Animal Spirits Podcast - Soft Landing (EP.269)

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

On this weeks show we discuss the stock market's ability to predict a recession, the hot labor market, wages vs. inflation, the prospect for a soft landing in the economy, Robinhood vs. Coinbase, volatility in the mortgage market, a bunch of movie recs and much more.   Find complete shownotes on our blogs...  Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense  Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor  Like us on Facebook  And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Masterworks. We all know 9% inflation, isn't helping out with savings. A lot of our investments are down. Michael, I logged in today, checked out the returns in my Masterworks portfolio. I'm up almost 13% on it. Not bad. It's kind of nice when something is actually outpacing inflation, not falling 10 to 20%. CEO Scott Lynn came on our show a couple years ago,

kind of opened our eyes to the art market and collectibles market. I guess I had no idea how well real assets would handle inflation until they actually lived through something because we looked at history. We've never really done it before. Not bad. If you want to join us over at Masterworks, they said demand is soaring just as fast as inflation. Wait, what the heck? How much is your portfolio up?

I got an IRR around 12.6%. I'm 11.3. Okay. Well, I'm a better art picker than you. What can I say? We've been partnering with you guys for years. Go to Masterworks.com slash Animal to skip their waitlist. See important regulation A disclosure is at massworks.com backslash CD.

You know why? My Pablo Picasso and my homie asses hasn't priced yet. That's because that's my most recent purchase. So when that gets a markup, I think I'm going to leapfrog you. I bought that too, so I'm at the same spot. I'm going to buy all the same paintings as you from now on so you can't outperform me. Remember, massworks.com slash animal to skip the wait list. 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. Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Rithold's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Rithold's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I know last week I opened the show or maybe I closed the show. I can't remember saying that I was not going to promote future proof anymore. I lied. I'm sorry. Sorry. It was not a deliberate lie. I just have to share this with the YouTube viewer audience, this beautiful promotional chart that we've got. Is this a chart? No, it's a poster. Ben, what do you think?

Poster. But it's online so you can't hang it on your wall. This is very on brand with the tropical feel to the festival. It's got some pink hues or some purple. You've got me on a jet ski. You have Josh on one of those. What other things called? Hydro something. Anyway, last call, last call. Join us. at Future Proof in Huntington Beach, September 11th to the 14th. All your friends will be there. A couple thousand people, I think, so far. All right, I've got a question for you. Okay. Can we say now that the stock market was wrong as of this summer? I think the stock market at one point, we never know exactly what the stock market is pricing in, but it sure seemed like, felt like the stock market was pricing in an imminent recession. And now it's kind of saying,

okay, okay, wait, we overdid it a little bit. I'm not saying the stock market can't go down. It could and maybe it will. But is it fair to say that the stock market got ahead of its skis a little bit? Absolutely fair. Absolutely fair. Amazon fell, did Amazon fall 47%? Something like that? All right. Apple we spoke about last week felt, what did you say? 29%. At the worst. So these are the facts, Jack. Apple fell 29%. And as we discussed last week, reported a record June quarter. That is a record of the all-time variety. And so, yes, clearly apples and many other stocks like it. Now,

the market is not a blob. There's things that got killed that deserved to, but certainly with the benefit of hindsight, some of the selling was overdone. Now, the question is some of the bouncing overdone, and I'm sure we'll get into all of that later. It's just a weird part of this because everyone would love to have an all-clear in a bear market. Someone asked us a question in the other inbox, how do you know when a bear market is over? And I don't think there is a good time to say it's over until you get back to all-time highs. But there's no all clear, especially in a situation like this where the Fed is still raising rates and inflation is still uncomfortably high, where maybe the stock market missed a recession now, but it could price went in for 2023 or 2024 at some point

too. What if inflation has been slower to hit our pocketbooks because consumers were flush with cash and absolutely desperate to start spending inside? And what if inflation? doesn't really show up in the data until 2023. And when I say, whatever, it's one possible scenario. That's probably the best way to think about this is that you should probably increase your range of scenarios right now to both sides. Because I think more people are coming around to the idea of a soft landing where before everyone was saying a hard landing, I don't think that you could rule out anything between

a soft and a hard landing. What would be better than a soft landing though? A smooth landing? Is that like the best case scenario? Or is that the same thing of soft? Is J. Powell going to be Captain Sully Sullinger? Just flying this economy upside down. All right. So we spoke last week about everyone, the topic of conversation has been the recession, not a recession, yes, a recession, not a recession. Two weeks ago, we got the second

quarter data, showed two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. But last week, we got the jobs report. And further evidence of the camp that, no, we were in fact at, not in a recession in the first half of the year. And the Dallas Fed put together. If you said, I think we're in a recession right now in the last couple months, you have to take the L. Oh, no, no, no. Nothing wrong with that. You have to take the L.

If you said in the second quarter, we're in a recession right now, that was not correct. I don't blame people who said that, who thought that was possible, but at this point, you have to take the L. Yeah, yeah. I might have said that. Who knows? I'm sure you could probably find me saying something along those lines. There's a few pieces of data.

The Dallas Fed put together some charts showing. non-farm payroll employment as well as industrial production. And they went back to every recession from 1948 to 2008. And there is, I don't know, call it eight or nine of them. And of course, what you see in every single recession, for the most part, actually, what's that outlier? Is that 2020? Whatever.

What you see is non-farm payroll going down, right? Employment going down. And industrial production going down. And you know what is happening from December, the opposite? Yeah. It's not a fun economic environment, but it's probably also not a recession right now. But it's also, we could be going to a recession. Very confusing. They also put together a composite index of recession indicators. So what's in here? As mentioned, we've got non-farm payroll, industrial production, real consumption, real personal income minus transfers.

