was a little kid. I was like, you know, seven probably. You know what? We're going to put a pin in this because, and then we're going to take the pin out later in the conversation. Okay. All right. So you know how we get the now,

speaking of Japan? We get the now short Japan all the time. Wait, wait. I didn't even finish, I didn't even finish explaining what the meme was. Oh, okay. So the sumo wrestler is the labor market and the little boy pushing him,

obviously doing nothing, is the Fed raising interest rates. Good meme. Even the Fed said, you know, we're going to try to slow the labor market. And they haven't been able to be. it's almost like they kind of brush that aside and just kind of like, hey, look over there. We didn't, we're not doing this anymore.

But that was the whole idea that every economist were saying, we have to slow the labor market because if we slow the labor market, then companies will pull back. And if companies pull back, demand will slow and that will slow inflation. That's not what happened, which is really crazy when you think about it. Wait, can I just say what the, but it's weird because you're right, the Fed's actions have not slowed the labor market as a whole. However, the rising cost of capital has destroyed money-losing companies, and they have laid off a lot of employees, Spotify, the most recent example. Like, there's been a lot of restructuring with companies that required access to cheap capital.

True? Yeah, and it still hasn't mattered, though, for the overall labor market, which shows how dynamic the U.S. economy is. Now Show Japan has always been a big joke of ours over the years, because anytime we post a long-term stock thing, when I put this, this tweet up about the labor force meme or the labor market everyone's the net new one is okay fine show the labor force participation rate that's the new now show japan and i have to come in with people saying yes the labor force participation rate is dropping because baby boomers are retiring at a fast clip but if you show prime age as we've done here 25 to 54 it's almost at all time high right yeah you can't it's hard to poke hold in labor market right now maybe you can in the future

but not now we got we got a hustle though we got we got uh i look today guess how many pages are google lack is today. 44. We're bringing it today. 44 pages. I saw this. This might be our longest episode ever, so strap in. All right, Carl Kintania tweeted, lowest annual hourly earnings growth since June

2021 and highest participation since February 2020. So for those who might have missed us in the opener, we were talking about the soft landing. Ben made some sort of a joke that, what's your joke? We had a layover. I said we already had a soft landing, and now we're on the layover, and we'll see if the next flight has any turbulence or not. But so far, so good. We've made it through the first leg of the trip. Yeah, I think that's right.

I fly from a regional airport, so I'm used to a lot of layovers. All right, so we don't really have a VIX for the economy, but I think if we did right now, it would be, 2020 would have been, I don't know, a 30 VIX, high 20s. Right now would be like at a 12 or 15. So this is the last six inflation readings. So we had one this morning, 2.97 in June, 3.18, 3.67, 3.67, 3.7, 3.24, and now 3.14 in November. The volatility is gone. Like, there wasn't any, you know, it's because the expectations are getting reset and getting more in line, but we've taken the volatility out of it. I think that's a good thing for the economy right now. Yes. The volatility of prices was definitely, I mean, it was definitely weighing on consumer set.

but that's for sure. Right. Disinflation is potential here. So Patrick Coran tweeted this. Shelter again was the largest factor in the monthly increase. So this is from October to November. If we exclude shelter, we had two months of mild deflation. Because remember, the shelter one is lagging. It's basically like the only thing keeping inflation up at all is sounds like shelter and used cars. And those are two things that most people think are going to continue to fall, which is more good news ahead for inflation. You and I have talked about this before. Inflation versus the stock market, if you look at inflation higher or lower from one year to the next, a very crude measure, to be fair, but just one year to the next. What did inflation start out last year,

end to last year? What did it end at this year? If inflation is higher from year to year, the average return for the S&P 500 since the 1920s is 7%. If inflation is lower, the average return is closer to 16%. In 2003, with the markets followed this script again. Inflation was lower. Stock market did good. I was looking at that this morning, I'm finally putting this post together. If you look at a chart, like just like a simple line chart of the S&P 500 returns when inflation is higher or lower than it was a year later and you have them side by side, the charts look almost identical, even though there's a big gap in the average.

And the reason why is because there's a lot more negative years when inflation is higher than it was a year ago. It makes sense. So when inflation is up year over. year. The stock market is negative 33% of the time. Okay. And when it's lower than it was the previous year. And when I say lower, I mean, if inflation was 2.1% a year ago and now it's 1.8% now would be lower. Right. It's down only, it's only down 17% of the time. Wow. Cut your loss is a half. It's a big spread. Yeah. That is. So it takes the downside away a little bit. That's

interesting. Car dealership guy tweeted, it takes 39 weeks of income for the average person to purchase a new car. The good news is that that's down from 43 weeks earlier this year. The bad news. In 2019, that number was only 32 weeks. That's a 22% increase in four years. How many people actually need a new car? How many people are buying new cars that probably shouldn't be or can't afford them? Fair? I think too many people spend money on cars, and that is part of their financial problems. How's that? I've been, I've been beating this drum forever, and I think it's a problem, a huge problem for a lot of Americans. I think that, yeah, yeah, people overspending their car. There's no doubt about that. But counterpoint, use car prices were more than new cars.

So you can't, you can't really blame all of this on poor choices. Somebody emailed us. By the way, since I put up my bat signal, personal emails, personal responses, our inbox It's lit up like a Christmas tree. It was very nice. We've been hearing from a lot of people. A lot of first time, long times. Keep them coming. Subject line is my crazy inflation take actually plausible.

Michael and Ben, big fans since the beginning of the show. Here's my super hot takeout inflation. Is Elon Musk more responsible for lower inflation than Jerome Powell? Yes, that seemed weird to even type. Inflation was still blazing above 6% earlier this year, and job openings plus wage pressures were a big contributor. When Musk came to Twitter, he cut 80% of it. staff, no matter your perspective on the guy, this decision seemed to unleash a torrent of other

tech companies cutting staff. This has been a big driver in stock market gains this year, that degenerative AI and the fact that 2022 was a crap year. But I think the bigger thing this did was it lowered some of the job market stresses of the entire economy, not just the tech sector. I don't know this is a terrible take. I don't necessarily agree with this because I think tech was going to see layoffs either way. Maybe he started the ball. I think we can give Musk actually more credit for lowering prices on Tesla's so much. I think that's going to help drive down inflation on new cars. Car and driver has this list, now that we're talking about cars, of like the best-selling 20, 23 models. The top three models, of course, are Ford F-150,

the Chevy Silver Route of the RAM pickup. But number four is a Tesla model Y. Fourth best-selling car this year in the U.S., which is pretty crazy. So maybe he has more of an impact on his huge price cuts than Tesla's than anything. How's that? I think the tech stuff was going to happen anyway, don't you? Yes. But I do think that he, a lot of CEOs were looking at what he did and saying. Now, hilarious. It's like, well, things seem fine with Twitter.

