Animal Spirits Podcast - Has the World Gone Crazy? (EP.362)

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

On episode 362 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the great Bill Walton, how many people own stocks and houses in America, how the internet and outrage culture broke surveys, 401k millionaires, what inflation means now, the Home Alone house is on the market, the best personal finance traits, and more! This episode is sponsored by Franklin Templeton. To learn more about the Franklin Income Focus ETF (INCM), please visit: https://www.franklintempleton.com/investments/options/exchange-traded-funds/products/36262/SINGLCLASS/franklin-income-focus-etf/INCM 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

Today's show is sponsored by Franklin Templeton and their ETF platform. Ben, you know what's so hot right now? What's so hot right now? Yields, income, cash flows. Franklin has an income-focused ETF. The ticker is INCM. It's a diversified portfolio of equity and debt securities seeking to maximize income over a full market cycle. Okay, so we're looking at dividend stocks, convertibles, secured and unsecured bonds, senior floating rate notes, mortgage-backed securities, debentures, and short-term instruments. There's a lot of access to instruments in the fixed income market, huh? I've got a take later in the show on rates. Something's on my mind. So Franklin says the fund may hold up to 30% of its assets and equity-linked notes and 25%

in junk bonds. Twenty-five percent could also be in foreign issuers. So this is obviously a very diversified fund. Global. To learn more, go to Franklin Templeton.com. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investment. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.

And for the second week in a row, unfortunately, we're starting off with a bit of a eulogy. Yesterday, the legendary, I was about to call him a broadcast, but he's so much more than that. Social activist, champion at the college and professional level in basketball. Bill Walton was easily, easily, my favorite broadcaster of all time, and it's not even close. So I was very sad into here of his passing yesterday. And for those of you who don't know who Bill Walton is, just universally loved, right? He was a seven-footer who would go to Grateful Dead concerts and be headed shoulders above everybody else. He was really, really one of a kind.

I want to play just a quick 30-second soundbite from an interview that he did with Big Cat at Barstool Sports just to give you a little taste of the legend that was Bill Walton. When you go off in the middle of the broadcast, do you ever get lost in your own mind and you almost forget where you are? I get lost all the time. And it's unbelievable to listen to. People love to listen to it. It's late night on the East Coast. It's fun to get lost.

And it's important to get lost. But getting lost, that implies that I know where I am to begin with. and that's a giant leap of faith right there. All right. And you were wearing a throwback Bill Walton Blazers jersey. Yeah, I love this guy when I was, I was just say a little boy, but I don't remember when he came on the air, but I do distinctly remember listening to him in the late 90s,

or I guess early 2000s with the Kobe Shack Lakers. And I remember one time, like there's just so many sound by said he had that stuck with me over 20 years later. One time he was describing Tim Duncan, who is the greatest power forward of all time, scored a basket over Robert Ory. And Robert Ory was a nice player, you know, a fine player. And he was shocked that Tim Duncan, and this is a quote that he said, absolutely schooling one of the greatest defensive players of this era in Robert Ory. And Robert Ory was no such thing. Just he was, he was a poet on the microphone. Yeah, he was really good. He did college basketball, too, for a while.

He was, yes. I even think he did baseball, and he knew nothing about baseball. One of a kind of personality. Absolutely, yeah, true. Like, people use this term often a one of one, but he really, really was a one of one. So gone way too soon, 71 years old, the rest in peace, Bill Walton, you were absolutely the best. All right, Ben. What's going on in the stock market?

Washington Post shows that the stock market is now being driven more by tech. this is kind of funny because it's showing 2023 the Meg 7 with like 60% of the returns. And now it's only like 50%. What do you mean more? More now than last year? Yes. What? That's hard to believe.

Good chart here. But it's funny because it's still driving like 50% of the returns instead of 60. So it's showing it's brought it out a little bit. But now I don't know. I looked mid-cap stocks are up like 8% this year. The S&P is up 12. I don't know what small cap stocks are doing. So it's broadening out a little.

Anyway, I just thought this was a pretty good chart. I apologize. I misheard you. It's being driven by more than just tech now. Yes. I thought you meant to it was being driven more by tech today than it was a year ago. Okay. So the S&P 500 is broadening out a little bit.

But it's just funny to think that like broadening out means it's still 50% of the return. So it's still just a massive massive. And I'm guessing, I don't know what the majority is, is in video still. Well, anytime we talk about this, we have to just constantly point out the fact that the majority of the earnings are being driven by these stocks. So it's not, you know, it's not insane multiple expansion that's driving it. It's not just like investors enthusiasm. It's fundamentals.

So you know what, NVIDIA is up this year so far? Over 100%. Yeah, it's 115% after being up 240% last year. Josh slacked us after the earnings last week and said, we're never going to see another company like this again. And I retorted that in the last 10 or 15 years, we've probably had five like complete all-timer companies slash stocks that just we've never seen anything like this before. I'd say you could say- What else? Well, it's Nvidia. It's all the big ones, isn't it?

No, we've seen that before. The Cisco in the late 90s had runs like the Mac 7 that we're seeing today, for sure. Nothing like Nvidia. Obviously, as the stock market gets bigger, these companies get bigger. but we're talking these $6 trillion market cap companies. The fact that they're doing it at this size and scale is just what's so impressive to me. But I think the difference between Nvidia and everything else is that this sort of came out of nowhere. I mean, that's ridiculous.

But you know what I mean? This was a $400 billion market cap two years ago, three years ago, and now it's over $2 trillion. Like these sort of moves don't happen. Bespoke actually had a great chart on this showing the role in 10-year returns of invidia versus the other Mac 7, and this blows them out of the water. So I guess you're right. So Apple's was more of a long thing. Apple held it up for a long period of time.

Sustained dominance. So the MagS7 have had sustained dominance for over a decade now. In some cases, much longer than that. But invidia, so it's up another 5% this morning. It's just, it is wild. Five years ago, this was an $80 billion company. Today, it's $2.8 trillion. Yeah, so I'm talking about this.

tonight with with josh and what are your thoughts this sounds like so uh i don't know it sounds dumb just comparing market cap and saying this doesn't make sense but right like that's that's never like a winning uh argument however does it make sense to you does this sound right like one of these has to be wrong invidia is 2.75 trillion dollars and amazon is 1.9 trillion it does make sense to me though because of the Just because of... You think it makes sense that Nvidia is worth $900 billion more than Amazon?

