Animal Spirits Podcast - Enjoy the Bull Market While it Lasts (EP.355)

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

On episode 355 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: how we prioritize our spending, 1987 vs. the Covid Crash, crazy index fund flows, stock market concentration, panic about government debt, the tech recession in California, will millennials move to Florida in retirement, the most streamed shows, and much more! This episode is brought to you by Pacer ETFs and Fabric by Gerber Life. To learn more about the COWG and CAFG ETFs, visit: https://www.paceretfs.com/ Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/spirits. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: https://www.thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Buy tickets to TCAF LA at! 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. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's show is brought to you by Pacer ETFs. Ben, remember back in the day when Amazon was fundamentally ludicrously expensive based on every traditional valuation metric? Yeah, that's why you shorted it. That's true, actually. That is true. What I did wrong, I wasn't looking at the free cash flow. It wasn't about the bottom line because they were deliberately plowing money back into the business.

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Is that how old you were, ish? I was probably pushing 24. Okay. You could go from start to covered unless in 10 minutes, no health exam required, assuming you check some of the boxes. I like this. This is like this. Sometimes rules of thumb don't apply in finance. Like they're just too simplified. The whole, if you're young and you're trying to protect your family, get term life insurance, that's a simple rule of thumb. And so if you happen to have a dad bod like me, they're not going to hold that against you? I don't think so. Not as long as you play men's league and have your own personal trainer. Like it. Right? All right. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family applying just minutes at meetfabric.com slash spirits. That's meatfabric.com slash spirits. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states. Prices are subject to underwriting and health questions. 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 express.

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. Ben, do you know where I'm going to be in three weeks? Spring break. Woohoo. Spring break. I I still don't understand the staggered spring break around the conference. country. I think the schools must get together and put their heads together so you don't have everyone traveling at the same time. It's a good thing. That makes sense. Wait, so what are you

doing in L.A. besides the event, what amusement parks are you going to? Well, before we get to the amusement parks, Tuesday, April 30th, Josh and I are doing a live episode of the compound and friends. We've got two very exciting guests. One of the guests we speak about on this podcast quite frequently, so any listeners of this podcast will recognize that guest. Uh, that's Tuesday night, April 30th, Lincoln bio, tickets in the, uh, show notes, et cetera, et cetera. Um, all right, what am I doing in Los Angeles? Taking the boys to Disneyland.

I haven't been there in, I went there in camp way, way, way back. How, I don't, I'm curious how much of a discounted Disneyland trades to Disney World. Because I've never been to Disneyland. I've only been to Disney World. I'm curious. is it 75% of Disney World? In terms of the ticket prices? No, not the price is just the overall experience.

Well, is it, you know. It's a much more manageable, much more manageable park. It's like a bite-sized Disney World, you know? That's good. You've been there before. You know, like the fun-sized Twix? Yeah. That's what it is.

My kids like those. And then we're going to Universal, which I am incredibly excited about, not just for myself, but also. That roller coasters? No, I'm just, well, the movie. There's a Nintendo land or Nintendo or something or the other. Can't wait.

My son just got into Mario Kart on his iPad. Yeah, same. Great, great game. Oh, so speaking of vacations, people gave us a gentle ribbing last week. Just, you know, it seems like you guys take a lot of vacations. Yeah. Vacations, it's a bold market of vacations, for sure. It is, we talked about the travel boom, but here's my thinking on this, though.

Part of it is that I think where we are at her stage in life, life especially. You've heard this stat. I can't verify it, but it seems directionally right, that you spend 90% of your face-to-face time with your children before age 18. And I think it's like 75% before age 12. And I always tell this to my wife and she's like, stop. I don't, I don't want to hear it. But that time is fleeting, right? I always say there's a countdown on this, right? When your children are young, you spend more time with them. And so for me, prioritize what, priority-wise, spending on vacations and experiences is a huge part of what I prioritize as spending. Same. I am, I wonder if these are peak spending years for me. I feel like maybe

a bit earlier for that, but I have no problem spending money on things like this. These are, this is what life's all about. Today, actually, in terms of time being fleeting, my mother would have turned 70 today. She died when she was 56. And that had a, I mean, obviously a massive impact to me for many different reasons, but one of the biggest impacts on my life was, tomorrow's not promised. You have no idea how long you're going to be on this planet for. So I am, these are, these are like, these are probably the best years of our life right now. And the other thing is, we don't really have hobbies outside of like reading and writing and finance and our jobs. I play in a men's league. Well, you do play in a men's league. Look at that. And our families are like, I know people

who spend an obscene amount of money every year to join a golf club. Like, there's, I know people who've joined golf clubs in the area here, and they go to the club and they have the pool and they have the restaurant and stuff. And the access fee is insane. I have friends who go hunting. And so you have people who have all these other hobbies. You and I, we don't have hobbies. Like, my family is one of my hobbies. And so that's why traveling is a big part of us. Anyway, I just wanted to say that, like, we prioritize that area of spending. And also, I think we could, we could pivot into a travel podcast at some point because we get reviews about resorts and pictures from people's travels in our inbox all the time. I kind of like, I really, I really,

like those emails from people, but send us the pictures from their trips and give us good resort reviews. Anyway, yeah, I think it's, it's like important to prioritize your spending. That's my point here. Amen. Speaking of, you have a woman can't jump t-shirt on, which I think is apt. You sent me a couple weeks ago. It looked like a little local newspaper, and it was a story, and you said, look at the picture, and it was a picture of you on the basketball court with, like, 30 other middle-aged guys, and like a, it was like a team photo. And it said, it's like, Wait, but did you see the zoomed-in photo of me? Yeah, you were in there.

No, no, no. I had my own photo. I didn't show that to you? Yeah, you did. Yeah, so it was on there, right? For some reason, I was looking at I'm 6-8 in that picture. Middle-aged men playing... And it was something that...

Tell me the story here. What do you mean? There's no story. Why did they do a story on a middle-aged men's league? Oh, yeah, that's... I mean, it was for the local paper, obviously. It wasn't like in the New York Post. I'm not quite sure why.

I think somebody... Somebody tipped off the local media. I don't know who. Okay. That you just... This is a men's league that's been going on for a while or something. By the way, speaking of what they can't jump. I didn't.

I haven't played in a while, and I jumped last night to touch a backboard. I'm not quite sure why I did that. But as soon as I jumped, I was like, so he asked me where I'm sitting today. My back sore. You did pull something because usually you're standing. Okay. That makes sense. Okay.

Last week, we talked about how enjoy this bull market while it lasts. Because, like, it's not always going to be this good. Lisa Abramowitz tweeted, the S&P 500 hasn't had a 2% down. day since February 21st, 2023. This is a 12th longest streak since 1928, according to the city group. That's pretty good. Not bad.