By the way, there it is again. Real personal income minus transfers. I don't know what the minus transfers are. We're just going to skip up with that, pretend it doesn't exist. I think a lot of people came to us and said transfers is kind of like government payments. people. So just say taxes. Not necessarily taxes, but I guess that was a way to net out like government giving people checks. And I don't know if it counts social security. Someone can school us on this. All right. Whatever. I haven't asked this in a while. How's the farm payroll is doing? But I'm, so again, a composite of recession indicators goes down every single time there is a recession, needless to say. And that has not happened yet this time around. So in conclusion,

No recession first half of 2020. No recession in July, at least according to the jobs market, 528,000 jobs were added in July, high since earlier in the year. Unemployment is down to 3.5%, as you probably read last week. And average hourly earnings. Now, this is the sticking point. Average hourly earnings, up 5.2%. Which people say, yeah, but it's not keeping up in inflation, but that's still pretty good. Here's why economics is such a weird, I can't call it a science, a weird profession. Jason Furman, really sharp guy. He tweeted this uncomfortably hot jobs report. 528,000 jobs added, and unemployment rate falls a 3.5%. What worries me, R.E. inflation is average hourly earnings were

up at a 5.8% average rate in July. June revised up to 5.4%. The wage moderation, we were all discussing last month with simply wrong data. It's bizarre that you say it's a bad thing that we're adding too many jobs. Unemployment rate is too low and wages are rising too much. To me, I don't know, call me crazy. That seems like a good thing. Now, I'm Being facetious, because I know why he's saying this, because this could mean inflation is doing worse, but these all seem in a vacuum to be good things to me. Wages are rising, unemployment rate is falling. People can find jobs. Yeah, but that's nonsense. Come on. Why is that? Listen, okay. Absent context, yeah, that sounds good. True. But here's the thing. If you worry that the

job market is causing all this inflation, in January 2020, the unemployment rate was 3.5%. It then shot up to 15% from the pandemic now round-tripped like everything else back to 3.5%. This really has been the round-trip. No one was worried about inflation in January 2020. I know the circumstances now are different, but you can't say that all of this is because of, I know people are worried about a wage spiral or it was 1970s, whatever, but can you really say that the hot labor market is the cause of everything? No way. I mean, no offense. It's a bit of a non-sequitur. I don't think what people are saying in January 2020 is anything to do with what this person is talking about. This is what Fed is worried about that the labor market is too hot. Why shouldn't they allow the labor market to

stay hot for a while and see if all this other stuff shakes out? Because inflation is 9%. Okay. Everyone can complain and they still have a job and their wages are going up. I still think that's better than a recession because I still think the soft landing thing, I don't know. So the latest one people are saying is, okay, there was 11 million job openings and the best case scenario would be those job openings just kind of poof, most of them go away. And we don't have people lose jobs. That would be great. That'd be awesome if it happened. That'd be difficult. That'd be threading the needle. I know what you're saying. You're saying that it's weird to see that things are too good, that it's bad. But I do also think that that's the reality is that...

This is the Michael Scott. Tell me your greatest weakness. I care too much and I try too hard. I know you're not an Avengers guy, but... No, absolutely not. Jerome Powell is telling the economy to cool off. And Captain Steve Rogers is saying the economy, no, I don't think I will. Okay. I don't get that reference. They're trying to cool off the economy by raising interest rates. It's just not happening. I caught the Dark Night Rises the other night, I think is on Netflix I put it on.

That's a great movie. It's two different worlds. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies versus all the Avenger Marvel kind of things. They're not even in the same ballpark in terms of, I mean, you have to be embarrassed if you like Marvel movies more than the Batman movies, I think. I don't think anybody does, in fairness. Okay. The greatest, I think this is probably the economic chart of the pandemic era. from Bill McGrath. I think a million people have copied it. But showing that all of the percent

loss in jobs, and this is showing every recession, this world or two, has completely been, come back in. And I don't know. Another reason why historical analogs are just really difficult right now. We've never seen this. Because we essentially created a recession and then we created a recovery. And now we're dealing with what happened from both of those things. I agree that trying to find, I still think the best analog here is World War II, but even that was completely different situation in terms of where we were in a cycle and all this stuff. People were still dealing with like the after effects of the Great Depression at that point and coming off of that and not a 10-year bull market.

What if the stuff slash commodities, things that we consume, that inflation comes all the way back. You see crude oil below where it was when Russia first invaded in February. A lot of that is coming back in. And so obviously that will take CPI down quite a bit, but wages remain not just sticky, but continue to increase. And so CPI goes from nine to five, six. I mean, that's not a good steady state, obviously. To me, if prices are coming down and wages are staying elevated, that to me seems like a pretty good scenario, even if it's not 2% like the Fed wants. We'll find out. It would be really something

else if we have persistent 5% inflation and the stock market just doesn't care, it gets to an all-time high. And so it's not so bad. I'll come down. I wouldn't stick my neck out either way saying, no, this isn't the bottom, no, this is the top, but neither would surprise me. And then on the other hand, we had manufacturing PMI last week come in at a two-year low. So you don't have to like look that hard to find. There is some softening of the data. There's no doubt about that. Real estate is softening. That's a huge part of the consumer mindset. We'll get to that a little bit later. Ben, you wrote about travel has been crazy. What do you see? You were just out. We'd love to go to northern Michigan in the summer. Everyone up there calls it God's country. It's just beautiful along Lake

Michigan, Traverse City and Potosky and Mackin Island on all these places. And I have never seen any of these cities busier than they are this summer. You can't even get around. You can't get into restaurants. You can't drive through these cities because there's too many people there. my wife and I have been commenting on it because we've been going up to these places for years and is this the kind of thing that will stick or is this still pandemic stuff that's wearing off and people are just getting it out of their systems now because they saved it up. Has this turned on something where people go, I really need to get out and do stuff. I need to make more concerted enough to have experiences and these places are just going

to be more packed than ever now going forward or is this just kind of a one-off that we're just squeezing the toothpaste out of the bottle. Well, how transitory is the demand for traveling? I guess. That could last longer than people think. You would think that people get it out of their system and had their trips and they're not going to just do trip, trip, trip, trip, trip. But maybe this goes into 20, 23. I don't know. I'm booking my first Disney trip. I love Disney. I'm a huge fan. I can't wait. I cannot wait. I think I've sent this to a few podcast listeners. A friend of the show, Michael Antonelli, sent me an email listing his like hundred things you need to understand about

Disney. I sent it to my wife because she handled a planning for it. It really helped. us. So I'll have to forward that to you as well. All right. So right now I'm saying I can't wait. That's like the before experience. We'll see what happens. We'll see what my takeaway is. When are you going like spring break? So we're going in February, which is. Okay, that's when we went. Presidents week, I guess. And it is not surprisingly, it's expensive. So I don't know if this is normal with this is what it always is. We're booking this with somebody who's helping us plan all of this. So the flights are around $3,000, like give or take for four of us. The flights are $3,000.

