Animal Spirits Podcast - The Best Performing Stocks of 2025 (EP. 445)

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

On episode 445 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss the best and worst S&P 500 stocks this year, 2025 investing lessons, why silver is going vertical, international small caps are crushing it, family offices are booming, sentiment is still broken, over-optimization is a problem, how millennials got rich, when to spend more in retirement, the best video game of all-time and more. This episode is sponsored by TradePMR. Find more details on TradePMR by visiting: ⁠https://hubs.li/Q03XS3Sj0 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.   TradePMR Disclosure: TradePMR, Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. Securities offered through TradePMR Inc. TradePMR, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc. Please review the full Terms and Conditions at (⁠https://tradepmr.com/asset-match-terms-and-conditions⁠) for the complete rules, requirements, and obligations that apply to participation in the program. 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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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 Sports, Michael and Ben. It is Saturday, 2.30. Thank you to Big John for hopping on.

This is the only time that worked for me because I'm with my family down in Disney. This might be our first weekend recording ever. And this actually worked out for me, too, because the big thing we do with my family every year in the holidays is we go bowling. We're a bowling family. It's just a tradition. Like once a year? Around the Christmas break, we try to go bowling. but we've always just

bowling has just been a thing with my family I feel like I feel like you're a good bowler I was just gonna say none of us are really good bowlers but I just man I just bowled 220 plus games

for me that's really good so 120 plus yeah I scored over 120 and two games in a row so do you know that I took a I took a

I took a college I took a bowling class in college really this might shock you this might shock you it was at a community college and yes That sounds like a lot of fun to me, actually.

I think bowling is just, it's an undefeated family activity. The kids love it. The adults love it. So there's literally a bowling alley across the street from my office. So I went bowling with a family. And, you know, pictures of beer are involved. And, because, obviously. And I bowled two.

I bowled 128 and 122 or something. And I walked across the street. Now I'm here recording. It worked out perfectly. Yeah. And I didn't have to deal with getting the kids out. out of there. So it was perfect. On a Saturday recording, we make it work. Do you want to get a dizzy stuff now or save it? Thank you for doing this. Well, I don't have a ton of Disney stuff because

we spent two days at Universal. Actually, you know what? This is a racket. So we stayed at a property that's associated with Universal. So there's three parks, okay? There's Epic, which is the new one. And then there's the old school Universal Studios, which I I haven't been to in 30 years. And then there's Isles of an Adventure. So Universal Studios, which is like... So I've never done any universal parks. Is it, I've heard, it's got to be a different experience in Disney.

It's, it's, it's good. Like, it's... Okay, it's good. I didn't know. I thought it was like second rate in the service isn't good or something. I didn't know. Listen, it's, it's, it's not like six flags. Like, it's a legitimate park.

They have a good operation. I haven't been to Disney in three or so. I wish I had like a better, but I don't think there's a big drop-off is what I'm saying. However, get out of my face. Leave me alone. Kobe is so annoying. I've got one of those kids. He's in my face.

Talk about me. Talk about me. My kids always say that too. Hey, can I be in your podcast? I love him. But yeah, he loves it. He loves to be the annoying kid. I think it's called being a boy.

I think it's just a boy thing. I don't know. My other one's very different personality. I'm not describing it as annoying. So you're having a fun family trip then. Family trip, not vacation. Yeah, it's not the most relaxing thing, but I love it. I really do. I enjoyed the shit out of this.

As much as I complained about it, I realize that I'm just now, I've like been ingratiated into the Disney culture. I'm a Disney person now because I've done it so many times, even though I've really fought it the whole way. So I was excited leading up to this. like the day before I was like, wait a minute, why are we going back to Disney? It's like, is this a bad idea? I love it. All right. So the, the two parks, islands of adventure and the old school Universal Studios, the property that we're saying comes with the fast pass, okay, or the express lane.

Epic. So we got there at about 11. And we said, you know what? Let's just bang out Epic today. The express pass did not come with it. So that's a separate thing. Four people. Guess how much you think it is? Now, mind you, I'm looking at the app, right? So the wait time for these rides, for the rides that you want to go on is literally two and a half hours. Now, I understand it's a luxury that we're able to pay for this and to say, oh, like I could never do that because obviously most people have to. But for me, this is like, if you could afford it's money, it's money well spent. But it's a fortune. I agree. So for four people, guess how much it is? So I think I might know because we had an extra day in Disney. We were down there last month.

And the last day we said, let's leave it as a pool day. And I said, man, the kids love roller coaster so much. What if we went to Universal? And we pulled up the prices. And I think for five of us, it would have been $3,000 or something for all the fast passes and everything. I mean, that's because we do the last minute, but it's a lot of money. All right. So just for the one day, it was $1,500.

Yeah. And how packs is the park? It's outrageous. The park was busy. I mean, obviously. But like, listen, I saw somebody, I saw somebody. I saw somebody posting about Disney and how busy it is and how, you know, this looks like hell. And I was thinking to myself, like, oh, no, why am I doing this?

But then I had a realization. Yeah, I mean, obviously it's busy. It's always busy. There is a capacity, right? It's not like they're going to be 140%. Like, there is a limited number of tickets. And obviously, they sell everyone during this time of the year. As a personal finance guy, though, I always find myself when there's that many crowds going,

I wonder what percentage of people here are just wringing up that credit card debt. Everyone can't afford it. Anyway, deeply uninterested for the audience. But let me just leave it with this. The universe is good. It's only, it's a 20-minute ride. So if you're going to do Disney and you're interested, you might as well do it. It's 20 minutes.

