Animal Spirits Podcast - People Love to Complain (EP.334)

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

On episode 334 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the Fed's victory over inflation, what Americans get wrong about inflation, the price of iPhones is actually going down, when we get the first Fed rate cut, the rising unemployment rate, housing prices vs. recessions, Netflix movies, vests are overrated, and much more! Thanks to Amplify ETFs for sponsoring this episode. Learn more about their cash flow focused ETFs at: https://amplifyetfs.com/ Learn more about The Smoke Show: https://thereformedbroker.com/2023/11/10/the-smoke-show/ Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's show is brought to you by Amplify ETFs. Let's talk about cows for a second. No, bet I'm not talking about farm animals. I'm talking about cash cows. You know what I'm talking about? I got you. Yeah, okay. The ticker's cows, this ETF, it's high free cash flow meets dividend growth.

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I've never heard this before. The fund investment advisors agreed to waive the management fee for cows until at least September 11th, 2024. Almost a year with no management fee. It's pretty good. Go to amplifyetefs.com to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they say.

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. Before we get started, I have an exciting announcement to make for financial advisors. We have a new show coming on. It's called The Smoke Show, where companies that bring services to financial advisors, whether it's a wealth tech company or an asset management company or a cash management company, if you're a financial advisor and you want to stay on top of the latest companies that are going to help you grow your business, the smoke show is a place to be.

So it's sort of like in the Shark Tank style where Josh is going to be hosting the show. show, Josh Bell will be hosting the show, and there's going to be judges judging company. Now, these are not brand new companies, right? It's not like we're going to say, like, I'm out, the stinks, or anything like that. But they will be judged harshly in some cases, if need be. And the first one is on Wednesday, November 15th. So when this comes out, that's the day that it's going to be the first one. And we get a lot of pitches from these kind of companies, not to brag.

We have a little of a platform, but we get a lot of pitches. So we think, you know, we have enough people on board, especially at the firm and with us that can judge these kind of things. So here's the format. It's going to be on Zoom. I think we have a maximum number of seats is 500. And it's going to be live. So it's not edited. So this is why it's called the smoke show that we are going to be bringing the smoke to the companies that come on on pitch.

The first company that's going to be coming on is virtual wealth, which we're super excited about. Now, full disclosure, we are investing in virtual wealth. Not every company that comes on this show is going to be for our benefit where we're investors. But we are familiar with, very familiar with Virgil Wealth and thought that they were a great candidate for the first show. So again, if you're a financial advisor, Lincoln Show Notes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All right. Inflation day today.

Still pretty exciting. I feel like it's going to lose this lesser eventually. Today was kind of a good one. Inflation came in under expectations. I think the one thing you can say is that the Fed has rung out any volatility. Like we had so many months there for what There was, I don't know, what a six or eight month period where it was really uncertain

what the inflation rate was going to be and it was kind of, it could have been surprising in both directions. A lot of times it was surprising to the upside. So now it's 3.2% and you know what I'm sick of? I got a lot of bones to pick today. Okay, go. Look, cook, I'm gonna sit back.

The people who say, well, inflation is cumulative, you know, the rate is falling, but it's, who doesn't know that? I'm sorry, at this point. Who did? Stop saying that. Everyone knows that. Literally. We know if we know prices aren't falling. All right. So look at this. I'm sorry. I keep saying this. It looks transitory. In the history books, when we look back, I know it wasn't because it took longer. So look at, I did the inflation rate now versus the World War II. It looks pretty similar to that, doesn't it? That peaked out at almost 20 percent, which is just a tad higher than us. It wasn't transitory. I'm saying, if you look back in this chart in 20 years. I'm sorry. I'm also sorry that you're sorry. it's not transitory because the prices didn't go back down. The pace of inflation was transitory. Fine. Who gives us shit? Everything's still fucking expensive. To my other earlier point, of course,

prices are not going to go back down. That doesn't work like that. Okay. So I can't be mad? No, I looked at inflation going back to 1950. It was transitory. Oh, no, okay. Dude, the base is now ridiculously high. Casamigos at Madison Square Garden will never be less than $44. Okay, I looked back at inflation going back to 1950. How many times do you think we've ever had a deflationary monthly print in that 70-plus years? How many times? Out of 900 monthly readings, how many times have we had deflation where prices fell? I don't know.

100? 30. It's like 3.7% of the time. We literally never had deflation after the 1970s. In the 80s and 90s, there was no deflation. The only time we've had deflation was a couple times in the 19th. 50s and then in 2008 and 2009. That's it. We don't get deflation because the economy grows. People who think prices are going to fall are people. So people keep saying that we're out of touch,

right? We got another email last week saying we're out of touch. You keep saying the economy's doing okay. Don't you realize that prices are still high? If you think prices are going to fall, you are out of touch. It doesn't work like that. Inflation does not rise and then go into deflation so prices go. They don't round trip. It does not work like that because wages don't do that. I'm so sick of this argument. Is that fair? I mean... So here, this is from the Fed.

Lisa Cook, Fred, Governor, Lisa Cook. Most Americans are not just looking for disinflation. You and I, as macroeconomists, are looking for disinflation. They're looking for deflation. They want these prices back to where they were before the pandemic. Yeah, it's never going to happen. I'm sorry. People are irrational about the economy.

People who say, well, it's the economists are out of touch. No, people who think like this are out of touch. The economy does not work like this. And if it did, we'd have a freaking... depression every five years. You don't want that. Because your wages would crash. Yeah. No, you're not, you're not wrong, but I think that you're also, like, this is why people are upset, though. High prices suck, and they're not going back. And so it's going to take a while for people to digest these higher prices and be like, all right, I guess this is what I'm paying

for a sandwich now. Like, I'm never, I'm never paying $11 again for a sandwich. I guess it's now 14. I'm sick of, I'm sick of people saying, like, listen, the economy's way worse than you think because of prices, prices should go back to 2019 levels. It's never going to work like that. Sorry, it's not. Yeah. The economy would have to crash if that happened. So inflation was not transitory

because prices did not return to what they were in. 20 years from now, they're going to look back at this chart and go, it's kind of transitory. Meaning it was a blip in higher inflation. That's what transitory means. All right. It's not permanent. Okay.

So the stock market is reacting very well today. Taking the lead, it's home builder. and these are all, you know, interest rate sensitive areas. Home builders up 5.3%, arc up 5%, small cap value. A lot of regional banks in there up 4%. We're also 2,000, up 4%. All right, so, stock market likes it. Remember higher for longer for like a week?

Yeah, how long ago was our episode where we said consensus is higher for longer? Not even two months ago, was it? I think it was like two weeks ago. Now the market is pricing at a 20% chance of a rate cut by 2024. Now, let me ask you this. Are they going to cut rates? if inflation keeps falling and the economy is continuing to do okay?

They have to. So we're jumping around a little bit here in the dock. Why do they have to? Or they should. So Tim Dye of SGH macro advisors wrote last week. It's increasingly clear that the Fed has reached the peak of this cycle back in July. We can begin wargaming the first rate cut the cycle. And that's before this week.