I think the hotel is around the same, and the park is four. That's like roughly how it breaks down. So $10,000. How many days? We're going from Sunday to Friday, something along those lines. I would say making it out of Disney under $10,000 is almost impossible. Okay. That sounds crazy, no?

Is there a buy now, pay later for this? And the place is packed, and that's why I was saying a couple weeks ago, you look around and you go, how is everyone affording this place? And I think it's credit cards. Oh, speaking of some, you made a digger the American making tattoo jokes. Although, I guess I'm a tattoo person. But you're right. Actually, I don't want to get too specific on the tattoos because I don't want to offend anyone.

So how long will the travel boom last, I guess we will say. What is definitely not good and bringing it back to like, I guess, more real world stuff is volatility in the economy continues. And when I say the economy, I really mean like interesting. rates, mortgage rates, this is no good. Without getting too pessimistic, how does this not mess with people? How do you plan for business stuff when prices are all over the place? Costs borrowing, delays. I still haven't got in my Jetsky, by the way. Still, it's a little surprising to me that the Fed isn't trying to like target some level of interest rates on the Treasury.

So Lance Lambert from Fortune had this thing the other day, and this is last week. He said over the past four days, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate went from 5% to 5.5% to 5.15% to 5.45%. That's four different days when the most important borrowing rate to the majority of consumers in America was just wildly swinging back 50 basis points every other day. That's like a stock market up 4% down 4%, up 4% like that's happened before. That's like what's happening in the mortgage rate. I'm almost surprised the Fed just doesn't say, listen, we want 5% mortgage rates and we're going to make it happen, whatever it's, that seems to me to make more sense than just let it vacillate this much. Because you're right, people can't plan anything. Can you imagine if you're

locking in mortgage rates? I locked it at six and tomorrow it's five and a half. No, it's super, must cause a ton of anxiety, no? Yes. That's not helping matters. So the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has this wage growth tracker. This is nominal. But, man, this is really something. I know people keep saying it's less than inflation, but this is a massive. tick in wages. Yeah, but inflation takes all of it away. Okay, but when inflation goes back down, are these wages going to go back down too? That is a very good point. But what if these wages don't stop going down and continues to push inflation higher? I guess that's the worry. That's the worry, is that other things can come down. Wages are never coming down. This is my point about

economics being weird. We're worried about people making more money. I understand because it's the cost of living. It's a push and pull because for 10 years after 2008, everyone was worried that inflation was low, but people aren't making enough money. And we can't keep up because no one's making enough money. Now people are making more money, but inflation is higher. Yeah, it sucks. These are not real wage gains. But that's what I'm saying is you can't have both things. You can't have wages run really high and inflation be low. You have to pick one. Maybe it is more like 3% inflation and 3% wage growth or something or 4% wage growth is maybe a sweet spot. But I guess we've seen both extremes and maybe that's what makes people

angry is the extremes aren't great on either side. All right, so This is a true story It happened right here in my town One night 17 kids woke up Got out of bed Walked into the dark

And they never came back I'm the director of barbarian A lot of people die In a lot of weird ways We're not gonna find it in the news Because the police covered everything Willa On August days

This is where the story Really starts Weapons poor evidence that inflation will be coming down in the future months. From Liz Anson, there's shipping costs falling at an incredibly rapid rate. Remember all of this, like the ship stuck at port in Shanghai and Los Angeles. The year-over-year change in the cost to ship a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles has dropped negative 32%. The lowest since the start of the pandemic. And then the big one, the big, big one, are gas prices. I'm just about

under $4 here. What are they down for like 50-something straight days? I got to say, it feels pretty good. So Jim Batuckus said, Goldman Sachs says the immediate reason to expect disinflation is nearly 20% decline in retail gasoline prices mid-June. By itself, this decline should take at least one percentage point off the headline CPI for the next two to three months. Great. Nine to eight. We'll take it. Got to start somewhere. Which it sounds great in theory, but gas is just as volatile and I guess could come back up just as quickly. And so it could take away and give back. We don't know. But yes, I think people seeing some help with the gas pump is probably helping. Here's something for you that a lot of people wouldn't bet on. So, Y charts has this

thing where you can put stuff in and then you have different time frames. You can do one, three, five, 10 years. So I did 10 years because that's the max you can do it. So I'm not just having fun of the numbers here. Over the last 10 years, this is through August 1st, so this is before gas fell a little more. The U.S. Consumer Price Index, CPI, is up 2.6% annually in the last 10 years. Retail gas prices. What percentage annually are they up in that same 10 year period? So CPI is 2.6% What's 1.3%. So pretty much all, so they were falling from 2012. Obviously, 2020 was an outlier and they fell because no one was driving and oil demand

fell. But all of the gas stuff. So I think that's what makes the inflation thing so much harder for people to deal with is that on a relative basis, it was just out of sight, out of mind for so long that now we've seen this rapid ascent in it because we anchored to these low levels. The same thing with gas. Retail gas prices were down a ton and then now have shown. shot up, even with that huge increase, they haven't kept pace with inflation for the past 10

years. Gas prices are below the rate of inflation for 10 years. I'm just saying that would surprise some people, I would imagine. Yeah, I'd be one of them. All right. So over the last 60 days, this comes from at gas body, Patrick DeHan. Over the last six days, after seeing the largest 60 days 60 days, 60, is that what I said? I'm sorry. What did I say? Six days. 60. I meant, Okay, 60. There's too many numbers in this tweet. I'm just going to say gas prices have crashed over the last 60 days. The largest decrease, what is this? They fell by a dollar or something. No, almost a dollar over the last 60 days. Sharpest decrease in the GFC. He's also saying we just witnessed the largest increase in gas prices, a 60 day period ever going through starting on March. And we just saw the largest decrease as well. Yeah. I mean, listen, obviously, it will take the decrease followed by the increase. But this volatility in the real world is just, not good for morale. Yeah, another kind of round a trip. Okay, so I saw this, people were talking about this,

econ people were excited about it. U.S. consumers' median five-year inflation outlook declined to 2.3% from 2.8% in June. So basically inflation expectations are getting lower. Do any of these surveys matter right now? I feel like they're out, throw them all out the window. I mean, we're usually an anti-survey podcast, but I feel like asking people now to figure out what inflation is going to be or how they feel about the economy is just it's nonsense and it's not helpful.