All right. So I feel like we're in this season of stock market investing lessons, right? So here's the 2025 investing lessons. And then people list off the things. and I had a realization today and this is not a new realization there was this French author the name escapes me

and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature a decade ago or so and his speech he gave this beautiful French phrase and the meaning was the translation was it's always the same novel and his point was every novel I write is the same like the plot beats the characters right it's all the same and I fill in the details

and I feel like that's the same thing for investing lessons it's it's just don't let the fear agreed to get to you get to you don't panic don't like sell out of your plan don't whatever i feel like the investing lessons that you give are always going to be the same and they're never going to change fair enough don't overtrade don't buy silver at 35 and sell out of 40 god you freaking idiot um i'm talking to myself here wait wait wait you okay so i had this in here later so i put this chart of silver and gold in here and silver's up 170% this year and gold's up 70 and the silver chart, if you want to talk about like an AI

bubble or something, why is silver up so much this year? Please make it make sense to me. I don't get it. Just because it's like the riskier version of gold? I don't know. Why is silver up 170% this year? I don't have an answer for you. We're having a boom in technological innovation. Are all of the data centers built with silver? Do you see this chart? it's unbelievable. None of the other than I see that chart. I can't stop looking at it. I sold it a long time ago.

It pains me. I think it's hilarious that you actually bought silver. Why did you buy silver? Because it was breaking out. And then I think I sold it for, I mean, I think I sold it for like a 25% gain. It felt like a genius.

All right. So I put in the top 10 best and worst performing stocks of the S&P this year. And it's kind of funny. Speaking of silver, you look at some of these in its technology and it makes sense like Sandisk and Western Digital and Micron

and Seagate Technologies. Those are the, do I have to say what those are? What? They're the picks and shovels. Okay. Warner Brothers is on there, which is funny, but then Newmont is on there, which is a mining company. The only mining company. The only mining, the only gold miner in the S&P 500.

Is it really? Yeah. And then if you look at the worst. When I, when I like started to get really interested in the stock market, gold miners were hot, and there was a lot of them. Newmont, Barrick. I think there was one El Dorado. There was a million of them. Not a million.

There was probably six or seven. And I think there was probably a lot of consolidation. And it was a horrendous. It's been a horrendous 15 years for gold miners until 2025. Yeah. They're going nuts. And if you look at the worst performing stocks, so those stocks are up anywhere, the best performing stocks are up any.

This is the S&P up from like 130 to 600%. Sandiska is the best performer so far. The worst performers is a lot of names you actually know, down anywhere from 40 to 70%. The Trade Desk, FI serve, Decker's Outdoor, which is shoes, Lulu Lemons on here. Target? Chipotle was the 11th one, I think. Barely missed.

So there's some names that you know. Nike? Target is not on it. No, not as Nike. Nike's in my personal portfolio. It probably should be one of the worst performers. Anyway, I always think it's kind of interesting to look at these things. But you're right, those top four names.

Those are pick and shovel. And those are not new companies either. Those are companies that have been around for a long time. Those were like dot com. bubble stocks yes yes exactly all right this next segment is brought to you by our friends at fidelity they did a post like they have a 2026 outlook and in there one of them there's like six different modules and one of them is riding the i revolution how fidelity managers search for the potential winners of tomorrow we've got the link in the show notes in case you're interested um and some of

the charts that i grabbed here if you're thinking of of punching myself in the face as i say playing the AI trade. Like the hyperscalers, the semiconductors, the manufacturers, the, all of those players. Like the story can change and who knows who's going to win and blah, blah, blah. But I feel like the electricity, like the power plays. I mean, obviously they worked in 2025, a lot easier to look back and then look forward. But look at this chart. Total electricity consumption by U.S. data centers.

And the YX is terawatt hours. I don't know what terawatt is, but like, let's say it's a trillion something, maybe. I don't know. And this is up until the right. I don't know enough about this to say, what could stop this? Maybe something, an asteroid. But then they've got the, a pie chart. Wait, so should everyone buy utility stocks because all of our electricity bills are going

to go through the roof because of this? Look at this. And also, and also, so electricity generation capacity. by fuel type. Not gas is the most, is the most, generates the most electricity, then coal, then wind, solar, nuclear, hydro. Okay. And they say- So, so AI could be like a commodities play in some ways, or it is, I guess.

There is already an index for like, man, what's it called, the semiconductor, gosh dang it. an index for Mark Rubensy just wrote about this. Ah, who cares? I can't remember. Anyway, if the, uh,

Fidelity says, um, if we need power now, the main sources, gas turbines, they highlight G. E. Vernova.

All right. G. Fernova is the energy company, Ben. That was spun off in 20204. Uh, they do a lot of turbine orders. Look at this chart.

Up 100% year to date. I mean, it sounds like one of the, families from Romeo and Juliet, but I can't argue with the performance. Is that the middle of light talking? The Verona family, right, with the capulettes and the, it's possible. But when you're at a bowling alley, though, you have to drink a light beer, right? You have no other choice.

I mean, yeah, pictures of dark. That doesn't work. Ben, a couple of weeks ago, credit to us, after the Nvidia story and after the Oracle, you and I were very emphatically, like, no way is this the end? Like, no way. Right. I guess in hindsight that maybe we pounded the table too hard because who knows it could have been the end.

But 2026 is not going to be the end either, is it? I don't think so. It's hard to see. And I guess when, you know, you know, I reject this whole premise, this whole notion, and I'm guilty of it because I just, I'm talking like it's going to end. As if what?

What does it even mean? Like AI is not going to be a thing? I thought out this too. And I want to, so you and Josh and I next week are going to have a, a live show for TCAF, right? I want to talk about this then with him, but I want to plant the seed a little bit here.

