Animal Spirits Podcast - Now Show Japan (EP.349)

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

On episode 349 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: where Ben stayed in the Keys, Michael's surreal experience with Eli Manning, the market needs a healthy correction, Japanese equities making a come back, good news for homebuyers, the new Costner trailer, and much more! Thanks to EZBC and Fabric for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC), visit: franklintempleton.com/strategies/bitcoin-etf Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric by Gerber Life to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/spirits. Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com The Fund (EZBC) has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement and other documents the Fund has filed with the SEC, when available, for more complete information about the Fund and this offering. You may obtain these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at sec.gov. It is also available on franklintempleton.com. Franklin Holdings, LLC is the Fund’s Sponsor (the “Sponsor”). Franklin Distributors, LLC, an affiliate of the Sponsor, is the Fund’s Marketing Agent.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by EZ, B.C. That's the Franklin Templeton spot Bitcoin ETF. I'm going to have to take the aisle in the crypto ETFs, I think. Pretty close. Although... Pretty close. Where's the line? Take the loss of move on.

Well, the interesting thing is that I don't think it happened like anyone thought it would. I think most people assumed the crypto-Bitcoin ETF would come out and the price would take off. Are you saying that you're wrong, but... not for the right reasons? I'm nudging the gold post. I'm not moving them. But it's interesting because the price did fall first. And then the, I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that people...

What do you mean the price fell first? It did. Bitcoin price fell as the ETFs came out. The price fell after the ETF came out. Yeah, that's what I mean. The price fell after the ETFs came out. And I think a lot of people thought it was just going to zoom higher like it has. But then it kind of came back.

And I think this is a win for the... the ETF and Bitcoin industry. How's that? Franklin Templeton recently put out a thought leadership piece covering the case for Bitcoin, the value prop and portfolios and all that sort of stuff. Hit the link in the show. We're going to be talking all about the crypto ETFs later in the show. The fund EasyBC has filed the registration statement, including a prospectus with the securities and exchange commission, that's the SEC, for the offering to which the communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus and that registration statement and other documents.

the fund is filed with the SEC when available for more complete information about the fund and this offering. You may obtain these documents for free by visiting Edgar on the SEC website at sCC.gov. It is also available on franklin templeton.com. See, this is the great thing about crypto coming into the mainstream, is you get SEC protection kind of, right? Sure. All right.

Today's show was sponsored by Fabric by Gerber Life, which was designed by parents for parents to help you get a high quality, surprisingly affordable, turn life insurance policy, potentially in less than 10 minutes. Michael, you've talked before how you used to sell insurance back in the day. I'm guessing you didn't sell out of term policies. Well, hang on, hang on. My job was to sell insurance. Don't act like I was successful at my job.

Okay. You were supposed to sell insurance. Right. No insurance was sold to anybody other than myself, really, and my wife. So I'm guessing, since you have a broker for literally everything in your life, you had an insurance broker when you got life insurance. For myself? I did a, yep.

I used our own Jonathan Novi. Okay. I wish I would have had Fabric by Gerber Life because you can do it online. And they say it could be less than 10 minutes, depending on your health history. Join thousands of parents who trust fabric to protect their family applying just minutes at meetfabric.com slash spirits. That's meetfabric.com slash spirits. Under 10 minutes? Could be less than 10 minutes.

No promises, but it's possible. If you're in pretty good health, last week you would not have made it in less than 10 minutes based on your health. Right? You were a little under the weather. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. That's meetfabric.com slash spirits. 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. Boy, is it good to be back.

Ben, I want to thank you for absolutely carrying me on your shoulders, Haxar Ridge style last week. I was broken. You were in a bad place, and we probably didn't give enough information to the audience about how you had a child throwing up in bed with you the night before. A lot of people were questioning whether you were just burnt out, but you really were sick. No, no, no. I was ill. Yes.

It was horrendous. I was, as I said on the show, five days or whatever, how much, it was too much. And it was definitely too much if you're sick. So I was laying on the lounge chairs with towels draped over my body trying to stay warm. And I was shivering. It was, it wasn't fun. It's not a pleasant experience. So, thank you.

You kicked ass. We got a lot of people in the comments section and in the emails, I should say, asking where did you stay in the keys? People want to know. I got a million questions about this. I also had some other people who gave me other additions of places to stay if you go back. So a lot of people. Why do you think people were so, so interested in that specific?

I feel like you could have said anywhere else, but for whatever reason, that really hit a nerve. People wanted to know. It might have been the pictures. There was some really good pictures from the back portion. And one of the coolest, so this place was called Tranquility Bay, giving them free publicity. And the coolest part about it was all these little townhouses had huge porches in the back that overlooked the water. If I'm sitting on a porch with the water in the background, that to me is, that's my happy place.

So that was, it was called Tranquility Bay. Largest pool, my kids were very excited about this. It set it on the sign. Largest pool in the keys. Oh, wow. Yes. So. You know, I haven't spoken.

Robin said, why didn't we go away with Ben? And I said, I didn't know that they had February, that they got February break as well. We didn't even know we were going away at the same time. Maybe next week we should coordinate a calendar. Should we do a family trip, a Bat and Carlson family trip next year? Let's do it. I'll rent a station wagon. We're going to need one of your parents' vans.

Okay. Before we get into your, why you're still walking on cloud, I want to read this one, and then this is going to transition into your day yesterday. Okay. So someone asked, and a lot of people thought you were burnt out last week, but you literally were sick. But someone asked, and this is a good question. This is like a middle-aged, midlife crisis kind of thing. Otherwise, what do you think about my goggles?

My headphones, I mean. These are ear goggles. I mean, you look like Princess Leia. Yes? Are those like your noise-canceling headphones? No, I just, I got, my AirPods were just, they're just so annoying. Too finicky. Connecting, unconnecting, disconnecting, disconnecting.

It is the computer to the iPhone, to the Apple Watch. It is kind of annoying. Well, because, God forbid, your phone rings during the middle. Your AirPods switched to that. You got to switch it back. Hard wiring, old-fashioned. That's true. I'm living on the edge here.

How do you both manage to produce podcasts every weekend of jobs, write, read, and raise families without burning out? How do you maintain this balance? What strategies do you use to recharge yourself? Personally, when I go on vacation, I completely disconnect from work. Yet I've noticed you guys continue podcasting even during your vacations. Do you ever dream of leaving everything behind and retiring completely? What are your thoughts on achieving a happy retirement? If such thing is this, this person says like this, this person says like this,

middle-aged person, and it's on their mind lately trying to figure out, like, the work-life balance. And I think the weird part about getting into middle age is you're just as close to college as you are to retirement. And that's just a weird place to be. Like, right, you're right in middle of those two life goalposts. And it does start to become a little more real. You can't say, I'm 30, 40 years until retirement now. It's like, that could be 20, 25 years. It's getting closer. I think the easy part of this for us is that we really like what we do. do. And our jobs are very flexible in that we can have downtime during the week if we want. And I think that's part of it. Just like it. So a couple weeks ago, we had Jared Dillon on,

and he took a blowtorch to the fire movement. And a few people wrote us and said, hey, you guys were way too tough on the fire stuff. And I think the reason I actually understand the fire mentality is because a lot of those people hate their jobs. They hate them. And if you're in a soul-sucking job, I can see the appeal of wanting. to retire at age 40 and become a blogger or a podcaster. But we like what we do. This is like a huge not to brag because I know a lot of people who hate their jobs. That's part of it. We love what we do. Yeah, I did start to feel a little bit burnt out towards the end of the last year. Sometimes it takes a toll because for me, it's 24-7 is a bit of a stretch, but it certainly

is mostly seven days a week. I can't think of, yeah, most weeks I am at my computer at least for a couple of hours, even on Saturday and even on Sunday, because there's just so much work to do. But it's great work. It's work that I find incredibly fulfilling. Maybe to give you a specific, how do we do it, we hire very well, right? We've got an incredible team around us. It helps that I don't have a boss. That's a big thing. We don't have someone looking over our shoulder, having us to fulfill quotas or like, why aren't you doing this? That's the biggest, that's the biggest, like, non-stressor we have in our life. We don't have someone looking over our shoulder telling us, like, you have to do this or you have to do that.

