Animal Spirits Podcast - House Poor (EP.327)

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

On today's show we discuss higher for longer, soft landings, why nothing has broken yet in the economy, where the housing bubbles are, why it's harder than ever to outperform the market, gambling vs. day trading, NFTs are worthless and much more! Today's episode is sponsored by our friends at YCharts! Start your free trial and get 20% off your first subscription at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits-referral 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.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   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. Wealthcast Media, 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 Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at YCharts. YTcharts has this cool new feature. If you're watching on YouTube, you can take a look at the chart. If not, we have a link for it. And you can now break out different segments of revenue by product. So, for example, we have one of iPhone revenue by Apple. And on the top pane, we show the iPhone revenue. On the bottom pane, we show the market cap of McDonald's, Accenture, Pfizer, Netflix, Intel, Wells Fargo, and Walt Disney.

and the revenue for the iPhone is bigger than all those companies. Holy moly. Which is just pretty nuts when you think about it. The iPhone has more revenue than, I mean, you said it, McDonald's. Yeah, the McDonald's market cap. It's pretty cool. You know the phrase stop and think about it? I mean, Barry says it a lot.

In this case, I actually would like to pause and think about it. Are you ready to cover your paper short on Apple? No. No. Okay. You're pressing the gas. Okay. All right.

If you want to learn more to make charts like this. First of all, I'm not, I'm not short. I'm not outright short on paper. I sold paper calls. Okay. You're just, you're not a buyer. You're not a seller. All right.

If you want to make more charts like this, check out this new feature. Go to white charts tell them Animal Spirit sent to you. Get 20% off that initial subscription. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Bettenk. 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, you know, one of the great things about social media, sounds trivial and childish, but it's true, are the memes. There was one going around over the weekend of Kevin James. He's sort of doing a, what do you call this a look, like a smirk? Just a little smirk and a shrug. And it got captured into oblivion, and one that I saw that made me literally, LOL, is comes from Josh Black.

Me, after hitting no tip and turning the tablet back around. not bad it is like the power of the internet how something like this can just i don't know how it builds also uh what was this show called not kevin can wait it was his king of queen's yeah i like that show great show i never watched it but great show i mean costanza's dad from syonfelds i guess you never watched that either he was you know what the same character basically upon reflection by the way there's an office reboot yeah i'm not not thrilled with that i mean the office was the last three or four seasons we're going downhill already. So the fact that they're doing another one is not a great sign. Upon self-reflection, I'm not quite sure why, but I missed like all the great

sitcoms in the 90s except for I watched Friends. You know, maybe it's because you were too busy doing whatever in college, but we would get home from class and watch all the reruns on TBS every single night. Seinfeld reruns are beyond, Friends reruns are beyond. That's when you'd watch him and catch up and watch all the episodes. Yeah, I was, I guess I was, taking part in extracurricular, I can't say that word. Yeah, and watching, I guess I was more like a movies and sports guy, not really a

sick I'm guy. But I was thinking about Twitter and I know it's, it's not in vogue to say positive things about the bird app. I love the 4U column. Really? Is that a zag? I love it. That's a big, you're the only one, I think, because no one else does. So I

had complained one of my grives about Twitter over the years. It's not really great more of an observation about how lousy the business is, was that I spend, I don't know, six hours a day on the damn thing, and it's serving me up, uh, you know, women's deodorant ads just has no idea who I am. And finally, Twitter gets me. On the four you. The four you tab is, uh, just chock full of nuts. So I checked out threads for the first time in about a month last week. We, we can't post there anymore because of compliance reasons. I guess it's the, our compliance thing that stores these social media accounts doesn't do threads yet for some reason.

So we can't post there anymore. We tried. But I looked there, and it was basically everyone I follow on Twitter, just copy and pacing their tweets from Twitter to threads. So I just, I'm sure there are people posting there who aren't on Twitter anymore, but I just, I don't see the need to check two social media apps during the day. It seems like a lot of work. How's your office? All good. No construction this week.

There's nothing going on. Hopefully there's still, all the walls are barren outside, but I'm still hanging on here. You know, last week when I mentioned how nothing on the Internet works is advertised, all like these hacks, somebody sent us a video about the right way to eat an apple. The guy says he eats three apples a day to the core. Really? What's the right way to eat an apple? Yeah, I didn't watch a video, but from what I gathered, this person eats the apple all the way through and the only thing left when he's done is a stem. Okay.

Is that of the kickmen did it? Is that what the nutrients are? My kids make me peel the apples for them every time they eat one, which is kind of a pain in the butt. Like three apple peels in my house. I love peel. I'm not a skin guy. One last thing before we get into the show. Speaking of nutrition, I drink athletic greens because, believe it or not, advertising works.

And I feel good about it. There's a lot of minerals and things that I don't otherwise get. It doesn't taste great. I mean, it doesn't sound good to me. It doesn't taste great. Just name alone. But you know what? Something that tastes like that, you just know it's.

rich in a good way for your body. My body's the temple, Ben. I can tell, but based on your athletic gear. I got a take. I've been preheating the oven for a while now. Okay? Gold me on this one. Before you, just let me lay on my case before you push back,

because I think you're going to push back. We already had a soft landing. Oh, come on. I'm just kidding. No. Okay. So I looked back, the first time I wrote about a recession, it's kind of hard to believe, but it's been more than 18 months

since the Russia invaded Ukraine. and commodity prices spiked, and inflation went above 5%. And I wrote a piece in March of 2022, saying every time inflation is spiked above 5%, the only way we brought it down is through a recession. We talked about all this at the time. It's been 16 months since we had $5 gas, $120 oil, and 9% inflation. Since then, the unemployment rate has actually fallen. Inflation fell, wage growth rose then fell, GDP growth accelerated.

What if we already had this off landing? It's been a year and a half. is that I mean that's a long time to be debating this is that not kind of a soft landing already didn't we already have it how long does it have to last before we we declare okay we have a soft landing I think we kind of did are you saying that that the I'm trying to squeeze a transitory joke out of this but I'm coming up short I think cycles are faster anyway I think a year and a half of of you know low unemployment inflation falling GDP growth accelerating, that sounds like a soft landing to me.

I guess what I'm going with, this is the opposite of the transitory talk. It's like, you know, 14 months into inflation remaining, you can't really say it's transitory anymore. I guess this is the opposite where it's like, we're not ready to declare a soft land that we haven't landed. I guess what I would say is the Fed is not, the market seems to think they're probably done, but they haven't said it. They haven't necessarily said that they're done yet.

And it does seem to me that there are more. more risks to the economy than there have been in a while between all the strikes, between oil prices rising, between interest rates, re-accelerating, between the dollar, re-accelerating. But you can't tell me that the risks are higher now than they were 18 months ago. 18 months ago, the risks were way higher. Oh, that's a fact. That's good point. Which is, which is, that's just kind of funny.