In terms of people projecting to the future of what AI could be, I think that's, you're getting that sort of premium. Obviously, again, but it's the kind of company that it could drop 30% in a month and it wouldn't, because of one small miss because that much of stuff is baked in. So I know what's happening.

I understand why it's doing what it's doing, but you think this makes sense to you? I don't know. To your point of comparing them, it's hard to say. It's not, so, yeah, I mean, again, this is a, these are dumb games to play, but Nvidia was worth $900 billion all the way back in May of 2020. I don't know. I look at the market caps of meme coins in crypto and then, then, then, my point is,

Nvidia was $900 billion, or $800 billion in May of 2023. It's up three and a half X in a year. and $800 billion is not a small number to begin with. Okay, so I think about it more in terms of like a company like J.P. Morgan, which has a market cap of, you know, little less than $600 billion. All right, so that makes sense to you that Nvidia's worth more than a JP Morgan, more than Amazon? Does that make sense? If thinking, again, financials are more of a slower moving kind of thing.

No, I know, I know. Just looking at market cap is dumb. I get it. But the more that Nvidia just continues to go vertical, and I have not been, I don't think I've ever said over this entire run that like, Nvidia is going to take down the market, just wait. Like, that's not my shtick. But to see a company move from, to see a company add $700 billion in market cap in a month, it was $2 trillion. Remember that pullback a couple of weeks ago? So a couple of weeks ago, the pullback in NVIDIA took it all the way down to $1.8 trillion.

So it's added a trillion dollars in about five weeks. So I'm sorry, call me crazy. But when I see moves like that, like I do get a little bit nervous that this is getting out of hand. And it matters a lot. This company matters a lot to the psychology of the market because the market, it's not being propped up because that sounds like it's like a house of cards. But the market is being driven by enthusiasm with AI. Listen, they've earned it, right?

They continue to blow it out. So it's not, investors aren't, I'm not saying people are crazy or dumb or anything like that, but just moves of this nature. When they start to go straight up into the sky, don't love to see that. That's all. I agree. But this is the reason that this is not the dot-com bubble, though, is that they're actually backing it up with the results.

That's the crazy thing. Yeah, the superlatives are endless. I think they were guiding towards 71% gross profit margins, which is hilarious to begin with, and they came at at 79%. So the interesting thing this year, too, is that getting back to the non-tech things, the S&P and NASDAQ100 are basically up the exact same amount this year. They're both up 12%.

I guess I would have assumed the NASDAQ100 would be up a lot more. I would have to it. Lastly, as a gaps get filled, core guy, that's like one of my core principles, is gaps gets filled. This gap at 9, whatever, 960, whatever it is, that's getting filled. I don't know when.

It's getting filled. Okay. I still don't understand this one, but I'm just going to let you have it. I can't let you get away with that. This is very simple. For people who are like Ben, who don't know what I'm talking about, a gap is created when the stock opens up significantly higher than the last price. So it closes at 960. I'm making this up.

It opens up at 10.50. That's a gap. And that gap will get filled with the price coming back to the gap, in this case, 960 or whatever it was. Got it? I kind of get it. That's just weird to have as one of your life principles, though. It's, yeah, it's not an investment principle, it's a life principle. Okay.

Like if somebody has a great thing happen to them in their life and they gap higher, they're coming back down to Earth. It's just a matter of time. Gravity. U.S. stock ownership at the highest level since pre-2008 crisis days. So we're up to 62% of Americans own stock in some form. It got as low as about 50% by end of Great Financial Crisis times. And it's been slowly moving up since.

And it was basically this level from the late 90s through the Great Financial Crisis. And then you had this dip period where it went down and then kind of come back up. The vast majority of upper income Americans whose household incomes are 100% or more, 100,000 or more own stocks, that's 87%. 25% of lower income Americans, people with less than $40,000. Two-thirds of middle income Americans, 65% are run open stocks. So this is basically on par now with homeownership rates, right? So we're talking two-thirds of people own stocks or a house. and this is the one of the reasons that net worth for so many people is doing so much better.

So if you're in that two-thirds, you're in a pretty good, if you're both of those two-thirds, right, if we did a Chris Venn diagram, I own a house, I own stocks, you're doing pretty good for yourself, right? It's the people who are in that one-third who are looking at this and going, oh, my gosh. Speaking of comparing numbers that have nothing to do with one another, do you think it makes sense that these numbers are the same? Like, do we as Americans make too much of the idea of homeownership? That sounds crazy, that two-thirds of Americans own a home?

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just, it's a lot. Right or wrong, we've decided that homeownership or stock prices and homes going up in value is something that we, that's a life principle. That's a gap filled for America. Well, it makes sense because I think that from a long-term, wealth building lens, it's much easier for the average American to build wealth in their home than it is in the stock market. Because the average person doesn't know anything about the stock

market and might have the tendency to do something that they shouldn't do, right? Selling a bare market, get scared, panic, right? Because they get marked to market every day. The great thing about the home is it's four savings. So recession bare market, you're still putting it away. Yes, and I'm going to get to that in a little bit the ebbs and flows of those cycles, but I think we've made it so much easier for people to own stocks in index funds and target date funds and such in the 401K, that there is probably less freaking out that goes on. I mean, there's obviously some because just looking at this chart of ownership going from 60% to 50% that those 10% of people who sold out of stocks in one of the best

opportunities to buy stocks in history, those people screwing. themselves. But most people stayed the course. You're right. We're going to talk a lot about surveys today. And one of the reasons why I like this particular survey is it's asking a very direct question. Not do you think, not how do you feel? Or how do you think other people feel? Yeah. This is do you own stocks? It's a very simple yes or no question. So we're not survey people. This is a survey I can get behind. All right. So the next one is like what's the best investment. And 30, the highest number. So it's real estate gold. Huh? Can I guess? So it's real estate gold stocks, savings accounts, bonds, or crypto. No, I'm saying those are the, those are the, so what's the

highest? I would, I would have guessed real estate. Yeah, real estate is number one. It's come down a little bit. That's 36 percent. Stocks were second place, actually behind gold. And now stocks are in second place. So it's real estate gold stocks? Real estate stocks gold. But it was gold for a while there. Yeah. And they added crypto here, which is still a small amount, but that's a new one. All right. I want to get into this one, and you wrote a good blog post on this, speaking of surveys and why we don't like them. Before we get into the numbers here, people, there's always math-inclined people who tell us about surveys. Like, hey, don't you understand sampling? And this is how it's supposed to work. It's like, that's not our problem of surveys. Our problem of surveys are

the psychology behind it. So there was a story in the Guardian. The majority of Americans wrongly believe the U.S. is in a recession and mostly blame Biden. 55% believe the economy is shrinking. 56% believe the U.S. is experiencing a recession. 49% believe the stock market is down this year. And then 49% believe that the unemployment rate is at a 50-year high. And this one made the rounds on social media. Everyone dunked on it.