Yeah, so I think we're an incredibly unique and fortunate position to not get burned out or to not hate our jobs. So I don't know that I have great advice. If I was, I know for a fact that if I was in the corporate world, I'd be looking to retire probably as fast as possible. I know people who are like this who are like counting down the days or have a job where they could hit a pension age or something. And that is like their goal. And I can see that. But you and I have both had jobs that we did not like in the past. And we know what that's like. So I can, yes, I can see that mentality. So I think a lot of it depends on how much you really like your job or the people you work with. And the other thing is we work with people

who are our friends, which I've never done before. Like we have people, you and I are really good friends. We have people that we work with on a daily basis that are our friends and our colleagues. And that's a strange, it's not normal. I've only had horrendous jobs, except for this one. I was a waiter full time in college for years. I had to watch, this is a good segue way. I had to watch the first Super Bowl in the restaurant. Could you believe that? Why you were working? No, I can't even believe.

What year was that they played the first? It was 2007? It was 2008. I can't even believe that I didn't tell them to go fuck themselves. It was like, I'm not coming in. I did come in because that was my job, and I had bills to pay, and that was what I was doing. Okay. So before you recorded with Eli Manning yesterday, which you've been like, how, there's a couple months in advance that we've known about this,

And you called me right before he did it, and you go, I'm going to cry. I know I'm going to cry. You spent all this time to work on the introduction. It was really well done. And it's probably a good thing. You just got the tears out in advance. I thought I was going to make him cry, honestly. I think that if he was watching me tear up, I think he might have teared up.

So I was thinking about this as I was writing my intro over the weekend. So I wrote the intro and I walked downstairs and just I had like, it wasn't like, I don't do tears. I cry. I literally cry. I was crying. I had tears in my mouth. And I walked downstairs and Robbins like, oh, now what? And she's not super surprised because I cry all the time. I am a cry. She's like, why you cry? Yeah. She's like, why now? What now? So I told her that I was writing the intro. And she's like, oh, my God. And I cried a lot. I cried reading it. I cried writing it. And the reason why, just thinking about how. It's a good thing we both have wives that roll their eyes at us. Because that, yeah, that definitely helps. I think

sports from people's point of view who aren't sports fans, they might think, like, you're not even on the team. Like, why do you care so much? It's a huge part of my life, not just rooting for these teams, but all of like the life memories and the bond with my dad, like, if we don't have sports, I don't know what we would bond over it. I've had more, I've had more conversations with my dad about Michigan football than probably anything else in our life. Yeah. So, it's not just about the team or the players. It's about yourself and a reminder of where you were and where you came from.

So when I cried reading what I wrote for Eli, and by the way, he's the only person in the entire world. Even like Strayhan would be very cool. Like, very cool. Like, Patrick Hewn would be very cool. But nobody would have elicited that sort of reaction that I had for Eli. You probably have more Giants T-shirts than anyone I've ever seen, easily. It's not just about him.

It's about me. Like, I had Morgan texting me yesterday. he's like, so this is a pretty conventional career path, right? Getting kicked out of college twice and then I did not have it easy. And all of my, I'm not, you know, all my ruins were self-inflicted for sure. I got what I deserved. I was an asshole. But the fact that I made $416 in 2009, fast forward and Eli was there every step of the way,

like in my life. And now I get to do this, have him in our studio on my podcast. It was as much, I was crying as much about like where I came from. and tears of joy than anything else. Right, it's your own personal experiences. And I don't want to make it sound like we've got it all figured out because we don't, but I do think that there's something to occasionally having gratitude. Because there's obviously stuff that we do that we don't want to do,

and it's a pain in the ass sometimes, and whatever. Everyone has that with any job. But I think if you had that experience of not getting what you wanted before and now you are in a better place, being able to look back and have that gratitude is a huge part of being content in your life and not worrying about what other people are doing or people that are more thoughtful. successfully, you know, making more money and all that stuff. I think that's a big part of it is just being able to be grateful for the position you're in. Yeah. So what a, what an unbelievable

thrill. I had one blunder. Did you get to the part where I called Eli's dad a stockbroker? Yes. So it's true. His dad, when he retired, was a stockbroker. However, the fact that I just in conversation called him that, for those of you who don't know, Archie Manning, Eli's dad was a legendary quarterback, played in the NFL for a long time. That was your finance brain talking. To call him a stockbroker was... Well, then the older brother, the older Manning brother, was in some sort of real estate or private equity, too, right?

They must have finance and the genes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What an unbelievable thrill. I am on Cloud 9. Eli tweeted it and said I gave him a great introduction. At the end of the show, when I said, I'll be in Canton and I will when he gets inducted. He said, you should do my intro.

That was awesome. Unbelievable. Yeah, that was, I was very happy for you. Okay. So far this year, the Fed hasn't cut rates yet. And they're probably pushing back cuts. People think this is a bad thing. Inflation is kind of stickier than some people would like. People also think that's a bad thing. Oh, wait a minute. Damn and I forgot to put this in the dock. There was a tweet from, I think, I don't know if there's somebody in the New York Fed or who it was, but there was a headlines were running on Bloomberg last week like that we're not going to cut too early. It's funny because last week, the title of our show is the Fed should cut already. And you were making the case that they should just cut already. And he He's like, no, we're not going to do that. Yes, and I guess they're not, whatever. I'm sure it'll be fine either way. But so we've got now, I could say 13, but I'd like to say Baker's Dozen.

I actually looked this up yet. Do you know why they call it a Baker's dozen? Of course not. Back in the day, I guess bakers had to fill, this is like medieval times, I suppose. They had to fulfill quotas for bread. And if they didn't fulfill their quotas, they could get, like, flogged in the streets. So they always did an extra loaf of bread just in case because they didn't want to get whipped in front of people or something. So we have 13 new all-time high ends this year in the stock market through, I think, the end of last week.

So, like, a good economy is actually good for the stock market. This, like, we're in a situation where good news is good news. Now, is it, do we need a healthy correction? So things don't get a little crazy? Is that, is that getting too cute here? So this is from the bottom. I mean, I'd certainly, I'd certainly like a 10% correction. From the bottom in October, NASDAQ 100 is up 27%.

