Animal Spirits Podcast - The Biggest Short Squeeze of All-Time (EP. 467)

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

On episode 467 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss: peak FOMO, chip stocks going nuclear, 1990s stock market flashbacks, trillion dollar IPOs, the AI trade is global, the bear case, a tale of two bull markets, bad luck in the real estate industry, South Korea's boom, movies are back and more. This episode is sponsored by: Invesco and YCharts. Visit https://www.invesco.com/ to learn more. Visit https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits to get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription (new customers only). Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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By this time of the year, most advisors are already in mid-year mode. I know I am. You're running client education sessions, reviewing estate plans ahead of summer travel, and starting to have real conversations about how portfolios are tracking so far this year. And the reality is most of the work still lives across spreadsheet. sheets, PDFs, and disconnected tools. Wide charts pulls all of that into one place. You can take a portfolio, instantly see how it's tracking,

compare it to its targets, and turn it into something you can actually use in a client conversation without rebuilding everything from scratch. It's the difference between preparing for hours and being ready in minutes. If you're in the middle of these conversations right now, it's worth trying. Click the link in the show notes to start a free trial and get 20% off your initial wide charts professional subscription. New customers only. 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 Riddholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholds wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. we have a long show, well, we have a long dock. Ben has something at 10.15, so we're going to go an hour 10.

I suppose we're going to take all the time. We've got 42 pages. There is so much to discuss. I feel overwhelmed. I am doing four podcasts this week, and I still think I have more to say. I mean, the amount of news flow coming out is incredible. But I want to take a moment to acknowledge that I feel like I am having a moment. Michael Battenig is having a moment.

Now, we are having a moment. We share a lot of overlap in our good fortune. But things are going pretty well for me right now. So this is that you don't get the reference, but this is the summer of Michael, like the summer of George in Seinfeld. I don't get the reference. But that's part of it. Like all of this happening with the sun coming out, it's been a long,

prappy winter, as they always are. Like, the fact that it's happening while the sun is shining makes it even more sweet. but I say this not to brag because bragging is gross, nobody likes it, but more is just an acknowledgement that life is hard. Life has its ups and downs. And you know when you're sick and you're like, gosh, I just, I got to be, I just want to feel better. Please make you feel better.

And then you're healthy and you completely forget about being sick. So I'm just trying to acknowledge. We talked about gratitude a couple weeks. It's a good thing to be grateful when things are going well. It's not bragging. It's being grateful. But it is also weird to have clarity like this that this moment in time, summer 2006, might be the peak for me,

which is a weird thing to think about. I'll tell you what. This is my apex mountain. I have waited a long time for this. last week I wore a shirt from the from the 1999 finals I was 14 years old my father started taking me games when I was seven to be able to share this moment with my boys is beyond special I cried twice this week listening to podcasts once from Mike Breen talking about how specialist moment is uh and once when Legler was talking about how good Jalen is like

literal and actual tears falling down my face um it is you're in some sort of news story showing you shouting about the Knicks? So my friend texted me yesterday. I am apparently the face of people that can't afford tickets, which is obviously ironic, you know, but the tickets are out of control expensive. So my plans, depending on how the series goes, if it goes the distance, I will be at games three through seven. I'm making the trek.

So I think Nixon five, I mean, I don't actually think that, but I do think Nixon's six. So we'll see. All right. So there's that. The Giants, after a lost decade, are finally, I think we bottomed. I don't think it's going to get any worse for us. Movies are having a serious moment in time.

What happened with obsession and backwinds, which we'll talk about later in the show, is remarkable. It's not just movies. It's your kind of movies. It's my movies. The movies that I have subscribed to and have had season tickets for a long time. Right. Yeah, your deranged type of movies are having a moment.

We at Red Holtz, things are, thank God, going well for us in the company and our employees and our clients. Things are, you know, things are going well. We launched Porterhouse, the momentum strategy that we've spoken about. And this is my regular, semi-regular reminder that we need more advisors. We have a lot of people that are interested in our services, and we have a shortage of advisors to serve all of them. which is insane. I started my career, and I'm using air quotes for people that are not watching,

cold calling and getting hung up on. So the fact that there are now people that are coming, knocking on our door, is something, it bothers my mind every day. I've been saying this for a while, there's a bull market in the need for financial advice for the next 20 years. Yeah.