I tend to agree with Cam Harvey, though. So Cam Harvey, he was on the live show with you and Josh last week in Barry. And he basically said, here's his three points that I took away from his talk. The consumer basically saved the Fed's ass this year, which I kind of agree with. It wasn't really the Fed that orchestrated this. It was the consumer. The Fed is probably going to be late in terms of rate cuts. And I think that they want to be late because there are no counterfactuals if we don't have a recession.

So I think the Fed wants to save us. So that that be my biggest worry is that the Fed is going to wait too long and keep rates higher. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but I think at this point, like, so March is when they're probably going to cut the first time. Well, it's a 20% chance. That's what the market is implying right now. So we'll say. So back to the transitories of Kelly Cox, who was also, she was on TCAF last week. I'm sorry, Ben, I love you.

It's not, it's not transitory. It wasn't. It was too, it's too long. It's transitory that the inflation wasn't permanent. Like the high inflation rate. I know we keep talking about each other. The rate wasn't permanent, but the price increases were permanent. And that's all that people care about.

I know, and they always are, though. But this is the type of thing that is, missed in a textbook because we know we're living today. People, it doesn't matter. It's not the pace. It's not the rate of increases. It's the price levels. I'm sorry.

That's all that matters. I think our best call we've ever had in this show is being anti-survey, and I think all of the surveys of the economy today don't make any sense. People saying that they're not better off and these sorts of things, people are legitimately better off financially. I'm sorry. There's a survey later in the show that we'll get to. It was like 60% of people.

people want a recession, so prices fall, home prices fall or something ridiculous like that. Careful what you ask for. So this is the part that it could have been, so. And by the way, Ben, speaking of people calling us out of touch, I don't want to overstay. I mean, come on. It's like, we get like one email a week. It's not like, it's not like we have a tidal wave of people saying that to us. Well, I get it on Twitter like twice a day. Okay. Because I always poke the bear there because I just love going after Dumer's on Twitter. It, it thrills me to no end. And then I block them. All right. Kelly Cox said the second coming

of inflation crisis was just a story about. but oil prices. If you picked up on that like we did, you didn't sweat the sell off. So she's showing that, like, the big part in early 2022 is a lot of oil in that has kind of reversed. Do you remember the $200 oil stories back in 2022? I think it's now below 80. Remember? I have to say, like, hand up, I never would have guessed this with oil. With the war continuing to rage, I never would have been, I would never guess that.

Here's another one from Kelly Cox, though. You got her name right when you saw in person, right? Yeah. Remember you couldn't figure it out, which one it was? Well, because her handles Callie A. Bost. No, it's Callie Cox. All right. Paychecks are still growing faster than prices. I'm sorry. People complain when this happens the other way. No one celebrates it when it reverts. You know what we are?

What? I'm sorry. Everyone's spoiled. That's where I've fallen. Most people are spoiled. There are people who legitimately... No, no, we love to complain. We love to complain. I think we hit the nail on the head. People get used to their wage increases very quickly. They adjust. mentally, oh, cool, I got paid more. And then like six pay cycles later, they're over it, but they don't adjust to how much they're paying for everything. All right. Here's a couple of examples. I think there are certainly people in the economy that have a legitimate grip about inflation and deserve to be complaining about it because of

their job or the industry they work in or their particular like budget line items. But there are other people who are doing just fine. And there's people who got, who rocketed so far ahead of everyone else in the 2000s and 2010s that even if things are slowing for them now, got so far ahead of the game, like in terms of wealth or whatever, that they, you don't get to complain anymore. So this is an interesting one from this guy on Twitter. The economy can be summed up by an experience ahead at a recent family reunion. Everyone was complaining about how shit the economy was and how expensive everything was. I pointed out that for the first time ever, every adult present had a good paying job they liked. Three people present had just been

bragging about doubling their salaries. Two people had just gotten back from their first ever Europe trips. The raises and jobs were things they felt they had earned. The prices were going up were the government's fault. Yes. Perfect. Exactly. But look at this next one from Torson-Slock at Apollo. This is great. So the record high share of U.S. consumers are planning to go on vacation to a foreign country, and this thing has skyrocketed in the last couple of years.

Yeah, it looks like 2024 is going to be a recession. I'm sorry. But if you drive like an $80,000 truck or SUV and you're taking European vacations, you don't get to complain about inflation. Those are the rules. Okay? Yeah. Right?

Like there are people who have legitimate gripes, but the people who are like, going crazy and keep spending, like, inflation is not here? Like, I'm sorry, you have to adjust your habits if inflation is that bad for you. People just love to complain. I think so. So this is a good one from Ben Wallace. Then I'll let them.

Could you believe? Yeah. The median voter wants double-digit deflation, a booming economy, a tight labor market, except for low-level service workers, and rising home prices except when they want to buy. And frankly, is that too much to ask for? Right? Again, there are people with legitimate gripes right now,

but there are, I think a lot of people are complaining for the sake of complaining and don't deserve to because they're in such a better spot than they would have been, especially as far as wealth goes, the people who complain about ZERP and the government stepping in to help in the pandemic that have benefited the most from asset prices rising, and they're the ones complaining about inflation. Like, you're so much better off financially than you would have been in the alternative to that situation.

Did you really want the economy to crash? And everything you own is worth half as much? There is a segment of the economy, for sure, as there always is, that is getting a raw deal that got the short end of the stick for, you know, various reasons. Yeah, and those people have a legitimate gripe about inflation. You're right. You're right. If you're driving a $70,000 truck and you're taking a vacation overseas, just please shut the fuck up. Please. That's all I'm asking for. I don't want to hear from those people anymore.

Speaking of inflation, we spoke about this earlier a couple months back. Like, just because there's like supply chain issues and too much stimulus and inflation, that you have that on the one hand. But then on the other hand, you've got like the technology, the disinflationary force of technology. And like, where does that fit into all of this? Remember the conversation? And it didn't stop.

It's not slowing down. So somebody sent this to us. Here's a great chart. The price of every iPhone adjusted for inflation. Oh, that's interesting. the iPhone adjusts for inflation hasn't really rose that much in price since the first one. No, not at all. It's the price is the same is below, in real dollars, the iPhone is cheaper today than it was in

2008, in 2009, and I imagine, I never, I never, I never, I don't, I wouldn't have thought about it that way. And look at the pro. So look how expensive the first version of the pro was. 1250, 1212, 1190, 1180, and now it's, now it's below $1,000. The Pro Max, same story. Every iPhone has gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. and we'll continue to.

I think the hard part is for a lot of people is that it's like we're still getting inflation in the things we need, but deflation of the things we want. Right. Although for a lot of people, maybe a smartphone is something you need now. And guess what? I keep getting text from Verizon.

I don't think they're scam. I think they're legitimate text messages for Verizon. That I could just trade in my iPhone. Right. Right? Or it's like, oh, $400. I mean, the iPhone is, for what it is, it is ridiculously cheap.