And maybe it doesn't matter. But the Fed seems to think higher for longer is the new thing. So even on the, based on their projections, which they're. projections, I don't know, roll them up in a ball and throw them in a trash can because they're worthless. But they say, 24, their Fed funds rate is going to be 5.1% and by 2025, it's 3.9%. The thing is, I see people making two arguments. The rates are going to remain higher for longer and we're going into recession. I'm sorry, but doesn't two solve one? You can't have both. Yes, you can. Every recession we've ever had, rates have fallen. Go look.

What if rates stay high for the next? No, that's true. I think once we do get a recession, you know, the rates part will take care of itself. But what if we get, what if rates stay high for another, I don't know, year or so? And then we get a recession. Can't that happen? Yeah. But isn't that a soft landing, though? Two and a half years of, I don't know.

So Cam Harvey, who is famous for making the yield curve, he was on compounded friends before. He said the Fed is making a mistake. He kind of has a Jeremy Siegel, Jeremy Schwartz thing where he said, if you look at shelter inflation was normalized, core inflation right now is 1.5 to 2%. percent below the Fed's target. He basically is saying the Fed is waiting, they're going way too long. And he said, the higher the rates go, the worst the recession is going to be. Here's my question. So let's say the Fed did want to declare victory in a way. And they said, you know what? We're not going back to ZERP, but we're going to slowly lower rates to 4% over the next year. We want to

get to 4%. Would 4% really be the end of the world? I know stocks would probably take off and bonds would rally, but 4% is not like, in that scenario, you're not going to get a bunch of refinancing from people because they all already have 3% mortgages. It just, it gives people a little bit of breathing room in terms of no more 9% car loans and no more 7% mortgage rates. It just makes them a little easier to stomach and it makes it easier for corporations to borrow. How bad would 4% really be if the Fed said that? We're going to declare a victory. We're going back to 4%. Would that really risk taking away everything that they've done? Could. I don't know. Really? How?

They're still worried. I mean, inflation is still here. I just think if the Fed wanted to avoid a recession, they probably still have time. But I agree with Harvey that the longer they keep rates higher and the more they raise, they're almost guaranteeing us a recession at some. Because at some point, there's just not going to be much more investment. Corporations are going to, like they, sure, they short up their balance sheets and consumers short up their balance sheets. But there's just going to be, everything's going to grind to a halt going forward.

Sure, the stuff in the past is fine. like this collective awakening where people are like, oh, shit, rates really are going to stay at 5%. And that changes, that changes the cost of capital dramatically in terms of investing in new projects. Jamie Diamond this morning, I didn't have a chance to read the article yet, but he said, I'm not sure if the world's prepared for 7%. I ask people in business, are you prepared for something like 7%. The worst case is 7% with the stock inflation. Now again, I don't know why he's necessarily saying that. Is it okay to go contra Jamie Diamond every time he makes one of these big pronouncements. As smart as he is and as great of a CEO as he's been, he was one who said

we were in recession in 2022 and prepare for a hurricane. His, his, his, I think his track record seven percent rates. If we had seven percent rates, the economy would be doing amazing in that scenario. His actual track record speaks for itself, but his public comments about the economy forecasting have not, have not aged well. And to be fair, whose has. And look at, so Mike Cardi posted this. Credit spreads, again, just don't care. So bond yields are rising. The yield curve is, what's it called, disinverting? Yeah. Is there, is it disinverting? Stevening. Steepening. Steepening, okay. The yield curve is steepening, but not for the reason people would have assumed. Most people would have thought the yield curve was going to, the long end is going to stay where it is,

and short-term rates are going to fall. But instead, it's longer-term rates that are going up. Is this a bull-stapener? I think it's a bull-stimperer, but who can get this right. No, no one predicted this. This is another thing that no one would have predicted. The reason the yield curve is going to, the spread is going to decline is because long rates are rising. I continue to think that, boy, I wouldn't want to try to forecast anything over six to 12 months. But I mean, if you're a pension fund or an insurance company and you're seeing rates get up close to, you know, 5% for longer term bonds, I'm sorry, over the short term, they could get hit a little bit. Over the long term, we're going to look back on this and think these bond yields were an amazing deal.

I totally believe that. Yeah, I agree with you. And we're not going to look back. It's already happening. So Balchunas tweeted, people keep piling into TLT, another $750 million this week. Amazing. Can't recall an ETF taking in so much money while being down so much. And so consistent.

So I think that investors are rightly taking advantage, locking in these high rates. And could there be some more downsize? side in price. Yeah, of course, who knows. But I think that investors are are wisely piling into bonds here. Average yield to maturity for the ag is now 5.4%. Yeah, lock it up. Lock it up. I mean, I think every, all the things keep saying, the highest rates since 2007 for most of them across the yield curve spectrum. I don't know. Call me, I think that's a pretty darn good deal, especially relative to what we've seen in the past. Oh, it's great for investors,

but it might be bad for the economy. Leading economic indicators. Which is good for investors. Isn't it? Aren't we setting up for the threading the needle of this being a decent thing for investors in an economic slowdown? Is it possible? Because you get high yields and as soon as the economy starts to turn

and asset prices start to soften, the Fed is going to ease, sending them back higher. Is that, I don't know, maybe that's getting too cute with this kind of stuff. And that's wishful thinking. leading economic indicators have been negative for 17 straight months, which I don't know if that is a record, but it's close. Is it really that long? Geez. It's been a while. So, yeah, I'm not saying anything.

And then, of course, student loans coming back online, which is not necessarily a drop in the bucket. I want to put this take by you that I've heard recently, that the Galaxy Brain take that higher rates are actually inflationary. Now, look at this. This is a Wall Street Journal article about corporations borrowing. And remember we talked about how. net interest payments, so net is net of what they're making on their cash, have been falling. And we're like, why are net interest payments still falling? And they use Microsoft as an example.

You know what? We had this chart on Animal Spirits Live. And I didn't, I was like, I don't understand this from Soxia. And I said, this is great chart. I don't know what it means or how it's happening. Yes. I didn't factor in what you just said. I didn't know that either.

So that makes sense. So carry on. So they're showing Microsoft has more cash than debt. So Microsoft in T-bills now is making more interest income than they're paying on their low-rated debt. So by raising rates, the Fed has given them a raise on their cash. So wild. Which is, I'm sure, the case with a lot of these big companies,

which, again, everyone keeps waiting for the magnificent seven to just fall and drop. And I do think it's also funny that every year we just add another company. It started off being Fang, and then it was like Fan, MAG, and now it's magnificent. And Netflix is out. Nobody talks about that. That's true.

