Animal Spirits Podcast - How Much is Happiness Worth? (EP.321)

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

On episode 321 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: Ben's trip to NYC, stock market vs. bond market valuations, the 4% inflation scenario, why the consumer is so important, record home values (again), the power of home equity, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Franklin Templeton. To learn more about the Franklin U.S. Low Volatility High Dividend Index ETF (LVHD), visit: https://www.franklintempleton.com/investments/capabilities/etfs If you'd like to apply for the Creative Media Editor position we're hiring, send a resume and portfolio to [e-mail]. Learn more at: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3677185959/ 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 Franklin Templeton ETFs. About a couple of weeks ago on what are your thoughts I was talking to Josh about dividends, which are obviously a popular style of investing. But I was saying that if you're going to invest and dividends is your primary input, but taking that a step further, it's dividend paying stocks that have a high yield. And that's all that you're looking at. That is a recipe for disaster. Right.

You can't use a single variable analysis. So most dividend strategies have to have another component for it to make sense, right? If you just pick the highest yield, chances are you're going to pick a stock that's in trouble in some way. So yeah, a bit of dividend growth, dividend stability, something, anything other than just dividend alone. It's interesting because last year, defensive strategies like dividend stocks outperformed by a wide margin.

And everyone wanted, everyone was clamoring for those types of strategies. Now this year, it's the opposite. Everyone is looking again for the more exciting things because those are up a lot, where the defensive stuff is taking a backseat, I guess. We talked last week about how, even in good years, there's a chance for corrections along the way, or even in both markets, there's chances for correction. I don't think you need to have a correction

for a defensive strategy to work, but it certainly can help. So Franklin Templeton has the U.S. low-volatility, high-dividend ETF. So combining these companies that have low volatility, neither in their share price, but also in their financials with a high-dividend yield. So dividend income, discipline process, defensive positioning. Dividend strategies are, to me, one of the more intuitive, defensive sort of hedge

strategies that there is. It intuitively makes sense to almost every investor. So the ticker on that is LVHD. Click the link in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about Franklin's low-volatility, high-dividend index ETF. 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. A little housekeeping announcement for the team.

Duncan and Co. are looking for a full-time editor based in New York City. And this is somebody that has experience on the audio side of things. So if you want to join the team, you're in New York City. Work with a fun gig. Not only work with Dunk and work with us on podcasts, videos, right? Been a few weeks ago. Maybe like, I don't know, four weeks ago.

When did I talk about buying sunglasses? You mentioned that you've lost a pair of Maui gyms. Well, come on, let me tell a story. Don't step from my material. Well, you asked me a question. Well, I asked you when I bought them. I didn't tell you to ruin the story. I bought two pairs of Maui gyms.

I bought a black pair. I bought a brown pair. And I was deciding which, you know, I bought two to return one. Oh, kind of like my wife, I guess. I bought two to return one. But before I could return one, I lost one. So I don't know where they went. I mean, I took him on the jet ski, and then they were gone.

I tried to tell you. I tried to warn you. I don't know how it happened. So I bought these gooders. Ben's been talking about them for years. I won't say they're disposable, but they're $25. They look good, they feel good. The only problem is, I don't know that they go that well with a hat.

I like the thin. I like the thin ones on the side. You know what I mean? So I'm wearing them because I'm sick. I won't take them off. I'll take them off. But I also can't take my hat off because I'm growing my hair out. Is that a joke?

I think you should do the lawyer, David. Can I tell you one more thing about... I'm not joking. Look at my... Well, I'll take my hat off. Look at my hair. It looks absolutely absurd. I think you should grow it out.

Can I tell you one more thing about Gooders? This is not a sponsor of the show, by the way. They should be because I've been pumping them. But I just learned this week that they had a one-year warranty. So I had a pair that had a scratch on the lens. And if you send them a picture of it, a one-year warranty, you don't have to send the old pair back. They'll just send you a brand-new pair, as long as they have the order number. Pretty good deal.

Well, Maui, Jim, also. offers warranties, if you get a scratch, if you lose, if you, but I can't, but you have to send them back. I can't send back a lost pair. Can I just ask them for a new one? Here's what someone, someone deemed me and said, hey, listen, have a nice pair of sunglasses, but wear those to like dinners and weddings and like nice functions. Dinners. Yeah, if you go out to dinner. If you go out to dinner, sunglasses to dinner? Well, you know, if it's an outdoor place, you have some, you know, some outdoor bars there. And then if you're going on the jet ski or you're more active, then wear your cheaper sunglasses. That's a good tradeoff. I do wish I could see myself

with longer hair. I think it would be hilarious. But the problem is, I can't, I mean, my wife would kill me. I also, you know, I'd be embarrassed. I can't actually grow it out. I think you should grow it out for the winter. I'd like to see you with George Costanza slash Larry David. All right. According to The Economist, we should just mention Michael is having a flu game today. Not doing so well. I don't know. Anyone got sick in the summer. Apparently you do. From the economist, American stocks are at their most expensive in decades. I think they say five decades. So they're looking at the equity risk premium here, which is they're looking at the forward 12-month earnings yield minus the 10-year treasury. You can see from this chart here that it's

crashed. Obviously, this makes sense in the context of interest rates have risen a lot, and stocks have had a nice run. So it would make sense that equity risk premiums have the spread has narrowed. They also say, what? Sorry. Okay. I've got a spreadsheet up. I'm working on this post. I said it last week, I'll say it again. Then look at this chart. I'm throwing this in the dock. This is, now, here's a problem. Nothing matters in the short term, right? Right. Like almost nothing matters in the short term. And things that matter in the long term, people don't position their portfolios for. That's right. You said you were going to do an earnings yield post. Because even though valuations matter a lot over a 10 year period, is anybody said their portfolio

today for the next 10 years? Does anybody do that? Here's the other thing that I was thinking. But look at this chart. Look at this chart. Yeah. So what we're showing on the screen is the earnings yield minus the real 10-year yield. And then I show the S&P 500 12-month return from that point in time. And if you were to say, like, if you were to try and derive meaning from this chart, there is no meaning. It's a shotgun blast. It's all over the place. Now, as you extended over, you know, even three years is really not much there. But if you got 10 years, yeah, it matters. That makes sense. The other thing is, so my thought was looking at the Equest premium book, if people were just rational and I follow the fundamentals only,

I don't think about psychology. Why would you not be moving money from stocks to bonds? This is the lean-in-to-the-pane to the pain, blood in the streets. But the problem is I think one of the reasons we haven't seen more move, and obviously part of it is because T-Bill yields are higher than bond yields. But bonds are still in a bare market. The stock market has made back most of the money it lost. 7-10-year treasury ETF still down 20%.