I feel like people keep putting this stuff all in one big bucket. Like, it's either going to succeed or it's going to fail, and it's all or nothing, right? Yeah. But what if it is like, hey, listen, these two companies figure out how to work it,

and these other companies figure out to use it better, and these companies, they do crash and burn, but it doesn't bring the whole thing down. I think that's the way people are thinking about it, that could be misinterpreted or misunderstood is that it's like, it has to be all or nothing. And what if it just doesn't? And it's Google ends up being the winner.

And opening eye is a loser. Someone is the winner. Someone is a loser. And someone is in the middle. And it's not the whole thing crashes and burns. I think the reason why we talk about this is just the expectations, the amount to spend. It does feel like it's easy to talk in all or nothing. But we never spoke about this with the cloud, for example.

And obviously, the cloud is not in the same universe. as far as like disruption potential as AI will be right but like imagine you spoke about like every new category like that like up is the cloud is it is this it for the cloud right yes right is this is it this is the beginning or the end right and it's just going you're right is what if it just keeps going i think that's the thing that people aren't really prepared for i had chart can make a few charts for me um we stole this one from somebody did he give them credit my bad i You know what? I think I took this from S&P.

I asked me to recreate this chart just like for verification purposes. Yes, we did this take this from S&B. Okay. It's a 12 month trailing relative return of the S&P 600, all right, that's the small caps, versus S&P developed XUS. Now, why did they make this chart? I'm not quite sure.

But it is a bit of a faceblower, is it not? Because what we're seeing is it's the worst 12-month performance. for the for the for the small cap 600 versus developed stocks now if you think about this in the context of where we were coming into the year and liberation day and main streets turn and small businesses we're going to win and obviously you know this the s p 600 is not quite small business but it's a it's a it's a proxy and the fact that foreign stocks outperformed our small businesses small public businesses by the widest margin in the history of this data set,

at least as far as we have it, going back to 2008. I don't know what it says, but it's interesting. So I don't have this chart in here, but if you look at, I share this on Slack with you guys a couple of weeks on a research channel. If you look at, so DFA has the U.S. small cap value and the international small cap value of ETS, okay? And we use some of these for clients.

The DFA International Small Cap Value Fund is up 48% this year. The U.S. small cap values of 10%. So that's not, like, you can't say that's the currency thing, right? The U.S. dollar fell. International small cap value is absolutely crushing it this year. And they're outperforming the U.S. counterparts by almost 40%. It's unbelievable. So it's not just developed markets.

It's U.S. or developed small cap international is crushing it, too. That has to be, this has to be the biggest spread ever, right? And you show the Matt's chart here shows that since two, I can't imagine there's been a bigger spread than that ever. So what is the exact spread? It's 27%. Right. Huh.

All right. One more. I like small caps going to 2026. There I said it. Can't help it. It's how I feel, Ben. Matt has a chart. I made the case last week, remember?

Matt has a chart showing that the profit margins for the S&P 100 versus the S&P 600. The spread is basically at an all-time high. You've got 15.7% for the S&P 100 and just 5.9 for the S&P 600. By the way, look at the S&P 600 relative to itself. The profit margins peaked three, four years ago.

That is surprising. So this AI has to close this gap. But here's my big takeaway from this chart. how is it possible that they spent, the hyperscaler spent so much money on AI and profit margins still increased this year? That's kind of unbelievable, isn't it? How did profit margins not get eaten up

by all the CAPX that they had? That's incredible. Yeah. All right, last week, Ben, we talked about FOMO for a good cause, and we've got more of it. Charles Schwab is joining in. Michael Dell tweeted this.

adding $1,000 to the account of employees' newborn children. Oh, wow. That's a pretty good bonus, right? That's not bad. Love it. So Charles Schwab, the company, not the person. All right. So Gungin at the Wall Street Journal had a piece about family offices.

Family offices have become the new power players on Wall Street. It's funny because my wife and daughter the other day, they were joking. But they're huge Taylor Swift people. They go, hey, how come I'm going? Ritholtz doesn't manage money for Taylor Swift. And I said, that's funny. She obviously has a family office. If you have that much money, you have a family office.

And here's some of the numbers. Family offices... Wait, Ben, hold on. Can you just explain... I feel like most people have no idea what a family office is. Okay. So a family office is essentially you hire people internally to manage your money. You don't give your money to a Ritholds wealth management or a Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan.

you hire people to literally run the money for you in-house. You hire your own portfolio managers, your own CIO, all this stuff. And according to Gungent at the Wall Street Journal, family offices recently oversaw a $5.5 trillion in wealth, a 67% jump from five years ago, according to Deloitte. That should rise to $9 trillion by 2030. So it says, in the coming years, these offices will manage more money than hedge fund firms.

That's kind of a faceblower, right? Right. But it's funny, a lot of this is also a status thing. So they interview this guy who's a, who manages money at U.S. Bank for these families. He said it's kind of become the word for ultra high net worth families. Do you or don't you have a family office? And they said there's some status assigned to that. You got a cocktail party talking about it. So this is like one of those things like, hey, do you have your own foundation? Do you have a family office? If you're really rich, right? You fly private. You have a family office. right? I don't have a wealth manager. I have a family office. That's a thing. Now, the question is, do you get better results because you have your own people internally versus hiring out of a firm? I don't know. Do you think the people that have family offices even think about that kind of comparison? No. Wait, is it really worth it to me? Or is it? Because for some people, I think it's also like a privacy thing. I don't want potentially all these other people at a big firm to see how much money I have and see the movements of the money and where it's going. I want to keep it.

