Animal Spirits Podcast - Flash Crash or Recession? (EP.372)

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

On episode 372 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: market mayhem, Japan's 1987 crash moment, Jerome Powell's legacy game at Jackson Hole, recession worries, the worst asset class for the next decade, the vibe shift on inflation, the Godfather of the 21st century, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Global X. Visit https://www.globalxetfs.com/ to explore a lineup of more than 90 ETFs, along with insights to help you navigate a dynamic investing landscape. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's Animal Spirits, we will be talking about whether this is a flash crash or the beginning of the end of the world. We also get into how Stephen A, the great Stephen A, would cover the not so great Jerome Powell. Yeah, legacy game time. Will residential real estate be the worst investment over the next decade? Ben, put me on the spot. Wish I had some heads up. I did it, okay? We got into What's Our Version of the Godfather, and much more.

Hope you enjoy the show. This episode of Animal Spirits is sponsored by GlobalX ETFs. Since 2008, GlobalX ETFs has been committed to empowering investors with unexplored and intelligent solutions. GlobalX specializes in ETFs that track emerging trends like artificial intelligence as well as strategies within the AI ecosystem such as data centers, robotics, cloud computing, and more. Visit GlobalXETFs.com to explore a lineup of more than 90 ETFs, along with insights, to help navigate a dynamic investing landscape. 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 Riddholz wealth management.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, how has the Olympics been this week? Very good. I wanted to get in this later, but the streamers have figured it out. I'm watching more. I could watch it on my cable since I still have cable, but Peacock figured out how to do Olympics on streaming. When they did it last time, everyone complained that they had to find stuff on Peacock and they didn't work. Peacock's Olympic experience is great, and it makes me feel good about the fact that streamers are going to be.

getting more into sports. They have this gold zone thing that's like six different sports at once. Oh, wow. Something's going on. Kind of like the red zone. And we watch all of our Olympic coverage on Peacock. Have you watched any Olympics? No, no. Okay. The stock market has been just as exciting, though, has it not? More so. Well, let me ask you this. Was uncertainty yesterday the same as uncertainty two weeks ago? Same level? No difference. It's the same as it is today, same as was two weeks ago? It is funny. The responses we got to that were Michael's an idiot, Ben's right, or Ben's an idiot, Michael's right. We got a lot of those. I, this, you have to admit, though, as being market watchers, the last couple weeks has been way more fun than the

rest of the year was. Oh, yeah. Of course. Obviously, losing money is never fun, but this is, this is exciting. What was it, two weeks ago, we showed this chart from Charter that said U.S. stocks have been chill in 2024, and it showed that there's just been no big moves at all. And I think this thing poked the bear a little bit. It angered the market gods. You know the Michael Jordan, and I took that personally? Yes, the market took that personally. Apparently Japan hates rate hikes. It was literally, the funny thing is to me, you know the dog meme where it's like the really buff dog and then the little dog sitting down? The buff dog is like Japan raises rates 25 basis points, and then the little dog is the Fed

raises rates, 550 basis points. So you showed this is the second largest drop of the NICA ever, I guess, going back to 1970, only second to the Black Monday. And Charter did another one on this that shows it a little differently. The crazy thing to me here, so this is yesterday or two days ago, I guess, with the NICA, would be worse than anything that happened in 2008, worse than 2020. In 1990, the biggest financial asset bubble in history, as far as I'm concerned, popped, and it did not have a bigger down day.

than we had two days ago. What do you make of that? That's wild stuff. Does that mean that yesterday was blown out of proportion? Or does that mean that the opposite? No, this is actually something. Maybe a little bit of both? A little bit of both.

So, I mean, the Japanese market snapped back, and this is how much I've been paying attention. I was looking at the Niki last night because it was open. Here's something I didn't know. So it was up, what, 10% yesterday? it's, or today it snapped back. If you, I typed it in on Google, and it showed the Niki, and they have a lunch break still. Yeah.

And did you know that? I did. Okay. The Tokyo Stock Exchange still takes lunch, which the U.S. Stock Exchange did at one time as well. And we used to be open on Saturdays from like 9.30 to 12. I think it stopped in the 50s or 60s. What happened, Ben? If I'm trying to hedge here, it's, this was a flash crash versus this is something real.

and it's, it's, I'm melding them both together, probably. How about, can I try to come together with an explanation? The labor market is cooling. The Fed did not cut. That got markets a little jittery and then. Well, it wasn't the Fed not cutting that market's jittery. It was the Fed not cutting and then weakening data. Yes, and data weakening further.

And I would love to see the counterfactual of the Fed actually cut and then the next day jobs data is soft. if how the market would have reacted, if it would have mattered anyway? Do you think Powell pinged his secretary afterwards and said, who scheduled our meeting the day before the labor data came out? Maybe we would have liked to see that first.

Do they see that first? I don't know. They probably do. So, I don't know, it did feel like a mini-1987 moment. I pulled up the New York Times front page when that happened, and then they, on the, one of the story says, does 1987 equal 1929? And it feels like whenever there's a stock market,

and most of the people said, no, of course not. But when the stock market falls like this, it makes sense that people immediately think, oh, gosh, this is really bad for the economy. Even if it doesn't have to be that bad, because we all know the stock market is more volatile. Are you surprised at all? I was asking for a number of months,

like, I can't believe there's no more fun blowups from the Fed raising rates from 0% to 5.5%. Japan does 25 basis points, and you see this yen carry trade online blow up, did that surprise you at all that it finally happened now that you saw, obviously a bunch of funds blew up. That had to be it, or whoever, you know, people unwined trades. Yeah, I'm going to plead ignorance here. I just, I don't know enough about this carry trade who's involved. I mean, obviously it's big because it led to a massive de-leveraging.

So for people that are not in the financial universe, they're like, what the heck is a carry trade? you could borrow the yen at basically 0% interest rates or close to it. Right, because Japan didn't raise rates like we did. Yeah, and then you could go take those proceeds and invest it elsewhere. And then the Bank of Japan raised rates. The yen was up 8% yesterday, I think, versus the dollar. And risk assets tumbled, and that led to massive, massive margin calls. Right.

And the fact that it bounced back today shows that a lot of that was a huge. de-leveraging in the system. That doesn't mean that the correction can't continue, but that was a big part of it, why it got so big. Right. I wrote this yesterday that I would much, the type of sell off we got, we're always going to sell. The type of self we got yesterday is way better than, oh, shit, Apple missed, Google missed, Microsoft missed, recession, corporate profits are waning. Again, you know, we'll see what happens, but this is a not to be too cavalier because it's, you know, it's a real sell-off. I mean, 13% of the DK is nothing to hand-wave.

