Animal Spirits Podcast - Hi-Yo Silver! (EP. 449)

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

On episode 449 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss snow days, government debt vs. household debt, the wealth effect, diversification is working again in 2026, stocks vs. earnings, Jeremy Grantham, the dollar is falling, Silver is the new meme stock, gold is crushing bitcoin, housing market inflation, Dry January for spending and much more. This episode is sponsored by Invesco. Visit https://Invesco.com/fixedincome to learn more about their comprehensive fixed income solutions and how they can help strengthen your portfolio's foundation. 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 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 brought to you by Invesco, looking to add some stability to your portfolio. Investco's fixed income solutions are designed to help. Investco's team of 181 fixed income investment professionals manage $519 billion in assets, giving them the scale and expertise to navigate any market condition. Whether you're looking for investment grade or munis or other types of bonds, Investco's fixed income strategies are designed to help find the stability you may need. Visit investco.com slash fixed income to learn more about their comprehensive, fixed income solutions, and how they can help strengthen your portfolio's foundation.

Investco, let's rethink possibility. All data from Investco as of September 30th, 2025, fixed income investments are subject of credit risk of the issuer and the effects of changing interest rates. Before investing, consider the fund, investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. VisitInvestco.com for prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing, Invesco Distributors, Inc. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. It's a snow day. Sunday. We're recording at 3 in the afternoon. We're not recording because it's snowing. Josh and I are going to Arizona tomorrow for a state con. Hopefully I can get out. I think we'll be able to. But you better believe I did some shoveling over yesterday. Better believe it.

Do you have like a shovel with a weird bend in it? So better if you're back. I feel like you'd be the one. You buy that at Instagram. No, actually, I don't have that one. I'll do you one better. So I've got the standard shovel with like the ground. rip so you can like do it like this. So you get some low leverage there, not as bad on your back. You know what I mean?

It's like two handles. One handle straight, the other, the other bends. I, uh, I shoveled three times yesterday. Was that,

was that necessary? I'm not going to do the dodgeball line, Ben, about, is it necessary that I drink my own urine? Shit, I just did it. No,

but it's, but it's sterile. And, uh, shot to patches of hula hand. Anyway, I, uh,

here's why I shoveled, Ben, because I am a damn good audio book listener. I'm committed to the craft, end a bit. So I listened to Dead Week by Eric Larson. You probably read The Devil in the White City. Yeah. Did I need to listen to that book?

Nope, but I did. It was okay. Here's what I learned. Did you know? So I was taught in school that World War I, the singing of the Lusitania, brought us into World War I. Is that how you learned it?

No, the Franz Ferdinand guy getting assassinated. That was it. Okay. Obviously, you're not a historian. That's what, or you're not listening. That's what started World War I. Yeah. Why would that bring in the United States into World War I?

Oh, okay. I didn't know what that you meant. Okay. So that's, I was taught that, okay, they sank a consumer craft, a consumer craft, whatever, civilian craft, a civilian vessel. Took us two years to get into the war after that. So it wasn't like, boom. Things moved a little slower back then.

guess that's what we're trying to say here. All right. No, but that's a... Ben is having none of the small talk. No, shoveling snow is it... That's an all-time dad thing to do. I love getting out and shoveling the snow. I don't mind it.

It's been years. So I know, obviously, Michigan is much snowed. I do all the time, yeah. I finally pulled the trigger, though. I did. I bought a snow jo. It's a battery-powered, small-ish snowblower, because those things are gigantic.

Those are like the size of cars. Where do people put them? We have garages. But, yeah, your battery power one, this is never going to work when there's a real snowstorm. Wrong. I actually, the reason why I saw a neighbor using it and he was, he was blown like there was no tomorrow. All right. Yeah, they do have electric ones now.

I guess that's, that makes sense. All right. Well, this morning, as I was making my final voyage, Ben, to the driveway, I listened to, uh, I listened to, uh, Joe and Tracy had the CEO of Pimpco on the pod, on odd lots. and they were talking about what's going on in Japan and everything else in the world. So, manny was saying that, I forgot the context,

but he made a comment about like debt to GDP. And he said, well, like, what about like household net worth to GDP or something like that? So it sparked an idea. I had chart kid look at this. And we're going to talk all about

the U.S. trade. and waning confidence and gold later in the show. But I want to start here. So Matt made a chart showing government debt as a percentage of GDP, aka the Buffett Indicator. Ben, you're familiar with this? Yes.

All right. So it's at 121%. It's going up until the right, not necessarily the direction you want to see it go. But Matt had another line on there showing, all right, what about household debt as a percentage of GDP? because unlike households, government has the ability to print so money. Sure, they can't do it recklessly. We're living through some of the recklessness of fiscal policy and inflation and the limits of that.

But look at this, Ben. Household debt as a percentage of GDP has gone down in a meaningful way. The consumer has delivered over the past 15 years. And it's an important thing to recognize here is that from the 70s through the mid-2000s, these two lines were kind of moving in the same direction. And they've completely shifted and that changed. I was going to talk about this later. Better bring it up now makes sense.

Matt Klein wrote about this last week. And he's saying what we're seeing with the wealth effect this decade really and probably since the great financial crisis is unlike anything we've seen in previous cycles. So he said that household assets, this is American households and nonprofits, assets are 53% higher than the end of 2019. Okay? A lot of that is obviously home equity, stock prices. by contrast, liabilities are only 28% higher. Now, he's saying this is not normal. Usually,

they kind of go up at the same time. So he said the $66 trillion of net wealth that was added in the last six years is equivalent to more than three times all of the personal consumption expenditures of 2025. So he's saying that the wealth we've had on top of the fact that it's growing way faster than liabilities is worth like three years worth of spending. Like he's saying, we've never had this kind of wealth built without the liabilities following along with them. It's kind of crazy. So he shows,

listen, like in the 2000s, we just borrowed our, household borrowed their faces off. They had all these gains in housing. They took the HELOCs. They cashed out refis, all that stuff. He said, it's not happening this time.

So he's saying, I wonder if lower rates could actually be inflationary. Because when people do finally turn that spigot opens and they finally start borrowing in their houses for whatever reason, there's going to be so much more demand

because there's so much wealth sitting there to borrow against. Does not sound like a controversial take to me. No. Anyway, but your point is the balance sheet, we talked about this last week, there's so much better than probably than they've ever been at this moment. And guess what, Ben, that chart? Collectively. That was just the appetizer.

I haven't even shown you the entree yet. Look at the next one. So same chart. Debt is a percentage of GDP, 121%. Compared with U.S. total debt. So same numerator as a percentage of household net worth. And this has grown sideways for the last 15 years. So in other words, for as much as the government is printing money and adding debt,

household assets, aka the stock market and real estate, I suppose, has kept pace with that. Face blower? Yes. So you're right. That hasn't gone anywhere, basically, since the great financial crisis. There was a slight uptick, but after that, it's been steady. So I don't know if the Buffett indicator is a thing of the past. You know, I feel like he hasn't been, he hasn't commented on this in a while.

Munger, there's a quote from Munger who basically said, Buffett doesn't follow that just because he said it once doesn't mean he followed it. Of course he doesn't. I mean, listen, I know that he's not making decisions based off it, but I didn't know he, it was never even his thing to begin with. All right? Yeah, that's funny. Buffett's like, I said it once in 1984.

Why do you guys keep bringing it up? I said it once. Yeah. All right. So is this another diversification? year. Kind of weird. Still thinking about the AI bubble. I looked at this just probably an hour ago. Again, this is Monday afternoon. Everything is outperforming the SEP again this year. Value stock. So look at the Vanguard value index. Russell 2000 small caps.

