Animal Spirits Podcast - (Fixed) The Netflix of Financial Advice (EP.75)

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

On today's episode we discuss how to pay for college on the cheap, why is financial literacy in the U.S. so low, is there ever going to be a solution for the retirement savings crisis, the Netflix model for financial advice, why the financial services industry is like the fast food industry, there are plenty of rich people to go around, the Lyft IPO, how much money would it take to get you off social media for good, why Michael is the Brett Favre of writing about the CAPE ratio, credit card recommendations is a big business, should financial advisors have their own advisor, where the 'Bell' in Tace Bell came from, why The Avengers movie franchise is just like the finance industry and much more.   Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Like us on Facebook And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Animal Spirits, the podcast that takes a completely different look at markets and investing, hosted by Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson, two guys who study the markets as a passion and invest for all the right reasons. Michael Battenick and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's wealth management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritt Holt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Ritthold's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities

discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal talking about literacy, financial literacy, and high schools. And they spoke about this kid, Owen, who was going to go to Western Kentucky University after graduating, but he decided instead to go to a community college and then transfer for two years because he found out about the cost of going to college. It's kind of funny because when we always talk about the growing cost of college, my brother would always say, I wonder if you'd be better off just being a manager at a fast food place. And it sounds like this person actually decided to do it.

And especially when you run the numbers for people who can't afford it or don't understand how student loans work out, for some people, maybe that is the right choice. So I guess this is a pretty complicated issue because it seems like some basic financial literacy is probably a good thing. And I think Thaler was talking about this with somebody on Twitter and said, like, well, what can you really expect kids to learn about financial literacy? Maybe I'm putting words at his mouth, but I think it was something to this effect at such a young age, because it's not like they, you know, they learn calculus and then all of a sudden like they're mathematicians. But I think it doesn't have to be like advanced finance, just very, very basic

stuff like paying for colleges is a perfect example. Now, I guess the flip side of that is Is this necessarily the right move? And maybe there are some like unintended consequences. Well, it says this kid is going to a local community college or he's going to and then maybe transfer to a four-year state university, which honestly, if you're totally against student loans, that is the way to do it. That's not probably the perfect way to experience college for most kids. But if you want to cut down on student loans and not have these huge payments late in

your life, the community college for two years route, which is ridiculously cheap in a lot ways. Unfortunately, I guess I read an article a couple weeks ago that said the graduation rate from a two-year program is like 10% or something. So a lot of people who go there don't really make it out. But if you want to find an economical way to do it, that's probably not a bad way. And so obviously a little bit of financial literacy for this guy worked because he realized he didn't want to spend the money later in life. Two things that I didn't know about this. 19 states currently require that high school students study financial literacy before they receive a diploma. Did you realize that?

No, that actually seems high to me. And then another benefit of doing this is from the article, quote, States are turning to financial literacy programs to educate teens before they form bad spending and payment habits, hoping to save taxpayers money over the long term by reducing public assistance. Probably not bad because, so there was one in investment news last week, too, and they looked at adults and they said the U.S. ranks only slightly higher than Botswana in adult financial literacy. And it was another one of those things where they looked at how many people could answer four or five questions on simple compound interest and debt payments. And it's always such a low number. I think it was like

30%. But don't you think that there is such like such basic stuff from forget about like stocks and bonds and interest rates or whatever like but spending and budgeting and debt and credit cards like very, very basic stuff that could probably help people out even if, you know, 17 year olds, at least when I was 17, I didn't want to learn anything. But there is stuff that directly applies to them, like college, for example, and stuff that is very basic, even if they only take one percent away from it, they can learn something. So I wrote about this last week, how my daughter is going to kindergarten next year in the fall. And some of the local public schools here have these immersion programs where they speak all Spanish or all Mandarin and they learn it. And

like in these classes, it's all they can speak. And so from kindergarten on, they're learning a second language. And I'm sure that there's studies that show that there's a lot of benefits to that. I don't know what it all means. But that focus on a second language, couldn't there be a focus on learning the language of technology or finance for these kids? Obviously, in kindergarten, you're not going to teach any personal finance skills. But over the course of their education, why isn't the language of finance more important than something like that? I don't really don't get that. Like the language of blockchain? Yes, something like that. Speaking of blockchain, can I just tell a quick story? Sure. Or do you want to finish what you were saying? No. Did your dentist give you a good recommendation? for a new crypto? So I have, so as you know, we spoke about this on the show last week that I have been credit card, I've been juicing on credit cards. Yes.

