Animal Spirits Podcast - State of the American Investor (EP. 427)

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

On episode 427 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss what happens to the stock market after Fed rate cuts, is this 1996 or 1999, why value stocks need a recession, investors love options, how people invested before the Internet, why we need a correction and much more. This episode is sponsored by Invesco. To learn more about Invesco’s income advantage ETFs. Visit https://www.invesco.com/income-advantage Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for our prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Investco Distributors, Inc. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben as the summer winds to a close. time to look forward to the fall. Is that right, Ben? Yeah. You live your life one season at a time. So Ben and I are going to Las Vegas in November for the FPA annual conference. We will be wrapping it up. When are we speaking? November 5th. Ben, you and I have never been to Vegas together. Is that right? No, I haven't played blackjack in a long time. So I was just thinking, like, man, I can't wait to play blackjack again. Okay. So we've been to casinos together. Milwaukee and Arizona, I believe.

Yeah, one of those was a short-lived trip because of you, but we'll tell that story another time. What happened? You had an upset stomach. You know, Blackjack is like as close to a 50-50 game as you can get, right? It's one of some of the best ads in the casino.

Yeah, some of the best ads you can have. And yet, I think I've lost like eight times in a row. Now, mind you, I just play by the book. I don't do anything exotic or special or fun, but I've managed to pull off the Impost. possible. I don't know what it is, but I feel like I've won 80% of the times I've gone to play Blackjack. I'm like the opposite of you. For some reason, I can't be true. I win way more often than I lose. I have an unbelievable streak with Blackjack for some reason in my life.

All right. Well, I can't wait to watch you get demolished in Las Vegas. FBI conference should be fun. I have, yeah, I don't think I've ever done an event in Las Vegas before. Okay. So we will put a, we will put a link in the show notes. We got a promo code. Think of it. Listen, it was $100 off the car registration rate. So yeah, come see us in Vegas. So the stock market is a bizarre place sometimes, often counterintuitive. I tweeted this out the other day. The stock market was up, I don't know what, 2% on Friday. And the headline should have been that the stock market is up because Jerome Powell sees the labor market slowing down.

Which seems like an odd thing to happen. But that's essentially what it was, correct? Policies the labor market slowing. That could lead to a Fed rate cut so the stock market rallies. Yeah. Seems a bit odd to me. But I guess, so the hope is that we're just going to thread the needle. Yeah, I think maybe for the average person on the street,

if you explain to them the situation, hey, good news. The labor market is slowing. They'd be like, huh? But I think at this point, in the year 2025, it's well understood. There's no more mysteries about why Stocks Raleigh. Okay. What's the reason? You're confused on why Stocks Rallied on Friday?

I feel like we've been railing off of the hope of rate cuts for like two years almost. Yeah, but they're still, eh, I don't, you think so? I just do wonder if we finally get the rate cuts, if that's like the signal of, okay, this is like, this is actually like the cycles coming to a, to a close kind of. It's not that easy ever. All right. Counterpoint, though, we are seeing more and more stocks participating. And I always, for the most part, fall back on the stock market.

Always for the most part. That was a grander of the time. always for the most part, the stock market knows what's up. So Grant Hawkech, which has this wonderful chart that he shows the percentage of S&P 500 stocks that are above the 200 day, the 50 day, and the I can't even see anymore. I don't know what these these are. There's three different colors. Point is, Grant tweeted, more stocks are trending higher, not fewer.

Around 59% of the S&P 500 names are above both their 50 day and 200 day averages. only 20% are below, both. This isn't narrow leadership. It's broad participation fueling the trend. Brett is confirming the ball. One more data point from our friend Ryan at Carson Group. Friday was a rare 90-90-day, meaning 90% of the volume in stocks on the New York Stock Exchange were higher.

These events tend to be quite bullish with the S&P 500 higher more than 90% of the time a year later, and it's more than 23% on average. So when you see this type of behavior inside the market, again, I fall back to the thing that like investors are not dumb. When the market is doing something that might be counterintuitive, as you put it, go with the market. And so you are seeing more and more stocks participate.

Microcaps, equal weight, Dow, what else do you need to see? It's all happening. Equal weight is up over 9% this year. The S&P is up close to 11% now, but the equal weight is, you're right, it's right, it's right there. The one thing I will say that the stock market has not been very good at, and I don't have the numbers in front of me. I use them in my new book, which you got to,

to wait till next spring to get. But leading up to a recession, the stock market is not very good at sniffing out a recession if and when that happens. We don't get those anymore, so you don't have to worry about it. But if they happen, the stock market probably wouldn't be very good at picking it out. It does seem to, like, so Tom Lee was on, by the way, what a, what a goat that guy is, 250,000 views in the first 72 hours. Okay, I didn't listen to it yet. I still, I will listen to it today. I was busy watching 12 soccer games this weekend. Do you agree with him that we,

that it's still early? Because I feel like I don't know. I don't know. Here's the, I think this is, this is the talking point we've reached in the cycle. Is this 1996 or is this 1999? I feel like that's where people are starting to go to. And surprisingly, I've heard like in conversations with clients in

recent weeks of, you know, I feel like at the end of last year, it was Why am I not just all in U.S. stocks, you know, like, get me, this is where I should be. And now a lot of the conversations are, I am actually starting to worry about this, like, AI bubble forming and what does that mean? I've heard that multiple times now. So I do feel like the 96 Greenspan says irrational exuberance, which if you read the actual speech, he doesn't even, it's very coded. Like, he just kind of slips it in there. He asks a question about irrational exuberance. He doesn't say, I see this.

I actually read the speech, not going to lie. I'm like one of those people who've actually read the Bitcoin paper, right? I read the Greenspan speech. And then the S&P, I think, was up 12% per year to the end of the decade. So people are already worried in 96. So that's kind of where we are. And I guess that's what Tom Lee's point would be. It's 96, not 99.

Let me Long Island Hedges. It seems crazy to think that we're early considering the compounded returns of the S&P over the last 15 years. And even more recently, what have we compounded? did that since, since 2020. Anyway. 13 or 14% read. And so I look at Todd's, Todd's own chart that shows

Nvidia, the market cap of Nvidia and Microsoft compared to healthcare, staples, utilities, and materials or real estate, something like that. It doesn't matter. And you see the two converging, you say, how could this make sense?