I think that's a big thing for people's privacy when you get that much money. My knee-jerk reaction was, if you have a family office, the people that work for you, and I am making this up and I am generalizing, the people that work for you, their primary job is not to get fired. Yeah, so there's a big element of career risk there. I totally agree. And so what you're going to experience is basically like a reflection of what you want to happen, how much risk you want to take, right? Like, you're not going to have people, say, like, disagree to the extent that they're going

to get fired. It's like, wait, this is a whole thing too, right? Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure it depends is the answer, but. Yes. But the fact that the growth is so big, that just shows how rich people are just getting way richer, right?

Because I think they say, if you have, I don't know, $100 million and up or something, you could consider a family office. Well, how much does it cost you want a family office? That's the thing. You're paying salaries. You're paying taxes and social security. All this stuff. It's the cost of running it are much higher, too.

That's the tradeoff. Okay. I want to talk economy real quick. So the U.S. Index of Consumer Sentiment. A bunch of people are commenting on this I saw last week. It's now at the lowest point since early 1980. And let me rewind you to 1980 what was happening. Paul Volcker took the Fed funds rate to 20%.

The U.S. had two recessions in the span of three years. We had 7% inflation, I think 7.5% inflation for the entire 70s, for like a 12-year period from 1970 to 1982, inflation was just crushing. Everyone was getting crushed by inflation. We are now at the same level of consumer sentiment as we were back in 1980. Okay. Counterpointed. We've obviously debunked this many times. the quality of the survey data is

is shit. I forget who I forget who's work we cited. Like people just don't answer these questions anymore. It's like the the sample size or whatever. Words escape me. If my brain is broken right now, forgive me. But like the quality of the respondees, it's just, it's garbage. It's garbage and garbage out.

This is not representing real life. I also think, I think the pandemic broke brains. I think the 2008 crisis broke a lot of brains when it comes to investing and such. And I think the pandemic just shattered in terms of this sentiment data. And I think it's never, ever going to be the same. You're right. A lot of it is people not answering and the survey quality is worse and people lying and all this stuff. But I do also think that it's just, I think the pandemic just altered our brains forever.

And it's never, I don't think we're ever going back to like, hey, we're going to get normal consumer center readings now. Absent that one period from like, I don't know, 90, 92 to 99, like when I guess the mood of the nation was like pretty okay, maybe the 50s. I don't know. I feel like the nation's mood, like it ebbs and flows, but I don't know. Is it ever awesome? The creation of social media and the pandemic, I think, has altered this forever. And it's never going back to what it was. All right, Ben, good news with Robin Hood.

After enough attempts at moving $5,000, they said, hey, you know what? I think this guy's good for it. Just let him take his money. So they lifted my limit. Although, wait, is it because I'm in Florida? No, I don't think so. What they lifted to? They double it or what?

I had $15,000 left of Bitcoin and I was able to move all of it. There's no restrictions now. Okay. I guess it makes sense that moving. money should not be ultra, ultra easy. But sometimes when you're doing it, you feel like, why can't this just be easier? I feel like a point of the blockchain is to make

financial transactions either. By the way, I mentioned last week that I'm going to sell more crypto when the new year turns over. Like, it's just, it's just like not, there's nothing going on in crypto, right? I know maybe the price is the only thing. I'm sure

the crypto people will tell you that there's projects and stable coins and blah, blah, blah. It just seems like nobody cares anymore. And can it get its mojo back? Like, listen, I'm not selling all of it, like, hardly. But, and yeah, the answer is yes, absolutely could. That's the weird thing about Bitcoin. You can get its mojo back anytime for any reason, for no reason.

So I wouldn't be surprised at all. But it just seems like nobody cares about it right now. Seems like apathy. But I do feel like Bitcoin is the ultimate price drives narrative or anything else. When Bitcoin is going down or it's going nowhere, you go, what is this even for? What are they doing? Nothing's happening. And what's going up, you go,

nothing can stop this. What could ever stop that, you know, because there's so much money flowing in and no one's going to sell. And I feel like that more than any other asset class has that. But you're right. It does have that feeling now of like, okay, we got the ETSs. Now what? What are you going to do? But then again, like those were the big catalyst. It was the ETFs. It was deregulation, it was all this sort of stuff. And like, there's not like another thing. And it's not said that the price can't work, but the catalysts have played out. I think I said this at the time. Like, what happens if we get all this deregulation for crypto, and then people go, okay, then what, then what, then what are you going to do with all that deregulation? If there's nothing to do

with it, then what does it even mean? Listen, we both know a lot of smart people who are still like, listen, crypto is going to create the rails, the new rails of the financial system. That's what it's going to do. It's going to be the payments. It's going to be the transfer. And maybe I already use with the stable coin stuff. Like there's a lot more stable coin transactions than are with Visa MasterCard. But, I guess the thing is like, well, what does it have to do with Bitcoin? True. I think gold and silver, obviously, to another, took a lot of the shine off of Bitcoin this year.

And I'm sure a lot of people go, wait, I could have just owned this other thing instead of Bitcoin and done way better. It's, I keep thinking this is a minor black guy for Bitcoin. The fact that gold did so well this year during a technological bubble revolution, whatever we want to call it. it's surprising because it's been a risk-on-risk-off asset. And Bitcoin being risk-off in this kind of year, it's kind of bizarre. All right, let's talk some private market stuff. So I've been pretty sober, I think, about the risks of private credit, especially direct lending. I think I've been less hysterical than some folks.

But like when I'm talking about, listen, these are loans, right? The banks used to make these loans, these syndicated loans. Now Blackstone is making loans. And I think it's, for the most part, even though there's some shenanigans, even though there's some companies that have been frauds and defaulted, like, yeah, there's defaults in public credit, too. It's not just here. However, this is definitely, this raised my eyebrows. All right, story from the FT.

