Animal Spirits Podcast - Living the Dream (EP.370)

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

On episode 370 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: why the stock market doesn't care who the president is, the U.S. stock market is having a boring year, the biggest winners in stock market history, the economics of a martini, the best comedy movies of all-time, the broken beer bottle economy, Nvidia employees are rich, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Global X and Fabric by Gerber Life. Visit https://www.globalxetfs.com/ to explore a lineup of more than 90 ETFs, along with insights to help you navigate a dynamic investing landscape. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/spirits. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's show, Ben and I discuss Jerome Powell. Is he the greatest Fed chairman of all time? Or did he just get a little bit lucky? I'm going to make the analogy that the U.S. economy is like the time my friend in high school got a beer bottle broken over his head. We go over the definitive list of best comedies of all time. An emailer asked us about that. The ultimate conversation stopper? I'm not a big guy for small talk, but you say this one phrase, and Michael and I are out.

Done. See you. Lastly, we hit on the economics of martini. Hope you all enjoy the show. This episode of Animal Spirits is sponsored by GlobalX ETFs. Since 2008, GlobalX ETFs has been committed to empowering investors with unexplored and intelligent solutions. GlobalX specializes in ETFs that track emerging trends like artificial intelligence, as well as strategies within the AI ecosystem, such as data centers, robotics, cloud computing, and more.

Visit GlobalXETFs.com to explore a lineup of more than 90 ETFs, along with insights to help navigate a dynamic investing landscape. Today's show is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life. Fabric by Gerber Life is the term life insurance you can get done right here, right now. You could be covered from your couch in under 10 minutes with no health exam required, which is good for us because we have some aches and pains in our middle age. Very good. My back hurts. I'm going to get to that later in the show. So the time to do this thing is when you're young and it's easy because you can do it right online. You can do it on their app, which is interesting. It's designed by parents, four parents,

trusted by millions of families for over 50 years. You know Gerber because they have the baby food. Did you ever sneak a bite when you kids... No, never. Not once. Not curious. Okay. I don't think I tried it either. It always looked kind of good, though, besides the veggie ones, of course. All right, join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash spirits. That's meetfabric.com slash spirits. Policy is issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Price is subject to underwriting and health questions. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing.

Join Michael Batnick 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 Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. You know, one of the things I've learned in the finance world is that you're constantly saying the same thing over and over again. And I'm sure there's times of us repeating ourselves, but I think there's a reason for this.

Because sometimes you just have to. It doesn't seem like there's anything more to say about politics in investing than we said four years ago. But it feels like every four years, we have to have the same conversation because people make the same mistakes over and over again. I'm already getting questions from people. Hey, listen, there's going to be volatility come November. I just know it.

I'm going to change my portfolio. I'm going to get more conservative or more, whatever it is. And it just feels like we have these same conversations every time there's an election. But I guess it's human nature, so we have to. Right? I mean, like, we're going to have a ton of good charts in the months ahead about politics and investing and why it doesn't really matter. My whole thing is just the stock market doesn't care who the president is. There's drawdowns.

Listen, there's drawdowns with every president, and there's upswings with every president. That's the thing, and so much of it is based on pure luck and chance. Do you think Clinton was a wonderful president for the economy, or did he get lucky that the fact that boomers were spending a bunch of money in the 90s and the dot-com bubble happened? Was Bush a bad president for the economy, or did he just happen to have bad luck and come in after a 20-year bull market that was in a 30-year debt super cycle that was going to crash either way. If there's a spectrum of who's in the White House matters a lot

versus it literally doesn't matter at all. I'm more towards it. It literally doesn't matter at all. However, like it does. The president can impact certain sectors, for sure, certain companies. I think that, but if you think that and then like, oh, and then I can predict how it's going to, and I'm going to react based on what I think is going to happen, well, yeah, you're going to get run over.

Yeah, obviously the president matters their policies, but the whole thing, people have asked us, we've been getting questions for a few weeks now, hey, what do you think about this policy? What do you think about this idea? And my whole point is always, what they say in their campaign is not really what's technically going to happen when they're in the White House. And because a lot of that matters, who's controlling Congress, who's controlling the Senate? And also, are they just lying to us? And what they actually do it? Well, that's not possible. And are they going to do what they say they're going to do? And how much of it is really, I think you could, you could probably make the case that the president matters way more when there is a big calamity or crisis.

for the economy, but even then, a lot of it is just luck and timing and I don't know. So that's my whole thing is that it just, it doesn't matter as much as you think it does. And if the president had the ability to control a $27 trillion economy, if they could make it do whatever they wanted to, they would, but they can't. That's the whole thing. Agreed. So, I mean, we're going to have these conversations in the months ahead again. And we're going to have the charts and we're going to provide the context, but it's repeating

things we've already said before. And my biggest thing, and I think Barry was the first one to really have some good takes on this, is just that don't mix your investing in politics. Think of what you want about politics, all you want. I don't care, do what you want to do, don't bring it into your portfolio. How's that? Yeah, like it. Fair?

Okay. So this one made the rounds a little bit from Sherwood and Charter on U.S. stocks have been chill in 2024. And you know it's a good chart when everyone who produces financial content just goes, oh, great chart. Yeah, that's a great chart. Right? Like just, oh, that's all you need is, oh, great chart. So they look at the daily returns in the S&P 500 by year going back to 2020. In 2020 is this huge wide range. And they show the daily returns as little dots. And the smaller the dot, the lower the return on an absolute basis, the bigger the dot, the bigger the return. And 2024 has been so clustered. There's been one 2% move plus or minus this

year and it was an upday. No big moves in either direction. Takeaways. Everyone knows there's an election in 2024. It's not going to catch anybody off guard. Now, it's not to say that there can't be volatility that there won't be. But if you think that you're the only one who's worrying that there will be volatility, well, don't you think that, yeah, we know. It's literally on the calendar. We know it's coming. And I think who has the best take on this was just in terms of, like, let the market do the worrying for you. It's Bill Miller. Right? I don't know what the exact quiz. Or going to paraphrase. Like, the investors do plenty of worrying. And it's all in the market. I'm just going to let the investors worry about it.

I'm going to focus on things that I can control. Yes. And the other thing that really is another pet peeve of mine is people say, well, listen, uncertainty is heightened right now. Right? Like uncertainty is at an all-time high. Uncertainty is always at an all-time high. I'm never certain about what's going to happen in the days, weeks, and months ahead. That's cute. That's cute, but like, it's, it's... No, it's true. No, that's things the blogger says.

I'm sorry, no offense. It's things the blogger says. It's true. Yeah, because it's true. No, no. You could measure uncertain. Like, just, okay, are things... So, so COVID was as equally as uncertain as any other day the week? Well, it literally came out of nowhere.