Netflix got booted. Netflix just quietly got removed. You know, this is what you just mentioned, Ben, is a great example of things that the textbook would say happen where you have to take into fact, you have to take into account other considerations. Like, okay, rates higher, interest payments up. Well, no, actually, not so fast. For all these companies that locked in low mortgage rates, or I'm sorry, low interest rates,

right, because they issued so much debt and have so much cash that there's actually a positive spread, there's nothing in the textbook that would suggest that would happen. And we're going to talk about this later in the show. Same thing with my view on U.S. residential real estate. You would think higher prices, higher interest rates, home prices down, not so fast. And this is the same thing for wealthy people who have all this money sitting in cash. Like they are getting a raise. And unfortunately, I think that's distorting a lot of things in the economy.

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Weapons. I wanted to look at, you talked about how things have, like, everything looks bad right now. rates are rising. The Fed is going higher for all the leading indicators. And the S&P 500 is still up 14% year to date. The NASDAQ 100 is up 35%. I don't know. Wouldn't you, if you were given all the headlines this year at the beginning, take away what we already know about the stock market. If you were given this at the beginning of the year and said, you're going to be up 15% in the stock market this year with all this negativity. Wouldn't you say sign me up immediately.

Of course. So it's just funny how, obviously, part of this is just the bounce back from last year. But it's interesting that the market is still not matching sentiment, which I guess is just something we're getting used to, that the market rarely matches sentiment these days. I shared this chart with you yesterday. Since the Fed started raising rates, which I think is a blockbuster I'm going to do since the Fed started raising rates, what's happened since. But since the Fed started raising rates, the median stock is not doing great, as you would

probably expect, right? So I had Nick Mujuli break down the median return by market cap desile since the Fed started raising rates in March 22. And the median stock in the largest and second largest decile by market cap is slightly positive. But every other decile, the median stock is down. The weirdest thing to me is that the smallest stocks are the third best performer out of the deciles. Yeah, that is interesting. I ran this on my own looking backwards, and I said, this can't be right. Because the median stock, if you look at today's Russell 1000, and you do this analysis, the median stock in the last bucket is down 41%. But that's almost like self-selecting because like Peloton's in there and it's all the stocks that got

crushed. They fell into that bucket. Yeah, exactly. So I said, I had my, I had my Nick Majuli correct this for me. I said, hey, Nick. do this proper, and so this is what it looks like. Yeah, that's a good chart. All right. Beating a dead horse here, but Spieva came out with their half-year report about index funds versus active funds. They look at all these categories across equities, small, mid, multi-cap, large, all the growth value.

We are beating a dead horse, but go ahead. And if you look at the 10, 15, and 20-year numbers, it's not just average returns. for indexes. It's top decile, basically, and sometimes the top 5% you are bringing an index fund over 20 years, which again, dead horse, but is it actually becoming harder to outperform the market because of the informational advantage has been kind of taken away? I know the whole argument has always been, listen, the market is active funds underperform because they are the market less cost. That I get. But I think it's actually getting harder to outperform. And it's not like you can just say, well, it's because the biggest 10 stocks carry the day, because it's the same thing in

midcaps, it's the same thing in small caps, it's growth, its value, it's all this stuff. I just think outperforming the market now is actually harder than it's ever been. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's probably mostly true. I guess in defensive active management, I would say, for investors in active funds that believe that their manager is going to outperform any, but if they don't, If, and maybe I'm reaching here, if there was a behavioral edge to be had, like, and maybe this is actually, this is probably backwards. I'm trying to say that, like, maybe you're more likely to stick with an active strategy

if you really believe in the manager. But I think, I think empirical evidence shows that actually to probably be the opposite, right? You're more likely to bail. I think these numbers, like, also. Dollar weight of returns, do investors in active funds do worse relative to the funds that they invest in an index fund investors, I would say that's probably actually almost definitely true. I'm sure there's a morning star study on that. I tried. But this is also probably why I think thematic funds are going to continue to see groundswell and see assets going to them and why people

are sticking with a fund like ARC because they believe in this innovation idea. And I think the thematic, that's like the new active. And it's going to take a while for that to filter through. But I think that's probably where most of the growth comes for active in the years ahead. All right. You had Jeremy Grantham on The Compound Friends, which was great because I still disagree with a lot of what he says in his view of the world, but he's not a psychopath about it. He has good reasoning, and he's a smart, sharp guy for how old is he again, did you say? 84. 84. So I wanted to pull up, you wrote about this yesterday. I wanted to pull up his, you sent me this clip about him talking about a real estate bubble. Before you get there, I just want to, just one thing. So I got to say,

interviewing Jeremy Grantham was definitely like one of the highlights of my career even though we've ridden with a critical eye about him and what he said he's a gentleman and I knew that he was before the show and he's a legend

and how could you not respect the guy? Yeah, I think the perma bear moniker is a little bit of recency bias and I'm not saying that it hasn't been somewhat earned because he's been definitely cautious to outright bearish much of the last decade of over certain times. But the guy's been around since 1969, and he has an incredible track record, and he's

very, very thoughtful. He's not just a guy that wants to see the world burn. And we got a lot of comments, like the one I'm about to read. I just finished listening to episode 110 of TCAF with Josh. Okay. Jeremy Grantham, man, it was so good. I always thought of Grantham as a permavere. But listening to this episode completely changed my mind, Grantham's data-driven process, the way he thinks about investing in the way he articulates his thoughts, totally changed my perspective. And I couldn't agree more. Like if you, I get it. Believe me, I get it. But if you listen to him, he's, he's probably not what you think he is. No. He has like, he has an idea. He's built up this philosophy and this, this model of the way the world works. And unfortunately,

the world hasn't really agreed to those models lately. And I feel it felt like you guys talking to him where he was kind of going back and forth, thinking through like, do I still believe that these models work? And it was interesting to see the back and forth. So I wanted to bring up to the housing bubble stuff because he talked about a global housing bubble and he mentioned Toronto and China and in Vancouver and all these places. And I actually, I'm, I think it's, it's really, really hard to call a bubble while you're in it. I'm no good at that kind of stuff. But he mentioned like two or three times income for, and no one can afford a house. And I do agree that there are places like this around the world, but I don't think those, those conditions

are being met in the United States. I think in places like Canada and Australia, in the United Kingdom. Like, if you look at, I did all these charts of since 1990, real housing price growth versus real disposable income. And we did this for Canada a couple weeks ago. So I just did it for all these other countries too. The Japan one is crazy. Look at the Japan one.