Yeah. Yes, for everything, the super computer that you have in your pocket, that, yes, it's amazing. So do you think, getting back to the rate stuff, do you think if the Fed came out today and said, and they would never do this, because they're always going to be late about everything, if they said, we declare victory, we won. What do you think? Not going to happen. But they potentially could do that if it, they would never.

Do you think the 5% we saw in the 10 year is the peak? Because it's already back to 4.5. less than four and a half, it was there, I feel like the bond market believed higher for longer for like a month and then now it's driving,

like, do you think 5% will look back and be like, that's peak the cycle? Yes. I tend to agree. I don't know. What would have to happen for?

I mean, inflation re-accelerating, the economy like just booming in the first half of 2024? I don't see it. And I don't think that if the Fed cuts in 2024, I don't think that's going to like help the economy.

boom, just like them raising rates didn't totally slow the economy. Like, I don't, if the Fed cuts 50 or 75 basis points next year, whatever it is, assuming we don't get a recession, I don't think that's going to, like, cause the economy to go crazy. Oh, I do. I do. No, I think it'll, I think it'll be better for financial assets than it will be the economy. Both, because housing. Housing will explode.

Absolutely explode. The IPO market will reopen. Asset prices will go bananas. and we could get a boom, and that could be bad for the economy, paradoxically. You don't think the markets will pull forward a lot of that? No, I don't. The NASDAQ is up, I looked at this. You know the NASDAX up year to date now as of this morning?

32%. 42%. Wow. The S&P is up 17%. So you think that the stock market is already pricing and cuts? Definitely. Could be. I say definitely.

Look, I know. I think. No, could be. Listen, I like that you're not, that you're not, this is, you know, normally you're a grand rapid hedge guy. I like that you're taking a stand. I think the market has been pulling. I think the stock market has been smarter about the last three years than any other sort of market or prognosticator. Maybe I'm giving it too much credit, but I think the stock market has been ahead of the game on a lot of this stuff.

Let's talk about some, like potential downsides to right now, because inflation is looking pretty good. The unemployment rate has gone from 3.4% to 3.9%. percent. You've heard of the SOM rule before. Claudia SOM is the SOM rule? No, I haven't. I have not. Okay. So I think it's relatively new. She's an economist, and I think she used to work for the Fed. And her rule is when there is a three-month moving average of national unemployment rate rising by 0.5%, which we've done. We've gone up by 0.5. We haven't been there for the moving average. Relative to its low, we are in a recession. So we just triggered that. So it hasn't triggered yet because we haven't been there for

three months yet, we just hit 3.9%. So she's saying, if we stayed at this level of unemployment for another three months, that's basically a, so look at the, I put it in here from Y charts, they have it in there, that it's basically a recession. So like unemployment rate moving up by that much and staying at that elevated level triggers a recession. And her way of, her reason for coming up with this rule was just that that's the time for the government to start stimulating the economy, which is kind of hilarious because like that would really happen right now. But what about when unemployment is so low? Well, it's been low in the past.

But, yeah, I mean, that could be, maybe that's your counter. But so we're not, again, we're not there yet, but it's actually, like, unemployment rate moving up in the labor market slowing a little bit has to be like a kind of a tiny cause for concern. Now, the other side of this, Goldman Sachs said, job openings in virtually every industry are above 2019 levels. Layoff and jobless claims are still low. The increase in the unemployment rate since April has come entirely from an increase in the size of labor force rather than the decline of employment, the combination of elevated job openings,

continued employment growth, and high labor force participation is unlikely to trigger a vicious circle of job loss. So Goldman is taking news out of that. I don't know. I think the unemployment moving up is something to watch, though, in terms of, like, that could not be a good thing. Let's talk about spending. So we've got Bank of America, total card spending per household, fell 0.5% year over year in October. services still growing strong, retail, excluding restaurants, dip pretty significantly. So it fell a little bit, really not a ton to gleam out of this. But interesting is that lower income households showed the biggest drop in year-over-year

spending. So if you have an income under $50,000, your spending fell significantly. That makes sense. Go up a little bit in the dock here. Joey Politano did this average real wages. And you know what Jeff Mackey last week we talked about? He said people secretly missed the pandemic. Yeah.

I think we're certain. So for certain people, the unemployment insurance they were getting and the checks they were getting from the government meant their wages were higher than they had bid otherwise in their job. And if you look at this average real wages here chart, this huge, huge spike in 2020, I think there's something to that where people were better off financially during the pandemic than they are now in terms of like the the jump in wages that they got

and so i think there is something too like that being another case of people why people are like they felt this this sugar rush and it and then it went away yeah i definitely think there's something to that um another thing that dumers have been saying is that once student loan payments restart which they have that's going to be a lot of money that's drained out of the economy Right? You've heard that? Yeah, I don't really buy that one. Well, according to Bank of America internal data, we do not see an adverse impact to spending for households who resume student loan payments in October.

Data is right here. They show households that paid student loans prior to October, households that resume payments, and all other households, and nothing there. I mean, don't we assume people who have student loans have higher than average wages? That's typically how it works. and that can handle this? I don't know. That's my thinking.

All right. Here's something that, I don't know this is disinflation back to 2019 levels or what we're calling this, but Sam Rowe tweeted the New York Fed's global supply chain pressure index. And there was an article this week about like what actually caused inflation and the differences between the U.S. and Europe. And a lot of people thought that, and this is definitely part of it. Like, the supply chain stuff was not an insignificant cause of price increases, right? Demand turned back on, and it took supply months to catch up.

But all of that, all of that pressure has been erased. The supply chain is totally fixed. Which is part of the reason, I think, for the soft landing-ish thing that we've had, things ready themselves out. And the other thing is, like, no one wants to think this way, but Europe is in a way worse situation than we are. Like, the FT did a piece on that, saying that, like, the U.S. growth is accelerating. The EU had even worse inflation. Like, it could have been worse.

People complain, like, the U.S. fiscal response is way too big. I think it's probably the most successful one of any country in the developed markets. It could have been way worse. Inflation could have been higher and growth could have been lower. That's a double whammy of – that would have made things even worse. There were stackflation calls, were they not? Oh, yeah. Lurie Summers was all over that one.

Stagflation is here. nailed it. All right, so you might think the economy is unhealthy due to personal anecdotes or whatever. But here are, these are the facts, Jack, from S&P, a total of 50 companies filed for bankruptcy in October, down from 61 in September, according to the latest S&P global market intelligence data. This is the second lowest monthly total for the year so far. And they've got this going back, well, just to the, Just a 20, is that 2020, 2020? These aren't rising.

Well, that was another domer thing, is that low rates are just making for a zombie economy where all these zombie corporations are staying afloat because of low rates. Well, that was true. No, but I'm saying wouldn't you expect more companies to be failing now that rates are higher? Or would that take more time? That's a good question. Well, I mean, look at the stock prices. You would assume just based on that, that it is happening.