IFA emerging markets are all outperforming the S&P. It's a month. But this, we're seeing a continuation. That's a big month. It's January. I think another surprise for a lot of people, though. The fact that everything is beating the S&P again. All we hear about is the AI bubble, AI bubble, MAG 7. And yet, it's, we're gaining, it's like the bandwagon is growing. Last year was just kind of emerging markets and international stocks. Now it's all the other stuff is outperforming. So Bespoke has a chart showing, sorry, I can't multitask. All right, I, my, my hand was caught in the cookie jar. I tried to multitask, can't do it. Where the hell is this damn slack? Come on. Here it is.

All right, so bespoke's chart shows, they call it smaller is better. So again, year to date, all right, 26 days, but it is what it is. Mag 7 at the bottom. S&P 100 next, both negative, by the way. Then the 500, then the equal weight, then the 400, then the 2000,

then the microcaps, taking the lead. This has been a minute, huh? Okay. Diversification working again. All right, one more on diversification. Here's a chart. Ben. Hang on. This is the thing, though, that no one, when people predict like AI is going to lag and these big stocks is going to lag, this is the other side of it that no one ever predicts,

really. That what about the rest of the stock market that has been sort of left for dead? Right. All right. So, let me just reorder this. All right. So, so, so Urian has a chart showing the Mag 7, which has gone, which has gone sideways for about a year. No, not a year. Six months? Yeah, six or seven, it looks like. Legitimately, the MAX seven has gone nowhere for since the summer. And then he has a chart underneath it that shows the percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving average. And it's going up until the right.

This is awesome, I think, that more stocks are participating in maybe the next leg of the bull market. You kind of love to see it if you're looking for the continuation of the bull market, right? Who doesn't love to see this? the people who put all their money into the tech stocks, guess what? If they did that, then they've been doing fine anyway. So they can't explain. All right. We spoke recently about like when are investors going to wake up is the wrong word.

But like how long is the lag going to be from international out performance to investors putting money in there? And emerging markets, we got monthly flows into IEMG. like in a material way. Look at this. Record since 2013. We'll talk about this later, but this is also a play on like the physical good stuff, right? Stuff is working, the hard stuff, right? And that's more an emerging market to play, isn't it? Actually, no?

I don't know there's more technology in emerging markets these days. Yeah, I can't remember who did that post a couple of years ago that we referenced that like actually, it's not just material stocks anymore. Okay, but that's kind of the idea. But okay, so this is a really. real number, though, of money going in there. Massive. Because no money has gone in there for a long time, too.

Correct. Okay. And what are emerging market stocks up here today? Did you mention that earlier? It's eight or nine percent already. It's a pretty meaningful move. Annualize that. That's not bad.

Now we're talking. Yes. Okay. Last week we talked about how in 2025, earnings told the story. Earnings were up like 14%. The index was up 17. Add in the dividend. Fundamentals basically drove the day.

And I talked about, but sometimes it doesn't work like, that. So I had Matt, Tarkad, create these charts for me. This is pretty good. So he's got these four quadrants here. I kind of gave him the data and I said, have at it. He makes the charts look way better than I could do the thought. So since 1930, and I looked at this data from Robert Schiller because he's got it going all the back. There's been 47 times where stocks were up and earnings are up in the same year, right? earnings are higher, stocks are higher. Makes sense. Only eight times where earnings down and stocks were down. Part of that is because stocks don't go down very often.

But here's the real, what do you call it? Faceblower, Face Ripper. 24 years, earnings were down on the year and stocks were up. 17 years, earnings were up, but stocks were down. So almost half of all years in the past call it 100 years, earnings and stocks have diverged. One has gone up, one has gone down. That's pretty surprising, no?

I mean, obviously the- Because the market is looking forward. And earnings are reported on a lag. I get all that. No, it is. It is not intuitive. You're right. It's still surprising, though.

The fundamental thing, it's not, it seems intuitive as not. That's a good chart. Hey, can I ask you a question? Mm-hmm. Getting back to Eric Larson. Wasn't the devil in the white city supposed to be a movie? Yeah, with DeCaprio. Never happened.

Great book. That would be a good movie. It should be today, if they made it, it wouldn't be a movie. It would be a TV series. It's true. man your dog loves to bark lately well you know what it is she's barking at the

shovelers out there oh snow plows and such that makes sense cut it out see if that works my wife always says hey you have to say the same word to the dog so we our dog got like a week of training and she thinks that

that week of training really stuck in the dog's head I'm like come on the dog forgot all the training immediately because we didn't stick with it so the word is the dog starts barking and I say no or shut up, you know, something. And my wife said, no, you have to stay quiet. That's what she responds to. Doesn't work?

No, when I yell no, then she stops. But also, little dogs, like, cannot be stopped. No, that's true. You're right. I mean, big dogs can't be stopped either, but, like, little dogs are more prone to barking. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay. What's your small cap earnings here?

All right. The chart of the week from Exhibit A. Small cap earnings. So we've been talking a lot about small caps outperforming. By the way, the streak ended, rest in peace. It was a good one. I think they outperformed. 14 days in a row or something?

Something like that. Look at this chart. So we have a drawdown. You've seen drawdown price charts before, but now we have it in earnings. And small caps are coming up the rear in a big way. Look at that recovery. Man, I didn't realize that the drawdown in small cap earnings was that deep in COVID. So it was 35% drawdown almost.

Hmm. That was meaningful. It's wild. Look, look up until like pre-COVID. They tracked the S&P. Yeah. Perfectly, the earnings drawdowns and monster diversions ever since. And this is all interest rates. Is that fair? Yeah, I think so. Okay. All right, I've never seen this before. I was kind of like seeing a piece of data that, like, oh, I've never thought of that before. So, Goldman Sachs had this update. And they looked at how equities performed during economic

expansion. I wish they would have done it the other way. I told Chartkit, hey, let's look at what happens during a, during recessions too, when it's an economic attraction. So this is, we're looking at what exactly? The percentage of time stocks are positive when there's an economic expansion. And it's almost 90% of the time. So this is returns during these periods, right? And this is, I think this is annual returns, right? Returns greater than 10% to happen 65% of the time. And greater than 20% is like one-third of the time. Now, those are pretty close to the averages. Maybe, obviously the positive returns way better. But the decline of a at least 10% is only 4%.

So it's just saying when the economy keeps growing, the probability of stocks doing well is pretty high. And I guess that's another reason why everything has been so good because we just don't have economic contractions anymore. It doesn't seem like it. We have these pockets of recessions in these industries, but not the whole economy. Therefore, the stock market continues to go up.

See if I can figure out to do this for recession. I thought that was interesting. makes sense. All right. You and Josh had Jeremy Grantham on again, second time. Well, he really won you over this time, I feel like. You love this guy. I really do.

He's like a sweet old grandpa, right? Because you said he's 87 years old and still sounds very sharp, right? Incredibly sharp. I love Jeremy Grantham because, now, I think most of the world knows Jeremy Grantham for being bearish. I mean, he wrote a book called a making... I can't believe he actually called his book that. It was definitely like a middle thing.

Well, it's totally tongue-in-cheek, yes. But I can't believe that the editors led him. That's kind of, it's hilarious, I think. Now, I think most, to the extent that people know GMO, it's for their bearish forecast. They do a seven-year forecast. And it's been widely bearish and wildly wrong since I think as far as, as far back as I can remember,

2013, I think is probably the first time I remember looking at it. 12 to 15 years, probably. And it called for a flat decade or a flat seven-year period for U.S. large-cap stocks. I believe something like that. The reason why, and in fairness, well, not in fairness, just in reality, Jeremy has, he retired in 2011 maybe, although I'm pretty sure that he would, would have agreed with those numbers. Whatever, he was wrong. And we spoke about it on the show.