Huge bull market. We need help. All right. What else is, is we launched an ETF. Can't really say much more, but we did that. And family and friends. Like everybody's healthy. And life is hard.

My uncle, when my mom passed, my uncle said to me, and this is extremely corny, but it's also extremely worth digesting. He said, enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal. And it's true. I like it. We only have one chance on this planet, and life has its ups and down. So if things go well-

I appreciate you struggling with positivity, because I'm really sick of, all the negativity in the world. So I enjoy a glass staff. We'll take on the world. Well, listen, I know that life is hard for a lot of people. And if you're struggling and you're vomiting me, you know, expressing gratitude, I'm sorry for you and I hope things get better. But I just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge publicly that like I'm having a moment and it feels it feels good. This is the top right there. That was it. Okay. Well, I helped out. All right. Let's get into the market because shit is happening. Every day it feels like something is going nuclear.

Is this the worst fomo we've ever seen in our lifetimes? Post.com, is this, this, it seems like every week it's something. It's a country, it's an ETF, it's a sector, it's a stock, right? It's Dell, it's Intel, it's Sandisk, it's Western Digital. There's something going just bananas all the time. You look at the charts and it's... This morning, Jensen. We're getting dot com like 1999 like returns.

in some stocks for a year. Like four-digit returns. It's insane. Jensen Wong said this morning that Marvell could be the next trillion-dollar company and the stock is up. The stock is up 16% pre-market. That's a big, big statement.

But I think it's accurate. I don't think, because you could say 2020, 2020, 2021, but that was stupid. That was like GameStop nonsense, right? This is... That was like Internet fun times. This is real.

This is real. And it's hard to, to fight it. Okay. If you are an investor and you feel under exposed, you're not feeling awesome right now. No, I agree.

So this is from the Wall Street Journal. Chip Stocks Power, the S&P 500 up 16% across April and May. A two-month surge matched only four other times since 1950. The index was higher six months later each time by a median of 17%. So we're talking about a handful of times

that this is the best two-month stretch since 19-one, one of the best two-month stretches ever since 1950. That's pretty good. This is interesting. I've never seen this before. Sam Rowe. So this is S&P via Sam Rowe.

I've never seen it presented like this. And I told chart came out, it said, hey, we've got to recreate this. From an all-time high, how often did the S&P 500 make another all-time high within the next day, week, month, and year? 99% of the time within the next year, the S&P 500 made another all-time high after making one.

That's pretty insane. Yeah. That's good stuff. All right, I am not, I'm not an analog chart guy. you compare two lines, right? Like, I've said this many times. Lines can only go in three directions, up down or sideways.

So when you see two things lining up, you know, one of my first blog posts, actually, I compared Autria to, like, Altria from whenever I wrote the blog post to the Dow Jones

from a different time period. And I was like, this is very easy. It's very easy to find charts of that line up. But this one I do find, um, interesting.

Remember how many 1929 charts there have been over the years? Oh, God. Yeah. Well, that's all, that's all, yeah. The worst. Okay. So Bespoke tweeted, um, the NASDAQ at 875 trading days after the release of NetScape on December 19th,

1994 and the NASDAQ at 875 day trading days after the release of chat, GPT, and it's identical. Um, now, whatever, you could see the rest of the chart. The, like the, the NASDAQ had only begun to explode after 875 trading days. So I guess maybe one of the takeaways is this thing can go a lot longer and a lot higher than anybody thinks. Whatever. Be that like that's near the here. It is rolling in 1998 right now. Exactly.

