Animal Spirits Podcast - Everything is Up This Year (EP.319)

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

On episode 319 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the biggest behavioral bias in investing, the number of IPOs that survive, rolling the dice on the stock market, why the consumer doesn't care about higher rates, fiscal vs. monetary policy, some good news for first-time homebuyers, and much more! Register for Future Proof at: https://futureproof.advisorcircle.com/ 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 Future Proof. There's only two weeks left to get tickets. The deadline is August 15th. The high it is sold out. It's where I'm staying. And the other three, there's three more or those two more. All right. They added a hotel this year.

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This is it going to be an-out burger truck? How cool is that? Not only is it great because that was one of my favorite parts about the whole conference, as far as a small thing goes from the fact that you didn't have to sit down for like a dry piece of chicken, like from hotel food. They had all these food trucks there. Now this year, Virgil's bringing this big in-and-out cookout truck. And this is going to be great for content because there's going to be so many arguments

about what is the best burger. Right? When I go to New York, we argue about what the best pizza. places. This is going to be, is it five guys? Is it in and out? Is it Culver's one of these places, right? Shake shack. Last week on the podcast, we spoke a little bit about fast food. I think that was last week. And in the airport, on the way home, I had a spicy chicken sandwich. That, if I could eat that every single day, I would. That's your everyday meal. That's my everyday meal. It is the perfect sandwich in my estimation. For me, for my taste buds,

You have yours, I have mine. For my taste buds, it doesn't get better than the number six. All right. I would be either tacos or cheeseburgers, but that's why I can't wait for the in and out. Futureproof. That advisor circle.com to register. There you go. We'll see you there.

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own. opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Now, Ben, I was actually going to say something. So this is not just shit, but then I saw you tweeted about it. Can you

believe it's August? This is what you say when you reach middle age. Every single week, you check another box about hitting middle age and you keep saying you're not middle age, but it's just slowly. I'll be personally. Oh, yes. Yes. You keep saying it like I'm not middle age, but every week you check a new box. This is just, I mentioned this on one of our podcast recently that the thing you say to everyone when you show up to a conference, like everyone gets together for a drink in the bar, you say, so when did you get in? No one actually cares when you got in, but it's an icebreaker. For parents, it's, geez, can you believe that it's August already?

Where did the summer go? I really, I mean, listen, I really can't. And then it's going to be September. Jeez, can you be with September? Schools back already? Where did the time go? This is what people say when they get older. It happens.

It is what it is. All right. James Peserno at the Capital Spectator.com had a piece. All major asset classes are now posting year-to-date gains. He put ETFs for all the major asset classes. U.S. stocks, foreign stocks, emerging market stocks, emerging market bonds, U.S. bonds, tips, junk bonds, reits, all this stuff. Even commodities now eking out again, everything is up this year.

I guess which kind of makes sense when you figure that everything was down last year. The NASDAQ 100 is up 45% as of this morning. We're recording this on Tuesday, noon Eastern, correct? I don't want to mess you up with time change stuff again. I know that that's a pet peeve of yours, even though you don't have pet peeves. I have no pet peeves. Last week, somebody emailed me, said, hey, can you meet 9 a.m. Pacific Time? You know what I did?

I said, how about 11 Pacific Time? Credit you. The way it's supposed to be done. So markets are going crazy this year. It's only July, but, I mean, just a complete seat change from last year. It's, it's, it's total opposite. 2022 versus 2023.

Yeah. So this is the best performance through July of any year on record for the NASDAQ 100. That's a face melter right there. How is that what? This is, this has got to be tough for the people who were calling for an end of like the technology super cycle and tech was in a bubble. and growth is just too crazy. You had, what, a 15-month period maybe where it was like the reprieve from that

and now just right back on, right back on the horse. We are at the point in time where you're starting to see some signs that the market's getting a little frothy. People are getting a little bit excited. The junkie stocks are rallying. So Goldman Sachs believe, this is from Walter Bloomberg at Delta One. Goldman Sachs believe signs of capitulation are starting to emerge, and I'd say, yeah, they sure are.

Wait, so this is the other capitulation. So during a bear market, you look for capitulation of people, everyone's selling, and this is the capitulation of people buying. So Goldman Sachs publishes the prime book of global equities, and there's short selling and short covering, and there's been massive short covering over the last couple of weeks. This is a painful stat that I'm about to deliver from Goldman's. By the way, some of these charts come from at Daily Chartbook. This person publishes phenomenal charts.

I'm a subscriber, and I encourage you to check them out on Twitter at Daily Chartbook. Fundamental long-short managers have experienced nine consecutive days of negative alpha, which is the longest period since June 2017. So what's going up? The crap names that everybody's short. I'll use Carvana as an example and names that. are money losing in the sense that the companies are not making money and that's that's not great and then it always seems like this because human nature like the pendulum always swings

too far in either direction but it just seems like in recent years the extremes are more extreme of like the people who are getting punished are being punished a lot when things either when things go against them in a certain direction right when when the the speculative stuff got when it crashed, it got, I mean, the stock market was down 20%, but there was so many things that were down 70 to 90%. Right. And now when that stuff is coming back, the whoever was on the other side of it is getting crushed too. It just seems like the extreme movements are just getting further and further, doesn't it? Yes. Yeah, records all over the place. Speaking of, sentiment about equities against bonds is the highest it's been in 24 years. And I don't know exactly what's in here,

but it says, this is from Bloomberg, the index measure is futures positioning surveys, options activity, and fund flows. Did you see actually speaking of options? Wait, this is meaning that people are more optimistic about stocks than bonds? Relative to bonds in the last, since this goes back to 1998, which is kind of nuts, considering how well stocks have just done, the data that we just gave, and the fact that bonds are now actually a viable alternative. The fact that there's record, you know, so anyway, I'm not saying that a crash is coming.

In fact, I'm definitely not saying a crash. Let's get, that won't be very clear. But maybe, maybe no more new positions. Maybe if you're getting excited, just pump the brakes a little bit. Is part of that, do you think the fact that bonds got shellacked last year? And even though, even though yields are much higher now, that you're not, you're not seeing the fruits of that labor and a lot of bond positions are still underwater? In my opinion, this is more of a numerator thing. If bonds are at the denominator, I think this is not a bond story.

It's a stock story. People are just exciting and chasing because everything's working. Right? Like, stocks, stocks look great. And one more, one more side of like, God, I'm about to use the word that I don't like to use it. People are complacent. I don't know what else to say. So, so net. It is funny how how quickly that happens. It wasn't that quick. It took months. Months, but we went from a nasty, nasty bear market where people thought the world's coming to end. And now all of a sudden people are complacent in a bull market that has lasted for like two months. No, yeah, yeah. So net call volume. So call volume jumps to the highest level since late 2021. And you know what?