And the reason why he was wrong is because all of his work, a lot of his work, I shouldn't say all of it. A lot of the work in this early years were about how margins mean revered. And nobody could have foreseen, or a few people could have foreseen in 2013 that the Mag 7 was only going to expand. and get bigger and bigger. But I think a lot of people don't know the history of his earlier years. I didn't until I read the book. Up 16 in the first 17 years, 8% outperformance was like the first investor, the first or second institutional investor to manage index funds was his idea.

First into small caps early on. 1970, before Vanguard was a thing. He was early to small cap value, small caps, stocks, and he was early to using value momentum. He had a monster career. He got the dot-com bubble right, the GFC bubble right, the Japanese bubble right. And he got this decade very wrong. But the reason why I feel good about him, as opposed to a lot of the people in that ilk that are labeled permabairs, there is just a nastiness. Not with all of the permabairs.

Some of them are intellectually honest. But there just seems to be like, I want the system to burn. We have to have our comeuppance. And would he be happy if there was a bear market to feel better about, yeah, I'm sure he would. I mean, he made that pretty clear. He did sound like he was a little, little, he wishes 2020 would have been worse. Yeah, he does. He does.

But he seems to be a gentleman, a genuinely nice man, and he cares about humanity. He doesn't want the world to end. He's not a psychotic bear, perma bear. In fact, his foundation has invested $700 million into making the world a better place with green energy and whatever. Like, he cares about humanity. And so I could look past them being on the wrong side of recent market history. So I think I'd written this before, not about just him, but about other people.

And I thought about this after listening to the podcast, which I thought was really good. But also, like, just sorry to cut you off, but his, he's very aware of who he is. Like, that, that quote that I read about his confession about the way that he managed money was the wrong way to do it. I thought it was funny that he said he reads the comments because you'd think like he would, he's not a guy. Like some people just, that's like a lot of, a lot of these people, that you talk to, actually do, like, the stuff that they hear and, like, they pay attention. Anyway, I listened to it, and I wrote about this before with him and I think other people, just, like, experts on an earlier version of the world.

And the thing is, the fact that he called the Japan bubble and he called the dot-com bubble, right? And he got out ahead of the great financial crisis and, like, latent up on risk. Of course he was going to call this one again, like, and be, feel, like, kind of certain about it. You know, like, how could you have that track record and not? So that's why it makes sense. But, so my thinking was, what is the thing about the current cycle that? that will get people in the future. Because this got him, the fact that the world changed.

This time it was different. And that got him. He was expecting a mean reversion. Meanor version didn't happen. And it was like, wait, in the past, this has always worked for me. And now it's not working anymore? What the heck? So what are people learning in this current cycle that is going to get them?

Because I think the easy one is just the fact that there are so many high quality companies, and I pulled this one from the new Mobus in piece, which I know you put some stuff in here later. It just shows the share of economic profit for the top 10 companies by market cap. And it just goes up, up, up, up every year from 2015 to 2024. And I think it was just, it wasn't easy to hold these companies because they all had huge drawdowns. But buying the companies you knew that were the biggest and the highest quality companies in the world, that that led to outsized returns and huge outperformance.

I think that's the thing that's going to get people eventually. Jeremy in his book, he was like, once about a time, nobody wanted to own growth stocks. Right. But don't you think that's the thing that people, and obviously you say, well, also the buy the dip every time the stocks fall, they're not going to come right back. But we had a bear market in 2022. But don't you think that's the thing that gets people as like, just buying these companies that you know that are the highest quality?

They just cannot perform forever. That's not going to last. No, it's not. I guess, okay, I thought you were going to ask like a specific, like what's going to end this bull market? We could save that debate for another day, because obviously we do that every week, I guess. I think the thing that might get people in the future

is just this idea once upon a time that you just took risk and you got rewarded, like all the time. immediately. Right. There are going to be years of negative performance. There's going to be a string of them. There might even be a period of five years where the market goes sideways or losing money or losing money. There might even be a period of tenure. I'm being facetious. Like, it will happen. There will be a five-year period and maybe even longer where stocks go sideways and stocks don't go sideways. If they go sideways is because they went down a lot and then they

recovered. But of course it's going to happen. Now, maybe this extended period of the wind at our back continues for another five years. Like, I don't know. But yeah, probably I would just think that this whole delusion that we were drunk on risk. Yeah, could be. Because this wasn't just Grantham. There was almost everyone who got caught up in that lost decade and the two huge crashes. And everyone who sort of had a hand in calling that or predicted that things were going to go wrong,

they all overstayed their welcome on that prediction. So there's going to be people. who overstay their welcome on the bullish side of things too. That's what I'm getting at. That's going to happen as well. For sure. The last time, so the first time we had Jeremy on, I read a quote to him that he gave to Barron's.

I remember you and I speaking about a time where we were like, good for him, where he was self-aware enough to say that, like, listen, I called three bubbles. Like, it is in my nature to see risk or something like that. Of course. So he knows who he is. Anyway, I'm a fan. I think it's a good lesson that, like,

I think everyone is going to have a hard. time, like, letting go to. Like, you said he retired and he could have just walked off in the sunset. But he, like, I feel like this is a, this is a defining thing of the baby boomer generation. They're going to have a really hard time letting go. Just like walking off into the sunset, you know? Well, look at our politicians. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They're going to have a really hard time not being in the spotlight anymore. In the, um. So if you, if you work for a baby boomer, just expect that they're not going to retire when you think they are.

Yeah. And Too Big to Fail, Sorkin's book, he was, he was mentioning names, like, I think he was talking about like Pelosi or Schumer or whatever. It's like, what? How are they still in power? Like, they were, they were, they were at retirement age 15 plus years ago. But let's be honest. You and I are never able to walk away either.

We'll be doing this one. We're like seven years old still, right? I hope so. Holograms of us? Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not, I'm not one of those people. Well, I think there should be like age limits for Congress or whatever. But like, I'm totally understanding the fact that, yeah, if you, what, you just, you just get old and you shut your brain off and die. Right.

Yeah, I won't be able to do that now. I'm not, not me. All right, somebody sent this a chart, Ben, with margin debt, overlaid with the S&P 500. And we've spoken to a lot about this over the years. They're concurrent indicators. The SEPs at all-time highs, you better believe that margin debts could be at all-time high. This was a one back in like, I'd say 2012, 2012, 2013, where people really hung their hat on like, oh, no, margin debts at new all-time highs, watch out. This was a big one.

This definitely was. You know, we were just talking about- So you did it as a percentage of market cap, and it's obviously much lower. All right, so if you divide it by the Russell 3,000 market cap, it kind of shockingly hit a multi-decade low last year, which is really weird. That is surprising. I wonder if it's because, you know what, I have a hypothesis. Who needs margin debt when you could just use levered ETFs? That's true.

Yeah, people are using different types of leverage these days. Counterpoint. Futures, all that, yeah. Counterpoint to what I said 10 seconds ago. This is a massive increase over the last five months. Over the last 12 months, I suppose. So for people that are listening, it went, it's been going down for the past since 2018 until 2025. But isn't this just people not wanting to sell and they're finally borrowing against their shares?

I don't know. I don't know. That'd be my guess. Not sure. All right. Funny enough, I wanted to grab this chart for Grantham because part of his recent for index funds back in the day was not a market efficiency argument. It was just investing is a zero-sum game and remove frictions and you'll do better than people. Because his analogy was like, if you're at a poker game and you've got some suckers,

like, and they just run out and they just stop playing and you're only competing with the pros, like it's harder to beat the pros eventually, if that's all that's left. And look at this. So anyway, actively managed mutual funds. This is the trial that's looking for it. It's updated by Michael Lopez and he just put out a new piece. Actually managed mutual funds down to the right. This is, is there a bottom here?