Private credit firms snapped up nearly 14 times as much consumer debt this year as in 2024, piling into riskier areas such as credit cards and buy now, pay later debt. in 2025 private credit groups, including the likes of KKR Blue Owl and Sixth Street, either purchase or struck so-called forward flow agreements to purchase $136 billion of consumer loans, according to figures compiled by KBW analysts. That number compared with just $10 billion in the previous year. Now, I will also say that these are not dumb people, KKR Blue Island and Sixth Street, that's actually, in fact, the opposite.

But yeah, this is worth monitoring. but haven't we learned that the buy now pay later like the default rates on those are surprisingly low very low um also in a but also in a but also in a benign economic environment now the counterpoint ben is like well yeah this is these are riskier debt guess what in that article it also said that this is the most lucrative area of of asset based finance that jp morgan made like 20 something percent on the credit card receivables right even if you get a 5% default rate or something, but isn't it just, you and I have to talk about this, like, the risk for any of this stuff is like what happens in a recession? I feel like that's like the easiest risk you

could possibly bring up. Yeah, but you know what? It kind of, not that I reject that argument, but what do you call 22? Because in 2022, bonds got fucking annihilated. And guess why private credit is so popular? Because they performed really well. Yeah. We could act like 2022 was not a stressful year for equities and for fixed income? I think until we have an actual event in the economy, a true slowdown, a recession that lasts for a whole year or something, people aren't, some people aren't going to trust this stuff. And my kind of point to that would be, what comes out of a major recession on the scale?

Are private credit loans going to be the elite thing that go down in value? Right. Yes. You know what I mean? Like, that argument is just so hollow. Right. Of course. Yeah.

high yield is going to get crushed. It's like that's, that's what happens if there's a financial problem. Wait, are you telling me that defaults will pick up in a recession?

Holy shit, stop the presses. Yes. We don't have recessions anymore, though. Right? That lasts like two months. All right. Someone sent us this,

and this is from one of the Reddit channels, which I still, I'm too old to, in middle age to use Reddit, but when people post pictures of my, I read them. Ben, you're not middle age. The next article

that we're going to talk about, it's all about millennials. And it said people age 29 to 44, and I'm pretty sure that includes you. Yeah, middle age. I'm afraid that my responsible life choices have made me permanently boring and miserable. It says I'm 30 and I spent my entire 20s making all the right decisions, focused on my career, paid off debt aggressively, rarely went out and avoided major risks. Everyone tells me I'm set up for life financially stable and I should be proud. But looking back, I realize I have no exciting stories, no memorable failures in a very small circle of friends who mostly talk about mortgages and promotions. My anxiety told me that

security is the ultimate goal, but now I have, now that I have it, I feel an acute sense of regret and panic. And this, this is honestly one of my worries about young people. And you and I've talked about, like, the fact that drinking is is, is, is careening lower and people don't do it as much anymore. I mean, Ben's in the podcast. Ben's in the podcast bust. Yeah, I mean, it's a great way to get with people and, and let loose a little bit. But I listen to this podcast that with Tim Ferriss and Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks does some of the best writing, he writes for the Atlantic, he wrote some of the best stuff on happiness in what makes us happy. And so I wanted to listen to it because he's very good on this stuff

about the fact that like money and happiness and what actually makes you happy. But they got into their morning routine stuff which is the Tim Ferriss trope, you know? And they talked about all this stuff about how they, their morning routines are like down to a science. And Tim Ferriss made a comment and I'm not like throwing shade on him because I'm sure he has this stuff figured out. But he said, listen, my brother and I used to go out for martini's all the time. But I realized when I put my sleep band on, when I had one martini before I went to bed, it would tell me my sleep was horrible. And I think, honestly, this is no scientific understanding at all for me. I think those sleep things are totally bunk.

And I think if it tells you had a good night sleep or bad night sleep, it depends how you feel, not like what this thing tells you. Right? So he's like, I don't get it, man. So he's like, I just had to. Why do you need technology to tell you if you had a good sleep or not? Exactly. So I think people who over-optimized like that, and if that optimization causes you to not go out and have a drink with your friend or your brother to, like, have a good time, because what the research actually shows is that the best possible outcomes for happiness and longevity in life are relationships. It's how many relationships you have, and guess what, going out and maybe feeling crappy the next day, but you went out with your family or your friends and you had a good

time, I think that's worth the trade-off of not having a perfect, the band on your arm told you you had a bad night's sleep. That's, I think people, the over-optimization crowd, I think sometimes takes things way too far, and to me, that's not living life. I under-optimized. These are dorks to me, but you know what? Here's where I am, and genuinely, to each their own. I don't care if somebody wants to over-optimise.

That's their decision. And I agree. You're right. Some people, if they don't over-optimized, they're not going to be happy. I just think you can take it too far. And I read a post like this. But don't you think for the most part, this is just how people are wired. Like, even this dork who wrote that threat on Reddit, even if you can go back,

let's be honest. People are, people are how they are. And it just is. Like, I don't think people wake up and choose to be happy, disgruntled, anxious. Like, it's just how you. you were born unfortunately like my son Kobe he's annoying he doesn't trisbee annoying you can't help it i do having kids made me realize that more than any the nature versus nurture thing i think and i look back at my own life how many of the things in my life that happened because of the family

i was born into i think like recently like michigan football has been going through a lot of stuff because their coach got into scandal and stuff and have you heard the jim gaffigan bit about like him being catholic he has all these kids and he's catholic and he's like listen it's too late for me to change now i was born catholic i've been catholic my whole life i can't can't change now. And some of this stuff is just the way you're born, you can't change. Like, I was born into a family that we have a friend group, we have some friends who don't play cards. And our, our family's huge. I grew up playing cards my whole life. My kids are into games, like, card games. Like, we love playing games and playing cards. And some people didn't

grow up with that. And it's like, that's not their fault. They just didn't grow up playing cards. Yeah. It's like, it's, you're right. It's like, so much of it is hardwired and how the circumstances that you were born into and, like, how your DNA or whatever evolved, as a person, like, will dictate so much of your life that's out of your control. I grew up with cards, too, which I'm fortunate for. Genrami, was that a big one for you guys? I like Ginrami. We played spades, and the big thing in the Midwest is Uker.