And we got denied from the Barclays card. And then I thought, I, they can't fool me. I'll apply for one for my wife. But she got denied too. Really? Yeah. So they're pretty savvy. But one of the cards, and I won't mention the name of this company, because not important

I suppose. So it was not, it was, I think it was, you spent $1,000 and you get $200 back. So I wanted to log on to pay my bill. So I created an online profile. I entered my username and I entered a password. And then I tried to log on and I can't log on. It tells me that there's an error message. So then I reset my password.

I write it down because I thought maybe I just entered it wrong. I write down my new password. I try to log on again. Nope. Can't log on. So now I'm like, oh, all I want to do is pay my bill. It's all I want to do. So I call them up and they tell me that I have to go into a branch to set up an online profile.

And I don't like to get frustrated on the phone with people because I know that it's a tough job, but I was because I'm like, it's 2000, what do you? 2019. Why do I have to go into a branch? I bet it's been years since I've been into an actual bank branch. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not doing this. please just let me talk to your manager so I spoke to four people they all told me the same thing finally I spoke to the manager and I said you know what let me just pay my bill in full and I will never use this card again so they gave me my balance and I give them my checking information and they said

okay this is your balance and I said excuse me are there some bonus points tied to this account because that's why I set up this thing and they're like oh yes actually I do see that you have $200 off so they were going to process my payment without applying the points And then I said, all right, fine, apply the points, please. They said, that's going to take seven to ten business days to apply. I'm like, I don't want, I don't want this. I just want to pay my bill. So I paid the bill in full so I wouldn't forget.

And in seven to ten business days, I have to call them and they will send me a check for $200. And all the while, I am thinking, long Bitcoin short the bankers. So Bitcoin is going to a million. Is that you're saying? I just, it was just so frustrating. I spent 35 minutes on this nonsense. It is hard to believe how some of the bigger banks can still not have this stuff figured out. but maybe that's the point. They have people just, it's the initial thing where they have

them stuck and there's nothing else you can do. So big news in the financial advisory world this past week, at least for people like us that pay attention to this stuff. Charles Schwab announced that they are changing to a subscription-based financial planning option on their digital advisory service, which is basically just their robo advisor. I can't remember what it's called. But this seemed to have a lot of people up in arms in the financial services industry, especially those of us are on social media, and they're going to charge, I think they charge an upfront fee of $300 and a flat fee of $30 a month for financial planning, plus whatever they charge on the assets in the plan in terms of the investments. So you're buying Charles Schrobb funds and then you're

paying them. So they basically decided to separate investment management and financial planning. What do you think about this? Because I have a theory. I want to hear your thoughts first, and I want to give you my theory. I mean, I think it's great that the price of advice continue to come down for the lower end market. I guess the one question is like what sort of advice are you really getting for $30 a month. But the point probably is that these are people that don't have really complex needs. And maybe one phone call a year is all they need for something as simple as I don't even know, a Roth conversion or saving for $529 or whatever it is. So I think it's probably a good thing on balance. Yeah, it's funny. Every time we see one of these announcements,

people in the financial services industry immediately, especially on Twitter, to paraphrase, is Paul Samuelson. Financial Twitter has forecast nine out of the last five end of an era in the financial services industry. Every time selling this happens, people scream, okay, that's it. The way the current way of things are going is gone. And I just think, I look at it from a positive perspective like you, that this is a good thing for people who didn't have any option before. And so remember when someone like Betterment came out in Wealthfront a few years ago and everyone said, that's it, Robo Advisors are going to take over. Well, Betterment's average account size of something like $70,000.

And those were people who didn't have these services in the past. And I'm hopeful that that's what's going to happen for something like the Schwab intelligent advisory thing. I don't think that they're going to be fighting over really wealthy people. Maybe they are. I have a feeling. I do not think so. I think it's for younger people just getting started and people with lower account balances.