Like, when does this even dry up? Because it looks like it's almost accelerating. Although it's cumulative. Never mind. Don't you think it's going to accelerate even more because the baby boomers in years ahead will be also selling out of their 401ks finally? I mean, they're already doing this. But no, there is no bottom for this.

Yeah. Again, there's a cumulative chart. So I don't know if it's accelerating or not. But there's still plenty of money in actively managed mutual funds because the market continues to go up. They're not bringing in new money, but the money that they already had is growing because the market is doing so well. All right.

So on the one hand, you have less pros, right? Like less dollars being managed by professional money managers. But you have a lot more retail to pick off now. So this chart, he's got U.S. equity trading volume, institutional versus retail. Now, the problem is retail has been outperforming. That's true. Right? That's got to be the even harder part for equity managed funds.

Well, we don't know that for sure. We know that... I'm generalizing. But I would guess retailers are performing more this decade than they have before because of the names

that are winning. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. And so now there are more individuals that own stocks than institutional investors.

This is a kind of an interesting chart how it totally flipped and now it flipped back again. I would love to break out the individuals. How many of these are just CEOs? and people in the C-sweets that own these shares. Yeah.

I don't know what percentage that is. It's got to be a high percentage, but you're right. The fact that it flipped back, that means more individuals are buying and selling stocks now. Well, the chart that I opened the show with where we're talking about,

like, debt is a percentage of household net worth. How much of the household net worth is owned by the top 5%. Yeah. Well, that's true. A decent amount. So does it invalidate? Two-thirds of the net worth

is owned by the top 10%. 67, 70%, something like it, yeah. All right, speaking of top X percent, I wanted to play this view. This is just wild. Let me share my screen. We are going to give guidance at some point to see what is a mom and pop that someone, maybe your parents for their retirement, about five, 10, 12 homes. So we don't want to push the mom and pops out.

So they're talking about the new proposed law about blocking institutional investors from... So you never watched Rested Development, right? I never would, no. Okay. I think it's one of the greatest sitcoms ever. This is Lacile Booth. It's a banana, Michael.

What could it cost $10? That's that quote, obviously. Yeah. I mean, could you imagine being so out of touch? I don't know. When you've been rich for decades and decades, like you have to be out of touch. You have to.

There's no other way, you know, flying on private jets and, of course. Why do you think of so? many celebrities go nuts. No one ever tells them no. They can get anything they want, anytime they want. They fly on private jets, of course. Could you, I just had a thought. Bear with me. Duncan, hold my beer. I'll bear it back. Give me like two minutes. Okay. So I, yesterday during our snow day, I was cleaning out. I've got like a chest on wheels that we need to like get rid of. So I opened the chest and I saw all of these like stacks of photos, like family photos. And I don't even know how I ended up with them. I have never seen most

of these. So we've we've spoken in the past about the houses that we grew up in and not just us specifically, but our generation, what everything looked like. We're speaking today about how much money people have. Kitchens today look very different than they used to. So look at, look at the kitchen that I grew up in. Here's a picture of my mother who I miss very much. in Merrick. Like, this is, this is what kitchens used to look like. Man, that's actually not bad for some 80s kitchens, though. Like, just, I mean, the microwave was, you know what, you know what?

I don't think this microwave ever worked. In fact, I'm pretty, I'm almost positive. I never turned this microwave on. God only knows what the dishwasher was, but it was just like. Do you remember how much wallpaper there used to be in, in houses? Just walls everywhere, right? Like, everything was walled off. I don't know what that countertop is.

What do you call that? Like, for mica? For mica, yeah. It would start peeling and the edges would fall off a little. Yeah, and it was, and it was just, it was just peeled forever. You never fixed anything. We never got a new couch. You cleaned the carpet.

Like some people came to like steam the carpet once every other year or whatever. And I know my neighborhood is not like any wealthier than it was when I grew up. It's the same, it's the same people that live here. All right. Put a pin in this one. I got something for you for this for later, too. Okay. Last week, you asked, why isn't the dollar falling because everything going on in the world right now? And then the dollar fell. The dollar rolled over. Yeah. And it's rolling over. It's kind of back to the lows now, even below the Liberation Day stuff.

So the dollar is, so this is another reason why international stocks are doing well, obviously. The funny thing is, if you do a zoom out here, you know, I'm a big zoom out guy. This is the dollar going back to the early 1970s. Oh, you can see. there are huge moves in like the 80s. The dollar was going nuts in the 80s. Way higher, way lower. It's all over the place.

It's essentially unchanged since like 1975. The dollar has gone nowhere. So you get these cycles. And, you know, it's been up ever since the GFC, basically, with some snapbacks. But over the very long haul, these currencies don't move all that much against each other. A few, all right, a few questions slash comments, thoughts about precious metals. And I'm not saying this because I'm bitter.

about selling silver 90% ago. So it's up another 6% this morning, or this afternoon, I suppose. It was up even higher. Look at this chart. This thing looks like a meme stock. It's unbelievable. So my two, here, I get first question first.

Is this, I don't know anything about like precious metals and inputs and stuff, but like, are there things that are going to break as a result of this? Just like manufacturing jewelry, for example, obviously. I don't know. Anything, I guess my question would be anything big enough to matter. Like, macro-wise, probably not. I mean, it's up 55% this month. This year, silver's up 55%.

But silver is an input. Like, it is an industrial metal. It's not just for watches or necklaces. We don't fight with swords anymore, so I think we're okay there. All right. Maybe this is a chart crime. You know, the chart crimes that really get me on, the people on social media love to do the thing where they compress the chart really close together.

So anytime a line goes up, it looks just going nuts. Even if it could be going from like 80 to 82, it looks like the line's going straight up. That's criminal. Yeah. But this looks like that over the long horizon. And so I have to imagine, we're in like meme stock territory here where people, like the Reddit people have to be in on this.

Like the people who are jumping on this. They have to be in on this. So who's buying it today? It has to be all these other people that are just, I don't get, I mean, my whole thing has always been, because we've had a few people try to dunk on us, like, hey, you guys totally miss the precious metal move. And my thing has always been, I wrote about this like 10 years ago.

You don't buy and hold commodities. It's trend following, that's it. So when a trend starts, you follow it, right? And I'm sure that a lot of trend followers have hopped on this. But this is also reached now, it's not just trend following. This is fad investment territory, right? Someone this morning, I posted this chart on Twitter, and they said, I think you're nuts if you're long or short this right now.

Oh, that's good. And that's actually a pretty good way to think about this. Well, actually, Todd Sone has a chart showing the volume in one of the inverse silver ETFs, which was dead for a while. Like nobody put any money in there. The volume is going nuts. Oh, people are playing against it now. Okay.

There's plenty of people that are shorty, now. So I don't even know. I don't know. Are there a lot of vehicles that you can leverage up to go along this, too? Is that happening as well? Has to, right? I don't know. I don't know, but it is, it is wild.

It is wild to see. Not being a silver person. It's a five, it's a $5 trillion asset class now, and it's going literally vertical. So I pulled up the drawdown chart for price of silver going back to like the 60s. This has been some massive drawdowns. Obviously, the 1980s thing, gold and silver just because they went so crazy in the 70s, it was down like 90% from, I don't know, 1980 to 2000 or something. Well, coming off the gold standard might have.

Yeah, that totally. But it also had a 66% correction. in the 2010's, so not that long ago. Like, this thing is extremely volatile. Well, how about that? I'm asking who's buying it now? That was me. I bought the top of 2011 at 50 bucks.