But as far as sell-offs go, I'll take it. Yeah. And Japanese stocks were on fire this year as well. So that's a lot. And sometimes it is, it's a cascading thing of people looking for an excuse to sell because they have gains. And then you add leverage on top of it and everyone on one side of the boat or whatever it is. But you showed the VIX had an enormous spike, like financial crises level of spike. So Boas Weinstein tweeted a great chart of the VIX and credit spreads.

And he said, we haven't seen the VIX at 50 and credit spreads hanging in this well. One or both of these look wrong. And I would say... So the other times that the VIX has spiked, spreads have been blown out or they are blowing out. Meaning that prior times it was more of an economic event than, like, some sort of exogenous market event. So hopefully it's the VIX that was lying. And, you know, we'll find out. Where's the VIX out right now? It's Tuesday morning. VIX is at 32. So in the short term, it looks like the VIX was lying because it spiked all the way to

60 something yesterday. So do you think part of it is people have been waiting for an economic event for so long that any time there's just a little bit of a ripple, people are, oh, okay, here, it's here. Bears were salivating yesterday. Here it is. The AI bubble has popped. And I'm not trying to poke the bear because it's way too early to like, you know, a one-day balance is way too premature for the Bulls to be like, see, you idiots. Like, we'll see. When you have this kind of volatility, you don't stake your claim. In a month could we look back and say, geez, that flash crash was crazy.

Markets kind of continued up their up trend. Or that was a precursor. And when you see a 12% down day and a 10% up day back to back for one of the biggest stock markets in the world. Yeah, not great. That kind of volatility happens when there's a downtrend in place. Yeah. Now, if we're doing the context thing here, this is still, this is abnormal but also normal. The S&P is still, as of through Monday's closing, and we're recording this just before the open on Tuesday,

the S&P is down 8.5% from the highs. It's not even in correction territory yet. I don't think you've ever seen a VIX spike of this magnitude with the S&P, not even in correction territory. I don't think it's ever happened. That, yeah, that sounds about right. In fact, it hasn't happened. So I did this thing where I updated my numbers. 64% of the time, you see an entry or drawdown of 10% or worse.

So that part of it is normal. All the other stuff going on around it seems abnormal. I guess they almost always seem abnormal. It is funny to me, you mentioned the AI bubble popping. I looked yesterday, Invita had crashed up to 30% at one point. Then it came back. It's still up 115% on the year. And it is going to smash earnings.

All of the mega cap tech stocks have told you that they're overinvesting. Yeah. So, I don't know. This is a good meme. What? I have no idea. Yeah, you have nothing to say. The Starfish tweeted the Ben Stiller, a center for ants meme.

And he goes, what is this? a market crash for ants. He's looking at a pulled back the chart, and of course it's but a mere flesh wound for now. It is. Okay, so yesterday I did a, let's get into the Fed. So I did this Steve Ney Smith meme here

that I created, and I just said, Powell kind of choked. I think Jerome Powell choked. I think he had the ability to walk into the end zone and spike the football. And he choked. A 25 basis point cut

would have been it would have been relatively meaningless as far as the economy goes, but it would have signaled victory. We made it. And I think that's part of the reason that everyone is so up in arms

about the Fed. Is that now they're going to have to do it after the fact and they're late. So I did this Stephen A. Smith meme and we got a call yesterday to our main line at Ritholt's Wealth and someone from NPR said, can I talk to Ben Carlton

and hear his thoughts on the Fed? I said, oh, sure. And I said, hey, why did you reach out? He said, well, I saw your Stephen A. Smith meme. I wanted to hear your thoughts about the Fed because of this. Did he ask you to talk in Stephen A. Smith voice? He said it was humorous. I wanted to hear your thoughts. So let me tell you what I told him.

The Fed is always late. They raise too late. They cut too late. Why don't they just ever try to get ahead of something? And just say, you know what? The labor market is softening a little bit. It's not in terrible territory. And I got some stats to back this up.

But why don't they ever try to get ahead? of anything. Why do they have to always try to become heroes after the fact? That's what I don't get about this. Couldn't tell you. And their line of thinking. No, it's, you know, it was interesting yesterday. All of the major custodians,

Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, retail users were having trouble logging in. I understand the frustration because a lot of those users wanted to buy. But let's be honest. A lot of people that were mad were probably looking to sell. Yes. And sometimes it feels like you and I are part of the customer service team people vent to us on Twitter like hey I couldn't get in today and I agree and if one day is going to make or break your your account that that doesn't

pretend good results for you in the future if you think that this one day you're right you're either going to panic sell or you're going to hop in there and buy and that's going to make or break your year or whatever I'm okay with this stuff happening I think it's okay when volatility really what what you think it's good that the custodians don't I'm not saying it's good. I'm just, I don't get up in arms about it. I think this is just part of the game we play in when stuff gets crazy. I think it happens. I'm on the other side. I think it's awful. If the market volatility spikes and you're trying to take advantage of it and you can't, that sucks. Put it on autopilot. You want to know what happened yesterday in my brokerage account? Nothing. I bought,

index funds. It just so happened to be that my biweekly purchase of index funds in my brokerage account happened yesterday. Not to brag. Because I had it automatic. my whole point is that I get my people are up in arms and they wanted to get in there and fly when there's blood in the streets or whatever

but it's one day one day is not going to make a break right does it change anything no it doesn't mean it's not frustrating yes but I think this is the way that our system is set up

and if there is this huge rush for the exits or the entrance or whatever it is this kind of thing is going to happen so I guess one of the reasons people are worried The unemployment rate has gone up, and Josh had Claudia Somm on the compound last night talking about this,

but her indicator is basically just a three-month moving average of the unemployment rate. And typically, you don't see the unemployment rate just go up a little bit and stop. It goes up and it keeps going up, and that's the worry from people. Sure, the labor market is not out of control yet. The unemployment rate still is generationally low, but it's like, could it get worse? And that's what the Fed has the ability to do to maybe stop that. So now people are saying, what, 100 basis points this year, at least? Right?