You know, that was a pretty hilarious environment. So record call, not record. Highest call volume since late 2021. And on the other side, the cost of buying a put has fallen to the lowest level on record. So everybody's buying call options. Nobody wants a put option. These are things that you typically don't see at the beginning of a rally, let's just say. It is funny because we know.

empirically, everything is cyclical in the markets, but it never feels like it's going to be cyclical when you're at the extremes. Like, it just feels like, oh, whatever, whatever's happening is going to last forever. And we know that's not true, and it is never going to be true, but you can't help but feel that way. I was on, Josh and I just did a podcast with Dan and Guy on the tape. And Josh made a point that recency bias is the most powerful behavioral thing. And you just said it. I think you guys are spot on. Whatever's happening today, Even though you know it can't last forever, you behave as if it's going to, right? And when I say you, I mean, people that are positioning and trading act as if whatever

happened to the last, pick your time frame, one week, three months, six months, whatever it is, that will happen going forward. And we just know that's not how markets work. All right. So why don't we zoom out a little bit? Did you read the new Movison piece for Morgan Stanley? I did. And I loved it and it's great.

But he did this piece. This feels like an update to a piece that he did like a couple of things. years ago. He's done this. Birth, death and worth creation? I don't think so. So that, no, this is one of his greatest hits. I'm positive he's done this before. Okay. He's done some of this, but. There's some, there's some new stuff in here, but this is, uh, anyway, listen, I've been visited the greatest hits all the time. I'm not throwing shade. It's great piece.

This is like the Mobus and Spotify playlist. It's like some of the best stuff. Yeah, it's great. So this was interesting. So fewer public, he talked about, we talked about this before. There's fewer public companies in the U.S. in 2022 than there were in 1976. But the fact, but now we have 1.5 as many, 1.5 times population, real GDP per capita is two times. What? You lost me. Okay. So, population right now is 1.5 times higher than it was in 1976. Okay. He's making the case and then- The population of what? People or companies? Of the United States. So just saying there's more people, GDP per capita is two-point-two times higher. And the number of firms was 1.5 times higher back then. So he's saying, they're saying research

estimate the gap in the U.S. is 5800 to 12,000 companies that, like, it should be that many higher if we were to say on the same trajectory as back then. But, oh, I thought he said, well, but the but is that a lot of those companies were microcap companies. Yes, yes. But it's also, should not exist. Yes, that's part of it. The other interesting thing to me, though, he shares this chart of the survival rate of IPO companies, the amount that survived their first five years and first seven years. I don't know. These, these numbers are, I guess aren't as high as it like anywhere from 30 to 40 percent, sometimes 50 percent and sometimes in some decades of IPO companies just fail to survive, five years even.

Does that number surprise you? It's a jungle out there. The failure rate is way higher than I would have thought. I mean, being a publicly traded company, that is the arena, right? Like just gladiators waiting to knife you. And a lot of it, because a lot of these companies, as he shows, they get, they get taken over or under. Right? It's not, it's not necessarily bankruptcies or delisting. Yeah, you're right. You're right. They could be bought out, but a lot of them. And he goes

through the paper, you can read it. But the other one is just this Besson Binder study that we've mentioned a ton of times about how there's been like 28,000 public companies in the U.S. since 1926. 60% of them destroyed $9.1 trillion of value. The 11,000 or more than 40% created the bulk of the value. And then he said there's a net wealth creation of $55,000. dollars from the stock market since 1926. More than 50 trillion was attributed to 2% of the sample. The top three names, Apple, Microsoft, and Exxon added almost $6 trillion alone. So the 50 trillion total net wealth that's been added from the stock market, $6 trillion has come from three stocks, which is pretty darn, and then this chart kind of shows the top 20 wealth creators. It's a lot of

names that you'd think Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Home Depot's on there, Berkshire, Walmart, Anyway, worth going through this. Great, great. I'd like to pull the charts out. I'm a chart guy. Yeah, great charts. I think one of the takeaways, and we've spoken about this from the best and bounder study. Yes, it's advocating for index funds, ultimately.

That's one of the main conclusions. But it's easy to poke holes in some of this data. In other words, who's buying at the IPO and then hold them forever? Right. Like, you could have good returns on a company, even if you don't buy it at its IPO and hold it for its lifetime. I don't think anybody's actually doing that. And then the other thing is that Mobeson pointed this out, like, yeah, General Electric

is on this chart. But that hasn't delivered Cheryl DeValue or IBM in what, 15 years? It depends when you bought it. So the recency bias talk, what is my favorite thing about the Wall Street Journal? When they find random people? When they find random people on the street and they give their, so this is, they found a strategic communication consultant in Pittsburgh. And here's some good stuff from her.

She says, her and her husband had buying short-term T bills with yields of nearly 5.5% through Treasury Direct. She said, how does it feel to know that we're outpacing our mortgage with treasuries? It feels good. And now that we're beating inflation, plus there's no state or local income tax. Actually, it feels great. That's fine, right? That's a great thing.

They locked into 3% mortgage. They're now earning 5.5% on T bills. That's a good thing. Here's where the extreme comes in. We aren't going to get rich on T bills, but we aren't going to lose it by rolling dice in the stock market. This is where she loses me. She said she got wrapped up in the meme stock craze of 2021, losing a couple thousand dollars after dipping her toes into active trading through GameStop shares.

Although that sum wasn't a big blow to her portfolio, she says it underscores how she feels about investing, taking a conservative, slow and steady wins the race approach to core holdings and reserving excess cash to play the market. This is where the extreme comes in where I played the stock market by trading meme stocks, so I'm never playing it again. She thought that was investing. Yes, and so now I can go into T-bills.

And 6% T-bills, which we're going to get pretty soon, And now that the Fed is raised and they could potentially raise again, we're not quite at 6% yet, but we're getting there or we're going to get there. I just think that extreme of going from, I speculated my face off in 2021 and lost some money. So now I'm just going to go to the safety of T-bills forever and avoid the stock market. That could work for a little while, but the long-term T-bill return over the very long-term called 100 years is like 3% per year, which is nominal. Nominal, which is effectively the inflation rate. I think you might earn 30 to 50 basis points over the rate inflation over the long-term in T-bills.

So she has a quote, I'm guaranteed not to lose. Or, hey, I'm guaranteed not to lose. CDs are easy to plan to fall and now they're paying very high rates. I'm taking advantage of that. Netpicking. But, well, if you do it over forever, you're guaranteed to lose. Forget about beating the stock market. You might not even beat inflation.