Geez, Americans are so stupid. The stock market is up. The economy is doing fine. Unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. People don't understand anything. Blame this on the media or social media. or just people are just naive and dumb and political and these are the things that people

have been saying about this survey. And you came out with a blog post and you called me, you said, this isn't it, people are missing something here because there's no way people actually believe this stuff. Yeah, I genuinely don't believe it. And your point was like, this was an outrage bait, right?

They massage this to look like people are stupid. All right, so here's a, the deal. People say that the media is doing this because they want to, because they're in a click for business, right? The more outrage they can generate, the more they get paid. And that's true. The part that people are missing is that they're giving us what we want, what they know will go viral, and what they know will go viral is shocking negativity. So, Ben, you said earlier that people will tell us that we don't understand math with surveys, that you only need to sample it so many people to get an accurate representation. What they're missing is, it's the language

of the survey, which we don't see. We don't see the questions. Now, the Guardian paid, I think Harris is a company, to do this poll. Listen, I didn't see the question. So maybe I'm wrong here, but I don't think I am. I think that the guardian could have. I'm not saying that they did, but I think that the questions were worded in such a way that they could have written the article before they even got the results because they were they were leading people to answer the way that they wanted them to answer. So for example, yes, like in a court movie, leading the witness. Exactly. Objection. Forty-nine percent believe that the unemployment is at a 50-year high. There's no fucking way. There's no way that half of people think that,

how about this? If you ask the question this way, ask 10 people, do you think the unemployment rate is higher today than during the great financial crisis? How many people? How many people, people out of 10 do you think say yes? Zero? Maybe one dumbass? So I just, I don't buy it for a second. I think that this is entirely driven by what we want to consume and what media is incentivized to do. We want negativity because we want to be outraged. So there was another, and I'll give you another example of this, Washington Post had a great article called When America was great according to data. Now, the only thing I saw people tweeting, this is a wonderful article. There's a ton of meat in here to chew on that. I love the visuals. It was really well done. So the only thing in

here that went viral was this chart and it said the headline was for haters, there's no time like the present. So almost every one of these, the line and these lines go back to 1930s, almost every time it's at the highest point today. Okay, so these are the questions. Share who said each superlative best applied to a given decade. The most political division, today. The least reliable news reporting today. The least moral society today. The worst economy today.

The worst work-life balance today. The least happy families and the most crime. If people are listening to the podcast not watching this on YouTube, the numbers are a drastic leap higher. Worst television, too, that's the one that's stowed out to me. Television has been in a golden age for 10 years. These people are, there's no way this is true either. So then there's another set of questions that asks not what the worst is, but what the best is. So how is it possible that we can have the worst work-life balance today, Ben?

But then also simultaneously, the best work-life balance. Where is this chart? They ask another survey, Ben, you says what decade had? Yes. And it says the best work-life balance also today. How can you simultaneously have the best and the worst work-life balance at the same period of time? It doesn't make sense. You know, I think the thing that the Internet has taught us, this is why all these, even if you go back, all these trends are just broken.

I think the Internet has taught us that, like, the sci-ops that you can do in social media and on the Internet and the way people can be guided and hurted. Oh, dude, we're Plato. Yes, people, and people, the companies and the people on the Internet understand this so much. better because so many of the things that go on in social media now, like someone will do an outrage, like satirical piece that is obviously they're trying to drum up outrage and people will get outraged of it, regardless of if they know this person's wink, wink in on the joke. Like, I almost assume everything, every one of those kind of things is fake now. It's all fake. So here's a quote from the article. When Americans were asked last year which

decade they'd most want to live in, the most common answer was now. At some level that it seems unlikely that we truly believe this decade stinks by almost every measure. You think? So thank you Washington Post for doing this. This was a really eye-opening and teachable article. So when you see, but here's why it matters. Here's why it matters. Because public perception shapes everything. And if people perceive that everybody's miserable, we talk about it all the time, it has an impact on our collective psychology. And that's the danger. That's the thing. The internet has broken collective psychology. I think I'm pretty, I'm okay saying that. That like the experiment that is the internet, having us have all this information, sharing our thoughts and opinions at all

times for a decent chunk of the population, it's just broken our heads. All right. Here's one more quote. So they say UGov didn't just ask about the best music and the best economy. The pollsters also asked about the worst music and the worst economy, but almost without exception, if you ask an American, when times were worse, the most common is responsibly right now. Again, hilarious. This holds true, even when now is clearly not the right answer. For example, when we ask which decade had the worst economy, the most common answer is today.

Hello, have you heard of the Great Depression? Nobody actually believes this shit. It's just... For the 1970, yeah. The only one that really rang true to me here is this is my favorite one, is nostalgia tends to peak when you are young. So they show this the same questions and when was the best. always when you are young.

Because a couple weeks ago, I talked about how the 90s is the best decade to grow up in. And I obviously, that was tinged with nostalgia colored glasses. And that's the thing for everyone that the best TV

and the best movies and the best music and all that stuff is when you were young. Yeah. Because guess what? When you're 12 years old, you have no problems.

You got no worries. Right? At least nothing significant. I say that stuff to my kids, my kids all the time. Like, what do you have to worry about right now? You have life so easy.

You have literally nothing to care about. All you have to do is be a kid. Yeah. It's way easier then. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not saying that being a kid is easy because, you know, there's all sorts of social pressures and blah, blah, blah. But, like, relatively speaking, it's a lot easier than supporting your family, that's for sure.

Yeah, but the biggest reason that you and I are anti-survey is because of this kind of stuff where you just can't trust the outcomes anymore of this data unless, like, they're really direct questions. Yeah, and so the problem is who's reading this article? How many people who saw that chart showing that everything is the worst today than ever, how many people read the article? Honestly, less than 1%. Right. It was a very good article. Less than 1%.