Yeah. I guess if you're a trader, though, you just have, this is trend following rules. No, but listen, I'm not, I'm not mad that people are making money. Like, I, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm a positive. I'm a positive, some thinker. So I'm not better. I'm happy for people that are making money.

I think the story is fascinating that the real stuff is winning. I would have been, if you'd asked me a few years ago, hey, the dollar's going to be falling and people are worried about like the system or whatever, what's the play? I would have said, crypto, definitely. And look at this. That is the interesting dichotomy.

Is that like Bitcoin is digital gold? Nobody wants digital gold. It's, it's really, I would have been totally wrong about this. So, so Mike Zucardi posted the gold and Bitcoin market caps. Gold market cap is now over $30 trillion. And Bitcoin is essentially, I mean, this is kind of hard on this chart to see.

but hasn't moved very much in the last two to three years, right? If you look, this is since the start of 2025, okay? Gold is up 90. Look at the next try to put it in. Okay. Oh, I did this. Look at mine. I went back further than you.

We did this. So since the start of last year, Bitcoin is essentially unchanged. It's down 4%. Silver's up 250% and gold is up 90. Again, I never would have imagined this. that Bitcoin is like Zima and investors like, just give me the fucking booze. Get out of here with that nonsense. But I guess this is, is this still like a central bank story?

Because I thought Michael Semble said that's not just that, right? That it's not just central banks buying this. There's obviously, so where is the buying pressure coming from? Well, I think they're the biggest buyer. Okay. But that was the hope for Bitcoin that like, listen, corporations are going to buy this stuff. And then maybe someday governments will buy it. And obviously that's.

But you're right. Like, who's buying it today to send it up 7%. after this run-up. It can't just be read at people. That's my only guess. I don't know. That's my best guess. It's nuts.

It's a crazy move. Wow. Credit to the gold bugs. You know, the 20-twens were not a kind of environment. Is it silver bugs too? Is it a different name for silver bugs? I don't, I don't know. But credit to them.

But, I mean, historically, this asset class, precious metals, has been huge booms and huge busts. That's the history of it. These massive gains and then these massive losses. That's like what it does. All right, let's do some economic stuff. Taurus and Slok on Apollo is like a... What does he call this thing?

Let's say. Daily and weekly economic indicators. All right. So, daily data, restaurant bookings are solid. TSA air travel, solid. Daily debit card data solid on the weekly data. All solid. Is there anything that's like not?

That's... All right. Mostly good. Mostly good stuff here. I picked out a few. Daily data for U.S. air travel. I can't believe this. 2025, despite a big decrease in foreign travel,

like still record numbers, close to record numbers. And during COVID, we thought business travel was dead. At least I definitely did. Forever. I did too. And dead wrong. Are you ever on a flight that's not almost all full these days? Every flight I've taken is almost always full.

Nope. right? You're almost surprised when it's not full now. I can't tell you the last time that the seat has been open next to me. Right? That's a great feeling, though, isn't it? Especially on the morning flight. When that, when no one sits next to you, oh, that's wonderful. All right, weekly job openings. This is a bit concerning. Just down to the right. If you're out of work, this is not an easy time. Counterpoint. We're back at 2019 levels. No. We're jacked that counterpoint. That doesn't count? I thought we said a lot of these job openings were fake.

I thought that was the story we went with. Yeah. So 4,000 down, whatever, normalizing seemed appropriate, but this is way past normalizing. Also, no layoffs. So if you have a job, you're okay. And if you don't, tough nuggies. That's the weird part about it, though, right?

Not good. Openings are closing, but people aren't getting fired. Not good. All right. According to Moody's, the share of total outlays going to those in the top 20% of the income distribution, making over $175,000 per year nationwide, increased to nearly 60%. There's another new high in the data we've constructed back to 1989.

So the title of this chart says it all. The economy is increasingly K-shaped. Bottom 80% taking less of the pie, top 20% taking more. This is spending personal outlays? Yeah. Holy smokes. Yeah. But good news to counter that increasing.

inequality. Jeff Wendiger tweeted, everyone thinks credit card trouble is compounding, but the data shows the opposite. My guess, if you send this to a friend, they will have no idea that delinquencies have been fallen since 2024. So remember when credit card debt hit a trillion dollars and it was like a big thing just because it's, hey, round numbers, everyone likes round numbers. I think it's at $1.2 trillion now, 1.3 or something. And yeah, it still hasn't led to the end of the world. credit card data is not going to be the tell, I don't think. I think that's like a concurrent indicator. When things go bad, credit card data will go bad.

It's not going to like front run things. How's that? It's not going to be a macroeconomic indicator. You don't think it's be a leading indicator. No. Fair? There's a whole rich data set of this. I feel like we don't need to speculate.

Either credit card either is or is not a leading indicator. You need to learn how to vibe code. All right. I hate that term. I'm sorry. I don't love it. That's okay. I don't love it either.

That's just not going to be... I'm going to survive life without probably ever vibe coding. It's going to be okay. I'm going to make it. I looked at... I googled the Claude code thing. I clicked it. Eh, not for me.

No. If I get left behind by the robots, so be it. All right, here is a study from the Keele Institute. American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost of tariffs. Foreign exporters absorb only 4% of the tariff burn. The remaining 96% is passed through to U.S. buyers. So that's the companies and the consumers.

So I guess the way you think about it, so it says they did all these studies. So U.S. customer revenues surged by $200 billion in 2025, a tax paid almost entirely by Americans. Now, that sounds like a big number, right? $200 billion. I guess this is probably the reason, though, that it hasn't had an economy. economy-wide impact yet. Because in a $33 trillion economy, $200 billion is just not a lot of money. Right. So this has been a like minor tax on probably small businesses and consumers, but not enough to warrant like a macroeconomic calamity. Right? Yeah. All right. So you talked about housing before. Someone sent me this. I thought this is a really cool inflation calculator. What should I spend?

click on the link there. So it looks at, you can pick a year every five years or something, go back to 1970. And basically it shows you what the price was in 1970, right? So this is a gallon of milk in 1970. If it just followed the price of inflation till today, what would it cost? Well, a gallon of milk would cost $11 if it just followed inflation. But it's actually only like $4. So it's cheaper than you would expect based on inflation. And I did this for things like eggs and a gallon of gas and movie tickets. Surprising. Movie tickets actually have not kept up with inflation. What do you pay?

Because you go all the time. $10 is probably about what I pay for a matinee with my kids. What do you pay for a movie ticket in New York? 15, 20? It depends if I'm going to like a regal or an IMAX. Those are obviously more expensive. But the local one is probably, I don't know, $14. Okay.

So the one that is the biggest difference, obviously, of all these. And like college tuition is one of them, but a median home. So a median home in 1970 was $17,000. If it followed inflation, that would be up to like $140,000. The actual median price today is like $400. So it's saying housing is way more expensive, has been way higher than inflation over time. So I wrote back to it and I said,

here's the hard part to calculate. I wrote the guy who created this little tool that emailed me. I said, housing today is so much nicer. So how do you account for that in inflation? Right. There's more bathrooms. There's more bedrooms. The kitchens are nicer.

The appliances are nicer. Does that account for all of them? the inflation? Of course not. Housing has just gotten more expensive. And it really was the 1970s that made like housing take off as an asset. Everything else did so much worse than the 1970s. Sneak preview for my new book. I'm bright about this a little bit. Everything else did so much worse, the only asset class that do well in the 1970s besides like gold and precious metals was housing. That was the thing that got people interested in housing to begin with as an investment. What's your new book called? Risk and reward. How long have you been writing it for?

I turned to my last edits last week. It comes out in May, I think. Hopefully. So, yes. I've really been right. This is a 10-year project for me. I've kind of been writing this since I started my blog. How's that? Love it.