Bespoke had a chart that shows the current versus average total returns going back to 1928. So it shows the 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20-year annual returns. And obviously, the one-year return is off the chart. It's like a 30% gain. But five years close to 15% annualized versus the historical 10% or whatever.

10-year-2 is almost 13%. versus 10 or 11% annualized. 20% is actually a little lower. But anyway, the point is, this is the good stuff here. It's not always going to be like this. This is the good stuff. Okay. So I had our new chart wizard, Matt, pull up a chart.

I said, you know what? The more I think about it, the more the COVID crash. I want to trademark that one. I want to put a TM after that. COVID crash. It's got to be called something. But you can't trademark that. That's not a Ben Carlson thing.

I'm sorry. You can't own that. Why? No one, I've heard anyone say that. The COVID crash. What are you? Dr. Evil? I created the question mark.

What did Josh say he created a couple weeks ago? The Josh said he literally invented Blu Shriver. One of the most obscene lines in podcast history. My older brother claims he created the drinking game passback. Never heard of it. Well, if you have like three beers to finish and you're leaving to go to a bar or a party, and you have to finish the beers. You can't leave them there.

I can't leave a man behind. You take a drink and you pass to someone else. until it's gone. Anyway, so the COVID crash lines up with the Black Friday pretty good. They both fell 30 plus percent in a very short period of time. And I wanted to say, okay, what happens? It's been four plus years since this happened. So what happened since?

And because there was a pretty big rally off of the 1987 crash. We've actually rallied harder. So we're close to 150% from the bottom, whereas the four years after the 1987 crash, it was up 100%. Now, obviously, that bull market kept going. There was a 1990 correction, but it kept going for, you know, whatever, 13 more years.

If we match that 1980s to 1990s bull market, we're talking, what, six or seven more years? Can you imagine a bull market lasting that long? Yes, I know. I mean, the knee-jerk reaction is no, just given how great the market has been. it's hard for me to picture. It would just be so out of whack

with really anything that we've seen in history. Well, maybe that's not true. Well, no, that's what I'm saying. If it was 80s and 90s analog, so if we had our AI bubble, that's the crazy thing. Like, there was a great period of time from 1980 or whatever to 1994.

That was pretty good returns. And then you juiced from 95 to 99. Yeah, I know, but there's many differences. One of the main ones was that when that bold market kicked off, that when that bold market kicked off, the 10 year was at 15% or wherever it was at, and the P.E. was at 9. Yes. That's fair.

So can we ride the AI wave if AI is going to add 1.5 percentage points to GDP, which is what some people are predicting. Who knows what I'm saying. If you wanted that analog, you'd say, okay, AI ramps up now and this is the dot com part of that phase. Yeah. I mean, earnings are going to have to power. If that were the case, I don't see like multiple expansion carrying the torch. It would have to be earnings. I'm not predicting that, obviously, but I'm just saying, like, every time we stalked about what could happen, I always think, like, oil went negative. Like, why take anything off the table?

True. That's fair. All right. I saw this chart flying around from Goldman. The U.S. equity market is near the most concentrated in a century, and this shows the market cap of the largest stock relative to the 75th percentile stock. And it shows all these times in history, it's funny because the highest it was ever is 1932. which is the bottom of the Great Depression. And so some of these are like bottom, some of them are tops. What this chart shows to me, it's not, I mean, obviously concentration is a big component of this, but it's also large relative to mid and small.

Right. My whole thinking here, though, is so what? At this point, like, the concentration stuff, I'm to the point where it's like, it doesn't worry me at all. Like, I don't worry about it. It doesn't keep me up at now. Some people think, like, it's such a huge problem. Unless the government is going to go break up the big tech companies, I mean, if you're betting

on mean reversion, that's one thing. But why worry about something like this? The biggest best companies are the biggest stocks. Well, hold on. Let's just define this. There's like degrees of worry, right? So would I prefer the market to be less concentrated, all else equal, just in terms of like diversification benefits?

Probably. Am I worried in the extent that I don't think you've, should own the S&P 500, and that if NVIDIA falls, that it's going to take the entire market down with it, could happen, but it's not necessarily something that keeps me up at night. That's what I'm saying. And I get it. People in finance are warriors. That's just part of the ball.

Like, you know, we talk about the bad stuff hurts more than the good stuff feels good. But infer my hierarchy of worries, things like index funds and market concentration are very low. Yeah. Well, I would say, I'm worried about everything when it comes to the market. Like, everything worries me. So in terms of, like, my priority of worries, this is... And as we've talked about, the stuff that's going to get you, though, is going to be the stuff you're not even thinking about or worrying about right now.

It's going to be something else, probably. This is interesting from being spoke to. The median S&P energy stock has a larger market cap than the median S&P 500 technology sector stock. Yeah, tech has a weighting of 30% and energy is at 4%. This is kind of why the concentration thing to me, I just don't know if it matters. right? Like, yay, energy is more diversified than tech by median market cap. But so what? That's my point. What's your point? That it just, it's not a big, it's not a big deal. It's not it.

Right. Well, right now it's not, certainly. I don't know. Yeah. And again, the meat reversing thing will happen eventually where small caps and midcaps will outperform. And, but I don't think that's a, I don't think you worry that markets are cyclical. That's just the way markets are. I'm not, I think what Warriors would say is look what happened in 2000 when tech stocks came crashing down. They took the rest of the market with it. Now, if you can't see the differences between today and back then, I can't do anything for you. But it's not inconceivable that a similar outcome might unfold. True. And it's also not inconceivable that the tech sector could underperform and other sectors will move up and do better. Remember, energy was just terrible for like 2014 to 2020, whatever, just did nothing.

That would truly be the coup de grace if tech stocks either go sideways or fall or underperform in some sort of direction and the rest of the market leads the charge. Financials, consumer discretionary stocks. Like that would really ram it down the bear's throat. That would be fun. Speaking of coup de grace, Mike Francesa said it. in the video and credit to you for giving a smirk at the camera after he said it. I liked that.

That was a record scratch freeze frame moment. Yeah, that was, uh, that was exciting. Well played. This has been the, the, the 2024 is the year of Michael Batnik recording with his heroes. Well, listen. Eli and Mike Francesa, who else is there? Deney? Listen, 2010 was...

Can we get Deney to talk with you in L.A.? And then we just check all the boxes? 2010, yeah, 24, 2024 is a good year for, for, for... For Michael, 2010, I made $416. So let me ask you this. As people transition, and not just specifically to me, but it is something that I've been thinking about, as people transition from, I'm looking for a better word other than rags to riches because I would not accurately describe, I neither hadn't rags nor riches.