That was short-lived because he got rid of everybody and now the company is in shambles. Yes. Although there were people who said like, there was like three times when people were like, okay, Twitter is actually falling apart at the seams and like the software is going down. And obviously that that didn't happen. All right, you've been saying I've been too doom and gloom, so I want to give a prediction. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I said that you're giving the doomers too much oxygen.

You're focusing, you're focusing too much on dunking on idiots on the internet. I told you, the doomers are my sworn enemies. What am I supposed to do? All right, 2024 prediction. I think I actually gave this on white charts last week on our webinar. I'm bullish on consumer sentiment for the following reasons. We already talked about it, stabilizing inflation rate. I think taking the volatility out of the economy is going to be huge for consumer sentiment.

Falling gas prices. Oil is below 70, I think. Falling mortgage rates. I think if we get a 60 or a 6% mortgage rate or so below that, I think consumers are going to love that if that happens. Real wage growth. Wages are growing faster than inflation again. And the Fed is probably going to cut two or three times in 2024. I think comeback time for consumer sentiment.

And I think we're going to stop having this, why is everyone so miserable when the economy is doing well takes? I think 2024 is going to reverse that. I hope you're right. I think that these sentiment stuff and the surveys are messy. Like the people, it's possible that you see a rebound in consumer sentiment if what you said just happens. But I think that we're a little bit broken and I hate to say it. But a lot of it is political. Jim Bianco did another threat on that last night saying, listen, this is all politics,

these sentiment indicators. The 2024 election is not going to help the vibes. We got another email from Anthony asking us, do you think the delta between, those other countries. So last week we were talking about how come other countries, there's not the big gap between what's going on and how, like, data and vibes. Yeah, data and vibes. And we were like, well, what's, what's unique to the United States? It's not like other countries don't have social media, right? So this person posits, like, do you think the delta between those other countries can be explained by income or wealth inequality? I don't have the data.

You probably do, but my hypothesis is that in most European countries, there are more social programs and perhaps the disparity in wealth is more narrow than in the U.S. A bunch of people did say that to me, too. Like, health care and education is covered in a lot of the European countries, even though they have housing that's even more expensive than ours. But it's always been like that, though. That's not a new thing. So that doesn't really explain, like, why this happened all of a sudden in the last two

or three years. I think, I'm repeating ourselves, but social media is really, like, messing us up. I think that we are so, so addicted to our phones. and I would put myself in this category, unfortunately, like, I don't spend, I don't really spend any time during the day on Twitter. Luckily, I'm too busy to pay attention to it. I'll log in here and not to brag, I'll log in here and there. But when the day is over, I'm on my phone all the time and I'm on Twitter all the time and I fucking hate it. And I don't, I don't know what to do about it. Like, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. And I was thinking about this because I was at

a traffic light the other day. And I looked over to my left and there's a couple. Literally, both of them are staring at their phone. He's driving. She's in the passenger seat and they're both on their phone. Now, I don't know that Americans are more addicted to social media. I'm assuming that's what they're doing, whatever, than other countries. But it seems like out of control bad. And once every couple of months, someone almost like veers into my lane and I, what are you doing? And I look over and they're looking at their phone texting or something. Yeah, of course. So I deleted the Twitter app on my phone, but now I just go, I just find it out. Now I just go on the website. So it's just harder to get. So I don't know what to do.

And again, it's not during the day. It's when I'm on my couch. Yeah. To be fair, we use it a lot, though. Like for me, it's a news source. We get so many the, so many the things that we read and talk about here. So, but there's also the addictive element as well. So Dan Carlin tweeted from hardcore history, I can't be the only one following the many upsetting global events via social media, concluding that this is the most poisonous and least productive way to conduct important conversations that humans have ever been a part of. I used to think the TV of the 1980s and the 1990s was bad, but it apparently was

demosthenes, demosthines, how do you pronounce this? Yeah, demathenes, sure. Demasthenes versus Cicero compared to this. In my humble opinion, this is making things worse. There's no doubt about it. social media, as wonderful as it has been for, you know, our careers and all that stuff. Like, it is just, it is so toxic. Yes.

And that is structural. That's never going away. I think the bad outweighs the good at this point for sure. Oh, my God. So Robert Kiyosaki, and I know I was poking, you've made fun of Dubers, but while we're on the subject, this fucking asshole, FYI, bank credit just sold off like 2008. Robert Kiyosaki is rich, I poor dad. Now, listen, I don't want to give these people attention.

However, a lot of our audience sees this stuff. I saw this tweet, and I think we're making progress because literally everyone on Twitter dunked on this guy. Okay, good. This is what I liked about it. This is why we're making progress because people don't listen to the doom. I mean, some people are, but most people are dunking on them and proving why they're idiots.

So this butthole said bank credit just sold off like 2008. Get some cash out of banks as you need cash. This may be the start of the biggest question in history. hope I am wrong, yet no time to play Russian roulette with your life. Russian would let with your life. First of all, hope I am wrong. Fuck you, dude. This is the worst Grand Rapids hedge I've ever seen in my life.

That's the biggest charlatan calling card in history. Hope I'm wrong that the world doesn't, that the world collapses, but I warned you if it does. Market Watch said, is the U.S. in a silent depression? TikTok creators say yes. We are in the worst economic time in American history says one TikTok user in a video with millions of views. What do we do about this? There's nothing.

I don't think there's anything we can do, unfortunately. And I don't want to keep talking about this every week, like just highlighting like the idiots, but it's unfortunate. This is like my hope was that young people would be immune to this stuff because they grew up in it. It's the opposite, it seems.

When the AI stuff takes off, we're going to have to get really good at just assuming everything is fake because there's going to be so many deep fakes coming at us. Hopefully that will. Well, maybe it'll take that to live through and people realize, like, you can't trust anything on the Internet, which is sad because we live in a society that's literally built on trust.

The financial system is built on trust. So if we just have to say you can't trust anything, that's going to be a tough way to live. And hopefully there's software or something that'll be able to say, like, there'll be like a watermark being like, this is fake. But I think that's what's going to have to happen is, I would have assumed young people would be better at this than they are. Like, Gen Z was, like, beating their chest.

Like, listen, we grew up in the internet. You, you know, you, you didn't, and they seem worse than anyone at this. Which, which, to be fair, I didn't grow up in the social media age. If I did, I'm sure I would leave a really bunch of dumb stuff back then. Our colleague, Nick Majuli, uh, made a chart of all of these, Robert Kaiasak. This is not his first rodeo. He's been doing this shit for the last decade. Did you, I know we're going to talk to this one of the show.