Fair? Mostly. I guess I would just say it's just a sign that people are feeling a little bit of relief. Can I just say it just looks so creepy with Warren Buffett with a shitty-eating grin on his face over your shoulder. Who this guy? Yeah, right over your shoulder. It's just like he's kind of peeking over. I think that we've been talking so much on the internet, thanks to Kyle,

I've talked so much about vibes and how people feel. And I think, listen, well, these are small wins. take the small wins. People feeling a little bit less shitty. I think we'll take the small wins. Speaking of small wins, I was trying to teach my kids the importance of small wins and making their bed every morning. You start your day with it. You don't make your bed. There's no way you do. Zero percent chance. Okay. So you start your day. Every day I wake up, I make my bed. You know what? You start with a small win. I can't remember what psychologist I learned that from. And it puts you in a good mindset for the day. I usually don't believe in that kind of stuff. And I taught my kids about it.

And somehow my five-year-old son, George, is making his bed every single morning now. I told him once, he does it every day. And he starts off with a small win. Does it really help his day? Probably not. That's big. It makes me feel better, though. George is going to be a motivational speaker to his five-year-old friends.

We practice writing threads, like tweet threads. We practice writing them out now since he can't type yet. He's going to be doing like 25 tweet threads in a row. Okay, but Ben, look at this next chart. So this came from Renaissance macro research. And it's showing the median three year and median one year expected inflation. And this went straight up. And now it's coming straight down. And that's not a bad thing. Is it just following commodity prices, though? Is this just showing what happened in the month before to commodity prices? Probably. I'm sure this follows gasoline very closely. But anyway, the point is, though, the bigger point. If we're doing a Ben and Michael inflation expectations for Disney, it goes up into the right forever. It never comes down.

Yeah, what's the annual Disney inflation? It's got to be 8%. Okay, I got to send a picture. Duncan, I haven't put this in to the thing. The best thing to get at Disney, you get a cookie that's as big as your face. It's like an oatmeal cream pie, but it's two huge cookies in a massive thing of whipped cream or whatever in the middle. That's worth spending your money on at Disney. That was probably my favorite thing in terms of food at the whole place.

Listen, if there's an oatmeal cookie in front of me, I'll eat it. A wookie cookie, maybe? I don't understand. I think there's a small segment of the population. And I know that's a taste buds to each their own, but oatmeal over chocolate chips, I just don't understand. Fair. I'm the same way. Chocolate chip is my favorite cookie.

But this cookie, whatever they did with it. I'll eat it. I'll eat it. But I'm just saying I wouldn't pick it. So here's the bigger point. I think the bigger point is that this opens the door for the Fed to slow down and say, our job here is done. And that is partially why, along with maybe positioning and chasing. that is partially why risk assets have had the run that they've had over the past two or three

weeks, however long it's been. The market also, you try to set expectations. So we were on vacation with my kids. We had a nice dinner with my mother's 70th birthday this year. Before we go out to dinner, my kids have not had much time to be in like nice dinner settings for the past couple years because of the pandemic. And frankly, because we have three young kids, we don't want to sit in nice dinner setting. We want to do order and go. But we had a nice dinner and And in a touristy place like that, it takes a lot longer. So we set expectations ahead of time with my kids. Hey, guys, it's going to take a little longer if the food come out.

Got to be good. Like, we set those expectations and then 10 minutes into it. They're running around and whatever. That's the stock market. The stock market, like the Fed tries to set expectations, what we're going to do and we're going to do this slow methodically. And the stock market says, okay, fine, see you later, to the upside or the downside. The stock market is my kids at a two-hour dinner in Mackin Island.

But you saw Bill Dudley and we spoke about Neil Koshkar, be like, no, no, no, you You don't understand. You get me wrong. Exactly. Come back. Yes. Let's talk about the real estate. Sam Rob posted this chart.

It is a percentage of borrowers with negative equity in their home. And starting 2011, so post-GFC, this was still very, very abnormally large. I wish this was like zoomed back a little bit longer. But the point is. Yeah, because 2012 is the bottom of the real estate market. So the point is that everyone is above water. Everyone is in. There is a huge margin of safety in homes right now.

It looks like 2% of borrowers have negative equity in their home. Very small. All right. There was a press release this morning from Redfin. Redfin reports a growing share of home listings are stale as the market calls. The share of U.S. homes that were listed for 30 days or longer without going under contract increased by 12.5% from 54% to 61%. The first year over year increase. This is a good thing because-go back to the pandemic.

There's probably a ton of people who are still delusional about their housing prices and setting them at ridiculously high prices. And those are the ones that have to come in a little bit and stay in the market a little longer. And then once you see some price reductions, people will swoop in and buy them, correct? That makes a lot of sense. Mike Simonson from Altos Research has this chart, the percent of properties with recent price reductions for U.S. single family homes. 37 percent, which is higher than it's been any time over the last five years at this point in the cycle. Obviously, housing is very seasonal, tends to ramp up in the spring, peak out. I was going to shout out to Mike. Every week he does, because a lot of the government data for

real estate is on a monthly basis. And him at Altos research, they do it on a weekly basis. And you're following the home market and you care about this stuff, kind of like we do. He puts out a weekly series of home inventory stuff. And he's showing that people, were worried that the inventory is just going to skyrocket. And I guess it's already slowing or rolling over a little bit. His thesis was, are we going to see a soft landing in housing, which I think would shock a lot of people if rates went from three to six and inventory doesn't just scream higher? Because here's the problem. Most people, the seasonally period, people like to buy in the summer because especially if you have kids, you want to move before the school year starts. When does your

school year start? September. Okay. See, we're in like middle of August already. School is starting. It seems early to me. We're on different cycles. Okay. What are you seeing in your neighborhood? Are you canvassing? What's going on there? We had a house across the street from us, put it up for sale and sold in a day about a month ago.

Desirable home? Pretty desirable home, and I think a pretty desirable area, not to brag. I was saying, desirable neighbors, not to brag. Yeah, right. No, but it sold pretty quick. I don't know if they had something set up ahead of time or what. But like I said, I drive by a few houses that have been on sale for at least two or three months now. that are on the way to when I drop my kids off at preschool every day, that I wonder, like,

what are these people thinking? Because that whole process, if you're waiting that long, is a very stressful process. And I'm surprised we won't see more price cuts if that happens to people. Know what's an exciting time in the life of a suburbanite? What's that? Where the house goes for sale and it sells. And then you're like, ooh, who are my new neighbors? Oh, yes. Right? The people moved in yesterday. They had a big moving truck. Didn't meet him yet, though. I heard they have two kids.