But like, think about a, this is a ludicrous example, but like LD, for example, there was an Instagram video of the last scene in the shoot, in the, in the, the last scene of the last episode, the series finale, which it is, where Richard Lewis was so grateful to Larry thanking him for treating him like a god, where Cheryl was crying. She said, the minute I met you my entire life changed. And it was very touching. And I was watching my, and I shut a little bit of a tear. Robin goes, why are you crying? I'm a sensitive guy. But anyway, my point is so after that, in classic LD fashion... Your wife does have to deal with you crying a lot, doesn't she? I do cry a lot. In classic LD fashion, he got very uncomfortable with the

praise that he sort of just turned and walked off the set. Did you see this clip? No, I didn't. Okay. So, so... I watched a finale last night, which we want to talk about later. So bringing this back to where I'm going, like Larry David is still Larry David. Obviously, he has a billion dollars and his life is a lot different. day than it was 40 years ago when he was driving a cab. But he's still the same person. So I've been thinking about the transition between like regular people and financially successful people.

You know, because like I'm sure Bill Simmons as an example, again, I'm using like, you know, some of the wealthiest people in the world. But he probably still thinks himself as a kid from Boston, even though he's clearly a rich guy. You know what I mean? I think that's the, that's also one of the weirdest parts about aging and entering middle age is, in a lot of ways, you still feel like the very same person. No one ever told me that would happen when you get older.

So as people transition from, and you get more, you get more success and more this and more that, like, I think some people handle the transition better than others. True. Okay. You know, Ben, we've been recording for almost 20 minutes now, and we've barely made a dent in the stock. Sorry for all the tangents. Speaking of, actually speaking of, and look, I'm about to derail the podcast again and prove this person's point.

Ben, did you see this review that I shared with us? So once a week, I get like an email from Chartable, which I guess is like a podcast tracking chart. And it will share like a review or two. And this week's was really Chef's Kiss. It was one star. Did you see this, Ben? Mm-mm. Okay.

Here's the review. Sort of entertaining, not good. This can be entertaining, but lately, I just skip it. I could only handle a few minutes of it at a time now. The host tend to go on tangent, so the flow isn't great. They also give uninformed opinions too often. Happens. Uninformed. Get out of here.

The FD had a post about the S&P 500, hoovering up all the assets. So, Ben, this would be the so what of, of, concentration, right, is that there's the S&P 500, specifically Mega Cap Tech, and there's everything else. And if these flows, if the sentiment, if the enthusiasm were to stall or, God forbid, reverse, buckle up, buttercup. So, ETFs tracking the S&P 500 vacuumed up a record $137 billion in net terms last year, surpassing the previous peak of $119 billion in 2021. This accounted for a record, 27% of all global equity ETF flows, compared with just 9% in 2022, 13% to 2021, and 1% in 2020.

That's pretty wild. Wow. So sentiment check, key check, where are people in terms of their feelings towards the S&P versus the world? But the whole way to hedge of that risk is you be diversified. That's why I'm not worried that if the S&P underperforms diversification, is the answer. Check out this chart. This is from Dimson, Martian, Staunton. U.S. equities approach mid-20th century dominant. So we're looking at the global stock market

capitalization by country. We're looking at the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, China, and the rest of the world. And, yeah, the U.S. is dominating. I mean, look at how bad the U.K. choked, though. They had a huge lead in 1900. What happened? British people. What did you do? All right, Eric Belchunis, this is interesting. Index funds make up 46% of Fidelity's assets, but only 6% of its revenue, which was $28 billion last year, about double the entire ETF industry. That gap may be one of the reasons they're looking to add a surcharge on ETF platforms, the optics of which may not be worth the money. So the thinking is, as more money flows into these index funds, these fund providers are going to have to think of a way to increase the revenue.

Because obviously, the actively managed funds, even though there's outflows there, the gains in the market have more than help there. So they're still making money on those active funds, but the money is going to keep coming and keep or keep leaving, keep leaving, keep leaving. So more of the money for the fund industry is going to be in passive, which is way, way lower cost. So how do they recoup that, those fees? I mean, I don't know what the answer is.

They don't. You don't think they're going to figure out ways to recoup the fees somehow? No. Trading fees are gone. Index funds paid nothing. They're going to have to make fees up somewhere else. Well, that's true. Are they going to replace entire?

the fees that they're losing. I don't see how they do that. I don't see how the math makes it work. Balchunis has written about this a lot that even though there's been outflows of active mutual funds forever, the revenue, I think, is it, oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah. The assets are still at an all-time high just because of the tailwind from the market. Right. Markets going out. It doesn't mean that their bottom line is at an all-time high, right? Because the revenue might be, but profitability is obviously probably being crimp. So yeah, this is a big industry. issue, for sure. Inflows into investment-grade bonds on pace for a record year, and it's not even close. This is cumulative, so it accounts for...

People are buying the dip in bonds. Usually it's, you run to the exits when there's a fire. Everyone has been throwing money at bonds for the past year and a half. Yeah, and I think the clear difference between this and stocks is that people are excited to lock in these yields for a longer period of time. But aren't we going to see inflows into bonds for the next 10, 15 years from baby boomers retiring? Or is that not a big enough chunk of assets to move? Because can you see people retiring

and getting more conservative that they're going to have to put more money into bonds? So what, do you think the buying pressure is going to bring yields down? I don't think so. I'm not necessarily. I'm just saying the flows. If we're looking at fund flows just for funds,

ETFs and mutual funds, it's going to be more to bonds in the coming years than it is to stocks. I don't know about that. Maybe. But my point is this year is so far greater than any other year that we've seen. And it's because people are locking longer term rates. There's not a counterpoint. And also, the inflows to money market funds are also on fire just behind 20, 23.

So people are really excited about the idea that for the first time in recent memory, you can actually earn a return in your cash. And don't give me this well, net of inflation. Because I'm sorry, investors do not think in real terms. They just don't. We're nominal beings. Yeah. But so this chart shows that three and a half months into the year, we've already almost

surpassed the market flows from last year. No, that's not what is jubes. Cumulative annual flows. So if this trend were to continue for the rest of the year. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Okay, so it's annualized. I'm just saying, mark it down.

Talk to me in 10 years. There's going to be more money that have gone into bonds than going into stocks in the next 10 years. Perhaps. Just demographically speaking, that it has to be. Well, the counterpoint, like the people that you're discussing, the baby boomers, there's no net new flows for those people. If you're 70 years old, your allocation is your allocation. So perhaps you glide path down over time.

That's what I'm saying. It's the glide path. Greg Gip in the Wall Street Journal. What's wrong with the economy? It's you, not the data. I'm sure this made a lot of people thrilled. Hey, he's not wrong. Well, for the overall economy, he's not wrong.

