Animal Spirits Podcast - Is Financial Education Working? (EP.413)

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

On episode 413 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠ discuss: how retail became the smart money, why long-term investing caught on, where the money is coming from to buy the dips, chances of re-testing the lows, the Moody's downgrade, millionaires next door, takeout food culture, the broken housing market and much more! This episode is sponsored by Nuveen and YCharts.  Invest like the future is watching. Visit: https://www.nuveen.com/future to learn more.  Learn why 9 out of 10 advisors say YCharts is a best-in-class platform at YCharts.com. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This message is brought to you by Newveen. What does it mean to invest like the future is watching? It's one of the largest global investment leaders managing $1.3 trillion in public and private assets. Newveen is uniquely positioned to take on tomorrow today. Combining over 125 years of deep expertise across income with innovative alternative solutions, Newveen adapts to the needs of investors as a change, offering reliability, access and foresight to its clients, communities, and the global economy, all in the pursuit of lasting performance.

Newveen, invest like the future is watching. visit nuvine.com slash future to learn more. Investing involves risk, principal loss is possible. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Y charts. Ben, you and I primarily use Y charts for the data platform side of it. The charts, the ratios, the economic data, all that sort of stuff. But advisors are using it in a totally different way. They are using it for proposal generation, meeting prep. They're using the AI tools, the extraction tools. Scenario analysis.

All that good stuff. Yeah. So Y-Chart surveyed their advisor clients. Advise using the platform, added $33 million and new AUM last year and saved over 20 hours a month on research, propels a generation and meeting prep. So it's efficiency gains, right? I think the AI chat is the one that is the new one for me that I've been using a lot.

Get this data for me, put it into an Excel file. Does it respond, Ben, just use a target date fund? No. Not yet. Click the link in the show notes to learn why nine out of ten advisors say Whitecharts is the best in class platform. I hear from our very own Nick Majuli. If you click that link, there's a webinar or a video that he did

on how their new risk profile feature makes it easier for advisors to match portfolios to client risk. 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. I think I've been on this corner for a while now

saying that I think investors are getting better. The whole mom and pop thing used to be a derogatory term, and retail was like, oh, when I worked in the institutional investing world, the hierarchy was the endowments and foundations looked at themselves as we're the best here. Pensions are a little lower than us, and then it goes down to like advisor clients and then retail. The lowest of the low, right?

We're better than them. They're not any good. I don't think that that hierarchy exists anymore. You have been on that corner, and I remember, I don't know how long ago, but I do remember scoffing at you saying that or investors getting smart. Maybe they're like, eh, I don't know about that. And I think it's a combination of a lot of things. Certainly Vanguard.

Not even Vanguard today, but back in the day, providing easy, cheap access to the market and reinforcing the long-term discipline. And on the other side of the equation, I do think Robin Hood helped to flatten the hierarchy a little bit, as ridiculous as it sounds, because we know that is the home to a lot of D-Gen behavior, and at least that's like the, you know, people say that. But I do think that they've done a lot as well to, ooh, democratize. I can't say that word. I want to punch myself in the nose.

But to bring access to the individual investor and help them learn about the market. Just to make it easier. Okay. So this is from friend of the show, Michael Antonella. He texted us the other day. He said, guys, I have a strongly held view on this, and I'm going to compliment you to. I think that education of retail investors is better than it's ever been. psychology of money, animal spirits, bull and beard blog, the proper education about how crazy markets are

and not to overreact and think long term is working. Wait, hold on. Did Michael just text us that? I didn't even realize when he, did he just text us that just to get a plug-in for himself? Yeah, I think he put his own blog in there. That was smooth. And not to overreact to long-term and long-term thinking is working. That's why retail is a smart money now. Could this be a good topic? Is financial education working? We have data that it is. And I think, listen, I think the great financial crisis was a seminal moment for investor education because we saw a lot of bad behavior in that 10-year window of the lost decade of people saying, all right, that's it. I tap out. Even if you held on during the dot-com crisis, there were people who tapped out during the great financial crisis going,

I cannot live through two crashes like this. No. But hold on, but I don't want to overstate the fact that some of this may be resulting because is selling in October 2008, it's hard to say it's bad behavior. It was the second 50% crash in a decade that went nowhere. And it looked like the world was ending. In hindsight, panicking is never good. But man, I don't, I don't point to people that panicked in 2008 and say, you idiot. Well, but the thing is the people who then, because we talked to so many of these people who said in 2015, I'm still in cash. I sold in, you know, February 09 and I'm still sitting in cash and I can't do it. I think there was enough of that where the information age came and there was blogs and substacks and podcasts and people in social media

are just beating, I mean, think about the early days of finance Twitter and the blogging stuff and how, I mean, some of the stuff we were writing about at the time seemed so basic, but we were drilling it into people's heads constantly. Everyone there, the whole finance Twitter community was just saying, like, listen, this whole trying to guess what's going to happen and acting in the short term and panicking, that is not a way to invest. And so I do think that that people, the education is working and this is what we're seeing in the data. And also, and anecdotally in our inbox. I mean, we see it every week, people thanking us for helping them on their journey.

We got some emails, right? Some. Well, it's, you put, I saw you put them in here. Yeah, we've got zillion. Oh, did I put some in here? Hey, guys, just listened to this week's episode where you guys talked about people who sold in April or in the immediate aftermath of the election and figured I share my line of thinking as someone who had the same concerns regarding Trump's trade policies.

but chose not to sell. I decided to keep my 401k contributions as a hedge to my dumerism. I figured if I was wrong, I'd feel good knowing that I made some money along the way. I'm in my late 20s for reference. Yeah, it's wonderful. Another one, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills on this market, but I am being disciplined as ever thanks to you guys. Now, granted, we made those two emails up.

I put them in the chat, you bt, but they could have commented. No, I'm kidding. Those are really in this. Yeah. Eric Belchunis says that VOO, which is the S&P 500 ETF for Vanguard, is taken in $46 billion more than any other ETF. 400% more, basically said this is like unheard of. And I mean, this thing is like on its way to a trillion dollars in assets almost.

So it's, it's $660 billion in assets. And the money is just going insane. Now, again, the other side of this is people saying, listen, long-term thinking doesn't always work. There are lost decades. There are crashes. There are all this stuff that could. Stocks don't always have to go up forever and ever.