Rich author, poor readers. That's my take on him. I know we're going to talk about this later in the show. But the movie The End of the World movie This is where we leave you What was the name of it? Leave the world behind Oh my God

I'm just making up titles now Like I'm turning into my dad Leave the world behind We'll talk about the later in the show But like It's hard to watch stuff like that And that was basically like There's a lot of good societal stuff in that movie

That really Yeah it's hard to watch that and not be like petrified, you know? Yes. Like what if we turned off all the internet and all the electricity or whatever and you didn't have access to information, how quickly would people freak out? And I think they kind of nailed that part of it. I really like that movie.

Yeah, so did I. All right. Another Carl continued tweet. Larry Fink said, Black Rock was mentioned by some candidates in last night's debate more than inflation or the national debt. That's a sad commentary of the state of American politics. Now I call this, now I know why they call this, this, the political silly season. You saw, I know this later on the doc, I just want to, well, we're on this topic.

You saw the, there's like a, a fight, an MMA fighter who has over 500,000 followers on Twitter, he tweeted a report that's obviously bullshit. 44% of all single family home purchases were private equity firms in 2020. Are you saying I shouldn't be getting my financial. advice from an M.A. fighter. All right. This is the Howard Linson thing has always said, there's no such thing as information overload. It's filter failure. If you're getting your information from people who are obviously sharing faulty stuff or they don't know they are or they're just trying to stoke the fires and that, that's on you at this point.

But that's, but, but is it though the problem is like most people, a lot of people just don't know. And you see this person and it's going viral. And this guy, you know, he's, I don't know, he seems credible. He's 500,000 followers. So he tweeted like this is extremely concerning and explains why the housing market didn't drop as interest rates doubled. It's becoming nearly impossible for middle class family to buy a home, and this will make the issue much worse. Like, these are, these are structural headwinds for the vibes. And it just, it just stinks. It like breaks my heart a little bit, that this is not a little bit, a lot, that this is, this is our reality.

This is it. There's no, there is no going back. This is the world. It's fucked up. There's going to be a line of demarcation. No, there's not. media after social media. I'm saying after social media came, there's going to be this like humanity's thoughts about the world or whatever happiness sentiment is going to be

completely changed after social media. Do we like is there a post social media world? I'm just hoping something better comes along to take our attention. That's the only thing we can hope for. All right. I need to be addicted to something more. Take up smoking. All right. You're a bunch of people sent us a story from Blue you're better off going all in on stocks than bonds, new research finds. Researchers find all in stock investing provides better value. And I actually looked at this piece, too. I read the actual paper.

We challenged two central tenants of Lake's cycle investing. Investors should diversify across stocks and bond, and the young should hold more stocks than the old. An even mix of 50% domestic stocks and 50% international stocks held throughout one's lifetime vastly outperformed age-based stock bond strategies in building wealth. I mean, a lot of people ask for our thoughts on this. and this is like the idea of academic versus real world.

Of course it's 100% stock portfolio is going to outperform a stock versus bond portfolio. Yeah. This didn't need to be said. Like I've seen in the past people say like if you do a 6040 portfolio and you never rebalance, that will all perform a 6040 portfolio that does rebalance. Of course.

Holy shit, mind blown. Wow. Stocks outperform bonds. Yeah, stocks outperform bonds. What is this? People own bonds as an emotional hedge or a volatility hedge or because sometimes stocks crash and they don't want to sell them when they're down

that's the whole of course if everyone was rational you could have 100% all stock portfolio but everyone is not rational people are emotional and my 9 year old the other day she's like mature beyond her years she's more mature at 9 than I probably was at 18

but she like voices her opinions and she had a little mini tantrum and we asked like why did you do that and she said sometimes I just can't handle my emotions okay which was like It's like a total human response, and I was like, oh, you kind of got me there. But that's the idea here with any type of hedge is because people can't handle their emotions or the responses at times.

So, yeah, this is a breach of support that really didn't need to be stated. Didn't need to be said. You know, but it's funny you mentioned the hedge. In watching that movie, leave the world behind, I was thinking about different types of hedges. Like, tell us strategies. Oh, how would you hedge that situation of the internet? Financial assets don't hedge you in that sort of scenario. So, like, there's like a spectrum of hedges, right?

Yes. I feel like the doomsday preppers on a lot of these shows and movies have been shown to be the best volatility hedgers, though, like being prepared for the end of the world. Kevin Bacon, haven't seen him in a while. Yeah, that was pretty good. All right, Nate Garasi tweeted, $850 billion swing from bond mutual funds to ETF since the Fed began raising rates in March 2022. Mutual funds lost 500 billion ETFs gained $348 billion.

On this topic, I saw CitiWire report on a Morning Star report that mutual fund outflows in November bled $64 billion, which was their 24th consecutive month of outflows. And then every- Unbelievable. Every bare market, when you have an excuse to sell, there's going to be even bigger. And the same thing from active funds to index funds. Every bare market is going to get worse. More ETF money and more index money. This is a melting ice cube, right?

401K. If you could do ETFs in 401Ks, if they just snap their fingers and made it easy to do ETFs and 401Ks, mutual funds would be in huge trouble. I think that's the only thing holding them together is huge gains. that baby boomers are sitting on and then 401K plans. Totally. Mal Chuta's tweeted, this is wonderful.

Someone is launching a 4X, S&P 500, ETM with a ticker, XX, X, X, X, which would be a leveraged about record of the U.S. We are so back, maybe two back.

And then he also tweeted a picture. It's a classic onion. Oh, this is with the onion. It's funny. Everything. We're doing five, Blades.

Which came true. This is what? This is a razor, a shaver. Duncan is a razor blade. Duncan is looking at his brokerage account to see when he can buy this thing already. And Don Chud has tweeted that it's that same energy. I love it. All right.

Economic stuff. You want some more good news? Yes. Justin Wolfers. So this is the indicators that the National Bureau of Economic Research looks at to see if we're in a recession. Non-farm payrolls, real consumption, household employment, real GDP, personal income transfers, industrial production and real manufacturing, trade and sales. They're all going in the right direction for the most of these things are going up. That looks like a pretty good chart to me.

Yeah, yeah. Right? You asked me three months ago, and I would have said, 2024, there has to be a recession, right? I think I'm leaning towards planting my flag on there's no recession again this year. I think it's not going to happen. You mean next year? Yeah, it's in 2024. I'm thinking, the crazy thing, we went on the limb in January of 2023 that there's no recession, and that felt weird. I think 2024, I don't think there's going to be recession? I don't think that a recession is going to come in 2024 as a result of all the interest rate hikes. I think to your point, the plan landed. We had a soft landing. It would have to be some other external shock to make it happen. Well, I wouldn't say it would

have to be. But that's where I would lean. I would be not surprised, but I would, if I had to bet, I would say that if there was a recession, it would be more likely to be from something that we're not thinking about than just, well, interest rates finally, they filter there with. through the economy. Right. Oh, it's been 19 months. I guess it matters now. Yeah.