Same with South Korea. Because this starts in 1990, which is when the Japan bubble burst and real housing prices are down by whatever, 50%. And income has risen a little bit. That's because their bubble is out of control. But the United States in Germany, I guess he could say, are the ones that look, you know, actually reasonable in terms of income

growth versus housing price growth, but places like Canada, Australia, France, UK, those ones are the ones where, plus you, not only do you have housing price growth that's way outpaced income, but you have the variable mortgages in a lot of these places. So the U.S. doesn't have a lot of that stuff, right? We've, people have done okay, people locked in rates, 38% of people own their homes outright or not. So I think I would, if I'm picking bubbles, the U.S. would be way down the line in terms of housing markets for seeing a huge price decline. And I would think it makes way more sense in places like Canada and Australia. And actually at the end of the year, the last nine months of the year, in a real basis, Canadian housing prices fell 20% last year. Oh, they did?

Yeah, which is, I mean, a lot of that's inflation, obviously, but they, they are falling a little bit. And so I think if there is a housing bubble, it's internationally. It's not in the U.S. Well, let me ask you this. If he is right and housing prices, because I think I said, like, what do you think is going to happen to housing prices? Like down 30%. I think he said that that's fair. Let's just assume that housing prices did fall by 20%, 30%. Would that lead to, would that, like, take the economy to its knees? I don't really think so because there's such a big margin of safety built up in home equity right now already. I think I looked at this before. If housing prices fell 20%, it would bring us back

to like October 2021, if I recall. And it's not as if it's not as if there's, now I know houses are a levered product, but it's not like people are levered to the hilt. See what I did there? There you go. Nailed it. You know, with multiple houses and a debt to income that is even remotely resembling the pre-GFC days. It was also, we went on a building binge in the 2000s, and we didn't have that this time around. So I still think supply remaining constrained, I got to imagine if housing prices did start to fall, like the demand would pick up really quickly. Yeah. And if housing prices were falling, you'd think rates were falling too. And I think that there's a floor under housing prices. So I really do. So I wrote a blog post

yesterday and I said that similar to the example that you gave with Microsoft and rising interest rates actually helping their net interest expense. I think that if interest rates were to even budge a little bit lower, you would see housing activity take off like a rocket chip. So Fortune didn't write an article, House poor is back, where they said monthly mortgage payments are up 60% year over year, which is obviously nuts. More than half of home buyers face a monthly mortgage payment of at least two grand, while one in four are paying $3,000 or more. Meanwhile, average US monthly earnings were just 4,600, according to economic data. That means that some homeowners could be spending more than 6% of their paychecks on a mortgage.

All right, well, if it's two incomes, it's more like 30%. But still, based on current mortgage rates, average income levels and home prices, more first-time home buyers are using a minimal down payment. They could be paying more than 40% of their monthly income towards housing. Somebody was quoted, and this is what I was just alluding to, any relief in mortgage rates is likely to get absorbed by even higher home prices. So there is, I mean, the housing market is absolutely broken. It is.

But, but it's structural. Everyone is trapped in their house. Would be movers are not moving because if you have a 3% mortgage, you just, you're not moving. You're stuck. And then also, and I think this is probably like a minor, maybe not so minor thing. They said 40% of people under 30 were getting helping their parents. So there's 84 million millennials. I don't know how many are in a home.

but a lot of them need to go into a home. And so could this, could the great wealth transfer and that issue put a relatively high floor on their prices? I think it could. Right. Hey, mom and dad, don't wait to give me this money until you pass away and it's an inheritance. Give it to me now so I can actually buy a home. Right.

And afford it. Right. Which unfortunately makes a wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. Yes. But I think that's what's been happening in the housing market for a while. The funny thing is, too, we talked about the Fed raising rates so aggressively. I tweeted this last week, and I showed rates going from everything 30 years and below at one point was under 1%. And now, you know, everything is 5% or more approaching 5%.

And I said, it's kind of crazy, nothing is broken. And a lot of people came back and said, well, the housing market is broken. But I think nothing broke like people thought it would break. When people would have assumed mortgage rates going from 3 to 7.5, you would have assumed, okay, housing prices fall 20%. Well, I think people thought that it would be. break and cause a panic. Yeah. So that's the thing. Nothing has broken like anyone thought it would in terms of breaking, like the Fed raising so aggressively. Like sure, the economy is going to break and consumers are screwed and none of the stuff has broken like people thought. And obviously

a lot of people come in and say, hasn't broken yet. Just wait. But it's coming. I know. But you cannot, but I still, this is my soft landing argument that it's, it's been going on for long enough where I think we can say everything everyone thought was going to happen just didn't happen this time around. And that, my friends, is what complacency looks like. From Redfin, a record, 26% of homebuyers are looking to move to a different part of the country, up from 24% a year ago and roughly 19% before the pandemic began. Where'd you go? Where did I go? Here I am. Yeah. No, I mean, on the doc. Good to see you. Oh, we're in real estate. Sorry. So we skipped ahead because I was talking real estate. Yeah. All right. I'm trying to keep up here. Any thoughts on people

moving, having to move? Midwest? I mean, the thing is people keep saying that like no one can afford to buy a house now, but people are, there's still activity happening. It's just not very much. I mean, a lot of people are completely frozen out. So Mike McDonough, we've been talking about how the average mortgage payment is up 130% since pre-pandemic. So then he inverted it. So, all right, the average monthly mortgage payment, assuming 20% down, current prices, is $2,300. So he flipped it. He said, how much home can you buy with a $2,300 monthly mortgage payment, assuming 20% down for a 30 year?

And at the peak in 2020, or I guess when rates were at the bottom, it was, you could buy a $700,000 house. Now with that same monthly mortgage, $400,000. I mean, the housing market is completely upside down. And what do you think people are going to do? Do you think they're going to change their expectations and go to a much lower-end house or just eat it and pay 50% of their income for housing? They're going to eat it.

They're going to eat it. They're going to eat it, right? Yeah. Which, yeah, eventually. Now, I mean, surely that should lead to less disposable income, right? And the consumer drives the economy. So isn't this one way in which housing can slow down the economy? Yeah, unless we all just take out a bunch of credit card debt.

Now, the other thing is, the other thing is, like what I just mentioned, yeah, point taken. The other thing is how many people are buying new homes relative to the whole population. Yeah. It's a very small percentage. It's very small. Ben, you just mentioned credit cards. We haven't done a survey in a while. I know I'm jumping around the dock. A third of Americans earning $150,000 a year or more say they're living paycheck to paycheck, and many rely on credit cards to close the gap per money-wise. Now, I think, and I don't know exactly how the question was... Paycheck to paycheck. I don't know how the question was worded, but Ben just did air quotes around that. Yeah, because once, you know, they're saving, they're contributing to their 401k. And then once you save and spend, you're out of money, right? Listen, after my 4-1K and after the 529 and after private school for the kids and after the Taylor Swift concert, I'm broke. I'm living paycheck to paycheck.