The other thing for people now is, wait, how much did it sell for? And everyone knows the number, like, immediately. Did you hear how much it's sold for over asking? Like, everyone knows that number, too. This is why you're right. Zillow needs betting markets. That's one of your best ideas you've had this year that Zillow should have betting markets on how much is that house going to sell for.

Thank you. I would totally bet on that. The house across the street for me is way overpriced. There's no way it's selling for that. Or it's underpriced it's going to sell it way more. You take the end of the year wrong. You're like, what? I think that's a great idea.

Softbank had earnings yesterday, and this might be an exaggeration. I paused a little bit. Maybe not. Maybe there's never been a more aggressive investor with size than Masseus-Shaun. Okay, soft bank, here's my analogy. SoftBank is to private investments as Bill Miller is to public investments. Because Bill Miller has a comeback every two and a half years. He's done, he's toast, he's back.

He's done, he's back. This is the same thing with SoftBank. But on like HGH, because these are tens of billions of dollars. And he's just slinging it. And he did this in the 90s. And somebody they worked with, they quoted it, they found Gary Reichel said, I don't think that Lepardtch changes their spots. This round trip of the gain and loss on the Vision Fund,

which is basically softback at this point, it's just crazy. I don't know. Looks exactly what you would think it would look like, I guess. But this might be the round trip of round trips. They blew out of their Uber position. they're doing some sort of synthetic forwards with Alibaba to raise money. I'm not quite sure what's going on there. But they invested in Klarna.

They put $1.7 billion into Klarna in the first half of 2021 and an average valuation of $35 billion. I think recently that was valued at around six. They and Tiger were the poster child of all the excess and in massive dollar amounts over the last year and a half or so. You know what, though? People are still going to give them money. He'll be back. Yes. There'll be a bull market at some point and yes.

But you're right, that round trip, wow, that's something else. That looks like one of those charts that like someone makes up, like an analog chart of the Great Recession or Great Depression. It looks fake. For sure. All right. We're going to get into quarter. Earning seasons. What do we have this week?

We're more or less past all the big stuff. The only one that I'm waiting with baited breath is Coinbase, which I believe is. sometime this week. We're going to start with Robin Hood. So the big news last week was that Robin Hood laid off an additional 23% of their staff. Bill Gurley tweeted this. We spoke about this. You never really stopped at 5% or 10%, which I think they announced a layoff.

They did 9% first, then 23%. That's a big, big reduction. So Bill Gurley said, if you were planning a RIF, what is that? Reduction in FOMO. Force. Okay. And haven't executed yet. please see this as a lesson. Robin Hood did 9% in April and now 23%. 5% to 10% reduction

RIFs are, quote, all of the pain and none of the gain and are frequently followed by 20 to 30%. But that's a psychological thing. If you're going to do it, try to do it. You can't start off with 30. No, I mean, you can't do it because that's just, I know exactly what he's saying, but that is harsh. Imagine being like, yeah, one third of you were gone. So Vlad, their CEO, put out a blog post on this. And he said, let me explain this decision. Early this year, we announced that we'd be letting go of 9% of our workforce. This does not go far enough. Since that time, we've seen an additional deterioration of the macro environment with 40-year high inflation, accompanied by a broad crypto market crash. This is further reduced customer trading activity and assets.

Last year, we staffed many of our operation functions under the assumption that a heightened retail engagement we have been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022. Obviously, it did not. The New York Times had a piece on Coinbase and went wrong at Coinbase. I looked at this the other day. Robin Hood's market cap is now $9 billion. Coinbase is still $20 billion. Who is in worse shape right now? Coinbase or Robin Hood? Because I think you could make the case that it's coin. If Bitcoin goes up, Coinbase will probably go up again. But here's the thing. In the first quarter of the year, Coinbase... Robin Hood's worse shape definitively. Okay. Here's the thing, though. In the first quarter of 2022, 90% of revenue from Coinbase came from

trading fees. Don't you think the fact that Robin Hood's already ahead of the game in terms of 0% commissions that Coinbase is going to have to get there somehow, some way, eventually. I think you could make the case Coinbase is in a worse position. No way. Where does Robin Hood's next customer come from? Where does Coinbase's next customer come from if Binance and FTX offer free trading? The announcement with BlackRock, that's where? Institutions, you think?

Yeah. All right. Yeah, I would much rather bet on Coinbase right now. I think they're both in trouble, but I think you could make the case that Coinbase is going to have changed their whole business model eventually to account for free trading. and that could be very bumpy ride. Somebody timestamp this, 12 months from now. Coinbase is in a better situation relative to where they are today than Robin Hood.

I'm talking long-term viability as a business. They're both in rough shape. I think Coinbase could be worse. All right, fine. Time stamp it's 10 years. Let's revisit this in 10 years. I'm just saying I would bet on FTX or Coinbase right now, being the one who comes out of this as the winner. Oh, moving the goalposts, are we?

Talking about Coinbase was Robin Hood. No, because I'm saying Robin Hood has already gone to zero fees. Coinbase has not. I get it. I get it. I get it. You don't think the market discounted that, punishing them by a 90% declining share price? There's still $21 billion company. Sounds cheap. Morgan Stanley paid $13 billion for E-trade less than two years ago. Put that into context for me. Well, you just said Robinna is $9 billion. I don't know. 13 billion doesn't sound like that bad of a deal, does it?

I don't know. All right. So what's going on with Robinette? Their first now piloting retirement accounts with plans to launch latest year. What the hell are they waiting for? How is it taking so long? IRAs. That's their new accounts you're just looking for. In Q1, we extended market hours. so customers now have more flexibility to trade when they want. And customers have now traded over $9 billion in their IRA. Who doesn't want Dogecoin in their IRA? They've traded over $9 billion in volume during these additional hours. Extending training hours we view as the first step towards 24-7 stock trading. And we are making progress towards making this a reality. Remember when they said that most of their customers don't trade? What did they say? Long-term investors. Yeah, yeah, sure they are.

