Animal Spirits Podcast - The Best of 2020

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

On today's last show of the year, we look back at the biggest stories from 2020 as well as our favorite books, movies and TV shows.   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

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. Michael Battenick 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 Ritt Holt'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 and the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. For our last episode of the year, we're going to do something of a year in review. We're going to

discuss some of the blog posts that we've written. We're going to talk about some of the shows that we watched, movies, TV shows, books, etc. With no further introduction, Ben, why don't we kick it off with you, some of your top blog posts for the year? Yeah, I looked back at these. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them are from March. which is when everyone was looking at this stuff. I think I've mentioned this before. I had like a million page views on my blog in March, which is an insanely high number for my blog. It was kind of interesting going back and reading them. And one of the top ones I wrote was called, What If You Buy Stocks Too Early During a Market Crash. It's funny looking at the dates on these. This was posted on March 20th,

which is three days before stocks bottomed. And people get freaked out during a bare market, but people were trying to figure out like, when is the right time for this? It's obviously impossible to know, But I basically looked at, like, back historically, if you would have bought a little early, what are your returns look like? Of course, it still looked pretty good, even if you bought way before the bottom happened. When did you write this? March 20th. That's funny. Obviously, we were writing about the same things.

On March 18th, I wrote a post, when is the right time to buy? And I looked at all the bare markets throughout history, and I circled, and I threw charts on the post, and I circled in red, the absolute bottom. The conclusion that I came to was very much the same thing that you did, was that it doesn't matter, when you buy. It only matters that you buy. Right. And you're never going to hit that bottom. It only looks good. We talk about that March 23rd day all the time now. No one knew it then that that was going to be it. There was no clear signal at the time. Yeah, it was my birthday. I was feeling pretty good. That was your birthday? That was my birthday. Bottom on your birthday. That's not bad. Okay. My other one was how long does it take to make your money back after a bear market?

I wrote this on March 13th. So this is more or less Tom Hanks day, right around there, Ruby Gobert. It was March 11th. Okay, so right around there. So at this point, the S&P was down 27% from all-time highs on March 13th. And I looked at, okay, how long does it take to make your money back? And what I found is the average break-even since 1928 was like 26 months to make your money back. And I looked at also more of a regular time, so modern era, the average was like 17 months to make your money back since World War II. And this one did it in, on a price basis, the S&P was back to all-time highs in five months, I believe.

From the time it dropped. So from peak to peak, I think it was five. five or six, eight months maybe. It was five months from the bottom, eight months from peak to peak. Anyway, it was kind of looking at, yes, there have been some times where it's taken a while to make your money back, so get used to it. And unfortunately, maybe for a lot of people who are like net savers, it wasn't a good thing that went to altamized because you could have had much more time in the past to dollar cost average and buy more. This is not good news for us. It was not a good outcome for us. And when I say us specifically, I'm talking about younger people that are

still contributing to their 401k every two weeks. So I guess it was good in that the sense that we had several purchases at lower prices, but there was no time to swing. I said recently that if you were waiting for a fat pitch, this came and went so fast before you even had time to blink. People kind of forget 2011. I looked at the numbers in these. It took three months to make back that 19%. Same thing in 2018. We had that member of bottomed on Christmas Eve. It took like three months to make your money back. Sometimes you really don't have time to think about it. When markets are rising again and people are wondering, I think about how many people said we're going to retest lows again. This wasn't it. There's no way that was it. And it just

happens like in a blink of an eye. As I've said before, March 11th was the Rudy Gobert, Tom Hanks night. The bottom was on March 23rd. It happened so freaking quickly. On March 15th, I wrote a similar post to you, Ben, what happens after the stock market falls looking through the prism of forward returns? And I wrote, once stocks fall 20% long-term returns start to improve with every painful leg lower. This is why it's so important to stay in the game. Nobody ever said you have to have all your money in stocks, but you can't be all cash either because low returns today, plant the seeds for higher returns tomorrow. Yeah, we were on the same page. I wrote on March 18th returns from the bottom of a bear market. And I looked at all these bare markets

and the average return a year out was like 52%. And not that granted, that's from the bottom, but five years out, it was like 132%. That was my point is that these things are pretty good. And I wrote at a time, this isn't like a pat on the back, but this is just like the way that you have to think about these things. So I wrote, eventually we'll get past this. We always do. If you don't believe this, what's the point of investing in the first place? By the way, that looked very precedent. The Russell 2000 doubled. Obviously, we know what happened. You tweeted this last night. What did you say? The NASDAQ would have to fall 47% to get back to the lows in March. and the Russell would have to fall 52, something like that?