S&P 500 up 24%. Torsten Slocke says the current AI bubble is bigger than the 90s tech bubble. He's judging this by the median PE ratio of the top 10 of the S&P, which I don't think this is the right way to do it because it was so many other stocks that were outside of the top 10 that were in a bubble back then, not just the biggest ones. Regardless, PEs are higher. Bespoke had this thing where they said yesterday was a first 2% plus one-day gain for the S&P since January

2023, blah, blah, blah. And I think they also said, like, the two to three percent gains rarely happen at all-time highs. Usually you have a slow stair step up. I don't know. It would be getting too cute here. Just

a nice correction. We're always going to get a correction every year almost. Like, shouldn't, wouldn't it be nice to take a breather? Just so things don't get a little too crazy? Yeah, listen, I just said, I would, I think now is the time. Let's, we're We're super extended if you look at any sort of metrics like how far we are above the 200 or whatever. Yeah, it's enough variety.

Let's take it easy. What's your concentration one here? So there's a lot of just over the last couple of the years. I think we've sort of reached like a breaking point. I don't know, breaking point. It's just so noisy, the amount of concentration that we have in the stock market, right? We talk about it a lot. Urban Carmel made the point that this has been happening for the entire.

of the last decade. He's using a chart of the NASDAQ 100 divided by the composite or the composite divided by the 100. And the big have been getting bigger for a long time. So in other words, I guess what I'm saying is like if you've been using this as an excuse or something, you've lost, you've missed out on a humongous rally. Do you think the NASDAQ composite would have been more popular as a benchmark if they would have given it a number? If it would have been like the NASDAQ 2000 or something? because I feel like just adding the 100 after the NASDAQ gave that one more cachet.

I agree, but I also think if the composite was outperforming the 100 to the degree with which the 100 is outperforming the composite, then we would have no problem using that as a benchmark. All right. Not just the U.S. I know some people think it's not only just

U.S. stocks, but it's just the MAG7. Gun John from the Wall Street Journal. It's not just the U.S. major indexes around the globe are torn to new highs. Markets hitting new highs in February. Japan's Nicky Germany What did I say?

You called it the Nicky Niki, sorry It's the Niki Nikki sounds better In my defense The office manager in my building Her name is Nikki She's just sent out a office blast this morning

Saying all of the Construction is not done in the building It's back to normal Oh fair enough Hey last week we were talking about How Japan is in the economy's in a Western I don't understand Why is the stock market to optimize?

The Dax for Germany, stocks, Euro, Europe, 600, France's, what do you call it? The CAC, 40? It's the CAC. Argentina? Is that hyperinflation driven, though? Taiwan. All these countries are on the globe hitting all-time highs. All right, so I looked last week, from the bottom, March, what was it, March 6th, March 9th? I can't remember exactly, one of those, March, whatever, 2009. The S&P 500 is up nearly 900%. 16.5% per year. That's from the bottom. The, the, the very bottom, right? Not intraday, closing prices. I'm not an intraday guy like you. Intradate's probably even better. So I posted that on Twitter and someone said, yeah, that's fine,

but what about from the peak? And this got me back to my old Bob days, right? Investing from the peak. So if you invested at the peak before the 2008 crisis, so that's October of 2007, I went to the day, you're up almost 350%, 9.5% per year. So you bought right before a 56% crash that lasted 18 months or so and took five and a half years to break even, I think. Is that the round trip? I think it was like five and a half years, 2013. And you invested at the peak. You're the world's worst market timer, and you're still up 9.5% per year, which is essentially the long-term average.

That's wild. Not bad, correct? Uh, but Julie just did a tweet about this with Japan. It's not bad, right? Okay, speaking of Now Show Japan, uh, the Bloomberg had a big piece on this, how they are finally topping out for,

I think, I can't remember if it was 1980, oh, yeah, December 29th, 1989, and they finally set a new record on February 22nd. Uh, so it took,

it took a really, really long time. And the thing is, if you look at this chart here, it didn't really bottom out and they started the, uh, abenomics thing in, what, 2010 or something? So it's really been only the last 10, 12 years or so that things have been going up. I mean, this was the biggest bubble in history, all that we've

talked about this before. Here's my question. So they show this, they show how the sector has changed over time for the Niki. Niki, see, I got it at that time. And that Toyota is the only Japanese company in the world's top 50 list. So I remember when I got my MBA, all of the business classes. Maybe they've changed since. We're still teaching like the Japanese way of doing things, like the Japanese way of running corporation and just in time, inventory and all this stuff. Wait, how old are you? I didn't get it that. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago. I got my MBA in the 2010s. It was like 2011 or something. I got it. Okay. So maybe it's more like 2000. So it's not that long

ago. That's weird. So my question is Japan had this awful economy in stock market for 30 plus years. Why do the business schools all teach the way of the Japanese way of doing things? And I asked one of my professors that's like, why are we learning this if their economy has been in the shitter for so long? And he couldn't really answer me. Just a question. So Nick tweeted, if you put a dollar a day, that is odd. If you put a dollar a day into Japanese stock starting in 1980, you'd have over $17,000

today. That doesn't include price. I'm sorry, that doesn't include dividends and not adjusted for inflation. So Nick says, a real return would have exceeded 3.5% annually. not bad considering the now-show Japan thing. Also, Japan doesn't break the stocks for the long run is dead because if you go back to 1970, M-SCI Japan started, you get like 9% per year.

It's just all the returns were front-loaded in the 70s and 80s in the last 10 years. So the long-run in Japan still works. It just, the returns were so compressed because it was the biggest financial bubble we've ever seen. That's my answer to the now-show Japan people. If you have the intestinal, fortitude to withstand the ups, the downs, the lost decades, and everything else in

between. If you can do all that, then the reward eventually, being the keyword, is higher returns, period. But you don't get the U.S., like, over the last 100 years of being 10% per year without the risk of a Japan-like situation happening. That's the trade-off. Correct. All right, look at this one. Wisemtree, Japan hedged DXJ. Remember, this was the biggest ETF for a long time. Over the last five years, this thing is outperforming the S&P. So this is the hedged version of investing in Japan. It's outperforming the S&P by 40% over the last five years. Kind of surprising, right?

I wouldn't have guessed that. It's not just the U.S. that's doing well. All right, go Jeremy. That's a Jeremy Schwartz baby. Speaking of friends, there's really nothing cooler than watching awesome people kick ass. Right? Agreed. Like, especially if like, so West Greene,

Let me tell you a quick story. I met West Gray in our office on Park Avenue back in the day. This was 2013, maybe 14, but I think it was 13. Either way, I didn't know who Wes was. He came to our office. So for those of you who don't know who Wes is, Wes Gray was a PhD student at the University of Chicago. Studied under Gene Phama.

Under Gene Pharma. He left to go home. fight the war in the Middle East, came back and finished his PhD. I think this story's a, my deed is aren't 100% right. That's the gist of it. Wes is a badass. Wes is incredible. And he understands all of the Kwan stuff inside and out. And he also understands that we're all impulsive, greedy, like he understands a behavioral aspect of it as well. And I met him and I remember saying afterwards, like, who the hell was that guy? And ever since, I've just been a massive fan of him and Jack and the whole team at Alpha Architect.