If you have $13,000, this is terrific. So here's my analogy. In the past, nobody would help you. Exactly. Here's my analogy. It's kind of like food. So there are fast food companies where you can kind of pay for, pay very little and you don't get much choice in the matter. And so that's what a lot of these

companies are doing. Schwab and I shares and Vanguard, they're scaling so they can be the fast food providers, places like Fidelity too. But in the back end, they're also trying to sell you maybe something else or upsell you to other things once they get you in the door. But still, I think that there's room for so many of these places that I don't think it means that it's an end of an era in the financial services industry and everything is going to be completely different now that they've done this. This is just, I think, one other avenue for individuals to access advice that wasn't there before. And so that that is a good thing. So you, I mean, I think, I think, yeah, I don't think that this was necessarily a watershed moment. Like, I don't think that we're going

to look back in 10 years and say that like this was the beginning of the end. Right. Exactly. That's what people are constantly looking for. And I think maybe it's just the social media information age. Anytime there's a big headline, people want to call it the top or the bottom of something. Like, this is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. I don't know. Not everything has to mean something. I think a lot of times, again, this is just a win for the average investor who has been just fleeced their entire lives pretty much. And now the playing field is finally becoming a level. Yeah, I agree. And it's pretty great to be an average investor because there was another article, this one from Bloomberg, showing that 29% of older Americans have neither a pension nor any assets in a 401k or IRA account. Yeah, that's kind of depressing. Yeah, they also, I kind of wrote about this too a little bit.

They basically said almost half of people and it's gotten better since 2013 the last time they did it, have no money in a retirement account. Do you think that there's going to be some sort of a, like, is the rubber going to meet the road or is this sort of the thing where it's such, it's so big and massive a problem that? I don't think, I don't, what is the solution? The crazy thing is on the other hand? Is there going to be like a riot? Is there going to be something to address the fact? or is it just going to be on social services and the children to just take care of this? I think that's probably the kick-of-the-can solution where it's on the government and other people to – because I don't – I mean, I don't know what this happens.

Because on the other side, there was a think-advisor piece last week, and they talked about the number of households with wealth between $1 and $5 million is now at a new record. It's over 10 million people. There's 31 million households with $100,000 to a million. and then there's an ultra-high net worth, there's 1.4 million households that have 5 to 25 million. So we have this huge dichotomy of tons of money. And I think that's kind of the financial services angle of it is there's still plenty of money out there for financial service industry people to hit the high net worth and ultra-high net worth people. And then again, people have just been constantly ignoring the low end forever. And I think that's hopefully kind of a low-hanging fruit where I think there should be some places that can build a really big business out of that

by serving that piece for people just have a little bit of money. And all they need is a little nudge in the right direction, hopefully. There are 173 households with $25 million. It's crazy, right? I mean, yeah. I don't, I guess the future is, have you seen the Matt Damon movie Elysium? No. No. All the people, it's not a bad. It's, it was okay. But basically all the rich people kind of destroyed Earth and then left it and shambles and left all the poor people to deal with it. And the rich people created their own planet in outer space. And maybe that's the road we're heading down. All right. Speaking of nothing. So on Instagram, there's like all these advertisements

popping up for shoes, for furniture, for whatever. And there's one that I've seen repeatedly over the last few weeks. It's a gentleman running with a beautiful body and a full head of hair. and he says, and the thing is, income 100K, question mark, one or nine minute mile question mark, get $1 million in life insurance from $36 a month. Health IQ is the name of the company. Oh, they really know you. I've not seen that one.

I feel like anytime on Instagram, they know me so well, they get like the best shopping ads that want to get me to buy stuff, but I've never seen it. I like it. Yeah, I think they have the best advertising of pretty much any technology platform I've seen. Like, they just know me somehow, but no, I have not bought insurance from Instagram yet.

Let's talk about Lyft. So I think we did mention them last week, but the company IPOed and they're lower than the IPO price today, which apparently means something, I suppose. I don't know. There's a lot of news about it. I don't know if it means anything. But in 2018, the company did $2.2 billion in revenue and lost $911 million. Doesn't it almost seem like this stuff is telegraphed at this point? Like, one of these companies' IPOs, you know they're going to have a huge first day pop.

