Animal Spirits Podcast - Founder Mode (EP.376)

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

On episode 376 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: Josh Brown's new book, an excellent year for investors, how bullish investors are, a new record high in 401k millionaires, efficient markets, the nostalgia premium, inflation at the arcade, the wait-and-see housing market, the stresses of being a parent, drinking at the movie theater, and much more! This episode is sponsored by YCharts. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only). Sign up at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits 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, Ben and I talk about Josh Brown's new incredible book. You weren't supposed to see that. All right. We look through the current year-to-date return and wonder if this is as good as it gets for financial markets and investors. This guy, Ben, accused me mid-show of doing something wrong when, in fact, I didn't do anything wrong. I stand by that. I still demand an apology. It was never got.

You're not getting it. I give my list of best high school movies of all time. Long list. and give the best high school movie there is. An $820,000 Bronco? What are you out of your mind? Stick around and enjoy the show. Today's Animal Spirits is brought to by our friends at Y charts.

I use this thing all the time. If you were looking over my shoulder at my computer screen, which admittedly looks a bit like my dishwasher, Ben, does it not? I almost had a heart attack when I saw a computer screen when I was in New York a couple weeks ago. Just tabs and files and folders. That's how I roll. One thing that you would see a constant,

the opposite of chaos, very neat, in fact, is my white charts. My dashboard, I forgot these stocks, that stocks, this macro indicators, these target date funds. No, I don't follow target date funds like Ben does. I've got it all. Economic data, whatever I need, it's customizable.

And there's all sorts of other stuff that you can do. model portfolios, client communication, what else, Ben? They have their own blog, too, where they publish their stuff that you maybe couldn't find. Same thing with me. The first thing I check in the morning is email, then Y charts. And I go to my daily, what can ever think of the name? What are your dashboard? Dashboard.

There we go. Getting old. So, yeah, you can check out the Y charts blog. They have all this good stuff here where they create content for you. Subscribe to the blog. It's pretty easy. in our show notes, and if you want to get a wide-chart subscription, you don't have one yet, mention Animal Spirits, get 20% off that initial sign-up.

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion, and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only, not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. It is a great day. It is the first day of school for my children. I've got a fantasy draft tonight. I'm going to see Pearl Jam tomorrow. We've got football on Thursday. We are so much. I wouldn't have taken you for Pearl Jam Guy.

It's 60 degrees outside. It is crisp. The seasons are seasoning. I love it. This is my favorite time of the year. The kids are back. Back to my routine. My wife is out of the house.

She's back at school. I'd agree with her. I love my wife. But I'm ready to be back to normal. Pearl Jam guy. You know, they're not my favorite band. But, I mean, come on. They're legendary.

They're legendary artists. And they come to my town. I got to go see him. And Eddie Vedder drinks a bottle of red wine for every show. Okay. Listen, I mean, who doesn't, who... Doesn't like Pearl Jam. Yeah, I love Pearl Jam.

Okay. That's a lot of 90s nostalgia for me. All right. Speaking of nostalgia and another reason why it's a great time of the year, you aren't supposed to see that. My partner, Josh Brown, wrote an incredible book. And Josh really, all the accolades and all the praise, it's well deserved, he really is a one-of-one goat.

The format of this book is something that I think he and he alone could have pulled off. What he did was he took 20-something of his most infamous blog posts and repurposed them and then wrote Josh's remarks as a follow-up to what he was thinking when he wrote the book, what's changed or what stayed exactly the same. And I said speaking of nostalgia because for me, this was a trip down memory lane. I read every single one of these posts as soon as they were published. For some of them, I was in the building, as Mikey Francesa would say. I was in the building when he wrote them, literally in his office. We shared Josh and I back in the day from, I don't know, 2013 to 2018, actually, I do know. We shared, Ben, how big would you say that office was, eight by eight?

You could barely fit two desks in there. We were touching toes. So anyway, the book was incredible. I've known Josh for a long time, but there are things in here that I didn't know about. And he definitely peeled back the curtain and just an incredible book, fun, insightful, smart, all that good stuff. I blazed through it. It's a very quick read, as Josh's style is. And I just can't wait for everybody else to read it because it was really, really an incredible book.

And I, what's the last book I read? Kyle's book, maybe? I might be back, Ben. I've been thinking about jumping back in. I was inspired. I got the feelings of, you know what? Man, I like reading. And it's been a long time, but maybe this will kickstart a renaissance.

It's hard to find a time. It is. Josh's was one of the first investing blogs that I started reading that I would read religiously. And I came across it from someone else had linked to it. And I thought, oh, what is this? When I was first getting into the blogosphere, 2011, maybe 2012. and then he was the first one where I would go check every day because I knew he was going to be writing something.

And back when Finance Twitter really took off, I would say 2013 is like the, for me, that's my nostalgic period for Finance Twitter. It was really humming. And you would have a blog post that would come out and it would just go nuts and everyone would be tweeting about it. And Josh had so many. He is like the all-time leader in those of screen grab,

highlight the sentence. Here's what Josh. He had the most of those. And yes, going back through reading some of those, the optimism is the default setting is still, I think, my all-time favorite one of Josh's. But there's so many. There's so many.

And I think Josh's ability to connect invisible dots where nobody else could see them. He's got a gift. So I love the book. And I'm happy for Josh. I'm proud of him. Really, really, really, really excellent. And he, like, taught me how to find your own voice when writing.

That's what people always ask. Like, how do I sort of blog and stuff? The thing is, like, writing in a way that you talk or that shows your own personality, Josh was the one who did, oh, okay, you can actually write like yourself. You don't have to sound like this robot when you're writing. If you, yeah, if you were to just read one paragraph, plucked from Josh's blog, you know it's him. No doubt. Yes, yes, exactly.

Yeah, it stands out. So, yeah, go get Josh's book. It's great. All right. As good as it gets. Okay, movie. Jack Nicholson. Titled's probably better than the movie.

Is it Helen Hunt? Who's his love interest? Yeah, Helen Hunt. I like that movie. It was okay. There was a dog in it. Okay. This is as of the close on Friday.

I pulled this chart from Y charts. These are year-to-date returns, total returns. S&P 500 up 19%. Nesek 100 up 17%. Russell 2000 up 10%. Bitcoin up 40%. Gold up 21%. International stocks, that's the EFA, up 12%.

Emerging markets up 9%. The ag is up more than 3% this year. and you're getting 5% T-bill yields. Is this as good as it can get for investors? This is pretty darn good. It's about it, yeah. That is not bad. And the reason that I like to do this kind of stuff when things are going well is just

because you know it's not always going to last. Oh, it's coming. I don't know what it's coming means, but. You know what it means. I mean, things don't say this good forever. I'm not predicting anything, but it's not always this good. That's a fact. It's not a prediction.

It's a fact. It's a good reminder, I think, just to just to, just to lay it out that. And the thing is... Maybe to check yourself? I do think the funny thing about Bull Markets is, like, the whole bad news is a headline and good news is progress or goes unnoticed. But this year doesn't, as good as it's been, it still doesn't feel like euphoric or

everyone in the boat. You don't get that feeling of this is a great... Like 2021 and 2020 was so nuts. We don't get that feeling this year. You know why? I think we've had it so good for so long. This is a long bull market, man. I know that there's been periods of give back.