I know some people were saying... There's three more meetings. I know some people were saying, like, emergency cut yesterday and stuff. That seemed a little premature to me. The counterpoint here to, like, the labor market would be we were at full employment, and there was literally nowhere to go but down for labor market data. Right. So if you look at labor force part...

participation ratio prime age, 25 to 54, it is still rising. And it's almost at the peak, like the highest ever level, which was achieved in the late 1990s. So like there are still, I think it's, it's companies are slower to hire and there's fewer job openings and there's not as much movement going on and wage data is rolling over. So the Fed, it seems like they just should have got ahead of it. But Torsten Slock wrote this this weekend. The Soft July employment report is inconsistent with the hard data for economic activity. There are no signs of a slowdown in restaurant bookings, TSA air travel data, tax withholdings, retail sales, hotel demand, bank lending, Broadway show attendance, which is kind of a funny

indicator, and weekly box office grosses combined with GDP in the second quarter coming in at 2.8%. The bottom line is that the current state of the economy can be described as slowing, but still a soft landing. If they did an emergency cut yesterday, I think the market would have actually panicked. Yeah, I don't think that was That made a whole lot of sense I think the Fed missed their window So now, if I'm getting back into Steve Ney-Smith

This is a legacy game for Powell and Jackson Hole How he handles this Because I feel like he's going to get a little defensive Of listen, I'm not going to listen to you commentators Tell me what I have to do I feel like that's part of the thing with the Fed They want to come to these decisions on their own Not have it be driven by the media or pundit narrative

So I think I put it down in a legacy game for Jerome Powell. He had the chance to smoothly land the plane, and I feel like he missed his opportunity. He fumbled the ball to five-yard line. My analogy is they could still recover the ball in the end zone, but they don't get to have the same level of celebration than they would have if they would have just walked into the end zone.

I'm not mad just disappointed. Counterpoint. If the market is at Altum Heisen, they cut, this will all be forgotten. That's the other good thing is that. And if the economic data that we get in the coming weeks actually shows that the softening that we saw was an aberration, that it'll be all forgotten. Well, here's the other thing.

There are no structural issues of the economy right now, that the Fed cutting rates couldn't help fix. Don't you think that if the Fed cuts rates, that it'll be helpful to consumers, it'll help it to the mortgage market, it'll be helpful with the housing market. Because here's the thing, the bond market has already moved. So, yesterday I took a screenshot of bond yields from Bloomberg, and it was 3.8% for the 10 year, 3.6 for the 5 years. These were at 5% not that long ago. So the bond market has already moved.

This is another reason why the Fed seems like they're behind the eight ball again, because inflation is at 3%. 10 years at 3.7. Fed funds is at 5.5 or whatever it is. That's a huge disconnect. And money, money will stay in money market funds. Yeah. So they're behind the eight ball, and that's the problem, I guess, is, like, what are you waiting for? I don't know. Which is a good place to be right now, and I don't know.

I just, I don't understand how all of us, like, armchair economists who are just, you know, we see the data, they see the data, and we all have one conclusion. They have another one. Who thought that they should not have cut? Was there anybody in that camp? Not very many intelligent people I follow. Is it just, is it human nature? I also think there's a piece of it where they even mentioned this when they were raising rates. The member of the Fed said, we can come in and rescue the market if we need to.

I think that there's a complex that the Fed has of they would rather save the system than get ahead of it and be blamed for doing something too early. Perhaps. I think a lot of it can boil down to not like, it's not the economic data. They have all the economic data. I think it's a human nature element that they're missing. That's the missing piece. Perhaps.

If you have that much control, how do you not allow ego to get in the way of decision-making at some point? Is it over? Was that it? I don't know. Market will bottom on Wednesday. It'll go up today. It'll go down.

It'll put in what's called a doji, which is a wick with long legs up and down, and the market ends relatively flat, puke on Wednesday, and that'll be at the bottom. I don't know. Are you talking about a candle stick here? That's a candle stick. But it is funny, though, the amount of, obviously there's other stuff going on globally, but the fact that the U.S. market is still down 8% or whatever, and it's still up 10% on the year. Yeah.

And the fact that fear got that bad that quickly, that shows how global and how technologically connected everything is in the market sees it, so that it can happen like on the blink of an eye. I had three friends and my sister who never text me about the market, text me yesterday. Like, what should I do? Or should I buy? If somebody buys, if I said somebody, yeah, you should be buying today, which is always good advice, by the way, Vick 60, buy something. If I say, yeah, sure, buy something and it rolls over, you idiot, you told me to buy.

If I say, yeah, you should buy, and then they do buy, and the mark, that was the bottom, and the market goes up whatever percent, they'll forget. told them to buy it was their idea the risks to giving advice are asymmetric so don't ask me if you're listening to this just don't ask it's also impossible to pick the bottom ever there's never been a good signal of okay that was it that was that was the bottom because human nature is running the show at this point and you can't predict how what human nature is going to do it was exciting though this has been an exciting little period in the markets if that was it if that was the only big wave or ripple it wouldn't be surprising but

it would be kind of anticlimactic if that was it. If I had to guess, was at the bottom? I'd say, yeah, I'd give it like minus 1, 10 odds. So pretty much a coin flip. Getting back to the legacy game thing, I could see the market freaking out again if Powell does not come out and be more explicit in what he's going to do going forward.

In Jackson Hole, which is when in a couple weeks? September? August? I thought Jackson Hole is August. So I think if he's not a little more explicit in assuring the market a little bit, I think the market could fight back against the Fed a little bit. I think I could see that happening. I put this in the dock before everything happened at the end of the week, last week with Powell and the Fed and the labor data, but the reason that I thought the Fed should have taken a victory lap is because the

inflation vibe shift is like firmly entrenched now. I don't know who came up with this new meme from Donnie Darko, which I think I've only seen that movie. once. I know it's kind of a cult classic. Is that in the horror realm for you or not? I only saw, I only saw Donnie Darko once and I haven't revisited it. I kind of don't remember it. Okay. Was there a twist at the end? I enjoyed it. I don't, that's a good question. I don't know. I really don't remember it. I'm not to have rewatched again. Joan Hall's on a heater lately. So it says, inflation is bad. And then his mom or whoever asked, inflation is bad, or he ordered a private taxi for your burrito. And he said, private taxi for my burrito. And this was, someone was complaining about the

DoorDash fees on Twitter, and someone dunked on it with this meme, which is a pretty good meme, private taxi for your burrito. And you're always the one who shares the DoorDash experience, so I thought it would be my turn to finally share it. And I thought of this private taxi for your burrito thing. On Sunday night, we were driving home after a weekend on the lake, and my wife says, I want sushi, pull it up on DoorDash and order me some sushi. And so I did it, and she wants two whatever roles.