Speaking of prices, I went to, I did one, I need to get bananas. So I got a bushel. Unbelievable value. It was like, three bucks. I've been saying this, remember? It's crazy. Yeah, you've been on this corner. My wife is like, why do you always buy so many bananas?

And I'm like, because you're bound to get one or two bad ones. and they caught it for 10 of them or something, it costs $3.50. Why not buy more than you need? Great point. On the other side of value, Starbucks, listen, I'm addicted.

They won't lose my business, unfortunately. But I went this morning, and I got a little, like, cardin of one of their, like, chocolate protein drinks. I forget what it's called. It doesn't matter. And two egg bites. like little round

eggs that they put in the oven. And this isn't a greetious, I suppose, but it feels insane. And it was $11.50. Yeah, but they know they have everyone hooked. It doesn't matter. Like, my wife loves to go to Starbucks, and my kids have like the breakfast sandwiches

or the cake pops or the banana bread or whatever. But isn't that nuts? It was like 12 bucks for a little carton of milk and two things of eggs. As a non-starbucks user mind, entire life. I don't, I have no frame of reference here. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Ben, I was, I chat, you beatied something the other day and it just not such a profound realization, but you should never say, I don't know. Now, you could, you could say it out loud, but like,

there should never be an excuse for not knowing something. Because back in the day, or even like with Google, you would like Google something like, they would like send you to an article. You like, that's a lot of work. Now you literally just say, hey, what is this? And I can't remember what I asked it. But it was something that like, you know, it's something that I probably should know. And I didn't know, because I don't know most things. My kids ask all the time because my son loves to ask questions, just inane questions. And he'll go, look it up on chat. Hey, what year was this college formed or whatever? With a college basketball game this weekend. What year did the college start? And then it has the whole history of it too. So he's like, oh, he's constantly reading me and

asking these things. Yeah, but like, yeah, it's great. Hey, but you know what's annoying about chat TVT? They have like your search. history, but they don't have every search. It's like, I don't know, it seems like random. They have like every fourth search. I think they drop off eventually. I have my list right. Oh, is that what it is?

Or sometimes your search has just to go on to other ones and you can't see it. But I ask it everything. Like, I'd be very embarrassed if you saw what I asked it. So please, don't look. But there are some very basic things that I, that I just, you know, just got by me. All right. All right, another one towards this lock, he shows that the, all the profit margin expansion in the S&P 500 has come from.

tech stocks, right? The green bars are everything else. Orange bar is tech. You can see the orange getting much bigger, and that's leading the charge higher. Couldn't you say that the way you measure success in AI is if it makes the green bar go higher and not just the tech stock margin expand? Absolutely. When you say that's like, if AI really is a success, it's going to make all these other companies more efficient. I mean, some people might say that's not a success because who knows what that means for jobs. But that would be a test for me to see does it really help all these other companies or not. I agree. All right. A bunch of people sent us this New York Times story

about prediction markets. Betting on prediction markets is their job. They make millions. Welcome to the era of the polymarket sharp. They talk about this guy who quit his job as a CPA. He made his first $100,000 betting these markets. And he's talking about how he's betting on Trump speeches, whether he's going to say hottest or big or radical or rigged or all these different words that you can bet on now. He says he's got like 500. bets going on at once. This one kind of was tough. I'm so terminally online.

I don't think I even recognize my own neighborhood. I spend maybe 16 hours a day on the computer. I should get out more. This is the guy that he does this. And they profile all these people who this is their job now. They figured out a loophole or whatever. They're good at it.

They make a bunch of money. This is the interesting part about these markets. And they interviewed this one guy who said he preferred to be anonymous because he didn't want any attention from the IRS. But he said, if I made $2.5 million last year, someone else lost that. And I think that's the hard part of these companies are going to have a hard time getting really big scale like they want, is in the

stock market, it's not a zero-sum game, right? Just because you make a bad bet on a company and underperforms doesn't mean, like, if you could have just been in actively managed mutual funds for the past 15 years and underperform the S&P, you still did pretty well, even if you underperform about a couple hundred basis points. In these markets, you need to be able to You constantly need new people in them because there's going to be a lot of people who are just going to lose and give up. I'm not putting more money on this. I just lost five bets. I guess now is a good time for me to raise my hand.

You're into it? No, I'm one of these idiots. I'm on the other side. No, that's what I mean. I'm saying you're playing these now, prediction markets? Do you listen to the podcast? Well, just, just the Seattle Seahawks bet. Are you the only person not dunking on me?

Thank you, Ben. You're taking it easy on me. There was a lot of people in my inbox last night after the game. Oh, well, of course. Seahawks are never going to win this Uber. Let's be honest. Come on. That was an awesome game.

And did that fourth and four. So you're forced to roof for the Patriots now. I'm forced for the Patriots. So, yeah, not a great feeling. Not a great place to be. I mean, objectively, the Seahawks clearly look like the best team in the league. But wait, are you making a bunch of other bets on these prediction markets now? Or is that the only one?

No. But this is what I've been saying. the stock market is positive sum. You stick around long enough, generally speaking, you don't act like a complete maniac, and you will make money. So somebody emailed me this morning, something about like,

how does it feel or whatever? I can't, it wasn't that nasty, but like you risked 100% to make 14%. Yeah, I did. That was the calculus. I said, like, yeah, I could lose, if they win,

I'm going to lose all my money. That's how it works. And if they don't win the Super Bowl, I'll make 14%. But this is, like, it's not, fun to lose 100% of your of your money. Another thing with the stock market is, generally speaking, bets don't go to zero overnight. I mean, if you're trading options, they do. But you could be

wrong and lose 20% and still walk away with 80 cents. So what I think is happening is I do think that the prediction market is here to stay. I think it's going to be bigger. I think it's going to be much bigger and more liquid than it is today. I also think that a lot of the early success is sending a wrong signal to some of these companies that are going all in. Robin is an example. They've never seen this sort of adoption. Yeah, but I think that they're extrapolating too far. I think that the hardcore people that we're going to predict are already doing it. I don't think they're going to like expand the pie that I don't think you can annualize the growth. I think, like, what it is is there.

But I do think it's, I don't think it's all nonsense. I think just in terms of, like, with some of the crowds and information and seeing what's implied in this decision or that decision, I think it's cool. I think there's a lot of good things about it. Like, the, we're going to obviously rely on prediction markets for elections going forward as a better source of truth than whatever it's done previously. But, yes, this, this idea of betting on everything. I don't know, you know, I'm not super into that.

The one way that we'd be kind of wrong here, I guess, would be if these companies just supplant all the online gamblers. If Fandul and Draft Kings are hurt because these just take over sports gambling, they'd be bigger than we think. That'd be the one thing that would make us. Yeah, I guess my point is like, is it going to, or other areas of the betting market's going to grow? Like, I, yes, but no. And also, listen, if the Patriots win, I know we're two weeks away. I'm sorry, if the Seahawks win, I promise I'll be okay. And if you want to check in and give me a little, a little ribbing, which I've received several of those.

That's fair game. Where, you know, it's fair game. I would be, I would be done. Hey, you put it out there. You could have kept it yourself if you wanted. Yeah. This is, you know, this is part of the fun. It's okay.

Right. All right. Oh, here's, this is not a great chart. Weekly data for home sales. Hey, speak for yourself. This is great for some people. Good for buyers. Yeah.

But no, it's not even. Why? If houses are staying on the market longer, this is great for buyers. Wrong. Why? Because if they, because there's no, because buyers are not finding value. It means the prices are still too high. Yeah, and they have to come down.