So, yeah, listen, there's nothing wrong with putting some of your money in and CD's earning 5%. I think it's a great option, but not for everything. Not for your future wealth. Unless you just want to have an extremely high savings rate, you can't keep all of your money in cash and expect to beat the rate of inflation substantially over the long term. It's just not going to happen. That's the extremes where, like, in 2021, I'm going crazy because rates are at zero. And now that rates are higher, I'm completely taking everything off the table.

That has to be balanced. Yes. Can we talk about this meme without making it too boring and reading the whole thing? Probably not. I think you're just going to have to read it. Okay. You're better reading this stuff than me. You do it. Thank you. So, credit to you. What we're looking at here is the scene in Goodwill Haunting Witch, I caught the It's Not Your Fault scene two nights ago.

It gets me every time. It got me, it got me, as it always does. Great movie. Great movie. Okay, so it's the scene at the bar, at the bar, where the guy tries to impress his his buddies or tries to impress the girls by dropping some knowledge and Matt Damon takes a big steamy dump on his forehead. So here's the quote. Good meme format here too. I was about to do the Boston accent. I'm not going to do that. Of course that's your contention. I'm sorry, let me just set the table. Last week we spoke about how people, young investors, don't we bring Graham anymore and then we saw this meme. A lot of people definitely agreed with us about that, that young investors

don't read Graham as much anymore. Of course, that's your contention. You're a first-year investor. You just got finished reading some deep value historian, Ben Graham probably. You're going to be convinced of net-nets until next month when you get to Warren Buffett. Then you're going to be talking about how Graham's ideas are antiquated and that you simply have to buy and hold quality, letting time arbitrage do its thing. That's going to last until next year. You're going to be in here regurgitating Fisher and Lynch talking about, you know,

the importance of placing more emphasis on qualitative analysis in your investment process. Shortly after that, you'll discover Drucker Miller, parroting that we should never invest in the present and that buying decisions should be based on what you believe the environment or prospects will be like 18 to 24 months from today. Just nailed it. That's like pretty much the exact format of that movie, of that line in the movie. And this comes from,

I don't know if this person stole it or if this is the creator, but the tweet is from At Investment Talk with 2K's Connemack. Well done to. I've created that meme. It's really, really a bravo. Nailed it. Nailed it. Yes.

All right. Ben and I had on Bruce Bond to talk about the ETF with zero downside risk that ruffled many feathers. Feathers were ruffled. Balchunist tweeted, Buffer ETFs have taken in over $5 billion this year, a 23% organic growth rate. It's now a $28 billion category. Black Rock just launched them too. I underestimated this category. There's clearly a lot of appetite. Okay. So we'll take a little victory lap here. When Ben and I first had Bruce Bond on the podcast in 2018, 18, yeah. Yeah, this, this immediately to us, I said, this is going to be, this is going to be a category

because investors love defined outcomes. They love their will. It's spelled out. I'm willing to give up this amount of upside in exchange for this amount of downside. Investing is all about tradeoffs with risk of reward, except most of the times you don't see, you don't explicitly see the tradeoff, right? You just sort of know what the range of outcomes is for stocks and bonds with this. It's like, no, no, no.

10% upside, 6% side. No, I don't want that one. 12% upside, 4% down. Whatever number is like you could pick whatever you're, whatever is suited for your interest and your risk tolerance. So that's why we were bullish on the category. Especially for retirees and financial advisor clients. People who have a decent amount of money and are just living off of their portfolio,

I think these are very appealing to that group. Ben, we like to talk about investor positioning, do we not? Yes. Especially, as we spoke about earlier, especially when it's like at the extremes. You know, I don't, I think for the most part, positioning is just good for talking about it. But like when something's, you know, really making a multi-year move, I, you know, I like to pay attention. All right. So, JPMorgan, Treasury Client Survey Index.

our client survey indicates that long duration positioning is more widely held now than at any point over the last five to 10 years. So long duration, call it whatever, 20, 30 year bonds. That's where all of the juices. So they're very, very sensitive to interest rate movements. And so this would indicate that these people are positioned for the long end of the curve to fall. Well, guess what's breaking out today to a multi-year high? So the 30 year is at 4.1% that, is the highest level since November 2022. So I guess, uh, oof, cloud off sides a little bit.

Oof to the positioning. The thing, the funny thing about rates is, I think rates rising were way more worrisome when inflation was rising. But now it seems that rates are rising because economic growth, at least estimated economic growth is accelerating again. Don't you think that this, this rate rise is a lot, is as much, so much, much, much more. of a better thing than it was 12 months ago? Well, absolutely, because rates were rising because the Fed was jacking up rates, right? And then, of course, the rates got inverted. But, yeah, you're exactly right.

The Fed controls the shortest part of the curve. When you're talking about, forget about 10 years, 30 years, that's like economic growth type stuff. That's economic and inflation expectations for way out there. So I think that this is a good thing. I just think it would be kind of funny if the Fed wanted to jack up rates to slow inflation, if rates actually went higher from economic growth re-accelerating than it did from the Fed jacking rates up. Which is, I don't know, it's possible if the economy keeps going.

So credit to the Wall Street Journal for beating me to the rich session thing. I thought I planted my flag on that one. I was proven wrong. They got me there. Last week, the Wall Street Journal had a piece about what Fed rate hikes. Much of America's consumer debt is still writing ultra-low interest rates. The whole point of the article was, why haven't higher rates hurt the economy yet? Because the consumer locked in such low rates.

I beat them to this one. This is not a Grand Rapids hedge. I've been pounding the table on this one for a while. I wrote a piece about a week before this. I'm just facts. Okay. So here's some more interesting stuff from the Wall Street. Wait, hang on.

The question is, like, the Fed keeps saying the full impact of our actions has yet to be felt, right? They keep saying that. They keep saying that. Why? As Ben's about to explain, consumers, a lot of the, the debt's not floating. Most of it is fixed. Same thing with corporations. How many times do we say the SEP 500, like 90% of the debt is long-term fixed?

Right. So here's another example. In the depths of the pandemic, Alex and Cynthia Durbin refinance our mortgage at 2.75%. they built up their savings by spending less than paid off a car loan and student debt. That means the family's balance sheet didn't take a hit when the Fed started raising aggressively last year. It's given a tremendous amount of breathing room, Durbin said, of his mortgage rate. And then they show the share of households debt that adjusts with market interest rates.