That's my point. You're moving the goalpost. You're moving the goalpost. Sometimes uncertainty is higher than at other times. It's just, that's just a fact. Come on. It feels that way. It feels that way. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the future is always unpredictable.

But certain points have more uncertainty and more fear than other periods of time. That's not controversial. You could make the case that a month ago, and uncertainty is at all-time high is based on what's happened in the past month, politically. But the only reason people say uncertainty's at high because all these unprecedented things happened. They're looking in the rearview mirror. And using that recency bias to say, crazy stuff has happened. So now it's really uncertain in the future. It's always like that, though.

That's the truth. Nah. No, it's not the truth. I agree with this thing. I'm certain about. You're going to pull, you're going to break your Achilles or break a knee or something playing men's basketball. Watch your mouth.

I don't like those bad jujures. But I did play basketball this weekend. I played six games in a row, which is far too many games in a row. You guys were balling. You kept winning? We were five and one. But I was on the old man court. Average age is probably, no, no, no, no, no,

50 maybe, give or take. Some older or some of a little older, or some a little bit younger, that's how that average works. So when I was growing up, we would play every single Sunday in high school and college at our little middle school gym that I went to, where I went to middle school. And it was half young guys and half old guys. And I always really enjoyed playing with the cagey old guys. Because they always had some moves.

They know how to play basketball. So I play Sunday and I play Monday nights. And Monday nights are with the guys, the dad's my age. And there's a few of them are good, but there's a few that are really bad. And they don't know how to play basketball. So it makes the game, like, really challenging. The older guys, yeah, they can't move as quick. They can't defend as well.

They know to box out. They know how to position. They hit open shots. They move the ball. But anyway. You pass and you cut. That's what old guys know how to do. Even if the cut is in slow motion, they know where to go.

They know the angles. Yes. One of the older guys, let's say he was like, I don't know, 65 years old. So in game five, I'm like, guys, I'm out of gas. Like, just, you know, if you get an open shot, just let it fly. And they're like, what, you can't breathe this? I'm like, no, it's not like my breath. There's more my body, like my back hurts.

And they're going, how old. do you? And I said, well, how old do you think I am? And he goes, um, low 50s? And I go, ooh. Ooh. That hurt. In their defense, though, a bald man could be plus or minus 15 years. And it also in their defense. It's really hard to tell. When you're 65, you don't know. You know what I mean? It's like, even if I was 50, I'm 15 years younger than him. So everyone, everyone looks younger now than they are. Under a certain age, everyone under 50 probably right now.

Apparently, I don't. It looks 10 years younger than people. But the bald thing hides it. I did feel extremely old. Two weeks ago, when I was walking in the East Village going to see long legs and just walking around. I guess it was like 8 o'clock at night and kids are out. And they looked considerably younger than we do. Midlife crisis, man.

You've been in it for a while. Let's just... It's coming. Let's just admit it. All right. One of my favorite pieces of stock market research of the past few decades comes from Hendrik Bessonbinder. We've talked about it before.

He did the do stocks outperformed treasury bills. And something like 4% of all stocks account for the vast majority of wealth created in a stock market of the long term. We've gone back and forth in this and said, like, this, you know... It's great, but also very flawed. Well, there's caveats to it that. you know, most stocks don't make it that long, and there's plenty of stocks that do well in between and all this stuff. But that's the biggest caveat. He's looking at from IPO. Now,

it's valid. It's saying, like, listen, most stocks don't generate a lifetime value that's worth investing in from the IPO. The thing is, though, that, like, there's a lot of opportunity in between the IPO and 70 years later to buy and sell stocks. But I think his biggest point that I latch on to is just that it makes more sense to be diversified because you want to make sure that you have those winners in your portfolio in some capacity. Well, he's making the case for index funds. Yes, which is why I like it. So confirmation bias.

But he has a new piece out about the biggest winners in the stock market. And he decided to take his research one step further and look at, okay, what were the companies that produce the biggest gains? And this is the craziest one to me is that he looked at the cumulative returns. We looked at the average cumulative return from 1926 to 2023. And to be fair, there was only 98 stocks that, or 38 stocks that survived the entire 98-year period. But he also looked at other windows. He looked at five years, 10 years, 20 years, and then the whole overall period.

And there was 17 stocks at a cumulative returns of 5 million percent. So the average return of the accumulated return for stocks was like 23,000 percent over this time period. But the median, picked the middle one, was a loss of negative 7.4%. meaning more than half the stocks in this group lost money over the long term, which to your point, there's failures. But the interesting thing was, like, the annual returns of the mega winners weren't these crazy Buffett or Jim Simons like numbers. They weren't 20, 30, 40 percent per year.

The average returns of the biggest winners were 13.5% per year. Just compounded over a zillion years. Yeah, it's just if you take two or three percent over the market, compounded over that long with a time prize, and it's really good return. So I put the list of the highest cumulative returns in here. And so Ultria is the top one, and that had a 16.3% in return. And that made it the whole period. This was Philip Morris.

Yes. So smoking pays, I guess, which is pretty extraordinary. So Exxon is, it's a lot of blue chip names. And I guess my takeaway here was these companies are blue chip for a reason because they survived that long, right? And so he also looked at any stock. with minimum of 20 years of data, and NVIDIA was the highest return in the data set at 33.4% per year.

So, NVIDIA really is a once-in-a-lifetime stock. It's the highest 20-year return of any stock in history in the U.S. stock market. I saw somebody tweet a poll for NVIDIA employees. What's your net worth? Did you see this? No. And the buckets are less than a million, 1 to 3, 3 to 5, 5 to 10, 10, to 20, and over 20. And the highest percentage answer, 36.6% of respondents answered over $20 million.

Holy cow. So this is, remember the stories you'd hear about, there was a secretary at Microsoft in the 80s who's worth $100 million because she got stock options earlier something. Here's my question about this. So wait, hold on. So let's say 30. So more than 60%, more than 60% of Nvidia employees are, worth more than $3 million, have a net worth of more than $3 million. Wow.

So how do you keep these employees motivated going forward? They're already rich. Is that NVIDIA's downfall that just... No, no, no, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. What about, like, the vesting schedule and the restricted nature of these stock units? True. They can't spend it yet. Yeah.

But you've got to be sure a lot of these people are borrowing against that stock, right? I would be. What would you be buying? A house? I don't know. Do you think these young tech people are, they have to buy a $3 million studio apartment in San Francisco? I'm sure there's a lot of that going on, I would imagine.