They're going to come down, otherwise you're not going to sell. You just move the goalposts. It's not good for buyers. They're not buying because they're not finding value. These homes are still way too expensive. And that's why the days are going up. This is becoming a buyer's market. That's why this is a good thing for buyers.

fires. Fine, maybe trend in that direction. But it's at the highest level since, like, COVID. If your house starts sitting on the market for one month, three months, six months, like you start, you're going to take eventually, okay, I'll take a lower offer. I'm going to cut the price. I would hope so. Yeah.

Otherwise, it's not going to happen. Anyway, housing market is still frozen. All right. You've talked about this before, how the financial media hates private credit. Or one, maybe they don't hate it, but they want to see, they want to see its downfall. So there's two big headlines this week. BlackRock cuts the value of private debt fund by 19% waves fees. And then another one, private credit investors are cashing out in droves.

And I think any time something like this happens, the media is going to pounce on it because they, I think they want to be first to any potential sign of like a crisis in this space. Is that fair? Yes. Even if any, I think you pointed out, both of these stories were kind of, I don't know, nothing burgers. They didn't, there wasn't much substance there. Well, also, the media loves just this idea that like, it's bullshit. The marks are fake. Investors being lied.

It's juicy. It's a juicy story. Right. So Matt Levine had a really good take on the marks. He said, broadly speaking, the point of private credit is that you don't have to worry about the marks very much. That's the whole point. So he says, you make the loan. These are loans.

I'm not trading them. I'm lending money in the market. companies pay me back? What do you, with the marks? So he says the loan at, you make the loan 100 cents on the dollar. Eventually, it either gets paid back or it isn't. If it's paid back, then it was worth 100 cents in the dollar. If not, it's not. Eventually, you find out the answer. He says your funds estimates along the way are some of the second order interest, but if you are buying a hold investor, it just don't matter that much. Now, here's where it does matter, because the fact that more retail and more advisor clients are into this space, they're not

buying hold investors. They're going to want to get out. And that's when there's a problem, is when you try to add more liquidity to the space, that's where the problems happen. And that's where the headlines are going to happen. Yes. So it's a time horizon mismatch. You're right. And if there's a company that defaults,

then of course, you're not going to get paid back or not 100 cents in the dollar. So that's the thing. Right. So my take on tricolor and first brands when it happened, when was that even? Was that September? Yeah, I guess it was a story

and then it kind of went away, right? All right. So my take at the time was like everything else, unless this was the big one. And Jamie was right that there were more cockroaches. I guess there were two cockroaches or three. So when you were in the Suezionale, I said, I think this is going to fade away. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know. So far I feel like I'm right.

How about this? There's only more cockroaches when there's a recession. Like all this stuff people worry about. Just wait until the recession. All right. The Wall Street Journal had this article. The Americans who are going a whole month without buying anything, just like dry January, people are doing dry, what did, no buy January. Okay, so they profile all these people who decide if the whole month of January, like, besides the necessities, we're not buying anything.

This one dad said he's got three kids. He's locking up his credit card. Unless you need it, like, we're going to talk about this before you spend something. Not to be a personal finance school. These kind of things don't work. Right? Like the crash diet that my favorite, book on this is one of my favorite behavioral books is called mindless eating. And the stat they give that's stuck with me forever is 95% of diets people end up gaining all the way back. And I think if you go into it like this, like instead of developing good habits like that, it's just not going to help. Like I, I, well, yeah, but I hear you. But like, if you, if you don't spend the money in January,

that's good. Maybe you can, maybe you learn stuff. Like, maybe I don't need this to buy this much stuff anymore. I can pick and choose. You're right. But I just, think these crash courses just don't, they don't work very well. Yeah. I guess the only thing that I would say is if you, if you spend $600 a month on things you don't need and then one of those months, you don't spend that $600 bucks, all right, that's $600 bucks in your pocket. By the way, everyone has a friend who does dry January and you're like, oh, he's doing because

he's an alcoholic, right? Like, you have that friend like at the kids games is like, oh, I'm just counting down the day until dry January is over. It's like, you're not really helping yourself that much here. Right? Anyway. I thought this was interesting. This is from JP Morgan

did this guide to retirement thing, right? Just look at their guide to the markets. And they show percentage of people with 401K loans or credit card debt and peaks at midlife, which makes sense because that's when spending peaks, right? I took this data from the BLS. You're spending peaks at like age 45 to 54.

It goes up until then, then it goes down, right? And you spend less as you age, which is probably surprising for some people and why people end up with more money in retirement than they think. But look at the percentage of households who still hold credit card, like a revolving credit card debt in retirement. That is interesting. It's almost 40% at age 65.

That's a really high number, right? Yeah. Wow. High than I would have thought. Okay. What do we got on movie theaters? All right. Somebody sent this to us.

Here's the headline. Our movie theater is cool again. Gen Z's hottest club might just be the multiplex. Here we go. Last year, there was a 25% increase in the theater attendance for members of of Gen Z, according to the annual strength of theatrical exhibition report for Cinema United, the world's largest exhibition trade association. Likewise, the number of Gen Z moviegoers who visit theaters at least six times a year rose from 31% in 2024 to 41% last year. Gen Alpha is even

reporting higher levels of interest in going to the multiplex. That's a survey, whatever. While 45% of millennials and 48% of Zoomers said they enjoy watching films on the big screen versus at home, the solid majority of Gen Alpha, 59%, said they favor the theatrical experience. Did a movie theater write this survey? There's no way these numbers are correct. 25% more Gen Z went to movies last year? No way. You believe this?

I have not seen the methodology. Come on, man. Think about it. I'm telling you, I have noticed a material uptick in attendance at theaters lately. that's possible. Okay, so the big worry about Netflix, which it sounds like the Netflix Warner Brothers thing is just done.

Like their Lucas Shaw wrote about it. He's like, listen, this, unless Paramount substantially increases that, like, this is it. This is the deal. Paramount stock is getting, Paramount stock got cut in half in like four months.

Like, what are they going to do? It was funny because someone made the point of like, Paramount is a, I don't know, a 12 or $13 billion company. They were trying to buy a company that's like six times the size of them. That should have. have been your tell, like maybe this isn't going to happen.

So Ben Thompson had the Greg Peters, who's the co-CEO at Netflix on his, on Sterechekery and his podcast, and I listen to it. And it's interesting. All the stuff people are talking about in the industry are the movie theaters, right? And when he asked him, like, he goes, why did you do this deal? What's, you know, because you've said in the past you don't want to do, he talked a little bit of all that movie theaters and keeping that, and he kind of, it was a brush off answer. But he really, he thought about HBO a lot.

And I think that Netflix knows that they have a quality hole, a quality void in their programming. It's just, it's not the same. And I think, I think the HBO part of it is probably a bigger deal than the movie theaters here. Like they want higher, and they're like, listen, we're going to keep all the HBO people. All right. We're going to let them do what they do and create quality content. And he didn't really say whether he's going to bring them together.

I'm sure HBO is going to have its own tile on Netflix or something. It would be amazing if we can have more HBO quality content. So, like, for example, I watched his and hers six episodes. I'll watch anything that's six episodes. And it was good. It was fun. It was like legitimately good. It was like typical Netflix B minus type of thing, right?

Like the ending made no sense. But like someone died. Who is it? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. If we could have like more high quality programming, who says no? Yeah.

So I like that part of that like, okay, good. They're not going to like, they're not going to try to mess with HBO. At least as of now, I hope. Sinners led the field. 16 Oscar nominations. That's a lot. Horror is very back. Weapons got a nod.

You think Sinners is a horror movie? Frankenstein got nine. Sinners is not like a traditional horror movie, no. I think it has elements of a horror movie. It's in the category. I rewatched the first like 10 minutes of from Dust Till Dawn because I think like a lot of people when they saw sinners, I enjoyed it. I had a good time. Overhyped, in my opinion.