By the way, I still can't send crypto. They talked about the wallets, not in New York, or at least not for me. I can't send it. Let's get to the earnings. Monthly active users peaked in the second quarter of 2021 at 21.3 million. It's now 14 million. I think that might be, I don't know what it's the all-time peak. I don't know how they get back to that number. Assets under custody peaked at $102 billion. Now down to $64 billion. This is no bueno. The average revenue per user. That loss, so like a 40% loss call it. That makes sense, actually. Which one? Oh, the assets under custody. Yeah. average revenue per user, a.k.a. how they make money, peaked at $137 in the first quarter of 2021. It's now $56. Now, credit to them, the net income, or in this case, loss has shrank dramatically. They lost

$295 million in the last quarter. I know that they were expanding. If they couldn't make money in 2020 and 2021, when are they going to make money? Well, they were in growth mode. And by the way, we're going to talk about this in a little bit. Uber turning the spigots on. Maybe this is one of the things that we didn't appreciate is that these companies do have the ability, not all of them, but some of them might have the leverage inherent in their companies to turn some of the dials and say, listen, we were optimizing for growth. Investors were fine with us losing money. We are trying to get to a free cash flow positive, and Uber did. So maybe these companies are able to do what Wall Street wants. We'll say. So anyway, monthly active users was down

1.9 million quarter over quarter. Ascent under custody, down 31% quarter over quarter. Jake tweeted at Economic. He tweeted net deposits up $5 billion, but AUM down from $93 billion to $64 billion. That's an asset weighted return of roughly negative 35% in the quarter across all of their clients, which I don't know, not to like don't think or be mean, but that's what they were trading was down. So that's not a surprise to me. If you're buying crypto and growth stocks, which most people probably were in Robin Hood, down 35% that quarter is probably about. Well, my Robin Hood account was. crypto. What of them? It got smashed. What of them? All right, let's talk about Zillow.

For context, in the second quarter, Zillow, which I'm not a daily user. That would be weird if I was checking it down. I'm a monthly user. I still check Zillow quite frequently. 234 million average monthly unique users, which is up only 2% year over year. Yikes, not great. For context, LinkedIn has 310 million monthly active users. Twitter is 330.

Snap is 530. If you think about it, Zillow has a. floor in terms of age of people looking at their houses. So, I don't know, you start looking at age 20 something, early 20s maybe, whereas Twitter and Snap and all these other ones, they start way younger. So I think the fact that Zillow is in the same ballpark as these, even though that they can't have any young users, like what young people looking on Zillow. I think that's impressive. Yeah, I agree. Look at the numbers, listen to what they said. There's definitely not a good report. The stock opened down, I don't know, a lot. It closed the gap and is now higher than.

but here's what they said. In the third quarter, we expect IMT, which is their main source that's internet media telecom. That segment revenue to be between $409 million and $434 million, declining 12% year for year, out at the midpoint of our outlook range. This is a bit worried, but I think it's important. Rich Barden, CEO, co-founder said homes are even harder to afford today. Rapidly rising mortgage rates have compounded the existing affordability challenges created by unprecedented home price appreciation. This is driven buyer sentiment to a 20-year low and reduced buyer demand,

which is cool to previous red-hot sellers market. Across the industry, we are seeing price growth meaningfully soften, unpending sales and new mortgage applications. Ultimately, with all these factors combined, the housing industry saw flat year-over-year total transaction dollar volume in Q2, while various leading indicators deteriorated.

Another thing that they did that was interesting is, and I will read this so I don't just, bungle it. He said the drop in stock price, which we've all felt has resulted in actual compensation being much lower than planned and on higher compensation for many Zillow employees who receive a meaningful portion of their compensation in equity. And despite what you may hear, it is a highly competitive job market for tech and product talent, which means it's unsettlingly easy for a skilled employee to get a significant compensation bump and an equity reset simply by

switching jobs. We've spoken about this, right? Best way to get a raise to switch jobs. our people create the great products and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it would be more expensive to recruit and replace valuable employees tomorrow than it will be to retain folks today. Attention and churn is an insidious barrier to growth, and by minimizing avoidable barriers, we are in a better position to achieve our goals. With that considered, we have made the decision to issue an off-cycle RSU grant to partially top up total compensation, particularly for those in the most competitive job categories. We will also reprice a small portion of the total outstanding stock office.

options, those that are far out of the money. Makes sense to me. They're buying low or trying to. With the real estate market as it was, I know that there was a lot of challenges, but they probably bungled it as bad as they possibly could have for one of the hottest real estate markets ever. Did you see the Open Door partnership they announced? I did. Why don't those two firms just merge? That should have been the thing. Instead of trying to compete with each other from the start, they should have just merged anyway. Have Open Door do that for Zillow. I know that's what their partnership is going to be, probably. But instead of trying to compete with one another,

they probably should just come together and done it as one, which I think is what they're doing now. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know about the dynamics of how that would work. But one more thing that they said is they're going to be leaning harder into a mortgage origination and they are basically almost all done or will be in the next quarter or two with getting those houses off their balance sheet. So partnering with Open Door to do the eye buying thing. Open Door, on the other hand, had pretty good results.

Revenue, $4.2 billion, up 254% quarter over quarter. I'm sorry, year over year, quarter over quarter, they're actually down. Quarter of a quarter, they're down about 20% or so just eyeballing it. They passed 50 markets. They're now in New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Detroit, giving them the ability to underwrite nearly 30% of single family home transactions in the U.S. So not bad. Stock is only down 84% from the highs.

Zillow's down 81%. Gross profit up 206%. Net loss much smaller than expected. There was a quote, though, there about a significant. significant or steep slowed down in the home market. So again, forward guidance, or at least some the things that they're saying is not super bullish, not surprisingly. No, that's you'd expect. All right, Uber, numbers are good. You mentioned the thing about going from growth mode to cash flow mode. Jason Calcanus was on Oblots recently. I never heard that one. But he said his point about this

was, yes, that CEOs were only in Uber growth mode were doing that because that's what the market was saying, do this. We're going to let you have that. you're going to be rewarded for it. Now companies are being rewarding for getting profits and cash flows. But you're right. So like the companies that can pull those levers to do that, I think that's turning a battleship for a lot of places. I think that's going to be very hard to do. So Uber was trading at 24 bucks prior to the earnings release. It's now at 31. So it had a massive jump. But I mean, this stock has just gotten decimated like everyone else. Something similar with left. Also positive free cash flow. Do you take Uber very often or not?