And in the 80s and 90s, this was like got up to 40%, I'm guessing people got into the adjustable rate mortgage or the adjustable rate stuff in the 80s and has fallen ever since. And now it's just a little over 10% of debt that adjusts with rates, meaning it's all fixed and locked in. So it hasn't been, as of the first quarter, only 11% of outstanding household debt carried rates that fluctuated with benchmark rates, according to Moody's.

Households only have to pay 9% of their disposable income to stay current on their debts in the first quarter, according to the Fed. That is above where it was at the depths of pandemic, but way below post-crisis average. People just locked their debt in for so long

that it's not going to be a problem for a long time, I feel like, for consumers. Yeah, now, for companies and people that are exposed to higher rates, oh, they're feeling it. It hurts. It sucks. But this is why the economy is not coming unglued because most people just aren't impacted by rising rates. Yes, exactly. So I want to talk now about government debt. Okay. So I posted this one on Twitter last week. This is a statement. I'm not making any opinions. The U.S. economy has grown by more than $5 trillion since the start of the pandemic in 2020. So it went from $21 trillion in change

to $26 trillion in change. What's the matter? Your legs getting tired? You know, I don't know. I just felt like switching it up. But it's standing all day. Okay. Actually, and Josh and I went on a decent walk, so.

90% of the day I use the standing desk. So I posted this saying that, you know, the economy has grown by $5 trillion. And I know Twitter people are not real life, but everyone on Twitter, well, of course, but how much did the U.S. government print? How much money did we borrow to get that? And I want to say, unequivocally, government spending that leads to good outcomes, that's a good thing.

Like, obviously, we don't want the government to be wasteful. But if the government's spending money, I think some people assume that, like, before, I don't know, 2008, there was never any intervention from the Fed or from the government. How do you think we got, like, the such people look at the 50s and 60s as this glorious time, like they're nostalgic for that period again? How do you think we paid for World War II? Yes. How do you think we got this wonderful middle class? Because coming out of the war, there was a GI bill. The government basically backstopped the building of suburbia. They backstopped and put insurance up on the home builders to build houses. How do you think people got cheap houses back then? It wasn't because people were bootstrapping and doing it on their own.

The government backstopped a lot of that. The government spent a ton of money. That's what got us out of the Great Depression and brought us into the 50s. It's the government spending. That's what did it. So I thought you were saying people in the 50s walk up at 4 a.m. and meditators. Well, they had a good morning routine. Ernie Tedeski said about 0.4% of Q2's 2.4% real GDP growth came from the construction of manufacturing structures such as factories. The last time construction contributed so much to quarterly growth was 1981. And a lot of that is because the government did this chip thing where they're incentivizing companies to build. Did you see this frying pan chart thing? This is a really good take from Alex Williams, who is at Employer America, and he's comparing gross domestic product and personal consumption expenditures and state and local

government, and he calls them frying pan charts because in the 2008 crisis, they crashed and went way below trend, and now all these economic charts are coming back to trend. So it's shaped like a frying pan. It looks like a frying pan? Think about it, down, flat, up. Took me a minute to find it too. You'll get it. Do you have to turn my head?

Yeah, turn it to 45 degrees. Oh, there it is. All right, I guess. Sure. And the point is that. that like we we totally underspent coming out of the the great financial crisis and it's almost like we needed to go through that period to do it to get to do it better the next time and now we're back on trend on all these economic policies and I think my biggest takeaway here can we at least

agree that fiscal policy is like 10 times more important than monetary policy for the economy I think monetary policy is definitely important for the markets and a lot of pieces of it but I think fiscal policy in terms of moving the economy in the right direction is way more important. So what caused the pan, so what caused us to go below trend, he's saying what? It was because all that we did was monetary experiments after the GFC and not enough fiscal response. Is that it? The government did do enough to help bring that back and how homeowner is in. I will definitely agree that fiscal has a more direct impact, right? But monetary policy, as we just live through an experience and explained, monetary policy can only do so much when so much of your debt is fixed.

If you are in an economy, like a developing economy where I'm guessing most of the debt is floating, monetary policy can have a massive impact. But for the United States in 2003, yeah, fiscal policy is at this point, no question more important than monetary policy. And I also, I've flip-flopped on this like six times now. Right after the pandemic, I said, now fiscal policy is going to be used after every crisis going forward. And then we had inflation and I flipped the other way. And I said, no, there's no way they're going to use it. Now that we're seeing the positive effects of this, I think it's going to depend on who

is in charge politically because, I mean, I'm sorry, but the fiscal experiment that we did, it's never going to be as big as this going forward. But I don't see how you, if you're weighing pros and cons, couldn't say that the benefits far outweighed the downsides on this fiscal policy experiment that we had and that I think we could be seeing a sea change here. If you look at what the United States did versus the other countries and how far they've fallen behind, it's because we use the bazooka and it's helped. And we have low unemployment and inflation is falling and the economy is booming again. I think, I think it's on the table again. I'm doing the double flip-flop

here. Andrew Ross Sorkin tweeted, the self-checkout at the airport today, ask whether I'd like to tip 15, 20, or 25%. It is a self-checkout. What is happening? It is getting out of control. It really is. Can we put the self, can we put a tip button on YouTube? If you like this podcast, tip us 25%.

There we go. Hey, what do you tip room service? Okay, good question. I'm all over the place with this, but go ahead. My very first job was a busboy at Minervas. Google here right now. A restaurant and the Park Place Hotel. and part of that service was taking food from the kitchen to people's room service.

What? I'm sorry. I just looked at the number, but finish your thought. And I always felt as someone bringing up the tray to someone's room, the busboys, we always felt that we should get a bigger tip for room service. So what are you, are you asking for a percentage for me? You know, my bad. I miss, I didn't explain this properly because when I saw the number, it says 15 to 20, percent. I'm not a room service guy, okay? I don't do it. I'm not judging. I know people

happen to love room service. I'm not, it's just not what I do. What I meant was, and it says 50 to 20 percent, what I meant was, and I Google it how much should I tip room service? What I meant was how much should I tip cleaning service at hotel? That's what I meant. Housekeeping. How much should you leave? Yeah, that's what I meant. How long are you going to stay for? The other question is Because a lot of hotels don't do it anymore. You have to actually request like 24 hours in advance to get your room cleaned. Apparently, I'm a very generous tipper, which credit to me, I already know I'm a very good tipper. What do you leave?

I take pride of my tipping. So I said to Robin, I only have $30. Do you have any money? I was there three nights. She said, how much do you need to tip? I said, I don't know, more than that, we've been here for three nights. So she Googled it and it says, housekeeping, one to $5 per night. What the hell?