I rewatched it. I agree. It was fun. I don't, 16 Augusta nominations. Sounds like a stretch. I think it was a very good movie, not a great movie.

That's where I fall on it. I really liked it. I didn't think it. I didn't love it. Yeah, I really liked it. I mean, I liked it.

I don't know if I really liked it. So I thought from Dust Till Dawn. I rewatched the first 10 minutes are from Dust Till Dawn. Amazing. Now, I'm pretty sure. I mean,

the first 10 minutes. I remember, I only watched it once. I remember not liking it. Oh, I saw it from Dustal Dawn a dozen times. I mean, obviously. But,

but, But I'm pretty sure that the last, it's been a minute, but I'm pretty sure the last 20 minutes from Dussel Dawn is an absolute joke. Like I think there was, I think I remember like a vampire playing the guitar of somebody's body, like the body guitar, like it was eating somebody. Yeah, it got really bad. I'm pretty sure it fell apart at the end.

All right, random, just a random chart as we wrap up. Las Vegas tourism, you would have thought from what we read that it's like in the shitter. It's not. It's sideways. Is that surprising? It is funny how people like to pick on Vegas for some reason. As a big economic indicator.

Like, yeah, Vegas is dead. No, it's not. All right, Ben, I got a parking ticket for backing ticket. Wait, what do you mean? There's head-in parking only in the train station. Really? Yeah. So I backed my car.

All right, so. Wait, I love that rule. That's amazing. I know you do. I take the 803 train and the parking lot is full at 803. And I have a big parking lot. Like there's got to be, there's got to,

I mean, there's literally got to be a thousand spots. It's expansive. And at 803, it's standing room only on the 803 train now. Like I don't know, you know, people are back in the city.

But anyway, the parking lot is full. So I was driving past, I'm like, oh shit, I literally think I'm going to have to like miss a train. So I saw a spot. I jammed in my break.

Instead of like backing all the way, because there was cars behind me, instead of backing all the way up, to park in head in, I just backed it in. And why do you think they have that rule? I'm curious. I guess they're like, no, don't show off, asshole. You want to brag?

You want a brag? You'll get a ticket. I hate when people back in. I hate it. It really annoys me because you're going and then they have to stop and you have to kind of back up and wait and people think it's safer for some reason, but you're just making everyone else wait for you. And I know this is your point.

Giant trucks need to back in. They think they need to back in. But that's the, look at how cool I am. No, no, no, they do. You can't, you know, physics, geometry angles. All right, Ben, what did you get into this week? All right. So the guy from Free Solo, did you ever watch that, Doc? Yeah, yeah. Very good. So he climbed Taipei 101. As you know, my son is a big skyscraper guy.

So when he saw this, he's like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. So when I was in Grand Rapids, George made me watch on YouTube, like the 10 tallest skyscrapers. And it's something tells me he's seen that one before. he's got them all memorized. He knows how many floors they are. He knows how tall they are. So we watched it and that guy is insane. Like it was, it's kind of funny. We probably watched the first 20 minutes and we didn't watch it live. And then they're like, kids kind of get more like, can we just fast forward to the end? And we got through it. My daughter's like, he didn't die. Can't believe it. But I don't know how that guy, like he should, like his level of calm. Like he climbed literally at the top of like the spire. And there's like a little thing.

little circle on top, you know, like the... Yeah, how do you get up there? Yeah. He stands up on it and he looks like he's just cool as a cucumber. It's super windy. He's taking a selfie. I'm worried this guy's going to fall from that thing. So it was very interesting.

I just think so Netflix is obviously getting into way more live content like that. Don't you think he's wasting his talents? He should be a day trader. Holy, he could... It does seem like he's taking the limitless drug or something. I listen to you... I'm probably halfway through your CIA book that you told me to listen to, the James Andrew Miller one.

How great is that? Very good story. I would never want to be an agent. It's kind of funny. Like, they talked about the one agent shacked up with Allen McGraw for a while, and she's like, why would someone want to do this?

Like, you get calls from crazy people in the middle of the night. But the way that they went up to send out about their business is interesting. I thought the interesting part, the most interesting part of the book is that mailrooms don't exist anymore. And you hear all these stories back in the day.

Like, all three of the guys, three of the founders, like started in a mailroom at an agency and worked their way up. You hear all those stories like of people who had Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs I started in the mailroom and then I worked my way up and now I'm a partner.

That never happens today. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I asked Chad Chippee what exactly happened to the mail room. And it's exactly what you think it is. Like it's mail. It's mail sorting and dropping it off. But the concept seems so like data. It's like there was an actual mailroom.

Yeah. But the idea that you would have to start there. And obviously they kept it for CA to like it was kind of like a you have to put in your lumps. And then you work, you know, figure it out from there. But that whole starting at the very bottom, working way up to running the company, that just can't happen anymore. right it doesn't happen nope

nope all right uh i told you i finished landman finished the new season i thought it kind of went off the rails a little bit and i still love billy bob i think i i think the third like someone there was a death there was a weird college story i think i'm probably good at the show who died did i miss that part

the son who seems like he's in a different tv show someone tried to assault his Fiancé and he killed him Anyway, spoiler alert It was entertaining I think the show is about ready To completely go off the rail So that's where I'm good

All right, I hear you And it's totally possible I actually think that this season was terrible And yet I enjoyed every bit of it And when I say terrible And nothing happened It wasn't terrible That's kind of

But like it was It was not It didn't move the story forward So I actually think That season three might bring it back and something might actually happen. Okay. I did think that they didn't use Andy Garcia enough.

Like he was there. I thought he was going to be really good character and he kind of didn't do much. So anyway, it's an entertaining show, but it's the amount of cringe moments that they have are, it's a lot of cringe stuff. I love it. I'm all in. All right. But yeah, of course, I hear you.

All right. This is my type of film, Ben. Mercy. It looks like minority report. This is the new Chris Pratt one. Okay. Yeah. The critics gave it a 21.

The audience gave it a 201. And in 82, say no more. I can't wait. I am very... Over the top action, kind of cheesy, but it's still entertaining. That's really landing there. Yeah, I'm... I have not been to the theater.

I'm, like, falling behind. I haven't seen Marty Supreme. I haven't seen Primate, which I'm very excited to see. I don't know what that is. I want to see... I want to see Mercy. There's one other that I want to see. It's kind of insane how quickly these movies are on demand now.

Where, like, hey, it's still in the theater. You can rent it here for 20. 2499 or whatever. Correct. Oh, send help is coming out this week. I got to see that. I don't know if I'm going to make it. I got to get back to the theater, Ben.

That's what I'm trying to say. So, wait, did you see this mercy movie or not? No, no, just saying it's in your real house. No, right in my will house. Oh, and Bone Temple, I haven't seen yet. Yeah, I got to get out there. All right, Ben. I am taking the kids sledding

because it's been a while since we had some snow here. We went sledding this weekend, too. Still fun. I still go occasionally with the kids. I'll go, I'll sweat down the hill a few times. I love it. It's great fun. Yeah. We went and my kids, it was like eight degrees out. We were literally the only three people on the sliding hill. Me and my twins. There's no one else around. It was all like powdery and a big hill we have. And it was way too cold for everyone else. And we went down once my daughter was like, I'm not going to do this. And we went like a dozen more times. Because once you start doing it, it's so much fun. Yeah. It's good. It's good. It's good. Clean fun. All right. Thank you for all the emails. Even the ones. dunking on me. I appreciate those too. Animal spirits at the compound

news.com. Hope everybody is staying warm and dry and just generally enjoying themselves. We'll see you next time.