I said it's crazy that we might never see the March 2020 lows ever again. By the way, I would say we probably will. When I say probably, if I had to guess, I would say at some point in the future, we will. But it's not a foregone conclusion. Like, stocks have to get cut in half. We could never see those levels again. That's certainly possible. I wrote a post on February 25th.

Is the stock market going to crash? Yeah. Whoops. That was, what, three days before the market topped? It was three days after the top. The top was on February 21st. That's right. Okay.

So I wrote for the 18th time since the stock market bottom in 2009, the S&P 500 is more than 5% off its highs. The current episode is due to fears over the coronavirus. So I showed a pretty nifty chart, if I don't mind saying, of all the 5% corrections, I guess those were healthy pullbacks that we've seen. So I said, why does this always happen? Who cares about a 5% pullback? The reason noise increases during these episodes is because every time stocks fall a little,

there's always a possibility they fall a lot. What if the virus continues to spread? What if it brings the global economy to a grinding halt? And what if the stock market crashes? This is what investors are worried about. Damn. You looked at these diversified portfolios and showed what the drawdowns could be based on the 50, 50, 50, 40, 60, 40, whatever. And you basically said, like, if you're taking too much risk, this is a way to calibrate it by changing your asset allocation. I'm sure there was a number of investors who in March realized, okay, I did not line up my risk appetite with my portfolio. I'd say this is one of the more useful charts and tables that I've ever done. It's incredibly simple. I show stock bond mix all the way from 100% stocks down to

0% stocks with 10% intervals, so 90, 20, and so on. And I showed the compound annual growth rate and the max drawdown. And of course, there is a direct tradeoff. The higher returns, the more losses you have to swallow. And if there's one thing I would say to an investor that's trying to calibrate the risk tolerance, look at this table. What type of loss can you actually stomach? One of the good things about 2020, and there are very few, is that you got a taste of what risk feels like. Now, it was very quick. It ended pretty quickly. That was damn scary. And if you were able to survive a 35% decline in 21 days, whatever it was, 25 days, then you're probably taking roughly the right amount of risk. I would say that if somehow we're not worried,

then you could probably take a lot more. My non-March crazy market, top posts. I had three of them in the housing market. And I think for some reason, you and I have always commented on this. Because that's an asset that so many people are familiar with, those posts tend to always get a lot of readers because people can relate to them. So I had one about should you pay off your mortgage early with rates so low. And this is in February. We're talking about rates being so low. We talked about the two of us both locking in low mortgage rates. We're like, we have to do this. Rates are so low. And of course, they've come down even more since. I think they had another all-time low yesterday. I reified at like 2.7 in the 30-year

now was at 15, in the 30 years below that now. It's like trying to call the bottom of the stock market. It's impossible to do. The other one I wrote personal finance-wise was, is the Ford F-150 partially responsible for the retirement crisis? And this one got a lot of feedback, and a lot of truck owners were not happy with me on this one. But I think a lot of people understood the point of paying a ton of money for a car can really hamper you financially, especially if you're not financially savvy or have your finances in order. I have to mention my top blog post for this year, again, it's every single year is something I wrote in 2014. I don't know if this is like the best SEO piece I've ever written. It's what if you only invested at market peaks. Remarkable.

Over 100,000 people read it this year. How many people? Over 100,000? Again, I wrote it in 2014. And I think it got shared on a bunch of message boards in March, actually. And I just recently did a cartoon of this. It's on our compound YouTube channel. I put a link in our show notes here. But for some reason, every year, that is my most read post. And I wrote in 2014. If anyone's curious, my top five posts were like in the 40,000 range, each of them. So it's not a whole lot of readers, but. I mean, it makes sense. We've always said this, the higher the VIX, the higher the clicks.

Yeah, March was by far my highest month ever. So many people in March were out reading stuff on the markets and paying attention when they hadn't in the past. The last thing that I want to highlight is I wrote in April, why aren't stocks down more? That's pretty good. Oh, sorry. I thought this was going on from February. Why aren't stocks down?