I'm not a sushi guy, so I don't know how this works. Oh, speaking of things that you're not, what do you think about Saunas? Sanas? I don't know. I don't have a strong opinion about Saunas. I've sat in a handful of my life. Can make it five minutes and one, maybe? I don't know. Why? Should I have a strong opinion about Saunas? I'm indifferent about Saunas. I was talking to Nicole. I don't know how Saunas came up, but somebody, I think Nicole, or Sean asked, what has Ben think about sonas? And I said, I'll ask him. My guess is exactly how you just responded was how it was how I guessed you would

respond. Pretty, pretty, look, pretty indifferent. Yeah, I didn't know, I didn't know people had strong son of opinions. I'm a big sauna guy. I don't use them that frequently because I don't have one, but if they're available, you don't have to twist my arm to go into sauna. I'll go to sauna all day. I could see you relaxing with a, with a towel around yourself. I do love a good sauna. Okay. Anyway, back to your door to the hash experience. So I, I order the sushi rolls for her, whatever, and it's like $60 for sushi. and with all the fees. And I have the DoorDash, whatever, prime...

Dude, the fees on the fees, and the fees. Robin got a skirt steak fajito. It was $50 from DoorDash. I said, this is the last time we're ever doing this. I will not be part of the problem. Here's what I did. I put my foot down and I said, no, we're not getting it. Good for you.

And I said no. And is it the fact that I couldn't afford $60? No. But I... No, it's ridiculous. And my wife said I'm being cheap, which, to be fair, I probably was a little bit, but am I wrong? And I said, no, we're not doing this.

Well, because here's why. If you pay $60 for sushi or $50 for a skirt steak, where's the line? You just don't say no to anything? You have to draw the line somewhere. It truly is egregious. The fees on the fees and the fees. Make it make sense, Ben. But I do have good news.

But they do it because people pay it. People say, ah, it's convenience. But it's not only the fees on the fees, it's the upcharge you for the food. The food is, I told her, I said, how much does this usually cost? And it was, I don't know, a 30% markup on the usual prices. I do have good news on the inflation front. Okay. My jet ski insurance went down, $53.

All right. I have more good news. My beach club is not raising prices next year. How do you like that? Do they usually raise them every year? I don't know. I think there's only my second year, so I don't know, but I assume so. That's good.

Okay. Price hikes are over. here's an interesting one. This is from Ernie Tedeski, who we've been talking about a little bit lately. He has a good chart on real average weekly earnings for restaurant employees. And this thing's stagnated from the late 90s through pretty much 2015. On a real basis, restaurant wages went nowhere. And I don't know how exactly they calculate this because of tips. Should that not shouldn't that be? That sounds reasonable to me. No offense. But a lot of these are younger workers.

Should their beer, should real wages increase at restaurants? They should increase a little bit. They should not go nowhere for 15 years. Above inflation? Why? Gotcha. No, I mean, because you think that people that restaurants just don't deserve to have an increase in wages? You don't think that restaurant owners?

Above inflation? Do you think a restaurant owners deserve a return on their capital above the rate of inflation? Yes. So don't workers too? I don't know. I don't know. Geez, guy up there in his glass tower. Hold on.

The owners of the restaurants are taking risks with their capital and that's their, that's their whole shabang bang for, and maybe I'm speaking completely out of turn here. So I'm sorry if this is offending anybody. But aren't the majority of restaurant workers, you know what? I don't know why I'm thinking fast food. But even still, even still restaurant workers, like isn't there a lot of turnover? Listen, I was a restaurant worker, so this is no cost of power stuff. Maybe there wouldn't be so much, but look at this.

Look what happened since 2015. It slowly started going up and then the pandemic. So we've seen essentially since 2015, I don't know, a 40% increase in restaurant workers on a real basis. Probably the biggest wage hike they've ever gotten. Yeah. So again, I know modern times. Do, should, is it not, it's not surprising that real wages, again, after inflation went sideways for. a long period of time. I guess I don't know enough about this.

Now, they've seen an enormous spike. So if you want to know why this stuff is more expensive, this is part of the reason, because restaurant workers are finally being paid a more livable wage, even though you don't think they should be. I think this is good news. It's not good news to the employers, but sure, it's good news to the employees. Jeez, not a man of the people, I see. Absolutely a man of the people. I am the people. How about this? How many years did you work in a restaurant for, sir? Two years.

My very first job in high school was as a busboy. And busboys get screwed more than anyone because we get paid out of the waiter and waitresses tips, and they were supposed to give us a certain percentage. And of course, they never did. They kind of like, eh, whatever, here. This is like a scram. Here's my career as a man of the people.

I started in a bar mitzvah hall as lower than a bus boy. I was, what was the position called? Maybe it was a buzz boy. I feel like it wasn't. I was running around, cleaning people's hors d'oeuvres. I had the tray, and I was dumping dishes in and running back and forth. That's a bus boy. Okay.

I suppose. I feel like it was called something else. And then I did caddy. I was a caddy. Lost every ball was not invited back. Yeah, where's the ball? I don't know where to go. You didn't see that?

Did you see it? I wasn't paying attention. And then I was a. a valet Parker for years and years and years got fired. We won't get into why. I think I was in the right. And then I was a waiter for many, many years. So don't tell me, Ben. Do you want to hear my man of the people? And I was a cabana boy for multiple, maybe five or six summers. Bus boy, I delivered furniture for two

summers, and I was a bank teller. That's a man of the people. You know, I got rejected from a job as a bank teller? Is that a thing that happens? I feel like that's not the hardest job to get. Although it was during the GFC, but still, I got rejected. They said, I don't know.

This is not for you. One of the worst jobs I've ever had. It's not fun. More responsibility than I should have had at that age of the amount of money I was playing with. All right. After years of raising prices, food companies hit consumers limits.

This is the Wall Street Journal. Kraft Heinz CEO said, we had 3% inflation this year. We're only pricing 1%. Doug, I just put it in the job. am I better having a standoff on who had the lowest position of the service industry in their career. I was the dishwasher. Lower than a busboy, yeah.

I never washed dishes. I would have. Obviously, I would have. It wasn't beneath me, but. Domino's CEO said restaurants ultimately didn't have the ability to increase prices as much they thought they could this year. In retrospect, the pricing power wasn't there. He said, Domino's raised prices less than competitors and slower than the overall rate of inflation. So this stuff is becoming entrant.