Right. So I also think like the rely on credit cards could be doing a lot of work in that survey. Now the headline is, oh my God, a third of Americans earning 150 grand live paycheck to paycheck. But the reality is people might just, I rely on a credit card. Well, I think most people do. Now, if credit cards didn't exist, I wouldn't rely on it, but they do. Yes. I heard a good

Probably a old wife's tale But that the Chargers are called that Because of credit cards Did you hear this? They're trash What a terrible team There All right, let's go back to investor behavior

Okay This is interesting I was about to say Apologize to Chargers fans But I realize that there are none Zing All right Since the early 2000s

There's been a structural decline And bullish sentiment This is interesting So if you did Like a moving average of this It is funny. You know what? Are people just not allowing themselves to get full-me-y?

Because these are boomers, and they've seen some shit in the market. And we've said, oh, you've ridden a lot. Oh, the boomers have had it so great. Falling interest rates, rising stock prices. I mean, they also had two monster crashes. Yes. I can say the first decade of this century, I think really screwed a lot of people. Like, I think investors had it great, or boomers had a great.

There's a lot of hindsight working there because I don't think it felt too great. as they're entering, like, their money-making years, and they see a monster crash, and then all the shit that transpired after it, and then as they're starting to get back to even, oh, great, we're at new highs. Finally, it's been seven years, and the market has finally recovered. Oh, yeah? Eat the 60% decline. Yeah, that's true. So I think, I think it's like, you know, you're not going to fool me a third time. I think investors aren't allowing themselves to get, like, euphoric. Now I know 21 was a different story, but. This is also another example of watch what they say, what they do and not what they say.

because a lot of those boomers have increased their allocations to equities over time. So they're saying they're bearish, but they're investing like they're bullish. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, this is interesting. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal title was, you might be paying too much for that index fund. Okay. State Street last month slash the fee on its cheapest S&P 500 ETF. The ticker is not SPY, it's SPLG, to 0.02% making it less than,

a quarter of the cost of its popular SPY fund that tracks the same stocks. All right, a $1,000 investment in SPLG, and that's just U.S. It's the SP-500 is 20 cents a year on $1,000. Jeez. So look at this next chart. We're looking at total assets in management. SPY has ballooned to $400 billion. SPLG is coming up the rear.

It's at $19 billion, basically up from zero in like, I don't know, 20, 17, maybe. If you look at the change, like the total assets under management as a percentage, over the last, since pre-pandemic, I think this was, SPLG is up 200%, SPY is up 42%. Now, again, this is not apples to apples because one is coming off a gigantic base. And I guess there's two things here. One is just marketing is very powerful.

SPY has the brand. brand, I should say, not marketing. SPY is the brand. But also it's got the assets. And I'm sure a lot of the money that's going in here is being used by gigantic institutions for either hedging or short-term trading. And they don't necessarily care about the expense ratio. Yeah.

But what it would for investors? What a win for investors? I've honestly never heard of, I guess, SPLG. But it makes sense that they have. It is kind of funny, though, they didn't just decide to make SPY have that same expense ratio. Like the SPLG kind of. There's no reason for them to slash it. I know, which is funny.

Like, they have SPLG to cover themselves, but you'd think they. Why not just make SPY two basis points? Well, why would they? Someone sent me this. We talked last week about what is easier to lose in? Gambling or trading options, day trading. Someone sent me this infographic here. Casino gambling versus day trading.

13 out of 100 gamblers leave the casino a winner. One out of 100 day traders reliably beat the market. I don't know. I've never really thought about what the winning percentage is for a casino, but that's way lower than I thought. I would have assumed 30% maybe, 20%, I think I would have too. I would guess my winning in a casino, I don't know. I'd probably lose three times for every time I win.

I'm a winner. I'm like 55 to 6% winning in Blackjack. That's not possible. No one ever believes me. It's true. I've had some amazing Blackjack streaks in my life. I don't think I don't even think that's true because I really only play Blackjack. If I play craps to lose every single time, that's just what you do.

At least that's what I do. But Blackjack, the odds are not that high in the house's favor. So, yeah, maybe I win for it at 10 times. Maybe I wouldn't anymore because they changed them. They don't pay as much on the blackjack and, but yeah. Nobody cares, but I am, we spoke about, God, I love betting on sports. What a rush. But what a kick to the pants.

I add the Ravens as the fourth leg in a relatively big parlay, not to brag. And, man, that was a brutal loss. Just brutal. But this is why people continue to gamble because. It's so much fun. The action is the juice. Yes. And you can, you could put $10,000 on a stock and not get the same emotional boost that you get from betting $100 on a blackjack hand or something.

Well, yeah, because it doesn't go to zero or double in 30 seconds. But obviously, this is why gambling will always have a place because those feelings, you can't recreate those. You can't replicate it. All right. This is a good chart. People are rightfully annoyed about rising gas prices. This chart doesn't really do anything to calm people's emotions. but it just happens to be a fact.

As a share of income, the price of a gallon of gas is barely half of its 2008 levels. I put this, I tweeted this the other day that if you go to the highs in 2008, retail gas prices are down 38%. But also, why should we...

But why should we anchor it to like... I mean, that is ultimately cherry picking. Yes. And I did say, I cherry pick this data. I admitted it. But it is true that gas prices haven't kept up with inflation for well over a decade, which is kind of hard to believe. Yeah.

But yes, cherry pick. All right. This, I've never heard of this. The Dopp Gamble, maybe this is a website you've heard of, had this thing on NFTs that kind of went viral. Of the 73,000 and change NFT collections that we identified in eye-watering 69,795 of the market capital of zero eth, meaning they're worthless. So 95% of people holding an NFT collections are currently.

holding on to worthless investments. Even if we look at the top NFTs, the value is hard to find. Starting 18% of the top collections have a floor price of zero, indicating that a significant portion of even the most prominent collections struggling to maintain demand. Furthermore, 41% of the top NFTs are priced between $5 and $100. Wasn't this the easiest one to call out of anything? Just that, you know who walked away? I'm sure people made a lot of money in this and sold. Remember the Beeple guy? Didn't he sell his collection for like $70 million? I'm sure that's completely worthless. That was one painting or image or whatever.

So 1% of them both the price tag of over $6,000. I mean, this was the easy one to think of just the jokes of, hey, I just right clicked your picture and I stole it. I think that even, I think even people that were Super Bowls on NFTs, a lot of them were saying this at the time, that 99% of these collections are going to zero. I think that was like consensus, even among NFT bowls. The one I really remember the most is these, these eth racks, ether racks.