Furthermore, how could we possibly be earlier mid-cycle? Someone should make an ETF of that. Along those sectors, short those two stocks. But maybe, maybe it's a combination of, yes, Nvidia is discounting a lot of the future growth. But what if these other names that have just been left for dead are just way undervalued? And what if part of the broadening out of the market rally is an acknowledgement of that? And what if we see the Mag 7 sort of pause or go sideways, sounds implausible over the next 12

months? And you do see a rotation into equal weighted stocks, materials, health care, things that have been left behind. And maybe it's not a catchdown, but like a catch up where those four sectors just take off and get back to a more normal standing. It's not out of the room of possibility. Well, that's what's happening. Who's to say how far it's going to go? But that's what happened on Friday with that 90-90 day. Everything is working. And it's unusual to see a day with the Dow leading the charge. It's been a minute. But maybe rotation is underway. Right. I mentioned this before. So you could have said that same thing in 95 or 96. Like the returns for the past 15 years have all been double digits, high double digits. There's no way this can continue. And then you

had a bubble and a blow off top and all that. But again, a lot of those other stocks were participating back then. It wasn't just, you know, like I said, a lot of the blue chips were very highly valued back then. We don't have that today. Maybe you're right. Maybe that could be. So we've got a clear path forward, a fork in the road, if you will, Ben, of on the one hand, you have rate cuts coming, you have the AI trade working, and also you have a potential broadening out of the market, all very bullish. On the other hand, in the real world, you do have a slowing labor market. That's a fact. Housing market activity recession still. And you do have the one time, but whatever, one time, one time, one time.

the impact of tariff prices, of tariff pushing prices up, and on top of the 30% cumulative inflation or whatever the number is, obviously it varies, that we've seen over the past five years, like how much more can the consumer handle? So there's a push and pull. Okay. You're not mad that we're talking about this again? I feel like we're synthesizing, Ben. We're tying a bow on it.

Matt and the team at Exhibit A did something about the S&P performance. performance following rate cuts. They went back to the 1950s. And it's kind of funny because they look at the 12-month forward returns from the start of a rate cut cutting cycle. And it's essentially average. It's 9.7% or something. 8.7? It's essentially average. And they look at the drawdowns and it doesn't really tell you all that much. No. I've looked at a lot of these. So many market stats, if you look at enough of them essentially tell you that it's a lot about average, most of the time things go up, regardless of what's happening. Yes.

That's why I really appreciate all the work that Ryan does, and I say his work all the time, when you see the psychology of the market doing one thing and you look at the back test and you see that that is always or usually very often quite bullish, like that's the stuff that I fall back on that I take seriously because the psychology of the market, everything changes all the time, the makeup of it, the fundamentals, this, that. But the psychology in the market really is, it's always the same. I know we just had a mini bear market in April. I really think that we could use like a double correction year.

It just, since the bottom, it's felt way too easy for people. I feel like a slap on the wrist would be actually healthy here. Yeah, I mean, we got two tiny pullbacks, but we have gone sideways for, I mean, I know we broke out of Friday, but we went sideways for a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks. I don't know, man. I guess that's how cycles are these days. We paused for a minute. All right.

So I had chart kid Matt. I think you put something on Slack the other day that he was working on you on Sunday. For some reason, I had this in my head that I wanted to see something on a Saturday. And this kid is sending me off charts on his way to Alex Palombo's house, who we work with, who's having a pool party. Apparently, we didn't get the invite. No breaks. Yeah, no. That's okay.

We're old. So he did value versus growth, rolling three-year periods. This is just S&P value versus S&P growth. And it's excess, which one is underperforming, which one is outperforming. And Value had a pretty decent run in the 2000s. And it had a little blip coming out of the pandemic. And now growth is just kind of... And so do you think that the lack of recessions is actually one of the things that has hurt value investing?

Because it tends to be those pivot points in the... the economic cycle where value tends to come back. And I wonder if one of the reasons that value quote-unquote died, and obviously it's not dead, it works sometimes, but it doesn't work nearly as much as it used to. The fact that we've had longer economic cycles, I think, is that one of the reasons that value investing has stopped working so well. I think it has more to do with growth and less to do with value. And I also think it depends, like, when you say value, which value are you talking about? So I made this chart, because I saw you put this in here, I made this chart of the shares, for example, S&P 500 value ETF versus just the S&P plane.

And over the last five years, the S&P is up 103%. And the value version is up 95%. So barely... That is surprising. Barely any difference at all. And then I said, okay, well, what is actually even in the S&P 500 value? I was wondering, is the S&P value actually a... So these are the top three names, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Right. Now, four through 10 looks a little more traditional value, I suppose. ExxonMobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Jake Morgan, Bank of America, Chevron. But it depends. What type of value? You're talking about, like, deep value? You're talking about stocks that are trading, like, left for dead? Which value stocks you're talking about?

You're talking about small cap value? So I just wonder if, this is obviously large cap value. So that's part of the problem. Probably been the hardest place to find anything. I've done work in the past where I've shown that commodities, you want to use not as a really long-term buy and hold, but more of a trend following thing. Because when it works, it really works. And when it doesn't work, it can go nowhere for years.

And you almost want to have it be more of a trend following model. I wonder if value is reaching a point. And this is just in the U.S., I think, because we've shown it still works internationally. If in the U.S., if value is more of a trend following thing, like when it finally starts working, you want to be in, but it doesn't work as much as it used to. All right. So this is a really good timing. I was reading Adam Parker's research note this morning.

And again, it has more to do with growth, I think this conversation and less to do with value because value stocks have disappeared, this according to Adam. So they look at the S&P 50, the mega caps. And he said, we have a proprietary style model that labels stocks as growth, value, or middle ground we call neither based on several factors at the end of each month. Below, we show the percentage of mega cap market cap that falls into the growth of value Categories from 2003 to 2014, the percentage of market cap among the top 50 stocks was fairly equally split between growth value and neither. Today, 77% of the mega cap universe is growth.

Only 3.9% is value. Wow. Isn't that wild? Look at this chart. And the value was as high as, say, 45% or so? Yeah, they used to be neck and neck. So again, it's growth. It's just, invidia. I mean, this is the boring part that we just about every freaking week. But it ate everything.

It ate everything. Here's another thing on growth. But this is a U.S. only phenomenon. Correct. There's still a ton of value stocks in the rest of the world, and value strategies have outperformed overseas. And another reason why historical comparisons that people have been making or trying to make about the cap ratio and this and that, it just, it doesn't work.