Market cleaned that up real quick. Or it's, yeah, or those, those companies are just underperforming. So Bank of America has this long-term stock market chart going back to 1824, which looks at me. I mean, this is like, this is my investment philosophy in one chart. What are your thoughts on log charts, though? Okay, for going back this far. If you put it on just a regular chart, it would look weird because it would look like a... No, it would be at, it would, if you put on a regular chart, it would be at one for the first 150 years.

And then it would just go high up. Then it would just go vertical. So you need to log this. The only problem, and by the way, this is my philosophy too, right? Stocks usually go up. It's not a problem, but like, this makes it look a little bit too easy. Yes, it makes the, like, even like the- The Great Depression is a blip.

I mean, come on. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, it makes the downturns not look as big as they were. One of my favorite quotes, I think, oh man, who is this from? Maybe the money game, I can't remember. Statistics tell a rather bloodless tale. Yes. Good one. Right?

Like, you look at this, you're like, oh. What, I mean? It's easy. It's, yeah, I think you have to pair this with a drawdown chart. Yeah. Just to show. Okay. Uh, I mentioned that the NASDAQ is up, what, 42% this year.

The S&P is up 17. That's hard, that's, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the equal weight is having a great year? I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to guess that the QQEW is up 30%. Probably at least 25. Let's, let's see. So the, what's see. So the equal. NASDAQ 100 for this year, year 2023, is a 21% year to date.

Ain't so bad, not so bad. The other thing with the equal weight, like people keep saying, like the S&P is just being driven by these stocks, and I don't care, right? I really don't care because most people own index funds. You're like Tommy Lee Jones and the fugitive. I didn't kill my wife. I don't care. Who actually owns an equal weighted index?

How many more people own a regular index fund versus, like, no one actually owns an equal-weighted index fund? Like a handful of investment nerds? I'm sure people own midcaps and small caps, but... Remember when we were speaking about all of the actors with three names? Like, Tommy Lee Jones, his name is just probably Tommy Jones or Tom Jones. Yeah, Mark Paul Gossler. Somebody set us straight. When you get to Hollywood, there's probably 400 young Tommy Joneses.

Anyway, that's that for actress's names. But I saw a tweet the other day. And yes, it's true, the mega cap are carrying the index. But this is directionally right, not 100% accurate. Like, 80 stocks in the S&P were up 50% this year. Right. You know? That's a decent amount.

So the NASDAQ 100 on a total return basis is actually closer to all-time highs than the S&P now. The NASDAQ is less than 5% from all-time highs. The NASDAQ 100. The S&P is about 6% away. Can we talk about all-time highs? Sure. So the S&P 500 has gone 467 trend.

from bespoke, 467 training days without making a new all-time high, which is... It's a pretty long time. The longest streak since the GFC. But don't you think being within spitting distance of it makes it feel a little better, even though we haven't technically hit one? Yeah, we're right there. We're right there. Here's a great chart from a great data point from Ryan D.rick.

Remember last week, I think I was talking about sentiment trader, how to chart similar to this, and I was like, listen. What small caps, yeah. No, no, no, no, not small caps. I like the studies that show what happens because there are behavioral patterns in the stock market. When you get a washout and then this happens, like to me, that's much more, that's much more explainable. That's like structural human behavior than say like biotech as well in February, right? Yeah.

Where it could just be like, you know, noise. So this is from a week ago or two weeks ago, I'm sorry. Yeah, this is from November 4th, they tweeted this. So Ryan said, we officially saw a super rare Zweig bread thrust today. The rare signal is simply stocks moving from very oversold to very overbought in less than two weeks. That's all you need to know. One from very oversold to very overbought. That's a quantitative analysis done on that.

All you need to know is since World War II, the S&P 500 is higher a year later every single time. And it looked like that's happened, I don't know, 15 times or so. again, when there's a washout, when things go from very oversold to, holy shit, everybody get back in the pool, that's usually a durable bottom. Doesn't mean it's going to hold forever and ever? I don't know. We were in a correction. We had like a double correction there for like two days, and then stocks just rocketed higher.

Yeah, right? We were in correction territory. That's right. Two weeks ago. We're down 10%. All right. This is an amazing stat from Quantian on Twitter. We're also 3,000 names by cumulative short P&L over the past decade.

Shorts made about $80 billion of profits on about 30% of names and lost $900 billion across all names over 10 years. Just, that's amazing. This idea during the pandemic that short sellers were evil, I mean, it's truly hilarious. It is not supported by data. Short sellers don't put good companies out of business. Exhibit 1,046. It is real, I can't imagine being a, like, not only the mindset you have to be in, and like, if you're like a, if you're like a, fundamental person who's like looking through the accounting data and stuff. But I mean,

people say short sellers are, people say shorts are manipulating in the market. It's the opposite. It's the opposite. Everybody is aligned to manipulate the stock market to go higher. Right. And people inside corporate America are incredibly good at doing this. They chop the fat. They pull back. Whatever they have to do to protect their margins, corporate America is very good at doing. And even if you have a crappy company, if you're in the midst of a bull market in an industry or whatever, like, you can, the rising tide lifts all ships. Everybody's incentivized to go to work to make your stock prices go higher, right, to make more money. That's it. That's the bottom line.

So, anyway, yeah, the short seller is not an easy job. So this chart from courtesy of Daily Chartbook via Jeffrey shows small caps now represent less than 4% of total U.S. equity market. Do you think how much of this is small caps underperforming versus just these big stock? because I've gotten so much bigger than they were in the past. I mean, it's a little both, obviously. Both. Both. Well, so Jeffries, to compliment that, oh, same thing, I guess, said the Russell 2000 is cheapest, our absolute valuation model has been since December 2012.

The thing is, again, back to people up to complain, if you want to look for stuff that's not overpriced right now, if you want to look outside of the Magnificent 7 or NASDAQ100 or whatever, there's a ton of cheap stuff and there's 5% money market yields and T-bill yields and bond yields. Like, the opportunity set for investors these days is actually pretty good. You know the total return for small caps over the last three years? Is it negative? It's 5%. And what's the S&P done in that time?

Up 40? Up 30. Huge spread there. Speaking of all-time highs, the Russell 2000, this is from Settlement Trader. In the coming week, the Russell 2000 will have gone 500 trading days. nearly two full years since it last closed at a 52-week high. That's the third longest streak in the indexes history. So I know a lot of people want to see this huge washout in the stock market.

Like, the stock market is going to fall 60% or whatever. Like, it's not like things have been amazing. Damn it. We had it. We had the washout. Right. We did it. 2020 was the washout. It was one of the worst years ever for a diversified portfolio of financial assets. So, I mean, even from an all-time high, so the Russell of 2000, forget about, I'm not even talking about the pandemic crash, which it lost over 40%. It made an all-time high in the fall of 2021, and then it fell 35%.

Is that not a washout? If you're waiting for a 70% washout, you know, you'll be waiting a long time. All right. So about the labor market, Ben. All right. I did a tweet. This is, I think it's pretty realistic. This is me going after the financial media again.