And so that's the idea that, well, just wait. And when we have one of these periods, it's not. going to be very fun. The alternative side of that is we've had three bare markets this decade alone, right? One of them lasted a decent amount of time. The other ones were pretty short. I don't think that- The also just wait is, just wait for what? So you could trade around it? I mean, what are you even talking about? Exactly. I don't think that. So you could perfectly timed the market? Right. I don't think that the behavior, that type of behavior is going to change where, I mean, there's going to be people who panic. But we've seen the number of people who panic,

especially on the retail side, has gone down drastically. Well, who sold in April? It was institutional investors for the most part. Retail bought them up. Yeah. So this is another one from JP Morgan yesterday. This is from Bloomberg. So I think futures were down 1%

and maybe at the beginning of the day, the stocks were on 1% on Monday. And this is from Bloomberg. They said an individual investors purchased a net $4.1 billion in U.S. stocks through 12.30 p.m. The largest level ever for that time of day and broke 4 billion threshold by noon for the first time ever.

All right, I have to, I have to confess, I don't, I don't get it. I know the numbers on this chart keep, you know, they, for the most part, keep getting larger because the dollar's amount, you know, inflation, a lot sort of stuff. There's more dollars in the system. Where does the money keep coming from? I feel like I've been asking this for years. So this is what I tried to answer. I want to read this quote first, but so this is head of macro trading at Buffalo Bayou Commodities,

Frank Monkham, never heard of this. But dude, 46 billion year to date. Like, where is that money coming from? All right, go ahead. I got that. So he says, retail is, are in the hard way, getting left behind during previous shock stock recovery supported by policy puts. There's an almost unwavering commitment from retail to never make that mistake again.

And I think that is that's the, that is part of it, just the fact that, listen, if things get super, super bad, the government and the Fed is going to step in and make it right. So in some ways, the really bad left tail has been, the funny thing is, then the risk then is probably a policy mistake that is the thing that kind of ends us. But it's, but yesterday, yesterday on a 1% down open. I know. That's the thing. After a huge rally, people are still desperate to get in. It seems wild. So that's not even buying a dip. That's just buying. Right. So I went to chart kid Matt and I said, what's going on here? Where is this coming from? Show me the total cash and money markets. And you can see money markets is still $6.9 trillion. Nice. It's a lot of money

still in there. But then he took it a step further and he looked at the dip. What happens to money market changes in the weekly change of money market versus the S&P. So look at this chart. This is a great chart. Credit to you, credit to Matt. This is wonderful. He was the one who did this. I said, look into it. He created this chart.

So he's showing last spring, April and May, there was a dip in the S&P, and there was a $112 billion outflow for money markets. Guess where that money went? The stock market. This time in April, there was $125 billion that came out of money markets. And I'm guessing, I can't prove this. My guess is the same thing happened to the bond market, too. like money goes into bonds because people think there's a recession when the recession doesn't happen

that money comes out of bonds and goes back into stocks and that's got to be where the dry powder is coming from otherwise I don't know where it's coming from because it's insane that we're seeing these huge spikes so it's got to be yes and yes I believe that a good chunk of that $125 billion let's say half out on making that up now that's wait at the stock market but what about the $46 billion year to date into VOO and what about every single year is it just wages that's part of it That's why these numbers are getting so big. Because, yeah, wages, inflation is up 25% this decade. Wages are also up 25%.

So it's more money coming in. There's just money everywhere. What else is the explanation? I don't know. So people were a little nervous about bond yields, and I'm going to poo this a little bit because a 30-year hit 5% this week. People are getting worried, okay, this is the bond vigilantes again, and this is worried about deficits and tax cuts that are coming.

and all this other stuff and the Moody's downgrade, which do you think is even worth mentioning? I feel bad completely sweeping that one to the side, but it's really, if we're not AAA, who is? We're the global reserve currency. We have the ability to print our own currency. If we're not AAA, then no one, no other country is.

I agree. I'm going to talk about this with Josh, and what are your thoughts? I don't really need to discuss it twice. It's relatively, it's a non-event. People want to freak out about it, but we've lived through this twice. It doesn't matter.

Nah, you know what? I think most people are like this doesn't matter. Yeah. There's a few people who are trying to make it a thing. Most people are not. Stop trying to make fetch a thing. But I do think that, I think this was, I'm stealing this from Warren Pyes, who said this before, but this is, for the last three years, the bond market has been, people

think a recession is coming, so they buy bonds, then yields fall, right? Then people worry, oh, no, there's a recession, yields are falling. And then the recession doesn't happen. So people sell bonds, yields rise. And people go, oh, no, yields are rising. it's terrible. And I think that that's the cycle we've been through. And eventually maybe some macro feature does break that.

But until we see a prolonged period of rates being above a certain level or going down, I just don't think you can worry about bond yields as a macro indicator. I think it's more flows. I think what matters, though, is the interest expense on our bonds. That does matter because that's part of the reason why bond yields are creeping up the deficit. I do think, I don't think it doesn't matter. I think the downgrade might be whatever, but it matters. So don't you think, though, that if things really got bad, and I always say the biggest

constraint against deficits and government spending is inflation. Inflation right now is 2.3%. If inflation was screaming higher because of the deficits in government spending, I'd be probably a little more worried, but it's not. It came way back down, and it's in a good spot. The weird thing is, if you took just a snapshot, of where we are right now, right? My daughter's got back in the...

What's with the pen? What are you taking notes? I'm a... I hold the pen guy, you know? I'm not a pen behind the ear. I'm just... You know, do you ever write anymore, like actually write? When I go to write a check now,

I feel like my hand is going to fall off because I just never do it anymore. I wrote three checks yesterday. Funny you should ask. My handwriting has gotten just considerably worse. I'm expecting one of them to not go through. I could barely read out of her writing. It's abominable.

Imagine starting checks today in telling someone you have to literally write out like the word of it's so why do we still do this i we were we were at the i was at the broadmore last week in colorado and they have an they have a crazy cool antique shot matter of fact which way do i lead that map behind me on my wall okay bought that last year 1950 uh long island map um so they had a copy of the declaration of independence from 18 18 i don't know what what the story is there that nicholas cage's version But needless to say, it's all handwritten.

I don't know if you know this. There's no computers back then. And they could write so well, right? And it's all script. And everything it is lined up, like, it looks like art. Everything lines up perfectly. Think about how little education people had back then, but how well they spoke and wrote. Like, I told you my daughter has been texting me lately.

And she hit me with a THX the other day. I don't know why. The THX always annoys me. Josh does that. I said, well, how much time are we saving here by not writing out thanks and just writing THX? I said, listen, I don't, I'm not going to, like, look over your shoulder on everything you do in life, but you're not going to be a THX person.

I'm sorry. Teach you the important things. I agree. We don't, we don't THX in this house. Yes. I don't remember where I was. Anyway, government debt, yeah. But so if you took just a snapshot of where we are right now, the inflation rate is 2.3%.

The unemployment rate is 4.5%. I think, 4.2%, something like that, and the 10 years at 4.5%. If you just ask someone, name me a normal economy or an average economy, if there is such a thing, that would probably be it. And we're trying to break that for some reason. Yes, and people are allowed to be concerned just because things aren't going cabooy today. It doesn't mean that this is not the setup for that. Oh, I know. And there's certainly reasons to worry. I just think with bond yields, let's let it play out for a little while longer.