Right. I think that's what some people are waiting for, like the lag thing. All right, it's 18 months and they don't matter. But at 19 months, then they're going to matter. I don't like that I got too gloomy back there. I want to bring myself back to the center. Because as we're looking at,

like, all these indicators are going in the right direction. Do you think that people who are not online are experiencing the same sort of gap in sentiment? When you say not online, you mean like not on Twitter? Or not on Facebook? How many people do you know they're not? Every once in a while, I'll hear, like, a dad at one of the basketball or soccer games for my kids brag about how, like, I'm not on social media at all.

But that is the minority these days. There are very few people that are like that. I think a lot of the bullshit exists on Facebook, too. I mean, I don't know. I don't even know what the Facebook feed is. I haven't been on years. But I imagine that the same stuff bubbles up on Facebook, same articles, same sharing, same idiots. Probably.

I mean, the hope is, though, the more. At least the economy, at least the economy is legitimately good. Not for everyone. Don't get mad at me. If you're listening, you're not in good position. that's, that's, obviously, I'm sorry for those people. It's always the case. The economy is pretty good.

Two good takes on this. Connor Senn, maybe some piece of this will break in 20, point in 4, but the fact that the unemployment rate may have stabilized in the high threes, worker income growth around 5% and core PCE trending around 2 to 2.5, with the Fed in position to cut is so perfect, nobody would have believed it. Here's another one from this other guy, Matt, who I don't know, but good take. The COVID economy could have never recovered. Inflation could have spiraled.

The Fed could have responded to inflation too harshly and sent in the country into recession. None of this happened. It's incredible. This is my take as well. I almost can't believe how well things have worked out. The Fed said they wanted to crash the economy and they did it or they couldn't. When we were on with Derek Thompson saying that there would be no recession in 2024, in 2023, it felt like we were almost being contrarian for contrarian's sake, right?

It felt like it took a little bit of courage. I'm using that word very loosely to say that there would be no recession in 2023. Thank you for your service. Yeah, no, it's a joke, but But it was it was really consensus It really was like The overwhelming consensus

Of course we're going to have a recession You idiot There was no other There was no other path to get there Yeah, so the fact that we're Where we are, I'm sure If you asked Powell After six whiskeys

He would say No way in hell that I think we'd get to like this There's no way Yeah, I think you're right I think you're right Here's another email Guys, you mentioned a Washington Journal article of how workers are so unhappy

with their jobs. Wanted to read it. But note, we were happy in May, but not now. So there's a, he took a screenshot of an article from May of 2023. Workers are happier than they've bitted decades. Well, this is why the sentiment stuff is just broke. This is from Axios yesterday. Americans haven't been this happy at work since the 1980s. Oh, that's, I give up. Oh, no, this is it. This is from A. So this is the one. Yeah, job satisfaction of a 35. year high. Yeah, it's, who knows. I know. I think we do just have to, the sentiment stuff, unless it's at the, like, the bubbling extremes of a massive bubble or a huge crash, I don't think the sentiment stuff is useful in any way because there's so many sentiment indicators

now, too. You can't, they all offset each other. Yeah, we're talking about how the vibes were in the toilet. I don't know, what, because some dumb survey that we, or a few lines on a chart that we saw, That can be refuted by another dumb survey. Bet, you tweeted, top economist is an article from CNBC in October, October 27th, excuse me, 2012, 23. Top economists, unanimous and higher for longer rates is inflation threats linger. And you tweeted this was basically the top in rates, unanimous economists lose again. And then you also tweet one year to the day from this gem, October 17th, 2022.

Forecast for U.S. recession within year hits 100% in blow to Biden. I mean, 100%. This is why economists should stick with a 40% land. Nobody has any idea what's going on. Right. Rates hit 5%. We're all just pretending. Charlie Munger in the interview with John Collison was talking about, I can't remember the exact

quotes, but about like experts on TV or something. And did I write this down? Charlie said, like, oh, here it is. I read it by the time. He said they're experts in saying something that's mildly plausible. Right.

Which is, like, such a great way to put everything that we, that we're talking about. Good happen, yeah. All right, how about this? So the higher for longer people, they're probably going to take a victory regardless if the Fed keeps about 4%. They're going to see, I told you.

But look at this. This is the average effect of Fed funds rate going back to, like, the 1950s. The average is 4.6% over the past 70%. years. So is it really higher for longer if they keep it at 4% or 5% or 4% or is it just average for longer? Yeah, I think you're being too cute.

Well, I mean, we're saying higher compared to the 0% I guess, but this literally is, we're a little bit more than average right now. Do interest rates in the 1960s have any bearing on today? What if you did the average interest rate for the last 30 years? That's lower. So I looked at this for more. mortgage rates the other day. Because some people are saying, if you go back to the 70s, mortgage rates average seven and a half percent. So we're right at average, which is ridiculous

because they got to 18 percent in the 80s. But if you look at just this century alone, average mortgage rates are 5 percent, that's another thing for sentiment. I think the spreads on mortgage rates bonds, I think that's what's going to help mortgage rates in 2024. I want to see that spread go down. All right. Let's talk about crypto for a second. Who tweeted this? Ryan Rasmussen, he's from Bitwise. This was, I think, on Sunday night, $71 million of Bitcoin longs were liquidated in the past hour. This is the best part about crypto to me is that... How is this still a thing?

Like, how are people still going full tilt in crypto? I think it's just never going to change. Where you have these nights where crypto will jump 10%, or all of a sudden, in three minutes, you'll have a huge sale and it'll drop 10%. maybe that's just never going to change in something like Bitcoin. I don't know. Last week when we were talking about Bitcoin, we were saying how, at least I was saying how, both of our Thor, we bought us an emotional hedge. Like, maybe this sounds irrational and petty to you, but sorry, this is, I'm just being honest. If Bitcoin went to $100,000 and I didn't own it, I would explode. Yes. Like my brain would just melt into my body. Because I don't.

It's an asset that stokes the emotions unlike any other. one, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And I certainly did not, would not want to be somebody whose identity was tied. Even my internal identity was tied to hoping something. Either way, though, you wouldn't want your identity tied completely into it or completely out of it. Well, of course. Of course. Yeah, we're not big fans of some of the crypto thinking. And this is a great example of it. So Bucco Capital retweeted a commercial that Coinbase did. And Coinbase tweeted single family home up, single family homes didn't always require four roommates. It's time to break the cycle.

It's a commercial that I'm guessing errors on TV. So Bucco Capital tweeted. Wait, so the idea is you can only afford a house if you buy crypto? Well, so Bucco Capital retweeted and said, these ads are deeply malicious. They attempt to establish a sense of insurmountable hopelessness to trigger people into yoloing lottery ticket, shit coins, and come tokens. And perfectly said, this shit is gross. I'm cooling it with the F-bombs. Excuse me.