Yeah, that is pretty wild, though. All right, so I have a theory about the U.S. economy. I want to run by you. And I think it kind of, it's kind of like the Fed, like did the Fed get lucky? I think Jeremy Siegel put it very eloquently with you, Josh a few weeks ago about like, is this the greatest fed in history or do they get kind of lucky? And you could say it's a little bit of both, but I think I'm leaning more towards the luck side. No, no, no. I don't think you could say that they're the greatest fed in history.

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't, true. Okay. I wouldn't even go that far. Yeah, I would say that they've done a pretty good job, but I think they got really, really lucky. And I don't know why I equated this. Maybe this is a total non-sequitur, and I just wanted to tell this story, but we were at a party one time in high school or college and a bunch of people and someone got shoved or whatever. And I had a friend who, this really big, stocky guy. And you know how some people just have a very punchable face? Sure. Just like, you're like, oh, that person probably gets in a lot of fights. You know, my friend had this. And he got into a number of fights. And it wasn't like he was a bad guy. Just it happened. He had the face. Yeah. And, uh, there was pushing and shoving.

And he was trying to break it up. And some guy comes from behind and tries to break a beer bottle over his head. This thing, like, it's like the round burgundy. Oh, that escalated quickly. And the beer bottle didn't break. It just, it careened off of his head. which probably hurts more. You know, like, and so he just kind of went out, you know. But then the guy with the beer bottle in his hand was way small, that my friend was a pretty big guy, was like, oh, crap, and like ran away

because he realized I didn't take this giant down. And I think that's the U.S. economy. Like, the U.S. economy got hit with a beer bottle in the head, but the bottle didn't break. And I think the reason for that is kind of well-known at this point. The corporations locked in low rates and household, holds locked in low rates. And so Torsten Slok has these great charts. I sent to you and Josh. He says a record high 30% of the population has a stock market portfolio worth more than $500,000.

37% of the population has a home worth more than $500,000. Survey results, take it with a grain of salt, obviously. These numbers are probably directionally. Regardless, there's never been a point in history when people have had more wealth tied up in their home or the stock market. Especially after a Fed hiking cycle. Yes, which is, which is, which is, which is, which is the point, which is like, how is that possible? But someone did send us this Wall Street Journal article, and they said, it's called American borrowers on Shake Your Ground, These charts show why. And they show some, so it's kind of like, eventually people had to start borrowing money

and buying houses and buying cars, and they're taking 8% to 10% auto loans, and they're taking 7% mortgages. And so that had to filter through to some households eventually. Everyone wasn't just going to stay put forever. So they show interest paid on U.S. consumer debt percentage change from a year earlier, and it's mortgage debt versus non-mortgage. debt. And mortgage debt is up 15% or something, which makes sense. But interest paid on non-mortgage debt is up 50% year over year, which is crazy. And I don't know how much of this is credit card

versus auto loan, but that's a huge jump higher, obviously. Yeah, monster. Auto and credit, I think, are the two big ones. And they show that the total average credit card balance was $6,000 in the first quarter, which seems like it's actually been pretty steady for the past five to seven years. That 6,000 numbers when I see a lot. And they show the minimum payment. for $6,200 credit card balance at different rates. And they go $15, $22, and $29. And it goes from, I don't know, $130 to $200-something if you're just making the minimum payment.

So it's a big difference. My one caveat here would be, if you're making minimum payments on a credit card balance, that's probably, like, the worst financial decision you can make. So I don't know how many people actually do that, but if you do that, that's pretty bad. I would say that even with some of these things ticking higher and not looking great, I would still not be worried about the consumer yet.

Like, there's going to come a point where there's a recession and consumer will retrench and people lose jobs and these numbers will get worse. But if you look at all the other numbers, the balance of 90-day plus delinquent by loan type, credit cards are going up a little bit. Auto loans are going up a little bit. Everything else seems fine to me, especially historically. They also show the exit. It's earnings season. We're going to hear all about the consumer. And so far, you keep hearing the words.

resilient. Yeah. So even though there's some households on the fringe, I'm sure that are being really impacted by higher prices. Oh, how about retail sales? Retail sales doesn't look bad at all. No. And here's one of the things. So they show excess savings. And they say the top 10 households by income, or those earning like $245,000 or more hold more than three quarters of excess savings. And they're saying, well, excess savings has been depleted for most Americans. I never heard about excess savings until the pandemic. This was never a data point. I don't know why we have to care about it. Why should it be a thing? We never had to worry about excess savings before.

Just worry about savings. Yeah. Right? So I don't, the excess savings thing doesn't... Well, that's a great point. What is the excess? How do they measure the excess?

Is it like a normal level of savings? And this is what's above trend? Well, it was taking a trend from pre-pandemic days. And then we went way above that trend. Now people spend it down. It's like, time to worry. I don't know. We never talked about excess savings before.

Here's another interesting one to me. So I looked at total U.S. household debt and plotted the change against CPI. going back to 2019. Household debt is up 25%. And the reason this line stops a little early is because it goes through like the fourth quarter, so it's not updated yet. Maybe the first quarter.

So household debt is up 25% since the start of the pandemic, and CPI is up 21%. So on a real basis, household debt in the last five years is up 4% on a real basis. That doesn't really worry me that much. That's not a huge number.

Like, it's not like people gorgeed on debt, even when they probably could or should have when rates are so long. National government debt. Well, yes. It just so happens the government can print their own money. Elon is tweeting that the United States is bankrupt? Yes. Sometimes I can't... He has to be doing this stuff on purpose.

There's no other explanation. I don't know. He's not that dumb. He's a smart guy. On Sunday, when Biden dropped out, I was driving home and... Just seeing, like, I was driving through Long Beach and people all over the place. And I think, like, most people just don't care. Like, it's, Twitter is just so fucking warped.

And the news and, like, oh, the country is being torn apart. And I'm not saying things are good. Like, I see what's going on it. It's not great. But I think that they're, outside of the people that, like, really care, the people that attend the rallies on both sides of the political spectrum, I think most people are just like go about their life. Yes. You know what I was doing when I found out the news that Biden was wrapping out, I was kayaking with my kids.

I came back and my wife goes, hey, did you see Biden dropped out? I said, no, I didn't. I was out on the water. I don't. And all these other people were doing the same thing. Probably not paying attention. Right? Yes.

I totally agree. The people who pay attention think it's everything that's happening tick by tick basis is the most important thing that's ever happened in the world. And everyone else is just out there living their lives. Yeah. I agree with that. All right, chart kid Matt created this for me. I wanted to see...

Wait, what are we looking at? Which chart? Oh, go to inflation. Okay. I've already made my case in the consumer. The other chart we had was household debt as a share of household net worth. I think this is from Bank of America. Periods of rapid disinflation, should say, you forgot a grand.