That's ridiculous. I bet if we did a survey, probably 70% of people do not tip cleaning people at hotels. One to $5 per, I mean, okay. Duncan says you're causing inflation and tipping. You're the problem here. So, well, listen, I grew up in the hospitality business. I get it. So I tip 30 and I gave a $25 room casino chip.

Yeah, from your winnings, huh? By the way, I forgot to, I think I forgot to tell you this. Did I tell you this? What happened with my credit card? I can't remember if I told that story. You lost it at the restaurant. Did I tell you the outcome? And someone else got it, right?

Someone else walked away with your credit card. So did I tell you that I spoke to the owner? So what are they going to give you? So here's what they said. They're like, ah. You think someone snagged it and tried to use it? No, no, no, no. No, she gave it to somebody by accident.

Because I saw they were charging at like Costco and gas station. It wasn't, you know, criminal, wasn't mischievous behavior. It was an honest mistake. um so i'm like i said i don't even i'm not like asking for anything i just want you to guys know like i'm kind of annoyed this is my main credit card all my bills are tied to here and they're like yeah man i'm sorry like that happens that you know here's what we recommend like every time you you get a drink just swipe and close out and then just you know tip when you're done which is kind of annoying but okay and then you know he was like just

you know next time you hear let me know i'll buy you a drink and i was like i feel like the the it felt inequitable like this is major inconvenience. So anyway, I went back to the bar this week and I ordered a vodka on the rocks. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I gained five pounds. I know if you can tell. I gained five pounds. To what you eating this summer? Middle-aged. Gained five pounds. So I got a vodka on the rocks. And on the receipt, it said $13 for the vodka, $4 for the rocks. Now, I don't mind paying $17 for the vodka. But that's a weird way to that's a weird way to that's a weird. way to break it out. Yeah, just, just write $17. And so I asked the bartender just,

hey, what's with? I'm like, I'm like, and I, I preface that. I'm like, I'm like, I'm not complaining. I'm just curious. Why do you put the charge for the rocks instead of just writing $17? And, and she was like, well, because if it's just a shot, then it's like one ounce, but with the, with the, with the rocks, it's like, whatever is. What if you would have said I want a vodka neat? It's a good question. But anyway, but the owner was there. He saw me talking to to her and sort of jumped in. And I wasn't, again, I was not like causing a scene. I was literally just, I was smiling.

Just make a conversation. And you know what he did? He did not buy me by vodka. Did he pay for your rocks? No, nothing. I don't know if you knew it was me, but I'm bald. How could he forget me? And I was only a week ago.

There's a lot of you. I guess. Oh, I had a little credit card one too. We got an email from Wayfair a couple weeks. We've been buying some outdoor furniture. Hey, we got to doubt. we got a someone logged into your account from some other place was this you or not and it wasn't so went on our wayfar account and someone had charged three two hundred fifty dollar gift cards

on a wayfar account so like you was it george like you we had to cancel our credit card and then all the stuff that was tied to it my wife had to go change and it's a huge pain but did i ask did i ask wayfair for like a new patio furniture set for my inconvenience no i just canceled it should have well hang on i didn't ask the guy for anything i asked I asked you what I should ask for, but I didn't. I just, I just said, you know, it's annoying. Yeah, but it's also annoying to close out your tab every single time. Leaving your tab open is kind of a bar move. Like, right? It's just easier. Yeah, it's easier. Should I, should I, should want to close your tab out? No, leave it open. That's a great feeling, right? No, we're here

for the, we're here for the time being. Leave it open. Yeah. Zillow did some sort of survey, And it says more homeowners say they are either listing their home for sale or considering selling their home. Did I say hair? And then, did I say hair? Yeah. And in the next three years. Now, I wonder if there's probably a lot of factors I play here. I wonder if like, for example, in Q2, 2021, you weren't selling your house.

There was a lot more buyers and sellers, right? You're still in the pandemic. True. but that was like the height of the, I could see this, this stuff thawing out eventually. People are going to, after a while, the shock of the 3% mortgage is going to wear off. People are going to have more equity and they're going to go, you know what, let's just do it. Like, it's going to be tough to go to like a 6% or 7% mortgage, but we'll be able to refinance. People are eventually going to say, we're not going to be beholden to this mortgage rate for

our whole lives just because it's a great financial deal. Eventually people are going to say, screw it. Let's just rip the bandit off and do it. It's going to happen. Ben, you made the case that during the next recession, people are going to to tap their home equity? Big time. What if, what if when rates come down, people refinance and all of that spending, all that savings gets spent back into the economy and then no recession? That's what I'm, no, that's what I'm saying. That was my point, exactly. You just made it for me.

That, like, that's going to be the floor for people for spending. Like, if something, if their income falls or they, whatever, they're going to pull that equity out and spend it. That's my case. Oh, well, we're saying, we're saying the same thing slightly different. I'm saying people are going to refinance, and then they're going to have more money to spend. You're saying people to take the money out of their house. Oh, yeah, right. Yes. So I think both.

But there aren't going to be that many people who have the ability to refinance once it's a cash out refinance. That's what I think is going to happen. You're going to get a wave of cash out refinancing and home equity lines of credit, and people are going to use that as spending to make up for any shortfall. So Zillow is, who has a pretty good readthrough into the housing market. They expect home prices to rise 6.3% from June to June. How about that?

How's the Zillow stock doing? You still holding? I'm still holding. They are reporting earnings tonight. Okay. It's up 70% year to date. I sold Airbnb. Because you know what?

I mean, I'm not Airbnb reports tomorrow, too. I'm not like super long-term bullish on the stock, but I do like the company. I thought it was just a opportunity to make some money, so I made 30% to move down. You still own an Airbnb? Yeah. I'm going to hold that one forever, I think, until the CEO leaves. All right. Len Kiefer at Freddie Mac has some good stuff on the mortgage rate lockdown that we haven't seen before.

The mortgage rate lockdown? Yeah, like the people being stuck in their house and how much they've saved. I think this is like an annuity stream that people have created by not having to go to market rates. So he said in a rising rate environment, homeowners with a fixed mortgage provided by Freddie Mac have locked in over $50,000 per household in value. He did like basically the present value of the savings you're getting between what the rate you's locked in versus what the rate is. now. We estimate that considering the company's single-family mortgage portfolio, homeowners of a fixed-rate mortgage financed by Freddie Mac have locked in savings of a collective $700 billion in total value. This is equal to about 25% of the outstanding unpaid principal balances

in their single-family mortgage portfolio. Just like, I don't think people thought through the ongoing savings that people have opened, opened up on a monthly basis in their biggest, for most people, for most households, their mortgages that by far their biggest payment they make, right, of their monthly budget. And you've locked in a low rate for that or a low payment for that from now until whenever you get out of it. Right? And it happens, it's a monthly stipend, essentially, that you've locked in. And I don't think people thought through how much those savings continuing forward would give people a margin of safety that it has. So it's like savings. So Jake at Economic did a... That's such a good point. Like if my mortgage

rate was not three-ish, whatever, but if my mortgage rate was five and a half percent, six percent, that would be another, I don't know, I'm making this out, $25,000 a year, whatever it is. It's a ton of money. So look, Jake at Economic did this. Person A has a $500,000 loan at 7 percent. They put $5,000 into retirement per year with 10 percent returns. Their balance is $822,000 in 30 years. Pretty good.