You could have written that in February. But this is a question that everyone was asking themselves. Why is the stock market still doing so well? And in April, it still didn't seem like we were out of the woods just yet for the market. Correct. Yeah, this is a theme in April and May and June. The Deadcat Bounce was a theme. How long could it last?

And I basically said that, like, the S&P 500 is, in this case, not indicative of the overall economy. Oh, wow. I wrote the pain that home builders are experiencing is being reflected in their stocks. Pulitzer Group is down 47% and Toll Brothers is down 57%. I feel like those stocks are definitely at, I don't know if they're at all-time highs, but they're definitely up like 200, 300% since I wrote that. Maybe that didn't age quite well. But I wrote about like Gap and Macy's and Bet and Bat, they were all down 70%.

The hotel stocks were all getting crushed. But I wrote, if you're looking at the S&P 500 and shaking your head, you're not alone. But you have to remind yourself that the market is working. The winners are being separated from the losers. The good thing about cap-weighted indexes is it all sorts itself out for you without you having to do it on your own. And I would say that one of the winners of 2020 was certainly the S&P 500 and cap-weighted indexes in general. The big stocks got bigger. And the ones that got crushed, the ones that I mentioned, they're a fraction of the market. They could have gotten to zero

the market wouldn't have blinked. Yeah, Pulte's up 150% from the bottom. I think one of the big winners this year is just buy and hold. It's not always going to work out like this. But if you had the waywithal to just hold and continue buying or whatever, that worked out so much better than all these people trying to out surround themselves and time it perfectly and pick the bottom or wait it out till the dust settles or whatever it is. It's never always going to work like that. There's going to be a bare market that lasts much longer and it's going to be more painful and it's not going to look as great.

But for this year, I think buying hold is a big winner. I'm sort of sick and tired of hedging our buying hole doesn't always work. Because obviously it doesn't always work. Like, what are we, children? Of course, the market doesn't always come back. I just want to say this that for the last five years, I feel like we've been writing every time the stock market comes back. We've been saying it doesn't always have to work out this way.

of course it doesn't know how it is to work out this way, but out smarting the market almost never works out. I said this to you a few weeks ago, isn't it a bigger risk to bet against buy and hold? If you're one of those people that bets against like the 1% crazy tail risk stuff all the time and you're constantly losing money, isn't that a bigger risk than betting against things getting better? Of course, there are a risk of every strategy, but with a buy and hold, that's putting the wind at your back basically and you're giving yourself a higher probability of success, even if there's always that small chance that things don't work out and you have a Japan scenario, even though Japanese stocks are at 30-year highs right now.

There you go. They're made whole. Now show Japan. All right, let's move on to some other topics. You want to move on to movies or shows or what? Let's do movies, because for me, this is going to be a quick one because how many new movies came out this year? 10?

On Rotten Tomatoes, there was a list of like 230. A lot of them I've never heard of, but there was more for me to chew on here than I thought. Why don't we go top five? You'll start. Okay, we're doing movies, TV shows, and books. What does the last dance count as? Can we just put that in its own category?

Because that was probably one of the best things I saw this year. What was your number five? I'm just saying, do I count last dance as a movie? I'm trying to get the rules here. For me, that's a TV show. TV show, okay. All right, I didn't really rank these, but let's see. I only have like five movies on here.

All right. Well, I rank mine. Okay, go ahead. You start. Okay. Number five was I put the Vast of Night. Did you see this? Did we talk about this?

Yeah, I wasn't a big fan. I didn't love the viewing, but it grew on me a lot. This was like a no frills, 1950s, New Mexico, alien-type movie, and it was such a throwback. It was such like a Spielberg-esque type movie from top to bottom. And I just thought that it was well done. And it's a movie that you don't see a lot of. So that was on Amazon. And I believe whoever the director was, I think it was his first time.

Okay. I guess we're ranking here. This is Slim Pickens. There was no good movies this year, really. I kind of like happiest season on Hulu with the guy from Schitt's Creek. Eugene Levy? No, his son. Okay, I never saw it.