Do you think that's crazy? Probably. Yes, they shared the chart so they looked at the headline. So, yeah, it's just not good. And this is the world we live in, and it's never going to be any different. And so we're going to keep better than this Trump. There's a clear dividing line. When the Internet happened, before.

and a, that should, that should be the new BCAD is, yeah, before and an afternoon at. Um, all right. Uh, the number, here, here's one more survey thing. The number of employees feeling financially well is trending up. Employees who rate their financial wellness as good or excellent. So it was 42% in 2023. It was 20, it was 47% in 2024. This is another thing that clearly doesn't square with perception. My favorite financial basis. My favorite financial basis, thing is if you're a financial, big financial company and you do a chart like this, you have to put a gray-haired smiling person next to it. Oh, yeah, got to. Has to. Those are the rules. Number of 401k millionaires from Bloomberg. This is just at Fidelity, who is one of the biggest

401k providers in the country, I think the biggest. Is that fair? Are they bigger than Vanguard? Yeah. It's 500,000 millionaires almost in the first quarter. That's a new record. But that makes up only 2% of their 24 million defined contribution accounts. Still, if you can do a million in a 401k. That's impressive because most people have a 41K here, an IRA there, an old 401k to an old employer. Most people don't have all of their money at a single 401k plan. And the millionaires had an average tenure of 26 years in the workplace retirement savings plan and an average contribution rate of 17%. That's pretty good. That is pretty good. People often ask, what should my savings rate be? 17% sounds like a good rate to me.

I would take that for most people. So, again, that's just for the millionaires. So that's what it takes. Yeah, not that doesn't a lot of compounding, a lot of time. All right, I feel like we haven't talked about flows in a while. You're a big flows guy. Wall Street Journal had a piece this week. Flows to U.S. stock and bond funds this year are the strongest since 2021,

when interest rates were near zero. Globally, we've seen a net $468 billion invested in ETFs through April, which is a record. Now, look at the flows here. This is flows to U.S. mutual fund and exchange traded funds. and we had a huge, huge uptick and flows in 2021. Then we have the bear market in 2022. Nearly $500 billion goes out. We had a little bit of less money come out last year,

and then now money's pouring back in this year. This is the people on the edges and the fringes because there's trillions of dollars in these funds, right? So, Ben, in 2021, almost $850 billion flowed into U.S. mutual and exchange traded funds. That's more than the difference in market cap between Amazon and Nvidia. Does that make sense to you?

I'm just kidding. All right. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF is on pace for potentially a record year. $37 billion net in less than five months. The annual record for any ETF inflows is $50 billion. And if you look at the list of the biggest inflows, it's the Vanguard S&P and then SPY is next, which is interesting.

The Vanguard S&P 500 is like taking over the throne, it looks like. But the next one, third biggest inflow is Bitcoin for my shares at $15 billion. Two things on this. I'm a bit surprised at VLO, which is the S&P, Vanguard's S&P fund, has taken more money than VTI, triple the amount. That is kind of interesting. I feel like historically VTI has been more popular, but I can be wrong on that. The other thing is that for this to potentially set a record in a year where cash is still yielding a very healthy 5%, I would not have predicted that.

And they showed in this article that were still well over $6 trillion in money market funds. So that has not abated at all. So people are putting money on their credit cards to buy VLO. Interesting. I guess this is just a thing where the pie keeps getting bigger so we should expect these things to... I mean, if you think about it, the savings rate thing,

if your savings rate stayed the same, and we're not... We never look at anything in the stock market on an inflation-adjusted basis. right? Which is, someone asked me last week, why do we look at GDP on a real basis? But things like the stock market and earnings are never on an inflation just debate. I don't know, because we've always don't like that. But if people are making 20 to 25 percent more in terms of wages, because inflation has raised those wages, that means more savings. You should expect these numbers to go

up, is what I'm saying. It makes sense. Let me ask you a question about the credit card thing. So I don't know if you saw my post yesterday, but I pulled a chart from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showing the percentage of people with delinquent credit card debt continues to rise. I can't hand-wave this away. This is not great. So whether it's people that are going into delinquency, where it's turning into 30 days or 30 days plus or 90 days plus, they all look the same and they're all not good. So for the U.S., it looks like just over 10% of people have delinquent credit card debt, which is, the highest it's been since, what does it look like, like 0, 6, 07, something like that?

And if you look at the poorest 10% of zip codes, it's going, it's way higher. It's like 17 or 18%. I guess my only way to square this is that, yes, it's whatever, 2% higher than it was a year ago, like going from 8% to 10%. But that number is being dwarfed by the people who are still spending more than those people.

if that makes sense. Yeah, I agree that this is, that's not a great trend. Yeah, no, it's, it's going the wrong direction. But I think the reason that it hasn't impacted the economy is because, again, the people in the higher end that aren't going into credit card debt are still spending. Do you think that in six months, I want to use the word reckoning? Are we going to hear more from this chart in six months? Is there going to be a, so when I look at, when I see this chart, I, rightly or wrongly, I look at the stock market. I say, okay, what are some of the biggest lenders that are exposed to the consumer doing?

what's Ally doing, right? And they're big in the auto, and the auto space, auto credit's not doing great. And I look at the chart. I don't have the number of, the number of people who pay the minimum payment

on their credit card. If credit card rates rent from 20% to 25% or whatever they've done and you're making the minimum payment, that doesn't seem like that much. That's a lot. Yeah.

The compounding against you so I can see how those delinquency add up in a hurry. So I literally never getting out of this. Capital One stock is doing fine. Now, you could say, hey, dumbass, what do you think this,

what were the charts of the banks doing in 2006, 2007, right? I'm sure they'll look fine then too. Now, you're building a basket of consumer shorts here. Well, so the stock market isn't always right, but I don't know. I feel like if this was really a stress, I would not be the first one to point it out. And the lenders would probably be doing less good than they are. So anyway, something to keep an eye on, definitely not something you want to say.

All right. Something else people were dunking out on social media, but I think is actually a fair point. Felix Salmon at Axios wrote this piece called inflation doesn't mean what it used to. And he wrote, the meaning of the word inflation has changed. It used to mean rising prices. Now it means high prices. And everyone on Twitter was like, no, and some of their community noted and all this stuff. I sort of agree with that.

And I kind of, I don't necessarily agree with it because it's like semantics a little bit, rising prices, higher prices. But I think this is the kind of thing that the way a lot of people think about it. Because I had a conversation with a friend this weekend. We were talking about like home renovations. And he was like, I looked into stuff and he said just everything is so much more expensive. And people, when they think about inflation, they do think, of just high prices being higher relative to the past, which, again, seems like splitting hairs

because, of course, prices are almost always going up. Inflation is always going to be higher than it was in the past, but it's just the leap forward that we've made. Well, here's why he's right. If prices didn't go up from today through next Memorial Day, do you think that people would say, oh, wow, everything's so cheap because inflation is zero? No. They would say things are still really expensive.

things still feel expensive. After like the 1970s and the early 80s, we obviously never circled back. And so it's interesting that people eventually just get used to it. Like that'll happen. If inflation did slow and it just was at two or three percent for the next five years or so, people would, some people would still complain, but eventually everyone would just kind of move on and get used to it. And this is the new level that people are used to. Yeah, but I think the eventually is longer than you might think.