I feel like there's been so many ups and downs. And every time they go up, people say, ah, bond vigilantes. They're worried about the government. Every time they go down, it's a recession. Just like, let's chill. That's all I'm saying. Also, this is from Mike Zaccard. He said 30-year tips yields are at 2.7% the highest in 23 years.

Now, you get almost 3% in real in tips. So let's say inflation is higher because of tariffs or whatever, government spending. Inflation is 3% or 4% now. We're talking a 7% return almost on tips. Now, long-term tips are, I don't know, you have to be kind of a psycho to own those, I think, because they're so volatile. But my comment on Twitter yesterday that got people really mad was the, so we've, for baby boomers, have been handed a 15-year bull market, 50% gain in housing this decade, and then now we're talking like 3% real yields on Treasury, inflation-protected securities. They just never lose. Like, heading into retirement.

Talk about a perfect setup heading into retirement. Your biggest financial asset is going to go up 50%. The stock market is going to be booming and you're going to get high bond yields. I know. Listen, I'm just poking the bear and I'm more because there's always people in my mentions who go, oh, yeah, 12% mortgage, 1982, buddy. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. I get it. But let's be honest. Also, no iPhone. I mean, yeah, but I think that's a positive. That's a positive. They had to bank on people just being there when you scheduled an appointment. My brother used to always say that my dad was the luckiest S will be on the planet because he never

had to bring his work home from him. He didn't have, he didn't deal, he was an executive in the pre-email, pre-Blackberry, pre- iPhone days. And he's like, that, that, you know, he had a briefcase he'd bring home, but he never did work at home because it was left at the office. And, yeah, I'm mostly saying the stuff about boomer's tongue and cheek, but also, if we're being honest, every generation has had their thing, they are the luckiest generation. There's, I don't think there's any debating that.

Speaking of a briefcase, you know, it was weird when I was in Boston for the nickname, not to brag, there was a lot of briefcases and trench coats like a lot of what is it is that like Sherlock homeless looking people so do you think people are just carrying their laptops in a I saw like three or four uh what town was I in damn it see in New York it's all backpacks though I feel like all the guys in suits and Patagonia vests they were you wear a backpack which is a better look where was I uh briefcase is more of a baller look oh I was on Beacon Street and walking around, yeah, a lot of, a lot of briefcases. I kind of like it.

It's like these people were in costumes. I mean, when I walk around New York in the financial district, it looks like a bunch of kids, older kids who are going to school. Not just briefcases, big umbrellas. Duncan says boomers drafted into the war out of the chat. Vietnam is a good, that's a fair. Yeah. No, but, listen, nobody's had easy. Life is hard.

That's true, except for boomers, financially. All right. So the Wall Street Journal has this piece on valuations, and they look at all these different valuation metrics to show them over time. They look at the Cape. They look at PE and 4 PE and I hate to keep saying this, but it just really feels like valuations don't matter anymore. Okay. My counterpoint to that would be the reason, and you know this, the reason why these ratios are elevated is because the quality and the growth of the businesses are off the charts. we've never seen growth rates like this

with ROEs as high as they are all the sort of profitability metrics we've never seen it and it's the bulk of the index so that's the answer that's it. No but I also feel like there are no lines in the sand anymore where people think, I feel like back in the day people thought like listen

you buy stocks when they get the 15P or like those levels those levels don't matter anymore now I guess a counterpoint to my counterpoint is well why is Walmart trading at 40 times earnings why is Costco trading at 45 times earnings okay I had this I had this in here for later. We talked to a couple gentlemen from JPMorgan

on their value investing team, and they shared with us. I didn't realize this. We know we're getting to Walmart later. Let's save it for that. We'll pin this. All right, here's a stat from Jason Gepford at sentiment trader. Both S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 are on track for perfect weeks,

rising every day for an entire five-day calendar week. Needless to say, that's me, not him. Needless to say, this doesn't happen during bear markets. it's kind of wild. We need like our AI chat assistant here because remember someone said we got to start tracking these stats? Once we have an AI chat bot

that's on the corner of our little recorder here then we're going to do it. Well, higher a year later, 93% of the time. All right. Steve Cohen is another retester of the low guy. Steve Cohen says stocks could retest their April lows sees a 45% chance of recession.

I think they're just putting these headlines to troll me now. Well, he said could. I know. So he said he. What's what? Michael Batnik. I also think we could. He expects maybe a 10 to 15% decline from here. He says Trump, by backing off, essentially raised the floor. It wouldn't surprise me to see two double-digit corrections this year. Yeah. I think that. I have a huge bone to pick

with the media and the consumers of the media. And this is old and stale, and it's a repeated take. I'm just going to take it anyway because it's timely. Bring it. So the headline here, Steve Cohen says stocks to retest their April low. sees a 45% chance of recession. And then when you look at the quotes, it's like, oh, it's nothing with nothing. He's not like, you know,

alarmist or anything like that. But people post his headline. And similarly, today, yesterday, there was a lot of people sharing the Klarna news. So Klarna is the by now, pay later company. Oh,

people love to dunk on Klarna, don't they? People really want that company to do bad. People love to dunk on it, at least on the internet. I saw that headline a million times too. I didn't read the article. So you give me some.

context. Here's the headline. This is from the FTA. Klarna's losses widen after more consumers fail to repay loans. Now, I don't blame the FT and every other outlet that puts this headlines because they're in the business of people reading their stuff. Like, I would do the exact same thing. And I don't even necessarily blame people that are like tweeting the headlines because

like they're also looking for attention too. So that's the game that we're all playing. Yeah. However. It's a fun game most of the time. Yeah. I get it. I get it. Okay, so here's the detail.

The FinTech, this is from the FTA, which offers interest-free consumer loans to allow customers to make retail purchases on Monday reported a net loss of $99 million for the three months to March, up from $47 million a year early. Now, the natural reaction is to go, oh, fuck, the ultimate subprime lender, the buy now, pay later nonsense, their loss is double from a year earlier. Uh-oh, maybe the consumer- Using Klarna by Chipotle burritos, right? Maybe everyone's in trouble.

They say revenues rose in the first quarter, 13% year over year. They have 99 million active customers. Kind of impressive. All right, so here's the thing. This is towards the end of the article. Clarnas credit loss rate as a percentage of its total payment volume remains relatively low. At 0.54% up from 0.51%. a year ago.

Give me a break. I'm surprised it's that low. 0.54%. Yeah. So, I mean, do you think in a recession this company is a short, though? What's that?

This company is a short or no. I have no idea. Paper trading, paper account. No. Okay. This is, I mean, this is people, people seem to be into it. If you think all the young people are going to suddenly default...