I hate this. I really, really, really hate this. I hate everything about it. Yes. There's other ways to push your line of thinking than playing on people's fears. All right. So I've got an AI take here. Josh on his website, so Josh changed his website from reform broker to, what is it now?

Downtownjoshbrown.com. And he posted this thing from Google Gemini that shows how the AI works. and Josh has been all over this AI thing way more than I have or you have, I think. And he's saying, watch this video, it's mind-blowing. And I think movies have ruined AI for me because my mind was not blown at all. I was kind of like,

I feel like I've been watching AI on movies and sci-fi for so long that it doesn't do anything for me. I feel like I should be- I-Robot is your high-water mark. Until you see something like that, you're not impressed. But AI doesn't impress me because I've seen, so we started this show last night called

the murder at the end of the world or something. It's actually pretty good. Clive Owen's in it. It's on Hulu, FX1. First episode, Julie. Yeah, I saw the first episode. I liked it, but they had the AI. I miss Clive Owen.

That's what I said. I thought he should have been bigger always. I liked him. You know, I feel like we did this bit on Clive Owen like a couple years ago. That's possible. So you watched the first episode. So they have the hologram AI guy to help you as your assistant. And I watch that and I go, I'm not going to be impressed until I get that.

Or the Sark Garlet Johansson on the ear that I talk about. So that's why, like, any of the new AI stuff that, comes on. It's fascinating. In a year, we've had such great breakthroughs, but it doesn't impress me at all because I've seen it in movies. I feel like that's way better. I don't know. That's fair take. Movie industry. All right. I've got to take on real estate here. So the house I told you, I haven't been able to run outside much lately because if it's below 42 degrees, I'm not running outside. Okay? It's too cold. But it got up to like 45 this week, so I ran outside, and I

saw sale pending for the house that I mentioned three weeks ago. Remember it was, it sold for 575 brand new in 2021. listed for $6.99. Okay? Sale pending three weeks later, sold for $6.99. So, pretty good jump in two years, basically. I think, so you're still getting that kind of activity. I think if you're in the house, we always say never timed the housing market. Like, if you want to buy a house, you can afford it, you buy it.

Remember how many people in 2020 and 2021 wrote into us saying, housing prices are crazy, the demand is surging, I can't pull my, you know, I can't do it. And we'd say, no, if you want to buy a house, buy a house. Because then you, if you didn't, if you missed out on 3% mortgage rates and you're kicking yourself so much harder now. Remember all those people in 2020 and 2021 asking us that? Oh, I forgot about that. So many people were asking us about time. And we always said, do not try to time in the housing market. If you can afford it, you do it. So I think. Right. No, that's such, that's such a good point because prices were up, whatever, 20% in a year, in a year and a half. And people were saying,

I'm just going to wait till prices dropped 10%. And that was a way better time to buy. In hindsight, at least you had 3% interest rates. Now you have the same prices and 7% interest rates. Or higher price. So I think, again, not trying to time it, but if you're in the market and you can afford a house, buying now with rates at 7 and then hoping to refinance and there's not as much activity, I think you're better off doing that now than buying when rates get to 6 and things are more affordable because then you're going to have lines out the door again, I think.

Oh, yeah. So if you want to have more negotiating power, I think you buy now and refinance. Just a thought. I was talking about this last night with friends. Like, I don't really have a strong feeling on this. I think I said, I think at one point I said that housing prices are going to explode higher if rates come down. And maybe they do, maybe they don't.

I think what's what will definitely happen is activity will skyrocket. What that does to prices, we'll see. Yes, I, that's, that's where I fall. I have a thought exercise for you. What percentage of current homeowners, if they were forced to buy their house right now at current rates and current prices could afford it. So let's say you can afford a 20% down payment on your current house and at the current level and the current mortgage rate because I looked at mine. Now, to be fair, my payment is lower now because I had equity from 10 years of owning a home

before and rolled that into this house. But I looked, my payment would be almost three times higher if I were to buy mine house right now at current, at 7% mortgage or 20% down at the current price. Three times higher than I'm currently paying. I pay $3,500 a month for my mortgage, give or take. I think my mortgage would be like, what, is $10,000? Probably. Eight to $8 to $10 probably. So what percentage of people could actually afford their own house right now, is what I'm asking.

How does the math work on that? Like, when I say the math, I mean, like the personal finance math, how do people make that work? You stretch and you stretch and you stretch and you put a little down payment down and you hope to refinance. or you put a big down payment down to, I don't know. Well, hang on, hang on. There's two realities.

One is that you can do an adjustable rate mortgage, which I'm surprised that's still a relatively small percentage of overall. Is it even 15%? What do you mean? No, it's like five to seven percent. It's really small. All right. But don't you also think that people are maybe putting down not 20%?

They're putting down less. But that makes your mortgage even more expensive. And again, this is first time homebuyers. if you're someone who owns a house, it stinks to have to buy a new house at a higher price and higher rates, but you've got a lot of equity that you can use to lower that new price. So this is really a first-time homebuyer thing, which, again, they got totally screwed. Remember in the 2010s, in the big short, people were worried about, like, all these ninja loans with people having low income, how bad that was because they took out subprime loans

and it destroyed the housing market, all that thing? So look at this new homebuyers have higher household income than first-time homebuyers. So look at the income of new homebuyers and first-time homebuyers from the NAR. It's been going up a lot. Now, some people would look at this and go, a lot of people look at this and go, this is unfair because it's only people who make a lot more money that can buy houses. And that's true. But isn't this a better situation than people with no income on their loan applications,

buying a house that they can't afford? I think this is actually a better situation, even if it seems like it's not fair. What happened between 2013 and 2015 for that big jump to? It seems weird, no? Well, I think part of it is they got more stringent on the requirements for a loan. You had to make more money to get a loan. It's regulations, right? I don't know.

I don't know. So Logan Motoshami debunked the nonsense. No Wall Street investors haven't bought 44% of homes this year, as we were saying, that stupid report earlier. So not that data changes people's minds, but these are the facts, Jack. We do get asked about this a lot, and it's not always like Dumer's asking. It's people like, I'm legitimately asking, what is the actual number? Yeah. No, that's fair.

You're absolutely right. Institutional buyers make up two and a half percent of all purchases. It's a small number. The overall, there's a great chart. The overall market share of investors is currently around 30 percent. And that's sort of, it's up a little bit from early 2000, but it's gone sideways for the last 20 years. It's around, it hvers between 25 and 30% call it. And the majority of those investors are mom and pop people.

It's not. It's not, it's mom, it's mom, it's mom. Yeah, when we say investors, it's mom and pop, it's regular people. It's not Vanguard and BlackRock. The thousand plus block buyer, so like the, the bad guys that are just hoovering up all of the houses, that's, that was zero. 0.4% of market share in Q2. Now, I will say... Oh, that's a good chart.