And here's why. Bucco Capital tweeted, crazy stat from Instacart that highlights the moat these Zerp error companies have. Quote, it took us 100 million orders before we were able to get to positive unit economics. Nobody is going to fund a new competitor. The battle will be won by the current players on the field. That's Bucca. It's unbelievable. Like the impact of zero interest rates on the companies that Silicon Valley was underwriting completely changed the play. playing field. It is pretty amazing that these investors, I mean, obviously, it's an illiquid investment. They didn't have a choice are just so willing to sit that long, too, to wait

for this to play out. Well, it were. They were winning. I know, but I'm saying they, but they didn't have like, like he said, positive unit economics. They're sitting on losses forever and ever and ever. Because just remember the error, like this is a little bit later, but raising a new round was a sign of success. It was just more, more, more, more, more, because it was all about scale and nobody cared about the bottom line. It was all about scale. And for the companies like Instacart, and Dash, DoorDash, like, they won. There are no, there are no more competitors because building out that three-sided marketplace in this example impossible. Well, there's some competitors. It's just, it's two or three,

it's an oligopoly now instead of a monopoly, right? Because it's whatever, Uber Eats and DoorDash and Instacart. It is kind of crazy, though, how, our behavioral patterns have just changed. Because people would have thought, ah, this stuff will go away. People aren't going to keep paying for this stuff. We had 9% inflation. People kept paying for this stuff.

I said to Josh last week, DoorDash is the company that I think I've been most wrong on. Yeah. People just prefer convenience. And people complain and they'll put the receipts up online and stuff, but like they still do it.

All right. Investors love options. This is Rungent at the Wall Street Journal. Call option to buy them across all you, US stocks and ETFs to the second highest level in history today, almost 47 million contracts, and she shows this thing is just up and to the right. And this is just this decade alone. How much of this is speculation? How much of this is like people who have just gotten really in on the yield thing? Because I want to talk about the yield thing in a minute, but why do you think

this is the case? Do you think it's more speculation? So it's both. I feel like we do this a lot, you and I'm not pointing to figures I do because I do it too. Do we think it's this or that? It's both. In the case of a lot of questions that we ask, it is a combination of the yield max DGens and the boomer candy investors, right? So it's, it's, it's, it's all of it. But yeah, people love it. People love trading it. People love packaging and ETFs and people love buying that. So it's everything. Yeah, you're right. It's, it's six of a one half to anything another. Okay, Jeff Battack, friend of the show always sends us good research. He did something on the yield max ETF. So if we talked about a couple weeks ago, and we got some emails from people saying,

hey, listen, I do this with like 5 or 10% of my portfolio. I think I'm going with my eyes wide open. He says, Jeff says, this is smoke and mirrors. So he did this thing where he looked at the Yield Max ETF for Tesla and Coinbase and NVIDIA. And he compared it to just owning the stock itself and owning it 67% in the stock and 33% in cash. And rebalancing on occasion. And essentially, you would have done better just owning.

two-thirds of the position of stock and cash as opposed to owning this option strategy. You see these charts? So the red line is what? The red line is... The red line is actually owning two-thirds of the stock and one-third in cash. And the blue line is owning the income ETF strategy and paying fees and then paying taxes on that income as well. The invidio one is actually pretty close.

Yeah. So this isn't owning just a stock. This is right owning a two-thirds position. So he says the yield on these ETFs that they tout appears to be a financial sleight of hand. The manager more or less chooses the monthly or weekly distribution rate it looks, it likes. Then it's, so he's just saying that like the income can be so high that the only reason that these ETFs have done okay is because the stock's done okay. But the income is essentially an illusion. So he says, yield max is declaring extremely large distributions for shock and awe.

Though a number of the stocks that they've chosen have done well, it's been insufficient to fund the distributions. Investors are flock into these products for yield, but in reality, whatever return the ETFs derive is likely to come mainly from the stock with a bit of volatility dampening from the option writing we do. That is, it's not an income story. So the yields look great. But if these stocks stopped going up, you wouldn't be able to get them as much. The total return will be way worse. So you're better off just owning these stocks. Yeah, and I don't think you could dissuade people from buying this.

Like, I think for this in particular, again, we've done the story. But some people know, some people don't. You get burned once, you probably won't touch a stove again. Right. Yeah. So once these stocks do have a problem, but these strategies aren't going to look as good. Okay. Fidelity did a story.

2025 state of the American investor. Some good stuff in here. All right. They looked at people that are over 18, 2007 adults, household income of $25,000 or more, at least $25,000 of investable assets. The only wrinkle in here is that the survey was conducted by an outside company, not affiliated with Fidelity, from April 15th to April 24th. So perhaps skewed some of the answers.

That was obviously post-Liberation Day. The market was crashing. But either way, a lot of the results jive with what I'm would have expected the results to be. So, investors with more experience express less optimism compared to newer investors. And they asked the question, my portfolio will perform better than it did in the last 12 months. Which, by the way, I like that they disclose that because oftentimes we're like, what was a question, right?

Yeah. So there it was. And people with zero to five years of experience, 56% responded in the affirmative compared only 34% for people with 11 plus years of experience. Why do you think newer investors, always, always and forever, are more optimistic than experienced investors? Well, especially in recent years, it makes a lot of sense because things have done so well. But I'll get my answer. Hope springs eternal.

Well, but seasoned investors can have hope. Here's what I think it is. I'm actually surprised that more seasoned investors are this pessimistic, or do you think it's just because things have gone so well, they assume, well, this can't go on forever. We've seen this before. Perhaps, but I think that this is less sensitive to today's market. I think it would always look like this for the most part. And the reason why is because, as we know, bear markets suck.

And they, like, ruin our psychology forever. And the longer you're invested, the more like, the more like, the year to experience a gigantic drawdown and the less tolerant you are of taking excessive risk. And your expectations are just out of whack if you haven't invested very much. You assume I can, yeah, I can get these crazy returns and I'm the next Warren Buffett. It also very much jives with just older people's mentality versus young people across literally everything. Younger people are more optimistic, right? They have a long runway.

You have your whole life ahead of you. Anything is possible. Exactly. That's why this is why a midlife crisis happens. I read many books about this. You get to midlife and you realize like, hey, this stuff that I thought would happen to me, I'm not a congressman. I'm not a CEO.

Like, what the heck? But when you're in your 20s, you go, I'm going to be a congress. I'm going to be a CEO. Of course. All right. Newer investors are more familiar with advanced income generation strategies, while tenured investors are more familiar with more traditional strategies. So look at covered calls, for example.