I don't know the financials that's come back. I have no idea, but... Yeah. So I want to talk about why stock picking is hard. So United Health is as of... I looked at the Dow E.T.F. Did you know there's a Dow ETF? It's like DIA.

Of course. Yeah. Who invests in that thing, though? There's what, $50 billion in there? $30 billion? How much is in there? What do you think the average age of that ETF owner is? $69.

60 plus? So, United Health in that ETF was the third biggest name in the Dow. It's down 50% in a month. Look at this chart. And this is the month. It was rising up through, it was doing okay even through the tariff stuff at the beginning of April. And in the last month, the thing is down 50%. This is why stock picking is hard. Who the hell's picking United Health though? But I mean, if this happened to the overall stock market, it would shut the world down almost. It happens to individual stocks all the time. I think it's just, it's crazy. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Walmart. Okay.

This is from CNBC. I think this was their CFO was going to talk. He said, we're wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases from the tariffs is more than any retailer can absorb. It's more than any supplier can absorb. And so I'm concerned that the consumer is going to start seeing higher prices. You'll begin to see that likely towards the tail end of this month, and then certainly more in June. Not a surprise because the tariffs are higher than they've been in whatever, 90 years. I got to chart here. So check this out. Sorry to cut in. I listened to the earnings call yesterday. These are my highlights. This is a faceblower. You might be surprised, I was, Doug, to know that nearly 60% of our suppliers in the U.S. are small businesses. That is a surprise.

So they're saying that the small businesses are probably themselves getting hit with tariffs, which is trickling down to Walmart. I just kind of figured that they were way more reliant on China and the rest of the world. Here's another one. So, Earlier, you mentioned the quote about raising some prices. They said, we won't let tariff-related cost pressure on some general merchandise item put pressure on food prices. So they're going to raise prices on items where they're seeing price increases. But as it relates to food, tariffs on countries like Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia,

are pressuring imported items like bananas, avocados, coffee, and roses. We'll do our best to control what we can control in order to keep food prices as low as possible. Bananas have some room to run. The bananas are so cheap. So cheap. I always say this. Don't you think that Walmart probably has the best supply chain of any company? I'm sure they must. When I went to business school, that's all, whenever we talked in a supply chain class, it was how amazing Walmart supply chain is. So if they can't handle this, I can't imagine what it's like for other smaller companies who don't have a good supply chain like they do. So Donald, the president tweeted or truth, Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as the reason for raising price. throughout the chain. Walmart made all caps billions of dollars last year, far more than

expected. That part made me chuckle. Between Walmart and China, they should, as is said, all caps eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers, all caps anything. I'll be watching and so will your customers. So the liberal Wall Street Journal opinion section wrote an article Donald Trump plays Walmart CEO. He goes full Kamala Harris and demanding that the retail giant not raise prices. We've called out, obviously, every time Bernie Sanders and more so, Elizabeth Warren said this nonsense about Kroger, for example. It's like, what, either you are really stupid or you think we are really stupid or maybe

both. And it's offensive. And to see the president doing this is, I don't know, pick the adjective. however you're feeling. But Walmart, I have a chart from Y charts looking at... Is he going to personally track prices across everything? I'm sure he is. Look at Walmart's revenue compared to their net income.

The revenue has grown, at least I believe, I don't know, so much faster than the income. But the bottom line is talking about their profit margins. There's no room. Their profit margin is 2.8%. It's average 2.4% over the last decade. They can't absorb the price increases and neither can any other business in this country. What are we doing here? And this makes an important point about a lot of our messaging, getting back to what we've

been saying publicly and others like us for the last, how long we've been doing this, is it's okay to have political opinions, right? Like, it's okay. You feel what you feel. You believe what you believe. But for the love of God, whatever your beliefs are, do not let it invade your portfolio. It's too much. You're going to live through administrations that you love and administrations that you love.

and administrations that you hate, and if you look at the raw numbers, it does not support however you feel. So just live with it and don't make any drastic decisions. Okay, and then in comes 2025 and the policies that the president laid in place blow up the stock market temporarily. Stocks fall in a straight line 19%. And everybody who was afraid of Donald Trump and what he would do feels vindicated. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

And people like you told me politics don't mix politics with your portfolio. Okay. Now that we're on the other side of it, as some of the rhetoric around the tariffs have been relaxed, it is interesting. And I was seeing by this morning, policies that can impact the market and the economy obviously matter a lot. We just saw that. Nothing else does.

Nothing else does. whatever he's saying to Walmart, whatever he's saying to these companies, none of the rhetoric matters, like, it's policies or nothing else. The market can look through a lot of the nonsense, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, the market will look through a lot of the rhetoric because whatever, the market just calls BS. But when it comes to actual policies, that's how politics can impact the market. What's the actual change? And that's, this is the thing people keep saying is, listen, we have not felt the impact of these tariffs yet.

They're way, way lower than they were on Liberation Day, but they're still higher than they were before and that there's going to be an impact. This was interesting. So we talked to a couple portfolions. Hold on. Just in conclusion, I think the belief that you should not mix your politics with your portfolio still holds true. Even now so more now so more than ever because if you thought that you were right about your intuitions that Trump was going to ruin America and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and now we're even, like, now what?

Yes, exactly. Now, yeah, what do you do? Yeah. And most people probably dig their heels in. So we talked to a couple portfolio managers from JP Morgan yesterday on their value team. is going to be on one of our talker books in a couple weeks. And they made the point that Walmart is actually cheaper or Amazon is cheaper than Walmart now. And I did this in a 4P ratio.

And they talked about it in a couple of different metrics. But so it's actually way, way cheaper than Costco too and Walmart. Why is Walmart so expensive? Can you explain this to me? Walmart's trading at 37 times earnings and Amazon's at 33. Costco's at 57. I think it's a combination of like their e-commerce business growing dramatically. it's not, this is not like the Walmart of 10 years ago.

But wouldn't we say that tariffs with Costco, I know Costco, the whole deal with Costco, all people always say is that they essentially break even on all the stuff they buy and then they make money on the memberships. That's their profit margin is the memberships. So if Costco and Walmart have these pretty razor-thin profit margins, and we're having tariffs that are going to impact a lot of their supply, shouldn't these companies see their valuations decrease?

You would think? It's a very fair point. I don't even know what the counterpoint would be. Why would why would the multiples not go down? I don't know. Especially from these levels. They're not exactly cheap. So Joey Polatano at Apricitas, his substack, looked at all the major tariffs.