T-L-T, which is a 20-plus-year treasury, still down over 40%, and the zero-coupon bond, zero-z, which you said you were going to think about taking a spin for your short-term paper trading account is down 54%. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I, that's not short-term paper. I will buy zero Z. I haven't bought it yet. So still down 54%, like the most duration there is. Bonds are still not only in correction territory. They're in bare market and market crash territory. So I understand why people are looking at these losses. We're looking at three years in a row of bond losses. If rates move up from here between now and the end of the year, it's going to be the first three-year loss in 10-year treasuries ever. Wow.

Never happened before. That could happen. But money's going into bonds. Money's going into bonds? A little bit, but if you think about it, the stock market is going up. Why is the stock market going up and rates? If a lot of money is going into bonds, why are rates rising? So maybe mutual fund flows are showing, but people are selling bonds because rates are rising. What you're saying is buying pressure should push price up, pull yields down, and that's not happening. Yes, the buying pressure is obviously in the stock market because the stock market is rising, but rates are rising in the bond market. That means people are selling bonds and they're buying stocks, right? So why wouldn't, if the risk premium is lower, why wouldn't people be doing

the opposite. And that's because they're looking at losses and their bonds and going, geez, I'm not going to put money here. Look at how much money I lost. And I think that's, obviously there's other economic components of that, inflation and growth and all these things. You said to Bob Elliott on TCAF, which was a great episode, that you don't think people look at yields on bonds versus stocks and make decisions. And I thought you're wrong, but I didn't really want to get into it on that show. I want to talk about it here. You don't think that people look at stocks versus bonds. When they're like, I mean, how else do they think about risk and reward?

I think they do on the margin. But I think if you look at a year like this, when bond yields are finally here for the first time in 15 or 20 years, why is everyone buying stocks? Because stocks have the ability to go up 20 to 40% in a year and bonds don't. Well, but there's no ones in there. So, for example, Bespoke tweeted, with risk-free rates above 5%. The typically low growth, high dividend payers in the S&P, which we spoke about earlier in the show, are massively underperforming in 2023.

The 101 non-dividend payers are up 20% year-to-date, while the highest 100 yielders in the index are down an average of 3.5%. And I think that it's not a stretch to say that is a direct result of, like, dividend stocks used to be bonds. Remember? Like back in the day, like the 2.5% dividend stock was like a bond proxy. But now that bonds are actually giving you 5%. You don't need to own, you don't need to own those.

I'm just talking about the psychological component where I think when rates fall and bonds start doing well, then a ton of money is going to pour into them. I think that's, I think once rates start falling and bonds start doing well, then a ton of money is going to pour into them. That's what I think it's going to happen. I think now is money going to come back into the dividend, the dividend payers. No, I mean, I'm saying bonds. When bonds start showing gains again, not just yield, because bonds are so sitting a loss.

So you think people are going to chase price return in bonds, not the yield? I think bonds turned into momentum plays. Which makes no sense. No, it doesn't. I'm just saying, I think people look at, I'm down 20% of the bond fund. Why would I put money into it and not think through the impact of, well, yields 5% now. I should be putting more money of this because future returns are much higher. Yeah.

I do also think that, so Bob Elliott mentioned to us that, like, a real risk here is growth accelerating, wages staying higher, inflation is staying at 3% to 4% instead of the feds 2%. and that being an environment where yields go higher as a risk. Which is funny because a lot of people predicted inflation is going to stay high and rates are going to stay high, but they all predicted it for the wrong reason. No one predicted higher rates and higher inflation because economic growth is going to be. I don't know if you saw retail sales were strong yet again today.

And I think no one predicted that rates and inflation would say high. People were predicting stagflation, right? No one was predicting the fact that it's going to happen because growth is accelerating the consumer remains strong. Oh, yeah, stackflation was a thing that people were saying. It was a big thing. And it, yeah, no, didn't happen. All right. Sam Rowe, here's the chart that'll be in every chart curator's chart roundups tonight

this week from Goldman Sachs. Nearly half of S&P 500 debt is set to mature after 2030. This is S&P 500 X financials, debt outstanding by maturity. And it's like dribs and drabs. And each of the next, it's five to eight percent in the next, whatever, seven or eight years. Then after 2030, it's almost half of it. That's a good chart.

It's a great chart. Corporations knew what they were doing, right? Like, I know it's easy these days to, like, look at CEOs and people in positions of power and think, like, oh, that person's an idiot. I could do that job. But let's credit where credit is due. This was smart. I mean, the S&P 500 are the, it's the creme della creme, the cream of the crop, if you will.

There's a chart that I saw this week. I don't know if I put it on the dock. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. we'll find out, about the number of bankruptcies, corporate bankruptcies, and it is, it's on the rise. It's not screaming, but it's higher. It's on the rise. Not all, you know, obviously not all companies have the ability to lock in fixed debt for eight years, right? They don't have access to public markets and they just, they got to pay up. And so companies that are exposed to floating

rates, they're feeling the pain. That makes sense. This other one from Michael Semblist is corporate net interest payments as a percentage of profits versus the Fed funds rate and the Fed funds rate is risen and actually net interest payments as a percentage of profits continues to fall.

He says it's that 60 year low. It is just continue to fall which I mean, part of that probably too is profits are rising. So interest payments used to follow Fed funds rate. Not exactly, but for the most part, right? It made sense.

And they used to be above it. Well, that relationship completely... Completely broke. No, no, no, Ben, the axes aren't the same. Fair. Okay. Yeah, you're right. Okay, I agree you're saying. Yeah, this is just one of those textbook breakers, right? Like, high interest rates are going to impact corporations. Well, yeah, but not if most of their debt is long-term fixed. That's true. That's a good way to put it. It's like everything that's happened in the past three or four years has been textbook breaking. Remember when buybacks were one of the

primary reasons that stocks were growing up? Yes. The whole bull market since 1980 is buybacks and short covering. That's it. No fundamentals. There was a chart from Bank of America last week that I didn't include because it was sort of confusing. But the long and the short of it is that Q2 buybacks were down 36% year. Guess what? Second quarter was pretty damn strong for the stock market. So is the assumption that stock buybacks are down because companies were borrowing to make them happen? Or just because they're sick? Why is my dog barking it? Do you hear that? Yeah.

she's not a barker I think she misses me I was at your house and what do you think my mudroom mudroom's great it's 10 out of 10 you guys did a great job do you have a mudroom

we have a tiny pretty tiny mudrum yes nothing yours is the Taj Mahal compared to my mudroom mine is ours is small we wish we would have had a much bigger bigger mudroom but

I mean my mom was not that big what is it 8 by 10 I mean it's a good I wish we had a mudroom that big It's a good-sized mudroom. Thank you. You know where I got to, though, where we should have in our muddrum. We have a three-stall garage, and that's where the muddrum should have gone.

You have a three-car garage? Yeah, three-car garage, yeah. What? This is what you get in Michigan. You have way more land, way more room. I don't even have a car garage. I have a garage, but you can't fit a car in there. Yeah, we got, yeah.