the insiders sell when they can and people try to flip it for a first day profit and then the IPO goes nowhere. It almost seems like it's too easy, right? Like this is, it's almost like the opposite of the tech bubble where they all just went to the stratosphere. Now they have like a little pop in the first day and that's it. Did you fade it? In my paper trading account. So Scott Galloway has some thoughts on this and you and I are fans of his, but this one I'm not, I'm not sure how I feel about this. He said, Uber and Lyft are companies where 20,000, mostly white, mostly college educated, mostly male employees and investors will sequester $150 billion in shareholder value from the 5 million, mostly non-white, mostly non-college grad employees they've

classified as, quote, contractors. Oh, that's a hot take. That's on fire. That's a little bit of a stretch. Here's where he's right in, and I didn't realize, but this is obviously bullshit, that the employees are contractors, so there's no health insurance, there's no benefits of any sort. Yeah, that's true. So I... I mean, that's pretty lousy, but are they really taking $150? So he's saying it's like a transfer of wealth from the drivers to the investors. Right, because eventually they're going to want self-driving cars anyway, so the drivers

are almost a placeholder at this point. But we talked to the anecdote is kind of funny on this because everyone takes an Uber a Lyft now and they think they know the companies because of this. But we talked to a Lyft driver a few weeks ago, and he had both stickers on his car. You know the Uber and Lyft. And we asked which one is better. And it was kind of interesting because Lyft use incentives. And he said the way that they get you to drive more for Lyft is if you do a certain amount of rides, you get a bonus.

And so it's like a $200, $200 if you hit X amount of rides. And then it's another $200 if you hit another X amount of rides. And it's a total of $800 if you hit this many certain amount of rides in the month. Galloway wrote, Lyft their credit is giving drivers who have $10,000 rides, $1,000 in cash. to buy stock, which is a diamond ride, and $10,000 if they've locked, $20,000 rides, which is 50 cents a ride. I mean, obviously it sounds like pennies and it is, but it's something, I guess. Yeah, that's not bad. And in the fight between the two companies, it seems like Lyft is probably doing things a little bit in a better manner in terms of their culture, but I don't know.

So I was on a panel talking about social media to college kids and what was your advice? It's, I hate, I, I, I, have a strong meme game. Yeah, no, it's terrible. It's, I mean, the advice is, what are you trying to do? You're trying to be like an influencer and that kept coming up. It's just such a gross word. And it was, what are your thoughts on hashtags and this and that? Someone actually asked you that.

Well, because, yeah, I mean, they did. What did we say the one time that? Hashtag is the fanny pack of social media. Hashtag should only be used ironically. Like, never, never in a serious fashion. So I came to the point that it's a lot easier to give, like, negative advice of what you shouldn't do. Right. Right.

Like, no 50 hashtags, stop. Don't be in somebody's mentions 18 times a day. Don't be an asshole. And I guess my advice was like, not everybody can be a superstar. It's like any other, you know, walk in life. My biggest advice would be stay in your lane and try to, like, find a niche where you can be, have an expert opinion in a certain area and get people to find you that way. All right. So, Ram Capital, for instance, is a ninja with his meme games.

But he's like one in a million. I mean, he's a very talented guy and not everybody is going to just be awesome. And there was a lot of advice about, like, be authentic, be your authentic self. People kept saying, but your authentic self could really be bad. Yeah, your authentic self could be really bad. Anyway, so I came back and I did a Twitter poll, and I sort of cringed doing this because it seems sort of intrusive to do a Twitter poll. You know what I mean?

Like whenever I seem, it's sort of annoying. But I asked the question, in exchange for $5,000, would you give up Twitter forever? Or the results. A lot of people voted. So I feel like this is fairly representative. It was 52% said, yes, they would give it up. 48% said no. So you're anti-survey unless you give the survey.

I see how it works So I guess I mean it's different for everybody Obviously for us it's like invaluable So you said giving up Twitter For all time for five grand Yeah Yeah it would have to be way higher for me

For me I don't even think there is a number Yeah It's priceless Where else can you log on And literally just start arguing With random people all day You can't put a price on that No

Speaking of price Let's talk about the CAP ratio Your favorite topic Are you still retired From writing about the CAP ratio? I am You've retired You're the Brett Farm of Cape Rations

because we retired like 12 times. You know what? Let's not talk about it. All right. Well, there is, so Rob or not gave a talk at their advisor symposium. And there's two charts. Was it a symposium or a conference or? There's three charts.

One is good and two are suspect. One of them shows that the Cape is powerful for long horizons, but almost useless for market timing showing one year, five year, 10 year, 20 years. And the dots basically get much closer to the line. We don't have much data on this. I mean, I feel fairly strongly that this is going to hold going forward, but what if it doesn't? That's like every long history of stock market return data. It's like 70 years.