It's 0.4%. This is... It's not the same everywhere, right? Like, there are some geographies where there are way more institutional buyers. And it's a fact that in CERN in markets, institutional buyers are driving up prices and making it homes more affordable.

Charlotte and Phoenix and some areas, but it's... That's a minority. But it's... Yeah, so if you've lived that existence, then it's your reality, but again, 0.4%. Yeah. So thank you, Logan, for doing that.

All right. What's this thing on divorce and housing? Okay, I just, I saw this, I found market watch on Twitter, and I just saw like three tweets in a row. It's interesting to the housing. So it's like, my wife and I are separating. I provided the down payment and paid the mortgage on our home. Will I be allowed to keep it if we divorce?

Next one. My husband wants me to sign over 20% of my home. If not, he threatens to take half in the divorce. What should I do? I would divorce him. I inherited $246,000 from my late mother and used $142,000 to pay off our mortgage. If we divorce, can I claim this money back for my husband? If you're like a real estate attorney, you've got to be rolling in it right now,

because these questions have to be coming up. Housing is such an important vehicle right now in figuring out the mechanics of it. Is the housing market going to keep people married longer? Will the divorce rate fall? You know, it actually fell during the Great Depression. The divorce rate fell because people couldn't afford to get divorced. Yeah. Just a thought.

Fellas, great show this week. Not the kids. I haven't ridden in a while, but with the news of Mint going the way of the dinosaur, I thought it might be nice if you'll discuss different alternatives during an upcoming personal finance. I went on the pod. You come to the right place. I know Ben still tracks all of his expenses in Excel,

but I'm sure many listeners would appreciate your insight on other available options. They've been a sponsor of the show, but I use rocket money. I love it. It's a great service. Matter of fact, I get one of the things that I like about it so much is that I get email alerts when there's like a large purchase. That's the part I like about it too. I started using it.

So I still have my Excel spreadsheet, but I use racket money as like a supplement to it. And it tells me, you know, unusual activity. Did you make this purchase? And that stuff has happened before. And it breaks down your spending by category. So I'm a big fan. I walked into the, I don't know what room in the house I was in bedroom, maybe. And I said to my wife, was like, what the hell is blah, blah, blah.

And she's like, and she's like, what are you talking about? And I said, rocket money. I found the purchase. And she's like, oh, that, okay. So anyway, that's what I used. I found a lot of those purchases are usually like makeup. Way more expensive than you'd assume. I'm pretty sure it was closed.

I can't remember the name of the brand. But she was surprised I never heard of the brand. Considering 70% of your wardrobe is Instagram T-shirts and Giants gear. I'm not surprised you didn't know the brand. So this new giant city that I got, now I just think everything I get us from Fanatics. I guess like that's the brand that found me and they're doing quite well.

I think they're valued like $4 billion. I mean, crazy. We've got a bunch of jerseys and t-shirts on for my kids for Christmas. Wait a minute. I think it's $30 billion. It's like a huge number. Anywho, they do something that I really don't like.

It's really shitty. They, they, uh, there's like coupons. for every purchase but if you don't click the apply button to the coupon then you pay full freight it's really kind of it's not it's not it's not it's not right do you use like the honey extension it looks for it looks for coupons for everything you buy on the internet and it applies them that's my point is with with fanatics specifically so if you want to buy a hoodie that's $60 and there's a there's a sale like it's it down to $45

If you forget to click the apply coupon button, which I guess should be on you, but it's not intuitive until you don't click on it. Because they know most people won't do it. They know a lot of people won't click on it. So it's kind of shitty. Anyhow, this hoodie, it's the sticker was like Darius Rucker. It's a Darius Rucker collection.

Hootting the Blowfish? Like literally. He designs sports gear now. Okay. Looks nice. All right. Interesting article in Business Insider. Boomers seem to have traded in the child raising village for traveling. Now millennial parents said they have no one to support them.

Oh, they want grandma and grandpa as the babysitter and the grandma and grandpa aren't there. Yeah. So I pulled a few quotes. Looking back in her childhood, Christiana Hillberg said that it was never a question whether her grandmother would watch her and her brother when their parents went on a trip. If mom and dad ran out of town, we were at grandma's, the 33-year-old told Business Insider. Grandma wasn't going anywhere, and we always knew that. But Hillberg, a mom of three, said there's no guarantee that our parents or in-laws would do the same for their grandkids, certainly not at the snap of a finger.

Quote, we have to make sure that we are asking months in advance, she said, and that, quote, their own travel plans often have to be factored in. Okay, I'm going to take the boomer's side of this. It's not that big of a deal to ask someone in advance, right? I think so too. So here's from the boomer's point of view, somebody named Dobson. So the elder Dobson said that even if he's off-boating and playing pickleball in Mexico, he's still done plenty to help his children out, including supporting them financially through much of their lives.

At this point, he said he deserves to spend some of his money on himself. Quote, they've all got nannies, he said, we didn't have a nanny. They drive expensive SUVs. I drove a freaking minivan. I'm team boomer on this. I, yeah, score one for the boomers here. I'm team boomer of this. Listen, I just, like, yeah, you want your parents around.

But what, they have their old life to live? Yeah, if we do something like that, we check with my parents in advance. Yeah, hey, we're going away for this weekend. Can you watch the kids? But we give them- It should be a foregone conclusion that you could foist your kids on your in-laws or your parents every single time you want to go out to dinner. Come on.

Yeah. You have to ask. All right, streaming cancellations at a new high. This is from Bloomberg. U.S. customers are canceling their streaming services in record numbers according to antenna. Cancellations at 5.7% in October. Up more than a full point from April in the highs.

on record. And the biggest jumps occurred in stars, what it's the stars, Paramount Plus and Discovery Plus. They need to start offering rewards for people who stick around long enough. Yes. Right. Hey, if you've, you've paid your bill for 24 straight months. We're going to decrease it by 10%. They need to do something to get people to stay longer. So look at, look at this next chart. This is from Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg. There's Netflix and everyone else. I mean, nobody cancels Netflix. So I think that this is less, a less commentary on like the state of the economy like uh-oh people are starting to then like it's too much well it's also uh talking about the quality of the shows and movies there's nothing coming

out right now because of the strike so there's nothing people are canceling there's nothing so uh streaming services have argued that the strike didn't impact their output of new shows in big way the data suggests otherwise take a look at the top 10 streaming titles in the u.s uh the week of october 30th per nielsen spiderman across the spiderverse so that's a new one obviously um gray's to me, suits, friends, bluey, all the light we cannot see. That's a new one. Gilmore Girls, NCIS, Coca-Mellon and family business. There's only one original series in the top 10. Otherwise, it's all reruns and some kids show. I'm so glad Cocoa Mellon is out of my life for good. What do you mean? Like your kids have moved on? Oh yeah. I mean a few years ago, but that... Even Cocoa Mellon, even Cocoa,

which is one of the most successful media businesses, even their cutting employees. Just constant stream of loop of those songs in my head. over and over from when my kids were little. So, sticking with this, New York Times had an article, Zombie TV has come for cable. In 2015, the USA Cable Network was a force in original programming. Dramas like suits, Mr. Robot, and Royal Pain's either won awards or attracted big audiences.