Obviously, 2020 was devastating. 2022 wasn't fun either. But take those two out, and it's been up 29%, up 46%, up 15%. It's been so long. We are working on a 15-year bull market. And people say, well, this bear market resets or that bear market, but the 1981 or 1980 to 1999 or whatever, that two-decade-long bull market,

there was setbacks along the way. There was a 1987 crash and times where people probably went, oh, geez, this is it, it's over. But we're living through one of those now. But what do you think about my hypothesis? Do you put credence in that? That it's just, we're used to the good times?

Yes, yes. I think people become numb to it almost where they don't, you lose appreciation for it. Well, and then the other, the other... It's kind of like a long marriage. You don't appreciate your spouse as much anymore, like you should. I do. I love my spouse.

Life. Okay. The other thing is that... You should, with the way you loaded dishwasher, you should appreciate that she puts up with that. Excuse me. She should appreciate that. She doesn't have to touch a thing in the kitchen. I cook, I clean, I load, I unload.

She should be thankful, despite my dishwashing loading habits. The other thing is that the good times that we've been talking about are not equal, right? A lot of it has been disproportionately mega-cap tech stocks. So I think that's a big component of it as well. But the rally's brought it out. So there you go. Okay, from Gunjohn at The Wall Street Journal, Americans are really, really bullish on stocks.

And it's like a bull with a crazy eye. So it's, here's from this article. US household stock allocations have steadily inched up this year, according to J.P. Morgan estimates. And recently encountered for around 42% of their total financial assets. That's the most on record going back to 1952. And it dropped to below 20% in the 2008 crash, now up to over 40%, which still,

seems low to me. And I, the way that I look at this, are people getting more bullish or they're just better informed? Because it seems like the allocations equities were way too low in the past. What about both and neither? Okay. I don't, I think that there's, I think that the main thing driving this is auto-in-lawful and foreign work case. Yes, I agree. And more knowledge. And target date funds. Like, that's, that's driving the ship. I think this, I think it says more about that than how Americans feel about the stock market. Yes. But why wouldn't be bullish. It's been a 15-year bear market. People are getting the memo. From the article, this made me laugh. This is a quote, was just going through my 401k

and holy hell, what a godsend, wrote Steve Etheridge on social media platform X this month. Yeah, if you look at your accounts now, especially after what they were in 2022, you should be giving yourself a holy hell because, again, things are going pretty well. But I agree. How many people in their 401k are thinking, I am super bullish on the stock market right now, so I'm going to turn the dial up. A handful people might do that, but... I think most people don't think about the stock market. No, I think to your point, it's just...

Yes. And if we asked, if we showed those returns from earlier and asked regular people on the street, what is the stock market doing, could they guess anywhere near what it actually is? Probably not. No. Okay. From Bloomberg, new territory.

The S&P 500 is up 25% in the past 12 months and has never climbed this much in the run-up to a first interest rate cut of an easing cycle. Seven decades of data compiled by Ned Research in Bluebird show. Ned Davis. What did I say?

Ned Research. Okay. Ned's a great name. You don't see many Ned's anymore. That is true. What's Ned short for? Ned one? I don't know.

What is Ned short for? Is it just Edward and people say Ned as a nickname? Was it Ned Schneebly in School of Rock or was it Ted? I think it was Ned. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, not a lot more Ned's these days. So I think you were talking about this is Josh last week, just of the historical comparison.

of the Fed and the markets and just, I think, throw all of them out of the way. Go them out. There's nothing there. This is... All right, back to the bullish stuff. This is from Axios via Fidelity, via, via, via.

How do they get this data from Fidelity? They call somebody? I want this data. I think Fidelity released... I don't know how they have the history, but they go back to, I don't know, the last five years. Record number of 401K millionaires

at Fidelity, almost 500,000. just that fidelity loan, which is one of the biggest, I think the biggest retirement plan administrator in the country. But is that a lot or a little? Seems like a lot to me. Just 401K. Because most people have 401K and an IRA and brokerage accounts and another 401k from an old job.

So just the amount of people who have that, to me, being half a million people, that seems like a lot. Just at fidelity. Are you consolidated? I bet you are. No, not as much as I should. Well, I'm relatively consolidated. Probably not as much as I should be. Like when I left my job to come to Ridholtz, I rolled my 401k over. My wife still has a 403B from her old job that's just sitting there in index funds, and I probably should roll it over and put it on one place, but I haven't done it yet. I think I had, I think my 401K, when I was at Mass Mutual, I had $2.97 in it. What should I do with that?

That seems like an AI assistant kind of thing. Hey, AI assistant. Roll my 401k over for me. But it is such a, because they like, most places literally send you a physical check. Pin in the ass. There's a company capitalized that's, uh, that's tackling that project. Making it easier? Yeah. Yes. Um, okay.

So that, I don't know, is this, maybe this podcast so far is a good contrarian indicator? On what? Everything being so good and bullish? Yes, I said. It's not always this way. All right. The New York Post had a piece on the ex-Peloton CEO, which I don't know if he was the founder, who's just a CEO?

Was he in founder mode? Yeah. I didn't read it. Is that okay? Founder mode? We'll talk about it later. Okay. I'm an open book.

He says that it was a brief stint as a billionaire. You know, at one point, I had a lot of money on paper. Not actually in the bank, unfortunately. I've lost all my money. I had to sell almost everything in my life, which makes for a good headline. Like, oh, former CEO was a billionaire. Now he's selling everything. Imagine they taxed his unrealized gains.

Can you imagine? That's true. But they also say he spends his summer weekends in the Hamptons where he recently downsized. twice, including selling a $55 million waterfront home. So he had to sell everything, but I think he's still doing okay. I don't know how levered he was, but he probably did, and they talk about how he's starting a new company, and I'm sure he'll be fine, but this part got to me. He has no, so he's running some new company.

I can't remember what it does. It's like an interior design or something. He has no interest in taking a public company, a company public again. This is funny. Peloton shares went from $170 to $2. With that type of delta, I don't trust a public. markets to get pricing right. He says Peloton is a $40 or $50 company from my perspective today. The current price is like sub-5 dollars. He says the contract of the public markets getting

evaluation rate is broken. So he's blaming the public markets for Peloton. No missteps on his part. The public markets are wrong. Peloton should have been a trillion-dollar company. Remember he said that? Did he? He made some comment that Peloton could be a trillion-dollar company someday. I think it, yeah, which was funny. The whole thing about him saying public markets are wrong and I don't trust how many, which is saying that, like, guess what, eventually those marks work their way into private markets. You can't fake it up, fake it until you make it forever. Did you read the Eugene found a piece in the FT? I did.

Okay. I thought it was very good. And his whole thing, I always get really known when people go, oh, markets are efficient, huh? perfectly efficient when something goes wrong. That's a pet peeve. It's very annoying. Efficient markets. He says that all models are wrong, some are useful.