I just think it's the parallels between the browser versus the chat chitb tchipt should not be lost in anyone. It's obvious. All right. This is from the Wall Street Journal article. George Vanderheiden, once a Fidelity portfolio manager with one of Wall Street's best performance records shun tech socks in the late 1990s and a bet that the bubble would soon burst. Loading up on treasuries instead. performance slumped. He retired in February 2000, scribbling a message and his office whiteboard, tulip bulbs for sale. He said, at the time, you try to manage the portfolio for risk, but the

market hasn't awarded due for it. The market has no fear. Obviously, the market peaked like a month later. But that's how I would describe this market. This is a market with no fear. There's none. I know people are trying to make up, oh, this is going to burst. The way the market is acting, there is no fear. Is that fair to say? Yes and no. I think it is a fair statement that on Tuesday, June 2nd, there is no fear. However, Warren Pies tweeted on May 31st, despite many expecting a seasonal top, retail traders are still jittery. The 2% pullback in mid-May. Now, that was May. Okay. So on June 2nd, there's no fear.

Wait, 2% we're talking about? Let me finish. Okay. In mid-May, the 2% pullback forced big inflows into cash and money market ETFs. Warren's point was positive price momentum and defensive flows is not something you typically see at tops.

But remember there was a literally a 2% whatever. I didn't want to say pullback, a 2% well pullback, I suppose. But there was a rush into cancel products. That's like a sneeze. That's like a market sneeze. So it's just let's just take take. Yeah, you're right. The fear could happen fast when it happens.

So what am I, I'm trying to, there's a phrase I'm looking for, take stock. That's the phrase. Let's take stock of the fact that things change so fast. Think about how bearish people were on the AI trade after Sam Altman said that shit on the podcast in the fall. Think about how bearish people. people who are on the Mag 7, rewind all the way back to the pullback from the war. Sentiment changes so fast. But Ben, you're right.

On June 2nd at 9.15 of the morning, there is no fear. It feels like we're on these train tracks of AI and just we keep going. And every once in a while, the train gets derailed for something. Liberation Day. War, whatever fears are. And then we just find our way back onto the tracks. And people like, oh, yeah, it's AI powering this thing. That seems to be where we've been for the last three or four years.

All right. Carl Cotinia from Goldman. U.S. IPO gross proceeds will total a record $225 billion in 202026. Previous forecast was $160 billion. These numbers are just like not even close to anything else since the Great Financial Crisis. It dwarfs everything. I think what the number was that the three companies alone, did you have this last week for us? Anthropic Open AI and SpaceX will together have more proceeds for an IPO than any of the 1990.com bubble stocks.

all of them. I think it was 90 and 99 and 2000 combined. Now, Denise on T-Cat, Denise Chisell made a good point. We're going to adjust for the size of the market cap. Yeah, obviously. Mark is way bigger today. But, yeah, we are in a moment. So last week, Anthropic raised a $65 billion series H funding at a $965 billion post-money

valuation. And then four days later, they said, we're going to YPO2 later this year. We got, they filed their S1 yesterday. I haven't had time to go through it. I love how the headlines all say Anthropic confidentially filed the S1. Like, it's not confidential. We're all talking about it. I know we keep saying this, but it is the fundamentals driving this.

Now, it's hard to, it's hard to like know how much of the pie is excess speculation and excess euphoria. Obviously, that's a part of it. Investors are rightfully excited. But last week, Dell raised its out. look for the year. After sales climbed 88%. It now expects... It's crazy to Dell is still a company. Like, where Gateway missed its moment here? Where's Gateway Computers? It not only is Dell a company. It's a gigantic company. It now expects full year revenue to be $165 to $169 billion up from a prior range of $138 to $140 billion.

So the stock gaped up 38%. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that this is being driven by fundamentals. Here's a quote that I want to share, Ben. To me, the weirdest thing about this is so many of these companies have been around for a long time. Intel, Dell, Micron, Western Digital. These are not new companies that are springing up. These are companies that have been around forever. Correct. In technology terms, at least. I have, Ben, I tweeted this quote in 2017 from the pseudonymous Adam Smith. He wasn't really pseudonymous, but he penned his books under Adam Smith. He wrote The Money Game, which in my opinion is the greatest financial book ever written, at least it's my favorite. And he wrote a book called