Yeah. I hear a lot of people complain how much higher prices are gone. I haven't taken Uber No, I haven't taken it in a while. I mean, I take it here and there, but not super often. So it looks like the stock is still down 50% from the highs even after a nice little jump here. I think it's up by the way. It is Tuesday morning and at least a NASDAQ 100 has almost taken back all of the pop from Fed Day on Wednesday. Whatever, just saying. You call that filling the gap, Michael? No, there was no gap, Ben, because a gap happens overnight. Oh, okay. In video, we actually spoke about this, how Microsoft. Sov's gaming segment. And maybe this is like good news that people are getting out and are done being inside.

Envidia's gaming revenue was down 44% versus the first quarter. That's got to be a record decrease now. Because all the nerds finally got out of their basement? I don't know. People actually doing stuff in the real world. Were there a Stimmy check sent out over the weekend that I didn't hear about? Why? Did you see the meme stocks yesterday?

This has to be one of the crazy, like, there's no way anyone assumed this could last for this long. Bad Bath and Beyond, we talked about that a few weeks ago. It's down 95% or whatever. It was up 40% in a day. What if the meme stocks are just a part of it now? They just happen periodically. I think that's not a crazy thing to say. But aren't we surprised a little bit that the market hasn't stepped in and crushed this stuff yet. Are retail traders really that important to these markets? Yes. For sure. I can't believe it's still happening. So in conclusion, earning season has definitely been better. than what was price into the market. We can now say that definitively. And that was easily the most important earning season until next quarter. Can we agree with that? It was the most important

earning season ever until the next one. And that's going to be the most important one. I take umbrage with your dismissiveness of this because I'm not dismissing it. I'm just saying no, no, no, sir, sir. The cycles ebb and flow. There are times where the market where it's all about CPI, there was times for much of the last decade when it was all about non-farm payroll. Sometimes this- But my point was. But my point was, this was a big earning season. This was a big earning season. But it was a lot of the perma bears were expecting these stocks are all going to get crushed and watch out. And this is what it's going to cause the market to go down another 30 or 40 percent. And that's why I think a lot of

people are probably disappointed that it wasn't worse. I think a lot of people wanted it be worse. Oh, people are pissed that stocks are rally. I think there's no doubt about that. But at the same time, there's like different buckets of traders and investors and it forms one sort of blah. But There are silos. I miss this. I say that. Duncan said, I should get a new bail tattoo. Where would you get it?

Tramp stamp. Definitely. Butt cheek. Bachelor. Jim Bianco has a chart showing that small option traders have cooled off, which, yeah, that'll happen when your stocks are down 80%. Okay, but option traders have cooled off, but we're still seeing the meme stock thing. That's what's surprising because you... That's what I'm saying.

You would think that it's like the same thing, but I guess not. All right. All right. Good tweet from Hunter Horsley of Bitwise. He said, working in crypto is an incredible, never-ending education in how far the pendulum can swing. 2017, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink calls Bitcoin an index of money laundering. 2021. Why BlackRock is bullish on blockchain, but not Bitcoin.

2022. BlackRock picks Coinbase to provide clients with direct Bitcoin exposure. By the way, if I had to pick out some of mild quotes on Bitcoin, they would probably be just as radical as this. Although I think saying in 2021, you're more bullish on blockchain than Bitcoin, that was a pretty good trade. That was a pretty good trade, right? That wasn't bad. There was a big story. I don't want to say it was big, but I got some attention about a pension fund that's yield farming. And I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during this discussion because there's a quote from the chief investment officer of the Fairfax County police officer's

retirement system. She said some of the yields that you're able to achieve in a yield farming strategy are really attractive because some of the people have stepped back in that space. So they put $35 million into this yield fund that's run by parataxis capital and Vanek has a new finance income fund. They put $35 million into this thing. But I just want to say two things. $35 million out of almost $7 billion is half a percent. So they're not exactly betting the farm, pun intended. And number two, they're not going. This is a pinky toe into the water. Yeah, they're not going from a 6040 portfolio into yield farming. They had already been in crypto for, I think several years. So good story. Deserves a little bit of cold water. The Black Rock

Coinbase deal. So I think this is one of the reasons why Coinbase has the upper hand. I just think that if when institutions come to market, they're going to go with a trusted brand. I feel like we keep hearing this, though, but it doesn't really lead to much. We see these deals, but then nothing happens. I know it's just planning the groundwork a little bit, but I feel like we've seen these kind of headlines before, and then nothing ever comes of it. Well, this is a big one. Brevin Howard raised more than a billion dollars. for its flagship crypto vehicle. It's the largest crypto hedge fund launch yet.

What do you call a fund that's not a flagship? Oh, that's your question. Because it seems like all funds are flagship funds. Would you like our flagship? Nah. No, give me the leftovers. Give me the other one. Yeah, give me the one behind that.

That's a good one. I want the guy behind the guy. Oh, we're running along. Let's move on to the recommendations, Ben. You start, do the counter Reeves thing first. I have some thoughts here. Okay. I was about say I've got news report.

It's actually a variety who's a reporter, not me. Variety tweeted Martin Scorsese and Leonard DiCaprio are producing devil in the white city and the lead is look at this look at this i found in my bookshelf not to brag i've read many books i have this one the lead is kiana reeves and i did you read this book so this is the book by eric larsson yeah you're talking about what it's going on here i'm excited about this one i read this book not too long ago i don't love the casting decision i can't picture that guy as kianu he can prove me wrong i don't love it Wow, an early zag.

If you read that book, this guy is a supreme sociopath. I don't picture him as like a guy with a California dude accent. All right. It's got to be Jared Leto, no? He's King Weirdo now. Leo would have been perfect. It was supposed to be Leo. Keanu can prove me wrong.

He probably has the best curating of any celebrity in the world right now. Like, people just love Keanu Reeves. I'm just saying he's not who I picked. He's not who I pictured as this lead. Okay. Well, I'm excited. I loved the stuff in the book about the World Fair. That stuff was really interesting to me

Yeah, it was good, it was good Wait, is this based on a true story? Yes, it is a true story Okay Oh, speak of true story Are you watching Blackbird? Sorry, I haven't got into you We're still finishing

I was out on vacation I'm way behind TV I haven't watched much TV lately Well, I have great news for you A, it was a great show B, six episodes All right You sold me

It's next on our list You know what is a great feature People complain too much these days They don't appreciate Ben, if you rent a movie or if you're watching anything on Amazon Prime and you press pause and you've got the x-ray, and it shows you the characters and the cast, and then it shows you trivia, you can click in. It also shows you if there's a song on it, says, who's seeing the song? Oh, really? Yes.