And I think he said, again, the highest in 90 years. He said, even if, so he has this chart that shows in it looks like cars and SUVs and minivans are the biggest hit. That's like a 19% tariffs. Vehicle parts is 10%. So these are still pretty high, right? He said, even if you walked him back to just 10%, it will leave tariffs at the highest level since 1940s

and make America's the only high-income nation with double-digit tarot rates. He may be easing his trade war, but it's far from ending it. So again, I just keep thinking that the corporations and the investors have to keep thinking like, okay, yes, this is true, but they're not going to remain this high.

That's the only explanation I can come up with. I think the market is saying that there's going to be exemptions on everything. Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of. Now, market may be wrong, but I think that's the interpretation because it's hard to imagine anything else being true. All right. Did you, when I first came out of college and I, in realizing I know nothing, and I'm reading through all the personal finance books because, again, I know nothing.

This is one of the first books I read. Did you read this? I feel like if you're a financial advisor, this is on your bookshelf. You know, I didn't. Okay. So this is the millionaire next door. You know what? My millionaire next door equivalently was the wealthy barber. Okay. So, but this was kind of, to use your term, faceblowing to me. So I think this came out in 96. I read it probably 2005-ish. And again, knowing nothing, I thought, oh my gosh, I've cracked the code. I figured out how to get rich. And so the one thing that really stood out to me that I still remember, this is back in 96. So this is self-employed people, entrepreneurs, business owners, make up less than 20% of workers in America, but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. So the point is, like,

One more time for people that missed it. Less than 20% of workers in America are self-employed or own their own business, but they make up two-thirds of the millionaires in this country. And so the Wall Street Journal, and so the question is, like, this is 96. Does it still, you know, does it still hold? Wall Street Journal has an article called Meet the Stealthy Wealthy who make their money the boring way. And the whole point of this, too, is also like, these are not people who own flashy, high-tech businesses.

It's mostly slow and steady, but profitable businesses. They're not showy. That's most of these millionaire next doors. One of the ones that the article highlighted was a guy whose business is cleaning or ripping up carpets in elementary schools. Oh, really? You didn't read the article? No, I did. But they had the weather tech guy, too.

I use those in our cars. Oh, the formats. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they say the largest source of income for the 1% of highest earners isn't being a partner in investment bank or launching a one in a million tech startup, owning a medium-sized regional business. many of them are distinctly boring and extremely lucrative like auto dealerships, beverage distributors, grocery stores, dental practices, and loss. And they found that the number of people who

are in the 1% of earners, the share of income that ownership generates has increased to 35% in 2022 from 30% in 2024 for the top 1% of earners. I'll read the next one. The number of such business owners worth 10 million or more just for inflation has more than doubled since 2001.

And it's saying a lot of it. So the takeaway here is equity, right? You want to own equity in a business if you want to get wealthy. Yeah. And it's not saying you can't be a nine to five person and say, we know plenty of those people who have done that. But if you want to get really, really wealthy, it's owning equity in a business. I'm always surprised, but we are always surprised about the anecdotes that they find

from these articles. There was a family who said, like, they made $550,000. dollars, and they just spoke about his family's luxuries, include two Land Rovers, private school with the kids, and a month on summer vacation, and all of the sorts of personal financial details. Why would you talk to the Wall Street Journal about that? I don't understand. Are you, like, are you showing your friends, like, look at this article that I'm in?

It's so bizarre to me. I mean, there are certainly people who brag a lot about their vacations, but yeah, you're right. Can you imagine going around town and, like, there's already gossip about people enough as it is. If you're worth $50 million or whatever it is, you can't hide that. Everybody knows you're rich. Right.

But yeah, I agree. The bragging of, yeah, we went on a month-long vacation to Europe and, yeah, you're getting talked about. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you want people to talk about you? I don't know. Good article, though. Okay, this one from Food and Wine is, I think we've talked something about this similarly,

but so they say a whopping 75% of restaurant traffic now consists of takeout orders, according to the National Restaurant Association. NRA. I think they want to rethink that one? And let's see, 95% of consumers deem speed as critical to the experience. Well, 90% seat is a top priority. So there's this 40. So convenience is just a huge part of the economy. And I think this is one of those pandemic takeaway things that no one really would have foreseen ahead of time.

I was so wrong on this. What did you think that just restaurants? I mean, people still go to restaurants, but it's not a particular. No, the DoorDash thing. Look at the stock. What a beast this is. It's a great looking chart. And I just couldn't believe that people would continue to pay the outrageous fees.

I guess I should have asked my wife. But the numbers don't compute. Everything's so expensive. Like, I don't use these services. I think once you get a taste of convenience, I probably do DoorDash once every other week at my office. I'm really busy. And I don't want to get up to go to get lunch somewhere down the street. I'll door dash and have them send it here.

And it is really, really easy. And I think once you get a taste of that convenience, it's really hard to give up. It's the luxury becoming a necessity kind of thing. I agree. I thought people would for sure go back. So we have a friend who actually owns some restaurants. And he said he's thinking about doing a restaurant that is takeout only.

Like, that's the whole thing. It's just a pickup counter. And he's like, why you save on overhead, you don't, you know, it's easier to manage the staff. and that's all people want. So he's like, I'm thinking about just doing a takeout-only restaurant. It's just interesting. Yeah.

All right, I want to talk AI real quick here. By the way, the other AI story was with Klarna was that the fact that they had AI agents. Remember, they had like 700 AI agents, and now it sounds like it's not working very well. Yeah. So Klarna is just, they're a lighting bolt of, you know, everything. Do you think that is one of those things that, I think there's two ways looking at it. One is, well, see, AI is not as great as we thought. it can't take over the customer service for a human or is it just like yeah fine but in two years

it's going to oh 100% it's going to are you kidding me for the call center stuff please press one for i was screaming at the phone the other day i can remember who was on with i was like no customer service that's what i always do talk to operator talk to operator talk to operator talk to operator yeah no that we will not be doing that in five years or pick a number okay so i So we've been in our house for eight years now. You know, boys, you know this. Boys with potty training, not always the greatest. Just my son would wake up in the middle of the night to go pee

and wake up in the morning and see just all over the toilet seat, just full of pee. Right? Boys are just, they're not good at aiming. Right? And so I looked at it and I thought, like, I think I just need to get, like, he's eight years old now. He's better.

But, like, what do I get a new toilet seat? I'm like, how do I do this? Without like, so I just took a picture of it and I uploaded a chat GPT and I said, what do I need to buy here? What's the toilet seat replacement? You can see the name of the brand of the toilet. And it looked at the, it looks like an elongated toilet and the measurement, if it's 14 by 17 or whatever, then here's the kind you need to get. So easy. And that kind of stuff is for me is slowly migrating from Google to chat GPT.

Like if I need help with something, I don't go to Google anymore. I mean, sometimes if you need a video, but. Yeah. You can still do that stuff on Google, but... Yeah, but it's... I find the answers are better with Chad GPT. It's easier. Everything, if you ask it, like, how do you do this?