Super Money. And to me, this perfectly describes how we are all feeling about the bull market. We are all at a wonderful ball where the champagne sparkles in every glass and soft laughter falls upon the summer air. We know by the rules that at some moment, the black horsemen will come shattering through the great terrorist doors, wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors. Those who leave early are saved, but the ball is so splendid no one wants to leave while there is still time so that everyone keeps asking, what time is it? What time is it? But none of the clocks have any hands. Is that chef's kiss or what? And I tweeted that in 2007. because at that time, there were so many,

there were so many people wondering, begging, when is this great ride going to end? When is the splendid ball? One of the lights going to go off. I think you just have to have an open mind about this. And that's where I am is that I know all the historical parallels. I do get worried that, oh, my gosh, this is the excesses we've been waiting for

that could tip us over. And, like, honestly, lead to a recession if the excesses get too big and there has to be a pullback. So that part does worry me. But I think you just have, if you don't have an open mind about what technology has done to the markets and to our lives in the past 15 years, then you haven't been paying attention. I think that's the right posture. The right posture is obviously not oblivious to the risks.

How could you be at this point? But an open mind that this could go on for a lot longer than you think and that some of the runups are justified. And have the Bulls not earned the benefit of the doubt? I got the bearish take later in the doc, but let's talk about the Bulls more. Micron. This company went nuts. So this is all the $1 trillion.

So you made this chart, it looks like. How many stocks? How many stocks does it now? 10, 11. This is the 11th? Which is crazy. So every stock in the top 10 of the SB 500 now has a trillion dollar market cap or more. Just nuts.

Ben, Ben, think about what's not a trillion dollar. company below Micron. You know what I don't see on this chart? I don't see JPMorgan. I don't see Walmart. No Netflix. Well, forget about Netflix. I don't know.

I'm just thinking of household names. But Walmart and J.P. Morgan are smaller than Micron? Okay. I guess. It's kind of cool to see Eli Lili on here too. So Bloomberg had some charts here. Trading days between $500 billion and $1 trillion market cap. Micron is the fastest in history.

And guess what? the next two are also happening now, Samsung and SK Hynex, which is, which, and like, Microsoft and Bertrandt took a lot longer. Well, look at alphabet. That wasn't like that long ago. It took alphabet over a thousand trading days. So Bloomberg also has, Bloomberg's earnings are expected to explode higher. This chart doesn't look real.

So it shows their trailing 12 months earning per share going back to 2017 and then the average analyst estimates for the next three quarters. and it's a 10-fold increase, five-fold increase, it looks like a totally different chart. To your point about the fundamental. The crazy thing to me is just that it wasn't like two years, even a year ago, people were saying this is going to happen.

These memories, that semiconductors are going to take off like this. This wasn't something people were foreseeing in this whole thing. Right? This is a new thing that no one was like pounding the table saying these are the stocks. To your point of happening fast, this happens so fast. In the re-rating and the earnings re-rating and the stock re-ratings and the stock re-ratings of these,

it's just, it's nuts. I want to give a shout to Roundhill for the greatest ETAF launch of all time. So they launched DRAM in early April. The ETF is up 127%. Oh, I've had this later

in the back. They send out an email today. So listen to this. This is from Roundhill. The Roundhill Memory ETF, Tigger, Dram, surpassed $10 billion in assets under management in only 35 days, faster than any ETF in history. Wow. Holy crap. Ten billion dollars in 10 days. So this is all those stocks that we just talked about. Micron, Sandisk, Skihanix. Isn't it, it's only like six stocks essentially? Oh, I don't know about that. I have no idea. I don't know what the whole things are. That makes of the majority of it. Okay, I would assume it's a bigger basis than that. But there's $14 billion in assets as of yesterday. This is credit to them.

These guys are good, but better to be lucky than good. Unbelievable. Love to see it. Good for them. Okay, right. So, sorry, yeah, the top stuff, but, oh, man. So we shared a chart on TCAF. The distance between SMH and its 200-A moving average, and there's nothing in history like this.

At least, well, I'm sorry, it goes back to 2001. So maybe it's crazy a 99. But for goodness sakes, like, if you are putting new money in here, I'm just have some sort of an exit plan. Like, you got to fight, you got to fight the fear. Fight the, fight the phoma. Well, this is the kind of thing where you said to like people have such big profits here that there's going to be a time when these stocks, something happens. And people, okay, my gosh, I need to, I need to lock these profits in now. And there's going to be a huge cascade of selling, even if it's like a one day or one week thing.