Uker. One more, you know, I don't know, Yucre's a Midwest game. It's kind of like spades or hearts, but a little variation. I'll teach you some time. It's a... I was asking my dad... If you're, it's a Midwest thing. I was talking to my dad about Kobe.

I was like, was like, was I like this? Because I definitely had, I had some shit growing up. And he said, I can't remember exactly what he said, what it relates to Kobe, but he said, we, mom and I didn't know what to do with you. Because I, I never did my homework ever, ever, ever, like starting in kindergarten, I never did it. I just didn't care. I thought I was too smart that I didn't need to do it. That didn't work out so on the long run. But they, yeah, my dad's like, genuinely, like, we tried everything.

And the more we push, the more you resisted. And I just, it's just who you. are for better and mostly for worse, but it just, you know, it just is. Yes. All right. That's a deep talk for the day. What's the millennial thing here? Oh, okay.

So this is an interesting article, Ben, and you are a millennial, so you're not middle age. Stop it. I'm literally the oldest millennial ever. That's true. So the Welsh Journal and an article, how the highest earning millennials made it to the top of their generation. It used to be, and just this title is kind of interesting because millennials did have especially like people that were in my age group coming to coming into the workforce in 2007 to

2009 not the best like I I how many people in my age group started at Bear Stearns and then six months later the thing blew up yeah that was yeah not a great time anyway so the article has some data it used to be doctors and lawyers so they're talking about like how how people in our generation got into the top five percent What do they do? It used to be doctors and lawyers. And the top 5%, so baby boomers in 1990, the top 5% adjusted for inflation was $212,000.

Now it's $300,000. Whoa. And they have a chart showing the chances of reaching the top 5%. This is an interesting one. So for our parents cohort, you had a 30% chance if you were a lawyer of reaching the top 5%. Now it's just 20%.

finance around the same computer math around the same um what else in here is that much different not a ton but i guess it's really legal too many lawyers okay so don't go to law school kids that that number to me that's a huge number again inflation is just at the top 5 percent so this is obviously a wealth inequality thing or an income inequality thing right if you're at the top of the heap you're doing so much better than people were before and this this make sense just from our lived experience of how many rich people did we know back in the day versus now. I was so my wife was commenting how seemingly everybody in my town is on vacation. Now, I don't live in a rich town like on the North Shore or anything like that, but I guess

it's an upper middle class neighborhood, right? Like fairly diverse, but upper middle class in terms of incomes. Um, and growing up I guess am I like misremembering I don't remember people going on vacations like this I don't think like people's parents have the money for this I think we took one trip a year and now if you're not taking four or five you're like the outlier it seems like it again maybe this is just for us it's like availability bias or something but you're right people take way more vacations than did in the past I think that's a fact also I guess like just on this idea of just how different things are and money and like everybody

has a $1,500 phone. Is that like lost on anyone, how nuts that is? I mean, how much is an iPhone? Expensive. Everybody has one. Yes, and it's a necessity now. That wasn't in the past. You're right. Okay. Back to the article.

One lesson. Not, I guess, not shocking, but just interesting. Going to an elite private school rather than a public flagship university increase the student's chance of joining the top 1% for earners

by roughly 60%. Wow. It shouldn't be this way. Because you went to Harvard or Yale or wherever or Stanford that you have a better chance because that's on your resume of earning more money,

it's kind of insane because of the choices you made from age, I don't know, 14 to 22. Or that, yes, that's kind of amazing. And obviously part of it is just the people who went there helped their kids get in there, and that is amazing. Okay, J.P. Morgan has this retirement by numbers report,

which is pretty interesting. And they show retirement spending by every five years. So you start out age 60 to 64, then 65 and 69, all the way up to 95 plus. And it shows that each five years, your spending decreases. And it's pretty linear decrease, right? like 5 to 6,000 every five years or so, even of spending decreases. And our Tony Isola, who we work with,

he wrote this blog post and he works with clients. He's an advisor for us, and he calls it the first decade retirement plan. And he says that he tries to help his clients spend more money that first decade of retirement because that's when your health is better. So he says that, like, there's this new study that shows that

the number of years people live in poor health is increasing because obviously medicine and everything is getting better, you can live longer, but a lot of those years are going to be in poor health potentially. So the average health life expectancy now is 12.4 years, meaning time living in poor health for people at age 65, dying at 87. So the point is, yeah, which kind of sounds like it stinks, the point is you want to front load that spending.

And I think the die-with-zero guy said, like, your net worth should peak when you're, like, 55, and you should be spending it down from that point on when you're healthy and can't enjoy it. And we talk a lot about this spending stuff, and I'll plug Talking Wealth again because someone else in the comments last week said, hey, you guys didn't tell us about this enough, this Talking Wealth thing. So Talking Wealth, it's our channel for advisors. I talked to Stefan Sharkansky last week about how to beat the 4% rule. His whole thing was how do we balance the risk of longevity, meaning you outlive your money, versus,

is people who chronically underspend. And he did, and we kind of explained in there, but this whole thing about how to spend your money in retirement is like every time I write or talk about this, like people have very, very strong thoughts about it. And I think it's one of these things in the financial advice space for the next 20 to 30 years is going to be one of the most important things that we figure out for people.

Is there anybody? It's such a puzzle. Our advisor spend a ton of time and energy convincing our clients not to wait, right? Like, how many success stories do we have of the client that bought the second house or whatever? Like, we obviously celebrate that and we're really proud of that.