What a difference is a few years make? Viewership is way down and USA standalone original programming. When's the last time you went to USA? People don't click, it used to be, you were clicking through channels and you'd stop on USA, right? or TBS, but you don't click channels anymore like that. Because you have, USA was streaming before streaming existed. You'd go to USA, TNT, or TBS to find an old movie playing.

Now you can do it on streaming. So what's the point of USA? Well, there is none. So to that point, viewership is way down. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC's Law and Order Special Victims Unit for all but two hours when it showed reruns of CBS's NCIS and NCI. Los Angeles. Why does USA need to exist? Why does, why do any of these channels need to exist? In 2004, 15, there was at least 214 original scripted programs on premium basic cable channel.

That fell 40, that fell 39%. In 2015, TBS and TNT aired 17 scripted shows. This year, that's a total three series. It's crazy. I mean, all this is, you don't, to watch CSI or whatever, you don't need, you go on peacock or whatever, whatever has it. Yeah, streaming killed a lot of these channels. Ben, do you remember back in the day when DISH Network and DirecTV came out and... Direct TV coming out was a big deal, I remember. What was the service? What was the service that used to be able to record things? Tivo.

Before DVR. Tivo. Tivo was DVR. That's all it was, but it was a brand. And it was like a box. And do you remember back in the day when this, when this, when this, when, this, I don't know what year it was, 2003, I don't remember. When you had 7,000 channels and it was almost a joke, like, oh, my God, there's so many channels.

Now there's too many, and it's all the same shit. Interestingly, Disney announced yesterday that they're going to play nice with Netflix. Well, do you notice all the HBO shows are on Netflix now, Disney shows? They've all just succumbed to Netflix 1, basically. So Netflix 1. Netflix absolutely demolished this. It really pains me. because he watched the Meg and the Meg 2,

based on your recommendation, my son. My kids call HBO Max. Yeah, that is painful. I did not tell George to watch the Meg 2. No, you said you watched it with your son, so I got, and he loved it. He loved both Megs. Okay, he watched the Meg 2 as well.

It seems like a lot of movies just came and went this year. Like, remember the creator? Denzel Sun was in it. It was like AI that came and went. Killers of the Flower Moon. Did that do any business? In fact, I know, I don't think it, no, it didn't. I had Sean make this chart for us.

I'm waiting for it to come out on Apple before I watch it. It's like a four-hour movie. I had Sean make a chart of Leo's domestic box office performance. Killers of the Flower Moon was the lowest grossing since, now these aren't adjusted for inflation, but since Jay Edgar. I mean, this is a bomb. a, this was a Scorsese movie. Nobody has time for three and a half hour drama anymore.

Oh, Scorsese should just make all of his movies into four-part series. You know what? You were so right. You were so right with your take on all shows should be six episodes. Because the most recent episode of Godzilla just was a filler. It's just a filler. It was fluff. Did not need to exist.

I mean, there should be six episodes. Yeah, they shouldn't have, they shouldn't have filler episodes anymore. All right. Last thing on this article from Lucas Shaw, did you know, Ben, that the anime business, because they were talking about Japanese culture and Godzilla and all that sort of stuff, the anime business generates more than $20 billion globally? Isn't that a drop in the bucket, though? Or do you think it's a lot? The anime business? 20 billion?

I don't know. Do you know what anime is? Yeah. What am I supposed to? What's my takeaway here? 20 billion. It's a lot of money. Am I smoking dust, or are you?

What he shows a bit? You get a lot of money? 20 billion? Oh, 20 billion. Okay. Yeah, okay, that's a lot of money. Oh, 20 billion. What did you think I said, million?

I was... Netflix. Yeah. Netflix did 30... Netflix does $8 billion a quarter. Okay. So a lot of teens and adults like watching cartoons. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I guess. Yes, that is what I'm saying. All right. Charlie Munger, again, in the interview with John Collison, said, let the bad people go. Just talking about life. Like, nobody has time for that shit. And I almost completely agree with that thinking. But then I was at Robbins' grandmother passed away. I was at her funeral on Friday. And she lived an incredible life. 96. Sharp as attack until the very end, didn't have, you know, a 10-year-long battle with cancer. Like, she just won the, you know, she went pretty quickly towards the end, which was,

which was a blessing. Obviously, nobody wants to have that drawn out. And at the eulogy, one of her son said, and this is definitely true of her, that she always saw the best in people. And, like, she discarded, you know, the normal sort of bad stuff that people have. And what a great way to live. I don't think that I see the worst in people. But, like, it's hard to see the best in people.

That is a rare quality. It is easy to see the bad side of people. I probably do that too much. Right? Like, oh, that person, the way that he sniffles, like, oh, so annoying. People are the worst sometimes. People are the worst. So just a very admirable quality.

But I was also thinking at the funeral, I love a good funeral. Now, with a caveat that. That's a good take. I don't know where the line is. I don't like, if it's a person that was 85, 90, and they lived a wonderful for life and there's a celebration. Listen, if you're, I don't like going to, uh, young people's funeral. I mean, obviously, I don't, I didn't like my mom's funeral and who died in her 50s. That, that shit is the worst. But when it's a celebration of life, and it's just one of the only

things in the world where like all of the nonsense just for a very brief period of time gets put to the side. I told, I actually had a conversation with my family a couple weeks ago at Thanksgiving, I think. And I said, when I die, whoever's here to be. there, I want you wearing Hawaiian shirts. So if you outlast me, please wear a tropical brother's shirt to my funeral. So, yeah, I love a good funeral. I love, I love, I love crying and celebrating somebody's life. I, it gets me.

I'm a big fan. That's a take. I've never heard anyone say I like funerals. Only for, only for old people. Yeah, okay, I get it. Yeah, like they, at their time, I just, it's a new take. I celebrate life. Okay.

That's what I do. That's fair. All right. Recommendations. All right. So we got a great email on Demolition Man from Tyler. One part of that movie that has lived rent free in my head for 20 years was the fact that every restaurant in the movie was a Taco Bell. And it morphed into fine dining. For whatever reason, I always thought that consolidation was bound to happen in real life and I've been a young brand's holder for years.

Also, don't even get me started at the three seashells. I've spent countless nights racking my brain for having to be actually work. We got a lot of emails on the three seashells. They replaced toilet paper somehow. That was Rob Schneider, right? Was he the three seashells kind of movie? All right, so let's talk about Leave the World Behind since we mentioned it already. I wasn't done, but okay. Okay, all right, what do you got? No, no, no.