It's the little things. I do like that one. All right, the new Predator movie, Prey, Phenomenal. Stripped down. No nonsense. You saw this at the theater? Yeah, I wish I saw it at the theater. It was only released on Hulu.

I don't understand. Oh, so I could see this now. I looked at this. The last predator, which was terrible, cost $88 million to make. Okay. So I pooh-poohed this one, but you're saying I should watch it? Well, I don't know if you should watch it or not. I like these. I love the original Predator is one of my favorite 80s movies. Oh, then watch it. Yes, then watch it. I love Predator. Yeah, there's no nonsense. It was just boom right into it and there's a hunt. And it was just no nonsense. Very reminiscent of the earlier one. But what was interesting is that, so Adam Neiman did a post on The Ringer about this.

Quote, he said, the plan had been to market the film purely as a standalone release. A period piece action movie with Native American characters, the working title was Skulls. The Predator Connection would turn out to be a surprise on opening night. The same tactic that M. Knight Shyamalan exploited with his cleverly disguised unbreakable sequel split. Dude, if I saw this movie in the theater, just thinking that it was some sort of monster chase movie and I saw The Predator, my head would explode. Can you imagine how sick that would be? There's no way you could keep something like that secret these days, though. Probably not.

Back in the day, we thought that Blair Witch, like people left the theater thinking it was a real documentary. That's how dumb we were back then, because no one knew anything ahead of time. Oh, man, I love Blair Witch. How old? I was like 13 when I saw that scared the living bejesies at me. I was in camp, sleepway camp, when I saw that. What year was that? Ninety-nine, no, like 99.

Oh, 99. Why didn't say 94? 99. All right, so I was 15. I was old enough. Anywho, a listener emailed me about a movie that he thought I should watch, thought it was up my alley, and boy was it up my alley. Ben, have you ever heard of Brawl and Cell Block 99? No, but it sounds like a straight-to-d-d-d-d-d-a-movie to me.

Google it right now. Okay. Vince Vaugh. Boy, Vince Vaugh, what happened to his career? Here, let me read the description. A former boxer loses his job as an auto mechanic and his troubled marriage is about to expire. At this crossroads in his life, he feels that he has no better option than to work as a drug courier. He soon finds himself in a gunfight between police officers and his own with his allies.

When the smoke clears, Bradley is badly hurt and thrown in prison where his enemies force him to commit acts of violence that turned the place into a savage battleground. On Google, it has how much this thing made at the box office? What is your guess? Box office, how much it made? Six million. $79,000. Shut up. Okay.

Budget four million bucks off of $79,000. Look at this cast, Ben. You've got Don Johnson, Jennifer Carpenter. You probably don't know the name, but you know the face. This guy, Uder Kier, he's like a classic European bad guy. You've got Tom Gurey, the guy from the sandlot, the kid from the sandlot. This sounds like a straight-to-d-d-d-cast to me. Okay.

I am being completely sincere and unironic here. This is one of the most savage movies I've ever seen. It is of the grindhouse. genre. It is extreme violence, but not just for violence sake. I don't like hostile violence. You know what I mean? Like just torture. I don't like that. I don't like torture porn. If this movie sounds like something that you would like, you will love it. Obviously, you probably don't fit that description of something that you would like. But if you do, I'm out. Great movie. Not a good movie. A legitimately kick-ass awesome, violent, fun movie.

Okay. Brawl and Cell Block 99 starring Vince Vaughn. That does not sound like it's going in Ben's Q anytime soon. You're welcome. You talked about city slickers last week, so I put it on for a little bit. Billy Crystal, they talk about him having a midlife crisis. I assume they're going to be talking about planning his 50th birthday party. He's like 39, right? 39, yes. How, I mean, him then and me now and you, like in the same age bracket.

He looks like he was 50, at least. But isn't it inexplicable to think that like Billy Crystal was a movie star? Like an A-list, A-list? It is kind of hard to believe. But how good was the first hour of that movie? It is good. We finally watch The New Bond, No Time to Die. I hadn't seen it.

it doesn't work it was entertaining i didn't know about the ending that was kind of surprised me i'm surprised i never heard about that way too long way too long so james i know they've made dozens of bond movies but like mission impossible is objectively a better franchise than james bond oh the recent movies i'm sorry the new mission impossibles are way more fun than james bond i'm sure you could like the old ones also i still think born identity is our generation is james bond i caught the first half hour born identity the other day anytime we have an origin story that first half hour is so awesome. Two quick kids movies. The Sea Beast on Netflix, my son loved, and luck on Apple. They pulled a person from Pixar and they're going to start making movies on Apple. It wasn't that

great, but my kids liked it. Finally, one more. Michael Clayton. This is a movie that people I respect with movie opinions love. I've tried to rewatch this movie like three times, and I want to like it, but I just can't get there. You ever had one of the movies where like, I want to love it? Because I know a lot of people love it. It's just kind of like, it's not bad, but it kind of falls flat for me and doesn't really, like, pull me away. I've rewatched it recently, and I do like it. I don't know. I'm just a big George Clooney guy.

I can just watch them do it almost anything. I got one more thing. So we rented a house. Our new thing is we have like my brother has three kids. We have three kids. My parents, a big family. We all want to be in the same place. In the summer we rent a house, like there's a bunch of ski hills in Michigan up in the

north. So we rent a big ski chalet that's way cheaper in the summer. And they have like water parks and golf or whatever for the summer, even though I don't golf. And so we had this huge house. And in the basement, instead of a pool table, they had a shuffle bowl bowl. What do you call it? Shuffleboard, board, whatever.

The shuffleboard? No, the handheld one that you have at a bar. So you have a salt on the table. Oh, yeah, yeah, those are great. Okay, I'm going to make the case that shuffleboard is better than pool. If we're talking about like a leisure drinking game, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shuffleboard is awesome.

Yes, I love that game. That should be more prevalent at different bars. I love that game. Great call. So in conclusion, brawl and cell block 99. Just the name alone. That was a grisly movie. That's how it's grisly.

Vince Fond needs to stick to comedy. Sorry. It greeted us gray. All right. Send us an email, Animal Spiritspot at gmail.com, and we'll see you next time.