Guy created Shitsk called Happiest Season. It's a Christmas movie with him and Kristen Stewart. It was okay for a Christmas movie. That's what I got for number five. Man, this is going to be rough. All right, number four, Palm Springs. Okay, I had that on my list. That's my favorite movie of the year.

I guess the best way to describe that was Andy Sandberg, and I forget his co-star. Do you remember what her name is? No, I don't, but she's really good. This is one of the years where I read the least on a fiction I've read since probably college, because I felt like I needed the escape from movies. So a movie like Palm Springs that can visually take you somewhere in a pandemic, I thought that's why I loved it so much because it took you to a different place. It was also accidentally, very timely.

It was essentially Groundhog Day. Yes. Wasn't that exactly what 2020 was? Yeah, it was a right time, right place movie. But I've watched the movie multiple times. I really liked it. That was my favorite movie the year. Okay.

All right. What do you got? I liked plus one. A listener gave me this one. This was the one with Dennis Quaid's son. Okay. Pretty good. Another Hulu one, a rom-com.

I liked it again. Slim Pickens here. Okay. All right. We get it. This is not your favorite year in movies. Number three for me was the gentleman. Oh, did that come on in 2020?

I liked that one, too. That was a guy, Ritchie movie. Okay. I did like that one. Hugh Grant. Actually, Hugh Grant making a comeback in 2020 between this and the undoing. Yeah, he was pretty good in this. Probably made that list if I'd have remembered it.

Jacks from Sons of Anarchy was in it. Who else was in it? Oh, McConaughey. Yeah. I liked this movie. It was fun. That was good. Three, I had Shithouse, which was the college dorm movie.

He was a college son. sophomore and made the movie himself. You steered me away from that one, which I appreciate it. You said you liked it, but it's not for me. I liked it. It wouldn't have been for you. And again, it's one of those movies that got a 20% premium because the guy wrote and directed and started himself. I know I've mentioned this in the past, but I love you for this. Being able to discern what was good for you but not good for me. For example, Chris, who works with us, everything that he likes, he is the most annoying person about it. Here's a thing. Like on social media, you could solve every argument around the holidays by changing the word best to my favorite. Right. Right. The

best movie or the best food is, no, it's your favorite. It's not the best. Food and music depends on your taste. All right. Number two for me was the Invisible Man. Oh, I forgot about that one. I liked that one, too. That was good. That was fantastic. That was just thrilling. The first scene, like, had the hair in the back of your neck standing up. Never let up. It was a good ending, too. I like that. Elizabeth Moss is good. She should win an Oscar for that. By the way, the Oscar is going to be very weird this year. Why are you laughing? You said she should win an Oscar for that. She should. Maybe she should because they should skip him. I said that Tom Cruz, she wouldn't honor your Oscar for his pandemic speech a couple weeks ago on the Mission of Possible

set because there's no one else who was a good actor this year. What do you got for number two? I loved soul. I thought it was an amazing movie. We talked about another podcast this week. I think that's one of Pixar's best ones. And it's like an adult movie, even though the kids like it too. Yeah, so I had soul for my number one movie. They just nailed it, right? It was so creative. I had Palm Springs one. And here's like the thing about it to me that I thought was like towards the end of it, and this is a spoiler if you haven't seen it, but he enjoyed being in the Groundhog Day. He didn't hate it. He's like, why would I go back to a world where I had a job and responsibilities instead of just doing this over and over and drinking and having fun

at a wedding? That was a very interesting take on it. He wasn't like miserable like Bill Murray. He was actually happy reliving that day over and over again because it meant no responsibilities for him whatsoever as a young person and he was actually okay with it. I thought that was interesting take on it. All right. I've got two honorary mentions that I don't want to put in my top five, but they were close. I really did enjoy both of these very out there movies. One was Come to Daddy with Elijah Wood. I don't even know how to begin to explain that. I watched on Amazon Prime. I can't remember. This was like an independent horror thriller comedy wrapped in one. It was very out there. Elijah Wood was great. I liked it. Definitely not for everyone. The other one,

which was just so disturbing and I'm embarrassed that I like this. I'm mad at myself. I feel I need to check myself with the counseling for liking this was Possessor. Another horror one? It was like a really violent and disturbing inception. Okay. All right. By the way, Tenant obviously did not make our list. Yeah, you know what?