He says that's the same thing. And he said he actually wishes that he wouldn't have used the word efficient, because that's the thing that really gets drive people nuts. And he says, the question is whether it is efficient for your purpose. And for almost every investor I know, the answer to that is yes. They're not going to be able to beat the market so they might as well behave as if prices are right. And his whole thing, he says, if prices are obviously wrong, then you should be rich. And that's the thing that made me laugh at the Pelton guy, that if Peloton really was a $40 or $50 stock

and it's trading at five, he should put everything he has in it. Well, good. Guess what? Round up a couple billion dollars. Take this thing private and then, boom, easy, peasy. The quote that stood out to me was Robin Wigglesworth wrote the article. He had lunch with Gene Fama in Chicago. He said some of the backlash against the efficient market hypothesis may simply be down

to hangups around the word efficient, which Fama admits he can understand. And here's Gene Fama. just couldn't think of a better word. It's basically saying that prices are right. And guess what? Prices basically are right. And with the benefit of hindsight, of course, they're always changing. So they're always wrong. But they're right enough. And sometimes they're ridiculously wrong. But for the most part, the basic premise is you can't consistently know if prices are right or wrong. And therefore, the markets as a whole are generally efficient. And I think that's fair. And I understand why people quibble with it, because there are all sorts of behaviors inside the market that would lead you to say efficient. What is efficient about this? This is a crazy town. But by and large, it's tough to know what the price is right. How many people have been screaming about the U.S. stock market being overvalued for, I don't know, 12 of the 15 years of this bull market? Tons. So Professor Plum, Mike Green, was tweeting about this. And we've heard in the past, I think, Charlie,

Alice might have said this, that Vanguard is only responsible, or indexes are only responsible for 5% of total trading. And I just, number just didn't seem right. Like, I know we've, we've used in the past. I just don't believe it at all. I don't see how it could be possible given how much, how the size of them. So, Mike Green tweeted something. He said, right, because if money goes in, you still have to buy those stocks in. Now, the argument is, well, how many buyers does it really take to set fair prices, but that's sort of moving the goalposts because somebody tweeted to Mike Green, what is the percentage of trading volume that is passive?

And Mike Green said, Vanguard tries to lie about that as well. So he shows the composition of trading has changed. From 1995, 80% of it was active management. He calculates that's down to 10%. And passive direct trading, and honestly, I don't know the difference between these two, but passive direct trading is 20%. And then passive market making is 36%. and that passive index derivatives are another 8%.

So you put that together, and that's about two-thirds of the market trading. And I don't know if that's right or wrong, but it seems directionally more right than 5%. I just, the number sounds totally made up. Yeah, this looks high to be, though. I would, because of all the trading that hedge funds and HFTs and algorithms do, that this seems... Fine, but we can, do we agree that the 5% number? There's just no way. And if somebody from Vanguard wants to present the data, I'd love to see it.

I just, that number just sounds completely wrong. Okay. I guess I've never seen that before. The one that I always saw from Ellis was in the 1950s, 95% of trading was done by households, 5% by institutions. So this kind of thing is literally always changing. Yeah. It's not like there's always been this one way of doing things, and all of a sudden, it's different now. It changes over time. Yeah. Okay. Interesting, nonetheless. Let's go on to the economy. All right, this is from vanilla options. I feel like upper middle class wages growing the slowest since 2019 explains the vast majority of the economic discourse on here, meaning Twitter. And it's showing that these are real wage growth, 2019 to 2023, is up the highest for low wage people. The bottom 10%, 13%. This is real after inflation, right? And so all wages...

Real as in it's not made up? Where do you get this data? Yeah. The government says it's real. But it does show that... So this is... High wages is 4.4% low to middle wage. So the bottom 40% has seen the highest real wage growth.

and the upper middle, which is the 60th to 80%, is seeing the slowest wage growth. No, Ben, the lowest wage growth has seen the biggest change. Yeah. No, I'm saying, I said the upper middle has seen the slowest wage growth. Okay, I'm sorry. Yes. So that's saying, I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago,

that it's kind of the extremes that seem to have done okay in the middle or upper middle has been a little left behind in this cycle, and that's part of the reason that there's so much angst. And you say it's like business, small business owners, paying more for stuff and paying more for wages. And like white collar middle management, I totally buy that. But these are the, I can never tell if I'm using this word, right? But you always talk about the people who are doing more well off,

gaslighting the people on the lower end, saying you're the ones getting screwed. And they've been saying that. And it's usually that is the case when inflation happens. But it hasn't been the case this time. Right. Yeah. So I kind of actually believe this. Okay, from Morgan Stanley via Daily Chartbook, which is another one of my daily things I do.

Via, via. U.S. consumer's net worth has grown at 8.5% year over year, on average, each quarter of the past three years, 200 bases point stronger than three years before COVID. So every quarter, we're growing at an average of about 9% a year in household wealth for the past three years. That's pretty good. I'd say. Another thing that won't last, but about as good as it gets. Ben, we've been talking about demographics, finances.

Millennials, Boomers, and the Washington Journal did a big expose. Today, is that right? Hang on. I got to tell a story here. So my wife sometimes will get into doing something and she's got her blinders on. And I say something to her. My kids say something to her and she doesn't hear it. And then five minutes later, she says something very similar.

Do you hear what? I literally just said this. Sometimes this is you with me. In my defense, and I apologize for what I just did there. But in my defense, I forgot to put something in the dock. Okay. So I put it in the dock. So I had to turn my brain off for 10 seconds.

So I apologize. Hand up. Did you say the word exos. Did you accept that into my brain? No, no. I literally talked about this story two weeks ago on this show. Same charts. Okay.

Okay. But if there's something interesting, you want to pull out of here. But we, we did this. We did this already. All right, fine. Well, here's another thing that we did already. Listen, I was there. I was there.

So, by the way, so I disapologize. I disapologize. What I thought I just did wrong? I didn't do wrong. I was listening. Half listening. But you weren't listening two weeks ago on the show. We literally went through this and the charts.

Okay. Well, we're not going to do it again. Listen, we do a lot of shows around here. And in your defense, we do. I can't retain everything. All right, fine. So let's skip this one and let's talk about another thing that we already did two months ago. Actually, not two months ago.

We did this one in May. Remember this? The greatest wealth transfer in history is here. Yep. Okay. So this is from Tal Smith. and we had Tal on TKF a few weeks ago. I know we did this.

I just want to repeat it because it's astounding. They showed the annual wealth projected to be inherited by each generation. And millennials are going to inherit so much money. 68% of millennials and Gen Zers have received or expect to receive an inheritance of nearly $320,000 on average. I was going to say, I think, I know that there are people in my town and in town that are just waiting. Oh, yes. That are doing okay. They're getting by. And I don't think that they want their parents to pass away. But that's their retirement plan, right? But it's an inevitability. Yes. And the question is, when do you get the money? Because for most

people, it would be much more helpful to them in their 30s or 40s, but they might not get it until they're in their 60s. And at that point, how much help does it really? Like, I have a friend from high school who would always joke that his father was a surgeon, that my retirement plan is my parents dying. And it was very loud. Oh, yeah. I mean, credit to him. Yes. Very tongue and cheek, but also, like, there was a level of seriousness to it. But, um, so listen, it is what it is. But it's definitely going to continue the inequality stuff. Yes. I agree. And the funny thing is, is that on the one hand, baby boomers will be living longer because health and medical, all this stuff is getting better. But there's so much money coming. And it's kind of weird because this has never happened before. There's never been a massive wealth transfer. Our parents, parents didn't have any money.

But we've shown the stats before, what people not spending down their retirement dollars. The people who have the most, their money has longer to compound now, too. So it's going to be even bigger inheritances than people have gotten in the past. Yeah. Part of the all cash. buying that we can't figure out is definitely, there's definitely some of this in here. I don't know how much of it is in the data, but it's... Yes, and we got some feedback on that. We'll get two later, but I totally agree that the, and especially the down payment help and all this stuff,

is coming a lot from... Speaking of gaslighting, you just tried to gaslight me into apologizing for not listening. I won't apologize. I was multitasking. Okay. I still think you'll mean an apology, but we'll agree to disagree. Listen, I told you, my brain. is not what it used to be.