And there's like two or three, yeah, like samples that you can use to draw your conclusions from. It's really not that great. So those charts were fine. I mean, the cape is useless at market timing, but then there was another one that I thought was nonsensical. Low macro volatility helped explain high cape ratios. Oh, okay. What do you think? It looks very chart-crimeish.

I mean, I don't even know what the macro volatility is, but I'm just going to say, hold your horses. It's like the volatility of GDP, because I actually wrote about this before, because they've talked about this before. So it's saying lower GDP volatility, lower cap ratio or higher cap ratio, because if there's lower economic volatility and we're not like an emerging market anymore, you would expect higher valuations. Well, you know what's funny. Kind of makes sense. Kind of make sense. Okay, fine. Let's just assume that it does.

But if you actually look at this chart, like, at first glance, they seem to track each other, but really look at it. And they really don't at all. Yeah. Like, there's a ton of gaps here that, you know, anyway. It's going in the same general direction. But not even really. Okay. The last chart that I definitely found to be of the criminal variety, it asks how expensive are fan mag, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

And it compares the market cap. Fan mag is a new one for me. That doesn't really roll off the tongue. It compares those six stocks to every sector in the Russell 3,000. That doesn't mean that they're expensive. Right. Okay. Like, oh, those six stocks are bigger than the entire consumer cyclical sector.

So therefore, what? Oh, right. They just, they're the biggest stocks. Of course. Yeah. That, yeah, I don't see the correlation there. Just because they're big, that means that things are out of control. Is that the deal?

They seem to always say that the biggest. stocks are the most expensive ones by definition. And I don't really think that's true. Okay. So you've been having trouble, it sounds like the last couple weeks with your credit cards. Do you follow the points guy on Twitter or the blog? I do, but I never read it. Yeah, occasionally I'll look. But you know there's people that you follow that like you literally never look at them? Yeah. Occasionally I'll look if I'm looking at a new credit card. So the Wall Street Journal had a profile of this guy. And his name is Brian Kelly. He's 30. six years old, and he created this website a few years ago called The Points Guy to talk about

credit cards. He basically has one of the most powerful personal finance blogs on the planet. Apparently, he sold his site to TPG in 2012. It says for an undisclosed amount, but it's now owned by a company that has about 60 full-time employees, and they make a ton of money from the bank. So it says, bank spent an estimated $4.5 million in banner display and video advertisements on TPG, the points guy in the fourth quarter of 2018, double from the year prior and triple from the two years ago. Definitely worth it. It's amazing.

So I've had a lot of people, I wrote about on Twitter a while ago that I go there every once in a while to research cards and a lot of people told me it's scammy. So do with it what you will, but it just shows how much of a big business getting these credit cards can be for these banks because this guy. Wait, why is that scammy? Because he's getting paid to recommend. Yeah, he gets paid. And they think that sometimes some people said.

They think he doesn't always recommend maybe the best card for the best situation, but I think it's kind of like know what you're getting yourself into. Of course, they're going to make money off of these, so they're probably going to push every card imaginable. But I think there's a lot of good information on the site for people who like to play the credit card game and get new bonus to sign up. So I think my point is you need to do a little more research on your credit cards so you don't get denied for new ones all the time.

How would I know? Follow the points guy. I don't know. Honestly, at this point, I don't think I'm carded out because I don't want to want to get denied again. That's true. It's a blow to my ego. Okay. Okay. I had another thought about shopping and stuff. Okay. Shopping and stuff. What do you got? Here we go. So, isn't it a fantastic bonus when you spend money and then it's like, oh, and here's a $200 gift card? Sure. So I think that they can charge an extra $100 to give you the $200 gift card because it's like

psychic income. You feel like you won even though you're probably losing. That makes sense. Where did you get one from? So I bought a dishwasher and a, not a dishwasher. I bought a washer and a dryer from PC Richards. And they gave me a $2 or $300 gift card. So I'm like, oh, fantastic. And then we're looking into either DirecTV or Verizon. And DirecTV gives you a $200 gift card, but you're probably paying a lot more for it. So this is the reciprocity thing from Sealdini again?