And I remember Drew Dixon tweeted this. And he just re-upped it, so I found it. And he said, there's this ether rack, which is literally a picture of a rock that looks like you could have drawn on Microsoft paint, was selling for $2.2 million. And he said, what would you rather have this, this picture of a rock or a $2.2 million house in Florida on the water with a sweet boat launch and a pool. and obviously this was just funny money at the time, but that's the one that always stuck with me to like how crazy. It was like, wait a minute, honestly, why would you rather hold this stupid thing your wallet

unless you're laundering money for tax purposes or something? Also, I, so Zillow has this house, so I looked at it. So this was in 2021, and it was selling for almost $2.3 million. Okay, so you know you can look up the price history. In March of 2022, this thing sold for $2.1 million. And then in January 2023, it sold for $2.3 million. And then by February, it sold for $2 million. Housing prices don't always go up.

Why is there so much turnover in this house? I don't know. Maybe the pending sale fell through. But it sold for less money than it was trading for at the time. Should have bought the pet rock or the eat rock. I think my take on NFTs at the time, I still, I still, I do think there's something interesting about digital ownership, like one of the, of the examples that I threw out was like every time I go to a nick game like I don't have my

tickets I used to have like tickets in a box I don't know where they went to be able to look back and have some sort of digital ownership digital digital entrance like I think that that part of it is interesting doesn't mean it had to be worth something and also no no no I like I like the idea of using it as a key to unlock like yeah like what we did with our discord yeah the community like you use the NFT as the key to unlock it but that doesn't mean the NFT has to go up and price all the time and be worth 20 times what it was so my take at the time where these things were going know. It's just like, how do you explain this? And I guess this was, I was trying to justify the insanity, was these were people, for the most part, these were people that were ETH millionaires.

And it was all funny money. It was poker chips. It was credit card points, whatever you want to talk, whatever, however you want to label it. For the most part, it wasn't people depositing $200,000 of cash. Right. And buying these things. It was people that were all- It was monopoly money. It was monopoly money. But I'm just saying, how many of those people do you think are kicking themselves for not cashing some of that out and buying a $5 million house on the water. Now, being a cynic, and I guess a realistic cynic, because a lot of those people did cash out to people that were actually using real money. Yeah, true.

Which is a shame. All right. So I created an AI image. You know, do a blog post and you have to have some little thumbnail for the social media. So I just put a picture. You created one? Yeah. So look at it under AI here.

So I wrote a post the other day about 24 things I believe about investing. And you need a little picture there for the blog and then for social media. And I didn't, usually if I have a chart, I just conclude the chart in there. But it didn't have anything. I told a little story about Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett. And so I said, you know what? I couldn't find a picture of them together. I'm going to create one in AI.

So one in an AI and I had to type a bunch of different things in and I wrote like Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, investing. And this is the end you came up. Like whatever free AI, there was a bunch of them came up. It's just like AI art generator, whatever. And this is the picture that came up. It looks pretty good, but it also looks kind of weird, doesn't it? like there's something just like

3% off about it. Bezos is dead on. Buffett looks a little bit a little off. Yeah, but I tried like 10 different iterations and I'm like, oh, you know, that's actually kind of, so I've been playing around with it a little bit. Some of stuff it can't, it couldn't do yet, but for something like this,

I thought it was kind of cool. Yeah, that's great. Ben, last week we spoke about Nav lending. The FD did a follow-up piece. Goldman Sachs has raised more than $15 billion. million dollars to buy investor stakes in private equity funds and invest in deals where buyout groups sell portfolio companies from one of their funds to another, and the latest sign of

sustained support for the fast-growing, quote, secondary strategy. The opportunity set is as big as it's ever been. I don't know who they're quoting here, but the need for some investors to get liquidity in an asset class that typically locks money up for more than a decade has offered attractive investment opportunities. Money on top of money, huh? Yeah. Now, I guess I could see that from the people from the point of view of new investors that are taking out old investors that want liquidity. But doesn't this just turn the concept of the illiquidity premium on its head? If you're bringing gallons of water to these markets, then what are we even doing here? If the whole idea is like you're locked up and therefore you're going to earn a premium for

giving up liquidity, then... It used to be this... When I was back in my private equity day, it was the secondary markets, you'd buy them like 50% discounts. Like to offload, that penalty for liquidity was a huge discount. Yeah, I bet you the discounts are not 50%. I'm sure they've fallen a lot. But that's what it was back in the day, which is kind of, and that's when you'd buy like a whole fund.

But that's kind of hard to believe that. Yeah, you wouldn't have to take something. Okay, here's a good one. Gen X today is significantly wealthier than boomers were at the same age. We talk about boomers having it easy. about this is adjusted for inflation, 600,000 for Gen X, and 500,000 for boomers at the time. I think the median age is around age 50 when this happened. So, and millennials today are about equal in wealth to boomers at the same age, just over 100K,

all inflation adjusted. Some people said, well, a lot of the inflation rate you use kind of has a lot to do with this, but I don't think many people would assume Gen X has had it easier than baby boomers. Although, I mean, no one ever talks about Gen X and their experience and what happened to them. I'm sorry. These comparisons are just dumb. Why? I don't know.

Like, okay, so what's so Gen X had it easier? They didn't. Millennials had it hard. I mean, who cares? Class warfare. I know. I just, I don't like, I don't like these things. It's just a way to divide us.

I'm all about bringing people together. I guess my point with all of this is it's hard to judge a whole group like this and the individual circumstances and luck and timing. All of it is, it's like anyone's personal finance experience. is going to be dictated more by luck and timing than most people would look to it. Yeah, the reason why I don't like these sort of comparisons, even though, like, I understand, you know, what we're doing here. It just creates a system of like winners and losers and people that feel bad and anger and, you know. Well, that is going to happen on steroids with the housing

market going forward. In the future, people are going to look back at 2020 and go, you bought a house before 2020. I hate your guts. I didn't get one. I got screwed. I, you know, there's going to be so much more of that now, I feel like, with the housing market. It's going to get worse and worse and worse, unfortunately. All right, here's another, we've talked to this before. Sonu Vargasi wrote this from Carson Group, and it shows bottom 50%, 50th to 90%, 90th to 99, and top 1% by wealth. And he shows the growth in wealth from 1992 to 2006, then 2007 to 2019, and those ones go in order. The lowest people in the rung grew the slowest.

The people in the top 1% grew the fastest, except for 2020 to the first quarter of 23, by far the largest relative increase in wealth comes from the bottom 50%. And they more than doubled up the increase as the top 1%, the top 10% all of this stuff. Love to see it. But is this another reason why the consumers remained so much stronger is that even like the bottom 50%, so their net worth just. skyrocket like they haven't seen in decades, right? How many people actually would know this fact?

If you just talk to people on the street, did family feud style survey, three people out of 100, maybe would say the bottom of 50% has seen the biggest increase, maybe? What do you think is more important for sustained growth for the economy? Or said differently, what would be worse for the economy? if the top 1% came under financial pressure or the bottom 50% which is better or which is worse? Which would be worse for the economy?