I think the eventually is like three, four years. Yeah, that makes sense to me, actually. And I wonder when it was after the 70. Because the 70s, inflation was 7% a year for like 12 a year. It was way, way longer than we've experienced it. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, I wonder how long it took people to get. But think about it, though.

In the 80s, it's looked back as this like greedy decade and people were making money and spending money. It's like the new cycle happened. And people kind of, it was always in the back of people's minds, but people did move on. This decade is nothing like that decade. I mean, needless to say, think about, well, first of all, the stock market is at an all-time high. The economy is booming. If you want a job, you can have a job. Not only was it a deep bare market, the worst recession since the Great Depression, and double digit inflation for

years. So do not even, do not even utter the 1970s. Come on. Yes. Unemployment rate was way higher for much of that decade. Yeah, you're right. This is, this is not that. And they had no Netflix on top of it all. What did they even do? No skip intro button. You have like three stations on TV. All right. Here's something that doesn't happen in anything outside of a booming economy. On Thursday, May 23rd, TSA officers screened exactly 111,000 passengers, employees, and crew through security checkpoints yesterday. So the Atlanta airport is the busiest airport in the United States, and it shattered the previous record.

So... Travel boom is still here. Atlanta is one of the best big airports that there is. I've never been there. Okay. I fly through there all the time because I do... Delta. So anytime we would go south anywhere, we'd fly through Atlanta. My brother used to live there. We're taking a flight next week. Ben and I are going to Charleston.

That's right. Live Annel Spears, talk your book. There we go. Okay. What's going on in crypto now? Okay. So there's something strange happening in the crypto universe, which I guess is more or less always the case. Par for the course. Caitlin Jenner appears to be shilling crypto coins, which, not a lawyer. but I feel like that's not legal.

I feel like you couldn't really, if you put a name of any sort of B-C-less celebrity and said they're shilling a crypto coin, like it wouldn't surprise me anymore. So there's videos of her saying, like, get involved, and people are asking, like, this can't, this really can't actually be real. And there's speculation of, is she hacked?

It's just like a fake AI thing, which would be, you know, kind of wild and also kind of not too surprised. so I don't know exactly what's happening. But if this is real, what in the world is going on? Somebody tweeted, wait, Caitlin Jenner is related to the Kardashians, right? Aren't they, like, ultra-rich? Why shilling dog shit's token on the timeline?

Somebody replied, because Chris and the kids are the ones with all the money. And Caitlin Jenner, Caitlin Jenner's account, I should say, replied exactly, L-O-L. What? The funny thing is, is that getting back to the nostalgia, in the 90s, like, no one could sell out to do anything. and now it's not only can people sell, we've gone past the people can sell out, but it's like people can just shill,

and that's okay too. It's not just selling out anymore. It's, I don't care. I'll take money from anyone, anywhere, anyhow. That's where we are. I mean, I don't know. You can't like paint broad brush over crypto, but it would be nice if they could,

if somehow this stuff could get shut down a little quicker if it was possible. Yeah, if this is real, I feel like we're going to hear from the authorities but we'll say. All right. I still have a subscription to the Detroit Free Press from when I lived there. I like to keep up with...

Is that physical? No, this is one of those ones where every six months when my subscription comes up, they're going to raise a price on me. They call me and say, hey, time to re-up, and I say, no. And they say, okay, we'll give you a lower price. Hey, who's your newspaper broker? Myself. I don't need a broker. All right. So this is just a story about the Detroit property market. And they're talking about

there's still multiple offer sales going up. And they talk about prices are way lower there than just about anywhere else. They've doubled. They're still low. So they said, for example, the three-bedroom ranch and Garden City hit the market for 130, quickly sold for 180 after multiple offers. There was a $500,000 one in Dearborn Heights sold that was sold in February 2023 and sold again last month for 700,000. And they're interviewing all these realtors. Just same thing. Like, you know, anytime a house hits the market and they're going up and down the scale here of prices that they're getting multiple offers still. And this has to be the worst part about being a person who's trying to buy a house now is that not only did we not get

lower mortgage rates. Like that was a thing. It's like, okay, just wait a little bit. We're going to get lower mortgage rates. That'll make things easier. But you're still, there's not any supply and prices are only going up when you bid. And obviously, this isn't the same thing everywhere. I'm just using this anecdotally. But there's still places like this where if it's in a relatively desirable area, you're still getting multiple bids and you're having to pay the higher mortgage rates with it. It's just like a double whammy against you that we never got any relief here for anyone buying a house. Yeah. Assume that rates don't come down. Let's just make believe that rates stay flat for five years. And people don't get the opportunity to refi.

Are there going to be ramifications from this? Is it going to lead to lower spending from this cohort? Here's the alternative, though. Young people are making more money. If they're not buying a house, they're going to be spending it on something else. So what if they're boxed out of the housing market? Let's say you're making more money than you never thought of possible as a young age, but you can't compete with people who already have equity or who have a low mortgage rate locked in or who have a higher income than you or a boomer who has a house paid off, then you can spend on other stuff. Maybe this is why that part of the reason there's a travel boom. It's like, geez, I can't pay for it. I'm never going to be able to afford a down payment

on this house. I'm never going to afford the monthly cost. I make some decent money. I'm going to spend it on something else. Has home ownership peaked? No. You think so? Like you think the home the home ownership rate is going to go down? If if mortgage rates stay up in the 7% range. Is homeownership going to go from 65% down to 60? I guess that's possible. I think that's reasonable. What scenario, what kind of economic scenario, see, this is the thing of in terms of like economic surprises that we just get used to stuff. If you would have told me this two years ago, mortgage rates are still going to be at 7% in two years. I would have said, you're nuts. There's no way. We can't have that. It would be

impossible. And everything is still fine. I think the biggest ramification would be we're not going to build enough housing because homeless are going to pull back. People are going to pull back on building. It's going to make the supply situation worse. But what economic environment would we have to be in for rates to stay at 7 percent? The economy would have to continue to grow very strong, right? In that scenario? I don't know. Never say never, I guess. By the way, I'm seeing lately, too, I just read an article today saying, like, listen, the pre-pandemic interest rate period is over forever. And I just wish people would would take, hit the brakes a little bit before they say forever. Because people said,