I know I have to caveat it every time saying not everyone is included in the average. But for the overall time, he's right. Okay. So in the Wall Street Journal's latest poll of swing states, 74% of respondents said inflation has moved in the wrong direction in the past year. This assessment, which holds across all seven states, is startling, sober, and simply not true. I'm not standing an opinion. This isn't something on which reasonable people can disagree.

Facts, but these respondents are not dumb people. People without an economics degree, normal people, which influence the narrative. Some of them are dumb people. Come on. Some people just really don't, some people really don't understand the economy. That's a fact. Everyone, how, dude, how would you? If you're a normal person, how would you understand the economy?

Why, if you do not think about this stuff every day and somebody asks you about inflation, you're going to say prices. When people are asked about inflation, they're talking about prices, not the rate of change. Right. Yes. That's true. And so this shapes everything. So while the facts are what they are, this is a case of feelings over facts.

So Derek Thompson. Wait, this is another reason why. All the information of the world that we have on a computer and an iPad and a smartphone in our pocket almost means in nothing without context or filtering understanding. Because people have access to that information if they want it, but they don't access it for whatever reason or they can't or they can't find it or they don't care to. That's why information is, that's why the AI thing with information is not going to change as much as people think in terms of how people feel and think and react.

It's going to probably make things worse. Let's say that an economist or Greg Gipp or whoever was asking a regular person, what do you think about price change, the inflation? Is it up or down from where it was last year? And they say, up. And this person says, no, actually, inflation was 6% a year ago. It's 3.5% today. The regular person would say, well, who, what?

How is that relevant? Why are you asking me about that statistic? All I care about is prices are a lot higher than they were a year ago. But don't ask me about the rate of change. That's nonsense. I know. But my point is, look back through history. How often have we ever had deflation and prices go down?

It never happens, basically. It's a non-sequitur. No, it's not. Yeah, it is. What does that to do with anything? Prices are literally always going higher. I know they've been going higher more in recent years when we've had. That's like, it's a shock to the system.

That's why people have been so concerned about it because we haven't had this high in 40 years. But, like, we're going to have inflation for the rest of your life. There's going to be, like, minor, minor bouts of deflation and a financial crisis, other than that, prices will continue to rise as long as economic growth goes higher. That's the thing that people don't realize. Wages go higher, economic growth goes higher, prices go higher. That's the relationship. Derek Thompson says where I've landed, grocery inflation sucks. Yep. Interest rates are high, yep. Telling people the economy is better than your experience of it is a waste of time.

Double you up. Unemployment is low. Real wages are growing. And the national economy really is better than people think. Yeah, I'd agree with all that. Fair. We're at a stalemate. Who? You and I? No, everyone. The economy and everyone's opinion.

So how they're long? Honestly, I think people need a recession just to be like, I told you, I was right, and then they can move on, right? We can get a recession, get it out of our system, and people can finally go, I told you the economy was bad, and now the economy agrees with me. That's what people need. Um, last week we got really good job numbers. Heather Long tweeted, good news. There was a big jump in the labor force in March. That means more people are looking for work again.

This is a great sign of confidence in the economy. And the replies on Twitter were almost uniformly negative. Like, yeah, but and a lot of political shit and. As usual. As usual. So I have this thing, go down to the labor market section here. We're skipping around the dock a little bit. I went to like, I went through and found some charts and data that kind of goes, like shows how

strong the labor market really is. So Ben Castleman puts monthly job growth in 2021. Look at how steady this is in the like 250 to 300,000 range for well over a year now. And it's only increased later lately. And a lot of people say, well, it's part-time workers. But look at this. Part-time workers as a share of total employment is higher than it was pre-pinned. pandemic, basically right on average since 2000. So it's not like you can say, well, it's all part-time workers. A lot of people say, well, labor force participation ratio is falling. And it's true if you look at the whole thing. Jed Colco tweeted this, though, and he said, you don't see a lot of Judds anymore. That's true. Yeah, add that name to the list. Labor Force participation rate,

he's showing is only down for people 65 and older, but actually like even 60 to 64 is up, 55 to 59. So all these other ages are up, but it's the fact that people retire early. And that's why the labor force is lower for the older people and overall, because there's so many people retiring. And the immigrants thing, it is true. So Pew did this

research saying they show like going forward without future immigrants, working age population in the U.S. would decrease by 2035. So it's showing that it would fall by like 18 million. But with immigrants is going to continue to rise. So it's saying the largest, but it's also saying the largest group joining the nation's

working age population in that time will be 60 million people who were born in the country to U.S. born parents and turned 25 between 2015 and 2035, but they will be outnumbered by U.S. born adults with U.S. born parents who turn 65 or die, meaning the people who are older are going to be retiring faster than new people are entering the labor force, right? So this is just, and every developed country is dealing with this. So the point is, we're going to need immigrants if we want to have growth. Let me ask you this, and maybe this is a bit of a third rail. So perhaps I shouldn't go there, but I'm going to go there.

If Trump wins the White House and he inherits this economy, as things currently exist, he will be social truthing. He's on Twitter. He will be talking to the nation every day about record high on your 401K, record stock prices, a booming economy. He will be banging that drum every day. How quickly would national polls respond to that messaging? Well, we know this is politically based.

So Republicans would immediately say the economy is better. And Democrats would immediately say the economy is worse. Even if it's the exact same economy. Unfortunate state of affairs. True. This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed,

walked into the dark, and they never. came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways. You're not going to find it in the news because the police covered everything all up. On August days. This is where the story really starts.

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here's something else. We're on a tangent of Ben, stuff Ben is not worried about today. Okay? Bloomberg has this headline. A million simulations, one verdict ahead for the U.S. economy. Debt danger ahead. Bloomberg economists, Bloomberg economics ran a million forecast simulations on U.S. debt outlook. 88% of them show borrowing on an unsustainable path. Now, I really wish they would have gone to 100% like they did with the recession call, just to stay in line with that call. But they so, I feel like they said an 88% of the simulations, results show debt-to-GDP ratio on an unsustainable path defined as an increase over the next decade. Wait, you're not worried about this at all? Just listen. Okay.

In the end, it may take a crisis, perhaps a disorderly route in Treasury's markets, triggered by a sovereign U.S. credit rating downgrade, or a panic over the depletion of Medicare or Social Security trust funds to force action. That's playing with fire. Here's my thinking here. This is something people we talk about have always worried about, but what is the alternative to the treasury market for people. So if you're looking for a high-quality bond, that's the thing people don't realize is that. The U.S. debt is an asset to someone else. Retirees, pension plans, insurance companies, are they all of a sudden going to say, eh, you know what, we don't need treasuries anymore? Let's go buy emerging market debt or

corporate debt or something. Is that really going to happen? When you put it that way. So here's Colin Roche's take. I often say the U.S. government isn't in financial trouble, and some accuse me of being a government agent, but my optimism about U.S. government debt extends from our optimism about corporate America and the fact that U.S. firms are hugely innovative, income-generating entities that give the U.S.D. credibility. Here's the thing we have going for us. If people are worried about this.