Green is the younger people. So 43% of younger people are investors are familiar with covered call strategies versus just 33% of older ones. It is funny because you would assume a covered call strategy typically would not be a great thing for a younger investor. No, you're capping your upside. Yeah, you're capping your upside. And it's, it's, you know, for people who won't need help with experiencing volatility, I guess. it makes sense, but typically for a younger person, you'd think you'd want to be more aggressive. And that's not an aggressive strategy.

No. Anything else in your job out? What do you call it a chicken equity? Chicken, yeah. Chicken equity. Older people, no interest in crypto assets, just 23%, compared to 56% for younger investors. Okay, so we had this conversation on Slack last week about how a lot of traditional finance people still just absolutely hate crypto, right?

And they see anything about crypto and they can't stand it. And part of that is having just missed out, I think, and like don't understand it, never going to be involved. Also the behavior of the half-fund staying poor people. Yes. And the scams and the rugs and FTX and the ideological beliefs of a lot of these people turn people off, which, you know, same. So in that vein, they say how Americans currently invest.

And of course, it's cash and individual stocks, mutual funds, CDs. Cs, interesting. Cryptocurrency are behind CDs. So it's kind of funny that these retirement reports like this, in the past, it would be a couple on a sailboat or a couple on a beach, right? Not retirement, for the record. Well, okay. But these kind of finance things.

But all of the pictures in this show people on their phone or on their lap, top. You never would have seen these kind of pictures in the past. Every one of them is someone who's looking at their screen. But here's a, all right, but why are options only 5%? I wonder how this was worded. Yeah, because it's so much, so much bigger now. But maybe, but this, when we talk about like different platforms where there's Fidelity or Shrub or Robin Hood. Yeah, maybe it's just not used as much there. This also jumped out to me. Only 7% are an alts. That makes sense to me, though, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just affirming the opportunity that we talk about for these larger companies.

So there you have it. What's your grand takeaway here? My big takeaway are that I think this group, this cohort of younger investors, genuinely looks very different than previous generations, even though I just said that there's a lot of things that stay the same. I think that this generation is far more sophisticated. like orders of orders of magnitude than previous young people. Myself included.

Like the stuff that I was doing when I first started trading is hilarious compared to what these kids are doing today. I remember I wanted to invest in some Vanguard funds when I first started and the minimums were like $3,000. I didn't have $3,000. There was no fractional share. I talked to Carl Richards last week. It was on our Talking Wealth Channel.

And I asked him, do you think, because he wrote the book, The Behavior Gap, and he had the picture, the illustration that showed the behavior gap, like, right? Investment returns, investor returns. And I said, do you think the behavior gap is shrinking? Because I think it is. And he said, you know what? I talked to a bunch of high school and college students.

They were my kids friends a couple weeks ago. And all of these kids were talking about their fidelity in Charles Schwab accounts and how they own index funds and ETFs at like 18 years old. Because it's so easy for them to do now. Yeah. I also think that if we were, so the behavior gap is the difference in returns of a fund or any instrument versus what the average investor earns in that fund over the same period of time. And there's usually a gap because of bad

behavior and other things. It could be path dependent. But I think that there is a positive behavior gap. Maybe behavior gap is the wrong word. I think a lot of younger investors are absolutely trouncing the market, just destroying it. Oh, yeah, because they have it all just a handful of tech stocks or Bitcoin. Yeah. So, and then the other takeaway for, for me is that not only are younger investors much more sophisticated, but they are much more brazen and embrace risk like wild. For people to think that like they're just going to disappear after the next bear market, I would remind you, we keep saying this. Did you not see 2022? Were you not around during the massacre of the first quarter of 2025? And yes, granted, they all were, were

relatively short in duration. But these kids are not going anywhere. All right. Well, it's one of the reasons is because the way that we invest is totally changed. So this, um, invest in substack had a piece about how people invested before the internet. What subsect is? I'm not familiar with this. I'd never heard of it before either. Todd us linked to this on abnormal returns. And on they test on. Yes. On vest on. Okay. Yeah. So they talk about how in the 90s commissions were like $50 a trade. And they were saying most people paid something like $500 in commissions alone. And for a smaller account, you have $10,000. We're talking like decent size percentage of the portfolio. This was an interesting piece too, though. The 90s retail investor operated in an

environment of severe informational disadvantage. Professional research was largely the domain of institutional investors and wealthy individuals who could afford premium services. Most retail investors relied on newspaper financial sections, monthly magazines like Money or Forbes, and basic broker reports that often arrive days or weeks after institutional investors had already acted on the same information. Real-time market data was expensive and difficult to access. Basically saying that, like, these retail investors were investing blind, making decisions on past information. And now there's so much more at your fingertips today, models and research and daily up-to-the-minute data that they just didn't have in the past. And it's funny,

that's, I think, one of the big reasons that institutions are having such a harder time outperforming. Did you read the Michael Steinhart book before? yeah like one of the ways he made a ton of money was just like using these brokers he and he's had an advantage over everyone else because he was like the first one and he was bullying these brokers like the way that he made money he couldn't do that today correct and it just it's it's a totally level playing field it's kind of crazy yeah yeah i mean that's that's such such a big advantage for for individual investors today to just be able to open your phone link your bank account put money in and trade

and not have to write a check at a brick and mortar building and then have them buy it for you and pay like a fee to buy it. It's so much easier. All right, it appears that the sell U.S. trade was really a one-month thing. Tors and Slok did a chart of this and he looked at treasuries and equities

and corporate bonds and there was definitely some sales in April from foreigners. And then it just reversed and went back because he looked at this by month, April, May, June. And there was a decent outflow And then the money came rushing right back in.

So not the end of American exceptionalism, turns out. For a month it was. Yeah. That's it. All right. This is interesting. And I said the big American exceptionalism thing is, I've said this before, that we buy the dip. Yeah.

That's like the optimistic part. Like we rush in when that's the American exceptionalism thing that, right? So good news on the inflation front. McDonald's is lowering their prices. So this is from the journal. After pitching operators on the plan, McDonald's and its U.S. franchises agreed to keep the cost

of eight popular combo meals, 15% below the sum of the individual's items prices, according to the company. The chain will also run $5 breakfast and $8 Big Mac and McNugget combo meal specials latest year. So we spoke about quick service,

aka fast food last week, versus sit-down places. And I thought, like, maybe when the prices of those things converge, when you could buy a Chipotle Bowl for $14 or sit down at a proper Mexican place and get a $17 meal, like you'll just sit down. But I don't think that's true. I think these are just different customers. Like, you're not replacing one with the other.