interest rates are never going to rise this high again forever. So I, anyway, I just caution people to tap the brakes a little bit when we're doing the forever thing. There are certainly scenarios where we could get back to 3% mortgage rates. It wouldn't shock me. No, I think the, but the zero era, you think we'll ever see that again? Zero for 10 years? You don't think we're going to, well, 10 years. You don't think we're going to have a financial crisis someday at some point where and rates are going to, I don't know, that wouldn't surprise me. Ron Lieber at the New York Times had a good piece about home equity and in talking about how it's like a first world problem. Oh no, I have too much home equity, but my house is up,

but I can't do anything with it. And he kind of goes through the different ways that you can tap your equity. You can sell it, but then you have the age old problem of you have to live somewhere. So what are you going to do? Now buy a higher price house. You can cash out refile. which was a way better looking proposition a few years ago when rates were lower. Helac also my helock I checked the rate the other day is at 8.3%. Those are variable. Reverse mortgage, which he said sounds great in theory for people who are, I think it's like 62 and older can do it,

but they don't allow many of them and not many people do it. And then he said there's those other kind of companies that are looking to sell the upside. We talked to a couple of those companies back in the day. that I just as a business model doesn't make a lot of sense to me so my question is like are we going to see some in your situation

if rates stay higher and make this harder to get people to pull that trillions of dollars they have an equity will we see some creativity here finally in like making it easier to tap that equity

in understanding that people have so much money in their house and it's just like pent up spending just sitting there why haven't we see more creativity here or will we I don't even know enough about this to, like, say anything. I just don't know.

I'm sure there's regulation and interested parties. There's just so much wealth sitting there in houses that people would spend if they... And maybe back to your forced savings at the beginning, maybe it's a good thing that people can't tap it because they would just spend it and go to Hawaii all the time or I don't know. I went to Home Depot last week to do some gardening. And I bought a tiller. I don't know, Ben, you're probably not a farmer, so you might not know what that is.

It's the machine that rips up the dirt. Wait, you bought a tiller for like your five-by-five garden? I rented one. Okay. I rented one. 50 bucks. They said... Did you know how to use it?

Oh, yeah. I tell. No offense to you. I would know how to use it. Yeah, no, I know how to use it. Not my first rodeo. So they asked me if I want insurance for $10 now. How many?

No. I broke the wheel. How? I have no, honestly, I don't know. I didn't even wheel it. That's the thing. I carried it to my trunk, and I carried it from my trunk to my backyard. So I didn't even wheel it.

So I don't know, but the wheel, I don't know if the wheel broke when I picked it up or put it down. How much you have to pay? I think they let me go. I think they were like, just get out of here. I'm like, you can't just bang it, bang it back in. Anyway, my point was that this, Home Depot, and obviously this is seasonal, but holy cow, is it busy. Busy? Oh, my goodness.

I can see that. I was never fan of that place because I feel like I'm just constantly chasing around people in orange aprons and waiting in line while someone else talks to them because I can never find. I know there's an app you can use now, but it was never good for me. All right. Wall Street Journal, the Home Loan House is back on the market after 12 years. This is just, Home Alone is, is it the most economically dissected movie in history? Ooh. I would have to think about that.

Why do you say that? Because of the house and the pizza? Every year, people talk about the cost of the pizza. How much is Mr. McAllister actually earn? What kind of job did he have? So the couple bought it for $1.6 million in Chicago area in 2012. They're selling it for $5.25 million. Listen to this.

So originally built in the 1920s, five-bedroom house is 5,700 square feet. I looked at this thing. This isn't even bigger than it looked at the movie. They have an indoor basketball court in this house. What? A movie theater? This thing is massive.

Let me check this out. Scroll down a little bit on the story. There's literally an indoor half basketball court. this house was massive. So I'm, ooh, I mostly am of the mindset that a bigger house is more of a liability than an asset. The upkeep, right? Yeah, and like all the stuff that we're owing and Aung eventually loses its cool and, you know, how luxury is turned into, not necessities, but norm. Luxury has become the norm.

I don't know, man. Having a movie theater in your house and a basketball. hoop, that sounds pretty awesome. Yes. But you would be able to give up going to the movie theater by yourself, though. If I had that movie theater in my house, I'd go to the movie theater every night. Would you take the home alone house with people constantly coming to take a picture in front of the house, though?

That's the part that would annoy me. I wonder if there's like a, is there a home alone premium or a discount? Because to your point, it must be kind of annoying. Yeah. Kind of like somehow people say if you have a pool at your house, it actually detracts the value of the home. Yeah, I wouldn't want people constantly streaming. But I feel like this house is so a lot.

there are a lot of people in front of it, never mind. You know, I wouldn't want to live there. Constantly. All right, back to the consumer. I was listening to both Walmart and Target's earnings call to hear what they were saying about the consumer. And they were saying the same thing. Resilient, consistent. Yeah, consistent, I think was the word that they used.

All right, here's Walmart talking about inflation. These are not inflation-driven results. In the U.S., like-for-like sales inflation was about 40 basis points for the quarter, including mid-to-single-digit deflation in general merchandise and low single-digit inflation in food and consumables. Together with our suppliers, we're making progress lowering prices. Our rollback count is up, and customers are responding to our price leadership. So they're saying, you can't just say that our results of higher sales are because of higher

inflation. The prices are going down, but the results are still going up. Is that what they're saying? Yes. And I think there was a quote about inflation being half of what it was last quarter, or this time last year. At my beach club, noodles for the boys, like a kid's meal, I think it was $7. And it definitely wasn't $7 last year. So prices are coming down, big time there. That's New York inflation, because for us, it's still like three for kids stuff. Three? Three bucks. We're talking, they give them Kraft mac and cheese. But what else do the kids expect? Here's another quote. This is a great read-through to the overall economy. I think the analyst's question was like, is this as good as it gets?

Something like that. And they said, while it might be a little much to expect every quarter to be this good, we feel really good about the performance, and it demonstrates how this business can perform when we're firing around all cylinders. Consumer economic conditions have been relatively consistent since the start of the year. Many of the value-seeking behaviors we witnessed last year have continued, particularly around seasonal events. Okay, whatever.