Hiked the top of the mountain or whatever it is, yes. Yeah, whatever it is. Is there like, no, you shouldn't spend your money? Is there like, no, you shouldn't spend your money evangelists? Oh, yeah. A lot of personal finance people are like that. Like, hey, you have to spend 2% of your wealth otherwise you're going to run out of money.

Like, there's a lot of people like that that can't help turn it around. But I think this is going to be one of the most important things the financial advice industry does in the coming years is helping baby boopers spend their money down. This is interesting, from the daily economy, which is a new one I've never heard about. It says 401Ks built America's wealth

and proved all the critics wrong. So there's this idea that, hey, once pensions went away and everyone's on their own, people are screwed. They can't do it anymore. No one's going to save. Everyone's out of luck. So it says around the time of the 401k tax code change, there were 30 million defined benefit plan participants in private sector at an all-time peak.

So this is like late 70s, early 80s. That was nearly double the total in defined contribution or individual retirement plans such as 4-1K at the time. Today, the number of active-participants in defined benefit plans is down to 10 million. So 10 million people have pensions now versus 30 million at the peak. But there are almost 90 million people in defined contribution plans. Thanks to 401Ks, the total number of workers, whether any retirement plan at all, is at an all-time high, even accounting for population growth. So all of the opt-ins or the opt-outs versus opt-in, all that stuff has completely worked

and there is now more people than ever saving for retirement, even when you account for population growth versus the late 70s, early 80s. So actually 401K plans kind of sort of worked. Just wait. They haven't even begun to work, Ben. Just wait until we get private investments in them. Then they're really going to work.

But is it how many, for years following the 2008, How many stories do we hear about the retirement crisis? Do you ever hear anything about that anymore? Not much. Obviously, there are some people that are always going to be some people who basically rely on Social Security and that's it. And if we ever decide to break up Social Security somehow, I think it's going to be the biggest mistake we ever make. But there are more people than ever who are investing and saving a 401k plan. Even if the average, I think the average balance they say, or the median balance is like $200,000 or something.

What do you think about it like that, that's not obviously. Is it? I think it was like $200. but still that it's it's much better than people think there wasn't this period where pensions covered everyone again 30 million people and I think the population at the time was 180 or 200 million or something in the US so even a kind of population goal foreign cases actually have worked hell yeah um I saw uh an article Andrew Garfield is going to be playing Sam Altman in a movie next year called artificial you know what can we stop making movies

about people, the biography movies. We had the Bruce Springsteen one. There's too many of them. So a couple of weeks ago, I was like, wait a minute, they're doing a Neil Diamond one. It's too much. So actually, the Neil Diamond one, it's, so it's Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman. You haven't seen that yet? Oh, I saw the preview.

I did not realize that that was a Neil Diamond one. Okay, it's not. It's a Neil Diamond, it's a Neil Diamond tribute band. Oh, just like Saving Silverman. So I actually, now I'm interested. Now I'll go say it. Okay. I didn't know what that one was about.

But there's too many. Like, do we have to do one of these for everyone? I mean, does everyone need their own biography movie? I don't care. Like, did anyone see the Bruce Springsteen one? The Bob Dylan one I thought, Shalmay is great, but like, it was just boring. Yeah, it was boring. Okay.

I got a question for you. Yeah. I'm going to give you a setup here, and then I want you to guess. So I have an answer for the best video game of all time. We finally got our kids a video game system. We got a Nintendo Switch. For some reason, we just never, our kids are 11 and our twins are 8. It's the first video game system they've had.

They played games on iPads, but they've never really been to video game people. And so we played games all Christmas Day. We got them this. And I never went past like Sega Genesis in my house and then like Nintendo 64. You never went past Sega Genesis? I know. I just, I wasn't a, we loved playing games. I'm saying I never even got to like the, you know, Grand Theft Auto or like the world building games of today.

So I'm a basic video game. So what's my favorite video game? What's the best video game of all time, according to me? Punch out. Okay, no, it's Mario Kart. And there is no other answer. Okay. I've played all the iterations from Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo,

and it's just the best game. Okay, for you. I mean, there are clearly other better answers than that, but for you, I understand. You're not a gamer. In college, we would just, in terms of like, the interaction. I'm sure people would say, like, Madden or something, you know,

but in terms of the interaction with other people, because you can play with four people. So in college, we would get back to the dorm in my freshman year. We would watch two or three dating shows after all our classes were done, and then we would play Mario Kart the rest of the day until we, like, went to dinner.

And it's because you can talk shit to other people, you get angry. It doesn't matter if you're bad at it, right? It's just, it's the best game for multiple people. Yeah. Because we got Mario Kart for my kids, the new Super Mario Kart world, and we play, and we've played it all day and all night

for the last like three days it's just it's the best and man I love smoking my kids in it like they can't even touch me in Mario Kart I'm still good after all these years I did love video games but I stopped playing I think Call of Duty was the last game that I played a lot

do you remember do you remember I'm a few years younger than you but how how massive Zelda was on N64 when that came out no yeah see I never got into like the world building games like that I just I kept it very simple I never went

Fair enough I could see you When you decided to skip all your classes in college I bet you played a lot of video games I did Okay I did All right short show today

Let's do some recommendations I got a few here So I've got a new one on my annual Christmas list I love watching holiday movies Around Christmas Christmas is by far my favorite holiday And when I first saw it It came out in 2008

Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn and Reese With Spoon It was a huge disappointment Because that was when Vince Vaughan was on a heater, right? It's not that far removed from wedding crashers and old school in some of the movies. And it just, I thought it kind of landed like a dud. And four or five years ago, I picked it up again. And I watched it again this year. And man, Vince Vaughn was hilarious in that. It's actually better than I remembered. And each one of the parents, because they go to four Christmas because the two parents

are both divorced. And it's John Voight and Robert Duval and Sissy Spaceic. And what's Ted Danson's wife's name? Mary Sturm? Yeah, Mary Steamergeon. Yeah. And every year it grows on me a little bit. I only saw it once. Another great divorce movie.