And, again, I'm not saying debt going higher isn't a problem if it's crowding out other forms of spending for the government, right? Because the interest expense is so high. Sure, that's a problem. But I think there are ways to fix it if our politicians ever decided to do so. My whole point is we can literally print our own currency, right?

That's number one. Number two, you don't think that if there really was some sort of treasury strike, that the treasury and the Fed wouldn't figure out a way around it. Japan had their debt to GDP go to 300% or something. And they didn't have a crazy 10% spike in interest rates or whatever. My whole point is that, yes, we have some stuff to figure out politically and the politicians will probably wait until they're forced to do something. But this is the kind of thing that has solutions.

when you can print your own currency. That's my point, that the whole crisis situation of this is, there's going to be this day of reckoning. I just don't see it. Yeah, what would a day of reckoning look like? That's what I, people, they're saying it's the treasury market blow up somehow. I'm less worried about a treasury market blow up, but, well, gold seems to be worried about about this.

Well, but every time something, every time an asset goes up, people say, well, it's worried about debt. Because remember when rates were rising in October? People said, why are rates rising? Do you think gold is going vertical for no reason? The Fed was printing money all throughout the 2010s. Why didn't gold go up then? I don't think it's a, I feel like this is a narrative violation. People are just giving that narrative to gold because it's going up.

No, this is not a money printing issue. This is a interest rate debt unsustainable issue. I think this is correlation causation. I think people are just giving that narrative because gold is rising. You really think so? If that's the case, why didn't gold go up 50% in 2020 then? Because we printed all that money back then. But you keep saying the same thing, and I keep saying it's not a money printing issue.

No, no, I'm saying the government spent trillions of dollars in 2020. Why didn't gold go up 50% that year? That was a one-time, that was a one-time or three-time thing. But that was a government, that got us into this issue. I don't think you could hand wave away everything. I'm not saying that this is the end of the world, but- That's the only point. I'm not worried about it as much as other people.

I'm saying there are legitimate areas to worry that, again, it could crowd out other forms of spending. Well, how about this? I think, no offense, I think the market's more than you. And you might think that gold is moving up because it's just going up. I think, and I could be wrong, that one of the fundamental drivers of this gold move is that people are worried about the debt.

Now, it might turn out to be worry for a reason. So if the Fed lowers interest rates, then gold should fall. in that scenario. In that scenario. Might have happened. I just think it's easy to, remember when rates were screaming higher to 5%? Everyone said, well, the reason rates are going higher is because government debt is out of control.

And then rates fell again. And guess what? It was just positioning. Here's where I think, people are just positioning for gold right now. Yeah. Here's where I do agree with you. The things that people obsessively worry about tend to be a gigantic distraction in the long room. That's my point. That's all I'm trying to get at. Most of these giant worries do not come to

fruition. I agree. I completely were on the same page there. All right. Here's something that maybe we can worry about. This is interesting. Email from a listener. I know you guys love bearish charts. Wink emoji. Where is this? I don't use those real. This is under layoffs. We haven't had anything there for a while. But curious what you guys think about this. You and Michael always have good rational, optimist, big picture, grand scheme of things. Here's some data from this listener. California unemployment rate today. 5.3%. August 2020, the trough was 3.8%. Pre-COVID, 4.3%. This is what the email is. I was actually kind of shocked. I guess on the one hand, not good. On the other hand, the rest of the country must be doing great. And so I looked into this and California does

have the highest rate of unemployment in the whole country at 5.3%. Isn't it the tech layoffs or is it not? Yeah. So I looked into this and the AP had a story on it. And it's basically the tech lab. But I mean, again, California is what did we say, the sixth biggest economy in the world or something ridiculous like that. That's a pretty substantial increase on unemployment there. Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. That is that, but if you look at, you know, so if you just Google, like, unemployment rate by state, most of the other, most of the, that's the whole thing. He said this must be great for the rest of the country. The lowest one is, you know, the two lowest ones are North and South Dakota, like 2%, but that's because 74 people live there they're all employed well in the energy but the only ones

that are over 5% are Washington DC Nevada and California and you know 80% of the countries are below 4% still so California actually is the outlier so we talk about that's being like a tech recession it really kind of has been Ben are you um you did you literally not go outside yesterday to look at the eclipse, did you refuse to even tilt your chin higher? I looked up at it a couple times. With glasses on? I didn't have glasses. They're all sold out. Did you have regular sunglasses on?

Yeah, I just glanced at it really quick. Thoughts? I mean, it is, you've ever read any of the Bill Bryson books about the universe, whatever his universe? He gives like these whole color. for how everything lines up in the universe. And it almost doesn't seem real. But the fact that this stuff can happen is amazing. I may have poo-pooed the eclipse a little bit yesterday on Slack.

And all I didn't say it's overrated. I just said it's a little overvalued. And I feel like we, I feel like we just, listen, there's, this is the problem of the internet because you have to either love everything, love something or hate things. There's degrees of liking and hating. And I think the eclipse is cool, but I feel like every, every office or every family or every friend group has that one person who went way overboard on the eclipse and was totally into everything about it. Totally. And I was further down on that, those degrees of like, wow, this is pretty cool.

Listen, own it. You poo-pooed the eclipse. Own it. I feel like we just had it like three years ago. But it wasn't full. Yeah. I'm just saying it wasn't like top of the top of mind for me. but it was it was it's it's pretty cool all right a bunch of we talked about florida last week a bunch of people

sent us this NBC news story they came for florida sun and sand they got soaring costs in a culture war and tell me your thoughts about this first and i'm going to give you mine because i i feel like the the headline of this story in this in the the individual stories in it don't match the overall numbers but and i feel like this is a good microcosm of the economy right yeah let me let's read the intro just to set the stage. One of the first signs Barb Carter's moved to Florida was in the postcard life she envisioned was the Armadillo infestation in her home that caused $9,000 damages. Yeah, an Armadillo infestation, that would send me running as well.

I saw an Armadillo at some Florida, I think, went to the zoo in Naples. They're cute. They're pretty cute. Yeah, they're cute. But not in the home. My kids would love an Armadillo infestation. Then came a hurricane ever-present feuding over politics and an inability to find a doctor to remove a tumor from her liver.