This is why the Fed needs a tri-mandate, not a dual mandate. The dual mandate is price stability and the labor market. The tri-mandate would also include the vibes. Fed doesn't see the vibes. I thought you were going to say delivery fees. Oh, delivery fees. That could be it, too. All right, this is an interest going on a chart of the week from Torson Slok.

Wait, hold on, rewind. What did you just say? That sounded like a mush. This is a what? Torsten Sloc, Charter the Week. Okay. Fair? This maybe should have gone on our AI section.

60% of today's workers are employed in occupations that didn't exist in 1940. Which I don't know if that's higher or lower than I would have thought, but people are always worried that, well, AI is going to steal all the jobs. And we're going to UBI just to pay people to not work. We're going to make up jobs. There may be a rough transition. Back in the day, 80% of all people worked on farms, like in the late 1800s. So if AI does take a lot of these jobs, I was telling something the other day, the DoorDash stuff, people who work for DoorDash on the side, at some point, that's going away and there's going to be driverless taxis that deliver your food. That's going to be, your private taxi is going to be a robot delivering you your burrito or sushi or whatever it is.

And I don't know how many millions of people drive for DoorDash and Uber right now, but at some point in the coming decades, years, they're going to be displaced. and driverless cars are going to take over, right? I don't know how many truck drivers are in the country. What happens when driverless truck? This stuff is coming someday. Not as fast as some people say, but it's coming. In the next 10 years? I wouldn't say that.

It's already taken longer than I thought for driverless cars. But it sounds like the way most stuff, at least California and Arizona, it's picking up. I don't know how the driverless car stuff works in a place like Michigan or New York when it's snowing. That's the thing that worries me is the weather aspect of it. I don't know how it handles that stuff. but there's going to be AI and robotics. It's going to displace jobs, but we're going to make up other jobs to go with it. And the getting there might be difficult, but that's going to happen.

Speaking of weather, it's Tuesday morning. We have a lot of our colleagues are coming to New York and we're going to the beach. It'll be a day on the water. And the weather's not great. So we look to the radar, the forecast. I'm a big probability of rain guy. I don't know if you know this about me. Back to my years as a Cabana boy,

if I see 30% chance of rain, complete disregard. I don't respect that. I have no respect for that. I'm the same. It's got to be like 60 for you to really respect it, right? 60 to respect it, 80 to say, okay, we're done. We're done here. It's definitely raining.

I agree 30 could be, eh, it might sprinkle it, Might not. So there was a six, what was the chance of rain over the weekend? We went to the beach anyway. Guess what? It rained eventually for a few minutes. Did you know I saw, I actually saw somebody tweet about this from the weather service. What do you think that, if there's a 30% chance of rain, what do you think that means?

I've heard this before. I can't remember exactly how it works. Okay. Well, the bottom line is the TLD is it doesn't mean what you might think it is, which is there's a 30% chance of rain. That's actually not what it means. What it means is they say the probability of precipitation forecast is one of the most least understood elements of the weather forecast. Here's what it means.

Okay, the likelihood of occurrence of a precipitation is stated as a percentage and a measurable, okay, that we know. A measurable amount is defined as 0.01, so 100th of an inch or more, the probability is for a specified period of time, which we know about. But here's the Kudegra. The probability forecast is for any given point in the forecast area. Okay. So if they look at, so when your weather person talks, they're talking to your whole county essentially. Yeah. So what does that mean that like up to 30% of the county could see rain?

Yeah. So if you Google where you are like, yeah, yeah, there's a 30% chance that it might rain 100th of an inch somewhere over there or in anywhere in the vicinity. What I'm trying to say is don't be a forecast. coward. If you see a 40% chance of rain, safe to disregard. Okay. All right. 40% of the time works every time. All right. Let me ask you this, Ben. The date is funky. We live in unusual times. Bank of America shows it's been the second longest manufacturing recession in history.

So we're looking at the number of months without two straight months of 50 plus, which is expansionary, on the ISM manufacturing PMI. You're telling me this is the second longest manufacturing recession in history, or is the data weird? Seems to me like the data's weird. This is, that's why, like, the SOM rule thing about the, it feels like if it's ever going to be thrown out the window and not work, it's this time. Well, I hope so, because Kevin Gordon tweeted, interestingly,

going back to 1950, we've never seen four consecutive monthly increases in the unemployment rate without being in a recession. We just saw that this time, and are we in a recession now? I don't know how you could say we're in a recession. Now, if you say that you think that we're going into a recession, okay, you could argue that. Are we in a recession right now? How? Doesn't seem like it.

And again, we're coming off of such a low base that it's hard to tell what is normalization and what is actual slowing in the economy. And I think, I do really think if it is this big, slowing, I do think the Fed stepping in could help things. I think that's a real thing. It's not like there's this financial crisis that's brewing that is just building up in the system. All right. This was interesting. This is from the Investment Company Institute fact book. There are now 68.7 million people households who own mutual funds in the United States. Was 58.7 million in 2020. So 10 million more people own mutual funds, which is surprising that mutual funds are

still increasing, which I guess is mostly attributed to the 401K. All of it. Has to be, right? Because only 15.2 million households own ETFs. So more people are owning financial assets. This is a good, this is a good thing, right? I continue to think that, yes. Okay. Nick Colas gave, he said he's been in the business for 40 years, so he gave, like, his 10 lessons that he learned. I thought these are pretty interesting. I wanted to go over with you real quick. Efficient market theory does not say that assets are always priced correctly.

It says there's no reliable way to tell which are priced incorrectly. I heard this gentleman... Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. He said he heard it from Gene Fama back at B school at the University of Chicago. It's just as true today as it was back then. This is why it's so hard to predict anything in, at a bare market bottom. You don't know. You know what sort of grinds my gears when the market goes crazy, when a stock goes crazy or a currency and people go, pf, efficient markets? Well, okay,

smarty pants. Then why didn't you make the move yesterday? The whole point is you don't know if the price is right or wrong. You may think you know, but you don't. Yes, exactly, which is my favorite way of hearing this. So here you go. You don't live, you don't want to live in a world. where the Fed can't create whatever outcome it wants. I heard that from Lee Cooperman at a hedge fund idea dinner in early 2000s. There's a closet industry and second guessing or criticizing the Fed, but in my experience, it's pretty much useless in terms of making money in capital markets. If the Fed ever loses control of the economy, a far bigger thing to worry about than stock prices. Amen, brother. Yes, that's, yes. The Fed haters, they want this to happen, but I don't think

they really understand what that means. These people are nihilists. All right. This is, I thought, as most poor one. The most important question to ask in both life in investing is what is your goal? A lot of clear answer to that question and a plan to achieve it is virtually impossible to achieve any sort of lasting success. We always say to clients, we can't give you a portfolio or an investment plan without knowing what your goals are first. The whole goals-based investing idea is the big, when everyone's something asked, you said, should I buy or sell? There's so many other questions you have to ask before even understanding the answer to that questions. What is your time arising? What is your risk profile? When do you

plan to use this money? All of this stuff is impossible to answer without knowing the goals first. Anyway, really good stuff from Nick Colos at Datatrack. Mm-hmm. All right. Oh, wait. I didn't put this in, but let me find this from crypto. All right.