They do, they just do incredible work. And they're, they're getting their due because they've got a product that is really unique, intelligent, and popular. It's got over a billion dollars in assets. And the product is very... They didn't even really market this strategy either. They didn't like put it out and try to get a bunch of money. It just picked up.

steam because of what it does. So the product is very simple in what it's trying to accomplish. The elegance is like what's under the surface and how they're doing it. They're using box spreads on the S&P 500 to replicate short-term bond returns. Gun to your head. Russian roulette. Explain what a backspread is or you have to pull the trip. Don't worry about it.

I'm saying I couldn't do it. They're buying calls and selling puts and offsetting that and whatever, Delta neutrals. Is your Delta neutral? anyway, they're replicating the return of short-term bonds, but the magic is that there's no interest being paid. There's no income. So the only time that you're going to pay taxes on this instrument, unlike if you're actually buying short-term bills where you're getting interest income, i.e. ordinary income, is when you go to sell. So it's like, it's like T-bills without the taxes on the income. Yeah. So massive.

massively popular, just really brings a smile out to my face. So, congrats to the entire Alpha. And the other thing that they really understand that Alpha Architect is the ETF structure and how to use it and how to like, how this system works. So Allison Schroger... Wait, hold on. Let me just read a quote from Wes. Love this guy. Gray said billion, this is from Bloomberg. Gray said billionaires have long had access to private bespoke schemes to shelter wealth from the IRS. He sees ETFs as a way for regular investors to get some of the same benefits. Here's a quote. We're one of a million products and ideas and innovators that, for lack of a better term, leverage the ETF tax

technology to get a better outcome. It's more of a democratization of tax dodges. Let's fucking go, Wes. Yeah, that's great. And he also says that like taxes are a form of, like, it forces you to behave. Like, he, he, Wes always says the reason that people who invest in real estate become wealthy is because they don't want to be taxes on it, so they're forced to hold it for longer. And that's a good thing. And he's saying that he wants to kind of do the same thing for ETFs. So Allison Schrager predicted in a Bloomberg opinion piece last week that the government's going to come after 4-1K soon. She's saying that, like, eventually there's too much spending. They're going to have to come after something. So they're going to do away with 4-1-H. I think this is

more of a hot take than anything. Would they ever come after ETFs like that for, like, saying like, all right, this is crazy. We can't have these tax deferrals in strategies like this. Because if they get away with a 4-1K, you just put all your money in ETF strategies, right? There's, I think there's too much... firepower, lobbying power behind the trillion dollar asset managers of the world. And I think that a lot of the magic of ETFs are actually a good thing. What I could see is, listen, if you have a, if you have a net worth of pick a line, you don't get, you don't get the tax benefit of like 401ks or something like that. That's what I was thinking to. If you make a $500,000

year or more, you don't get the 401k benefiting, the tax benefit anymore. And you know what? Heaven forbid I say I'm okay with that? I don't think anyone would really like get up in arms about it. And if we're being honest, I think people of that sort of level of wealth, wherever the line may be drawn, I think they'd be okay. Yes. But that's kind of thing that makes sense to me.

Like just phase out so many things above whatever income threshold you want. That's the price stuff that's probably going to happen in the years ahead. The problem with this and with all these discussions is that it gets, politicized so, so, so quickly and whatever. That's not even freaking go there. All right, Ben Johnson did a post on ETFs on the turnover. I think we, this is a couple of, I think we discussed this in January, but I just want to rehash us because we're going to talk about crypto ETS on a little bit.

This is a mind-blown statistic. So he shows a chart of the top 20 ETFs, I think by assets. Yeah, by assets. And he imputes the average holding period. Look how many Vanguard and I shares? So Vanguard, VTI, the average holding period is a whopping 665 days. Nobody's trading VTI. It's not a trading vehicle.

SPY, on the other hand, which is effectively the same exposure. Now, I know VTI is total stock and S&P is S&P, but nevertheless, they're pretty much damned the same thing. SMP or SPI is 17 trading days. Actually, even being more precise. The Vanguard 500 ETF is 285 days. The I share is 500 ETF is 262 days. SPY, again, the S&P 500, it's 17 days.

So people trade the shit out of that. Here's the point. SPY and QQQ alone accounted for roughly 36% of total ETF trading volume. Isn't that wild? Wow. Yes. Because those vehicles are also used to hedge and as placeholders or whatever, that makes sense.

So if you're a bunch of cash and you're going to get it invested in a separately managed account, you don't want to lose exposure to equities, so you put it in SPY while you allocate to those equities or something. I think a lot of it is that kind of stuff, too, or just shorting and all that stuff.

Ben, somebody sent us a picture. This looks like it's from California. Got to be with the Spanish-tiled roofs. Yeah. It's a picture of 7-11, and there's a little band, hanging over the doorway that says, we have lowered our prices. All right.

All right. Are we back? We're getting there. Somebody sent us a hot take of a piece that I actually did not have time to finish reading. But they asked the question, does raising rates actually increase inflation? That's a little too galaxy brain for me. No, no, no, no, I don't think it is. we have one example of raising rates taming inflation. It's really the 1980s. I'm sorry,

I don't think that the current example that we just live through. I think inflation would have normalized absent interest rate increases. I can't prove that obviously. But the basic question was this. Capitalism, and the basic premise is this, quote, capitalism is a credit-based economic system, an interest gets cost pushed onto consumers. So if you raise the cost of capital, companies, as we just experienced, will push that through to consumers. We literally just live through that. Now, I think that if you jack interest rates up and you destroy the economy and you cause a recession, absolutely that will bring inflation down. But I think that what we just did, taking interest rates from 0% to, I'm using like, air quotes, modest 5%.

I think that can actually contribute to inflation. I don't think that's crazy. Don't you think it's like a scale, though? Because when rates are really low, you're borrowing low, but you're not earning anything on your money. And when rates are higher, you're earning stuff on your money, but you're borrowing rates are high, it's kind of like a shock absorber where it balances out, don't you think? The counterpoint is that, or the opposite is not true.

Like, if the Fed were to cut rates, companies, wouldn't necessarily cut their prices. True. Yes. But I think that there's something there, like maybe everything that we think is true about raising interest rates to slow inflation. I just think there's...

Well, how about this? Corporations are smarter than the policymakers. I'm willing to say that because there's also a story in Bloomberg this week saying that, okay, the cost of debt is so high, we're going to issue more equity. So companies are issuing more equity now because it costs way too much to take on debt.

And so I think corporations are much more malleable to the economic environment. This is like the whole thing of Uber really didn't want to make money in the 2010s because they didn't need to. And then 2020 sits in a different environment. Okay, we'll make money now. Well, how about this? The Fed, I just think there's something to consider here, this like common orthodoxy that

you raise interest rates and you slowly the economy. I don't think it works that way anymore. We just live through it. The Fed tried to slow the economy and they couldn't. I saw Neil Dudda had a piece this morning and he said like, so we're really to assume that the lags all of a sudden like 16 months in are just going to kick. in? Like, yeah, no, it's over. He was saying, like, listen, the housing market stuff already happened. We already did that. What else is, what else is going to be the effect? Unless you

just leave rates here forever, I don't see it. Like, all of a sudden, lags are going to kick in because it's been 17 months instead of 16 months. The economy is still strong. Maybe it's a stretch to say, or maybe not, that higher interest rates actually spur inflation, but I don't, but I think the opposite is more, is kind of crazy. Like, it's not a given to me that higher interest rates are going to slow the economy? My whole thing is rates matter less than people think, and it matters more. The animal spirits, for lack of a better term, matter more than interest rates. Are people willing to speculate? Are they willing to take on debt? Are they willing to spend?