After a year in the Sunshine State, Carter packed her car with whatever belonging she could fit and headed back to her home state of Kansas, selling her Florida home at a $40,000 laws and leaving behind the children and grandchildren, she moved to be closer to. So many people ask, why would you move back to Kansas? And I tell them all the same thing. You've got to take your vacation goggles off, Carter said. For me, it was very falsely promoted. Once living there, I thought, you know, this isn't all you guys have cracked this up to be at all.

And my read on this is this is so much bigger than Florida, this is a life lesson. And I will repeat this again, take your vacation goggles off. This isn't all you guys have cracked this up to be at all. This is bigger than retiring in Florida. This is life. The grass is always greener on the other side. I can't wait until I have this. I wish I had that.

And then when you finally get what you wish you wanted, it's not all it's cracked up to be. I, one of the things that I love about living in New York is the weather is not great, although we have a beautiful day today, which affects the shit out of your mood. I am feeling, it really does. I'm feeling okay, Ben, leaving New York and going to a place like California or a nice weather place, you're like, oh my God, why do I live in New York? But that's the point is that people adjusts very quickly to a better situation in life. whether it's financial, house, weather, whatever, you adjust and you get used to it.

And what was special eventually becomes routine. And so you don't appreciate it as much anymore. Well, exactly. You actually mentioned to me, when you were in Marco, you're like, you know, I think I could retire down here or spend more time in here. My wife and I talk about this. Yeah. I asked you, I said, do you, and my question to you was going to be, do you think that

millennials will retire in places like Florida, like, because my baseline assumption is you're going to end up like your parents or your grandparents? Listen, I'm eating cottage cheese with fruit in it, okay? So I'm already my dad. I'm a Jewish guy from New York. I will retire in Florida. That's just, that's what we do. It's been preordained.

I don't make rules. But you said to me, you said to me, dude, you're going to get bored. And I thought that too. Like, it is so awesome down here, but I feel like I would, because I'm going to have to go somewhere for at least six months out of the year to get out of them. I'm going to need to get out of the winter when I'm older. That's just, that's going to be a fact. Another side tangent.

Why is it that people from the East Coast and New York go to the, Atlantic side of Florida, and people from the Midwest go to the Gulf side. Because it was all Midwest people, like if you're judging by T-shirts and accents and... Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. That's just what it is. It's just a thing, isn't it? It's just a thing. Do you remember back in the day pretending to be sick in elementary school? By the way, I'm having deja vu. What was this? I had a something, there was music or something that happened to me yesterday they did before where I was like, holy cow, it reminded me of being eight years old, and I can't remember what it was.

All right. Sorry, podcast listener. That was a horrible. That could actually be a movie plot. You hear a song from your youth, and it transports you back to that year. Oh, my God. What was it? I can't remember. But anyhow, what I was trying to say is spending the first day home watching Jerry Springer all day. You're like, man, I can get used to this. Judge Judy, was it Sally Jesse Raphael? Yep.

And then on day two, it's not as great. By day three, you're like, all right, I'm ready to go back to school. That's the thing with vacation, right? Is that you think, oh, my God, I can do this every day. You can't do it every day. Because if you do it every day, it's not vacation. Then it's just life. Yes. That's why I actually think when I retire,

I'm going to have to go different places all the time. You're going to be an Airbnb retiree. You're going to be an Airbnb retiree. I think so. But back to the original article that people sent us saying, actually, people are leaving Florida. But the data in this shows Florida has the second fastest growing state as of July 23, 700,000 people moved their

2022. And so the data is showing a huge migration, but there's also people leaving. So that doesn't really tell us anything, though. Like people, people are people, some people do love Florida. That's, that's all point. Even though this article makes it out to be that there are individuals, this is why this is such, this article is a microcosm of the economy. They go through these individual experiences of people who hated their experience in Florida, but there are still way more people who love Florida who are going there. Of course. Most people don't have the, most people aren't running away from the armadillo infestations? Yes.

I didn't realize that was a thing. Okay. From the NAR, they have their statistics on the homebuyers and sellers. Like, who's buying and selling homes? This is interesting. Millennials, 25 to 43, now compromised 38% of the home buying market up from 28% a year ago. Boomers are down to 31% of transactions. So that flip-flop, last year it was boomers that were buying the most homes.

This year is millennials. And I feel like that flip-lop is going to happen for a long time. time. Gen X was 4% of buyers. I feel like Gen X is the 3% mortgage people. Like, they're like, mm-mm. We're not moving. We're not doing anything. Four percent of buyers. Forty-four percent of older millennials are first-time home buyers. This is interesting, the first-time stuff. So first-time home buyers made up 32% of all buyers up from 26% a year ago. So it seems like houses are so unaffordable and mortgage rates so high that no one could possibly afford their first home. but that's a third of people buying homes are first-time homebuyers.

Historical norm is 40%, so it's still below that, but it's not bad. And among younger millennials, so 25 to 33, 75% of those younger millennials are first-time homebuyers. That's pretty good, right? There's nothing good about millennials buying houses right now. Well, not good, but I guess the life goes on is my point. Like, people are going to buy a house, whether it's affordable or not, And the other thing is, but they also said, they said 24% of those younger millennials

received down payment help from a friend or relative. Yeah, it's a bloodbath. For young people in the housing market, it is completely and absolutely effed. Now, some people would say, listen, they're locking themselves into way higher payments than the otherwise would have. But if you can scrape together and afford a payment now, while rates are high and housing prices are high, and your wages are going to rise in the future, and you could refinance in the future to lower that payment, I think you're going to be okay. Fair? I'm just saying

these numbers surprise me for high the first-time home buyer numbers were that a third of people buying homes in the last year were first-time homebuyers. That's surprising. I think this is one of the biggest stories in the country that probably doesn't get enough attention because young people don't have microphones is the struggle that young people are having with new homes. Here's an email that we got, not to just use like an anecdote, but But one item that has not spoken about enough is how much unwanted stress and awkwardness this has put on our friendships, meaning our friends have become our competitors with so little inventory, everyone in your social circles competing for the same homes and almost has to keep

secrets from each other. It's really bad, dude. Like, again, not to just use like my town as America, but there's not a lot. And there's a lot of young people that want to move back home. And there's just nothing there. And what is there, the prices are out. outrageous, completely unaffordable. I'm sorry, I don't mean to make light of this,

but this could also be a movie plot right now. Friends competing for lack of housing supply. That could be a, that would have been a Seth Rogen movie in the 2010s. The situation is really, really, really bad. Well, I agree. And it's going to make wealth inequality way, way, way worse. Because the people who can afford a home now,

of the people who are doing or are more well off, and the people who can't are going to, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's, problem. And the funny thing is, is there hasn't been one politician who's made this their platform, like, of we need to build more houses. I don't know how it happens. I think the median age is 38 in the United States. There's so many young aspirational homebuyers that are just getting absolutely railroaded right now. Yes, I agree. Someone also emailed us and said, how are so many houses being purchased in cash, it's either a line of credit, like from a portfolio,

or it's a he lock on a paid off home to purchase the neck home, next home, then you pay off the helock once the previous one is. So it's not like people have $500,000 sitting in a bank to buy a house. A lot of times, it's some other shenanigans, a bridge loan, barring. I think those two things are like a, I'm not saying that's not a thing that happens. If I had to guess, I would say that's a 5% slice of the pie. All right. I would love to see the breakout of this. I honestly don't know. So, like, where are the all-cash buyers coming from?