Person B has a $500,000 loan at 2.5 percent. They put $5,000 into the market per year, plus mortgage savings. of the 2.5% versus 7%, retirement balance in 30 years is 3.5 million. So if you just invested the difference, that's how much bigger your balance would be. It's a huge amount of money that you're saving every month. Wow.

Wait, did I say, did I tell you how much I love Jerome Powell? As a Fed chairman, I think he's one of the best. Just great. Is someone vacuuming there or what's going on? you know what what is that yep that's what i thought it was it's good it's the coffee grinder okay i'm sorry grinding your own coffee beans i'm not a coffee guy it's a bit pretentious like you can't just buy the coffee like in the little capsules already made that's a great point the only time i buy whole beans is if as when i buy them by accident right i mean what's

i don't like buy a bunch of tomatoes and make my own ketchup for my burgers what's the point of grind your own coffee beans does it really taste that much better apples to apples but point taken. Listen, I'm on your side. All right. I'm looking for some good news for first-time home buyers because I feel like it's always bad news.

So, this is from the Washington Post. Rent is finally cooling. See how much prices have cooled in your area. They show that rent growth in the country is back to pre-pendemic norms growing around 1.1 to 3% per year. The biggest reason for that slowdown, more housing.

Nearly 1 million new apartment units and all-time high are under construction around the country. 520,000 expected hit the market this year, $460,000 next year. So look at this chart here, more new apartments under construction today than any time in the past 50 years. This eventually has to be a good thing for the housing market. I would love it if we just built more houses. That would be a quicker way there.

But if we're building more apartments and rents are coming down, eventually that has to lead to lower demand in the housing market and potentially opening up supply, correct? Is that fair or not? That makes sense. Again, I would rather just not use the workaround and just build more houses. but I think this eventually will be good for first-time homebuyers. I think more supplying apartments is a good thing for that. Ben, last week, I was asking you, like, dry powder, what does it really mean? Is it, you know, a number that's sort of nonsensical?

Bank of America tweeted, Bank of America has a chart showing private equities have a record amount of dry powder that could be deployed to offset some impact of tighter credit. So they show the dry powder, and then they show the dry powder as a percent of total bank credit. And both lines are going up dramatically. And I thought, come on. There's no way. If lending standards are increasing or if they're more restrictive, then these companies are not going to step in. They're probably going to follow the banks.

And actually, actually, the CEO of Lazard, who knows, who actually knows about the space versus. This is saying that their borrowing costs are much higher, so the fact that they have dry powder is just going to help, like, take away some of those costs or help make them easier to eat those costs. If companies aren't being able to get funded the way that they were, because lending restrictions are increasing from banks, then these companies will be able to step in and fill the void. And I thought that was nonsense. But the CEO from Lazzard says, no, actually, that's not nonsense. Here's a quote. And this is, by the way, this is from the transcript. Huge shout to them.

We're going to use them later on in the show. They do a great job reporting consolidated snippets on earning season. And, oh, boy, is it earning season. Combining quarter with the transcript is a very good thing if you want to know what's going with companies. Yeah. So it says credit funds are disintermediating banks. So here's the quote.

What this is really addressing is the rise, the significant and very substantial rise in the private credit markets and is accessing that source of capital. It's a very flexible, very creative source of capital that now can be. competes, if not equally, even ahead of what traditional financing banks, public, financing banks, public markets do for our corporate client base and now restructuring client base. And we're kind of making sure we're talking to all the sources of capital on the other base. Anyway, you got the point.

So maybe these are viable sources for non-bank lending. Yeah, that makes sense. The other problem for private equity is, though, this is probably a better business right now for them than a leveraged buyout, because if they're doing a leveraged buyout, it's costing them more to finance something, too. Good point. I do wonder if they're pulling back on leverage. You would assume so. You would think. Okay. All right. So here's from the transcript. So they break it down.

So the Catholic is this. The consumer is very resilient. And this quotes from the CEO of Tripoli, the CEO of MasterCard, and the CFL of Visa. And they're all saying the same thing. I'm not going to read all these quotes because they're all saying the consumer is demonstrating how resilient they are. That's from Chipotle. MasterCard is saying consumer spend across all spending bands from affluent to low, remain stable. visa said, I mean, almost word for word, the exact same thing. Our data did not indicate any behavior change across consumer segments. So any sort of, I'm using air quotes, credit crunch from the regional banks, forget about

that. That just never came to fruition. I mean, that feels like it was 15 years ago at this point. The banking crisis, crisis, you know, in quotes, does that not feel like it was so long ago and it was like five months, four months ago? Yeah, I'll say what I said then again. I do believe that if the Fed didn't do what they did, it could have turned into something really, really nasty.

If they didn't take it as seriously as they did and they just let it go. After our talk yesterday, we have a talk about coming out next week with John Neff from Akri Capital Management, which I always thought was Aker. I was totally off there. They're a concentrated portfolio of like 18 stocks, and their biggest holding is MasterCard. And did his take of MasterCard's business fundamentals versus a stock price? Did that not make you want to buy the stock after listening to that? I did buy the stock.

You bought it yesterday? Did you? I did. Well, listen, I mean, the stock looks like it's breaking out. So I'm an easy, I'm easily influenced. What can I say? All right. But I bought a starter position.

I want to add. Okay. Keeping your trading head on, what's your tell for if you're right or wrong? Are you with price only? Well, I'm going to give MasterCard a little bit more time. So if it falls 8%, I'm likely to add. There's some stocks that I'm like, no, I'm not losing money in the stock. If it doesn't break out here, I'm out.