What do you mean? Just say grand rapid disinflation. Ah, okay. I see it. So I said this has to be over a period of 12 months, the quickest, one of the quickest dives we've had in inflation rate ever. It went from 9% to 3% in a pretty quick period. So he went back and looked at it going back to the 1920s for me. And so this is basically the 80s is the last time this happened. It went from 9.8 to 3.5, around 6%. You're looking at a two-year change. Yes. Right. Two-year change. And was it a recession or no? And this happened

all the time in the 30s and 40s and 50s because inflation was so much more volatile and it just hasn't happened in so long. So this is actually, historically, this kind of thing happens a lot, but it hasn't happened in a very long time. It's been over 40 years since the 80s since this happened and probably because we haven't had inflation high enough to warrant a drop like that. I'm kind of surprised there's as many noes in the recession column. Now, again, a lot of the data is from like the 50s and 40s and 30s, so I'm not sure how applicable that the column And some of it is on a, I had him look at, but some of it's not like the 70s, 1976 was recession on a lag, basically.

Like there was that recession in 73, 74, and then inflation fell from there. So close enough. But this was like kind of a historic disinflationary period that we've lived through. It happened really, really fast. And is this day, this inflation sticky? This is from Bloomberg. McDonald's to extend $5 meal. By the way, that was very TV anchory.

But he goes, for those who are listening, is this inflation sticky and then did like a point, like a finger point to the camera? That's a pro right there. McDonald's to extend $5 meal deal citing customer traffic. It is so funny that these, I mean, I don't know, I was a one who was lightly pounding the table

on the corporate greed thing, but corporations are going to do whatever's best for them. Lightly pounding the table. Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't pounding. And I was tapping the table. So they, this is funny, though. They're going to do what the customers tell them more or less. And they learn, like, listen, we push prices too high.

And now it's like, wait, we can go back to volume now. And this is what corporations do. Yeah, very successfully, I might add. Have you got the $5 meal deal yet? I don't need McDonald's anymore, unless I'm in an airport. Because if I'm on the road, on a road trip, and I'm in the mood for fast food, I'm going to spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's every single time. If I'm in an airport, you know, I just don't eat McDonald's that often.

I eat my kids McDonald's. That's what I do. I eat their chicken donuts. That's like my fix. My kids love McDonald's. Well, who doesn't? It's great. All right.

Ernie Tedeski has a new, he worked for the White House economic team, and now he's got a subset called the briefing book. And he looked, remember a couple weeks ago we talked about how there's really only been two periods in the last 50 years of wage increases for people? Because, like, in the late 80s, 90s, it didn't really happen. And he looked at. low-wage workers have only seen two periods of sustained real gross in the last 45 years, so I guess this kind of matches up. But it was the late 90s to early 2000s, and then we had,

so from 1980 to 1996 or so, we had stagnation in wages for low-wage workers. Then it took off. Then we had stagnation again until mid-2020s. And now it took off again. In the last 10 years or so, it looks like the biggest jump that we've seen in the last 50. Wow. It's weird. This started in like the mid-2010s. I feel like you didn't hear about it until, after the pandemic, right? It's just, it is funny to think about the fact that income inequality was one of the biggest economic sticking points in the 2000 pens.

There was a book about the CEO pay gap. Oh, yeah, and we didn't beat income inequality. It's still a thing, but it's improved so substantially, and everyone's kind of like, eh, okay, whatever. Also, one of the thing, doesn't get celebrated enough. One of the readers, I guess people celebrate bad news more than good news now. One of the readers pointed out in our inbox that, remember, we said, well, how come people weren't more miserable in the 80s? If wages were stagnant

on a real basis in the 80s, why is it looked at as this economic boom period? And the point they made was, listen, people, the boomers were moving up the income ladder. They weren't stuck in the same wage class, which, which, probably, Russ Roberts did that piece. Yeah, excellent. That is, that is a good point that people miss a lot of times when they look at different wage buckets. It's the fact that people don't stay in the same wage bucket their whole life or their whole career. They change and they move. So that was a good point. So, yeah, Ben's saying if you looked at the 25th percentile and it flatlined over a 10-year period, that's missing the huge detail that people are moving in and out, hopefully up, up and out. Yes. And I'm sure most boomers

did move up in the 1980s. That's the point. Somebody sent us an article, The Economics of Martini. We've been over the martini and the glass and the deliverable, and we won't belabor the point that Ben is wrong about how good a martini is with the long stem. Well, no, you can't show the economics of a martini without showing the psychic income of drinking it out of that glass. Well, this is from the business on his point of view. Okay. All right.

So in New York City, assuming... Does this mean the average price of a martini is $20 in New York City? Or is that just an assumption? Sounds about right. So they break it down by labor, OPEX, ingredients, rent, liability, insurance, credit card fees. And what's left over is not great. It's a buck.

Even in Charleston, the profit margins are a little bit higher. Do I what? I am constantly looking at food establishments where there's dining or grocery stores or whatever. And I'm constantly thinking, how do these places make money? They don't. The margins have to be so thin. You just, I feel like you, like, God bless the people that run these establishments. I think a lot of them do it for the love of the game.

But it's got to be such a difficult business to work in. It is. Robin and I, when we're driving on Merrick Road, we always look at stores. We're like, how does that place make money? And I always say, my answer is always, they don't. Just because somebody has a storefront with a business, doesn't mean they're making a million dollars. They're probably not doing very well at all. These businesses are really difficult to run.

Yeah. So the way you get around it is you launder money for the mob. That's how you make money. Yes, very profitable. Okay. So it's a higher profit margin in Charleston than it is in New York. Yeah. plus Charleston has way better views too

good views behind the scenes Michael and I sometimes discuss the doc in between tangents we go on here and I said you want to discuss the ETH ETF and Michael said nah and is that going to be the investor response

to this ETF? Is it going to be underwhelming that people kind of go we already had the big fanfare with a Bitcoin ETF is the ETH ETF going to be kind of a shoulder shrug okay that has less to do

with my feelings about the ETH launch and more to do with the fact that we have Matt Hogan on T-Kef on Thursday. Ah, okay. But you and I have talked about this many times that it's a harder, it's not as easy to sell it. Right? So I was watching Presumed Innocent this week. I think I'm almost caught up. I'm in episode six.

It's a pretty good show. And they talked about how when you're trying a court case, best story wins. That's what they said. I think they stole that directly. from Morgan Housel. That's possible. So they said best story wins when in the court case. And they're talking about the whole thing about it's all narrative driven and how do you sell yourself. And that's the thing, I guess, that the Ethereum ETF, it's not as easy as just saying Bitcoin is digital gold. That's, that, easy, easy sell for a lot of people. Yeah.