Right. Now, maybe you said this. What percentage of first-time home buyers are paying with cash? I don't, it didn't say. That's got to be very low, though. I'm sure it's... Anyway, the situation is just really not great. There was an article about the tax ramifications of grandparents making loans to their grandchildren. We got a few emails like this, like an enhanced inheritance type of thing. Jill, the amazing Jill Schlesinger has a video with the compound media talking about exactly this topic. Should you help your children buy a house? And the actual, like, because there's there's tax.

There's rules behind it, right? You have to, there's a certain interest rate you have to charge. Yeah. Okay, here's a good question. I wanted to pose to you. Someone emailed this says, I took out a heel, and this kind of sounds similar to me. I took out of HELOC in 2021 and rates for 3%, planning to borrow against my home slowly over time for renovations and such. Now the rates are 7 to 8% for a HELAC.

I realize I should have just done a cash out refinance. If mortgage rates went back to 3% or even 4% tomorrow, I would borrow as much as I could. My house is up probably 7% since 2020, not to brag. We just discussed this last week. There's going to be a boom. What would you do? So if rates went back to, if mortgage rates went back to 3% or 4% tomorrow,

what would you do? Would you borrow every last bit of equity that you could? Would you take it out? I would seek advice on that. I don't want to say me person. I'm saying like to the emailer. Yeah, I'm asking what you personally would do because I would probably do the same thing

that they're saying. I would pull equity out. That's what, well, I did do that. Yeah, you did it. I wouldn't necessarily like have a use for it,

but I would, I would pull it out and I would probably pull it out immediately. I think I would. And I think that's going to be a lot of people. Yeah. All right. Real quick, Lucas Shaw did a post on,

the streaming services, the most watched things over the last... Good newsletter, by the way, Lucas Shaw. Over the last three years, yes. Eight of the ten shows, eight of the top ten shows owe most of their viewership to Netflix, Bluey and the Big Bank Theory are the exception. So the chart is, time spent streaming shows that were in the top ten.

So we're only looking at the top ten. NCIS, number one, Cocoa Mellon, which is for kids number two, Grey's Anatomy number three. Talk about being seared into your brain, cocoa melon. Yeah. Nine of the ten most watched streaming programs are reruns.

If you look at these shows, this says a lot about the taste of the average American is just not very good. NCIS and criminal minds and the Big Bang theory, I don't mean to hate on people if they like these shows, but none of these are like actually good shows. they're like, it's like filler. Is there one really good,

well, nine of the, nine of the ten are reruns. The only original there is Stranger Things. The interesting one to me was the most, did you see what the most downloaded or streamed movie was in 2023? And there wasn't a close second. Moana? Moana. Yeah, I think I saw that.

Which is not that surprising to me. So while reruns dominate the top 10, overall, that's not the case. So that matters. Most of the hundred most popular titles, last three is our original series. Okay. That makes sense.

And time spent streaming shows in the top ten, it's Netflix and then it's everything else, pretty much. Netflix still rules. Netflix still rules. All right. Let's talk about gambling. What do you got, Ben? All right.

So there's been a few scandals on the NBA about people, not point shaving, but changing their own staff. And so there's a lot, there's a lot of talk about, like, okay, the, all the league has been pushing gambling, and there's going to, there's going to be all these gambling crises in the years ahead. And it's, it's showing the sports betting boom from gaming. And it went from like less than a billion dollars in 2019 to $11 billion in 2023. This is revenue from legal sports betting. And this is another extreme thing where some people say, oh, let them gamble. It's a form of entertainment. And other people say, no, no, it's going to ruin people's lives. And the truth is

probably usually somewhere in the middle. Where do you fall on this? Because I can, there's going to be stories in the years ahead of people who have just completely ruined their lives betting on sports. All right. I hope this is not like a straw man cop out. The way that I've used sports gambling is similar to how I view alcohol. Like there's, there's people that abuse it. There's people whose lives are ruined by it. And most people are able to use it. recreationally and not spiral out of control. And perhaps the downsides of gambling, I don't even want to say it worse because what could be worse than drunk driving, right?

So plenty of lives room by alcohol. Yes, I just, I don't know what to do about it. There are people for who, now there might be somebody listening whose child is addicted and getting upset. And yeah, there's, there's going to be things in this that are less than desirable. I don't know what to do about it. Obviously, they have their legalese figured out. They have more lawyers than anyone, but if someone going to try to sue a sports league

or a podcast network in the coming years for pushing sports gambling all the time? Yeah, probably. Is that where we're headed? Probably. Anyway, again, I think it's, I view gambling as a form of entertainment, but I can see how it. So do you think the alcohol analogy is a fair one? Like, there's parallels there? Definitely.

Yes. All right, I was in the mall over the weekend. What do you keep going to the mall for? I'll tell you. I'll tell you why. My son Kobe, we had a baseball game. So this is, it's horrendous, Ben. You know what this is about.

He's seven years old. And they just started in the league kids pitching. So either two things happen. Oh my gosh. Good luck. One. Ever contact with a ball? One, there's kids that can pitch really well.

And so if the kid can pitch well, the other kid can't hit them, right? Or there's kids that can't even come close to getting it over the plate. Right. And so eventually, strikeouts galar. So the game's an hour and 45 minutes.

And they just started on Wednesday at 5.30. So we're not going to be getting home with the kids until 7.45. It's not great. I'm just like kids pitch that early because my son is, he's in a first and second grade team and it's still coaches pitch. Okay. So maybe next year. So on Sunday, we had our first game.

And he was like, I want to pitch, I want to pitch. And he's never pitched before. And he said to Robin, mom, don't worry, I got this. And I'm so happy that he is an irrational overconfident kid. Like, that's obviously just a personality

the way you were born type thing. So I'm happy outside. Anyway, the reason why I went to the mall was because I need a baseball glove. I don't have a baseball glove. So I needed a baseball glove to practice with him. Okay.