Maybe when fast food gets too expensive, you just, you know, bring your own food or something like that. But either way, I was on quarter. And I said, show me a chart of McDonald's same store sales growth in the U.S. So it did that. And then it gave me a quote inside the transcript. So I clicked on the quote. And these tools are just magical.

We'll talk to my brother at this later in a second. So the CEO of McDonald said, overall, QSR traffic in the U.S. remain challenging as visits across the industry. So anyway, I'm sorry. I forgot one major part. Same store sales growth for McDonald's was negative for four quarters. Like they were getting smoked because people are like, this doesn't make sense more. I can't shop at McDonald's.

All right. Not us. We're still going to McDonald's. My son loves that place. Overall QSR traffic in the U.S. remain challenging as visits across the industry by low-income consumers, once again declined by double digits versus the prior year period. So that's it.

Low-income consumers declined by double digits. So they're getting hit really hard by these price increases. They said reengaging the low-income consumers is critical as they typically visit our restaurants more frequently in the middle and high-income consumers. Yeah, that's the story. I've already said the solution is you have the app on your phone, 20% off of anything over $10. Yeah. All right, a good take on what AI is going to do to the job market.

Seth Godin. Since I was born, humans have created six billion jobs, all while technology relentlessly disrupts existing industries. The pin-making machine replaced the handcrafted pin. The ox-pulled plow replaced millions of hours of back-breaking work. The amplification and electronic distribution of music upended the work of the live musician, and the camera replaced countless portrait artists. The internet destroyed the travel agent industry and grammarly and Photoshop turned fine editing jobs into low-paid gig work. Then he goes on to say, when the web arrived, many of the projects I had built as a book

packager, some at great cost became obsolete. It didn't seem to me that I could do much about this, though, arguing that I was entitled to have people buy the information please business almanac instead of looking stuff up online wasn't going to work. It's entirely possible that a magical AI will replace every single human job and then destroy the earth, but it's far more likely that the pattern of the last 500 years will continue. I hope so.

Totally agree. All right. You want to talk about this cracker barrel thing? I do for a second. Wait, can I, can I zag and just say, I like the new logo? I don't really feel, I don't really say that, but I feel like no one's on that corner, so I just want to put my, plant my flag there. I like that.

It's a good zig. So we don't have cracker barrels here. Oh, really? Yeah, I looked it up. Where's the closest one? They have ones like in Biggapton, upstate New York, but there's none by me. So I am entirely unfamiliar with this restaurant. slash. Okay. I've been to one like five or six times, I guess. Good breakfast food.

I would like to know how many people are upset about the logo. I've actually gone to a cracker barrel in their life. So the story was they changed their logo and the stock just got pummeled, down 15%. That's hilarious. Right? Is it really going to change things? But it's funny how the investor base has become so important to the fundamentals of these stocks, like, look no further than what Eric Jackson is doing with Open. Investors can genuinely change the trajectory of a company's fundamentals. If there's more liquidity, if they could do secondaries, it gives them more optionality. I hate that word.

This is an obvious structural change in the market. This did not exist prior to 2020. It changes the fundraising structure of a company. Not going away. So is Cracker Bail going to change the logo back? They have to, right? It is funny to see how open arms people get about logos. I guess it doesn't really bother me one way or the other, but people get really mad about this stuff.

Yeah. And other news that people are still mad about. I think FTCs really just nuked the average investor appetite for crypto because I saw this chart going around and we spoke about this with Tom, keep saying like, Really, nobody cares about crypto outside the crypto people. So D-Tap-Cap tweeted, which of the following cryptocurrencies do you hold? This is from Morgan Stanley. And I don't know exactly who is served it here, but whatever.

It doesn't really matter. 82% do not hold any cryptocurrencies. Huh. Okay. You're right. It does feel like much of the tree-de-lating is still coming from inside the industry. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if, like, they're gas-lighting us into thinking that everybody owns it or that you better own it before it's too late. But I listen to strategy's earnings call over the weekend. Wait, do you think a lot of people just getting beyond the, okay, I don't understand it, I'm never going to get it, I'm not going to invest, I'm too old to get this, are there a lot of people who go, I missed it? Like the huge runoff happen, I missed it. I can't buy now.

You're a schmuck. Yeah. So as we said, I think it's a combination of obviously that, sour grapes and people think it's a scam. And if you miss it and you're mad, then you definitely think it's a scam, right? Right. Just like human nature. So I listened to Michael Saylor, and this is the first time I believe, because I've listened to one before and they didn't do it. I believe this is the first time they opened it up to questions.

Usually it's just a presentation. So it was two hours. And I got to say, it's impressive. Like, he knows exactly what he's doing. And it is, I think strategy is one of the most fascinating areas of the market. what he's doing collateralizing crypto is interesting. So here's a quote from Fongli, who is our president and CEO. He said our objective is to be the largest treasury company in the world, not just the

largest Bitcoin treasury company in the world. If you take our Bitcoin holdings and compare it to cash in short-term investments of companies in the S&B 500, we are currently number five today. I could see us being in a place by the end of the year or in the next year or so where we're number two, and we pass the Mag 7. And I'd like to see us be in a place in three to five years where we could surpass Berkshire Hathaway's $340 billion of capital and thus having the largest capital base in the world based on Bitcoin. So how are we going to do that? We're going to do that primarily through tapping the preferred market.

So a lot of the call was about their strategy shifting. They used to do these convertible notes. Now they're doing preferred equity. And I understand most people are like, this is nonsense. This is so dumb. This is financial engineering. It's a house of cards, and I understand where people are coming from, but I don't know. I think, I don't know that, listen, it worked.

I don't know if it's going to work forever. I can't see the future, but I think that people are still not giving enough credit to what he's doing. How big would the Treasury holdings have to be where this company itself could actually impact the Bitcoin at large and lead to like a downfall at some point? If they, kind of like if Nvidia messes up, that could bring on all the other AI stocks, isn't it the same thing with Bitcoin potential? I don't think they're getting margin called.