So people in the crypto space could go, no, you idiots. Ethereum is way better than Bitcoin because you can do this, this, this, that, that, and it's programable money. But that kind of thing goes over most people's heads, I feel like. Yeah. So I'll be interested. Maybe I was wrong on the Bitcoin ETF in terms of popularity, so maybe I'll be wrong about this, too. I will say this.

That could be tough. I saw a tweet this morning that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF generated more year-to-date inflows than the queues. That is insane. That is surprising. Considering how strong the cues have been this year? Yeah. That's pretty good.

Pretty wild. Okay. This surprised me. share of households planning to move over the next 12 months has skyrocketed. I mean, I'm guessing this is in anticipation of rate cuts, but that's a big jump. 18% of people up from 14%. There's cash on the sidelines in the housing market. I do think that if we get to like a 5% mortgage rate, there would be an unlock of demand.

I don't know if it's just one initial burst, but I'm sure there's so many people who are just like, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, until we, get to better mortgage rates, and then I'm going. I think you can make the case that there'll be a bigger all knock of supply. We talked about this stuff before, remember? We did. Yeah. It depends how many new household formation there is and all this stuff. Total housing, this is from Torsten Slok, who did the housing update.

I just love how this guy, he tells it, speaking of telling a story, it's all charged, basically. Every once in a while, he'll give a little two or three sentence. summary, but mostly he just lets the charts tell the story. Total housing inventory per person is at or near it's total housing units divided by number of households.

It's very, very low. And maybe going up a little bit, but there's still a lot of room for this to run. And he's saying that the demographics are going to be the thing. And that's maybe your what you think supply, I'm in the demand camp. Just because of this, U.S. population by

age and. Now, my only point was, my only point was, I think the people that wanted to buy a house like were more eager to buy than sellers were eager for sell, right? Like, the sellers just can't make the justification for selling a 3% mortgage, I know up to 7%. But if you're a new home buyer, you need to buy a house. Okay. That's, that's fair. That's my point. But I think that this chart, the demographics are talent has in which the chart shows that the most people in the United States are 33 years old, like, by age. And this should put a pretty high floor into housing prices, like, regardless of what happens.

Yes. I'm still in the camp that you're going to have to wait until the 2030s to see some housing, like, big-time weakness if the boomers decide to sell, which is not a guarantee. Or COVID-20 hits. No, but that'd be a boom in the housing market again. We spoke about this a few minutes ago, but Noah Smith had, a chart in here showing the ratio of the 75th to 25th percentile of weekly earners, so the spread between the two groups, and it's collapsing. He said the wage inequality between the American

working class and the American upper middle class that appeared in the 1980s has completely collapsed over the past decade. A chart that should be celebrated, that isn't. Do you also think this is why people in the upper class are a little cranky? Yes. This is why the middle class, especially, feels like they're not making progress. And I get that too. Yes. Because what happened following the 1970s is you had the middle class broke up a little bit, but we had more people going to the upper class, which was a positive. But you also had a few more people going to the lower class. And now the lower class is coming up more than the upper in the middle. And yeah, I'm sure that part of it because we think on a relative basis. Well, and guess who employs lower class, upper middle class? Right. So it's a double in me. That's true. All right. This survey surprised me from Bank of America via the Daily Chartbook.

The percentage of fund manager survey investors expecting a stronger global economy over the next 12 months fell by the largest amounts since March 22, driven by the most negative U.S. outlook since December. I'm not really sure what to make of this. Maybe it's just noise. It does go up a lot, up and down a lot, doesn't it? It's funny, Howard Marks in his latest letter, first one of his I've read in a while, but he showed the 40-year volatility of economic growth, dividends in the stock market. And the whole thing is the economy, the standard deviation was like 1% or something. And the stock market is 13 to 15 or something. And people think that the economy moves like the stock market.

And it does not. Yeah, it does. There's not that much volatility in it. Okay, a bunch of people sent us this. University of Michigan does the sentiment indicators and they do it by surveys. And we've always made it clear. The reason we're anti-survey podcast is not because we don't get how sampling works or surveys we think they're important. but the way that they're conducted has a big bearing on the outcome.

And they show it how they changed some of their, because people stop answering their phones, which this is how old I am. I remember when my first friend got caller ID, and it was a little box that you placed next to the phone and plugged into the phone. And it was like the, we were, I don't know, freshman in high school. And it was the craziest thing in the world.

Like, you can see who's calling you? It's nuts. So, of course, no one answers their phone anymore. So they started changing these surveys to, online. So they showed that expectations of inflation of 15% or more have skyrocketed. And it's like, why would people think there's more inflation of 15%? That's crazy. And they said, in recent months, elevated level of mean, long run expectations have been amplified by methodological, did I say that right? No. Methodological transition from phone to web interviewing

that began in April 2024 because respondents on web interviews are consistently more willing to report extremely high expectations than on phone interviews. So they're saying people are crazier with their answers on the internet they are on the phone. People are more reasonable if you talk to them on the phone. They're more unreasonable on the internet. And there's just so many different ways you could take this stuff. Yeah, this is the whole king caboodle.

It is almost like sometimes people think the internet is a fake life. Like the stuff you'd say to someone, Louis C.K. had this joke. The stuff you say to someone in your car or on the internet, you would never say it to their face. It's a warped version of reality. Yes. I think that, but anyway, this is one of the reasons that you can't, because I don't think the people saying these answers even believe it in most cases. Right? Yeah, it's just, they're just clicking buttons. All right, from the Wall Street Journal. The Internal Revenue Service has made it easier to take a limited amount of money out of a traditional retirement account, penalty-free. But previously you could tap your savings without

penalty in more limited ways, and often more paperwork. You can now take up to $1,000 of your funds for any self-defined emergency. You still owe income tax if you take it out and don't pay it back. So it'll be like a loan. I don't like this. I'm against it. I think they should make it harder for people to take out of their retirement accounts. Yeah, not good. If you make up your own emergencies, I don't think it's a good thing. I agree. Don't like it. Not for it. Let's talk about streaming. Last week, Netflix reported earnings. Alex Morris at The Science of Hitting does great work on this company. He's showing the trailing 12-month paid net ads. Wait, before we get into this, do you still on this stock? I don't remember. I do.

Because you famously caught the bottom of this one. I do. You know what stock I sold? Thank goodness. We're going to talk about us in a little bit. I sold Disney a couple of weeks ago. I think maybe in like the hundreds or something after the gap lower. I probably should. So Netflix was down 76% at the low. and that was in spring of 2022. So a little bit more than two years later, last week, it took out those, it took out the highs again.