You don't say that outside of a booming economy. Booming might be strong. Whatever. Call it what you want. A very healthy and strong economy. Everyone thought we were going into recession in 2022. What if we really don't get one until 2027, 2028? It's certainly possible.

Then rates will stay higher for longer. Could be. Yeah, but what if we get back into a situation where inflation is back at two and a half, three percent and the Fed lowers rates to 4 percent or something? That's like, that's a pretty good place if it could happen. Yep. All right. One more survey that I think is actually useful.

This is from the Federal Reserve, the economic well-being of U.S. households. So they show the assessment of your own financial well-being versus the local economy and the national economy. And this is pretty remarkably consistent and is always the case. So everybody says, I mean, not everybody, 73 quarters of the respondents say that their own finances are doing okay. If you look out to the local economy, it goes from 72 down to 42% in terms of people saying that things are okay. And then the national economy down to 22%.

So that's always what it is. Morgan's running all this a lot. I think Derek Thompson's running on this. I'm doing good. My community's doing okay, not as good as I am. And the rest of the country is going to hell. I had a conversation with a person about this this week, and an old friend who said they were talking to a co-worker

who was saying, like, the economy is crap right now. And he told her, you are literally making the most money you've ever made in your life. Your business is booming. Do you really think that it's not like that for other people and it's just you? But I think that is the way people look at it these days. And this is another internet has broken our brains thing.

Yeah, you know what? If you were to say that somebody, I think, I don't think they would say, yes, that's how I feel. I think they would sort of like, they would like hand wave it away. You know what I mean? Like they, because it like breaks their brain a little bit because they know it's just, it's a ridiculous premise that I'm doing okay. Everyone else is doing terrible.

I'm thriving despite the economy struggling. Like, no, you're not. I do think that like the social media stuff is a piece of just constantly looking at other people. I saw an old friend from high school this week for the first time in a while. And he's always been one of like the most even keeled people that I know. And some of the traits that this guy has, I kind of am jealous in a way, but he has the ability to not be envious

of other people's stuff or not be impressed by what other people doing. It just like, it doesn't, it just totally bounces off of him. And I feel like most people don't have that ability to just look at what other people are doing and not be somehow jealous. Because it's like, yeah, I'm doing great,

but this person is doing way better than me. So why am I not like them? Yeah. And I feel like that trade in people is really hard to find, Someone who can just be like, I don't know, I don't really care how much money you're making or what toys you're buying or I feel like way too many people are consumed by that stuff. Yeah. I think it's normal. On the way to the beach yesterday, I saw some guy driving a really nice Porsche. And I thought, oh, back to your car stuff. I thought, yeah, I would love to have that. Like, it's an awesome looking car. It looks really cool. Now, I wasn't like, oh my God, that guy's so cool.

I wasn't thinking about him at all, but, like, yeah, I would, I would love to drive that car. And things are just a little more ostentatious today. So I watched, I rewatched for some reason this weekend. It was on Amazon Prime. I kind of had it in the background when I was doing some stuff. You've seen 16 candles before? Like one of the all-time great... I never heard of it.

16 candles? One of the all-time what movies? One of the all-time great teen. John Hughes, it's, you know, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall. Yeah, early 80s. Okay. Hold on. Before you get to that, in the survey about what year, what decade had the best movies. They said the 80s. I'm sorry. They probably

they probably pulled mostly Gen Xers because it is definitely the 90s. There's a handle on Instagram called The Greatest Scenes of All Time and they put on Instagram in October of 1994 Pulp Fiction, Farris Gump, Shawshank,

Lion King, and Jurassic Park were all in the theaters at the same time. Jeez. The 90s are clearly the best decade for movies. And it's never going to top again. But the funny thing is about things being more over the top these days. The movie is about the jock and the girl who is less popular, you know, that has been done a million times. But the 80s kind of was the first one to do this stuff. So they had a party at the Jack's house, Jake. And his

parents just have, you always talk about these normal houses that are around you that are going for so much money. It was just this normal house. But his dad was a rich guy and he drove a Rolls-Royce. But it was this regular normal, like, split-level house. It is weird when you see that. I see that. You do see that. Yeah. People who drive. of Maserati and live in a very, very standard house. It's like, that's so just, it's just weird. Speaking of cars, I made a mistake. And I think I can put this car issue to bed, at least for the next three weeks.

I won't talk about it. The Czech engine light came on again for my wife's car after being told that they took care of it. They got to the root of the issue. Guess what? Spoiler, they didn't get to the root of the issue. The light came out again. I said, that's it.

We're getting a new car. I can't take it with the bullshit anymore. So I still owe $31,000 on the car and rookie mistake, this is a PSA. I went to Kelly Blue Book and maybe CarMax and I put in my VIN, by this, my that, to get a quote. And now my phone won't stop ringing. Oh, this is buy it from you. So the bad news is I owe $31,000. No, here's a, here's a, play them off against each other.

No, dude, the gap is too big. I owe 31. It's worth 16. So that gap is not getting filled. That gap will, ooh, good one. That gap will never get filled. I am driving this car straight into the dirt. But now my phone won't stop bringing it. I'm getting text messages from all sorts of dealerships.

So Kobe turns 16 in eight years or whatever, and he's getting that, this car. Yeah. So stay away from car quotes. Okay. Ben, I was explaining to somebody who, well, English as a second language, about I got a traffic violation like a year ago that I never took care of. It was the babysitter drove past.

a bus that was pulled over. Now, you obviously, for obvious reasons, they want to protect the kids. I want to protect the kids. If a bus, a school bus is pulled over with its stop sign out, you can't go past it. Right.

Well, they have, there was a video, right? So you could check it. So I'm looking at the video, the bus is pulled over on the side of a main road, lights off, and just traffic is just driving by.

So all those people got flagged. And I never took care of it. I got a second notice. And I called them And I'm like, they're like, sorry, it's been over a year. We can't do anything. If you want to dispute this, talk to a lawyer. I'm like, I'm not talking to a lawyer about for $250.

So I'm talking to somebody. You don't just have a lawyer on retainer for this stuff because I'm not a broker for you. I don't have a lawyer. I do not have a lawyer. I say far away from the lie. I play within the rules. So I'm talking to somebody about this. And she said like, so I'm like, wait, actually, maybe I should hire a lawyer.

because I don't want points. And she's like, wait, points are bad. I'm not understanding why are points? And she made a great point. Why do we, whose idea was it to call the bad things points? Like the insurance company is like mind gaslighting us into thinking that these are actually a good thing. Like you want more points? No.