And in 2020, it was no one wants to work, right? The government is paying people not to work. 2021, they called it the Great Resignation. Everyone's quitting, getting new jobs. And that made sense because wages were, wage increases were way higher for people changing jobs. The people don't want to work thing. I don't think that was fully fabricated. Well, no, mates, I mean, they were paying people literally to not work.

Yeah. 2022 is quiet quitting. People are quietly quitting their job. And then 2023 is now no one wants to work anymore. This is from the Wall Street Journal. The white collar labor market is softening to. a point that companies are encountering an issue that would have been unthinkable in the area known as a great resignation. These days, too few people are voluntarily leaving their job.

Turnover has declined so steeply that some large employers that companies now find themselves over budget on certain items, requiring leaders to weigh weather. Hang on. Too few people are voluntarily living their jobs? What's happening here? I think the thing that is the most surprising to me in terms of like financial media, and I'm not saying like financial media is all evil, but they seem to be taking the side of corporations against, like, consumers and households and workers in all of this. Like, corporations never get blamed for anything these days anymore.

They, like, people, the media feels bad for corporations. First, people are quitting too much. Now people aren't quitting enough. It's like, this is a good thing for people in jobs. I almost feel like some of these articles are written just to trigger people like us. It must be. I can't think of any other reason. I'm sorry, I didn't read the article, but this just sounds like such horseshit.

The new headache for bosses, employees aren't quitting? Like, is everything, it's all just for clicks. I'm sorry. I need to be so cynical. That's, that's what it is. It is. I think you're right. I mean, okay, whatever.

Let's talk about crypto for a second. Bitcoin's market demand has outpaced its supply. This is a tweet from Neigen tropic, okay? Bitcoin's market demand has outpaced its supply, a clear sign of robust positive momentum and just one day a whopping, 700,000 new Bitcoin addresses joined the network. This expansion is considered

one of the most reliable indicators for price predictions. It's interesting that people are piling into crypto now a little bit because the whole idea of a Bitcoin ETF is that it will make it easier to buy crypto. And it's like people are buying it ahead of it. You'd think people would just wait to buy the ETF

if it's new people coming in. And so I saw another tweet that I thought was in the dock, but I guess it depended from Will Clemente showing something about how money is coming out of

stable coins and going into Bitcoin, which I guess is an interesting analog for what probably won't happen.

We've been talking about how a lot of the money that's parked in money market mutual funds is just going to stay there.

So money's coming out of stable coins going into Bitcoin. And so there's a hell of a rally underway.

And I don't say unfortunately, it is what it is. It's just a number go up thing. Right? That's the funniest part of it.

It's not like it's not like it's rallying on some sort of innovation. If anything, crypto is taking a step back by going up because of going into an old legacy financial product that's been around since 1993. But guess what? You know how you said you're talking about, you're doing your time on Lee Jones? I don't care about that the S&P is driven by, only seven stocks. I don't care. People don't care why the price is going up. Bitcoin holders, myself included, I don't care why it's going up. I'm not, I'm not like a zealot for Bitcoin rehauling the society. I don't care. I own it as a financial asset. And the number's going

up and cool. Why? I really don't care. I'm just making the observation. That's fair. Yeah. The money gets cashed all the same, right? Yeah. See, I was holding out for tokenizing the entire world, but I guess that's not going to happen anymore? That's coming. That's coming. All right. So there was an article. Who wrote the article? Was this fortune? I can't remember who did this. Your NFTs are actually finally totally worthless. Some research company did a whole study on it, yeah. Okay. New report from industry researchers finds that 95% of the once-hyped crypto assets have hit rock bottom valuation. I mean, this is not terribly surprising that most of this stuff was worthless. But somebody tweeted, the craziest thing about someone bidding $3 million just now,

and this is for a cryptopunk, the craziest thing about someone bidding $3 million just now for something that's actually finally totally worthless is the owner won't. even accept it. Kind of wild. What am I missing here? So, Cryptopunks, there's been a huge rally

in NFTs. Okay. Cryptopunks, board apes, they're going nuts. Somebody is, somebody was offered $3 million for their

cryptocurrency and they declined the offer. Oh, okay. I got you. I'm sorry. It's still dumb. The Cryptopunk

and board ape thing is still stupid. Okay. It is. Well, fine, that's your opinion. I mean,

it never made any sense and it still doesn't. That's all I'm saying. Okay. was 2022. So one of our guys, Nate Jefferson, asked chat GBT, was 22 the seventh or eighth the worst year in the S&P 500 history? And chat CBT said the S&P 500 index had a negative return of negative 10.3% of 2020, according to an article from a wealth of common sense. I guess my job's safe. How about that? I knew chat GPT was a hack stealing my stuff.

How about that? So, Ben, we spoke earlier in the show about like... That means, like, when the AI overlords just have the things in the back of our heads and they're just sucking stuff out of us, like, I'm going to be safe. I'll be like the teacher's pet for the AI machine that's taking over the world. You know what movie came and went? I don't know if we spoke about us that nobody saw. What was the movie with Denzel Sun?

Was it the creator? Oh, yeah. Did you go see that? I did. I didn't get great reviews. I wanted to say it. Okay. I'll see when it comes out on video.

It was in and out. We spoke about if the Fed says they're done, would financial conditions loosen to the point of like basically reversing all that they've done and risk more inflation? So this from Bloomberg via Concitania, the average 30-year mortgage rate plunged last week by the most and more than a year, helping generate the biggest advance in home purchase application since early June. So it ranges rates went from whatever, 8% down to 7.6% people are like, it's a feeding frenzy.

So the thing is, housing was already basically in a recession, which is kind of crazy. We saw that 4.9% GDP print. Activity isn't a depression, but prices are still in a bull market. But here's why this is like the automatic stabilizers in the economy, whatever. Like, we're going to have other pieces of the economy probably slowing down when rates are getting cut. And housing could actually help. Housing could pick up the slack if there's more activity. Like this, it could be a good, like some people might worry that's going to cause a boom

and inflation. But I think there's going to be other parts of the economy. economy that's slowing, and housing activity could actually help a little bit instead of hurt. Right? Yeah. Okay. So Logan Motisham, you wrote a piece for housing wire about why home prices won't crash the next recession. It was a simple supply demand thing, right? Just like you said, there's pent-up demand that if mortgage rates fall, people are going to be coming in. And a lot of people I saw talking to Logan were like,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why would housing prices ever hold up during a recession? That makes no sense. And I think a lot of people have the recency by his brain of the great financial crisis of, well, every time there's a nasty recession, housing prices have to fall. So I looked at this. I looked at every recession going back to 1960, and there's been nine of them. In seven of the nine recessions, going back to 1960, housing prices have risen. They've only fallen twice, once in the great financial crisis, of course, and then once in the early 1990s, which was a savings and loans crisis. So basically, the only time housing prices have fallen during recession have been when there's been a financial calamity. that's happened. Other regular run-of-the-mill recessions, housing prices have risen.