Look at, well, this is a great example of stocks being not being very connected to fundamentals. Look at this chart showing the 12-month net paid ads. It cratered. They were actually going through it. You could say that Netflix deserved maybe 80% of a drawdown is too much, but they deserve to fall a lot.

Oh, no, they definitely did. They definitely did. They lost subscribers. They got super complacent. And look at their annual EBIT margins expanding as well. So the company is firing on all cylinders, and now effectively, they're the winner. I mean, Warner Brothers is a complete disarray. There's rumors circulating about what Zavlov is going to do with the company.

Paramount got sold, but, you know, a horrible exit by any stretch for existing investors. Disney is in the shitter big time. And then it's Netflix and YouTube. Those are the two ones. So Lucas Shaw wrote on Bloomberg this week. Their quarterly profit rose 44% year over year, and it's up more than sevenfold from 2019. They've got 277 million subscribers.

They've reached more than 600 million people around the globe. And they show the Nielsen ratings of the top 10 shows, and it's Netflix and everything else. I mean, Netflix has $33 billion hours spent on the top 10 shows, and Disney is number two. it's 5.3 billion hours. So not even close. In the same article, he wrote about Apple struggles

and how Apple is trying to reel in some of the spending that they've done. Because they really, like, they didn't have a ton of hit shows. They've had good shows, right? We love severance. They've had some other shows that people really enjoy. I've made the case that Apple is starting to slowly but surely become HBO. But it's not good.

It's very high quality. But no one watches it. No, but they're not doing that anymore. Like, that trajectory that they've been on is going to change because. Well, what they need to do is just stop doing the morning show. They spend so much money in the morning show, and that show is awful. Just cut the morning show salaries and you're fine. Ted Lasso is really their only, like, hit hit, right?

It sounds like Presumed Innocent is a little bit now, too. Presummed Innocent is great. So its streaming service is attracting just 0.2% of TV viewing in the U.S. Apple TV Plus generates less viewing in one month than Netflix. does in one day. Oof. So it's showing that Apple is going to be canceling its original series more quickly now than they have in the past.

There was a report that they're spending $20 million an episode on the new severance season. Whoa. Huh. 20 million an episode? How is it even possible? Big paycheck for Ben Stiller? I don't know.

Anyway, Netflix won. Game over. And that's that. All right. Getting back to our survey thing about are people really answering correctly? So I think I've talked about this before. This David Blanche Flower guy did this research about David Blanche Flower. He did this research on U-Shap of Happiness. So you're really happy early in life. It goes down, down, middle age. You bottom out in middle age. That's why they have the midlife crisis. Then as you get older and you age again, you become happier. It says U-shape. And he said, but not anymore. Now young adults on average are the least happy people. Unhappiness now declines with a age. age and happiness now rises with age and this change seems to start around 2017 the prime age are happier than the young so the whole point is people always say that like your best days

are high school and college like that's gets your happiest and i for me i had a wonderful i know there's some people who did not like their high school and college days i loved it i was very happy and my point here is are we sure young people are this unhappy yeah or do they just say they're unhappy. I think they're unhappy. I think it's much harder to be a child today than it was when we were growing up. Way harder. I agree it is. The social media and the internet and paying attention to stuff is harder. Think about how bad it felt. Like, were you ever left out of your friends didn't invite you to anything or you were just like home bored? Like it sucked. But you didn't really, it wasn't in your face. Now you see where everybody is. It's just, it's way more difficult. Yeah. No, I get it. I've said it a

million times. I'm so glad that cell phone cameras did not exist when I was in college. Yeah. Because it changes the way you think and act and behave and every, your life shouldn't be in a fishbowl when you're that young and stupid. Yeah. Ben, somebody left a comment. Ben has a target date fund of boats. That's pretty good. That is good. A pontoon is no notes. We got an email. The subject line is honking etiquette. Need to know the appropriate honkage for the following scenario. Three lanes at an intersection. Left lane is a turn only lien that stays red while the other two lanes are free to drive straight. All right.

So left turn lane, two to drive straight. Tracking. So there's a ready line of cars in the left turning lane, but some gibroni forgot he had to turn. So he's just waiting in the middle lane, blocking traffic with his left flasher. So now the middle lane is jammed. Nobody can drive straight because of one selfish asshole.

It gave him the longest mother of all hogs when I drove by. Yeah, no, deserved. Definitely. This person, you don't stay in the middle lane, wait for the light to turn. Guess what? Your shit out of luck. Too bad.

You missed it. You drive straight. You go past and you turn around. You drive straight and you wait for a you turn. This is clear, this is. And you can't hold up everyone else because you missed your turn. Totally agree. This is interesting.

Also from Charter, the box office versus video game spending. For every $1 spent at the box office in 2020, Americans spend $6.43 in video games. So it's saying, $203, spending on the box office is $8.9 billion. Spending on video games is $57.2 billion. Wow. Just not even close. Hmm.

You're the only keeping the theaters alive, my friend. Doing my part. All right, Ben, we've got a new segment. This used to be in our random segment mashed up with listener emails, but this is the part of the show that people seem to respond to most to, so we're going to give it its own segment officially,

and hopefully people enjoy it. The formality. We've got to go to the Google Doc in a while. Yeah. It's called Storytime. So here we go. A few stories from Michael from the previous week. Robin is off of the summer. She's a guidance counselor.

How does that change your day to day? Because you work from home mostly. You know, I like having her around. It's fun. We banter. We laugh. Say, what are you doing? Nothing.

Do something. I'm on vacation. That's fun. So she's cleaning out the closets. And we're going through the closet of my office, which she took everything out. It didn't put anything away. So that's just a bomb explode in my office. But that's the here nor there.

She was keeping old laptops I'm not even sure why Not even like the old Like HP or Dell laptops Like the Apple ones And these were probably from college So we're old I don't know

Call it 15 17 years ago They were fucking heavy Like actually heavy Remember when laptops used to have a CD-ROM drive In a laptop? I had a laptop With a CD-ROM drive So if laptops used to be so inefficient

Remember they used to have I don't think the apples had this But they used to have like The little like rubber red like button, it would have a pencil eraser, and now it was like the mouse. Yeah. It's come a long way. That's true.

My friend, the first laptop I ever saw in college, it was like a Bible thickness. It was huge, and it couldn't do anything. Yeah. So it was not a laptop. I'm saying, like, it was too heavy for your lap. We probably just used it on the desk. True. Yes.