I keep saying this. When Micron reported its blowout numbers last quarter, blowout numbers, the stock fell 30% in about two weeks, three weeks. And that was, guys, that was like in March. So I'm not, I don't want to be like, guy, it's super lame. But just be careful. Yes, there's going to be those stats that say, oh my gosh, these stocks down 30% but still up 400% for the year or whatever.

And by the way, we own a lot of these names in Porterhouse. Like, we own a lot of these names. And if and when they break our, whatever our rules, or they'll get sold. Yes, that's the point of momentum strategy. The AI trade is global. This is one of the things that I've kind of been talking about for a while, wondering or predicting whatever you want to say.

So Michael Sembless looked at a basket of Chinese AI stocks and a basket of US AI stocks. And this is going back to the start of 2024. And they're essentially following each other beat for beat. Chinese stocks are actually outperforming a little bit. Going back to the same thing, the emerging markets ETF versus the NASDAQ 100 has kind of tracked it pretty similarly. and are about the same as each other since the start of 2024.

So this is the kind of thing where this is not just on our shores anymore. This is a global phenomenon. And actually, I've been thinking that AI, the internet really didn't level the playing field as much as people thought, I think, in terms of like U.S. domination of the world. I think AI might be the thing that does it. That sort of brings the rest of the world up to us. I think it's possible.

All right. I want to give the AI bear case now. and talk about my favorite new macro podcast. So T.S. Lombard has a podcast. Dario Perkins is a guy I follow on Twitter. They have three macro people. They're all British. And they make macro calls.

And then if they get it wrong, they all rip on each other on the next podcast. I love that. So I really enjoy it. So they said, let us lay out the bear case here because everyone has the bull case. So Dario Perkins says,

I did the numbers. 80% of the revenue right now is circular, meaning it's going from Google to Oracle that like it's it's the capax from one company going to these other companies. So a lot of it is he's saying it hasn't quite broken out yet to the wider world of businesses yet. A lot of it is still circular. So all this capax we're seeing is them shuffling the chairs around, so to speak. And he's saying if we don't see the leap, then that's a worry. If it's just these companies spending with each other.

And it's interesting, Ben Thompson on his podcast last week said that NVIDIA is now starting to break out their quarterly numbers by hyperscalers versus non-hyperscalers. Because I'm sure they're getting crap about this. Like, hey, is this just a big circle jerk? Are we, what are we doing here? So, anyway, it's worth a listen. So it's called Global Data is the name of the podcast. I think it's worth a listen for the bearish take because I think we are now in the camp that I feel like the bearish takes before an AI, we're kind of getting the most oxygen. And now I feel like the only thing you hear is bullish. So again, trying to keep an open mind, I want to, I want to think about both of these things still. And like what I should be looking for for like mile markers

and goalposts to be like, all right, fine. That bears trope, that one was knocked down. Right. Anyway. You know what I found? You know what I found really helpful for me early in my journey as a young investor? I used to write down everything. When I bought or sold something, I would write down what I was doing. And Ben and I have joked about this in the past. In 2011, I think I shorted Amazon. And I would frequently reread what I wrote with the passage of time. And I don't mean like years later.

I mean like three months later, I would look back. And believe me, it didn't take very long before I discovered that I was not, in fact, the next Stanley Drucken Miller. And if you do that, especially in a time like right now, because whatever happens, you will, it will have appeared obvious in hindsight for the most part. And I would say, listen,

if the bull market goes another year, if we're up 30%, I don't think anybody's going to be like, not anybody. I don't think a lot of the narratives like, well, of course we're up another 30s. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.

Like, there will be more disbelief, in my opinion. But if we're down 30%, everybody will have seen it coming. Everybody will have said it was so obvious. Oh, yeah? Okay. If you think it's so obvious that we're in a bubble,

then sell. or short or whatever. But write down, write down. It's a really helpful exercise. Write down how you're thinking before you buy or sell something and do that for a couple of months

and see if it doesn't sober you up about your own abilities to predict the future. Yes, I agree. That's one of the reasons that I like having a blog because it keeps me honest with that stuff. And it's one of the reasons

that we have policy statements for our clients, writing stuff down, reminding you of your goals and why you're investing. Duality research had a good one showing that this is really a tale of two bubbles, or not bubbles, two bull markets. Sorry, I got bubbles on the brain here.