I don't know that's how this works. Not margin called, but just they aren't able to raise money anymore or something or there's enough competitors where it dilutes it and they can't get as big as they want to. So I think the big risk for them in crypto is they are buying so much of it all of the time that if there is a, not if, when there is a risk off event for whatever reason, stocks go down, Bitcoin goes down, everything goes down, and invest. investor's appetite for more risk-taking wanes, and they're not able to raise more money and just the amount of demand for Bitcoin goes down, then, yeah, sure, that's a risk, obviously.

But listen to this. Quote from Michael Saylor himself, most of the world is unable to access the crypto economy. And so what we're doing is refining and we're harnessing the power of the Bitcoin asset and we're able to actually refine it into low volatility, low leverage, less risky financial products, and then higher volatility, higher leverage financial products. So just like you might refine a barrel of crude oil into kerosene, which would be very, very pure in asphalt, which is not so much, we're basically providing a function that say an ETF cannot provide.

You can see iBit, the most famous example here in this chart, it basically wraps Bitcoin and it serves up a security flavor of raw Bitcoin to the investment community. We, on the other hand, are offering step-down elements of convertible bonds, convertible preferred stock, senior fixed stock, junior high yield preferred stock. And of course, this Treasury preferred stock in the form of stretch, which is one of their things, one of their new preferred equities. And those in essence, we're stripping and modifying the duration of the asset, and we're also stepping down the volatility of the asset. And we're actually extracting the yield from the asset, which is Bitcoin, and we're serving it to each of these fixed income investors.

But the excess yield, excess volatility, excess performance, that does not go into those fixed income instruments, goes into the micro strategy common stock. And then, of course, that feeds to the micro strategy base ETFs and the options. So all of these are different instruments. They're all targeted at different types of investors. They're all some of them off for yield, some of them off in return. So then they dive into it. And listen, I hear myself reading that and I hear the average listener be like, what the,

yeah, exactly. Like just stop. Stop. I can't take it. This is something that sounds way smarter in a bull market. And when a bear market happens, you go, of course, of course this fell up. part. Of course those are a housing cards. All right. So. But to your point, credit where credit is do that they, they pulled this off. These are, these are the opposite of dumb people. I'm telling

you. Their deck is impressive. Their reasoning might sound cuckoo, but they said what they were going to do. They did it. The market cap is $112 billion. A lot of that is a premium that they were able to generate based on all these different instruments. And I get it. I get why people hate it. But it's working. However, it backs up like 2,000% since 2023. Yeah. So say whatever you want. It's the best performing stock in the world.

All right. But that being said, is it running out of steam here? So look at this chart year to date. Bitcoin is up 24.5%. It's been on a pretty epic run in 2025. Would you agree? Not bad, yeah. And yet, strategy, formerly known as micro strategy.

is not keeping pace. Micro Strategy hasn't made a new high all year. Hold on me just confirm. Micro Strategy, yeah, micro strategy made a new high, or last made a high in November 2024. So why is strategy only keeping pace with Bitcoin? Why is it not made a new high since 2024? Why is it 20% off its highs?

And then look at Mara, for example, which is the second largest Bitcoin Treasury company. it's down 3% year-to-date. So it's not working the way that they would want it to in this type of environment. They pulled forward a lot of returns. How about that? Yeah, maybe. Huge premium. That premium had to come in eventually.

Anyway, I won't board the investors or the listeners every week with this, I promise, but I'm going to be paying close attention to this. And yeah, I'm a listener. The calls are very, very interesting. And the guy is colorful, to say the least. an idiot, the opposite of an idiot. Man, it's, he sounds like a preacher to me, though. Yeah.

He sounds more like a preacher than a CEO. Yeah. And Bitcoin and crypto itself is kind of, does have religious undertones to it. Mm-hmm. So it makes sense. All right. Real estate? All right, this is good news.

Logan Motoshami has a chart showing the spread between the 30-year mortgage rate and the 10-year treasury. And he's got this sweet line chart showing, uh, year-to-date in 2025 versus 24 and 23. And we are, there's like a 2.2% spread, which is lower than it's been at this point in the year, in a couple of years. So the question is, all right, well, yeah, the Fed's going to cut rates. But there is also inflation and an expectation of inflation picking up.

So what if the overnight rate goes from four and a quarter down to four? It doesn't mean that long-term rates are going to come down because of inflation expectations keep longer-term rates high. And guess what? Mortgage rates are going to stay high. People keep saying that because last time when the Fed cut 50 basis points, mortgage rates went up. And it was kind of ridiculous how exactly to the date, like Fed cut rates go up. But don't you think the slowing labor market might have a saying this as well? We're in a different economic environment that we were then.

I know people are worried about inflation picking up. But even the Fed themselves have said, listen, if we get tariff-based rates, inflation, it's going to be a one-time thing. I'm surprised how easily they're, they're sweeping that aside. Like, it's just a one-time price. Like, I don't know. That still matters. But it doesn't it seem like a slowing labor market could have a say here on rates falling in? You would think. Yeah. I had a little back and forth with Logan last night because Zero Hedge tweeted this thing that said, adjusted rate mortgages climbed to 41% of total mortgages held by U.S. banks for passing the previous all-time high of 38% during the global financial crisis. So everyone says, oh my gosh,

we're doing arms again, like, it's going to be a housing market crash. I said, Logan, there's no way that's that high. And he sent me a chart that shows arms are 8% of the total or something. So what's the, what's driving the delta, as they say? I mean, because so many people got into fixed rate mortgages. No, no, no, I'm saying. How come zero had you shown 41% and Logan's showing 8? I'm not exactly sure what, I'm sure it's something to do with the bank balance sheets being different now than they were then.

but the point is that the actual arms held by borrowers is still very small. And it was almost like 40% in the last crash, and now it's below 10%. So I think people wizened up and realized like we're not doing this again, especially when fixed rate mortgages, it's just, it's the best deal there is. A lot of other countries, yeah, 30-rate fixed-rate mortgage is one of the best thing that's ever happened to American consumers because a lot of other countries have variable rates. Although someone, one of our listeners, Adam and Canada, sent me the Canadian, mortgage rates right now, they're like in the fours, because they are tied directly, because

they're variable rates there, directly to the, and Canada has been cutting rates. Yeah. All right. The real estate industry is impervious to change. I'm becoming more and more convinced in this fact. This is one area where technology will never, ever, ever change the industry. Okay. You're fired up.