All right, Ben. Is this not the ultimate conversation ender? So I'm at the kids had like visiting day for their not it wasn't sleepway camp At least we don't go to sleepway camp yet It was day camp so the parents come and they see you know they watch him do activities And I saw a kid that I grew up with How I've seen around town and uh I said hey what's going on man And his response was living the dream

And I know he wasn't trying to be anything other than whatever you know But but it's just like it's the ultimate I'm like all right see you Right that's like like the ultimate conversation ender. Not that I was looking to have small talk, but that's really like, don't talk to me. Like, hey, good to see you. I'm good. I'm good. You're good. Let's just keep it moving. Yes. That's a good way to vet people out of your life. That's the keep it moving, buddy. That's also secretly, I secretly hate myself and hate my life. I feel like you should actually adopt that since you don't like small talk. That'd be good for you. Oh, that's

true. Live a dream. But then you know you get the living the dream guys that are there on board of you. Oh, you're a living the dream guy? Me too. I'm also living the dream. Tell me about your dream. All right, this is awkward. You ever been in a situation where you tell somebody like, oh, what are you watching? What are you doing? Oh, don't you love? Isn't it so good? And they're like, oh, really? We don't, no, we don't like it. So I was talking to a couple at the beach and the particular topic at hand was House of the Drag. I'm like, how good is it? How great is the season?

Like, really? No, we think, like, it's kind of boring. And then you're like, oh, yeah, no, I see that? I can I, excuse me, can I actually offer my one detraction from House of the Dragon this season? I like it. Here's my only problem. Damon Targaryen, the, you know, the guy who played Prince Philip and the Crown? I didn't watch the Crown, but I know Damon. Okay. So he reminds me the same character, but I feel like they have him sitting in the corner shooting threes. They got to let him cook. You know what? It never works for me in a TV or movie? Dream sequences. Yeah, I don't like it. It's a crutch. The show is great, but he was one of my favorite characters in first season. they're going to bring him out in the end of the season with the dragon,

but he's in this musty old cabin having dream sequences. Let him cook. You really hate dreams, huh? The dream sequence never works. They did it on sopranos. There's never been a good dream sequence in any show or movie ever that's helped move the plot along. I actually think that's a pretty good take.

It's a, it's a crutch for... There's got to be... There's got to be some good ones in there. You know what comes to my brain with dream sequence? This is just random and did not move the plot along. to your point. Remember the scene in Jurassic Park 2 where Dr. Grant is on the airplane and he opens his eyes and there's a velociraptor sitting next to him or something? Completely forgettable. Why did that happen? Exactly. It doesn't move the plot long at all. All right. Great email here.

First time, long time. Love the show. I'd be able to put on a debate. Wait, I was a thought having it. Oh, you got more story time. All right. What do you got? Excuse me. I've got, this week was particularly chock full of stories. Let me tell you about my experience at the Food Fighters concert. Do you have a minute? Do you have a minute? Yeah. You called me on the way and said, you forgot your AirPods, and you literally went home to get your AirPods because you couldn't stand a train route without them. It was 70 minutes. I'm not doing. I'm not doing 70 minutes with no AirPods.

So I enjoy concerts, but there's a big caveat. So Dave Grohl and the FFetters, they rock pretty hard, right? But that's a great show. It was great. But there was a few songs that are quieter. It's more like intermission. You know, you see people scarring away, go to the bathroom. And let's just say I wasn't exactly 100% sober, right?

So maybe I'm feeling some sort of way. But he plays a song that goes a little bit soft. And, dude, I look to my left and the guy is singing very emotionally. And I think there was a tear rolled down his cheek. I'm like, I got to get out of here. This is too much. I can't take it. He was, it had emotional meaning to him.

Yeah, sometimes it gets weird with your surroundings where people are behaving in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Yeah, I can see that. So I got an F-pack, a fanny pack. You've seen me wearing one a lot lately. Yeah. So when you go to a place like a concert, so normally I carry my backpack to work. But if I've got my phone case charger, my phone, sunglasses case, this, that, or the other thing, you just, I don't have six pockets. So I'm carrying around my fanning.

Kind of surprised you're not a cargo short guy. I mean, that's ridiculous. That defeats the purpose. I don't want things pounding on my knees. when I walk. I over the shoulder F-pack. So the, it was like,

the sun went down. So it was dark. That's what happens when the sun goes down. And I sat in the wrong section. One section over. I'm looking around like, this doesn't look right.

So I get up and I realize I'm in the wrong section. I go to the right section. And I do the thing where I'm like, oh, oh shit, I'm checking my pockets. I don't,

I look at my fanny pack. I don't have my phone. I lost my phone. I brought a fanny pack and I still lost my phone. How the hell is that possible? So I'm thinking to myself, well,

all right, I lost my phone. You don't, I can't go into a different section and start crawling on the floor looking for my phone, right? Excuse me. Yeah, no, I'm like, no, it sucks. Like, all right, I lost my phone. That's, I guess that's just that it is what it is. I didn't lose my phone.

It dropped out of my, it dropped out of my pocket under my seat in my existing section. You definitely panic, though, when that phone's gone, don't you? I panicked. Yeah, I definitely had dark thoughts of, uh, all right, I guess this is, uh, what is happening now? It's a panicky feeling. All right, Ben, onto the emails. Need your input into a debate I found myself hangout at a bar recently. What's your age cohort's generational comedy?

That is a funny movie that defined you as you were growing up must be highly quotable. Always watch on television, something that came in your life at an impressional years of approximately 12 to 22. And so he says, I'm 35. Here's my definitive list in order. Wedding Crashers old school. Wait, hold, hold, hold. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

So he's 35 years old. So he was 15 in... 2004. You know what's scary to me? Old school came out when I was still in college. That's like an old movie now. What year was old school? Ninety-eight? No, old school, like 2001 or 2002. Oh yeah, that's why I was in college show. Okay. All right. So this person was 2015 and 2004. So these are these are his generational comedies for a 35-year-old. Wedding Crashers, Old School, The Hangover, Anchorman, and Superbad. And I will say, great list. For the 2000s, this is, this is my definitive list, too. I think it drops off after five. I would quibble with the order,

Hangover Anchorman or 1A and 1B to me But these five are unequivocally The list of the best comedies of the century 40-year-old Virgin Good, but doesn't... These five, to me, are it. I don't think you can break through this list. There's some good ones.

Knocked up? It's close. Yeah, I just don't think it breaks. So here's... I did this list. I put a lot of time and effort in this. So again, those are the... So I did it by decade. 1980s, this is personal to me.

Not best comedies. These are my favorites. Christmas vacation or vacation. I think those are interchangeable, but if I'd pick one, I'd do Christmas vacation. Uncle Buck, one of my most re-watched movies of all time. I'm a Big John Candy Guy. I quote that my friends and I would quote that movie all the time growing up. Beverly Hills Cock.