Maybe. They give you something and make you feel like you got much more than you really did. But they dangle that carrot, and it's pretty motivating. Makes sense, especially when you consider how many people leave those balances and never spend them. I've seen the numbers. They show them every year on the holidays. Oh, well, funny you mentioned that because last time I did this, or maybe two times ago, I lost the gift card. Ouch.

Okay. Listener questions. Would you please define and opine an equal weight ETFs? You've written about this before, so I'm going to pass this long to you, but this is an interesting one because equal weighted. So most indexes are set up market cap weight, at least the biggest ones, where the biggest stocks have the biggest weight in the index. Equal weight is just as it sounds. Each stock in the index has the same weight within the portfolio, and then they pick a

rebalancing period and bring them back down to equal weight. So I am of the opinion that equal weight is, at least in like the large cast space, is really just midcap exposure. Yeah, that's what it ends up being. I think you wrote about this a while ago where an equal weight ETF just ends up being a midcap in drag basically. And you probably pay similar fees these days because fees have been coming down. So it basically gives you midcap exposure, which I think is actually kind of an overlooked place for a lot of people in the market. Wait, wait, I stand corrected. I guess it depends

if, you know, obviously pick the start and end data. You can make any arguments you want. But over the last 10 years, midcaps have returned 292%. And the SEP 500 equal weight has done 325%. So maybe I stand corrected. Ah, okay. So it has outperformed. Interesting. But anyway, an equal weight is just having no preference to tie market cap to the weight in the index, which is what the S&P 500 does. Here's another one.

Should financial advisors have an advisor helping them manage their own money? Do you guys ever ask for an advisor from the firm to give you their opinion on your own financial plan? Good question. So I do have a betterment account. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yes, but it's very small. It's probably not even worth mentioning.

I just did it to like see what was going on. I haven't moved my money out and I don't plan to. I probably should be adding to it. But I ask advisors for questions, not regularly, but certainly like probably a dozen times in the past. Probably mostly on the financial planning side, right? Yeah, because I don't know anything about personal finance-related stuff. So I've asked our advisors many times. It's one of those things, especially in the investing side, I think I like to automate most.

So I have it in one of the models that we use for our clients. So the majority of my money is in that. And that gets managed the same way we manage money for clients in most ways. Definitely ask questions on one-off topics. So if there's a text question, I'll go to Bill Sweet. If there's another financial planning topic, I'll go to one of the other advisors. Definitely something that we bounce ideas off of it. I'm not afraid to ask because what's the point if you have that firepower behind you when I use it?

I heard this analogy that doctors have doctors because it's hard to be objective about your own situation. So I think it could certainly make sense for a financial advisor to have an advisor. And it's probably not uncommon. Definitely. Recommendations. What do you got? I write a book called New Ideas from Dead CEOs. and I forget who mentioned it.

So I definitely got this idea from somebody. It was good. It was very much in the format that my book was, where each chapter was a silo, and you could skip one if you wanted to. Did you know... Hashtag Humble Brag. Did you know that Taco Bell was named so because the owner is Glenn Bell? I did not know that. That's pretty good.

That was in the book. So they were copying McDonald's. And there was another one like that, and I wrote it down, I just can't remember, where... So it could have been like Taco Smith? Yes, exactly. I thought the bell meant something. Right. And there was another one where the store was the person's either first or last name.

I just can't remember. But I was like, huh, I always thought that was just like the name of the store. Wow. Oh, I think that's it from me. Okay, been a while since I've got into any good books. I read Spending Time, the Most Available Resource by Daniel Hammer Mesh. He was on Econ Talk with Russ Roberts a couple weeks ago. and it's a good one about how people, how things have changed and how people spend their time.

And he had a great stat in here. He said between 1960 and 2014, the average lifespan for people in the U.S. and the U.K. grew about 13 to 14 percent. So on a per year basis, that's like 2.2% on average. But disposable income rose by roughly 200 percent in both cases, an average of about 2% a year. So he said, this change means that our spending power per year of life has nearly tripled during this roughly half century. Put another way, our time is now worth more. It is more valuable and increasingly scarcer than the incomes we used to buy things. So it's kind of interesting dichotomy between people have more money, but the same amount of time. And that's kind of a hard thing for people to wrap their heads around. And probably one of

the reasons that people are always complaining about being so busy. So I like this one. Hold on. Can I jump in? Yes. I forgot two recommendations real quick. Okay. Meb Faber had a podcast with this guy, Paul Luneses. And I saw him, speak at a conference last year in Chicago. And he was very, very interesting. He's a real bottom-up stock picker. And a lot of it is qualitative and knowing the businesses and talk with the vendors and suppliers and stuff like that. And it was, it was a really good talk. And at the end, and he was speaking a lot about the mentors that he had. He worked with Wayne Cunoff, Goldfarb. I believe I said that. I hope I said that right. Did I say that right?