I'm just not even saying that. I'm just not going to see it. I get it. I get everybody's reaction. I don't need to pile on. I don't need to waste 20 minutes and turn it off. I'm out. I am just out.

All right. So for TV shows, I came up with so many more TV shows than movies. So I'm going to have to do a huge honorable mention list, but you wanted to do top five. Let's do top five. Here's my categories I came up with. You have to binge these right away when it come out. Very good, above average, and flawed.

But still watch. I came up with like probably 25 shows I watched this year. It was a lot. Man, what time are you waking up? I'm on Mark Wahlberg time. All right, number five, go ahead. I loved, oh, this is a tough one. This is very tough.

I agree. I really liked high fidelity, and I can't believe they canceled it on Hulu. They did? Yeah, that was one of my favorite, like, easy watching shows. It was only a half hour. That was really good.

Was that sort of like a sequel to the movie? Or just thematically similar? No, it was very similar. But they changed it from the lead being a male to a female. They went from John Cusack to Zoe Kravitz. I really liked it because I love the movie too. You know, I never saw the movie. Okay.

It's a good movie, too. Start with the movie. Number five for me is The Mandalorian. If this was once a week, and I actually think it was once a week, I don't know why I'm saying if it was once a week. I believe it was once a week. I came in late. Put it this way, if this was like on HBO, where the entire country was watching, the last

episode would have broken the internet. Okay. Can I admit something? I can't tell why people love Star Wars stuff so much. I just, I don't get it and I never will. That is the one that is just, I feel like it's all nostalgia. I feel like some people just pretend to like it, even though it's not that good. You took the words right out of my mouth.

Don't underestimate nostalgia. Like Top Gun, for example, it takes you to a different place. I completely get it. There are movies that I saw when I was a child that I have irrational love for because it takes you to a different part of your life and it almost feels like a personal insult when somebody takes a shot at something

that you watch as an eight-year-old and fell in love with. You'd a top gun with me, but yeah, I get it. It's hard to be objective with Star Wars. I genuinely enjoy it. I can't believe it hasn't reached an oversaturation point. Maybe that's good for me as a Disney shareholder,

but there's just so much of it in the last few years. I can't believe that people still eat it up. I don't get it and I never will. but I don't have to. Okay, the next one for me, the Crown, I thought this season was the best, but that's one that we always binge. I think it was on the fourth season on Netflix. I think it's just one of the most best put-together shows that there is in terms of high

quality, acting, scenes, storytelling. It's just, I love it. Number four for me, based on your recommendation, I don't even know if this is 2020, but it was 2020 for me, Yellowstone. Was that 2020? Was season three, 2020? I think the new season came out this year. Yes, that's my number three is freaking love that show.

We binge that one. all three seasons, two seasons? Two seasons, I guess. I can't wait for it to come back. It's a shame that it's on Paramount. You have to pay, I mean, it was well worth it, I think, 20 bucks per season. That show would be much more popular if it was on network TV. Yes. There's like four or five really good characters on that show. That's an excellent show. All right. Number three for me was The Boys on Amazon Prime. Easily one of my favorite shows. Homelander, I think, is the most disturbing character in all of television, maybe all of television history. I got to say, we still haven't finished season two yet.

I got lost in the shuffle of other new shows, but it's still on my, I did like it, though. The very final scene in season two is up there in the most WTF things you've ever seen. Okay. I didn't know they like to blow up people's heads, too. Number two, this is a tough one coming to the favorite one. I had Ozark. I was so excited for this season. Oh, me too.

Kind of show that keeps getting better. And we watched, was it the third season this year? Third. Ozark was my number two as well. Probably in a week. Belief the final season is coming back sooner than later, but I don't know. I've really liked Jason Bateman's Smartlist podcast where he talks about a little bit about the idea of directing and acting. So I suppose we both have the same number one then.

We're very similar. Hold on, before we get to number one, this week on the pot I mentioned Dr. Sleep, which I really enjoyed. Ewan McGregor is English Jason Bateman. Oh, that's a pretty good take. I do like Ewan McGregor. I believe he's Scottish. All right, same thing. All right, number one, the last dance.

Oh, okay. I had Queen's Gambit. Oh, Queen's Gambit was not on my list. I mean, Queens Gambo was probably number six or seven for me. Okay. I put Last Dance in, like, its own documentary category. Okay. The last dance was probably, go off the top of my dome here.