This is what you get in Michigan. You get much more room for that kind of stuff. And I'm interesting how you call it a stall instead of a car. Like a stall garage? I guess it makes sense. That fits to it. another mid-bust thing. So anyway, we're talking about buybacks

because J.P. Morgan had a chart from the Daily Chartbook. We have seen very strong momentum and buy-back announcements so far this year, but buy-backs as a share of profits are stalled up. So it shows the S&P 500 announced buybacks, and 2023 is pretty,

we're off to a pretty hot start. In fact, the hottest it's been since 2013, at least announced. I don't know if that's followed through. But then it shows S&P-500 buybacks as a percentage of earnings before interest and taxes. And it looks like it's, just eyeballing, it looks like it's about average over the last 25 years.

Not bad, right? Yeah. So what's the takeaway here? Not sure. Buybacks are cyclical? I was going to say that buybacks are not propping up the stock market, but it's not, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe this is just noisy. Maybe there's just not much here. Maybe that's a takeaway. Noise. And they never really have. Matthew Klein had a piece for the Financial Times about basically asking what if inflation settles in at 4%.

So he's saying markets are currently pricing in the most benign possible outcome. inflation decelerates, even as real output keeps growing briskly. Certainly possible it is at least as likely that inflation will stabilize at a rate roughly two percentage points above the Fed's 2% goal. In that scenario, short-term rates would remain at their current levels for some time, if not go even higher, which in turn would pull up longer-term yields and push down valuation multiples. That could spell trouble for assets. And he's in like the reason. So why is this happening? He says, since 1929, the average American workers hourly wage has grown about 1.6% faster than PCE price index each year. Wages have only grown at three percentage points faster

than prices 17 of the past 92 years, five of which occurred after 1956. However, the best data suggests that U.S. wages are currently rising at a yearly rate of about 5%. And he's saying that this higher for longer is potentially going to keep inflation higher than most people think, even though it's falling right now, which is another one that Bob Elliott talked about on TCAF with us. here's my question. Like the fundamental textbook thing says this has to be bad for markets, right? If inflation stays higher, wages stay higher, that should be bad for multiples if long-term rates rise. Isn't this a good thing for profits if people are making more money?

Because it would be one thing if people are making more money and they're just going to save it like they did in a pandemic. I think that's a one-off. Like people saving money when they get more of it. Now, if people make more money, they are spending it. They're not going to save it and pay down debt. isn't it technically a good thing for profits and maybe not a bad thing for markets? Is that a possibility or not? Yeah.

Possible. There's a lot. I mean, there's a lot going on here. Do you think it matters, though, that inflation is higher, but people are making more money? Every time I talk about this, someone says, Ben, you're an idiot. Wages are rising slower than inflation. That's why people are so mad. And I put some charts in here.

They're down in the labor market section, but I'll just read them to you. So average hourly earnings since 2021 has fallen behind CPI. It's like 17%. CPI is of 17%. Wages are up 13%. That makes sense. Surprisingly, since 2020, U.S. average hourly earnings and U.S. consumer price index is identical because

CPI fell and wages rose. And so since the start of this decade, wages have kept up with inflation. Wait, CPI fell since 2020? Well, no, in 2020 it did during the start of the pandemic. So I'm saying... So if you go from the start of this decade, surprisingly, wages have kept up with inflation. It's just since inflation took off that wages have fallen behind. So it's more of a recent phenomenon than it is like that it's been happening this whole decade.

Anyway. Well, how about this? If I told you the next two years of wages and inflation, assuming that inflation was not, well, I don't want to assume anything. Nothing is taken off the table. If I give you the wages and inflation over the next two years, how confident are you that you would be able to predict, not to the penny, but directionally, asset prices? The only thing I would be able to predict would be T bills,

and I would say T bills are going to be one of your best. T bills are going to give you 6% in that scenario or whatever. In what scenario? Oh, sorry, with this one that I'm laying out, inflation at 4% or whatever, then you're going to get 6% a year for a couple years in T bills. That's the only thing I would be competent on saying. Anything else, I don't know.

Ben, a few weeks ago, you were talking about how, like, just, we get more extreme readings everywhere these days. Things happen quicker. Things move quicker. The magnitude is larger. A couple of weeks ago, when I was laying out, why a short-term pullback might be in order, there's just, I mean, there's a long list, a long list of things that were suggesting that.

And this is one of them. According to FINRA margin data, this is the largest six-month increase in leverage on record. This is from Goldman Sachs. So you are right in saying that things swing larger and quicker everywhere in like almost all data sets. And I wonder why. Do you think it's as simple as information moves quicker and people are quicker to react? I think part of it is a technology. And there's no, and there's no frictions anymore with anything.

Right. There's no barrier. You can just push buttons. Right. I think that's it. So, but looking at this chart, it had a huge drop as well. And don't you just think that margin? is a concurrent indicator, like when stocks are going up, there's more margin,

and when stocks are going down, there's less margin. That's kind of the way, it's not like a predictive stat. It's one that follows the market. Listen, if this was predictive, there would be a margin data ETF. Right. True. Right. So, no, I don't think, I think there's little signal here.

But this is just, this is one of the, this is one of like 12 things suggesting that things had gotten a little bit overheated in the short term. Fair. And I would still say that your ability. to predict a short-term correction is nil. How's that? Not just you, the royal you, everyone. No, come on, of course. I totally agree. All right. Speaking of predictions, New York Fed says survey of consumers in July puts one year ahead expected inflation of three and a half percent the lowest since April 2021. Which I think is kind of one of the funny things about like inflation

keeps falling and you're going to see these headlines probably keep falling. That's why if it did re-accelerate, to your point, like, how can you gauge what the reaction is going to be? That would be, I don't know what people would think in that scenario if inflation went down and then back up again. Well, let me ask you this. Is it possible that inflation goes back up, not to where it was, but, you know, from where was the last reading? Was it a little over three, like 3.2, 3.1, something like that.

So let's say it goes back up to 4.5. But without gasoline prices rising, is that possible? Maybe. I think that's probably the biggest risk, though, to sentiment is oil prices continue to rise and gas prices going up, which would happen a little bit. But let's just say that inflation were to rise. Man, we're doing a lot of mental gymnastics on the show. Let's just say that inflation were to rise, without gas prices rising. But this is, I mean, this is what investing is, though. It's like you're creating a range of expectations, same, right, that you don't know what's going to happen. I think that's instead of, like, everyone, a lot of people want the person to say,

this is exactly what's going to happen. The market's going to crash. or the market's going to take off. And the truth is, there's a lot of different paths. Like, I tweeted something out yesterday that mortgage rates 7.5% even though they've averaged 7.75% since 1970, which is kind of a fun with numbers, but it's true. And I just said, I cannot, no one predicted that mortgage rates at 7.5% or whatever they are, and the housing market remains so strong. And a bunch of people got in my replies and said, have you ever heard of supply and demand before, sir? Economics 101. And it's like, yeah, But no one was saying this two years ago that mortgage rates are going to go to 7.5% and the housing market is going to be fine. That's the point. It's so easy to look back and say, like, of course this happened or that happened. But no one ever says it ahead of time. It's just easy to look back with hindsight and say, of course this happened.