It happens. We're middle-aged guys now. You're finally accepting it. So, no, I'm not. Americans, from the Wall Street Journal, Americans' economic mood brightens a bit. This is August 31st. Did we do this last week as well?

Did not do this yet. Okay. Just checking. The American consumer is starting to shake out of a lingering bad mood. When the Wall Street Journal asked 1,500 voters

in late August for their feelings about the economy, 34 said it was improving. Up from 26% in early July, The share who thought the economy was worsening fell to 48% from 54%. I spoke about this on TCAF last week. For the first time in a while, I noticed the price of gas in a good way. It does, I was thinking that, too.

It seems like it's lower. Because it is. Look at this average price of regular gasoline. Down from a peak of $5, it's now down to below $3.50 nationally. And I noticed it. And I got to say, felt pretty good. I don't know if that's psychic can come or what, but it was a shot in the arm. So I've seen a few people post in the last couple weeks with a personal savings rate being back down into a lowest level. It's been in a long time, like sub 3%. And a lot of people say, well, this just proves the consumer is tapped out. And I think it proves almost the opposite that consumer finances are so good. People think, I don't need to save as much anymore. Right? My house is way up. My 401k is way up. I'm earning 5%. Don't you think that's part of it that this is not the way people should think?

and relax. It's somewhere in the middle, right? But I would more lean towards your interpretation of this that people are feeling pretty damn good. They don't need to save. Right. And that's not how they should act. You should keep saving. Keep it constant. Don't get up and down and just because things are good now that you slow down the saving. But I think that's how a lot people do think and act. Well, we're a nation of spenders. We spoke about it last week. We speak about it a lot. Shil Manote tweeted, I kept getting Instagram ads for classic Ford Bronco. looked interesting. I clicked and used their cool configurator.

I was completely astounded by what this thing costs. Are people paying this much? Must be for the company to exist and invest in creating the configurator, question mark. All right. So an old Bronco, but new, I guess. $820,000. No way.

People are paying almost a million dollars. No way. For a Ford Bronco, I don't believe this. So car dealership guy, he quote tweeted, car dealership guy who said, monetizing nostalgia is an incredible business. I've recorded with someone today who's doing it in the car industry. He's running a multi-million dollar business selling modern classic vehicles. Okay. So I just looked up classic Ford Broncos for sale. There's like

1970 Ford Broncos for sale for like $240,000. Wow. How much do you think it cost at the time? Five grand? No, less. Less than that? Probably. Okay. Wild, right? yes remember last week I said that I bought a chicken shredder I don't know I guess I'll use it like three more times by the way somebody

I don't know somebody tweet this to us this the why won't this damn drawer open starter pack yes you got a ladle you got a

what is that what is that thing called on the right a grater yeah cheese grater cheese grater the masher the ladle is the word one. The ladle is the worst. Yeah, get rid of the ladles. So Robin sent me on Instagram. Now,

she's being targeted. There's a grape slicer. You pop a grape in, you click it, boom, four cut-up grapes. Grapes are so small anyway. Why do you need to slice a grape? For so the kids don't choke. Oh, my kids just eat them a hole. Um, anyway, $5.99. We got to get that in our drawer. Okay. We buy everything. Okay. Switching gears. somebody tweeted Peter Bereson tweeted quote learn to code remember that that was like the thing learned to code and then he tweeted he showed a picture from Fred software development job postings on indeed in the United States this is one hell of a wild chart when all the it looks like arc all the way up all the way down do we think that this was just a bubble in tech

stuff or like tech over hiring or I think it's yeah I think it's the AI thing. Okay. You don't think this, a lot of this was so many jobs posted in the United States, whenever we filled anyway, that kind of thing. Yeah, I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's both. Did you listen to Gavin Baker with Patrick? I did not yet.

Okay. What's a TLDR? I can't TLDR that. It was a lot in there. But some of the stuff that they were saying about, like, humanoid robots coming, like, I think it's, things are going to look a lot different in the next, I don't know, in the future. We're going to need it.

We need people to take care of aging baby boomers, right? Because let's be honest. Millennials are way too selfish to do it. We need home care nurses that are robots. We're all going to need people are going to want robot nannies. Like this kind of stuff is, I can see people totally using this stuff and trusting it immediately. I think there was a scene in I robot that was like an old lady with a robot. Yeah.

We're going to need it. It's coming. 70 million baby boomers in their 70s, 80s, 80s, we're going to need it. Jason Furman wrote an article in op-ed in the journal about taxing the rich, like the unrealized gains things. Did you read this? I did not. I saw his tweet thread about it.

I just think it's funny how up in arms people get about taxes for the ultra, ultra-wealthy. Well, it's just this one seems to have taken on a life of its own. It's just funny to me that people care so much. about taxing, we're talking about like 3,000 people. I think that, yeah, I think that the people that care, it's not about the 3,000 people. It's about like the slippery slope of overreaching. And, yeah, it starts with the ultra-reality,

but then it trickles down to everybody. And I think it's a fair, it's a fair concern. The funny thing is, if you look at tax rates over time, they go one way, down. Down. So he said, he laid out three reasons why we should do it. Oh, he's pro. Yeah.

Okay, I didn't know that. He said, and him and Tyler Cowan were going out respectfully. I thought it was a good back and forth, waiting to tax until gains are realized through the sale of an asset has three major disadvantages. First, linking taxation to realization encourages people to hold on to assets. That's true. These gains escape taxation at death, which turbo charges the incentive not to sell and prevents capital from flowing freely to those who can make the best use of it. Reasonable. Second, taxing gains when they are realized is unfair because it allows two people

with similar income or wealth to be taxed at different rates for arbitrary reasons. For example, if you hold stocks that appreciate, they will be taxed less than similar stocks that do not appreciate, but do pay a dividend. I don't know. How about this? How about this? The way that they should, the easy way to do this is if you borrow against your stock, that's a taxable event.

That's like taking a gain. That would make, that would make, that would be the easiest solution. Yes, I agree with that. That should be a taxable event. If you're barring against it, you're effectively taking money off the table from the, that's a taxable event. Yeah, that jives. Finally, taxing only realized gains now is the tax base and requires higher federal tax rates and more kinds of taxes to meet revenue goals. It just seems so, the plan just seems so convoluted and impossible to enforce.

I agree. It's never going to happen. All sorts of complexities and headaches and people will find ways to, escape out of this as well. It just seems like, I don't know, just seems like sort of dead on a rival. Here's what we should be going after. Endowments and foundations. Harvard and Yale, their hedge funds with a college attached to it. Tax those things. I mean, they already did add some little tax, but keep taxes. Religious organizations? I'm fine with that. Tax them. Why are they tax free? Tax them. I agree. Tax everything. Tax it all. All right. But listen, if I make a billion

some day. I'm not going to be happy with this. Okay? Yeah, it just seems sort of silly. I might need a billion dollars to go to the arcade. So we have a new place in town here that is like a kind of a Dave and Busters, but it has more. It's like a huge video arcade and they also have a bowling alley and they have laser tag and it's all this stuff. You know, you walk in and you feel like you're going to have a seizure. It's just loud and everything. Great back in the day. It's like a casino for children. Yes, it is. So my kids loved it. They loved Dave and Busters and this new place open. So we went yesterday.

weather wasn't that great to be outside, so we went in and did some stuff, and we did the laser tag, and we did bowling, and we did arcade. And the arcade thing, you pay some money, and they give you a card, and then you swipe the card, right? And it's effectively a form of crypto, because you get it, and it's like $30 equals 160 credits, and each game costs five to ten, whatever it is. Arcade inflation is real, man, because you do this, and I put, I don't know, 30 bucks on each kid's cards. We have three kids. That's 90 bucks. I don't know, man. One credit equals one credit. That's what it should be, right?