Where was... Okay, here we go. So if someone tweeted out on Twitter, which I'm never calling it X, because I hate tech name changes, I think it rules that we invented a decentralized currency uncontrollable by one central entity, and it just ended up perfectly correlating

with the American stock market anyways, which is obviously a little tongue-in-cheek, but also kind of true that... Crypto is really a risk-on, risk-off asset. It's not decoupled in any way from what's going on. It didn't provide you a macro hedge when inflation hit. When stock markets sell off and there's calamity going on, crypto is going to be the first thing that falls because it trades 24-7.

Anyway, I thought that was pretty cute. Not bad. Kind of funny. And maybe the point is there is no asset that exists like this. that can shield you from everything else that's going on, right? It sounds amazing in theory to say, I'm going to create this asset that is totally decentralized, and it'll hedge the Fed, and it'll hedge inflation,

it'll hedge everything in macro, and it'll decouple from the stock market. That asset does not exist. And I don't think it can exist. Cannot. Cannot. Cannot. Cannot. It does not, cannot, will not. All right. I know you hate demographics, but I think in the last couple weeks I've seen from two people that we know and respect have said, over the next decade, the U.S. housing market or housing in general

will be the worst performing asset class of all of them. Colin Roche and Nick Majuli, or very own Nick Majuli. They both tweeted out and said, housing is, and knowing exactly where they're coming from, I get it. The price increase, we pulled forward to decades of returns, mortgage rates are higher. It kind of makes sense. The counter argument would be just, demographics, I guess. So Eric Finnegan tweeted this out. This is from John Burns. There were four plus million U.S. births per year in 1990 to 2010, which is the tailwind. You can see that's the high point. And actually the high point in births in the past couple decades was in 2007. So I guess since the 2008 crisis, we've just crashed in terms of birth. And the demographic tailwind

would be my one thing to hang your hat on not to be bullish, about housing, but to not be bearish. Yeah. And I don't think that Nick and Colin were necessary bearish. I think they were realistic. Yeah, they were saying expect a low. The baseline should be low returns. And I agree with that.

My counterpoint would be this. And also, what if we just turn into Canada? And the fact that we have low housing supply and fibril demographics means housing prices just continue to get whackier. Yeah. That would be the counter. I'm not making a case for that.

I'm saying that would be the counter argument. All right. This is from our old Tadas Viscontas sent me this. I always talk about the Midwest climate hedge. Like when climate change happens, people are coming to the Midwest because it's going to be so hot in the South because you've had this huge migration of people in the South. How much do you actually believe that?

Give me some odds. Listen to this. Answer the question. I want to read you the research first, then I'm going to answer your question. So this just came out this month. It's called the Snow Belt to Sunbelt Migration, end of an era. So they talk about how for the past 50 years,

Americans move from the coldest places to the warmer places in the sunbelt. And they say in the last full decade, those migration rates have essentially become uncorrelated. And they say, given climate change projections for the coming decades of increasing extreme heat in the hottest U.S. counties and decreasing extreme cold in the coldest counties, our findings suggests that the pivoting in the U.S. climate migration correlation over the past 50 years is likely to continue leading to a reversal of the 20th century snowbelt to sunbelt migration pattern. meaning people are going to stop moving so much to the south or start moving to the north. I really do think this is the thing. In the next 10 to 20 years,

I think this is going to be a thing. All right, what are the odds? The odds are greater than 50%. It's going to be unlivable in some of these southern places in certain months of the year. Minus 130? Sure. And plus, I think the water thing is going to be a huge issue at some point, too.

The fresh water, you should see. I take my boat occasionally, only if it's not rough. If it's more than one foot waves, I'm not taking my tritune out on the big lake, okay? No way. But when you go out to Lake Michigan, it is some of the, it's like crystal clear Caribbean water. And it's fresh water, no salt. Does that mean, there's going to be wars over this lake at some point. Can you drink that water?

Straight out of the lake? I mean, I wouldn't. It looks like you'd want to on a really hot day when it's 90 degrees, but. Can you? probably would want to filter. I'm sure if you're really dying of thirst, you could, but I would recommend it. Old people don't like the cold and they like the heat.

What if it's going to become warmer in these places? I'm thinking more of like a, for four or five months out of the year, people are going to reverse migrate. Instead of, you know, now they migrate during the cold winters and they go to Florida. There's going to be the reverse migration too, or people from the south are going to come live in the north in the summer months.

That could be. Well, that is their thing, snowbirds. They go down for the winter and come back for the summer. There's going to be more of that, though. All right. Divorce rates. What's going on here? We got some emails?

A bunch of people emailed us about this. Forbes had an article. They say it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that half of all marriages end a divorce. They say 43% of first marriages are dissolved. Second and third marriages are fail at a higher rate. 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages and in divorce. So still, but 43% that's still pretty damn high. That is surprising.

You know anybody who's been divorced? Anybody around our age? I have two friends from high school who've gone through divorces, I guess. So not a huge percentage. So that's the thing. If you think personally, it doesn't see, anecdotally it never seems as high as it does in the staff. Well, also, I wonder what's the, are we not quite yet at the edge? where people start getting divorced.

True. That tends to happen more in your middle age. Is that true? Or did you make that up? The source? I made it up. I think it's true. I don't know.

Somebody emailed this picture of this massive truck sticking out of a parking lot. This, this, I know it's not going to end, but it should end. I mean, this is,

it's getting egregious. You know, you know the new Waggoners? I guess they're the same size of the long suburbs or whatever. They're like, they look like they're like 30 feet long. Really long.

They just keep going. Someone sent this email and said, I saw this truck sticking out of a parking lot in a parking garage, and I immediately thought of Ben in his complaints about trucks. And this is my biggest complaint about trucks. I don't mind them, but his point in this email was, they need to park on the top floor or something. There should be a separate lot for truck drivers.