Oh, I don't want to touch that one. And he was talking about all the mentors that he had in his career. And so at the end, MEP said, how do people find you? And he said, they can call my office. Wow. And I thought it was like the nicest thing I've ever heard anyone saying. He wasn't, this was not tongue in cheek. I think he genuinely means this.

He said that he speaks to students all the time. So that's pretty admirable. And then also this morning I was listening to Ted Seidies spoke to Dan Ariely. And it was great. Did you watch the innovators, the innovator or the, the, The inventor or the innovator, the one of Elizabeth Holmes on HBO. No. Her documentary.

Airelli was on that too. Okay. Which I think if you read bad blood, you probably don't need to see the doc. But if you don't want to read a whole book, watch the documentary. So I am fully out of the TV space these days because I'm not in my house yet, as you know. So I've been staying with family who cut the cord. Oh, ouch. So I'm out, but I don't miss it.

Stay tuned for next week. I'm going to write a post for tomorrow about my experience with, or my experiment with cutting the cord. Oh, you did it? Just stay tuned. I'm going to talk about it next week. Okay, AfterLife with Ricky Jervase, I thought was excellent on Netflix. One of the better shows I've seen in a while. It was very, like, deep and heartfelt from him, which I didn't really expect.

So definitely check that one out. It was only six episodes. Again, another, like, one you can plow through is only 30-minute episodes. And finally, I watched the Avengers Infinity War, just because it's like the biggest, movie ever and it's on Netflix so you're not you're not you're not a Marvel you're not a comic book you know I watched like the first one of all of them and then I felt like they just got repetitive like how many more aliens can there be in bad people and cities can they destroy it just all seem derivative to me have you seen the other Avengers or did you go in cold I saw the first one I

think I just stopped after that so I'm going to so I probably missed a lot of the inside jokes but I think it was pretty easy to follow what's happening I mean I guess one of the reasons my review is if you like that stuff it's great I'm sure but it kind of felt like a video game there's so much CGI fighting in it. Maybe that's why people like it. So here's my theory after watching this. The Avengers is just like the finance industry in a lot of ways. Because here's what I was thinking.

There must be what, 20, 25 really good actors and actresses in that movie that have spent the last decade or so in these movies. They've all made a ton of money. The movies make a ton of money. But couldn't those actors and actresses have been in like some better projects in that time for the amount of time they spent doing these movies? And so it reminded me kind of the way that so many people like PhDs and rocket scientists are now going to work for hedge funds in quantitative firms. And it's like, couldn't those people

do much better and cure cancer or something or work for NASA instead of going to work for a hedge fund where they can underperform by 600 basis points a year? Jim Simons is Ironman and Ken Griffin is the Hulk. Okay. So obviously, the other way to look at it, I'm not trying to be a crotchy old man here. You can't blame these people for taking the paycheck and giving people what they want. But doesn't that seem kind of like the same thing where all these actress and actresses in the Avengers movies, like, I don't know. Did we really need that many of those movies? Spoiler.

Get off my lawn. I know. And I'll probably watch the next one. And guess what? They're going to make a ton of money. But I don't know if that makes it right. That's what I'm saying. Well, Ant Man and the Wasp was very good.

Sounds awesome. I know you love Paul Rudd. But I tried to watch the first one of that too And I couldn't do it We did try to watch the Meg too Your recommendation Hold on a minute I don't want to be married to that movie

I said if you listen to my recommendation I said it was exactly what you thought it was I mean it was yes I went in with little expectations We watched for a half hour And they didn't show the damn shark Once in the first half hour So we got bored

Come on you bailed before you even saw the shark Sorry man It's my wife might finish but I gave you owe yourself an apology all right animal spirits pod at gmail.com send us your your favorite reviews and we'll talk to you next week.