And it was easier when it was just quarters. So now you don't even know. And the kids are swiping left and right, and they're doing these stupid games where they try to win more tickets and it never works. But, I mean, that $30 for each kid was gone in like 15 minutes.

Just swipe, swipe, gone, gone, and it's just gone. And it's just gone. Wait, wait, what? How is this possible? It went really fast. Dave and Buster is the one near me closed. Didn't make it, huh?

So this is like that, but on steroids and it was a really nice place in the nice bowling alley. And a brand new bowling, because a lot of bowling, very few new bowling alleys. A lot of them are just the old ones that made it. This was a bowling and the pins were on strings. It wasn't a duck pin bowling, but it was like that. So it would be easier to set up, you know? And I didn't like it because I need pin action. Yeah. That's kind of

the whole point. Like the hearing the sound, right? You still get the sound now. Well, you don't get the sound as much. Okay. Yeah, I don't like that. Anyway, arcade inflation is real. We're, we haven't deleted a category in a while, I think. Maybe, what's the last category do we deleted? Supply chain? Yeah. Um, all right, layoffs. Gone. Deleted. Oh, this is the top. That's it. Your unemployment rates arising. Really? That's it. Okay. Well, I feel like we lump that stuff into the economy anyway, right? I think a lot of those layoffs were the tech stuff that's happening. Yeah. All right. We are entering the wait and see economy. I feel like for a lot of things. Like, the stock market is waiting for some exogenous event or a recession to hit before something

really happens, you know? I think the same thing with real estate. Wait, who are you quoting here? Who called it the wait-and-sea economy? I guess I'm calling that. Just looking at this is from Redfin. I think you stole it from somebody. I think Callie Cox and our team was saying that. Okay, yes, Cali did.

So pending home sales fell 6.9% during the four weeks ending August 25th. The biggest annual decline in nearly a year, that's despite median monthly housing payments falling to its lowest level since February as mortgage rates dropped to the lowest level in 15 months. And they give a bunch of reasons why they think buyers are waiting, and they say clarity in the NAR settlement, which I don't think

I really cares about that. Lower home prices, lower mortgage rates, the outcome of the presidential election. Listen, only one thing matters here, lower mortgage rates. Yeah. So I think people are thinking, well, I'm going to wait until they get into fives before I come off the sideline and buy, and that will make things more affordable. And you and I have talked in the past about trying to time the home market is just a fool's errand. But I think that's, I think we're in the wait and see phase And I think it's the same thing with refinance. And people have asked us in the last couple weeks, when should I refinance?

Because if I got in at seven and now at six, should I wait more until it gets to five and a half or five? And I think that there's some of that going on here. And I don't know what the level is. I think once we get into five, five and a half range, that's probably going to unlock a lot of things. I just, I wouldn't get too cute with it because you don't know how much of the demand

is going to come back to once we hit a certain level. Yeah, if you find the house that you want that you can afford, do it. If 50 basis point is going to matter in the grand scheme, of things to you? If it does, then you probably shouldn't be buying in the first place. Yes. But I think we are in kind of this wait-and-see place. All right, someone asked, we said, why is real estate always the highest performing asset for

consumers? Why do they think it is? Good, good comment on this on YouTube. I think I have a good answer. Much less volatile than stocks, and the volatility is never fully apparent. You only see the price bought and the price sold. You don't see all the maintenance taxes, HOA insurance. Good point. several very well-educated friends are terrified of the stock market. A friend of mine has over $500,000,000 in cash. She works for a fang stock, a fang company, and her only stock exposure outside of a 401k is her company stock.

She does not like the ups and downs of the stock market. That makes a lot of sense to me. You don't get the volatility. Yeah. I buy that. Even though way more people are involved in the stock market now, I'm sure most people would say, I'd rather have a house where it's out of sight, out of mind in terms of the price.

You can check on Zillow, but is there really volatility there? I don't think so. I buy that. We spoke earlier about all cash offers, and where's all the cash coming from? Somebody emailed us and said, I have had at least 15 clients buy homes in the last few years. Every single one used their brokerage account as collateral using a line of credit.

They appear as cash buyers to the seller. Nobody's using traditional lending products in my experience. See, if those people had $100 million, it should be a taxable event. Yeah. Okay, speaking of this, I got a letter to the mail the other day for our place in the lake. We have three clients looking to pay all cash on the lake. up to $1.4 million or $2 million. They are serious and are prepared to make all cash offers.

They're just saying like, can you imagine getting to that point where it's like, I'm going to do an all cash seven-figure offer, and I want you to just spray and pray all around this area and tell people, like, just make it happen, even if it's not for sale. Is that a baller move or is that like a desperate move? Desper? I don't know. It doesn't sound like a great strategy to me. I wouldn't think so either. Do we really think that, that, because I know we said it sort of tugging cheap,

but do we really think that people barring gets their portfolio, that should be a taxable event? How would that work? No, no, no. I was saying, like, if you have a, it'd have to be above a certain amount, right? So if we're doing the $100 million thing. But this is the hard thing. It's like, where's the line?

I mean, that's talk about arbitrary. Yes, I agree. And people, but when you draw in line, people just say, okay, I'll just go up a line. Yes. there are probably way better ways to tax the ultra wealthy how's that ultra but the thing is the ultra wealthy are really good at hiring professionals yes to find loopholes that's the thing there's these kids how do you eliminate on that if you look at the old tax rates there was a time period in like the 40s or 50s where the tax rate for people making a million dollars a year

above was like 90% people go see look it we used to tax the rich yeah what do they actually pay no one actually paid those rates because it was so easy to hide it from the IRS right yeah yeah But there's got to be simpler ways to tax it so wealthy if that's really going to be your platform. I agree. Ben, did you see Twitter was lighting up yesterday with founder mode? I saw the piece from Paul Graham. I guess it took on life of its own.

So Paul Graham shared a blog post. He said, at a YC event last week, Brian Chesky gave a talk that everyone who was there will remember. The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could be optimistically summarized as hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. He followed this advice and the results were disastrous.

So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how steep jobs ran Apple. So far it seems to be working, Airbnb's free catch-all march is now among the best in Silicon Valley. The audience at this event included a lot of the most successful founders we funded and one after another said that the same thing had happened to them. They'd been giving the same advice about how to run their companies as they grew, but instead of helping their companies, it had damaged them. So Twitter lit up yesterday and Albert Wenger tweeted, Founder Mode is a great concept dot, dot, dot, that will also be used to justify horrendous leadership. So Fadden Mode, the thing is like basically like, is my company,

I know the DNA of this, you don't know, let me make the decisions. And again, it's not black or white. I'm sure there's like a middle ground where people examine. executives coming in, managers coming in, have completely ruined companies. And it's also true that for every Jeff Bezos, there's a million other bozos who ran a company into the ground. And all saying, I'm going to emulate Steve Jobs is like saying, I'm going to emulate Michael Jordan. I'll just do it the best person ever to do this. Did. And I also think one of the things about founders is they take themselves way too seriously. Like, calm down. Yes. Great. You found it

an awesome company. Great. But there is a difference between running a startup and running and actual publicly traded company. They're not the same thing. Like, think about Mark Zuckerberg runs Facebook way differently now than he did when it was a startup. He adapted to the changing times. Yes.