We could do that. Okay. I thought it was really good, and it was the kind of movie. I knew it was going to be like a good novel where the buildup is better than the ending. I told my wife, like the ending is not going to leave you satisfied in this movie. So just go in with that thinking. The ending was a little abrupt. It wasn't very satisfying.

But it was Julia Roberts, playing an admittedly unlikable character. Ethan Hawk, who I love. I think that guy is great. Marshall Ali, I also love. And then Harper from industry. And then Kevin Bacon made an appearance. Here's my take. Netflix is going to save the movie industry.

That's two in a row for Netflix. Leave the world behind. The killer. They were good movies. Not great, but they were good. I enjoyed both. This movie really got me thinking. And it wasn't a great movie.

It was a good movie. I tried May December. it was way too creepy for me of a storyline. You heard of this one? I turned it off after the first two minutes. It's too creepy. I don't know. I just, yeah.

But Netflix and I think Apple to some extent are going to save movies because we haven't had like good movies and I thought Netflix was never going to happen and I think it's going to happen. I'm looking forward to Netflix movies now. I want to get back to the movie because I very much enjoyed it as well. But I think that if there are people in the industry in the movie industry listening to our podcast, they want to punch you in the news. knows because aren't, isn't Netflix killing the movie industry? I mean, Netflix,

Netflix killed movies. Streaming killed movies. But they're, but they're going to put movies out on the, at theater. They're going to have limited releases and I just want good movies again. I just want good movies again. Has there ever been a bigger divide between an industry and, and the, the consumers of said industry, like the industry is reeling, right? But you understandably, in this framing, you're not talking about. the people who are impacted by the wrecking ball that is the streamers, you're talking about just purely from the perspective of the consumer. And I get that. I want good movies again. I think Netflix is going to get there. And it's going to be Netflix is going to have the wide release ones

and Apple's going to have the Oscar ones for the most part. And I think that's how it's going to be in the future. But there's, but none of the, so many movies just will never get made again, unfortunately. But I think Netflix is going to start making them again, though. That's where I'm getting at. They're going to figure out like, they're going to get better at rom-com. I think Netflix is going to do it. Do you think they're going to start doing like indie films as well? I hope so. I have faith.

So anyway, yeah, you're right. End of the World movies are impossible to end in a way that satisfies the audience. It's just, it's really tricky. Although I did like a cabin, a knock at the woods. A knock in the cabin? Oh, my God. One of those. There was an irony in the way that this one ended, which by the way, the movie was

thoroughly entertaining. Even though I don't think anybody's going to say the ending was amazing, whatever, the movie was thoroughly entertaining. Very suspenseful and psychological. I thought it was very good. Very entertaining. But the end was pretty meta. Yes.

Right? The streamer. Yes. I liked it. Yeah, it was a pretty good, again, tell against society. It was a Mr. Robot guy who made it. So it made sense. Somebody emailed me.

I was speaking about like, why do I enjoy horror? And they emailed an episode of hardcore history called Painfotainment. It was four hours. and I listen to every minute of it. And I miss Dan Carlin. I don't know why I haven't listened to hardcore history in a while. There's nobody better.

There's nobody better at podcast and then Dan Carlin. He's great. Yes. I should go back and listen to some of the old ones too. So the episode is called Painfotainment, and it's a four-hour history of public executions. And what was involved,

what happened, why the audience loved it, why it stopped, and why it stopped, it's not because people wanted it to stop. I highly recommend it. Charles Dickens had a quote. He wrote a lot of to the daily news on capital punishment and stuff.

And he said, quote, it is in our secret nature to have a dark and dreadful interest in the subject. Hey, it's just in my nature. Can't help it. You're just looking for an excuse to watch these sicko movies. Can't help it. All right. What else? Oh, I was in the car with Logan and he wanted me to play We Are the Champions.

Okay. and Logan is my four-year-old and he asked what he said what movie is this in? I want to watch it in a movie. I don't know where he made the connection between the music and it being in a movie

and I said immediately. Immediately, you know what I said? And I'm pretty sure this is right. The Mighty Ducks. Okay. I wouldn't have known the answer to that one. It's got to be a bunch of them, though. So we started watching The Mighty Ducks.

We only made it four minutes in. But I was thinking about I was, so, oh, remember earlier in the show I said, put a pin in the show. that we were talking about you being a set oh when you were seven years old or whatever and you found out that that wrestling was fake so i'm taking the pin out and saying that i also had an experience of reminding myself like being seven-year-old michael because that's how old i was when mighty ducks came out and in the movie when gordon bombay misses a shot as a child it's a movie

about hockey players for those of you who didn't see it the coach said to him before he before the penalty shot. You miss this shot. You're not just letting me down. You're letting your whole team down. What an asshole. But the guy who played the coach in Mighty Ducks, I remember when I saw my cousin Vinnie and being like, hey, wait a minute, but that guy, he was in Mighty Ducks. How could he be in this movie, too? Oh, you realize movies were fake. The concept of that there could be actors have more than one role really blew my mind. My son, every time we watch an action movie or a whatever dinosaurs, my son always goes. This is fake, right?

This is just a movie. Just making sure. Yep. I did two Heath Ledger movies in the past month or so. I rewatched The Dark Night, of course, like one of the greatest movies of this century, and then Ten Things I Hate About You. It just made me realize, like, man, Heath Ledger kicked ass.

That guy, like, obviously The Joker's one of the greatest performances of all time, but Ten Things I Hate About You was probably the first movie I ever saw him in. And I have nostalgia for that period of the 90s, because there's all these great high school movies. Ten Things I hate about you in America High. While we were in high school. While I was in, yes, while I was in high school. I was a junior senior when Superbad came out.

So that's why I have these, like, nostalgia about that period. But there was just so much more innocent back then. Like you, the stuff they make today about kids is like, they're all crazy and doing drugs and depressed. And it's like so over the top. And then late 90s. Like the show on HBO. Yes. The late 90s, everything was so, even the party stuff, it was so much more innocent.

And that's what I love about it. And 10 things I hate about you, you could tell like this guy is going to be a massive star just from, from that role alone. And it was young Heath Ledger, young Julius Tiles, and young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Like, that movie to me, I love that movie. So Netflix is saving the movies. They'll never be another, will there ever be another run of, like, teen high school movies? I'm hopeful. The 90s really is the last decade. After that, there's no more decades. We sound old, but it's true. Yep. All right. Anything else? We got some technical difficulties. We made it through this. We made it through. Anything else? I think we covered everything.

All right, Ben, good potting, good potting. All right, listen, personal emails, personal responses. This is what we're all about here. Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Duncan, everyone else who works behind the scenes on making the show possible. We will see you next time.