How do I cancel my subscription to this? Chad GPT takes you through the steps. That's amazing. Whereas Google, it's just... It's one more step to try to find it through the... No, but now Google built Gemini into the search feature. Okay, but I still am just finding myself going more and more to chat GPT for that type of stuff. Yeah.

All right. So did you look at Torsten Slok's real estate update? He has this U.S. Housing Market Outlook. It's 120 pages or something. And people were posting a lot of these charts on social media just saying, listen, housing is broken. And the point, I think it's partially broken. I also think demographics play a big role here. Okay, so this is the conventional mortgage rate versus the effective.

So effective is what people are actually paying. And throughout history, this has been very close. And I think we just really screwed things up with the mortgage rates. I think that's part of it, is just taking them so high, so fast. and along people to still pay so much lower. He's looking at the demographics saying the demand is still there. Like 33-year-olds is the most common age. So the people who are homebuyer age, it's still there.

But now it says the median age of all homebuyers is 56 years old, up from 31 in 1981. And this is more where people go, okay, come on. And this is back to the baby boomer thing. Like, they're the ones who have paid off mortgages and can afford to buy a house. So this is why this number is rising. point is 40% of homes don't have a mortgage. So this is interesting. This guy on Twitter replied to someone who was tweeting about these, and he said the median homebuyer in 2007 was born in 1968. The median home buyer in 2024 was born in 1968. Wow. That's a crazy

stat. But then Jack Rain said, fair. But the median American is also nine years older today than they were in 1981. So he says we have a housing affordable problem, but we also have an older population where many people switch homes later in life. So I think, yes, the housing market is broken, especially first-time homebuyers, but I think so many of these demographic numbers in the years ahead are just going to be broken by baby boomers too. We've never had a cohort this big before. 70 million baby boomers with all this money, $82 trillion in wealth, I think that they also make these numbers look more skewed than they are. An or the journal said, baby boomers homeowners hold, baby boomer homeowners, excuse me, hold 17,000.

trillion dollars in home equity and they share that's half of the total right they show a chart the share of u.s. home equity held by people who are 70 or older it is actually less than what they're in the gFC i don't know if it's surprising or not but it's it's around 30 percent a little bit more so the millennials look at this in the gen x younger gen x say all right fine but we're going to inherit that money someday sure because the baby boomers aren't spending enough of it it's just You're not going to get it until they're 65. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick McJulie and I talked about this on the Unlock recently. If you want to check that out, it's our channel for advisors. But his whole point was this is why you need to give now and not later, like to help the young people who are struggling in the, especially when it comes to homes and such. Homes, child care. And I would think a lot of people are like for the people that are able to. Oh, yeah. For the young people that are buying houses today, there's just, there's no way to do it without helping your parents. Yeah, unless you're in the top 10% of income for your cohort.

Yeah, you're right. You need help. Yeah. Can you imagine telling someone, no, just save 20% for a down payment? And also, set aside 12 months of expenses for the emergency fund. It doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work. And also, like, you can't make it all work.

Right. Surveys. So sentiment surveys came out last week, and it feels like they're already stale because they were all tariff-related, obviously. But they looked at consumer sentiment. Hey, Ben. Was it, yes, pen guy? What's the problem? You don't like my pen?

I just think it's funny that you hold your pen in your hand as if you've got like, like paper notes in front of you that you're going to pound on the table. Like you're like a reporter, an anchor. I'm writing stuff over here. So consumer sentiment slides with second lowest level on record as inflation expectations jumps. They looked at inflation. This is Michigan survey. Your head inflation expectations surged from 6.5% last month to 7.3% this month.

This month's rise we're seen among both Democrats and Republicans alike. I just think we have to throw these sentiment surveys out the window. Yeah. I don't, there's so, people go to such extremes, and it's, there's such recency bias that it's, and I understand why people thought this because the tariff stuff and it was crazy. And, but having these types of extremes when we've lived through so much worse times before, it's just, I don't think they're useful anymore at all. I agree with you.

I also used to be of the mind. Well, ultimately, people will act the way that they feel. But that's not true. No. People say stuff on the Internet that they don't mean in person. Right. The answers that they give are not how they actually feel. And people are not stopping spending or spending more because the prices are good.

Like, they just, the way that they behave does not match the answers that they give. Here's a chart from Semblis. Wait, hang on. I got a point on this. So my wife and I, before he got canceled, we went to see Louis C.K. a bunch of times. My favorite comedian ever. He's great. So he had this thing, or his bit where he talked about how you yell at other people when you're in your car, unlike ways you would, like, you yell at someone for cutting you off and you go, hey, idiot!

And you swear to them. But if someone cut you off in the elevator, you wouldn't say, hey, moron! You wouldn't yell at someone the same way in your car versus the elevator. It's the same way in the internet. People say stuff and do stuff on the internet that they would never do in real life. Yes, accurate. So he has a chart showing all these different surveys that should be catching the same thing. The conference board, U.S.

one year households, Michigan, New York Fed, Atlanta, Fed, Philly Fed, whether it's business people or professionals or households or consumers. And I mean, they're sort of all going up into the right, but some are the Michigan one is way more dramatic than the others. To this point, Mike Sikardi tweeted, you miss 7% inflation expectations. And then he said, ask want a bet. And that figure drops to 3.7%.

So on Cal Shee, it shows how high will the level of inflation get in 2020? putting your money where your mouth is yes that's an interesting okay so so it's at 2.3% now 3.7% is the forecast are you an over under that like what side of the bet would you take here under I think I probably would too I feel like I mean I don't know it but I mean we're almost halfway through the year I feel like the corporation can keep kicking the can and my my worry would be a to 2026 story yeah that we'd be seeing the higher inflation if these tariff stay on. So, Ben, we were in Del Mar last week. We took a nice long hike. You know, I was impressed. That's usually my type of outdoor adventurous thing. I got to San Diego later than you,

and you said, get your shoes in shorts on. We're going for a hike. And it was a way longer hike than I had anticipated. Credit to you, you're on the health kick, kind of. I don't know about that, but I did 30,000 steps out there, 15 miles. I was impressed with the trails there. I really loved it. So at the end of the trailer, he said, you know, let's go get some tacos. And I said, you down for another, for more? It's another 50 minutes. You thought I said 15. Yes, I did. It was another 50 minute walk. But we got there. And when we got there, I didn't have my wallet. I just had my phone, which has my Apple pay on it, no big deal. But the restaurant didn't take Apple pay. So you, thank you, paid for lunch. I was surprised to learn that you have a Hyatt credit

card, and I want to know what that's all about. It's an interesting choice. There's a reason for this. I'm sure there is. I know you've thought about this. Go ahead. I just got it probably a month ago. That's why I'm using it. Oh, you're playing the game. Well, my, what's, what's your Bahama? But you don't even use hot. You don't even stay at Hyatt's. What's your Bahama resort that you go to? Oh, but I'm sorry to say, points don't work there. Okay. Well, that was my idea. Okay. There's a resort in the Bahamas, and so I figure I might as well become a high. member and you spend $3,000 in the first three months, then you get all these extra bonus points. So that's why I'm doing it.