This is another reason why the GFC cuts all money people by surprise is because housing prices really have never fallen. There's no precedent for that. That's the other thing. Housing prices don't fall that often to begin with. So that's why they've risen during recessions in the past because it takes a lot for housing prices to fall on a nationwide basis. Now, that doesn't mean housing prices can't fall during the next recession, but it's going to have to be a nasty financial crisis probably to make it happen. We got an email from a listener that is emblematic of the environment that we're discussing. My wife and I fall into the camp of growing family, don't necessarily need to move right the second, but quickly running out of space in our current home. Like most

adults, we were always looking at Zillow, just in case someone were to catch our eye. Well, I don't know where it did, and we went from casually looking to agreeing on a purchase price to realizing crap. Now we need to sell our home ASAP in an 8% mortgage world. As someone who is in the industry, I'm paying close attention to all the same charts and data that you and Ben, I've brought up so many times on the pod. I consider myself typically pretty stoic, but I'm sure you can imagine how anxious I was to get my home sold. What transpired over the past weekend truly blew my mind.

We listed late Friday afternoon. All weekend, we had showings and people coming to our two open houses. And by Sunday evening, barely 40 hours later, we had four offers, all that asking or above with many waiving inspections. I think it's worth noting that I think the home we are selling can be described as a good starter home. Three beds, two and a half baths. Point being, all these potential buyers were first-time home buyers.

Another interesting observation was that all the offers wanted to put down the minimum, 5%. That is something that we don't spend enough time talking about. People aren't putting down 20%. They could still get into a house. Now, the math doesn't make the math any easier. The payments are still wildly expensive, but people are finding ways to do it. The four offers above asking away the inspections is crazy in an 8% mortgage world. But it makes sense.

It's a supply and demand thing. Great chart from the Wall Street. on a homeowner improvement and repair activity. It's a four quarter moving average and it's at all-time highs. So because people aren't able to move because of the 8% mortgages, somebody said, we feel like we have all this money and have nothing to do with it. And so people are remodeling or whatever. And this is another weird thing that you can never have, never have thought of,

if you were just thinking about like textbook economics brain. Wouldn't you do that right now, though, if you had the choice between like adding an addition on your house or fixing up the kitchen, whatever it is, or buying a new house. Like, you would do the addition in a heartbeat, wouldn't you? Absolutely. So the housing market is broken, and so people are spending their money on other shit, whether it's vacations or home improvement or whatever.

It's like, I had all this money earmarked for a home, and I guess I'm going to spend it on other stuff now. Yes. And you have the, even though a home equity line of credit is 8% or whatever, you still would probably pull that money and do it and just paid off quicker. So this guy's point of first-time homebuyers, first-time homebuyers now make up 32% of all homebuyers. Right, which is actually down.

The historical average since 1981 is 38%. Oh, that's interesting. So it's down a little bit. And the reason is because home buyers are getting older. So this is repeat buyers. People have bought one in the past. The average age has gone from like 35 in 1980 to 58 now. And the Washington Post,

and the first time homebuyers have gone from 30 to 35. And the Washington Post is saying a lot of this is boomers that are either downsizing or deciding to move. somewhere because they have all the equity and they have probably a paid off home that they've lived in for 30 years. And so it's saying most of the activity right now in the housing market is actually being driven. It's a bar belt. It's all first time home buyers and baby boomers, which is interesting. So people, I guess you'd call us in the middle group, older millennials like us, if I'm a millennial and Gen X are just like staying put. Because what year? Were you born?

81. Yeah, you're a millennial. Oldest millennial. All right. This is a good one from Jeremy Horpidal, who always does some good myth-busting on Twitter. So one of the things I love about Home Alone is that every year it just comes into the discourse, and it's more and more financial-based. I talk about the pizzas. We watch it this week.

It's that time of the year. My kids are asking for it. I'm sorry. Call me a Scrooge or whatever. I'm shutting everything Christmas down until after Thanksgiving. My daughter wanted to read a Christmas book last night before bed, and I said, no, not until next week. Does it make me a bad person?

Courtney called me out this morning and said, why would you do that? I really just didn't want to read the book. book, but I also, you got out of principal. So someone tweeted the worst part about rewatching home alone is you just know Kevin's parents bought this house for like $2.50. I think people don't realize, like, the McAllister's were rich. We don't know what he did, but this Jeremy Herbertahl guy says, actually it sold for

Pete. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What do we think Mr. McAllister did in Chicago? Did he like trade cattle futures or something maybe? Yeah, I was saying he was, I was the same as a bond trader. Yeah, something like that. So it actually sold for $875,000 in 1989, which was seven times the medium home sold that year. So this is, it was a mansion, right? I looked at it. If you inflation adjusted that price from 1989. That's a mansion. That's a mansion. Look at all those windows.

If you inflation adjusted it, it would be $2.2 million. And Zillow estimates right now, it's first $2.3 million, which I would have thought he would have got a premium for being the McAllister's home. But this, this house sold for a lot back then, and it's basically tracked inflation ever since, which is kind of surprising. Huh. I probably need some work. All right. Let's do some quarter stuff. Expedia CEO on the consumer. We haven't seen really anything on the consumer side. We keep looking. You'd have to squint really hard and look by sub-region, sub-sub-region, to try and cut it by price point and a lot of things to really see anything noticeable. Again, people aren't, I found an old, I'm writing a piece on this. I found an

old New York Times article from the late 70s that was about how people are changing their habits. And it probably, granted, it probably took a long time for inflation to be that high. And it's talked about people not traveling anymore, not spending money, and like, wearing old close for longer, and it really changed people's behavior for a while. And that's the thing that I just don't think we're seeing in that many people right now, that many households. Here's another thing. I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago that the ad market is the first thing to go.

Like, that's the leading indicator to look at. And obviously, Google. I could talk about that on the Disney call last week. So this is from the transcript. Ad markets picking up from the lows. News Corp's CEO, specifically at Dow Jones, advertising was down 3%, which was a market improvement after a 14% decline in the prior quarter, both digital and fringe report improvement in trend lines. So all in all pretty good. However, I can't, I don't want to

discount this. The average mention of weak demand for consumer sectors is basically at an all-time high. Now, I wonder if this is company-specific and they're just blaming. They're just casting blame. I don't know. Mensions include lower, software, moderate, and weaker. What if software includes software landing? I don't know. Okay, here's your survey. You slide dog you. All right.

64% of Americans would welcome a recession that have met lower mortgage rates per the USA today. This is such bullshit. This is so easily debunkable. First of all, how many people, how many new home buyer, or how many people are looking to buy a home? What percentage of the population

right now is looking to buy a home? Every year there's like five or six million homes sold out of 160 million. It's like less, you know, such a tiny amount. So if we would say, do we think that 5% of the population is looking for our home right now? Well, no, there's 70 million millennials.

I don't know, fine. So let's just say aggressively. Let's say aggressively, it's 15% of the population looking for a mortgage. So USA Today is reporting that 64% of Americans would welcome a recession if it meant lower mortgage rates. No, they wouldn't. Yes. Nonsense.