I think that was peak pandemic for me in terms of like my happiest, most enjoyable. It was something to do. I feel like everybody was watching it. It was Michael Jordan, like we've never seen it before. Seeing him choke up was like surreal because obviously he was larger than life, probably the most famous person on the planet. during my childhood. For me, that was an easy number one.

I would say that Last Dance and Queen's Gambit probably have the highest approval ratings of any shows this year. Judging from social media feedback, that's where I get a lot of my recommendations, actually. Queens Gambit seems like a show that only people who wanted to be contrarian said they didn't like it.

I feel like everyone loved that show because it was just so well done. That's so not serious to not like that show that it's almost like, I know this is harsh, but it's almost across that person off forever. Like, never listen to anything they say. I'm never taking your recommendations again.

I know you have a million honorary mentions. One honorary mention for me, the NBA playoffs. I don't know if that really fits in, but... That's weird. Okay. I'm vetoing that. I'm vetoing that. Okay. All right.

Do you have any other honorable mentions before I get into mine? No, but I just want to point out. I've never heard you say that word before, but you say veto weird. Okay. Vito. Go ahead. Okay. It says Lawn Island.

How do you say it? Law and Guy land. Here's my very good category. I had high fidelity in there, but I bumped it up for my top five. Ted Lassow. Ben's shaking in a seat, so, you know, he's about to pop off. Okay, I feel like you missed a lot. So here's my very good pile.

Ted Lassow. I thought it was the best feel-good show of the year. Curb came out this year. We don't remember, but I think in January. Oh, man. Big miss by me. Schitt's Creek had their final season this year, the finale. I loved it.

That's an awesome show. A very bingeable, you could finish it very quickly. Hold on. Hold on. Let me stop here in tracks one sec. The scene in Curb where they had diarrhea. Oh, yeah. Where she sweated to their food.

Like, I was crying, and my wife was getting so mad at me, just because I couldn't stop laughing. The Spite Store, he opened up a spite store next to the coffee store like that. With the scones? Yes, I loved it. Okay, Schitt's Creek. I actually enjoyed the morning show on Apple, even though a lot of people didn't like it. I thought it was good.

It was a little over the top. Dev's on FX was this really cool Steve Jobs-ish kind of show. It was weird about the future. I like Insecure on HBO. It's a show about these young black people in L.A., and their life is totally different from mine, and I love getting a view into that. I think that's an awesome show. Dark season three was this year.

Did you watch it? No, I bailed after season one, which I can't really defend. You got me into season one. Dark season one was one of my favorite seasons of all time, like top ten easily. The next two seasons aren't as good, but you have to watch. The ending is great. The undoing we mentioned with Hugh Grant and Nicole Kibnan was good. Homeland, the finale I thought was amazing.

Shame on me. Yeah, the final episode of Homeland I thought was just excellent. Nailed it, yeah. Normal People was a good, love one on Hulu. I actually read the book, too, was good. Going down to my above average pile. Love Life, the Anna Kendrick one on HBO, Max. Remember you watched that, too?

That was fun. It was kind of like, it was like a rom-com every episode. Perry Mason was a good, well-done show on HBO. Homecoming on Amazon Prime was pretty good, season two. I watched a lot of it. Trying was this show on HBO with these people who are going through the adoption process in Britain. I thought was pretty funny. A show on HBO called I May Destroy You.

She's almost like the British version of Lena Dunham. Did you ever watch girls or not? Yeah, I liked girls. Okay, here's my problem with these millennial Gen Y shows, though. They always throw in a few things that, just are totally kind of gross you out and are needless, but they do it just because it's on HBO. That showed a few of those where I was like, I could have done about that. All right, here's some flawed shows. The outsiders, I liked, but it was too long. Hated.

Wanted to like. Have potential. Yeah, it started out good. Defending Jacob, I thought, was interesting, but flawed. Yeah, good point. Did you watch Raised by Wolves on HBO? No. Okay, we watched that one too. It was by the Prometheus guy. What's it? Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, one of those. Ridley. It had some vibes of that with robots in the future and apocalyptic world.