That matters more than rates. I think the emotion matters more than anything. All right. From Axios, I think this is a good thing. The U.S. has 2.7 million more retirees than predicted. This is from something from an economist at a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That number was 1.5 million six months ago, more than 80% increased. Before the pandemic, there were often fewer retirees than expected. So this is, we're taking a trend line based on demographics. How many more people are retired than expected?

And from 2000 to 2020, it kind of, you know, went back and forth, but never really got off trend that much. Now it's way off trend. So higher stock prices, higher housing prices. I'm guessing COVID made a lot of old people rethink their lives. And geez, is that extra four years of working really going to matter to me? Why is this a good thing? Is this a good thing for the, not only for people retiring because, guess, they get to spend their twilight years doing something they want, is this a good thing for the economy? Those boomers are going to be spending money.

If they're retiring early, they're going to be pulling out of their retirement accounts. You know, they're going to be vacationing. Have you seen how packed cruise ships are? I think this is a good thing for the economy if more people retire early. Maybe a bad thing for the heirs and the inheritance, but I think it could be a positive for the economy. Thoughts? Yeah, my negic reaction is, I think you might be on to something. That's possible.

All right. After last week's show, we've been talking a lot recently about how the U.S. is just kicking everyone else's ass in the economy and how we have more entrepreneurs and all this stuff. And Duncan, actually, last week after the show said, well, what, and we talked about, you know, maybe the solution to more screen time is taking more vacations. I said it tongue-in-cheek, but I kind of meant it. So Duncan sent me this article that said, three European countries top the charts for their generous pay. It's like which countries have the most paid off vacation days.

Austria is number one with 25 days of paid leave and 13 public holidays on average. Bringing a total of 38. France and Spain had 36 each. South Korea had 31 days. The U.S. had 10 total day, almost four times less. So sure, they have less economic growth over there and productivity and their stock markets aren't as good, but do they actually have life figured out more because they take more time off and enjoy themselves? It's a pretty good, it's a good conundrum there. Yes, yes, we have a great economy and their stock market kicks ass, but we're all overworked and stressed too much and don't spend enough time relaxing and taking vacations.

I don't know what the right answer is, but it's somebody to consider. Maybe they have a way more figure out than we do. Yeah, sure. Our economy hasn't grown for 36 years, but we all get four weeks off of vacation. How much time off do you need? That's the American mentality, though, isn't it? I mean, honestly, like, listen, I know we opened the show saying how unique we are and that we love our job. I can't wait to get back to work.

I love Mondays. I don't want to take time off. I know. I'm just, I don't know. I'm just saying maybe this is part of the reason that we're all so worked up here all the time. We have road rage incidents and people getting into flights on airplanes. Guess what? With all these, 38 days off a year, you're not getting AWS.

It's true. I'm just saying that's a tradeoff, though. It doesn't seem like a tradeoff. How much vacation do we need? How many vacations do we get a year? you're going to have an iPod surgically implanted in your eyes so it never goes away and Europeans are going to be on the beach smoking cigarettes in their speedos. That does sound nice.

I would love to be on this beach smoking cigarettes in my speedo. And you do have a speedo. No, I don't have a speedo. Did I tell you that story? Yeah, we went over this on the air one time. Yeah, you wore it on your honeymoon, right? Or on some vacation? Not quite.

It wasn't a speedo. Robin wouldn't let me. I tried to buy one. It was just like my underwear. Tell Robin, if we go on a family vacation together, though, it's going to be all tropical bros all the time. So she's going to have to get used to it. Workday knows there are two kinds of people in business,

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so you can add value even faster. Workday, moving business, Business Forever Forward. Hey, guess what? Guess what I am doing after we finished recording? Speaking of surgically having things in my eyes, I'm going to pick up the Vision Pro. All right, I reserve the right to make fun of you when you wear it.

I've never in my life bought the V1 of anything. And I didn't think I was going to buy the Vision Pro. I really didn't. What got me over the edge was... Come on, you were like one of the first guys who invested in NBA Top Shot. You were envision one of that. Fair. I don't want to wait for the second one.

What if the second one's two years away? I don't think you're going to miss anything, but I think you should probably get it. I kind of figured you would. Really? Oh, yeah. You can do a whole podcast with it on. Do you think I'm going to return it in two weeks? No, I'm sure you're going to love it.

I'm incredibly excited. All right. I'm still holding out. This is out of my character to splurge on something like this. Like, this is, I don't do this. So I've got a theory I'm stealing from Derek Thompson. and you see a lot of rich people complaining about the economy, even though they've benefited more than anyone else

for the past 40 or 50 years, for sure. I have to reject this a little bit. I'm sorry. When you say you see, you don't see the people that aren't complaining. This is very much online behavior. Okay, but a lot of people are online these days. How many, I mean, not really. When you say online, we're talking about Twitter.

Nobody's on Twitter. Also, speaking of online, someone did point out that, waiting in line, you say on, and I did notice it. You said it twice last week. I didn't want to rub it in because you were feeling bad already, but you said I was waiting online for something. Like, that is a weird way to say it. So that is a weird way to say it.

It never occurred to me. When you wait online. It makes it sound like you're going on AOL. Right. You're waiting in line. And I said that, I mentioned that Chris, I was like, hey, it's weird that I say that I'm waiting online, right? Because you're in a line, like you're in line.

And Chris was like, wait. I think I say online. Maybe it's a Long Island thing. It's a Long Island thing because you say I'm on, I'm on Long Island. Yeah, but I agree. Objectively, being online, standing in line is the proper way to say it. But anyway, I sort of reject the premise that rich people are complaining about money or complain. But go ahead. What's, what's... Again, and maybe it's a political thing. I just think there's a lot of rich people complaining about the economy and gasolating people into, like, thinking that the economy's worse than it is.

You have to admit there's a lot of that going on. There has been for some time now. I don't have to admit that. I don't. Okay, that's fine. Present the case. All right. Well, so Derek Thompson had a really good podcast on the other day of all about real wages. And he's saying the growth in wages for this cycle has been, women's wages have been higher than men's, black wages have been higher than white, young wages have been higher than old, and low income has been higher than high income. The growth, not the wages themselves, obviously. I think we've seen such an unwind of some of the trends that have been happening.

and I think some people do not like it. And I think a lot of it is politically motivated, but I think that a lot of that has been going on and why there are certain people who try to tell you that the economy is worse that it actually is. I'm sorry. I reject it. I don't think that the people that you are making up or are talking about,

I'm not saying they don't exist because certainly they do. You think that they either see this data or just intuitively know it and don't like it and are having a fact of the people that complain about McDonald's. I'm paying $12 at McDonald's instead of $10 at McDonald's. Dude, that's like one, that's effectively one person.