They should be called like, I don't know what they should be called. The points is an interesting choice of words. It's a sort of red flag. Yeah, that's a good point. One random observation for you this week, Ben. why do old men love giant belt buckles? I thought it was just guys in the south, no? Listen, I saw two people over the weekend, but that's two.

The big old ones? Just big, like a big silver, like a loop design thing. I've never been a cowboy, so I wouldn't know this, but wouldn't it be uncomfortable when you sit down? Wouldn't it like dig into your stomach? You would think. You would think. Yeah. remember the popular belt back in the day it was like braided

that's a 90s thing the braided belt that was a big big 90s thing and then the front you'd get a little long so the front end would hang down a little bit yes

the great thing about the braided belt is there was no there was no loop so you could just that's true anywhere you wanted but it would fray eventually because it was very flexible you lost weight you gained weight

that's true I think a couple weeks ago I asked like why don't we ever hear about how many people are moving and where they're moving to and all this stuff Jay Parsons did a piece on this and he looked at the data from people 20 to 34 from 20 to 20 to 20 to 23 in the

pandemic like where did people move and he did a chart on this and by far the biggest one was Dallas Fort Worth added 123,000 young people which he's nearly nearly matches the next place finishers of Houston and Phoenix so you look at the chart here it's so Austin is up there which makes sense and then some of these other places where's the villages yeah that's a good question is that in Florida somewhere maybe looks like a lot of Florida places. But clearly, it's all people going to the south. And there are young people moving away from Los Angeles, New York, which kind of makes sense Chicago, San Francisco. But it's young people moving to the south. So there are hundreds of thousands of people who are

picking up and moving to the south for weather, jobs, or whatever. Makes sense. All right. Let's do some recommendations. I have heard, it's funny, whenever we get emails from people now about movies, it'll be like, I'm a total Michael person for movies, or I'm a total Ben person from, like, there's two camps now. Yeah. Which is fine, to each their own. Everyone has their own preferences. For the past few ones, a bunch of people have said, you have to watch Snackshack.

This is a total Ben movie. Never heard of it. I had never really heard of it either. So it's one of those movies. There's no really actors. One of the kids from the original Jurassic World reboot was in it as a little older kid, but more or less people, it's the star of the movie. or the second, it's two bros, and it's an assault,

this hits everything I could want in the movie. Let me read the discussion. This is a total bad movie. Dreaming of striking it rich, inseparable best friends, AJ and Moose seized the opportunity to run the local pools, run down snack shack. However, things take an unexpected turn when they meet Brooke, an effortlessly cool lifeguard who puts their big summer plans and friendship at risk. Yep, that's got Ben Carlsonman and all over it.

TLDR, I loved this movie. This is one of my favorite movies I've seen in a long time. Here's what it had. It took place in 1990. So first of all, I got the 90s nostalgia. It was a party movie. It was a summer movie. It was a coming-of-age movie.

It was also two friends. It kind of reminded me of the friendship reminded me a little bit of Seth and Evan in Superbad. It wasn't that funny, but the kid who played Moose, who's like the bro of the tandem, it's just these two kids

who were kind of always hustling to make more money and they like make beer in their parents' house. He played young Steven Spielberg in the Fablemans, which I didn't make it very far in. But this kid was so good, and apparently he's going to play Lauren Michael in a movie.

But this has the Ben's stamp of approval. This was the most fun I've had to watching a movie in a long time. Okay. Can I watch it? I don't know. Give it a try. I think he actually might like this because it's kind of raunchy too. Not raunchy, but vulgar.

I do like the premise. It's, and it's just a very simple premise. It's just these two bros who are constantly hustling trying to make money. All right. My wife and I watched Dune 2. I waited until it hit HBO Max. I'm not going to lie. I was a little disappointed.

Now here's, let's, shame on you. You should have gone to the theater. So here's, it's a visually stunning movie. I'm sure there was a premium by seeing it in the theater, but here's the problem. I didn't see Dune One in the theater either, and I really liked doing one. I thought the first one was just better than the second one. No, no, no. So here's what I liked about it.

Austin Butler, I thought, was great as the bad guy. I think this is, here's two reasons I didn't, I was a little overwhelmed. I still liked it. I just didn't. Well, reason number one, because your expectations were too high because people like me. Yeah, but I didn't. I liked it. I didn't love it. So I'm just saying I've seen the first one two or three times.

I really liked the first one. I thought it was better. Here's some of the reasons I didn't think I like it. First of all, the plot is very disjointed. Like a lot of it just... Really? I thought it was very disjointed and kind of like what's going on here. And just in like a Game of Thrones kind of way.

And number two, I think I like Timothy Shalameh more as like the up-and-coming guy as opposed to the guy. Because I don't know. I'm not going to Lysan Al-Gib or whatever. you say in Messiah all the time to like some hipster from Brooklyn. I just, I don't, I don't trust him as like being the guy. Is that fair? Well, it's your opinion. Listen, again, I, I perhaps would have had to see this in the theater. I mean, that's just what, again, it was a visually stunning movie. Like, when they floated up and down on stuff, like that was amazing. It looked cool. So I saw this on the IMAX screen. And when the lights went, when the lights came on,

I said that was one of the best experiences I've ever had at the theater. I remember you saying that. Now, I just made my expectations to, I just, I like the first one better. That's all, that's where I land. Okay. I think that's a very, that is a, that is a contrarian take. I'm probably in the minority, but I, I, my wife and I both afterwards, we're both like, wait, what? I was just a little, a little bit of letdown.

Okay. Well, this is why there's Michael people and Ben people. What else? This is true. Oh, ask the compound this week. We have money with Katie on. uh she's amazing she she she's at morning brew now uh and uh very refreshing takes from a young person in the money so i highly recommend you ever on atc this thursday this thursday okay um all right i

watched equalizers one two and three last week i've seen the first two great movies i didn't i didn't feel the need to watch the third uh yeah i mean you know i actually thought the third was the least good of the, of the trio, but I can't wait for the fourth. Like, that is a great, that is a couch movie. I'm sure it's fine in theaters, too, but you can just watch it at home and do just fine. Yeah, you don't need to pay attention that much either. No, not at all. A lot of fun.

All right, that is it for me. Oh, we had a really good talkier book this past Monday talking about Venture Back Dead and all sorts of interesting private credit. I thought that was a really, really fun episode. So check that one out. Animal Spirits at the Compound News. Hope everybody's enjoying the warm weather. Have a great rest of your week.

And we'll see you next time.