You can't try to just push your way into a spot and leave your back end hanging out so other people can't get around. Ridiculous. Yes. Here we go. Ben, I concurred that people talking on FaceTime in public is totally annoying, but I can't figure out why it bugs me more than just overhearing two people engaging in a live conversation, i.e. not on FaceTime. Either way, it's two voices having a chat, right? Why does it bug us more when one of them is on a phone, whereas it's less annoying when people are both physically present and can't figure it out. It is true. Do you have a good observation? Do you have an answer? No, I have an answer. I don't. There's a time and a place for talking on your phone is not at a restaurant. You talk to the person next to you. You don't talk a person on your phone. That's not what it's for. There's a difference in the way people talk on the phone.

You get up and you walk away. Yes, definitely. And I feel like the way people talk on speakers different than two people having a conversation right next to each other. That's fair. I saw something so egregious one time getting annoyed thinking about it.

I was parked in a car. I don't want to give too many details away and over a share. But let's just say this. Person got out of their car, speaker on, walked over to a group of friends. Friends tried to talk to him and he goes,

he gave him the one second. And he got out of the car on speaker. Hey, Jackass, stay in your car. What a D-Bag move. To then walk over your, like, acting while important. I can't talk right now. I'm on the phone. Do you want to do the living the dream here or not?

Oh, yeah, that's great. Okay. All right. You think about winners, who's going to make it in life? attitudes. I'm a big attitude as everything guy. This guy has the right attitude. Listen to this email. This is how you win in life. Hey guys. Love the show. I worked at a lot. Okay. Isn't it a counting? During busy season, everyone is miserable and stressed with the workload.

So living the dream was a sarcastic response to how's it going around the office. Batnik is right. It is a conversation stopper as more or less just a spicy fine to a more or less cordial acknowledgement of your existence. in a copier breakroom, a copier break room elevator interaction. As I grew, I got more comfortable and had friends, so I started to screw around a bit. Knowing the how's it going and living the dreamer so rude that any response would really work,

I started repeating, I've the Tiger lyrics to our managing partner as an inside joke with my office mate. During our weekly stand-up meetings, I would reply with the lyric to see if you would catch on. So how's it going? Rising up back on the street, did my time, took some chances,

trading my passion for glory, until I got to hang in tough, staying hungry. This got such a positive response. I started using it as my go-to when asked the obligatory how's it going by higher-ups. And a passer interaction, this is C-suite catnip.

I really do believe it helped me step back from the cock status and a few decision-maker's minds to, quote, go-getter, still use it to this day and it's still as effective with no one making the connection, love the show,

hang tough, and stay hungry. Listeners, you could incorporate, you try this one hack. Just pick a 1980. This will help you climb the corporate ladder. Hey, how's it going? Hanging tough, staying hungry. That's pretty good. Somebody tried that report back. It's not going to not work. We had another good email where someone had said that they replied, living the dream to someone, another, to a service worker. How's it going? Living the Dream. And the person said, nightmares are dreams too. Which is a good way to end to live in the dream for someone. That's a very quick response. I feel like I have to, I don't know if I can remember that. Next time I hear somebody say, living the dream. I'm probably going to butcher that.

Dreams are nightmares, too. No, no, that's not how it goes. Ben, last week we were talking about cell phones, social media, keeping them away from the kids. And I'm listening to you. I'm making sense. I don't want my kids on social media. It's nightmares.

Well, somebody emailed us, a father of five and said, I'm sorry, father of three. I told this story to three of my girls Friday night and daughter number three, who is 20 years old, said, quote, strict parents raised sneaky children. that's deep shit. That's pretty good. That honestly, like, that changed my whole perspective.

It really did. Yes. Because you know what? I was raised by a strict parent. And was I a sneaky child? In ways. Did I abuse my freedom when I went to college? I did.

Yeah. The person who's never drank in their life in high school and then goes to college, it's way easier to go off the deep end as that person. Yeah. So strict parents raise sneaky children. I like that. That's pretty good. All right, story time.

Looks like you have no stories this weekend, so I'm going to take one. Go ahead. So our kids went away to camp for the week. My daughter did a sleepaway one. Our little ones stayed with the grandparents because it was closer to them. They did this nice camp right in Lake Michigan. I don't know if they're drinking the water, but it was nice. They liked it.

And it just got us thinking about, I mean, my oldest daughter's 10. It's going to be, everyone always says at the blink of an eye and she's going to be gone to college. And it was like a whole week of just quiet around the house. The biggest thing I noticed is that the house stays way cleaner. far easier. No kids, right? Because I must have 100,000 miles on my Dyson vacuum. I use it all the time. The kid's not there. I don't have to use it as much, obviously. Do you have a Roomba? No, I don't have a Roomba. Big Roomba guy. Love the Roomba. You think it works? All right. Oh, I know it works.

But it got me thinking about when the kids go to college, and I'm sure I'll be like a blubbering mess when it happens, but also I think I'll be okay. Like, I don't mind the peace and quiet sometimes, too. my wife had a little harder time with it. But you, you'll have this when you send your kids way to camp for the summer. You go like a mini test preview because that's, how long is the New York camp scene? Six weeks, eight weeks? Seven. Seven weeks.

Okay. So you get like a test run of this. Yeah. The kids being out of house for a long time. I think I'm going to be okay. Yeah. But you, we watched a lot more movies. It's easy to get a lot more done than obviously.

Yeah. We've had the conversation of what do you do? life is way more boring without kids there and quiet. But, yeah, I think I'll be okay. As much as I love my kids. It's going to be great. How was your summer? You enjoyed it?

It's not over yet. Speaking of, recommendations, kids were gone, so we went to see Twisters at the movie theater. Did you take George? No, but we're going to take him because he can go see it now. Good soundtrack, though. I'm on the, I'm on the lake. It's the only time I ever listen to country music.

good Twister soundtrack. Highly recommend it. I loved this movie because it reminded me of a 1990s action movie where it's just like this is all it is its action. There were some throwbacks

to the original one. You said there wasn't. There was a couple. They had the Dorothy machine at the beginning. There's a few. But Glenn Powell, again, can't miss.

And I want to, the reason I love this movie because it didn't have like any wink wink to it. Like we're in the joke. So we also watched the fall guy last week with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. And I love both of them.