Just absolute nonsense. Service are garbage. I don't know how the question was asked, but yes. There's no way. That's true. I'm sorry. All right. Who's missing their credit card payments? This is from Heather Long. The answer is millennials. So it shows the share of credit card borrowers who are newly delinquent. And if you look at Gen X, Gen Z, and Baby Boomers, it looks like they're like, I guess, sort of back to, yeah, they're back to 2019 levels.

Millennials are slightly higher. So 2.7. I mean, it's really, there's nothing to report here. Is there? It's paper thin. All right, this is interesting. From BLS, average consumption expenditure by age group in the U.S. And it shows it goes up from 25, peaks in your 45 to 54 age range, falls, and it falls from there. And it also shows, like, what you spend your money on. I don't think a lot of people think about this kind of thing in terms of retirement.

That, like, you actually spend less money in your older years than you think. And you probably, like, the Die with Zero guy, did you ever read that book or not? I know I've talked about it before. No. he says that not only should your spending peak in your 40s to 50s, your net worth should peak as well, because that's when you should start spending the most of it, because that's when you, like, before your health starts to decline a little bit. Well, this is a great segue to Christine Benz did an incredible post about people not spending

enough in retirement. And she said, even the retirees who spend in line with our base case, which is take it 3.8% initially and then inflation adjusted. So she said, for example, people start retirement with a million dollars, withdrawn $38,000 initially and inflation adjusting, the median ending balance was $3 million more for balanced

portfolios, and even higher for more equity-heavy portfolios. People are understandably so too conservative, because there's no penalty for dying with too much money, but if you run out, you're f***ed. Yes, that's longevity risk.

And I think people always assume the worst-case scenario is going to happen to them. Speaking of longevity risk, we just did a very interesting episode with Lifex, which is a stone-rich product that, I don't know, that's next week or the week after. But if you're a financial advisor, you're going to want to listen to that one. It was interesting. All right. Here's another scary headline. Americans are pulling money out of their 401k plans in an alarming rate from CNN. Alarming, really?

All right, what's the numbers? Let's hear it. All right. It surged the first three months of the year to 15,950, a 36% increase from the second quarter. That sounds bad. Unfortunately, there's four million. What does that number mean? What does that number mean?

Is that... That's how many people did these hardship withdrawals out of their 401k. Almost 16,000 people. 36% increase. That sounds like a lot. Until you realize

that there are 4 million people in the plans, I think that's 0.4% of the people. Okay. It's not great that people are doing this, but it's a tiny, tiny number. All right. So, you're not going to believe this.

You're not going to believe this, Ben. Have you ever gotten a text message from somebody? where they leave, it's a voice, it's a voicemail in a text message. I know you can do that. I don't think I've actually got one of those before. Okay.

So I've gotten a few. And I don't think I hate it. I don't think I hate it. It's interesting. It's a voicemail in a text message, right? However, however, I got a voicemail DM on LinkedIn. That is over the line. That's aggressive.

But he goes, hey, Michael, blank here. I work in it. What does he say? I operate a boutique life insurance brokerage. Imagine sliding into somebody's DM with the voicemail. Wow.

I guess this is like this is a thing now? It stood out at least. All right. Let's talk about Netflix. Okay. This Lucas Shaw put this biggest hit, the 10 biggest shows by U.S. consumers in the first half of 2023.

and I don't think I watched any of them. Nope. I have not... The mother, the night agent, just Ginny and Georgia. I have not seen a single one of these. Not even extraction to it, which I have to say. I haven't seen a single one. He says that fewer than 5% of original programs on Netflix last year

would have triggered performance bonuses under the new contract with the Writers Guild of America. Remember they said, like, if a certain amount of people watch it, you're going to get a bonus, which means you have to be seen by at least 20% of the U.S. users. It's very rare, but, I mean, their TV show is just not great, but I guess they just go quantity or quality. Paramount says streaming subscribers will see even more price increases moving forward, a trend that's permeated throughout the entire media industry. So Yahoo has this cool graphic breaking down all the different fees for, what stands

out to you here? Well, here's another inflation thing about the 2010s that probably is, warping people's minds. There was way too much stuff that should have cost more in the 2010s, but it was being subsidized. Yes.

Uber. Everything. Streaming services should have cost more in the 2010s when they came out. Disney was charging like $6.99 a month. Like, it was way too... All this stuff was way too cheap and it should have been

more expensive for what you get from it. Speak of streaming. So Disney Plus has lost nearly $11 billion. Sounds like a lot. Let's see. Disney reported that. that a streaming business is making progress,

they lost $387 million in the most recent quarter, down from $1.47 billion a year earlier. I couldn't tell you the last time we watched something new on Disney that wasn't old. We use it as just a way to watch old shows and movies. You know, we watched this weekend with the boys, Spider-Man Far From Home, great movie. Okay, my son loves all those Spider-Man movies.

Great movie. All right, so I nailed this. I mean, whatever, this was very easy to see coming. Remember I said the Marvels was the absolute worst trailer I've ever seen in my life? It bombed, right? $21 million in opening day, the lowest in MCU history. I hope they just stop at all the Marvel movies.

They're not going to. Here's my take. And I was listening to the big picture, and they were talking about this, that they did, they did, what's the, oh, the stinger. They did a stinger, and they showed Beast. I think they're going to go hard at X-Men. And they're going to stop making junk. So all like the tier fringe, that's over. That is over.

They're going to go after X-Men, and that's going to revive. That's a revive comic book movies. I'm all in for X-Men stuff. Deadpool is like the only one I like because I'm a big round of the stand. So Wolverine's going to be, and I love X-Men movies. I will be at the theater for every one of those. I can see that. Yeah, love.

Warner Brothers. Oof. So this is ad revenue per court. This just mean because they're getting lower ad revenue from TV? They lost 1.4 million domestic subscribers. That's a lot. What a debacle. The Max, Max Go, HBO Max, HBO Now.

Look at this ad revenue per quarter. The lowest level in, I don't know, three years. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad. Netflix broke everything. Everything. It really did. Okay.

So we have family photos on Sunday. And Robin said here, that's fun. Love doing that. Robin said, here, tell me if you feel like, like any of these sweaters. So she shows me the bag and it's J. Crew and I said, what am I Ben Carlson? How did you like it? It's a sweater. I'm like, I have four of these. So she's like, yeah, whatever. All right, you know what I have one of? Yeah, well, they don't cost $250 to a Jew. So it was $90. I said, what are you crazy? You spent $90 for this? And she

showed me in their seat. It was half off. Creditor. You never buy anything from a J. Crew or banana place without being 40 or 50% off. Never. All right, but I've got, I have one vest. Okay. And I wore it last week or two weeks ago. And I think I like how they look. Vests are style over substance. I probably have four vests. I'm a vest guy. I'm not going to lie. I'm a finance bro. I don't care. I'll own it. Okay. But whoever has it where their torso is hot or is cold, but their arms are warm. Right. Right. So that's where I'm going. It's useless. It's just for looks. Okay. Okay. So I'm glad we're on the same paycheck because I like how it looks, but like my back was really hot. You know what I mean?