It's such a small, tiny fringe group that is being vocal about that. All right. I think you're wrong. Think about all the sentiment indicators for the last two years have been negative on the economy. How do you explain that? That has nothing to do with rich people complaining about the economy. That's actually the opposite.

It's everybody else complaining about the economy. And I think a lot of rich people have been gaslighting people on the lower income side of things to think the economy's worse than it is when they're the ones who have seen the biggest benefit income lives. You think rich people are gaslighting everybody else? For what purpose? I think a lot of them, a lot of them are. You don't think that that's been happening in the media and all right. I don't know. No, I don't agree with that premise. All right. Here's another one. Non-managers have seen stronger inflation-justed wage growth since a pandemic than managers. Look at this. This is a huge

divergence since 2020 of the managerial class doing a lot worse than the non-man. This is, and this is a good thing again, and I think a lot of people don't, aren't realizing what a good thing this is. It is very interesting that, like, upper middle class people are being outperformed by everybody else. Yes. That hasn't happened in a long, long time. Yeah. I don't know.

Listen, maybe it may be wrong. I'm not trying to be too harsh in your rich thing. I just, I genuinely don't say it. All right. Well, you're not online as much as me anymore. Maybe I'm too much in the online discourse, but I see it happening quite a bit. All right. This is interesting from the Wall Street Journal.

half of college grads are working in jobs that don't use their degree and they show the share of grads in these certain industries and the whole point of this is like, well, maybe college isn't worth it. You don't need to go to college. I know a ton of people who studied a certain thing and went somewhere else, and I think that's normal that you don't figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life from age 18 to 22.

Listen, I studied economics and I became a waiter. But I was also thinking, like if I could bottle up that first, the feeling I had the first week of going away to college, being on my own for the first time, and meeting new people and going to parties, I would be a billionaire if I could bottle that feeling. And a lot of people say,

do I need to spend $100 grand to, like, party and get away and be on your own for, no, you don't have to do that, but like, there was so many other aspects of college that are totally worth it, regardless of the area you go into, of course, not everyone's going to figure it out. That's just the law of averages

because more people are going to school, less people are going to figure out and find the dream job that they want. I think that's normal. Yeah, you're giving me the sweats thinking about my first week of college. What was that? Did you not go into classes? Just not going to classes and just falling so far behind and... I definitely, my first semester of college was by far the worst grades I got.

I don't think I got a 0.0 like you did. I got a 0.9. But I definitely did the worst that. It took me a while to figure it out, too. But there is something about the, I don't know, that, I don't think you can put a price tag on the experience of college. I agree. I agree. All right.

Let's talk about the ETF. We're talking about the crypto ETF specifically. Balchun has tweeted, the 10 Bitcoin ETFs netted $2.3 billion last week for context, that is more. than any other ETF took in. I bid alone was number two. This brings total net to $5 billion, which is more than the BlackRock as a whole has taken in. Again, this is all net of GBT bleed, throw that out, and the number gets even crazier. So pretty wild chart there. Balchun has also tweeted it's official. The new nine Bitcoin ETS have broke an all-time volume record today, today being yesterday with $2.4 billion, just barely beating at day one, but about

double their recent daily average. Ibit went wild, accounted for $1.3 billion of it, breaking its recent record by 30% of them. Lastly, James Seifer tweeted an update on the Cointucky, on the Kentucky Derby, as they're calling it. This is truly mind-bending, Ben. The Bitcoin ETFs have $40 billion in assets. Even if you take out GBTC, completely take that out,

it's just a it's a hair under 16 billion so is it one month in it's one month in and it's 16 billion dollars even if you assume that some of the gbtc money converted into other ETFs i don't know two billion make it make up a number even if you take that out so now you're at uh 14 billion of inflows of new money coming into the ETFs 14 billion maybe it's 13 maybe it's 14 it's a lot of money it's a lot of money it is a lot of money it is a lot of money so i i took the i said i lost but you also said a hundred billion so you're going to be wrong too i don't know that i said a hundred billion you said a hundred billion i mean listen i feel like that's a classic that's it that's a deflection just because you were i already took i took the l i said i did but

i also think i was the the it did sell off and crash a little bit at the new at the people sold the news. What does that do with anything? I said, I think that's going to happen. It happened for like a week, but anyhow, I'm willing to take the L. I said that. The price is, uh, the price is going bananas. Bitcoin is $57,000 this morning as we speak. I still don't get how this isn't bearish for Coinbase. I know people are still trading it after hours and such and want to trade it 24-7. I still don't, because Coinbase just seems to follow the price of Bitcoin. I still don't understand how this. is not bearish for them? I've been wrong about this the whole time. Matthias tweeted 832 new bitcoins created in the last 24 hours.

A single ETF just purchased 81% of that new supply. Jeez. Okay. So how is this not bearish for Coinbase? It's very simple. The higher the price goes, the more activity there is. I mean, that's exactly what it is. It's not more complicated. But shouldn't there be less activity on Coinbase, all things people? Why? Why? Because there's more stuff, more people trading ETFs as opposed to buying and selling a coin. Base. Apparently not. People that are trading on Coinbase are trading on Coinbase. All right. This is interesting. David Ingalls from Bloomberg wrote that from the bottom.

Again, hold on. Dude, one last thing. Like, maybe beating a dead horse here. The ETFs trade from 930 to 4. So the reason why Coinbase is correlated to the price of Bitcoin, it's just the higher it goes and more people want to trade. It's just that's that simple. I get it. This is interesting to me, too. People thought this was going to change. It's kind of amazing still having David Engels from the bottom. Bitcoin and ETF, or Bitcoin in a Thier and he plotted them both out. They're both up 110% from the October bottom and more or less afouled each other. Remember when people were saying, like, Bitcoin is going to get left in the dust or Ethereum because it's programmable money or it's a computer, is buying the HTTP

ahead of whatever people said about Ethereum, it still just tracks Bitcoin, more or less. It's kind of wild that they haven't diverged more. I mean, I feel like that's cherry picking, because if you look at a price of Bitcoin divided by ETH, like, they diverge. Okay. Yeah, I guess. It's kind of like the NASDAQ and the S&P a little bit, but Yeah. I guess a lot of people predicted like Bitcoin is going to get left by the wayside eventually, and that hasn't happened. No. All right. Good news for homebuyers. I'm trying to fight good news for home buyers. Mike Simonson, 498,000 single family homes in the market. That's a 1% more than last week and 16% more than last year at this time. He's saying mortgage rates are finally starting to help with inventory a little bit. So he has this chart that shows

when rates and inventory were rising, or when rates rise, inventory rises, and when rates fall, inventory falls. And I think he's saying people are coming around the idea that maybe these mortgage rates are higher for longer and stickier than we thought, and that is actually driving inventory up a little bit. Still way, way lower than it was pre-pandemic.

But I guess we can build on this. As long as, I mean, don't you think it's, we always say never try to time the holiday market if you can afford a house and you want to buy it, buy it. Don't try to time it. But if you could buy one now before rates fall and we get a demand surge and then you can refinance, isn't that almost a better option? I completely agree on with everything you just said. Timing the house and market is not wise. But if you can afford to buy today before rates

eventually fall, I think it's a smart decision. Duncan just popped in here. Just at John check, here is Michael's Bitcoin numbers, several shows back. Okay. I said $100 billion off the cuff, but I walked it back to $50 billion. Okay. That, I feel like... 50's going to happen. This year? I don't know about this year.