Wait, what's best quote from Uncle Buck? You should have seen the toast. I couldn't get it through the door. I don't know. You should have seen the what? Should have seen the toast. I couldn't get it through the door. Remember he makes the pancakes with the shovel?

I don't know if I might have seen Uncle Buck when I was a kid. I have no memory of it. Okay. No, I mean, the best line is when he's talking to the principal, and she's got the big mole on her face. Hi, Moli Russell's Wart. No? Okay.

Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America. So I guess I got two Eddie Murphy's on there, but these are just me. Nine-19-19-old. Hang on, hang on, hang on. What about the naked gun? I liked naked gun. I don't think it defined my, it just wasn't one of my defining one. I love a naked gun.

Is in my Hall of Fame. Also, also, oh my God. Why am I drawing so many blanks on movies these days? I'm getting very old. Oh, trading places. Okay, that's another good one. Another Eddie Murphy one. He defined the 80s, I guess.

1990s, I got Dumb and Dumber, Austin Powers, Office Space. There's something about Mary and Tommy Boy. Dumb and Dumber. Okay. Dumb and Dumber has been any list. I would add, I mean, that's not going to surprise you. I would add Wade's World. Okay.

That is one of your favorites. Billy Madison and Happy Gimor. Oh, Happy Gilmore is pretty close, probably. That's a good one. You know what? It was one of my favorites, probably irrationally so. But I just, sorry, not sorry, hot shots. I did that.

Funny thing is, I watched Hot Shots more than Naked Gun probably. Yeah, Hot Shots, it was definitely like my Hall of Fame. I mean, it stole from Naked Gun, obviously, a little too. So that's what I got. Any other ones I missed for you? Generationally, Comedy's growing up? I'm sure. We missed a bunch, but those...

Good question. I was doing the guy in the wall with the string. That was me trying to come up with these lists. It's a hard list. All right. Speaking of heavy laptops, I watched Notting Hill this past weekend, one of my all-time favorite rom-coms. One of the better rom-coms there is. And your laptop heavy thing, they were watching a movie on Notting Hill.

And he was watching on an old tube TV. And just got me thinking, you're like, God, I can't believe we used to watch stuff. Yeah. My first apartment out of college, I had an old Zenith TV. Tube TV was probably 19 inches. How did people used to watch TV on these things? No HD. No widescreen?

We spoke about this maybe a year or two ago. I was watching funny people, which I think was like 2011 or something, 2009. And they referred to a TV as a big screen TV. Like, it's only in the last 10 years that we stopped calling them big screen TVs, because they're all big screen. That's true. Because a handful of people you knew in your life would have a big screen TV. And they were rich people.

It was a mega thing, and now everyone has one. They were rich people. Speaking of Notting Hill, which I agree is an absolute all-timer, You know the guy who played Spike, his dumb-ass roommate, is the mentor in House of the Dragon Season 2? Oh, yeah. Okay. He's also the bad guy in one of the Spider-Man's. He is?

Oh, he's the lizard. Yeah, he's a lizard guy. That's right. All right. Give me your Twisters review. Speaking of Spider-Man, Mike, so Kobe, like, loves, loves Venom. Like, he just got a Venom toy. He's, like, obsessed with Venom.

and I showed him the trailer for the third one. Ed Robin goes, absolutely not. She's like, I'm like, what? Who cares? My wife always says that to me, too. He's 208 years old. I saw, I saw, like, in the mouth of Manus when I was nine. True.

I saw, I saw Friday in Friday the 13th when I was like seven years old. Probably not ready, but I did it. I did it. No big deal. So it turns out that Venom is rated R. What are your thoughts? Are you going to take George to see Venet? I feel like he might be,

seven years old is, that's pushing it. We've never tried Venom. He doesn't get into the superhero stuff very. He did like Spider-Man back in the day, but now it's all natural disasters and like over-the-top action for him. So I asked you,

could I take him to see Twisters? Because he saw the previous Twisters, and he was, that's it. That's all he's been talking about is he wants to see Twisters. Yeah, so Twisters was, my guy, Glenn Powell. Yeah, no, he's so hot right now.

It was exactly what you want from Twisters. It was perfect. Tons of fun, great action. They shot fireworks into the Twister. That's not necessarily a spoiler. Did you get any nostalgia for the original? I actually saw the original on a clash trip in fifth grade.

Did I get any nostalgia for it? Nah. I mean, I think you could make the case that this was at least as good as the original. Were there any throwbacks to the original in the new? No, no, not really. Okay. Because I re-watched it recently. Still holds up.

You know, Twisters was a ton of fun. And it's doing big numbers. It did $80 million at the box office. And speaking of that, Mike Cicardi shared a chart with us from, again, another one from Torson's lock, weekly movie theater visits. I'm saying we're pretty back, and I'm pretty bullish on the back half of the year. Oh, I'm not, I'm not looking, you know what? I'm not seeing Wolverine and Deadpool.

I just, I don't like Deadpool. I don't think it's funny. I know you're a big monomel's guy. I love it. I don't see it here, but I like it. I hope it's a huge hit because they're counting on this, but yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't do it from me. Okay.

Last week, Ben, I took umbrage with your saying that people are going to have nostalgia for this decade in a couple of years. We don't have economic nostalgia. You know what we do have, we have movie nostalgia. They're making a reboot of, I know you what you did last summer. Oh, really? Huh. Okay.

Well, I guess they did it with Scream. It makes sense. Jennifer, if you were coming back, hopefully? I don't know. I just saw Rodnith Smith's tweeted. All right, two more. Speaking of horror, there is a movie called In a Violent Nature that is a Shutter movie, and it is a throwback.

It's like Friday the 13th, Jason Vorees. The difference is that I've never seen a horror movie this way. It's done through the lens of the killer. So you follow the killer And there's one of the gnarliest Most Grizzly murders Let's call it a kill scene It's not really murder

Because murder is well it is technically a murder But Murder implies that it's like Sort of anything resembling reality This is just a this is just a kill It's not a murder to kill You could tell me in 10 years time There's going to be a big scandal

And saying every literally every horror movie That comes out now is created by AI Because there's so many of them Eventually that's just what's going to happen Yeah And lastly It's insane to me You see a horror movie once a week now, it seems like.

No. They come out all the time. I saw this a few weeks back. I forgot to ask you if you saw it. Did you see challengers? Is that the tennis one? Yeah. I did not see it.

Is it out yet? It's streaming. It's streaming. It was good. Okay. All right. A little heavy on the techno music, but it was effective. It was a...

I feel like actually, how about this? Save it for your next airplane ride. I feel like it's borderline elite airplane movie. Like much better in the plane in the air than I'm going to be. ground. That's fair. Okay.

All right. That'll do it. Animal Spirits at the Compound News. We'll see you next time.