Because it's like... Vests aren't functional. They just look good. Okay. All right. Because, yeah, my back was too warm. I was like, I don't... And then I couldn't take it off because I was...

The shot underneath was not like a... Anyway, just not sure I failed about Vest. So I was in Vegas last week. And there are... There's a thing there... I'm sure there's no one there's spending money, right? No. No, it looked like a depression in Vegas.

I'm sure this is, again, functional over... No, this is the opposite of that. It's probably function over style. there's clear backpacks. Hmm. I thought you only had to do that if you had a school or something that has a lot of crime. There's got to be a reason why people are walking around in clear backpacks, right? I don't know.

It must be a Gen Z thing. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but I'm guessing somebody will email us. All right, let's talk about, sorry the show went long today. Lots to talk about. Busy week, busy couple of weeks. Recommendations, what do you got? All right, David Spade was on the Pete and Sebastian show.

I love David Spade. I've been a fan of his forever since, like, PCU days and Tommy Boy and stuff, obviously. But, like, the fact that he's, I love his podcast. I think he's, like, one of the quickest, sharpest guys there is. And he was just telling story after story about S&L and movies and Samler and Farley. Who's Pete and Sebastian? It's the Sebastian Menasckel podcast. They interviewed him.

And they just let him go. They, like, didn't interrupt him. He just talked for the whole time. It was great. I watched The Curse. It's the new Nathan Fielder show on Showtime with Emma Stone. I don't know who this show is for. I think it's only for like 30 and 40-year-old dudes

who live in Brooklyn who have a TV podcast. It's essentially a satire of a couple who's doing an HG TV show, but everything he does just makes you feel uncomfortable. It's just like how uncomfortable can we make you feel? And like I watch the show and I'm like, I just made me feel bad. I don't know who it's for.

Are you going to stop or? I think so I'm sure there's a lot of people who are like, this guy is a genius doesn't do it for me All right, the killer on Netflix I, it's the new Fincher movie on Netflix

I thought it was the best movie Netflix has ever had I thought it was excellent, I thought it was like a throwback to movies they don't make anymore thought they could have landed the plane a little better on the ending. It was a very deliberate movie, so I was not surprised to say you didn't care for it that much but I thought it was great.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all, you're putting words in my mouth I didn't say I didn't care for it. What did you say? I'm pretty sure I said I like, didn't love. Okay. All right. I thought it was one of the best movies I've seen in a while. I thought it was really, really good.

Okay. So for those who don't know who David Fincher is, this is his filmography. Alien 3, which was a bit of a debacle. Who doesn't know what David Fincher is? Well, I'm just going through his movies. Hold on. Not everybody's a movie guy or girl. All right.

Seven. The game. Fight Club. Panic Room, Zodiac, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the social network, the girl with the dragon tattoo, gone girl, I won't mention Mank, but he did Mank, and the killer. So not bad, not a bad, not a bad pedigree.

So I wish I saw the killer in the movie theater. So I think I would have loved it. It felt like it should have been in a movie theater. Did you, do you agree with this? I preferred the first half to the second half. Yes, the ending wasn't great. It was a great fight scene though, but. That was a great fight scene.

So just for me personally, listen, I liked it. I did like it. I just didn't love it. It was a little bit too cerebral for me I thought FastBander was awesome It was like an even keeled movie Like it stayed at this level

It was very deliberate How about this? If a different director Tried to do this movie It would have been horrifically unwatchable He's a master Here's one question I like it I did like it

Here's one thing I noticed about movies though So he because he got beat up And he took these pills To make himself feel better How come people in movies Never drink water when they take pills People in the movies take pills and swallow They like chew the

pills? Who actually, who, what insane person does this? That's a truly funny observation. I've never taken a pill without a, without a sip of water. Yeah, that's, that's psychotic show. They always do this on movies and TV shows. So I saw Eddie Murphy is coming out with a new movie, which I'm very excited about. Just kidding. It's called Candy Cane Lane. What the hell is this garbage? Is that a Disney one? It's, it looks like it's on, is this Amazon? I don't know. I think it's Amazon. The Rock has a Christmas movie coming out too.

Come on. All right. So I've got a few, a few things on my list. I watched old dads on the airplane. I loved it. It's written and directed by Bill Burr. It's a Bill Burr stand-up special inside of a movie. That's what I thought, too. Yep.

So, listen, I loved it for what it was, right? Like, it's exactly what you think it is. If you like Bill Burr, you'd like the movie. That's a good airplane movie. It's a great airplane movie. I saw a deeply disturbing movie, disturbing on the lines of Speak No Evil. If you saw that horrific monstrosity of a movie,

of a movie, which was a great movie. This is of the same ilk, cut from the same cloth. This is not for horror tourists or beginners. This shit is grisly and gnarly and holy cow. It's called When Evil Lurks. I think it's Argentinian, and it's on Shudder. So if I'm talking to you, you know what to do. I don't understand anything you just said.

Okay, well, I wasn't talking to you. I was not talking to you. I was not talking to you. Argentinian? Geez. All right. So, did you see the new Ghostbuster trailer?

There's another one? Looks great. All the originals are in it. Bill Murray's in it. Oh, okay. I actually didn't mind the reboot they did with Paul Rudd. So I don't,

I haven't seen Ghostbusters since I was five years old. I have no, I don't have, I have zero memory. I watched it with my kids. They love it. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.

Okay, maybe I'll do that. All right, let's talk about real quick, before we wrap up, the best movies for the rest of the year. There's some good movies coming out. Godzilla minus one looks awesome. And I'm not a big Godzilla guy, but it is...

They make a new one of these, like, every two years. This takes place... No, but this is different. This takes place right after World War II when Godzilla was born, I guess. Oh, so it's historically accurate. This is based on a true story. This is based on a true story.

It looks great. Ferrari, the Michael Mann movie? I saw a preview for that looks pretty good. Napoleon, the Ridley Scott film? I might go see that in the theater. The Boys in the Boat, George Clooney? I don't know what that one is. Remember that book?

It was on every The Boys in the Boat is the book that was in every airport for the last 10 years. Oh, okay. I missed that one. Silent Night,

a John Wu movie. And last but not least, A-24 is making the Iron Claw. I think that looks good. The Texas Tornado and the Von Erick family, I can't wait for that. So there's a lot of good movies left.

I'm excited. Been a really shit year for movies, but... Yes. Looks pretty good. It hasn't been much good to come out at all. So, all right.

I'll take it. Remember, the compound News, no, Animal Spirits at the Campan News.com. The Smoke Show, Wednesday, there will be a replay. We don't know how it's going to be coming to you, but there will be a replay. But if you want to see it live, you can ask questions, be live in the audience on Zoom. Hit the link in the show notes.

You have to be a financial advisor to do it. And we'll see you there. No one Mr. Nice Guy. I'm sick of people telling us we're out of touch. You're out of touch. That's the energy I'm bringing today. You can start calling us out of touch when we start doing cold plunges. Until then, fuck.