Right. So I guess what we're all getting at is like, right, all of this is in service to like, will there be a recession, right? At what point? Yes. And what will causing consumers to pull back? Callie Cox tweeted this morning in light of the GDP sales. She said, consumer spending is 70% of GDP. Okay? 70. It's everything. Basically. It's hard to have a recession when spending is increasing at this peat and unemployment is still though. And this is fair. I mean, at some point, people are a boy who cried Wolf, but all of the stuff that we have in the data, by definition, we're looking backwards. Nobody knows where the data is going forward. If you know what data is going forward, then you would, you know, then you would have an idea

if the recession is coming or not, but we don't. And right now, I don't see signs pointed towards it, although, of course, I can change. All right, more stuff from Kelly Cox here. She, I got a few more things in the credit card debt, then I'll leave this one alone. This is a, I've never seen this chart before. She, she did credit card debt as a percentage of total deposits, and she's saying that it's the lowest it's been in around 20 years almost. It's just people have more money in the bank, the ability to hold it. Liberty Street Economics, which is, I think, part of the New York Fed,

they did credit card delinquencies by zip code and income level as well. So you can see from the income percentile there, starts out 100, look at even like the lowest income levels, below 25, the lowest quarter of income, the delinquencies are not even there yet. Look at how low they are. Nothing like they were in the 2000s or 2010s. Kind of surprised. And I made this point on Twitter yesterday. I'm just reading my tweets for the show today. I have this theory that finance people only inflation adjust data if it helps their argument. Right? Like the doomers who have been talking about inflation forever, like, well, inflation adjust those wages or inflation adjust those retail sales. Why don't they inflation adjusts one trillion dollars in credit card

debt? Because if you do inflation adjust that, we're talking about credit card debt being 20% lower than it was in 2019 on an inflation adjusted basis, which actually takes it from like $1 trillion to $800 something. So I know everyone wants to think that inflation is only a bad thing, or some people want to think that it's only a bad thing. But for people holding debt, inflation is actually a good thing. It eats away at the fixed payments of your debt and makes your debt worth less than it would have been had inflation not been here. So credit card debt on an inflation-justed basis is way lower now than it was in 2019.

Pretty wild. Right? I mean, this matters. You got to adjust. Speaking of like... No, no, you only adjust if it helps your argument. I do the same thing. I'm a nominal guy. I'd say 95% of the time I'm a nominal guy. I know inflation adjusting helps, like, helps comparisons through economic cycles.

But I think we all, our brains work nominally. We don't work on a real basis. Did you see this chart from Sam Rowe? Which one? Via Bank of America. Our deposit data continues to show signs that unemployment is picking up from these very low levels at a faster pace for higher income earners. This chart is confusing, actually.

It says number of households receiving unemployment benefits through direct deposit. So a year-over-year change. We're going to have to have a talk with Bank of America because how many Bank of America charts do we read and then you kind of say, wait, what does this mean? I feel like you did this last week, too. No, no, no, you're right. Because, okay, if I just look at the lines, I understand what's going on here. But then the Y-axis is 65%.

So if you make $125,000. This is the year-over-year change. In what? Number of households receiving unemployment benefits through direct deposit. Because unemployment benefits dropped so much that the gain is much higher now. Yeah, I guess so, because they went down 100%. By the way, I see negative 100%. Could something fall?

Yeah, they have negative 120 on here. Is that possible? I wouldn't think so, but I guess. This is not a. a chart crime. It's just, uh, I get what they're saying. I'm just confused. Exactly. I think the thing that matters is the trend. Okay. This is from Redfin. And this is, this is what I was talking about. I read this Redfin thing. The total worth of U.S. homes hit a record of 46.8 trillion in June overtaking the prior all-time high study earlier

as a shortage of homes for sales propped at the housing market. That's an analysis on more than 90 million U.S. residential properties. So, hey, can I ask you a question? When do you use the word analyses. I feel like if you and I were both doing some analysis, someone would say Michael and Ben's analyses, right? I don't know if people have to have to use that. I don't know what realm you would have to actually put that one together. Put it as a word. It's like, is it the plural of analysis? Sure. Multiple people doing analysis? I'm sorry, go ahead. All right. So, if you collectively add up all the real estate in the United States, it's now back to an all-time high. even if prices maybe aren't, because it kind of, you know, certain ones pick up the slack.

This is interesting. Home values from, this is home values per generation. Home values for millennials surpass silent generation. So here's the total home value owned by generation. Boomers own 18 trillion. Gen X is 13.4 trillion, which Gen X is coming on strong. They're almost catching the boomers, right? They're coming up the rear.

Millennials at $5 trillion in the silent generation at 4.7. It is kind of funny that you had, like, no one ever talks about the silent generation, right? I mean, because they're so old. Yes, but I'm saying that you had the boomers that everyone talks about, then no one really talks about Gen X. Millennials everyone talking about, I don't know, it's just, it kind of skips a generation. I don't know. The biggest surprise was how much Gen X, so this is also interesting. Total value of homes worth between 500 and 750 increased 4.1% year over year, and between 250 and 500 saw 4% gain.

By comparison, homes worth... Wait, hang on. Slow down, slow down. A lot of numbers. One more time. So we're looking at, like, the gain by housing price range. So gains be, so houses between 250 and 750 both increased by like 4%. But homes between 1 and 2 million saw 2.6% decline. Homes between 2 and 5 million saw 7.4% decline. All right. So a bigger drop at the higher end. But unfortunately, for people coming in to buy a first time home, that's why was all this

demand for millennials and household formation. Those prices are still rising. So this is a bad thing. It's a good thing if you're a rich person looking to pick up a million-dollar house on great. But if you're looking to pick up a, you know, relatively good-priced home for your first-time home, those prices are still rising. That's not good. Then I saw an article from Wells Fargo, how untapped equity could sustain the consumer. And they said an excess household savings dry up and as, I'm sorry, excuse me, Duncan, start this over.

as excess household savings dry up and as this is the first time we've had to do that in so long yeah you know what we were just talking about you know what duncan leave it in leave it in my bed i felt bad coming out of my mouth i don't like i don't like that i don't like that we're showing the warts warts and all because ben and i did a did a podcast the other day i was on uh what was i on ask compound and i said i can't remember the last time i asked duncan to like edit up by one of my things and i'm not sure why i just did it there what was i thinking it was in your head as excess As household savings dry up, and as consumer credit is both more expensive and harder to get, households have become more reliant on income growth.