It gets better the more you watch it. Have you ever heard of this movie? I saw this on Netflix. I was like, how have I not heard of this? It doesn't even make sense. The night before? Yeah, it wasn't that good either. That was a Seth Rogen one?

So it's Rogan, Anthony Mackey, and Joseph Gordon Levin. It came out in 2015. and I've never heard of it. Nathan Felger, James Franco? So I watched it when it came out and didn't care for it. Maybe that's the one I should watch again. Actually, it was not a bad one is, what is it, Christmas office party or office Christmas party?

Jason Bateman one? That's not a bad one. So anyway, that one's on my annual list now. So my 11-year-old Libby got into Stranger Things. I finally let her watch it, and she plowed through on her iPad on Netflix and we'd watch it together at night. She plowed through all four seasons in like three weeks, and she just loves it. So she's like, she can't wait because the new season came out to watch it. And I watched some of the end of season four with her again. And I really liked the first season. I thought the last

three seasons were like, boy, it's getting a little repetitive. I feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again. And the fifth season is kind of the same thing. Like, man, this is repetitive. She loves it. But it, so it felt like the last two seasons probably could have both just been movies, two and a half hour long movies, because it seems like we're doing the same thing over and over again. But the problem is, it's actually still kind of entertaining, and it's just, it looks good. Like, the quality of it is very high, even though the

story and the plot, it's like, what are we doing here? It's the same thing over and over again. So anyway, I don't like love the final season, but it's her watching it and liking it makes it better for me. And finally, finishing pluribus, the finale. Didn't you say you kind of gave up on it?

Well, I, well, I saw the first episode, and then I decided that I was going to wait and hear from people like you to tell me if it was worth continuing. So should I watch it? So the first episode, I said, I worried that the first episode was so good, they're not going to live up to it. And I feel like that's still true.

Like the, it's been downhill since the first episode. It got slower. And it's still interesting, but I feel like the first episode set the bar way too high. And ever since then, it's been kind of like, I'm out. I'm going to pass. I still, I think my wife likes it more than me. it's interesting, but I feel like they could have gone a lot of different ways

with it than they did, and it's just kind of like, okay, it's okay, it's all right. I'm still watching it, but it's just okay. Okay. So the season finished, like, it's like, all right, it was fine. But the first episode was by far the best.

I finally finished, I finally finished the offer. If you're a big Godfather fan, you should watch it, if not, skip. The guy that played Bob Evans was freaking awesome. He nailed Really good, right? Holy cow. So good.

Especially after reading that book, you see, like, he actually feels like he's playing that guy. Yeah. So we were talking about over the last couple of weeks, like, how much I love the what-ifs, right? In the NBA, like, and in movies. So I learned a few more things. This is going to blow your face, Ben. Chris Farley was supposed to play Shrek. Man, I feel like I heard that before.

So this was right before he died? He recorded, like, 90% of the movie. movie, and then he died. And then they brought to Mike Myers. Wow. I would love to hear his voice overlaid on it. Because I can't picture anyone else besides Mike Myers doing it. What else? Liam Neeson

was supposed to play Lincoln. I could see that. I don't know, man. Seriously? Versus Daniel Day Lewis. I have a specific set of skills. So I, what book do I listen to? I listen to the men who would be king an almost epic tale

of mogul's movies in a company called DreamWork so it was about Geffen, Spielberg and Katzenberg So this is where you got all this from? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

I love books about movies. So you said that you listened to the camera code book last week. Yeah, very good. So DreamWorks made almost famous and it bombed at the box office to like $30 million bucks.

Yeah, I think it's one of the got lags later on. I started to listen to that book this morning Yeah Francis McDormit Did a great job playing his mom Is he not just an amazing storyteller Reading his book? It's so like

It's awesome He's much older than he looks He's got to He's been making movies for a long time, right? He's got to be 65, 70 maybe All right It's the last show of the year for animal spirits.

I want to thank everybody for listening, emailing. I never take this for granted. As somebody who's a big consumer of different personalities, I grew up like a lifelong Howard fan and just listen to podcasts.

I know how important it's to show up for the audience. So here we are on Saturday. You guys show up for us. We show up for you. We are so grateful that, out of all the things you choose to listen to, were part of the rotation so could not be more

grateful and thankful for for everybody that listens we love our audience like the emails that just the people that get us and our stuff we're doing like we get a lot of emails for people and yeah I think it really means a lot

so all right hope everybody has an incredible 2012 26 hope all your resolutions dreams goals family health wait wait when are we getting your 26 predictions next week you know I don't think I'm going to do it

It's just, it's, I don't, it's too much. What? It's an annual, come on, man. When everyone else is sleeping the night, after being tired of Disney, you get on your laptop and pound out some predictions. I need five. But it's like, but you know, it's like, it's so, like, it's such nonsense. It's things that I think about, like, it's like half-baked, half-bake ideas.

I don't even think about it. I forgot what they were. That's true. Like, just to have them? We don't, like, hold ourselves accountable for them, right? Yeah. Just we can put the title, 2026 prediction. Uh, okay.

Everyone next time. Ben, enjoy, enjoy Scottsdale. I hope the pool is warm for you. All right. Yeah, yes, it better be. We're paying for it. Have fun to do you. All right.

Thank you, John, to the production team. We'll see you next time.