That's the thing. All right. Do I want to do one thing on a great quarter? Also, this makes me kind of want to sell Airbnb. I feel like admitting this, like, this guy's probably kind of lost. I really, I like the company. It kind of makes me want to sell.

So, oh, I mean, the stock looks like trash. Where is this? Yeah, it has not been a great investment for me. I was really bullish in Airbnb, and it has not worked out. Chris and I are staring at an Airbnb the Saturday before Future Proof. It's $250 for the house. Okay. There's a $225 cleaning fee.

I don't know if that goes to the home water. Maybe it does. I don't like seeing that. And then the Airbnb service fee of $67. So one night goes from $251 to $5.43. Jeez. How much of that cleaning fee do you think is actually just going to host as part of the nightly rate? They're just using it as a way to get people in the door.

I'm sure you could find that. I don't know. I would assume a lot of it. All right. So dollar general. You know the weird thing about dollar general that I always notice? Is that they're always in rural areas. Mm-hmm.

Right? They're like in the middle of nowhere. you're like, why is there a dollar general here? Yes. Obviously, that's the plan. So a dollar general is a stock that I have bought and sold twice, credit to me. Did not take large losses here. The stock is in a, let's see, I think the deepest drawdown ever.

Let me just see. Why charts clickety, click, click. Yeah. Oh, yeah. By far, 67%. Almost not nice territory. Really bad. So is this a buying opportunity or are they just getting destroyed?

So this was a kitchen sink type of quarter. You know, sometimes you listen. to conference calls and you see the stock markets, we ask you, like, why is it down 12%? I don't get it. So dollar general is down 27% or whatever after the conference call. I guess what? Completely deserved. If you listen to the conference call, you would say, I don't know, 15%, 40%, you couldn't

make up a number that would surprise me. That's how bad it was. So they say, from a monthly cadence perspective, same store sales growth was strongest in June before turning negative in July. Notably, the three softest comp sales weeks of the quarter were the last weeks of each of the calendar months. This pattern suggests that our customers are less able to stretch their budgets through the end of the month. With that in mind, as well as our continued softness and discretionary sales in our own customer data and survey work, we believe the softer than anticipated sales performance in Q2 is at least partially attributable to a core customer that is less confidence of their financial position.

I want to provide some additional context around what we're seeing and hear from our customers. The majority of them state that they feel worse off financially than they were six months ago as higher prices, softer employment levels, and increased borrowing costs have negatively impacted low-income consumer sentiment. As a result, and here's a kudagra, as a result, our core customer who contributes approximately 60% of our overall sales comes predominantly from households earning less than $35,000 annually. Ben, let me ask you a question. At what point in history were people earning $35,000 doing well?

There's not a point in history because by definition, they're always doing poorly. So sometimes these companies, you look at them as a bellwether of the economy. Not this time. But here's the thing. So dollar tree is also off 50%. My question is, what's the trade down from a dollar store? Where are these people going that's not? the lowest price place that there is?

I could be out of my depth here, but I think Walmart is killing them. Okay. I think Walmart has made it really, really easy. And I just think that it's like a, I think it's more of a dollar general. I think it's more of a dollar store story than a low-end consumer story.

Right. Walmart is probably a better deal than both of these places. Just because they have dollar in the name doesn't mean that it's the best deal. Then you're getting everything for a dollar, right? Right. So that makes sense.

So people were pointed to this as evidence that it's over, and I just don't know that I see it that way. Right. Because Walmart is at an all-time high again. Yeah. So there you go. Okay. Survey of the week from the Wall Street Journal.

Twelve years ago when researchers at a public religion research institute asked 2,5001 people, if American Dreams still holds true, more than half of them said it did, when the Wall Street Journal asked the same question in July that dropped about one-third of recipients. And they say, still holds true, has fallen. Once held true, but not anymore, has risen. And also, never held true has risen from 5% to 20% or so. I mean, that's poppy cat. Come on.

Never held true? Yes. Do you think the American dream, if you work hard that you'll get ahead, still holds true, never held true, or once held true, but doesn't anymore? And so this is from the article. It feels like my parents' generation has ruined it for us. It's such a stark case of the haves and the have-nots. I just, I wonder if how many people actually understand, like, what came before them

and what, and I think this kind of gets a bit. really hard to articulate because there's another one from Schwab from their wealth survey. I think we were talking about this. Americans feel they're in better shape to reach our financial goals and generations that came before them. Sixty-four percent, so they're more likely than previous generations than before. I just, I don't think people are very good at the results on these surveys, understanding them. I think, like, I'll fall back on Josh's optimism as the default setting. It's, it's never been easy to get ahead. I don't know if it's harder or easier than it used to be. There's always

winners and losers. But come on. Like, this is, uh, this is the land of opportunity. And it doesn't mean that people don't get a raw deal and people don't get screwed and everybody has equal access to the opportunities. But come on. Where else are you going? How about this? It's never been easier to feel sorry for yourself either and put it on the public platform. Here's, here's, here's American Dream, uh, from our comments asked, going from a 1.4 GPA to becoming CFA's and seeing the impressive. Gives me hope. Michael Batnik,

the American dream. I'll take it. I will take it. I got a personal finance question for you. Based on your dishwasher alone, I'm going to guess that your car is generally kind of messy. Is that a fair assessment? You think?

No, and the fact that you have two young kids. Because I feel like there is a huge difference between a parent's car with little kids and a non-parent car. If you have kids You have no shot at keeping your car clean Is that fair? I'm not making a mess

Yes, yes, exactly Although I could see you be in like in the Like in college Being like a fast food bags And bottles in the back of your car Going a guy. Fair? Yes.

One time I wanted to pick up Josh He opened the door I said nope I got in his own car So I was in one of my friend's cars I have a friend with five children And I got in a he had like a suburban I got in this summer

And I was just like, oh my gosh, this makes me feel good about it. But, I mean, it's just Cheerios and goldfish and stuff smashed and fingerprints everywhere and the windows. Anyway, so I cleaned my car, my wife's car yesterday. I took the floor mats out and I and I power washed them. I wiped down all the windows. Hold on. You power washed the floor mats? Oh, do you know much junk kids?

So you know those squish balls that are kind of like stress balls kids have these days? And they have like little shiny things in them. My son has broken like six of these. He had one in my car the other day. We were driving up north, and I told him, like, dude, quit squeezing that so hard. You're going to break it. And he's like, I got it. It's fine.

And next thing we know, it sounded like someone got their head shot, head blown off. It was, boom! This thing exploded, and it was a glitter bomb in my car. My daughter had glitter all over her sides of my car, just glitter. We had glitter everywhere forever. So I had to clean my car out. And it took me probably an hour to clean both cars. Vacuumed.

I vacuumed. I used the car detailing stuff. and wiped everything down and I did the windows and I did the floor mats and it took forever and... You ever hear of a car wash? Is it just easier

to get a car detailer to pay a couple hundred bucks and do it every six months? Do you do that? I think... Like get your car detailed? Yeah, Robin does it for us like once, I don't know,

hearing very infrequently. We've done it before, twice maybe. Speaking of cars, my EV, my hybrid wrangler, I like how it looks. I think it's a cool looking car. But what a piece of garbage It just

You turn out like goes I feel like you've kind of not Like that thing from beginning All of a sudden like it goes silent Like It was dead quiet when I got it And also when I got it The charge

You were able to go 30 miles on a charge Now for people on the South Shore Who understand I get to the loop parkway It's probably I don't know Seven miles away

I looked yesterday I was down to 15%. So I'm going to say The charge now takes me 10 miles So the battery base go to work. Would not recommend.