I don't know if I put a time frame on this, but that's... We said this year, but... Okay, well, it could happen if it's at 15 already, XGBTC. Yeah, if the price can... If the price goes parabolic, you could be right. Fair. Okay. It's like 6040, me to you, for losses.

Everything is 6040. All right, there was this piece in the New York Times Someone sent me about these real homes The Great Compression in Housing And they're like five to 700 square foot homes And it's saying for people who thought the dream of housing was over There are these little homes now These are real?

These are real It's like five to 700 square feet And if you look in the inside of them The kitchens are nice They got it nice It's... Where are the stairs? Hold on, I got to see this Is it in the...

Click on the thing and there's more picture But it's just saying, listen A lot of the post-World War II suburbs that people are, you know, we want to go back to the 1950s, those were about 750 square feet. And that's about the size of these little houses they're building now. And it's a small percentage of places that are building it. But there's these neighborhoods cropping up and it says people are buying them for like $145,000. They're affordable. And you can actually own a home.

It's just smaller. And a lot of people are saying, this isn't a great thing. But a lot of people are saying, look, this is great for me. I become a homeowner. Yes, it's smaller. Not what I wanted, but I can afford it. I like this trend. It makes sense.

I don't know. Those are really small. But again, that's what it was in the 1950s. People keep saying, why don't we go back to the 1950s? This is the 1950s. That's how small those houses were. All right, 750 square feet.

I mean, listen, that's the size, that's the size of apartment, so. That's what I said. It's an apartment size, and you get to be an owner. All right, here's a question I have, I'm going to pose to you. I was thinking about this.

People trying to, like, time the housing market based on where rates go. Why doesn't the Fed set mortgage rates to? I know the pushback initially would be like, well, you don't want the Fed having to do like credit checks and the rates are different based on your different, but why doesn't the mortgage, why isn't there a band of mortgage rates set by the Fed? So people can actually, because you know the Fed sets all this stuff about, here's where we think the Fed funds rate is going to be. And they're not right usually, but if the Fed could give people expectations about mortgage rates, maybe we wouldn't have to have such a weird housing market all the time. And people could actually plan a little better. Like if I know the range of rates for the next 12 months is going to be safe.

6% to 8%? I can plan accordingly. Why wouldn't the Fed just set mortgage rates if they want to have more of a impact on economic activity? Like, why should we have this spread that can blow out and compress based on bond buyers as opposed to the Fed just setting them? I guess my knee-jerk reaction is like, isn't it enough that the Fed sets overnight rates? And do we really want them setting mortgage rates? Well, if the Fed really wants to impact the economy, wouldn't this have a bigger impact than changing short-term rates? Because we've already seen short-term rates don't have as much of an impact as they thought they were.

Well, I mean, mortgage rates follow interest rates. The spread isn't constant. Now, you know what? I don't want them. No, I've rejected. I don't want the Fed touching our mortgage rates. The volatility of the mortgage rates is what really, I think, could screw people. No, but they do impact that by buying or not buying mortgage bonds.

Yeah, buying $20 billion worth of mortgage bonds a month keeps the spreads really tight. I don't want the Fed involved in my mortgage. I do. I think it would help more than they already are. For such a huge market and a big piece of the economy, I think it would help a lot. By the way, that sounds ridiculous because, well, all I have, the only person I have to thank for my 3% mortgage is the Fed. So I maybe thank you, Fed.

Yeah. Again, I just don't think it's fair that we were able to get 3% mortgages and now people have to pay 7. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's fair either. I guess life's not fair. No, it's really f***ed up. It's not fair.

I just don't know what the answer is. What's the answer? You just say mortgage rates are 3% forever, for everyone? No. I think every first time home buyer gets the chance of getting a 3% mortgage. I think that's fair. You have 18 months to do it. Go. After that, sorry. So if you come into the 19th month now, you're f***ed. Yeah. Yes. I don't know. I'm all about fairness, but, you know, markets aren't always fair. Life's not always fair. It's true. So Ted Gioia wrote a post. I don't know if I'm saying his name right. And he has a chart. that he calls the rise of dopamine culture. And it's athletics, journalism, video music, images, communication, relationships.

And it shows slow traditional culture, fast, modern, and dopamine. So for sports, for example, it goes from play a sport to watch a sport to gamble on a sport. For journalism, it goes from newspapers to multimedia to clickbait. And you know, you know where this is going. He said, the fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. but it's not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity. The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds and must be repeated.

It's a huge business and will soon be larger than arts or entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok, an aptly named platform for a business based on stimuli that must be repeated after only a few ticks of the clock. I agree with some of this, but I also reject a lot of the premise. Okay, go ahead. I'm thinking of my own personal media consumption. Yes, I don't read as many books as I did in the past, but I listen to way more podcasts. So I'm not listening to two or three minute things on the news.

I'm listening to hour, hour and a half long conversations. That's longer. Most of the stuff I would watch that was really good entertainment in the past was movies. Now I've extended that to watch TV. Like so many of what would have been movies in the past around miniseries or TV shows, that's longer than it was in the past. Right? So I think I think I sort of agree. let, there's no doubt that TikTok and Reels is big, big business, but are we all zombies

addicted to Reels and forsaking watching sports or watching movies? I think this post is fair, but maybe went too far to one side. It's clever. It was very clever, but I don't think it's, I don't think it's totally accurate. Speaking of a podcast, I was listening to Simmons on with Spade and Carvey. And he was making an interesting point about SNL, because they were talking about SNL a lot, that it just, it doesn't work anymore because there aren't enough singular references where everybody would understand the joke because the culture is just so bifurcated these days. Right. I thought that was interesting. I also thought it was interesting that Shane Gillis, who I'm seeing in a week. I'm very excited about that. I thought it was interesting

that he's hosting SNL. At a big place or like a comedy seller? Radio City. So he famously got canceled for for uh for saying some stuff um from s andl oh that's right he got fired from he got fired not can't he got you got fired and i wonder if like that sort of stuff has swung too far where everybody's like all right can we bring it back a little bit like could comedy be comedy are we allowed to like laugh without canceling people and i'm pretty feel like a tinge of optimism that we do there's so many comedians out there who say like you can't say anything funny anymore and they're saying as much as they want so i i think that that movement of you can't say anything anymore without getting canceled i really think and i hope that peaked i think it's behind us yes i agree

also on the other side of this like going away from like the reels and stuff so matt bellany got a great feature um in vulture over the weekend he has i i'm a paid subscriber to puck i think they do incredible content i'm a huge fan they have 15,000 paid subscribers. So I think there's huge demand for not long form. I don't want to read anything for three hours, but for just quality. Yes. In a niche format. Yeah, you and I like paying attention to the entertainment world stuff because it's the intersection of movies that we like and TV, but also business. Yeah. And finance. All right. This is a great email. Gents. Re, Michael's Martini choices. What makes the martini the greatest of drinks is its purity

and simplicity. The realization that there is nothing better is the arrival of wisdom. Hmm. A martini is ice-cold London gin and a hint of extra dry moot with a twist of lemon and an olive. Never foul it with olive brine. A dirty martini is just that filthy. The brine overwhelms the fine taste of the gin. On that note, vodka that came from someone in England. On that note, vodka is tasteless grain alcohol and doesn't belong anywhere near a martini glass. Wow, shots fired. Related, there's zero difference between vodka brands. So-called, All the espresso martinis and other kiddie variants are an abomination. Good only for 20-something women with bad taste.