I think the bottom 50% bottom 50 because they're spending everything. Spend a higher percentage of income. Yeah, so if the top one half of 1% is feeling the pinch, all right, they're not buying paintings. Yes, they have a much bigger margin of safety too from financial assets. So is this an underreported or underreported?

explained aspect of why the economy remains strong. It's a bottom 50% is doing relatively okay. Yeah. Did I just say that like two minutes ago? Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. Thank you. That's a good call, coach. You really do look like a JV football coach.

I think that's your calling in life. This is my Balochic outfit, and I'm feeling pretty good about my preseason bet of Patriots under seven and a half wins. Okay. Not feeling great about my giants over seven and a half wins. How many bets do you have going on at one time? because it sure seems like a lot.

You know what, you know what Fandil needs? You're right, Ben, I do have a bunch of bets going on at one time. The Fandul needs to have, so when you're looking at your phone and you see active bets, I don't want to see my futures bets. I don't want to have to scroll through my future spreads. I want them in a separate column. Okay. Those are the only bets I make anymore.

I bet like four teams to win the Super Bowl, the NBA finals every year, and that's it. You know, it's unbelievable. We're so different. You're a set it and forget it sort of investor. Yes, it is true. And you're doing these 18 parles and I just, it, I had a bad run. I had a really bad run in the NFL season a year or two ago. And I just, it soured me to the whole deal.

Hello. I kept getting screwed. What about Holt? What about Delusion? I was getting screwed on all these picks and I'm just like, you know what? I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. I've had enough and kind of went away from it.

All right. Derek Thompson tweeted it's mostly cringe for middle age people to gawk at general changes in younger generations, but the anti-socialization of childhood in America is. It's really a stunning thing to see all at once. So from 1976 through 2015 or so, we're looking at the number of people that have a driver's license, that have tried alcohol, that have ever dated, that work for pay. And these things, you might say this is social media. These things have all been in a downtrend since, basically the mid-90s, I guess. 90s, probably.

Now, it's accelerated and crashed. Ever dated, for example, is alarming. It's an alarming crash. There's another chart that shows the percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders who spent an hour or more leisure time alone nearly every day. And that is going the opposite direction, as you might imagine. That's skyrocketing. That's screens, though.

Yeah, and I think there's nothing we can do about it. honestly, with screens and social media, I think, I think this is the new normal. I saw. And everyone is going to get married in the future from dating apps. Isn't that just where we're heading? Yeah, I saw, I was watching something on Instagram. It was nostalgia overloaded. It almost made me cry.

I don't know why. I just got emotional watching it. It was the introductory songs from shows from the 80s. Full House, Family Matters, Who's the Boss? You know what the best one ever is, right? Growing pains, Wonder. growing pains is the best one ever growing pains is terrific how how weird was charles in charge was scott bayo basically an au pair that's kind of a bizarre i mean people just didn't so

who's the boss how weird was that show if you think about it the 1980s is such a weird time for so i was thinking about this i one of my my favorite all-time favorite tom hanks movie if you asked me under truth serum i'd say money pit even though it probably should be big yeah i never seen he has his 1980s so it's on netflix and i looked at it oh it's on Tom Hanks, one of our greatest actors ever. And right when you start the movie, I've never noticed it before, it says, Stephen Spielberg presents the money pit. So Stephen Spielberg, executive produced, Tom Hanks starred, and it's a slapstick comedy

about a husband and a wife who are building a home together. And it's totally 80s. It just cracked me up that one of the greatest directors of all time, maybe the greatest, and one of the greatest actors of all time in the 80s collaborated on a slapstick comedy that would be like a like a straight to DVD movie today. I got to see that. It's totally. But anyway, just watching these, these, these songs, these interest songs from the 80s,

like thinking about how different life is. And I'm not saying life was better necessarily in the 80s, but some things were better. Now I'm a 90s baby. I was born in 85, but. Okay. Although I do remember, I do remember growing up with a lot of boredom, I must say. Like, there was definitely just. just some sitting around looking out the window type stuff just like oh should I call

I guess I'm just going to call this person's house and see what they're doing this is also why I've seen every movie from the 80s or 90s like 12 times because USA TNT TBS the summers that was my babysitter I just watched movies all the time um all right I saw this the other night and I thought I was taking crazy pills I was I watching uh I was flipping through I think I was on ESPN I've said before I'm not a flipper but I happen to be flipping I came across Cornhole Oh yeah I've seen that before

And it said It was on ESPN 8 the Ocho Wasn't that From Dodgeball Wasn't that a joke Yes I think Did they turn this into a real thing I think they made it kind of a joke

And turned ESPN 2 into ESPN 8 to be Like wink wink Yes Okay Ben I was in the supermarket yesterday with Logan And My wife told me to pick up A piece of salmon

for her. So I waited on the line, you know, where you get the tickets. And I was thinking, how often, how fresh is this food? There's 4,000 pounds of prepared foods here. You know what I mean? Meatballs, chicken parmed, this salad, that's, whatever it is. How often does that turn over? And how would you even know if it's fresh or not? There's no way they do it every single day. It's just no way. I've got to have some sort of, I often think about that at the supermarket and liquor stores. Like with as much inventory as they're carrying, how do they ever make money? Yeah. In the margins being so thin. How do you know there should be, how old your food is that you're

buying? Roll the dice. You're a gambler. You're rolling the dice. You play craps every time you buy salmon at the store. It's like a parlay. Are you a prepared food guy? We have a pretty good meat department at my local place. Yeah, it's not bad. That's not what I ask. That's not, meat is not prepared food. You cook meat. I'm saying like, do you go to stores and get meals that are already made? Oh. Occasionally, like, the Costco tacos are pretty good. They have, like, a kit, you know, that kind of thing.

The chicken al-Fredo my kids like from there. You're not understanding. There's not a... I'm not about it by kits. I'm talking about... You see the food that's already made. You go and buy it and then you heat it up. Isn't that what this is?

I feel like we're talking about the same thing. No, you're talking about a taco kit. Give me an example. I just did. A piece of salmon, Terry. Taraki salmon. That's what I bought for my wife. Yeah. I'm saying at the meat department, it'll be like chicken that's, it'll be like a chicken kebab ready for you to go and he's got to cook it. Yeah. No, I'm saying not even. Now,

what you're describing, yeah, if you go to a butcher, they'll have raw meat. So you're saying the salmon's already cooked. Yes. All you have to do is heat it up. All you have to do is microwave. That's what I'm saying. Prepared foods. Not raw prepared. Okay. That sounds kind of gross. I'm saying. Okay. Yeah, then, no, I wouldn't do that probably. Okay. And not to judge my fellow Americans, but the people online, you know, little on the heavy side. It's easier to eat bad than it is eat good. That's a fact. All right, recommendations. All right, I think I nailed this, not to brag. This is from Barstool. Apparently, Aquaman in the Lost Kingdom is so bad that audience members walked out of test screenings. I said last week that was

the absolute worst trailer I've ever seen in my life. Now, I am a trailer guy. Whenever I see people say that trailer looks awful. I usually don't understand because I like all trailers for the most part. It's usually a bad sign though. If the trailer looks bad or if it's a comedy and doesn't make you laugh, that's a bad sign. Yeah. So if the trailer looks bad, you know it's bad. I was talking with my trainer the other day, as I do. Now, my trainer, I hate working out. God, do I hate it. And I know that if I'm not paying this guy to watch me work out and say, yep, you're doing great. Like, you know, uh, uh, it sounds really creepy when you put it that way. I was thinking of Chubb and Havie Gilmore.