Okay. All right. I have a movie theater thing for you. So I still am a physical magazine guy. I get GQ and S-Q. Wow, what is that? Yeah, Danny McBride. And I was going through it this weekend.

And he talks about, they did this whole profile on Danny McBride, how I moved from L.A. to Charleston and moved this whole production company. It was pretty cool story. Didn't we see his house? Oh, that's right. Maybe someone pointed it out.

So he talked about movie theaters. He says, I can't stand the modern movies theater that served dinner trend. I hate it. I can't stand it. I also don't think it makes sense to combine booze with movies. You're going to have to piss.

Doesn't alcohol make you want to get up and get loose? You don't want to sit there, drink beer, and just be quiet. I would have no interest in going to see a movie and just pounding IPAs. Yeah.

I'm on board of this. I never saw the need for having, like, a meal of food while you're watching a movie or drinking beer. Yeah, I think it's cool, but the novelty probably wears off. I had to use the restroom

during long legs, and I hate it. I hated it. That's the thing. You don't want to leave the movie in the middle. You can't pause it. Not great. All right.

Oh, somebody sent us. Last week I was talking about being an outdoorsman, which, you know, I love camping, even though it's been over a decade. Yeah. Which is the biggest line of horseshit I ever heard in the show that you love the outdoors. I do love the outdoors. Camping, though, there's a difference between looking outdoors and maybe being a camper. I love camping.

If you haven't gone camping in a decade, you don't love camping. I do. Like, Bill Sweet goes camping, like, once a year, I feel like. Listen, there's plenty of things that I love that I do. don't have time for. Okay. Somebody sent us, there's a company called Under Canvas, where they set up in national parks. And look at these tents. It's like glamping, I guess they call us. Oh, so this is glamping, yes. It's like professional. You can't stay one of these and then say you love the outdoors, though. This is like a non-outdoors way of going camping. Oh, stop it. You are literally outdoors.

Look at this. This is like a condo. It's a professional tent. It's like wooden floors. Yeah, that's not that's like I pretend to like the outdoors, but I'm really going to live in luxury All right, uh listen, I love the outdoors, but I don't like daddy long legs. I don't like waking up with daddy long legs on top of the tents. I hate daddy long legs. Yeah, exactly. Camping because you always, what percentage of the time do you wake up in a tent and it's wet the next day? 100%. 70%? It's all the time. Even if it's just due. Not a big do guy. That's the worst part. And setting up the tent is never easy. Poles and that they

It All right Parenting from the Wall Street Journal Parenting is hazardous To your health A Surgeon General Warns Report cites that the American Psychological Association

Saying you Half of parents report Overwhelming stress most days Compared to 26% of other adults They're lonely or two According to cited data From Health Insurance Cigna In a 2021 survey

65% of parents say they were lonely Compared to 55% of those without kids I just wonder how much of today's Stresses are self-imposed because at what point in the thousands and thousands of years of history where people have had kids were they not worried about their children? Parents have always been stressed about their kids, and maybe I think a lot of what we do to ourselves today

is self-imposed stresses and depression, and I'm not saying everyone, but most people. Like, I get this feeling all the time, like, oh, God, did my parents have these feelings about having kids a way that I do? Like the worries and the, you know, you're always, you're only as happy as your unhappiest child, all this stuff. in school and sports and all this stuff that we all worry about.

Parents have always had to deal with this stuff. I think now we just make it harder on ourselves than it has to be. I think the challenge is now, like parents are more connected with one another. Yes, there's way more of that. Keeping up and staying involved and not getting left behind.

That's the thing, it's competition among parents. They're competing with each other. It's bizarre. Yeah. So I don't know. How do you avoid this? Like, it's pretty tough. That's true.

The lonely thing gets me because I think having, like, I don't know, my kids are my friends in a lot of ways, which is not weird. But, like, I think part of it is the friends that you get when you're a parent are typically parents of your children, whatever. It's sports parents or it's kids in your age. Parents of your children's friends. I think the reason that people might say they're loneliest parents is because you don't get to really pick your friends anymore.

Right. Your friends are chosen for you by your spouse. or by your kids. Like, you're new friends. And the survey puts a gun to your head and says, you're lonely, aren't you? Yeah, I don't get the, I would love to be, I have three kids.

I would love to be lonely or more. Admit you're lonely. All right, we could skip this boomer, not be marrying. We'll talk about next time. Story time. All right, here's a fun part of having kids. We went to a costume party this weekend.

So our pool, beach, boat club that we belong to up north, So this place has been around since 1903. So it's technically called a yacht club, but it's not, it's, it's really, really old. It's been there forever and they have a pool and a little deck where you can get drinks and, like, food. You went to a yacht club and you dare to call my outdoorsman, you call it the outdoorsman a realist? I'm putting yacht in quotes here. There's no actually yachts at this yacht club. It's just called it.

So it's been around since 1903, but apparently in the 1920s, this place ran into like financial ruin. and they had to have a fundraiser. And what they did for this fundraiser for some reason is they threw a Pirates ball. Naturally. And so this was the 100th anniversary of a Pirates ball. So every year they have a big party of Labor Day.

It's kind of the end of the season bash. And two to 300 people show up. And we've never done it before because our kids were never really of age and didn't make sense. And this is the first year we've done it. And literally 250 people show up to this place dressed full gear as pirates.

And so my wife went out and got all our costumes. Amazon, you know, like Halloween pirate costumes. And we were looking a few weeks ago, like, what does the costume need to look like? And my kids want to be like Jack Sparrowish. And I said, you look at this picture. You got the dimples. I said, I said, I need to get a fake mustache. And my youngest daughter, Kate, who's the princess of the family, said, no, no, no, daddy, you have to grow it out yourself. You can't have a fake mustache. And no one else wanted me to do it. But hey, she says she wants me to do it. I do it. And so I would it take you to grow. That is impressive.

I grew a beard for like two weeks, and then I shaved the mustache and left the little soul patch. Did Courtney like it? Hated it. My wife hated it. My other two kids hated it. My daughter, who wanted to grow it, she thought it was the greatest thing ever. I think you look great. What's with the headband, though?

It's a pirate. I don't know. It came with a costume. I had a hat, too. Did you get a lot of compliments? I mean, everyone else there was dressed. A lot of compliments on the mustache, but I got, not going to lie. I kind of liked the mustache.

I love it. Like, I, I'm going to be honest. I look a little bit like a porn guy, like a C-rated porn star. Yeah, yep, I wasn't going to say it, but. But I think the mustache plays. And I told me, like, I kept it for a couple. I took it for a test run for like two or three days. And I liked it.

When we were we talking about mustaches on the show? Was I talking about with somebody else, that all of our dads had moustaches? Oh, yeah, my dad definitely had a mustache. Yeah. Non-ironically. So now I couldn't tell, like, okay, I'm going to wear it ironically. But then I can see how people go from ironic mustache to, I kind of like it, actually. Yeah, I like it.

We were just talking before we got started. I don't know how we got on the subject, but how weird were boxer shorts? What do you mean? Like, so I wear boxer briefs. I assume that most people wear boxing. Oh, you mean the boxers that are loose? Yeah, I used to wear those. Yeah, of course.