It was kind of interesting concept but kind of a weird show because he didn't really like any of the characters. What category are we in? These are my flawed shows now. Okay. And finally there's a show Rami on Hulu

really well received critically. It's about a guy trying to be a Muslim in America and his whole family's from Egypt and dealing with that. Season 1 was better than season 2, but I kind of liked that show even though those parts of what I didn't like.

I probably watch a good 20-25 shows. this year. Wow. Anyway, that's all I got. All right. What are your favorite books? So, I'm light on books this year.

I'm very light on books this year. I said the other day, you used to read more than anyone I know, and now you don't read as much anymore. Well, because I sort of became obsessed with, like, catching up on movies that I haven't seen. That's the thing. I'm saying this year gave me a bigger and better appreciation for Hollywood, I think, in the movie business. I did a lot of re-watching movies, too, that I had not done in the past.

I mean, I have read a lot of books. I just haven't really spoken about them. No filter, I thought was excellent. The Instagram one. The story of Instagram. What was the one about John Mayer Keynes? Was it the Price of Peace? The Price of Peace was an amazing book.

It was a biography of Keynes, but it was essentially also... Like a history book, too. Easily my favorite book of the year. Basically of the early 1900s to now on not only economics, but war in the Great Depression. And I never realized how influential Keynes was in the World War I, Great Depression, World War II, like the thinking behind it all. Oh, yeah. An intellectual giant. Sells by Zach Carter.

Yeah, how I invest my money by Josh and Brian Portnoy or edited by, I should say, a collection of. I'm sure they thought about this ahead of time, but the best marketing for that, I thought, was you pushed other people to write about that same concept, which was kind of cool because you got to read even more people that wrote about it outside of the book. The Psychology of Money. Yeah, from Morgan Howellsville. Morgan's book. Is this anything? The Seinfeld book was hilarious. It's just Seinfeld bits one after another.

That's a great bathroom book. Yes. Right? Ron Lieber has a new book coming out about college that I'm looking forward to reading. Yeah, we both got an early copy. We'll give some thoughts on that. What else? My favorite of the year, which I said was the biggest upset ever, was the Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey.

I had a lot of people tell me that him reading the audiobook was even better. So that was great. For some reason, maybe it's like the podcast world, but I've really gotten into the whole business behind the movie thing. So the big picture by Ben Fritz, I thought was great, even though it's a couple years old. The Hot Hand by Ben Cohen? Yeah. I wrote a piece in my blog. blog about my favorite books. And I included it in there. He wrote me an email saying, hey, thanks

for including it. And I said, I love the book. And he said, yeah, came out on March 10th, right as the pandemic was coming out. So whose book was this? Ben Cohen, the hot hand. He had some amazing stories. And his stuff about how Shakespeare wrote four or five of his best plays while under quarantine because of the plague was just really well timed. The story about how the guy created NBA jam. That was great. Oh, the Splendon and the Vile by Eric Larsen. I didn't finish. I got sidetrack, but I really enjoyed that book. I actually enjoyed this book called Wild Company by Mel and Patricia Ziegler. They were the husband and wife who started Banana Republic.

Oh, wow. How did you find that? GQ? I can't remember who recommended that to me. But, I mean, you think of Banana Republic now and it's owned by the Gap and not going to live shop that banana before, which you probably wouldn't be surprised about. Their whole starting it as entrepreneurs back in the day and how they really bootstrapped the whole company before selling out.

It's a really good book about like entrepreneurs and how they got things off the ground. I also enjoyed leadership by Doris Curran's Goodwin. That was 2019, I thought. Whatever. That was excellent. Just books that I read. Oh, okay. Basically a biography of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.

Excellent book. The reason I like it is because so many of those biographies, I always complain that they're way too long. And they're like, hey, my fourth uncle on my mother's side. Yeah. He was born in 1856. It's like, who cares? But this was a good one because it was four people and it was all more condensed and just the best stories. All right.

So I know you didn't have much for podcasts, but I've got a ton. And I'm sure that when we start talking about, this, these will all pop into your head. So you ready for this? I cannot remember. I listen to so many podcasts. I can't remember him. So you let me know what you've got. All right. I've got some individual episodes and just broader recommendations. Patrick O'Shaughan to see's podcast invest like the best. Like many people I listen every week. One of the ones that I really enjoyed was he had Rich Barden on and oh my God. I'm sorry. The guy from Al Timitner, I believe is in the fun name. I can't remember his name. I'll put all this in the show notes. That was excellent.