They're great. They were amazing in this movie. But the movie fell flat to me because the whole movie was one giant wink. Like, hey, we're in the joke. Action movies are cheesy. And so they went over the top with it. That's like some Ryan Reynolds garbage. I like Ryan Reynolds.

I know. But this was also a two hour long. So the whole movie was a giant wink and it felt like there was no stakes involved. So I never cared what happened. And it was also way too, it was two hours long, so, way too long. So Fall Guy and Twisters I love, which I, the original still probably just because it has Philip Seymour hopping in it, gets the slight nod, but it was close to being as good as the original.

Bill Paxton, who I love, his role in Hudson is one of my favorite characters of all time. You know I'm a big aliens guy. Was he terrible in the original Twister's, I'm pretty sure he was. No, what? When he's yelling at Helen Hunt. Pretty sure he's bad. I don't know. Like, I'm a big, I'm a huge Bill Paxon could do no, could do no wrong in my mind.

I know, but picture of him, he only got hurt to get over it. Like, it was, that was, that was not great. It was a little over the top. All right. So, I rewatched in the last month or so, Godfather 1 and Godfather 2. I do this every couple of years. In full? In full.

It takes a while. Godfather 2 is like three hours and 20 minutes. And Godfather 2 is, the more I watch it, the more I realize Godfather 2 is way better than number one. Yeah, yeah. But it's a movie that shouldn't work because the plot is actually kind of confusing. Like, they don't hold your hand in the movie. It's kind of confusing.

It's long, but here's the thing. It's one of the realest movies I've ever felt. Like, when they go to Cuba and in Havana, it just, it feels like a real thing. So, wait, did they really shoot that in Cuba? I think it was Dominican. I actually looked it up. I think it was Dominican Republic. That's why I love IMDB.

So here's my question. What's the 21st Century Godfather? Not in terms of, like, what's our mobster movie? But what's, like, the highest quality movie we have this century? I have an answer. I want to see if you get the same answer. What's the best movie of this? And not best in terms of it's entertaining, but it's also just super high quality.

Okay. The one that comes to mind, I mean, there's one that comes to mind. I would wish I had more time to think about it. But the one that comes to mind is the dark night. I put you on the spot. That's a good answer. My thought is Gladiator is our godfather. Oh, okay. Yeah, that works.

Because I watched that recently too. But that's why I'm really nervous that they're going to ruin it with number two. Well, guess what? They can't move number one. True. They can't take that from us. Okay.

So I saw preview during Twisters for the new Beetlejuice movie, which I think actually looks kind of good. I'm a huge Michael Keaton fan. So I started to be watching the first one because on HBO. And it's amazing cast. Alec Baldwin, Gina Davis, Winona Ryder, the mom from Home Alone. Who's the that guy, the guy with like, does he have a mustache in the movie? The guy with the reddish hair?

Yeah. He's the principal in Ferris Peeler, I think. So they have that huge house up on a hill. And at the beginning of the movie, spoiler alert before Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis die, people keep trying to buy their house from them. And they're saying, someone's going to give you $260,000 for this house.

And it's a huge kind of, you know, funky house. That was in 1988. How much do you think that house would go for today? Because if you inflation adjusted, it's only like, I don't know, $750. Yeah, I was just to say $7.60. That's going to be like a million dollar house now. I don't.

I rewatched the reasoning on the airplane. Holds up. It really does kind. It's such a bizarre movie. Even though it's a time capsule, it's almost sort of timeless too. It really is, yeah. That's all I got.

I watched Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Oh, and? The least good of the reboot, but still way better than it should have been. I'm not quite sure. That was my thought, right? I'm not quite sure how they're doing this. just a just a good movie

because it was mostly the apes the whole movie it wasn't like a lot of human stuff just a good movie I watched this movie called Fresh Kills which I'm not recommended even though it was decent that sounds like a straight to DVD movie Fresh Kills

it was a mom movie but it was about the two daughters so it was about it followed the two daughters so their dad is a gangster and it followed their their struggles with growing up with the dad as a gangster. But there was one part in the movie that made me think,

huh, I remember this. Remember when the phone used to ring in your house, your landline phone, you picked it up, and it was one of seven people calling for your mom? Kids will never know what it's like to talk to Uncle Bert. Oh, that's true. A very awkward conversation. Or your friends,

Hey, how's it going? Yep, hold on just a second. Mom! Yeah, but and that was how, if you, when you were younger, that was always the worst part about having to call someone. So like middle school, Ben, when I'm calling like a girl, it was always weird because their parents would answer it. And it would be really, really awkward.

Hang up. Yeah, no call her. Yeah, hang up until she answers. Yeah, you would have that really awkward interaction that you never wanted to have. Kids don't understand it, huh? Oh, I saw a tweet about Trap, which I was excited, and then I got disappointed, but now I'm really excited.

Hold on, let's see. All right, so Trap is the new M-Night movie. Jared Weaselman tweeted, Trap movie is far and away the dumbest movie I've ever seen. At no point does any character behave with logic or reason. The theater openly laughed at it from start to finish, couldn't have loved it more five out of five stars.

That's my type of review. How does this guy keep making movies? I know people keep going to see them. The last one was good. The knock on the door or whatever one? Whatever. That was good. Bold was terrible.

But... So we're continuing with a Josh Hartnett comeback then with this movie. I am very much looking forward to. I don't know if my schedule will allow me to get to it this week, but I'll find a way. Alien Romulus. Very excited.

Okay. Okay, I got one more here. So you know how people get mad when the Fed does, or anyone does, inflation, X energy and food prices, right? Like, how can you say X energy and food prices? But if we did House of Dragon, X Dragons this season, it was a terrible season of television. Did you finish it? It was really bad. The finale was not good. The only part of the show I liked this whole season was when they had dragon fights, but that happened maybe 3% of the show. You know, credit to me, I was so lost that I didn't mind it. I don't really know what's happening

anyway. I did say to my wife, did they just introduce five new characters in the finale? I'm like, who's this guy? What's his story? Who's this person? What's their story? Yeah. Why do they do that? Couldn't tell you. I don't know what's happening. Well, I still watch? Sure, but this show's been knocked down a peg or two for me. It's in a severe

bare market. Are you dry? And I'll still watch. Are you dry with shows now? I'm pretty dry. Yep. I don't know. We're watching hacks gun on HBO. I liked that one, season three. Okay. All right.

Send us an email, Animal Spirits at the Compound News.com. Thanks to production staff, as always. Duncan, Daniel, John, Nicole, Rob, everyone. And we'll see you next time.