There was a thing, for those of you don't know, right now you wear boxer briefs, right? They're long-ish, tight underwear. Yes. Back in the day, we had something called boxer shorts. which were just shorts under your shorts. Yeah, they bunch up all the time. That was a weird thing, right? I mean, are they weirder than, I think the, here's the, here's why we got them.

Because whitey tighties were so restrictive. People said, I need to let stuff breathe down there. So we went from whitey tides. It's kind of like going from a bubble to a bust. We went from whitey tides totally restrictive to boxers, like let it breathe and and then I feel like boxer briefs didn't come into existence until years later. Yeah, we scaled back to boxer briefs then. Yeah.

But yeah, yeah, you're right. I remember wearing boxer, boxers. They were weird. Middle school, high school, and they were just all sort of bunched up all the time. All right, recommendations, Ben. A friend of mine, I have one friend in Hollywood, and he texted me,

Have you seen Strange Darling? And I said, not only have I not seen Strange Darling, I've never heard of it. So I went to the theater knowing nothing, and it's, well, I have to think about this. easily of my top five favorite movies of the year. I've never even heard of it. No, you haven't.

I never heard of it. So, and nobody's seen it. It's done $2 million at the box office. If you... All right, this is a full batten and endorsement. Not like trap. I understand I should have given more disclaimings even though I thought I disclaim the shit out of it.

Strange Darling is a Michael movie through and through. I'll just read the description. Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer's vicious murder spree. Okay. The movie was phenomenal. I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend you go see it in the theater. But even more so, I will say this.

And I hope even me saying this doesn't spoil anything, but it's a type of movie that you need to go on blind like I did. Don't Google it. Just if you're a Michael movie guy or girl, go see this movie. Twist ending? I'm not saying anything. Just a great film. And in the film, there was a trailer that I laughed out loud at, which I don't, I'm not a laugh

out loud at a trailer guy. It's got to really, it's got to really be funny. Kevin Smith, were you a Kevin Smith movie guy? I mean, clerks, chasing Amy, mall rats. Mallrats is one of my favorite 90s comedies. Okay. Me too. Mallrats is great.

I think chasing Amy, I don't think I was ready for that movie when it came out. I think it was a little bit too young, clerks as well. But there's a, Kevin Smith has a new movie called the 430 movie. When does it come out? Oh, shit. It comes out soon. Hey, my guy, Justin Long. I laughed out loud in the trailer multiple times.

I might actually go see this. Okay. I feel like it's been a while for him. Ben, I asked you to watch a movie. Did you watch this movie? I did. I watched it last night. So I watched a movie called Love Lies Bleeding.

I think it's an 824 movie, right? Praise 824. It is. And it definitely felt like an 824. Okay, so Kristen Stewart, Ed Harris. It's a noir movie, and it's on Max. I said to Ben, because Ben and I have very different taste of movies. I said, I feel like this is a mic.

movie that Ben would enjoy. I was curious to hear your take. So, I loved it. I thought it was very clever, enjoyable. Your thoughts? Dave Franco was in. I'm a big Dave Franco guy. It was very well done.

It was a really, like, well-shot movie. I think it was a little too dark for me. Okay. I liked it, but it was good, but it was a little too on the dark side. Okay. It was really well done. Yeah.

Obviously, you like, yeah, you like the dark side. I thought it was really well done, though. All right. I enjoyed it. Yes. I enjoyed it, but too dark for me. Okay. All right, good to know.

It did keep popping up on my HBO Max algorithm though. She's great. Ed Harris is great. I really, I enjoyed the hell of it. Weird Ed Harris' hair. Party in the back? Yeah, big time.

And Harris was completely bald. And not only did he have a party in the back, but it started like at the back of his head. Yeah. It was bizarre. All right. Lastly, I took my kids to a Broadway show. Oh, Ben, here's another thing.

Here's another thing that I'd love to do. that I never do. I love Broadway. There, I said it. Really? I would have guessed that. When I was young, my parents took me to see Phantom of the Opera, and I love it. I still love the soundtrack. I took my dad to see it maybe two years ago. Love Broadway, never go. So I took my family to see the Lion King, which I never died. It's been on Broadway forever. My wife and I saw it a number of years ago. Wonderful. Great experience. Kids loved it. Kobe did fall asleep at the end, but too long. Too long. But if you're, if I do get emails from time to time, hey, I'm bringing my family to New York. What do you work?

recommend line king i think so too yeah my wife and i went to see we didn't take the kids and she loved it it was yeah it was pretty good uh i don't have a lot for recommendations this week i do have a list for you did you watch incoming oh shoot i didn't watch yet no i was gonna watch it my wife said no you got to watch it with me so i have so i have it's really it's really funny okay i have a look i did this list off the top of my head so i'm probably missing stuff but i i took a list of like what are some of the best high school movies ever dude if you make a list i want in. I can't, I can't participate. This selfish of you. Okay, I'm sorry. Here's my, this is, I came up with this on the fly, so I might have missed them. So here's like the list of preeminent best high school

movies. And I'm going to give you my number one at the end. Uh, breakfast club, 16 candles. Oh my, go slow. Go slow. Sorry, 16 candles, fast times at Ridgemont High. Ten things I hate about you. Ferris Bueller, days and confused, clueless, varsity blues, big 90s one there. America pie, another 91. Juno, book smart, risky business, which kind of started them in the early 80s. Can't Buy Me Love. How's the underrated? Can't Buy Me Love with Dr. McDreamy? Who? Don't know. Oh. Okay. Great 80s movie. Mean girls can't hardly wait. Project X, Weird Science. Easy A, 21 Jump Street and Say Anything. Those are like the ones that I came off at top of my head. I'm sure I missed something. What's say anything?

That's one where John Cusack is holding the stereo above his head. Good party movie. Yeah. That's a good list. 80s. What's your number one? Oh, wait, did you say Ferris? I did. So the number, I've watched it again this week. I've been on a classic movie binge for the last few weeks. It's super bad. It's not even a close second. Yeah, yeah. You're right. And here's the reason why. It has all the things you want from a high school movie. It's got the great party scenes. It's got the dorky kid who has a turn. It's got like the awkward sex scene. Like it checks all the boxes. It's perfect. It's the cops. It's Seth Rogen and Bill Hader. Take it to another level. Those two as the cops as like the other, it's almost

like another whole their plot within a high school movie just for some reason that was the part that I watched that movie probably once a year

we watch and it's one of my I think it's probably my favorite comedy of this century even if I was that 2002? What year was that?

Like 2007 probably. Seven? Yeah. And that's the best high school movie my favorite one ever and I've seen them all. That's the right answer.

Okay. That's what I got. Oh, Duncan says Ned actually is Ed, Edmund, Edwin, Edgar it's a form of ad and it actually can be traced back

to Ned Stark was the first one ever from the 1300s he's the first Ned um okay we're going along these days what's gotten into us next week I'm going to be coming back

with some recommendations for what to watch on your flight to future proof Duncan threw it on a gallant on that you better be ready to oh three movies to watch in your flight on the way to future proof great call Duncan yep we'll be ready

oh we're talking Delta we're talking Delta right I'm going to give random movies you can download them ahead of time Oh okay Okay, okay. Not everyone rides, not everyone flies Delta. Okay.

Well, I'm just saying the link that Duncan sent us was Delta movies. Yeah, it's a streaming agent. Anyone can download anything. Okay, fair enough. All right. Thanks to Duncan and the production team as usual. Send us an email, Animal Spirits at the compound news.com,

and we'll see you next time. Go.