This is not one of them. It's also, you know what the market cap of the stock is, right? It's bigger than I thought. It's like $3. It's like $370 billion. It's a big company. Yeah, but, okay. Credit to Uber, they, Dara, their CEO, was the first CEO to publicly come out and

said, all right, the game has changed. Wall Street does not, doesn't care about growth anymore. They care about profitability. And they achieved their, first their first quarter of operating

games. I'm sure there's better examples of there's other examples of this, but is Uber not

the only example of a VC started fundup that essentially ate a lot of the costs for you

up front and then was successfully got all these clients just hooked to their service and then

were able to raise prices down the line, right? They were subsidizing cheap rides forever

and then once people got hooked on it, they could raise the prices and people said, I'm used to the service. I love it so much. I'm sure there are other examples,

but this is a damn good one. So the company, the company lost cumulatively $31.5 billion since 2014, which is a hell of a battle ship to turn around. So sounds like a lot. They report, they made $326 million this quarter. Last year at this time, they lost $7.13, then they lost $4.95, then it was $140, then $2.60, and they made it. So credit to them. The stock is down. 6% today, it's up like 90% of the year. So maybe not super surprising. Again, this just goes to the fact that, you know, expectations are super high going to the quarter and, you know,

stocks have been on fire. We've gone, again, going back and forth on my pendulum example, we've gone from expectations were way too low to now expectations are high again. Yeah. There's another substack or blog platform aeronaut. This guy, Thomas Reiner, has some good stuff. And he posted on like travel and leisure stock performance. And the year to date for the airlines, ride share.

So even like DoorDash is killing it. Booking an expedient, Airbnb, and then cruise lines, hotels, car rental. I mean, all these stocks are on fire. I know this, it's a lot of this has to do the fact that Uber went public and at a very weird time. But here's Uber's returns by years since 2020. They're up 71% in 2020, down almost 20% in 2021, down, 40% last year and up 100% this year. Wild ride. Yes. This guy's a chart showing domestic airline fares for 2019, 23, and 22. And it looks like in June and July, we are below prices paid in

2022, which is a good thing. And 2022, just a little bit of inflation there. Just a little. Just a little. Here's a great tweet from Wasteland Capital. By the way, I saw a stat about Snap, and we were joking that. It feels like it falls 15% every time it reports. It just gets slaughtered every time it reports earnings, it seems like, yes. I really think for the last four quarters, it did decline double digits. All right, so here's a tweet. Snap has paid out a total of $8.2 billion in freshly issued stock since its 2017 IPO.

The company's market cap today is $16 billion, and it has never showed a profit. It's lost $9.2 billion since the IPO. Look at the long-term chart of this. It looks like a shit coin. They invented a literal money printer for themselves. I'm looking at SNAP. That does seem wrong. I mean, you have to pay your employees, I guess, and incentivize them.

But yeah, I don't know. Moving on. The journal did a good post on Five Ways Car Buying has changed forever. Slim pickings. Was the first one that you now need to use a car broker to buy a car? car? Well, you do. How many people, how many people have emails over the years asking for your carbroker's number? Lots. Lots. Slum pickings. They're just not making as many cars. The days of the lots being full with hundreds of cars that's gone. Stubberly high prices, lower industry-wide

sales, fewer lease deals and more expensive used cars. So the average price for a new car is up 36% from the end of 2019. I don't see this going back to where it was. The average monthly payment for a new car is $7333? Jeez. That's nuts. Well, part of it is because you're paying 8% to borrow, right? That is so much money. You know what the MSRP ranges for a 2023 Honda Accord, which is what I'd be driving

if I didn't have kids or if I didn't need it. A 23 Honda Accord? Yeah. 27,000? Yeah, it starts at 27 to 37. That, that'd be, I'd be driving a $27,000 new Honda cord, and I'd drive it for 15 years if I could. By that, those are much, much, much nicer than they were, like, when we were in high school. I've always loved an accord.

Why? It's just the most vanilla car. I don't mean, not in a bad way. I'm an A to B guy. I'm an A to B, and it's a, yep, that's it. And it's a nice car. Okay, here's an interesting one from Morningstar, John Reckenthaler, looked at the pension or the retirement income, the median person had, median retiree had in 1973. versus 2021. And he broke it down by Social Security, pension, and then he also gave pension

participation, which everyone assumes that, like, everyone had a pension back in, like, the 60s and 70s. He said it was actually closer to 44%. And it was the pension payment he received is right around Social Security. That's a great myth bus, by the way. Everyone had a pension. No, not true. Right. 44% of people. So he said you received $166 and a monthly income for the Social Security. And if you apply that to $2021, it's like $1,000 a month. He said, the median private sector retiree was getting about $1,500, $1,500 a month in retirement income between Social Security pension, and then they didn't have, like, defined contribution plans back then, right? There's no 401k. There's no IRA versus someone in 2021 received more like

$1,900 a month in retirement income. And a big part of that is because Social Security was up by 60% in that time, which is a pretty darn good deal. And again, I'm not a government sponsor here, Booster, but easily one of the most successful government programs in history. I know people complain about how much the government spends on Social Security and Medicare and stuff. That program alone has kept millions of people out of poverty in retirement. Anyway, I know we always talk about how much worse things have gotten for people. This is a situation where things have gotten better for retirees in the last five decades or so. Duncan said I'm causing inflation with my tipping.

No, you know he's really causing inflation? Taylor Swift. But the average concert goer spent an average of $1,327. My family is bringing up this average because my wife and daughter went to a Taylor Swift concert in Detroit. And, yes, I can tell you, a lot of money spent. I think I did a bad parenting thing. Okay. What do you got? So last night, Robin told me that Kobe was wanting to make a wish upon a star, which was very cute.

So we went outside and she told me that he was going to wish for an Xbox. But he's not getting an Xbox. But he does not play Mario Card on like a Switch. So I said, Kobe, make sure that you wish for something that you might actually get. Because I said he's not getting an Xbox. So he's like, okay, okay, okay. So I said, did you do it? He's like, yeah.

Wait, wait, no, no, no. Yeah. Okay, okay, I'm done. I'm done. So we came inside. said, do I tell you what I wish for? I said, no, if you tell me, it might not come true. So I said, what you do is write it down on a piece of paper. And, and so I took, so he said, how do you spell? So he said, like, I wish for. He said, how do you spell for F-O-R? So he said, yeah,

F-O-R. So he put it, so he put it under his pillow. He folded it up. I said, run to the bathroom. And I said, go brush your, go brush your teeth so that I could see what he wrote. Yeah. So this is what he wrote down. So you see the four? Yeah. What are you write down? I wished four. I can't get it.

A trillion dollars. You see? T-O-I-L. It says T-R-I-L, and then on the next line, E-I-N, and then on the bottom I, D-O-I-L-R-E-S, a trillion dollars. Now, I don't speak to Kobe of money. He's six years old. You know what I mean? Like, he knows what money is, but I'm not like a psycho that talks about dividend investing.