But many households today have the benefit of a second line of defense to support spending should the need arise. Homeowners have more equity in their homes today than they did at any point in this 35 years between 1987 and 2022. I saw this too from this report was in Sam Rowe's. Homeowner equity stands at 69.6 percent. That's slightly off its peak from 2022. but higher than any point since the late 80s.

So that's like the percentage of equity as a percentage of total value, basically. And it's a lot since the 2012 low is obviously. This is something I've been talking about for a while. I think this is going to be a piggy bank for people for a long time to come. And I think there's going to be companies that try to get into this space.

I was thinking about the sentiment piece, and we were talking about it last week about the vibe session and why sentiment is so bad and why it seems like the economy is good and unemployment rate is so low, but people still seem kind of miserable. Don't you think the housing piece is one of these because if you have a homeowner... Hang on. Hang on.

I reject the premise. I don't think people are miserable, do you? You don't get, like, the consumer sentiment being so low and people hating the economy, not miserable, people hating the economy, even though it's being, it's strong. I don't think that exists anymore. We had this discussion last week. Okay. The sentiment numbers still show that... The soft data?

Yeah. Yeah. And so the soft data. So I think, I mean, isn't how... No, no. I think... Hang on. Hang on. I think like business owners might not feel great. Small business owners don't feel

great. Consumer sentiment numbers still aren't great. They're still. They're improving. Pull up the consumer sentiment data on white charts right now. Consumer sentiment. U.S. Index of consumer sentiment. Look at how low it is. It's rising, but it's, it's well below average. You're right. But it is bouncing pretty strongly. And again, it might follow gas prices. but is housing one of the missing pieces here? We're trying to figure out, like, why are people so unhappy? Like, homeownership rate is two-thirds of the country.

I don't think it's exactly two-thirds of the people own a home because of apartments and all this stuff. But anyway, let's say 6% of the people own a home. But I'm sorry. I just, when are people going to be so happy? I just, I think I reject that premise that people are so unhappy. You know, I agree that.

I think the, I think, when will a survey show that the entire populace is super happy? Yeah. It's just not a thing. I think the political climate in the internet and social media have made it so people just aren't ever going to say they're happy anymore or they're not going to think other people are happy. But don't you think, like, if you're not owning a house,

you're, if I was a young person, I'd be so angry right now. If I miss the boat on this once in a lifetime bump in housing prices and low rates and I'm renting and rent is going up, I would be so angry at the system right now. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who are like that. So is that like a missing piece of this sentiment that, like, if you didn't own a house, you feel like there's this dividing line and I missed it.

I'm on the other side of it. I got screwed. Guess what? I don't even think those people are included in the sentiment data. They're not, these young people, they're not giving surveys.

They're not being, guess what? They're not being asked, and if they were, they wouldn't answer. These are older people. Okay, so what point do we see trickle down to younger people actually answering surveys?

Never? Never. Okay. Maybe BuzzFeed will do it. This is interesting from the Washington Post. First time home buy, they go through all these reasons that we've already talked about,

why housing market is broken or whatever. As a result, first-time homebuyers are older with a median age of 36. In 1981, the median age was 29. I think the affordability is part of it, but don't you think, that is pretty high for first-time homebuyer, but don't you think part of it is, too, that just people are going to school longer and waiting to settle down way longer than they did in the past? Yes. For home-buyer, I think that's part of it, too, if you, especially compared to, like, the 1980s. Remember the big trope of BlackRock is buying all the houses, and that's why housing is so

unaffordable? We debunked this a few times. But Rick Placios, Jr., Mom and Pop investors for Q2, 2023, bought 64 times the number of homes and institutions did. It just, so then there's this chart from John Burns here that shows buyers, like they break them up by tears, and it shows that mom and pop buyers are the biggest buyer. You can see from that gray chart there, by far the biggest buyer. There's some more institutions than there were in the past, but it's still a tiny, tiny percentage. I don't know, maybe it shouldn't, but it just, the U.S. home market, I think, what did I say, it was, 47 trillion. And that's like a little bit bigger than the stock market probably. It's a lot of clams.

It's a huge, huge market. And it just, it surprises me that it's still these regular normal people who are buying the rentals that are buying houses to rent them out. And it's not, that hasn't been taken over. I think it just shows how hard it is to. It's hyper-local. It really is. I'm just surprised that institutions in Wall Street haven't had more luck coming in

trying to do this. And maybe it's just because technology doesn't scale in the home. in the housing industry, in the housing market, but it just surprises me that that many regular people are the ones who are landlords. Ben, here's one thing that I got right. A lot of things I got wrong. Here's one thing I got right. Victory lap time.

No, no, no. It's not, I mean, this is nothing. Voice not really being a thing. The Alexa. The only thing we use it for is music. That's it. Same. I was never bullish on the idea of people talking to their gadgets to get them groceries or

whatever, whatever. So the person that was responsible for the Alexa at Amazon stepped down or retired, Walsh Journal wrote, While Amazon has sold more than 500 million Alexa enabled devices, the smart speakers largely sell without a profit on each unit. The journal reported last year that the devices unit in some recent years had an annual, annual operating loss of more than $5 billion. Pretty wild.

I love, we love the Alexa at my house. My kids put music on all the time. And it's funny, we were driving a, I can't remember where we were, we were driving a rental car. And I didn't have a cord to plug my phone in. So we just had to listen to the radio. And my kids are like yelling at the radio to play a song. I'm like, guys, it doesn't work like that. They had never heard commercials before.

Going back from listening to a podcast or music on demand on your phone, hooked up to your car via Bluetooth or whatever or a plug versus the radio, I can't believe we ever used to listen to the radio back in the day. Like, remember you would, you would radio. You would have to wait to. Who needs a radio? Like the top five at five to listen to like a song you liked. You have to wait for it.

It's just mind-boggling to me that people would just, hopefully the song I want to listen to comes on. Yeah, and remember commercials? Yes, it's. So I've got, I think people don't realize how good they have these scenes. This is our walking to school uphill both ways is the stuff we had to deal with pre-technology. I was listening to, I had serious sound the other day in my car. there's no commercials you could put like favorite your favorite artist in and it tells you when your favorite artist comes on the radio it's incredible okay are you at least there's no commercials

are you at least because that's the easiest negotiation of the planet i've heard is serious do you at least negotiate with them every one or two years to get a lower rate i know your your cable company doesn't allow you but please tell me you negotiate with serious i should i don't you don't i've heard that's the easiest one on the planet to negotiate all right done i'll report back and you know what else? I was thinking about around this topic. This is not an epiphany. This is Captain obvious speaking. How great are podcasts? And I know we're recording one right now. But they provide so much free entertainment. We were talking about productivity with Bob. You can't measure that. How the hell do you measure satisfaction that people derive from listening to a podcast? Can't do

it. I agree. But that's, I used to. How many hours a week? I don't know. I'm probably five hours a week, at least. Oh, yeah. I used to, my wife and I were after college, we're in a long-distance relationship. I moved away for a job. She went back to school. And on the weekends, we would each drive like two hours to see each other. And I would listen to music the whole time and felt like I was like losing my mind after a while. Like, I can't imagine now would be so much easier if you had that kind of stuff to do, right? Just a, yeah. It makes the most mundane entertaining. Are you going to listen to, uh, The rewatchables just dropped, oh, my God, this reminds me.