Okay. Well, I wonder if a new member if you could, if you could. No, but you're right. I'd probably say at one Hyatt every five years, if that. Actually, I don't, I don't think I's told the story in the show. Maybe I did. But last December, we went to Bahamara. By the way, future proof Bahamara this year.

Holy shit. October. That's going to be awesome. Holy moly. What do they have, a water park, a casino? Yeah, it's going to be a good time. So last December, we stayed at Bahamar, and a friend of mine told me that he used points to book it or he was thinking about using points to book it.

And I said, you can't use points. He said, yeah, you can. I'm about to. So what is it, a million points to get a night or something? So I had already paid using my credit card. So shame on me, I guess I should have asked, but he showed me a screenshot of pay with points. So why wouldn't I believe it? So I took all of my reserve points, all of it, and transferred it to my Hyatt card.

They wouldn't take it, and the points are not reversible. So now I've just... So they have to find a Hyatt somewhere else to stay. So now, whatever, whatever I'm going to a city, I just, I stay at the Hyatt. Okay. So more, more San Diego talks in a minute. So it was something we were talking about that I didn't really realize until going through this.

So, do you get, once a year you get an email from Social Security saying, hey, check out your new Social Security statement. I don't. You don't get that? Okay. I signed up for something. And it gives you, like, if you keep earning this amount of money, if you take Social Security here, here's what you're going to get. Here's what you're going to get, you know. But it also shows your survivor benefits.

And so it showed, this is for me, it showed, like, if you pass away, your children will receive this much money a month and your spouse will receive this much money. And it says your total family benefits cannot be more than, like, $6,500 a month. for each kid. And we went through this. My brother, as he was getting his finances in his financial affairs under order when he got sick, said, listen, we're going to receive a check for each kid from Social Security because essentially, if you die early, you don't get your Social Security, but your kids do until they're 18. And I never really thought much about this or realized it, but it's a lot of money. It's like a couple grand a month depending on from Social Security that these kids get until they're 18 years old tax-free.

Amazing. Kind of amazing, right? I know people poo-poo a lot of government services. This is unbelievable. And so it gave me the amount. So you can look, if you sign up for your, you can just enter your email and create a profile on social security.com and they send you an annual statement every year,

and it shows like how much money you made and it shows how much social security you paid and what you'll get in. New York Times, this is Tara Siegel-Bernard, wrote this piece. Why many retirees are taking Social Security early? Because they'd like to get cash. It feels good. An additional 276,000 retirees claim benefits on their earnings, a 13% jump from a year ago. So it's more than they would expect based on how old people are.

And they say this rise was dramatic. And they say, why is it happening? This guy, the agency's commissioner, said, fear mongering has driven people to claim benefits earlier because they're afraid they're not going to claim benefits at all. Oh, wow. And so I don't know if that's because they think they're going to die or Social Security is going to run out. But this is the spreadsheet versus feelings kind of thing. Like, if you look at the spreadsheet, you are better off taking it at age 70. Because you get like a 7% or 8% return from 62 to 70.

Like, your benefits are going to be much, much higher. But most people can't or won't wait for that. My dad didn't wait. And I was like, well, but why? And he's like, because I want the money now. And I was like, all right, fair enough. Yes. So people don't use time value of money to make decisions like this, especially in retirement.

It's like, no, no, give it to me now. I'm going to spend it now. I don't care more in the future. It's worth more today than it is in the future. Okay. But it's not like, yeah. I get it's, it's, it's, anyway, just interesting, that, that's how things work. All right.

Let's do some more travel thoughts. We had orchata. At least I had it, you tasted it? You did. Do you still, it's like a milk cream, it's like, it's like rice pudding. It's like rice pudding in a drink, I guess, ish. I loved it. I don't know how you weren't ready to take a nap.

I took a little sip and it was not. I don't know that it goes really well with the burrito, but it was delicious. So last week I was talking about how the lineup clear was as short as I've ever seen it. And I couldn't help but think, well, I guess this makes sense. Economy is slowing. We know that travel is slowing. We hear it from the airlines. But then San Diego, my friend gilded me in to changing my flight to the 6.30 a.m.

flight to get home from the next game. True fan, my friend. I woke up at 4 o'clock, got my ass to the airport, and I thought I would sort of stroll through. It was packed. San Diego, five in the morning, packed. So I don't know. I don't know if that says anything or nothing. Did you see the line at the lounge?

The line at the lounge was like circled around the airport. Like people really wait that long to get into a lounge. I'm sorry. Going to a lounge, I don't mind. Waiting for a lounge. I don't think I would wait for a lounge. So when I was at the Broadmoor, I ordered a pastry and a cup of coffee. And it was $18.

And I thought to myself, wow, that's a lot of money. I also thought, in hotels, there's no limits to what they could charge. When I was in the Bahamas, I told you, I got like a little bag of Doritos and a ball and some sunscreen and this and then it was $110. And yeah, sure, charge whatever you want. What are you going to do? But then I got back to my room and I've got this travel case of cords, right? I got one of those two. And every chord was wrapped up perfectly, lined up.

My room was immaculate. And then I thought, all right. And guess you get what you pay for. So we, you and I were just, I had never been to San Diego before. I think you had never, never to the part that we were at. Okay. So it was, it was beautiful. And we were in a great section at the Tori Pines.

We did a live podcast there with Van Nack. And that's going to be coming out shortly, I think, next week or so. It was fun. Cool group there. But I had never been to San Diego before. You and I were just speaking gloomily of it the whole time because we were hiking and seeing the great spots and these outdoor restaurants around the water.

Every five minutes, we're like, this is amazing. Yeah, like, why doesn't everyone live here? And we asked a few people who lived in San Diego, like, because we said, do you think people here appreciated enough? Like, the weather is perfect. You can be outside all the time. The ocean is amazing. And so we asked people like, do people here appreciate it?

And most people said, yeah, but the housing costs. And we had multiple people say that exact same thing. Well, of course, we appreciate it. The weather's great. It's beautiful. The hills and the mountains and the cliffs. But, yeah, the housing is insanely expensive. And our retort was, yeah, like, this is the kind of place where housing probably should be expensive.

It makes sense that more people would want to live there than can. Yeah. Because it's so magnificent. So I don't know what the excuse is for New York, but... We have a great port. That's true. All right. I have a question for you.