Right. So the reason why I say, I think. I did a bad parent thing was this morning I put a $100 bill into that piece of paper. And when he woke up, he was so, so excited, like beyond excited. But I think I did a bad thing for two reasons. Number one, $100 is way too much money. If I gave him five, you would have been thrilled. Gets you excited. And the fact that I gave him his wish right after he wished for it, I feel like I should have made him wait for it. So I called Robin when I got off the train this morning. I said, you know what? I don't think that was, I think I did the wrong thing. I don't

think that was good parenting. The funny thing is, is they, they assume that one bill is worth the same amount, no matter what it says, right? But he knew it was 100. So he was like super, super stoked, but I wish I could take it the back. We learned available parenting lesson this week to our twin six-year-olds went off to camp, just a day camp. They get bused there and bused back, and they go to camp, and there's a little store at the camp where they can spend their money to buy candy or whatever. And the camp said, put $5 a day on your thing. And let the kids spend like $5 there on whatever, little trinkets. And so my boy put $25 on their thing the first day, and it's like a credit card, essentially.

And they get home, and my son's got his arms full of stuff, a big stuffed animal and candy and a pen and all these little trinkets. And he's like, I can't believe you guys gave it $25 bucks. So we put $25 up front, and they just spent the whole thing. And so I got to work on budgeting a little bit. So now they assume $25 a day. We got a few comments from readers, right? Oh, go ahead. Or listeners.

Which one? Oh, so this, I thought this is a great email from Trevor. Michael and Ben, showing some support for Michael. Sorry you lost your Maui Gems to the ocean, but take no shame for quality sunglasses. The world looks 10 times better through H.C. L. Bronze, especially in the water, period. Makes her an interesting topic. And this is why I'm reading the email. What products in your life do you treat as we call BIFL, buy it for life?

Things even early on you should go for high quality and keep forever. Mine is a Japanese knife. High quality, beautiful, and it makes me care about keeping in a good condition. $250 but going on 10 years strong and well worth of my books. That's such a great point. Like some stuff you pay for, but I don't know that I have anything. I don't know if I'm like cheap or like I don't have great knives. I have terrible pans.

The easy one for me that I learned right away is we didn't buy a starter home. I didn't want to buy a place that I had like to fix up. That's a great answer. We reached for our first house and spent up a little at the top. of our range because we knew we wanted and we lived there for 10 years as opposed to buying something that was cheaper that we would have been fixing up and tried to flip in like four years or whatever. That's a great answer. Matter of fact, I bought new pants from Amazon and they're horrible. They were like 140 bucks and they're just, they're garbage. So I might get like grown up

pots and pans. I'm also, I'm sorry, I'm calling BS on Trevor here. There's no way that that things look better through a night spare of sunglasses. Remember those? I'm sorry. The world does not look better in certain pairs. By the way, I said that I looked like Neo. What I meant was, I really, I look, I look like Morpheus, not Neo. I met Morpheus. The bolt, Morphus bald. Yes, good point. All right, one more. On male bikinis, per your comment on the podcast this weekend, whether people actually wear Speedos, it goes beyond that. I was posted to Brazil in, uh, the early 2010s where Speedos called Asunga locally are ubiquitous. It was a shock for Americans when they denied, when they were denied entry into local water parks because

they used American bathing suits, which Brazilians consider dirty and inappropriate. appropriate. It is a funny cultural difference. On the other hand, I now live in Indonesia and most people dive in pools or ocean with all their clothes. What? Yeah. I, cultural, I guess. A lot of people thought it's funny that you called it a male bikini as opposed to a speedo. I don't know. I guess, you're right. It's a speedo. All right. So I saw, I saw Oppenheimer, but before we talked about Oppenheimer, did we talk about the drop last week? I brought it up a couple weeks ago. Okay. So that came out before Gaintelefini died. I mean, I'm sorry, after he died. So he shot the movie, died, and then the movie came out. Thoughts? I enjoyed it thoroughly. I thought Tom Hardy's

Brooklyn accent was ridiculous, but that's my type of movie. It's dark and gritty and a little dirty. I liked it. Tom Hardy's good in that, right? Besides the accent. He's good in everything. All right, so Oppenheimer. I saw it in IMAX. Thank God. I would say it's an incredible movie an incredible achievement that I didn't care for I thought you were going to love it

I'm surprised to hear that so now there's a this requires I mean a deeper discussion because I think most people loved it or at least liked it Was it too long? Oh it was way too long

The last hour if you saw the movie the last hour just completely dragged for me obviously there's parts about it that I loved like parts I'm not going to revisit the movie I thought the story that they told it was a little bit weird, confusing, hard-to-follow, and disjointed. And if I saw it at home,

I'd say this was a piece of shit. So I think one of the reasons why I found it tolerable and partly enjoyable was because I saw it on a 400-foot screen or whatever. So all credit to Nolan. I thought you're going to be blown away. I'm shocked by this review. All people, all credit to Nolan, people have different tastes. And for me personally, just it didn't do it for me. I'm like a, I'm like a six-four. But listen, if you loved it, I understand. You know, people, people enjoy it. Just wasn't for me. Personal preference. Okay. Wasn't for me. Did not have...

You know what? Here's the thing. I wasn't really entertained. I didn't have fun. You know? And even being able to appreciate what he did, like, the fact that he did it was incredible. Just didn't land for me. Reading the...

I'm still reading the book. It's not exactly an uplifting story, his life. It's kind of dark and a little depressing, even though it's like crazy how smart this guy was. I got a new show that I'm halfway through. My wife and I flew through... I watched the first episode of that. this. And I told my wife, he said, all right, I'm going to stop now, watch the first episode, see if you want to watch it with me. She watched, she's in. It's called Outer Range on

Amazon Prime. It came out. I think I saw an interview with Josh Brolin. He stars. I'm a huge Josh Brolin fan. I think he's great. He's incredible. Wait, did Amazon make this? Amazon show. Is it a sci-fi? Is it a sci-fi western? If you watch it, you think at the beginning, you think, oh, this is like Yellowstone, but a little more serious than Yellowstone, because it's like the rancher whose ranch has been in his family forever. But then there's a sci-fi element of it. And I think the show would be good. even if they didn't have the sci-fi. But it does have the sci-fi, and it's enough to keep me interested.

And the first three episodes, I don't know how they're going to land the plane on this one, but I'm enjoying it so far. Really good cast, a bunch of people you'd know and like. I don't know how they're going to land the plane, but I like it so far. There we go. Anything else? All right. Animal Spiritspod at gmail.com.

Thank you for listening. We will see you next time.