Corey Hofstein on his podcast flirting with Models did an episode with Chris Sidial, who is a young person that works like inside of the markets, a lot of market structure stuff that was really, really interesting. Dan McMurtry, better known as Scoop and we got to, did one with Bill Brewster that was excellent. All right, Ben, listen up. These are more in your wheelhouse. Tom Hanks with Dan Carlin. I loved that one. I think that was probably my favorite one of the year. The Rocky 4 Rewatchable? I think this is the first year I got into the rewatchables podcast, and that helped me bring back a lot of ones that I have not. Did you listen to the Rocky 4 one? Yeah, of course. At one point, Bill Simmons said, wait, next question.

Was it East versus East or Man Against Man, ultimately? Yeah, that was good. That killed me. Malcolm Gladwell's podcast this year was very good. Revisionous history. Yeah. He had some good stuff. Josh Brown, a newcomer on the scene for the podcast world.

His podcast has been excellent. And then lastly, my favorite podcast of the year, Against the Rules with Michael Lewis. The whole series was good, but do you remember the very last episode where he learns how to sing, that, like, floored me. I thought that was such an incredible lesson in life and just what a way to wrap up that season. I thought that was incredible. I think my podcasting, I'm sure for a lot of people went down, mine probably stayed pretty similar. I still found ways to listen this year. My podcast cue is getting bigger and bigger as we go. For most people, I guess you listen like when you're commuting and for a lot of people

that disappeared. I listen to podcasts when I'm like doing the dishes and when I'm in the shower With AirPods, it makes it easier. I'm listening quite a bit. Wait, how do you listen to a podcast in the shower? I just put my phone on the ledge. Okay, that's dangerous. I like to live on the edge. What can I say?

Smartless is by far my favorite new one. I think Will Arnett may be one of the funniest people alive that people don't think is that funny from rest of development. I don't really know him. Like, what else has he been in? He's been in a bunch of shows, smaller movies, but I think he's so quick-witted. His, like, one-liners and comebacks are just off-the-charts good.

I think he's hilarious. One of the things that I enjoyed about 2020 is the new crop of bloggers on Substack. You got some generalists, some experts, Miles Udland, I'm late to this. Mark Rubenstein on net interest. Mark writes a lot about the financial world and fintech companies. I think Substack is going to be huge in the coming years. The incumbents, like the Golden Saks of the world and what they're doing to, I guess, pivot to the 21st century, which I've done a good job with, Packing McCormick, who is my favorite. It's not boring.

I've learned a ton of stuff from him this year. And finally, Bern Hobart on the diff. And I feel like every time I find a new substack, I'm like, my roster's full. I don't even have any room on my bench. Yeah, there's a lot of them to come out.

If I add somebody at this point, I'm going to have to cut somebody. It's like a stock portfolio. As soon as any of these people show relative weakness, they're getting cut. Tight stop loss. Okay. We actually do get a lot of our recommendations

from our listeners. I get a ton of movies, book, all this stuff. I'm sure this stuff we've missed. So send us an email, Anosbeard's Pod at gmail.com, tell us some of your favorites and tell us why Michael's movie selections were awful, like they always are. It was hard to have an awful movie selection this year because there were so few of them, right? Right. Right, you are, Ben. Man, the year is over. What do we want to say? We get a ton of feedback on this stuff. Our listenership is very intelligent, and we get some very great questions. Sometimes we can't make it to all of them, unfortunately. But we're going to try to do better. on that in 2021. We might try to have some dedicated shows. I think maybe once a quarter we decided

that are just going to be listener questions. At this point, we've got so many listener questions that we've got literally another folder full of categories. We've had discussions where if we ever got motivated enough, start our own sort of sub-sex type of thing where we just put our recommendations every week and then maybe do like a week Q&A on there, something like that. We're still talking about that, but we're going to figure something out to do more of that because we do get a lot of good questions from people, and we're appreciative that people are willing to share and ask questions and that sort of stuff. Thank you for listening.

Animal Spiritspot at gmail.com. Hope everybody has a happy, healthy, safe new year, and we will see you in 2021.