Talk to it. They had this big thing. This is in the Wall Street Journal. Remember, they had this big settlement, how realtor fees have got to be. We can't continue to charge people. make the seller pay the commission for the buyer. We can't do that anymore. We're breaking it up, so we're going to have flat fees

for realtors, and people are going to be able to negotiate, and those fees are going to come down. And guess what? Average commission rates went up. They said people, like, why? They said, it's just a very durable industry, and buyers are scared to negotiate. They just take whatever deal is given them,

and they don't want, like, no one, you have the ability to do this now. No one wants to. People are just staying with status quo. I don't think you can disrupt this industry. If it hasn't happened, it's never going to happen. Yeah, I think you're probably right. So you're not buying Open Door?

By the way, holy cow. But the thing is, has anyone talked about like Open Door's actual home purchasing process in this thing? Are they just talking meme stocks? No, Eric is. He's talking about the business. But either way, the stock went from, when did he first tweet about it? it was like 80 cents, it's at $5. I mean, yeah, it's going crazy.

And I don't know, it was 20 before it crashed. So it's bouncing off the lows. But like for a business model perspective, call me a non-believer still that this is going to change the way people buy and sell houses. I don't even know what their business model is. Is it still a straight eye buying? I'm sure there's other, there's other parts to it at this point. Either way.

All right, let's move on. All right, Jason's Weig wrote an article. The Ivy League keeps failing this basic. investing test. On average, in 2024, educational endowments with more than $5 billion in assets held 2% in cash, 6% in bonds, 8% in the U.S. stocks, and 16% in international stocks. That's interesting. Twice as much international stocks. Okay, so where's the other 70%-ish? Private equity, venture capital, hedge funds. That's right, Ben. Jason wrote, the lesson is so simple.

Even Ivy leaguers should be able to understand it. In good times, investors give no thought to liquidity because cash is plentiful, and the need for it is impressing. In hard times, liquidity becomes the only thing investors can think about because cash is scarce, and the need for it is desperate. Note that this retrenchment is recurring amid one of the biggest bull markets in history. Just imagine how hard it would be for these institutions to raise cash if public markets were crashing as in 08 or 09 or if interest rates were skyrocketing as in 2022.

How did this happen? Like, this is all just Yale, right? I saw it happening in real time when I was, when I was heavy into the endowment world. And it, yes, it was all Yale. You're right. They saw Yale. They saw Harvard doing this. And they said, we have to do this, too.

This is like the worst example of group think ever. Oh, yeah, it is. And it's total group think. They get together at these conferences and they all talk about, oh, shoot, they're doing this too. We have to do this. And you're right. If they actually have to raise real cash for operations at these universities. Like, what a joke.

They're going to have to, like, borrow money. Well, they did. So they wrote about it in the article that these companies, a lot of these endowments were borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars. Even sitting on top of $10 billion, in some cases, much higher endowments, it's mental. It's such a big amount in private. And the whole idea was, well, listen, we don't need liquidity. We're investing for perpetuity. But, like, the colleges and universities need this money at some point.

Like, you have to have some sort of liquidity management. I was banging my head against the wall, having conversations with these people back in the day, and I still don't get. And guess what? Not everyone can be David Swenson. Not everyone can be Yale. And now that there's so many of them in there, obviously the returns have come in as well. Yeah. All right.

Earlier we spoke about the price pressures hitting lower income consumers harder, obviously. Walmart reported last week, and they said that same store sales group 4. which is pretty damn impressive, reflecting ongoing share gains across key categories and all income cohorts with upper income households contributing to the largest gains. D. But as we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we've continued to see our costs increase each week, which we expect will continue into the third and fourth quarter. This is Walmart.

This is a big company. That's not great. You don't like to hear that. Not surprisingly, we see more adjustments in middle and low. lower-income households, then we deal with higher-income households. Yeah, so that's going to be a continued story through the rest of the year. So Sam Rowe has this joke where he says, if Walmart's earnings are bad, it's bad for the economy because low-income consumers are doing bad.

But if Walmart's earnings are good, it's bad for the economy because it means people are trading down to Walmart. This is going to sound very inconsiderative of me, but the low-income segment, as far as the economy goes, doesn't really matter anymore. Well, it certainly doesn't matter. No, no, no. It's not inconsider because we're not talking about people, and of course, they matter. We're talking about the stock market and how this impacts the stock market.

Right. This doesn't matter. The top 20% are driving almost all the spending. And that's for the economy, that matters more. You can say, well, it's a canary and a coal mine type of thing. But for the economy, it matters in real life. But for the stock market, what was that staff from Savita that we mentioned a couple of months ago? The bottom 20% contribute 20 basis points of earnings to the S&P 500.

Oh, I never saw that one. That's pretty good. Okay. Good one in the Wall Street Journal today. This is the lead. Liza and Anthony Dele are saving about $1,000 a month for a seven-year-old daughter Zoe. The money isn't for college tuition or summer camp or medical expenses. It is to support her once she is an otherwise independent adult. About 60% of parents with children 18 to 34 say they helped their kids financially in the previous year, according to Pew, and they go through a bunch of examples in this piece. And I think this is actually just a thing now. And we get questions all the time in our inbox from people saying, hey, listen, beyond, I'm not talking about 529 or HSA, how do I actually save for my kids for the future? And I opened up, I did a liftoff account, and I put one in each of my kids' names as well. And I thought about this same thing. When they get out of school and they need an apartment or they're paying off student loans or they got their first car payment or maybe a wedding or something, it probably makes sense to save for them. And a lot of people are realizing that because of the rising cost of housing in these things,

like they're probably going to have to help their kids eventually. Maybe we should plan for it. So I've been doing this as my kids were born, but I, I'm embarrassed. The Lisa and Anthony are saving $1,000 a month. It's a lot of money. I'm putting $50 a month. I think I'm doing, I'm doing like $85 a month per kid. And I, but yes, that's a ton of money they're saving.

obviously. And you hope, hey, the kid's going to be fine and we won't have to use this money on them. But obviously, the sort of not so good ramification here is that this just makes wealth inequality worse because the people who can't help and have the means do. And a lot of people obviously don't have the means. I transferred $150 out of Kobe's account last week to pay me back for that ridiculous $350 bills that Robin gave him. Did you have him pay you for the movie that you rented for him to? But this is a real thing people are thinking about now to do. Good.