Also, the other thing is no one can time a bubble. No one can do it. It is impossible. Isaac Newton was probably the smartest person to ever walk the earth, maybe one of the top three. And he got caught up in a bubble in the South Sea. One of my favorite stories. It's impossible.

No one can time it. One of my favorite stories about humility in the stock market is Stanley Druckin-Miller, who I think everybody has on their like Mount Rushmore of Mount, whatever your style is, he's on the Mount Rushmore, if not the goat. Okay. Drunken Miller was in the business for almost 20 years prior to the top in 2000. He had been killing it. He already was a legend for shorting the pound.

Like he was a guy. And he fought the bubble. He fought, he fought, he fought, he fought. he was underinvested. He hired a couple of young kids because he was like, all right, clearly I'm out of sync with the market. I need some young blood. Maybe they have a better idea of what's going on than I did because, well,

whatever, we don't think you're going to do his backstory. But, and he went all in, in his words, within hours of the actual top into tech stocks. He lost $3 billion in 24 hours, something like that. And as he reflected on what he learned, his answer was nothing. I knew I shouldn't have done it. But I did it anyway because I couldn't help it. that was from your book, right? That was my book.

All right. So back to this chart. What are we looking at here? All right. So you talk about analogs between the 80s and 90s and today. I think this is another one that it was that period, however you want to start it, 82 to 99, 80 to 2000, whatever it is.

It was really two different bull markets that were just kind of mashed into one over time. And so duality research looked at in the 2000, so 2013 to 2020, new highs in the S&P 500 came at low Vick. It was like the stair step up. But now in the 2020s, since the pandemic, new highs have come with higher VIX prints. So there's more volatility when it happens.

And this is showing that since the pandemic, this is a totally different market. The bull market is acting differently. So here's how the market is still grinding higher, but without the same complacency we saw in the 2010s. In other words, investors are still paying up for protection even during rallies, pointing to a more hedged, more cautious backdrop, which is interesting. Yeah, so that's why I pushed back a little bit of the because you're right. There's no fear today. But fear comes back so fast. It comes back so fast. All right. So we'll do a little bit about SpaceX here. I'm doing a full episode because it deserves a full episode tomorrow on talking wealth with Aaron Dillon about what advisors need to know about SpaceX because clients are asking a lot.

Yeah, we've got a ton of questions. This is the hottest IPO of our lifetimes. What does it mean for index inclusion? What does it mean for buying? So we'll get into that. a little bit of today. My dad texted me yesterday. Should I buy the SpaceX IPO? My dad never, ever asks me about individual stocks, ever. So this is on the brain. What did you tell him? I said, no. He said, okay. I said the price might go up in the first few sessions. Who knows, but it's a cluster. All right. So let me elaborate. I can't, I know you're going to get into this on talking wealth, I can't force myself to get up in arms about SpaceX being an anthropic eventually be included in index funds. I can't make myself get mad about it. Okay. So there's, a lot of people want to be mad about it. I can't force myself to get mad about it. There's nuance.

There is. Yes. These companies should be in a cap weighted index. If they are like a top 15, top 10 stock in a cap weighted index, how could they not be included? It would be bizarre. Exactly. That's my feeling. People are. People, are upset because the NASDAQ and the index providers are changing the rules, guess what? These rules were not handed down on a tablet by Moses. What do you mean? We're allowed to change the rules. The market looks so much different today than it did back then.

The rules are allowed to change. Okay. The question is, are the rule changes protecting investors? And everybody has their opinion. I think to include an IPO of this size in the index after 15 days, is kind of nuts. There are all sort of chicanery that can be played. I don't think there's enough time for price discovery.