They are not martinis. Great show, aside from the espresso martinis gag. Keep it up. This person, I'm pretty sure they said they're bred ashore. I've already solved the reason that martinis are so great. It's not the stuff that's in it. It's the glass. That's it.

But you were saying that's the glass. But you were saying it's like psychological. It is. The glass makes it. This guy, if they put this in a, if they poured him, a martini in a wine glass or a pint glass, it wouldn't taste as good. It's the glass.

He thinks it's the remorse. I agree it wouldn't taste as good. It wouldn't taste as good. It's not psychological. It wouldn't taste as good. There's something about the glass. Science, Bann. It's psychological.

So I just call you Bann? It's science. It's science. Okay. What's this about Denisville Nouve? Oh, so your boy, Deney. By the way, he looks like Kevin Young. I can see that.

So he said, this is great. I hate dialogue. Dialogue is for theater and television. I don't remember movies because of Good Line. I remember movies because of a strong image. I'm not interested in dialogue at all. Pure image and sound. That is the power of cinema. But it is something that is not obvious when you watch movies today. Movies have been corrupted by television. So this isn't, he's saying that television has made it worse because there's so much more time and you've got to fill. And I kind of agree with him, but there's a good finance. You're a dialogue guy. You love dialogue. I mean, that past lives with nothing but dialogue. Dini and I are cut from the same

cloth we're movie guys that's that is true i think in my recommendations i might be kind of turning into a film guy i'm 90-10 so i watched the holdovers you love the holdovers that's not a film that's a movie that's a great movie yes you didn't watch it yet no i don't i don't think i'm to like it should my wife and i watched anatomy of a fall which i i guess is up for a few Oscars, but it is a French movie with, I think half the movies in French with subtitles and half of it is in English. And this is definitely a movie you wouldn't like. But it's essentially a couple who lives in the French Alps and they find the husband dead. He'd fallen out of the top floor window. And it's a courtroom drama of did he kill himself or did the wife push him out

of the window? And it's two and a half hours and halfway through the movie, you go, how can this keep going? But it was really, really, it's like a movie that really makes you think. think. Why would I not like it? I love courtroom dramas. Okay, give it a try. I just don't think it's a Michael movie. It's all dialogue. You might be right. Okay. You told me watch BlackBerry. It is one of the best business movies I've ever seen. And so I found that on Hulu. That's a strong statement. Am I right? Am I right? Was I overstating it? It's definitely one of the best business movies of this century. It's way better than any of the stuff. So any of the stuff, remember all the Steve Jobs? They did two Steve Jobs movies. They did that Uber show and the WeWork show and Elizabeth Holmes, all that

stuff. It's way better than any of that stuff. I thought it was really, really good. And the guy from It's Always Sunny was fantastic as the jerk CEO. He was so good. He was incredible. The opening scene when the two nerds came to pitch him was one of the best opening scenes in recent memory. It was that good. It was the only net credit tower listeners. We had a bunch of people email us and I just- People have been telling us about this. I couldn't picture Blackberry being good. It was such a good movie. The only knit I have to pick with it is I love, what's the Jay Barrichelle, that guy? I love that guy. His hairpiece and it was awful. Okay. Really bad hairpiece. Other than that. How about the guy that played? That's a really good

movie. Wait, who's in charge here? Mike's in charge and Mike says no. That guy? The dork, yeah, did you, did you read the story about him cashing out Blackberry rim stock in the 2007 highs and he's a billionaire? Because that stock crashed, obviously. He kind of shot at the 2007 highs before the crisis and walked away the richest guy from there, I think. That movie worked for a lot of reasons, but it was primarily because of those three characters. The characters were so good. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. And obviously, there were some liberties taken, but the whole, in seeing them get to the point

where they didn't see the iPhone coming, I thought that was, it was, and it didn't, like, dwell on it really moved fast through all the time. Like, it could have dwelled on specific time. I thought it was really well done, really good movie. Awesome. biggest upside surprise I've been a long time for me. Yeah. Did you watch?

Oh, yeah, we spoke. So Curb episode three. I was a little bit, uh, down as sad as the wrong word, but like the first two, the first two episodes of the new curb season were not great. They were fine. They were just, just totally fine. And I was like, all right. I guess sort of, I guess Larry lost his fastball happens.

Um, and I was wrong. The third episode was one of the hardest I've ever. laughed. We watched it on Saturday night after we came home. Robin thought I was going to wake the boys. She videoed me unbeknownst to me laughing. You sent me the video and you were just dying. I couldn't... I bet you had tears in your eyes. That was that kind of laugh. Oh my God.

Dude, you got to... Yeah, Tia, forget about it. I couldn't breathe. And then, like, even 30 minutes after the show, I just started bursting out laughter. She's like, oh my God. I can't believe how funny he is still. And him and Leon, I can't believe it. I cannot believe

how funny he's nice. My wife and I talk about this, and it's It's the show that has given me the most belly laughs of any other show. I don't just like smile or laugh or say that's kind of funny like other comedies. I belly laugh. My stomach and face hurt. And there's no feeling in the world that is comparable with that sort of laughter. So thank you, L.D. You still got it.

All right. Lastly, the new Costner trailer, it's called Horizon, an American saga. Is that right? I think so, yes. Well, I'm going to be a good. Two partners, I think. Oh, is it? Yeah.

Okay. I'm all in. I mean, how great does that trailer look? I just want to temper our expectations. Why? Yeah, I know greatness when I say it. Is this going to be Waterworld or is it going to be dances with wolves? Dances with Wolves.

All right. I'm just saying there could be a lot of variance in the potential here. It's got to be good for him. Listen, this is no time for the Grand Rapids Hedge. It's time to go all in. I went to Waterworld at a theater. I remember that. Oh, yeah. That was a tough one. All I'm saying is Costner has that in him. We all do.

That's 90s, Costner. True. All right. It's got to work for him because he left Yellowstone for this. All right. It's good to be back, feeling better, having fun with my guy. What a week. What a great week. You're still, you're in the cloud still. I can't believe it. This is, I have, yeah, I'm very, very proud of myself. There's nowhere to go with Down from here. Nowhere to go about down.

All right. Thank you, everybody for listening. Animal Spirits at the Compound News.com. Personal emails, personal responses. No, someone said yesterday, they got Eli Manning on the show, no more personal responses. No, we still come with personal responses. Not only am I doing personal responses. I almost hate to say this because I don't want the flood gate to open too much.

I'm doing personal phone calls. When kids email me asking for advice, I give them my phone number. I'm taking phone calls. Yeah, we've had a few college career advice sessions. But I think the greatest thing about the people email us is I feel like our audience gets us. And because everyone's from while, we'll have a, I feel like I'm in the same wavelength as you investing or movies or whatever. So we appreciate everyone who reaches up. All right. Animal Spirits.

Oh, I did that a day. Oh, we'll see you next time.