Eyes wide shut, right? Eyes wide shut. It was my least favorite Tom Cruise movie, but I'll, I'll, I guess. So, Ryan Rusilla does this thing that, like, there's nothing, or he did this thing recently in his podcast. There's nothing worse than, like, people that tell you about their dreams. Yeah. But, like, I'm not, stop, just stop it right there.

Don't, don't care. Same. Same. I'm sorry. I'm about to break that. So if I could be on any podcast, just once, I would kill to be on rewatchables. I'd dump you, Ben, just to be on one time. That's fair.

But I had a dream, last night, I believe, that's just coming back to me, that I met Sean Fantasy in person and acted like a complete psychopath, and he wanted nothing to do with me. I tried to make a joke and it wasn't funny, and I blew my chance. All right, thanks for that.

But you would have to do a rewatchable for a horrible movie like Crawl or the Meg 2 or something. That would have to, that'd be your punishment. You couldn't do a good movie because you only like bad movies. One last thing on this. Sorry, I know we're getting way off topic here. First of all, Quentin Tarantino said unironically,

Crawl was the best movie in 2019. Now, I wouldn't go that far. That's crazy talk. But I rewatch it and it holds up. It's a good movie. Okay. I'll take your word for it. It's a good movie.

And the Meg 2 is coming out. I have no interest in seeing that. But the big picture did a podcast on like garbage fish movies. And they left that Deep Rising, which is Ashanda. But Deep Blue Sea, Jaws, which is not really garbage, obviously. Anaconda. Those are my movies, as you well know, right? Moss is in the ocean.

Yes. Give me that all day. Okay. All day. Back to you, Ben. What were we saying? I got nothing. Okay.

Oh, we were talking about Alexa. Anyway, that's it. I don't know if they're going to be like winding it down or, I mean, they're still selling a buttload, but anyway, the future is not voice. Let's just say that. Yeah. Because no one likes to listen to someone else yell about something. It's going to have to be a brain chip plan into your head and you think it and then it turns on.

There we go. That's what I'm here for. Okay, Ben, did you know, this blew my face? Great quarter guys. I'm going to give a shout to some of the updates on quarter app, which has been sweet in a second. But before I do, Young Brands reported earnings last week. Are you looking at this or can I quiz you? I see it.

Okay. Well, I was going to ask you a trivia question, but now that you're looking at it, I won't. So between KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, now that I know the answer, now that I know the answer. I can't undo what I'm about to say. But I think if I had to rank first, second, third by sales, I think I would do probably, I would do Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC. So I would put Taco Bell up top. So you're showing here that KFC is by far their biggest growth engine. Sales. For sales, right. And growth. So not only is that wrong, it's dead wrong. Kentucky fried chicken, now known as KFC, does more revenue than Taco Bell and Pizza Hut combined?

What? Really? That's surprising. What's that we've had KFC? Long time. We were never a KFC family. Me either. Especially since there's more chicken, there are more chicken substitutes these days.

Pop-I's and Chick-fil-A and such. All right. Interesting. Next. Okay. So, Quarter app, actually I got to open this up. Quarter has this thing where you can highlight, you could like make highlights in the app, kind of like a Kind of like a Kind of like a Kindle, I guess, where you could return to this.

You could pull up your highlights. So let me just go to my Disney thing. So I listen to Disney. Where are my highlights? Transcript. Highlights. Oh, here they are. Okay.

I mean, how easy is that? So I just, this is what I highlighted for when I was listening to the call last time. Walt Disney World is still performing well above pre-COVID levels, 21% higher in revenue and 29% higher in operating income compared to fiscal 2019. Remember, they were saying that, like, there was an article in the journal, which I don't, I don't really buy that, that Disney World is like, they didn't say empty. Remember that a few months ago, weeks months? Just that it was slowing, yes. All right, Iger said, since my return, we've reset the whole business around economics, designed to deliver significant sustained profitability.

I can't remember what the exact number is. I kind of want to throw $5 billion. That rings a bell, but massive, massive, massive cost cutting going on there. Here's another quote from Iger. And in the highlight section, it shows you who said the quote. So sometimes this is the CFO, the CEO, we're prioritizing the strength of our brands and franchises. We're rationalizing the volume of content we make, what we spend, and what markets we invest in.

Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Well, how come you spent $34 million a show on Loki? And what was the other one with Samuel L. Jackson we spoke about? Invasion something. I digress. Disney's screwed. I think they're going to have to, like, they're going to have to spin off ESPN or sell

Apple. They're screwed. We're harnessing windowing opportunities, perfecting our pricing. marketing strategies, maximizing our enormous advertising potential, and we're making extensive Hulu content available to bundle subscribers via Disney Plus. Okay, whatever. Last one. All right.

ESPN. Taking our ESPN flagship channels direct to consumer is not a matter of if but when, and the team is hard at work looking at all components of the decision, including pricing and timing. It's interesting to note that ratings continue to increase on ESPN's main linear channel, even as court cutting has accelerated. How is that possible? So, Brandon Katz tweeted, Q2 streaming subscription changes. Netflix, up 5.9 million.

Peacock up 2 million. Paramount of 1 million. Hulu, up $100,000. Dollars. People. People. Max, minus 1.8 million. Disney, minus 11.7 million.

It's not surprising. I mean, part of that is they lost, like, some India Sports Channel thing. But, yeah, the funny thing is, is a lot of the stuff they're trying to think about doing with ESPN now, the gambling and the spinning it off and making some streaming thing. That's stuff they should have done like three or four years ago. And they just missed the opportunity. So front office sports did an article and they said Penn wasn't ESPN's first choice And neither was the amount ESPN sought

Multiple betting industry sources told Front Office sports But after deals were unable to be struck with bigger players ESPN was ultimately willing to settle For about 50% less than I had ambitiously asked for in a 10-year deal Yeah Lucas Shaw and Matthew Puck on the town were talking about this

And yeah, they're late, super late, right? Yeah, I think they're screwed I think ESPN is in a, like, they get rid of, they keep getting rid of people. I think like their cost cutting and stuff there. I think they realize. Then let me ask you this. Why do you still on the stock? As do I do it.

It's a call option, right, on something happening. Iger's going to do something before he leaves. He's not going to leave this thing in shambles. So I think he's going to do something. This is an interesting point. How you think a company might be screwed and yet you own the stock. Those two things should not exist, right? Those should be mutually exclusive.