Okay. Why, maybe I just never paid attention growing up, and this is all in my head. Why does it seem like school drop off of so much harder these days than it was when we were younger? Because I had to drop my kids off this morning. My wife had to take my son to, he thinks he, my son got a new swing for his birthday. You know those big round circle swings? Like a big, it's a big circle. You see Matt, we got one for our back place.

Like a tire? No, it's just a round flat thing. Anyway, he was on it last night, and he goes too high. He fell off, and he thinks he broke his hand. Oh, no. screaming bloody murder. He's already broken his hand once. We'll see.

So he had to go get an x-ray this morning. So I dropped the girls off at school. And the line for drop-off and pickup is so long. Maybe it's just because kids don't take the bus anymore. I don't know, but it seems like I don't remember ever being an issue when I was young to drop off at school. Mostly because I did take the bus. And if I ever got dropped off, it was kind of a special thing.

But if my mom dropped me off, it was just kind of pull up, go. Now there's a line. You have to, like, follow. certain instructions for which way to go. Is it like that for you, too? Well, you know, that's one of the benefits of living in New York then is that our drop-off is actually super easy. Is it really?

Well, most of the 95% of the time my kids take the bus. Here and there, I drop them off. But yeah, pull up. See, the problem is ours is the very first stop. So our kids would be in the bus for like 45 minutes in the morning. They'd have to get out really early. So we just just said, that's not worth it. Yeah.

Anyway, all right. Recommendations. What do you got? What did you watch on the plane? I watched Inheritance, a movie I had never heard of. It was like a spy. It was actually a good airplane movie. Yeah, it was a good airplane movie.

Not the 2021, the 2025 or 2024. So I don't like it when movies use the same name. Actually, wait, there's a 2020 and a 24. Which one did I? I didn't watch either of those. Which one did I watch? Is there a 2025 one? Yeah.

Okay, so not the 2020 or 2024. Here's, when Maya learns that her father was once a spy, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an international conspiracy. Okay. So this has got a 5.6 in IMDB. Yeah, 54% of Ronald Tomatoes, airplane movie all the way. It was quick and easy. I went to see Final Destination last night.

Okay. Killed it at the box office over $100 million. Wow. Okay. That's still kind of stuff still has legs, huh? How many of those have there been? I remember when the first one came out, it was like kind of a thing. Oh, it was a thing.

And the second one was the thing, too, that was Allie Lauder. I don't think I've seen anything beyond the second one. But a rip-worn good time. A lot of fun. Great deaths. I guess it's one of those movies that just makes you think. Like, why doesn't stuff like this happen more often? Like, I could have died there.

And if this would have broken this way or that, like, I could have totally died there. Yeah, it was fun. Fun. Oh, so not to beat this dead horse. I'm still enjoying The Last of Us. I'm really surprised because I, I'm not even like a super fan, but did you watch the most recent episode, episode six?

Well, yeah, you won't because they brought Joel back. That's why you're enjoying it. When I saw him come back, it's like, yeah, this is why I like the show because of him. Yeah, but we knew he was going to come back that he was going to make another appearance in the show. Not that he was brought back from the dead. By the way, this is not a spoiler.

Some people got mad as such a spoiler. This is not a spoiler. All right. We'll be more conscious spoilers going forward, but you knew that Joel was going to make another appearance in the last movie. And it was already in the video game. Yeah.

But anyway, my point. But here's the thing. all the video game people don't like the show anyway, I guess. Like, they complain all the time. So why did we have to appease them anyway? You know, it's odd. It's only seven episodes this season. So next week is done.

But so are you back in? Or you still don't like it or you're mad? No, I'm just saying, Joel coming back makes you realize like, oh, why did they get rid of him? It's better when he's on the show. Yeah, he's a good character. Okay. I tried Noseferatu on the plane. This has got a 7.2 on IMDB.

my score is far lower than that. I'd give it like 5.4. No, I've made it halfway through. It's just when the vampire, so it's actually a movie about real estate. The vampire wants a new estate. He wants to get, and Nicholas Holt is going to come

find him a new estate somewhere. And when he comes to talk to the vampire, it's like unintentional comedy. It was, I don't know, for something about it to me, I wasn't scared, I was laughing. Maybe this kind of movie's not for me. It just, it's, uh,

I'm surprised that you would even try it. That's definitely not a U movie. I heard a bunch of people talk about it. I figured I'd give it a shot, not for me. I rewatched EZA-A for the first time in a while. I never heard of it. Emma Stone. It's Emma Stone.

Penn Badgley's in it. It's a early, it's a 2010-ish teen movie, and it's a little over the top. Stanley Cucci plays for mom. Wait, why did you re-watch it? I was on American. They didn't have a great movie selection. Emma Stone is just so good in this.

And I think, is she on the list of, like, best teen movie stars? Because she was in this and, this century, she was on this and Super Bad. She's been in some classic high school movies. And they do play up to a lot of, like, it's an homage to previous high school movies. They do a good job of kind of wink-winking at you, like, yeah, we know this is a lot of how a lot of high school movies are. But she's just amazing in it. Yeah. Yeah.

So she needs to get back to rom-coms. I watched Crazy Stupid Love recently, too, with her in Gosling. You know, my big take on Gosling is that's his best performance ever. I never saw that movie either. Good, obviously. I mean, it's a rom-com. Steve Corel, the very last scene of the movie is really, really funny. It's got Kevin Bacon, Steve Perl, and Ryan Gosling.

Those are airplane movies. Yes. Absolutely. That's why I watched it. Yes. And I finished the four seasons. I know you didn't like it and you fell asleep. I really liked that show.

I enjoyed it. There's a new show on Max. Oh, we even get to the Max's now, HBO. Again, what a cluster that is. There's a new show with the guy Sawyer from Lost New Max show. I always wondered why he wasn't bigger. I liked him. It's called Duster.

I watched the first 10 minutes. I think I'm going to wait. I think I'm going to wait to hear how it goes. All right. If it's good, I'll jump in, but I wasn't gripped. All right. Waiting game. I think everything's a waiting game now to see what the actual impact.

What are you waiting for? Tariffs. tariffs. I think everything that is just a waiting game. I think that's one of the biggest reasons the stocks came roaring back so quickly. Not only did Trump back off, but like, show us first. Show us the actual impact, then we'll react. I think the stock market doesn't have patience for like waiting and waiting and waiting anymore. It's like show us some actual impact, then we'll react. Maybe we will. But I think there could be, I think the risk is, like, a retailer gets dinged really bad in their earnings report in the months ahead.

But that's going to be, how long is that going to take? Third quarter, probably? I don't know. I'm not following, like, the tariff news that closely. Like, I don't even, I don't know what the current tariff policy is. I don't know if anyone does. All right. Personal emails, personal responses, animal spirits at the compound news.com.

See you next time. Okay.