Safe here, kids. It's great. But yes, of course. Listen, the capitalism exacerbates income inequality while simultaneously lifting all boats. The boats, the yachts get lifted a lot quicker. It just is. And there's no better solution. Speaking of yacht, someone sent me, someone emailed us under Animal Spirits account the

the day with a picture of a pontoon and it said Midwest Yacht. Nice. That's a pretty good one. But one of these, it's not to throw your hands up in the air and say you can't do anything. The baby, is it baby bonds? What were we calling them? Yeah. That every baby born gets, gets, uh, stocks.

I love that. Let's do that. Yeah, I agree. But imagine telling it because there's, there's, I'm sure there are some hardline people that's hey, once the kid is out of the house and they're 18, they're off the payroll. And I had a friend like this in high school. I remember he worked his whole time through high school and he said, I'm 18, I'm totally off of my parents, everything, and it was like a very well-known.

Like, I'm done. And he, it was very stressful for him in high school. Did he choose that or his parents did? His parents did. They were like at 18, listen, you're on your own, man. You're out of the house, find your own place to rent. After high school, you're an adult. I respect that.

I will not be doing that to my children, but I do respect that. Imagine telling a parent that today. Like, sorry, let your kid and obviously, but no parent. parents want to do, we'll bend over backwards to do whatever they can to help their child succeed, obviously. Yeah. All right. Um, let's do some recommendations. By the way, Ben, I got bad news for you. The stock market can use a pullback. That's not what happens when stocks breaking out. They don't just pull back. I guess they could, but anything's possible, but massive breadth thrust, as they say. Okay. On Friday. I'm just saying a healthy correction

would probably be nice, but, um, market doesn't always give you the returns you want or need. Okay, I talked earlier about how much better it is as an investor these days because technology. I think as a consumer of pop culture, it's just things are just so much better. So the Ringer had this piece on the oral history of the 40-year-old version. And I feel like in the past, we would watch these movies and then not really think of them again, not do like the deep dives into IMDB. Do you always, do you use IMDB very often or not really? Yeah.

Like if I say a movie I like, I will go through and look at the trivia on IMDB. And so some of this I'd read before, but it was really good. And just thinking through some of the, I mean, this is just sophomoric humor. Some people would say, like, how, but they talked about the joke writing process and how Gary Shandling helped with the ending. And there was a certain joke that they tried to figure out, and Adam McKay helped out with it. Which one? And reading through, like, Adam McKay said that he, the light bulb thing, where they're breaking the light bulbs on each other, that he used to do that at his job. So that was his idea.

And just to see where the ideas from these jokes come from the Genesis, just the, just the, deep dive when, you know, you think like, this is so dumb, but it had like such thought into it. I rewatched it. I rewatch this. I think it's on Amazon Prime. It still totally holds up. But it's hard. And they talk in the story about how Seth Goat, Seth Rogan was 22 years old helping produce this movie. He looked like he was 35. Yeah, he looked very old. Must be the goatee. Which is that you don't see goatees anymore, right? That is totally a 90s, early 2000 thing that went away. I was watching 25th hour last night. And Ed Norton was supporting a very healthy goatee, and I had the exact same thought.

You just don't see this anymore. Yeah. Ben Stiller was on Mark Maren's podcast, just talking about all the comedy movies he did and him as a director and how he does severance. And just seeing the curtain be open like this is just really interesting to hear how people think about these things. Anyways, interesting. Because of the book, I'm just rewatching old stuff because there's nothing good new these days. but you gave me the 1999 book

about the best movie you ever and there's a whole chapter on the office space so I rewatched it of course because I rewatch that movie like every few years so let's say you're an in a tech employee in 1999 right I'm Michael Bolton but do you think that though like

are those shares worthless now or do like people become oh yeah okay that company went to zero I mean I know they stole some of the money but I just I feel like this movie was so much deeper than I remembered it the part about where he asks, like, Lawrence, what would you do a million dollars? And that's the funniest line in the movie, right, two chicks at the same time. Um, but he's, and he asks, Peter, what

would you do? And he says, I would sit there and I would do nothing. And he says, take a look at my cousin. He's broke. Don't do shit. You don't need a million dollars to not do anything. I feel like that was a very, like, well-thought-out personal finance, um, happiness sort of analogy that I'd miss before. Shout to Mike, Judge. Yes. Okay, that's all I got. Um, all right, you just mentioned a lot of podcasts. I'm, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm taking a little of a hiatus. Not really, but I'm really leaning into the audiobooks thing. I love it. It makes me feel like much more productive. I mean, I feel like half the half a listen I do is for entertainment purposes. Like, I listen to, I listen to every episode

that Bill Simmons has put out for the last 10 years, literally. I think I'm good. I get it. What point do people become oversaturate on animal spirits, though? Yeah, that's a fair point. Nobody listened to this. Cover yours. So, My listening habits on the podcast side was Simmons, and I listened to Riscilla's podcasts, and sometimes Zach Lowe, and the town, and the rewatchables, which I will never not listen to, and the big picture, and Joe and Tracy, and Patrick. And I'm a, yeah, I'm a hyper consumer of information in the years. But anyway, I'm leaning to the audiobooks.

I really enjoy it. I feel like I'm like, you sign up, what's the Amazon thing where you sign up for a Kindle on Kindle Unlimited or something. So I just bought credits. So it's pretty cheap. It's like 75 bucks for 10 credits on Audible and one book per credit. So $8. Yeah, I feel like it's a new me.

I'm excited. So what's your latest one you're listening to? This one was on Libby because I told you I was like between, oh, I finished the jailblazers. That was good. I think somebody bought me this book. Somebody bought me this physical book called Unstoppable, the unbelievable true story. Siggie Wilsig's astonishing journey from Auschwitz Survivor

and penniless immigrant to Wall Street legend. So anyway, this is the book that I'm listening to today. But I just feel good when I'm learning. That's another story that will never happen again today. No. That's probably like a mailroom guy again. He worked up from the mail room and... Yeah, so I'm excited.

Okay. Turning over a new leaf, Ben, until lost sports betting starts and then I'll be back to Simmons and Rosilla. So I've got three weeks left. Okay, any way to plug here? Now's the time. No. All right.

Check our talking wealth. We working on a rebrand from the Unlock, right? Yeah. All right. I had my car. Richers went out last week. I think Josh has got one this week. Right?

You're going on vacation. You're out of here. I'm going to work. Yeah, I'm not going to not work. I have, yeah, phone calls in the car and et cetera, et cetera. All right. Animal Spirits at the Compound News.com. We'll see you next time.

Okay.