Fair. But it's the brand. I think the brand is the big part of it, too. Disney brand. Well, that's the thing. But it's one of the best brands in the world. Yeah. It's down, what, 55% from its highs.

Bad news is not sending the stock lower. Doesn't mean the stock can't go lower. But the expectations, let's just say that they're not high. Right. It wouldn't take a lot for this stock to start working. Or maybe it's dead money, as I mentioned, as I asked a couple months ago. We'll say. We will say.

All right. Someone sent me a DM the other day. I still bind open. And it was the guy standing behind a tree in a yellow suit doing one of these things like just so excited. I don't know where that came from. And it was the headline of, here's what a $5 million retirement in America looks like. This is from the

Wall Street Journal. And the funny thing is, I already had this in the doc before he even said it. And, okay, how much Americans have saved for retirement? And they break it out by different increments. And this is just in retirement accounts. So 401Ks, IRAs, that sort of thing. And this is as of 2019.

So take it for, you know, most wealthy people have a lot of their money in taxable accounts. But they say, 0.1.1.000. percent of families households in the United States have five million dollars or more saved for retirement. Only 3.1% have more than a million dollars in a retirement account. And so it's a small number that has a ton of money saved in these tax fraud accounts, right? And they profile these people who have $5 million or more and how much they spend. And this one guy is... Can I say one thing. One thing. People also have taxable money. Yeah, I just said that.

I'm sorry. I'm sick. I've got a lot going on. That was a 20-20 of last week. But yeah, As I said, most wealth people have more money outside of tax-affords, so take these for what it's worth. But they do profile this guy who is a 65-year-old guy. He has $6.1 million as a Southwest pilot. So I don't know what he got. Stock options or what? But he spends $144,000 a year, and he's set to receive like $40,000 a year from Social Security. So he has like a 2% spending rate.

He says, my plan is to continue living below my means, staying invested in having something to leave for my kids. This other couple is $4.2 million that spent $130k a year. and this guy's talking about how when the market was down in 2020, he was scrutinizing every purchase down to napkins, quickly realized it was doing so as unnecessary thanks to their healthy nestick. We've talked about this before about how people have a hard time spending money in retirement. And there's this EBRI study that says that the median household spends the income from their portfolio and tries to avoid taking their principle.

And I think this is one of the areas that people with money have a hardest to have one of the hardest times doing is turning around and going from saber to spender. And I love profiles like this because it proves my point. Like all these people, like, have more money than they probably could spend in a lifetime and they can't spend it. They're spending like 2 or 3% of their portfolio. I mean, there's like a big gap between those people. There's a retirement crisis on the one hand, and there's people who can't get themselves

to spend money on the other. Yes. And there's, of course, you know, a million miles in between. I mean, what percentage of the population has like the happy medium of, I saved a lot, but I'm also spending a lot. And I'm not going to, like, bring it all with me in the grave or whatever. Like 5% of people have, like, a good, healthy relationship between spending and saving. Maybe.

I think I'm not to brag. I feel like I'm in that category. I'm a healthy spender. And I, you know, I do what a kid to save. I used to be. I'm a good saver, but I'm not an oversaver. Definitely not an oversaver. No, having kids change my feeling on that.

I used to be like an oversaver and think frugal and spending money is bad all the time. And I've definitely let that feeling go. But I think there aren't many people who have a healthy relationship with money, is my point. Fair? There aren't many? Yeah. It's a low number. All right.

Let's see if you agree with this. This is a happiness study by Rob Henderson. I think it's from a book, but he highlights it. In terms of your effect on happiness, having a friend you see regularly is worth $100,000 a year in income. Being married is worth $100K. Wait, timeout. Slow down, slow down. Hold on.

We're quantifying. Okay. Quantifying happiness. Okay. Getting divorced is like slashing your income by $90,000. Wait, wait, start from the top. Start from the top. Seeing a friend regularly is worth $100,000 a year in terms of like income to happiness.

I don't like my friends that much, but go on. Me neither. Being married also worth $100K. Getting divorced is like slashing your income by $90,000. Seeing your neighbor regularly is worth $60,000. No way. And good health versus $100,000. not good health is worth $400,000.

I don't know how they determined these, but these numbers all seem so far off to me. I mean, this is very made up, obviously. This is a weird exercise. It is, right? The friend at the neighbor stuff especially. Neighbor? Right?

Hey, John, how you doing? Right. Good weekend? Believe the weather? Yes. Okay. Someone emailed us, Ben. I think taking a shot at you specifically,

or maybe me too. Okay, bring it. I love the show, but come on, man, looking at cash as a percentage of brokerage accounts in isolation, I know, this is me too. And comparing that to cash percentage of retirement accounts is silly. Cash positions can only be understood as a percentage of overall net worth or wealth and their liquidity needs. Liquidity demands that it cannot be in the retirement account. Okay. The percentage of the brokerage account, that is cash, reflects more about the size of the revenue.

broker account, not the size of the cash position. If 20% of a brokerage account is cash, but the retirement savings are three times larger, then the cash percentage is only a not unreasonable 5% of the total holdings. I agree with that. However, why would you have idle cash in your brokerage account? Right. Most brokerage accounts are meant to be invested in, not for cash. I mean, sure, some people might have a cash sleeve, but I don't agree.

I think most brokerage accounts, you put money in there to invest it in financial Yeah, so I will stand by our statement. And I think this person is right about, you know, the fact that retirement accounts are often much larger. So it's not apples to apples. That's fair. But I will stand by and I will actually die on this hill that people behave much differently in retirement accounts than they do in brokerage accounts.

Yes. And can't be talked off that. All right. We've been talking a lot on this podcast this year about being middle age. And I just have to share a story with everyone about how you and I are totally middle age. So I was visiting you in New York last week. We went out for dinner at a nice pizza, one of the famous pizza places, good stuff.

John's up bleaker. And we saw a terrible comedy show. One for six. One comedian of six were good. Yeah, pretty bad comedy show. What are you going to? It was 7 o'clock show. But we had a few beers at dinner, a couple of pitchers.

We had a couple drinks at the comedy show. In our younger years, following the comedy show, we would have looked for at least another bar or two to go to. This time, we're walking through the streets of New York looking for donuts. And it wasn't even late. It was 9.30. It wasn't even, yeah, I was saying it wasn't even 10 o'clock yet. Okay, 9.30. And as we were looking for donuts, which we found eventually that Krispy Cream, not our first choice, but they still did the trick.

Hang out, hang out. I just won't just, this is important for me. There was a donut shop that I'm almost positive used to be on the corner of 14th and 6th Avenue. So it's not like we were just randomly wandering for donuts. It was a donut place. Yeah, we did, right? It's not there anymore. So anyway, keep going.

But this has us to be middle age. In the past, we would have gone to look for a bar. And I think in the past, we would have woken up with a hangover from alcohol. Instead, we woke up with a hangover from food the next day. And also, as we were looking for donuts, we were crossing the street. And a fan of the show was walking the other direction and said, hey, it's you. And pointed at you. And then he looked at me.