Okay. You know, when he's giving the lessons to the lady and he's just... Anyway, I really do hate working out. But so we schmooze about movies and whatnot. See, this is where we're different. You get the emotional high from gambling and hate working out. I get the, whatever it's called, the endorphins or whatever you get from working out, I get that. And, like, I need, my body needs that at a certain point.

Like, I feel better after I work out. Like, I enjoy working out. Yeah, I hate every minute. of it. We were talking about the recruit. I don't know how that came up, but we were both like, oh, what a great movie. Great movie. I love that movie. I've seen that movie 10 times. Great movie. I saw it in the theaters, factually, not, not Field of Dreams, but I know I saw this in Florida with my dad, as a matter of fact. It got a 43% from the critics and a 50th from the audience. What the hell is going on? If you haven't, if you haven't seen the recruit,

put that right at top of your list. If that movie was released this year, it would be like a top 10 movie of the year. Totally. Colin Farrell goes to the, was it the farm? Is that what they called? The CIA, yeah. And Al Pacino is the trainer in big, for lack of a better word. Tom Brady's ex, Bridget Moynihan is in it. It's a good movie. Hell of a movie. All right, this blew my face off. With $633 million domestically, Barbie has now outgrosses from Eric Davis. Barbie has now outgrossed the first two Avengers films in every Star Wars film except for the Force Awakens. Greta Garwick's film is also outgoats every single D.C. film to date. Watch The Flash.

That sucked. And I didn't like it. Isn't that crazy? Barbie did be the first two Avengers in every Star Wars film? It's another brand kind of thing. I'm going to watch it. Are you going to watch it? I haven't watched it yet.

No, I'll see it eventually. I didn't really care to go see it in the theater, but I'll watch it eventually. All right. So I watched this movie literally called hashtag Chad Gets the Axe. Now, where do you find this stuff? I'll tell exactly where I find this stuff. I scroll on Prime for new rentals, and I judged a book by its cover, and I went to Rod and Tomatoes, got 100% from the critics. Now, only eight reviews, but still, and the 75% from the audience, and then I read the description.

Four social media influencers live streamed their trip to Devil's Manor, the former home of a satanic cult, but things start to go wrong. as the violence increases, so do the views. Wow. Okay. And I got to say, am I recommending this? Not necessarily. But if this sounds good to you, it was good. It was actually good. It was scary.

If this sounds good, do you? You punch yourself in the face, please. It was scary. It was scary. It was effective. I don't know how, after seeing hundreds of these movies, you still get scared. Not only do I get scared.

I'll tell you this. I even, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I get scared, I guess that's the point. Sometimes I'll mute it because I get too. too scared. I don't know. I just, I watched these movies. I'm like, okay, I see what's happening here. That's interesting. It doesn't do anything for me. All right. So, they had a Bronx tale on rewatchables last week. So I rewatched that. And then it got me thinking that I started Wise Guy by Nicholas Pileggie. Wait, I want to hear your take on the Bronx

tail. Oh, I, I hadn't seen it in 20 years probably. I thought it aged great. It's like a Netflix movie in the sense that like it's good, but in a better director's hands. Like, De Niro directed it. It could have been great, and it wasn't, but it was definitely good. Yeah. It's a tier below, like Casino and Goodfellows and all those, but I still like it. So I reminded me that I started Wise Guy, which was the book that Goodfellows is based on. I thought, I got to pick that.

I read like 10% of it on my Kindle and I just forgot about it. So I started reading it again. And it's just crazy to me. So the stuff, remember in the movie where they hijacked the Air France slate or whatever? Yeah. But they made it. sound like these guys would go to Newark Airport and that was like this was their income. They hijacked like two to three shipments a day and they owned the union guys so they couldn't

get the truckers fired and like that's how these guys lived. They would just steal. They would just steal stuff all the time and it was like that was their job basically just to steal stuff. And they talked about how the Jimmy character who De Niro's who De Niro plays in the movie, they said he had a really bad background. He was foster homes and sexually abused and you can kind of almost understand how this guy became a serial murderer. But they said he loved stealing so much. He said, you could offer him a billion dollars to stop stealing. He would say no, but then he'd figure out a way to steal the billion dollars from you.

That's how much he loves stealing. Anyway, it's the book makes me feel like the author of the book does not get enough credit for how good the movie is. What a great movie. Two parenting things. I watched, Welcome to Rexum came back again. I think I've watched the first three episodes. It's just as good as the first season.

I don't know. Could you bring me back up to speed? I don't know what that is. It's the one where Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElheny buy a team A soccer team Yeah, it's so good And it's not even just those two guys Like the whole second episode is a parenting one

About children with disabilities And it was just so well done And like kind of heavy It was it's not a show It's not a it's not it's based in reality right It's a reality show And they also they highlight the fans of the show The of the team and the people in the town

And it's just really really well done And then Matthew McConaughey was on Smartless last week, and they did a really long thing about parenting and being a father. And I thought, like, their whole, they're all kind of just sharing how they think about parenting. And I love kind of hearing about that stuff. And their kids are a little older than mine. Uh, I thought it was really well done. Good one. As good as hashtag chat gets the X? Not quite. Maybe McConaughey would have been in that before he got dazed and confused. You're, you're, I feel like your movie recommendations are just like you just, you just,

It's not a recommendation. I'm just telling you what I watched. I know, but the stuff that you're watching is just, it's, it's, there's so many horror movies these days. I feel like you've just, you've hit them all and, uh, they're getting worse and worse. Uh, dude, talk to me was, was excellent. Excellent. The, the worst part of it is, I know there's people who listen to our show who are on board of you with these movies. You guys are all sickos. You guys are all sickos.

Uh, so here's, here's, here's the top box office movies this weekend. The Nun 2. expendables four a haunting in Venice the equalizer three Barbie my big fat Greek wedding three it lives inside dumb money blue beetle I mean this is not a great this is not a great slate of movies all right animal spirits pod at gmail.com see you next time Thank you.