So that's why I went to the law. Roosevelt Field on Saturday. I couldn't believe it. I can't tell you the last time that I was there on a weekend, I think, like this. It was beyond packed. I took a picture of the Apple stores I went by.

Not sure why I took of the Apple Store instead of the whole mall, but, dude, it was slammed. I don't know if just... The Apple Store you took looks like a stock picture that's in like an AP News story. I don't know if this is a reflection of just Roswell Field specifically,

which is a really big mall around here. The economy or kids' preferences, they hang out here. I went to the mall like a month ago by us, and it was same thing. PATH and I was like, geez, I'm not expecting it. Yeah. So when you go places like this and when you go to the airport and you go on vacation, this is not just annotated.

Look at the numbers. The economy is fine. The economy is pretty good. It's a lot better than people feel. People are still spending money. Yeah, people are just spending money. All right, Ben, I do not what they say. You know, we've spoken to the past.

I've spoken to the past about things particularly with, not just cooking, like things on Instagram that don't come close to matching what you see on Instagram, like the sneaker cleaners that never work or the recipe or the this hack or the that hack like plucking the pineapple piece out individually doesn't work right i tried to poach an egg for the first time look at that picture what do you think not bad not terrible you ever poach an egg before is that where you like put it in the boiling water yes it was quite difficult okay that's one of those things that um the finished product is not worth all the effort fair disagree i'm okay i may I made my wife an avocado toast, and it was pretty darn tasty.

Now, it was a lot of work, but it actually did come out decent. All right, last thing. Last thing. I lost another pair of AirPods. And this time, I lost them in my house. I remember specifically putting the AirPods in to do the dishes, and I can't find them. So I was walking to the train station the other day. I needed some headphones, and I bought a pair of, like, Alexa Airbuds years ago just to try them out.

It was like a Black Monday type deal. They're not great, so I don't wear them. But I couldn't get them synced. You have to go into the Alexa app to hook them up with your Bluetooth. Look at this thing, solve this puzzle to protect your account, enter the letters and numbers above. Is this completely indecipherable or what? What the hell does that say? The funny thing is you're going to need AI to help you solve these puzzles now.

So that didn't work. And then there's a button, an option to say, hear the character. So I said, okay, wonderful. I didn't know there's an option. G8. Okay, anyway, so I pressed play and it was somebody talking, right, ostensibly for blind people, except inexplicably, instead of just saying G, M, H, 8, there was like a fishbow, water noise over the person speaking.

Why are they making it impossible for you to sign in? What are they trying to do here? We just need the face scan for everything. Instead of, I'm ready to get rid of passwords completely. It's unbelievable. Scan my eyeballs. All right, Ben. Recommations, what do you got?

All right, wait, what is this? Oh, Ben, your flying life is about to change when you find out you can download movies on all the streaming apps to watch them offline. A few people said this. Here's the thing. The best part about streaming and being on an airplane is scrolling through the movies. Totally. So I don't want to know what I'm going to watch ahead of time. I want to scroll.

Yeah, it's like walking into a little. blockbuster you want to be surprised yes i want to oh i didn't know i had this yes that's what i that's what i like about it so i did watch the finale of curb your enthusiasm and i talked my wife about this afterwards it's not necessarily i would necessarily say it's like the best comedy show ever because you don't get involved in the plot lines or the characters you don't really care what happens to them but that show made me belly laugh more than any show ever and there isn't a second place it just the amount of belly laughs even this season there's probably like the bruce Springsteen episode was amazing. I thought the finale was great. The way that they, you didn't

finish Seinfeld, so you don't know this, but the way of the intertwined the Seinfeld finale was, I thought, just perfect. And it made me, when they showed the clips of the old episodes, I went back and watched last night, the doll episode with the bottle in his pants, which I think is one of the best episodes ever. And I watched the ghost, the crazy killer eyes one, crazy eyes killer. Yeah, so good. So I watched some of the old episodes because of it. And yeah, that show gave me more Hard laughs in any show ever. Yeah, I forgot about some of them. Skeleth was my favorite one ever.

Okay. So a bunch of people, you mentioned the plot to shot collar last week. Could you believe how many emails we got? Yes, a lot of people. I literally never heard of that. I've seen the movie on Netflix before, but I was like, eh, it's the guy from Game of Thrones. Jamie Lanister.

Did you watch it? Did you? Oh, yeah, I did. I did. I love, I loved this movie. Oh, my gosh. I like put it on, we had a really early flight in the morning. on Saturday.

So I was super tired. And I'm like, I'm just going to go to bed, but I want to put on this movie for like 10 minutes while I check my email and stuff. You're going to turn it off. And I got sucked in and I watched the whole movie.

And it, I couldn't believe how it's a really great. Now, it's one of those movies that the circumstances make you think like, geez, how would I ever, like if you had a few bad breaks and you ended up in a crazy situation, what would you do?

That's part of the great part of the movie. But the whole mystery of it, like, is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? What is he actually doing? it was an awesome movie. It was so good. It was really good.

We got another email from somebody saying, I can't believe how many emails we got about Shotcaller. Unbelievable. And somebody said, and after you watch Shotcaller, watch Chopper. It's from 2001. It's with Eric Banner. Let's see.

America had Al Capone, England, the Cray Brothers, in Australia, proving once and for all it's antipodian. What is that word? Sense of humor has Marry. Chopper Reid. Chopper is inspired

by the books of Mark Brandon. Whatever. It's about a criminal in Australia and it's supposed to be very good. That's all at the end. Okay. Shot College, right. One other one.

I feel like the weird thing about streaming these days is you can have a big movie star that's in a show and you never even hear any publicity about the show even coming out. It just shows up.

All right, such as? Well, there was a Nicole Kibbun on Amazon early this year, but I turned on Apple TV the other day and there is a new private detective show with Colin Farrell. And it's like, Colin Farrell is a,

guy who, if you have someone missing and want discretion, he's the guy you bring in. And I'm like, sold. So it's called Sugar on Apple TV Plus. And I watch the first episode and it's very stylish. And I'm a huge Colin Farrell fan. Yeah, you are. And one episode and I'm completely in. Okay.

Anything from you this week? Anything from me. Well, I watch Shotcaller. I'll make my way through Tokyo Vice. And that's about it. Okay. I was surprised. I was expecting shot collar to be a movie that I that would be just a stupid plot movie that's kind of entertaining but it was it was just i don't know something about it was just very very well done

all right um animal spirits pod at the compound news dot com personal emails of course personal responses don't forget to chuck out we had a talk about this week with shaffer cullen on emerging market fundamentals quite good quite a good episode charma is like one of the longest running EM portfolio managers. He was a super sharp guy. He taught us a lot. But if you're thinking about diversifying away, he had a lot of good stuff in emerging markets. Yep.

All right. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week.