He said, hey, and it's you too. And he said he loves watching us on YouTube at work. So credit to that guy for being a good listener. That was thrilling. All right, Ben, I got a few things. So Nicole's been asking us for our sizes for clothes for various reasons. And I say, I'm a large, but would anyone describe me as large? What's going on with sizes for clothes?

I'm not large. I'm five, ten and a half, and I weigh, listen, I put on some weight. I've said this before, so don't judge. But you wear a looser clothes. It's a fat weight. I have a lot of muscle, so it's mostly fat. I'm 1806 pounds. I'm a 5.10.5.

Is that large? I feel like average. Could you pull off a medium? Is that what you're asking? You need like a medium and a half. I can't wear a medium. I don't think. It's too tight.

Well, I can't wear tight clothes. We need half sizes for shirts. But large should not be average. I'm an average size person. I should not be wearing a large. I don't know what I'm to tell you. We're a medium and wear it a little tighter. All right.

I saw... I can't do that. I saw a post, a New York Times article that I think is complete hogwash. It said, what's the title of this post? How to use your dishwasher better? All right, good news. Your dishwasher should get every dish completely clean almost every time you run it without your pre-wrenching the dishes before you load them.

This is complete BS. So Robin does most things in our household very well. She does not participate in the kitchen. She doesn't cook, she doesn't do the dishes, she doesn't do anything. And that's totally fine. That's my domain. I ruled the kitchen. And my secret to a clean house is a clean sink.

The sink is the epicenter for dirtiness. Would you agree with that? If you start stacking dishes, your house is messy. Okay. But on the few occasions where Robin does do the dishwasher, and they are very few and far between, she doesn't rinse. She puts them in the dishwasher, and guess what? They come out with food all over them.

Yes. And I use good, I have a newish dishwasher. I use the good tide pods. You can't, what? You have to. I've seen this before where, I can remember what interview I heard this in a podcast where someone said, for one of the companies, you shouldn't have to rinse.

Our soap should be able to take all stuff off. There's no way that happens. Well, yeah, that would be great. But guess what? You have to rinse. So are you a rinser? Do you do your dishes? Of course, I'm the dish.

Yes, I cannot allow dishes to sit anywhere. I'm doing dishes at all times. I'm the person who, if we have a party and have people over, I'm cleaning as the party's going. I can't help myself. Same. not only do I do the dishes not only do I rinse

I wash with this chope I clean the dishes before they get clean great point by Duncan you're using tied pods on your dishes what do you mean you mean that they look like tied pods you said tied pods

I don't know I don't know it's the it looks like what are they okay no they're pods okay yes they're a little I know what you're saying but not tied pods all right

Ben a couple weeks ago I was in a house and I made the I told you this this on the show that somebody jiggled the handle in somebody's house and then knocked clearly it's not it's not locked by accident right right and then said a so then I had to say do me a second right you're there so I was

in a restaurant last week and I locked a door and it's green or red vacant or occupied right so there's no need to knock it literally says if somebody's in there right so I'm in there and I hear I'm like, unbelievable. Who are these idiots? It says Occupied. I opened the door and it was my kids. Got to teach them. At least they knocked and didn't just try to like crawl under or something.

Last thing. I've got a, I've got a $10,000 idea. Okay. I ordered, my friend had surgery. So I ordered him a bottle of alcohol on Drisly. So this was the day that everyone was over. we were on the water. So I'm on the jet ski, and I get a phone call from Drizzly.

And I said, oh, thank you so much. Please knock on the door and just leave it on the steps. And he said, no English. And I'm like, oh, no, what do I do? So I just spoke louder and slower. Knock on the door and please leave it. And he goes, no English. So I'm like, oh, no.

So I'm like, oh, okay, gracias. Yes, and I heard up the phone, and I immediately went to Google to the English or Spanish translator, and I typed it in, and I copied it, you know, texted it. There should just be a button on your phone. There should be a voice button to translate into different languages. I'm sure that exists. You don't think so? That's going to be your AI assistant someday. I bet someone's going to email in and say this app already exists.

Meanwhile, my friend, it was nine in the morning. My friend texted me, he's like, thank you very much. I just limped. I just walked with a cane and a bathrobe to the door at 9 a.m. to get a bottle of whiskey. This guy definitely thinks of an alcoholic. Nice work. All right, Ben, recommendations.

What do you got? Okay. There's this movie, the top 10 on Netflix. There's this movie called The River Wild. They saw the preview for it. It's got Adam Brody, who I'm not. Wait, it's got what? It's got what?

Adam Brody. Oh. Which I'm not ashamed to admit. I was an OC fan back in the day. Wait. Oh, I thought you meant Adrian Brody, Adam Brody. Yeah, Adam Brody. Oh, that guy.

Okay. It's called the River Wild, and it's similar to the original one with Merrill Streep and John C. Riley and Kevin Bacon. Great movie. Awesome movie. And this new movie was like, it's like a 5.2. It's like, I watched the whole thing. Is it the same thing? It's just, it's a, you know, someone gets taken hostage on a, on a, yeah, on a Whitewater Rath.

Different story, but similar premise. I just don't like the fact that a new movie can steal the old movie's name. I think that should be illegal, never allowed to happen. That's a rule. It happens. It happens. It happens. They couldn't come up with a better name, and the movie was mediocre at best. One more.

I agree. Hold on. You can't do it. No, can't do it. One more. The Machinist, which is one of Christian Bale's first movies. I caught down on Paramount Plus, I think. I watched it a long time ago.

He got down to 110 pounds. It's one of those movies where, his acting performance is better than the movie. It's kind of a weird, dark movie that has a little twist at the end, actually. And it's an okay movie, but it's a better performance than anything. And just, it's kind of amazing

that he got to 110 pounds and just looks like it's wild, how small he is. I have a similar type of thing. I've watched a movie on Hulu called Resurrection. It's not a good movie. It's not the worst movie. It's watchable.

I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying it. it's watchable. So it's with Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth. Okay. And Rebecca Hall, I think she's the best female actor in Hollywood. She's the best leading actor in Hollywood. It's quite a statement. She's good. That's a leap. Oh, yeah? Who's better? I don't know. When's the last time she was in a good movie? The Nighthouse? Never heard of it. But this movie, this movie was objective. This movie was not good. she made it watchable.

Okay. She's a great actor. I do like her. But best actress in Hollywood, that's a stretch. There might be better. I'm sure there are. She's up there. Leading.

She can carry a movie. Okay. Anything else? Taking night. I'm taking day quill, airborne, some zinc. You got anything else from her? Good luck.

Night cool at night. It helps. Oh, of course. But you wake up to hangover from that as an old person now. Night cool hangover? You ever had that before? Nope. Not great.

Animal Spiritspot at gmail.com. See you next time.