I believe that they should be included in the index, but 15 days or even five seems nuts. Now, the part that I think, the part that people are upset with is exit liquidity. They are coming out with a very short float so that the index has to buy all of it and it's manipulating. So that part I sort of on,

understand, but the nuances of it matter. So here's Matt Levine. So the schematic, maximally cynical approach for SpaceX would be something like this. Do an IPO. Sell like one share of stock to the most ardent possible Elon Musk fan asset manager at a $2 trillion valuation. Sell perhaps tens of billions of dollars of stock to ardent Elon Musk fan retail investors, whoever's willing to buy at that $2 trillion valuation. lock up all the rest of the stock so that no one can sell, get in all the indexes because you are huge, something like 24% of the stock of the average member

of the SEP 500 index is held by index funds at a $2 trillion valuation, that's like $500 billion of stock. Sell $500 billion of stock to index funds at that $2 trillion valuation. They can't say no. That is the maximally cynical approach is to sell as little stock as possible

to price sensitive investors in order to keep the supply low and the price high, and then sell as much stock as possible to index funds who can't negotiate on price. Actually, can't negotiate on price understates the issue. If index funds need to buy 24% of your stock and only 20% of your stock is available to buy, then the index funds are forced to chase it, driving up the stock to whatever price you like. You have effectively created a short squeeze for the index funds. They have to buy stock at any price, and there isn't enough stock for them to buy,

just keep bidding, U-Tel Vanguard. Okay, so that's Matt Levine. But the reality is a little bit more nuanced. Here's Lou Wang and her colleagues also at Bloomberg. They say, fast-track timelines vary by index. But if S&P follows its competitors,

the resulting passive demand for SpaceX from funds tracking indexes would be nearly $20 billion. According to Bloomberg intelligence analyst, James Seiford, and Rob Dewe. Rob Duboff's estimates. With a $75 billion raise, all right, so they're raising $75 billion. That would be roughly a quarter of SpaceX's offerings.

So to be clear, SpaceX will not be in the index at a $1.8 trillion valuation. We had a bunch of listeners email us. Like, hey, is this total horseshit? Like, should I sell my index funds? So here's where it is going to fall inside of the index. This is this, so Callie, Cali Cox calculated this for us based on, you know, putting a few pieces together of the new float adjusted rules.

The float is what's actually being available, okay? Callie said it's going to be right around Amgen and Gilead and Shopify and Honeywell. So if you look at this graphic that chart could create, it's going to be like the 195th company in the S&P. It's not automatically going to be a 3% position right away or something. But that's assuming that they waive the profitability requirements, which are probably going to. Sounds like they're going to.

And we don't know when it's going to get included. I think the bigger idea is what do future unlocks look like and how much supplies ultimately could be dumped on index funds and what does that do to the price? And we will cover all of that if you want more on talking about. I'm sure this is going to cause the index providers to change more rules in the future. if they try to manipulate them.

All right. So half-based idea that will never happen. What if there's a new rule for private companies where once you cross a certain threshold in market cap, you can't be private anymore. You can't come public at a trillion dollar valuation. What if there is a limit? Like if you want to be a publicly traded company, there's just a limit. You can't come public at a $4 trillion.

market cap and only release 4% of the float to investors pushing stocks higher, push it like, I don't know, it's probably not going to happen. I'm sure that's, you know, probably not a great idea for various reasons. It's an interesting experiment. We'll see what's going to happen. And that brings us to one of the big questions is how much supply can the market handle? Because the money's got to come from somewhere. And if Open AI is coming public and SpaceX is coming public and in front of the

is coming public and they're raising $200 billion. What was the number that Goldman, it was a $250, $250 billion in new shares coming to market. You have to sell something. And what does that do? Okay. Well, funny you should ask because Google apparently needs to raise money or they are choosing to raise money. So Google is doing an $80 billion equity offering. It is the first time since 2005. This is a narrative buster to me. This whole story is so bizarre to me. In what sense?

The fact that people have been talking about Buffett sitting on a cash pile and the timing of Berkshire Hathaway getting into this is bizarre to me. So they bought Google last year. They're buying more. They're buying $10 billion, which is, I mean, what's their cash pile? Is it $300 billion? It's, so it was done via private placement. I'd only like a 4% discount to current prices.

And the whole story is fascinating. It's very interesting. Yeah, a company's biggest Google and mature as Google, raising equity is so, I looked it up. I'm like, when has this ever happened before? This is basically a one of one that this has happened. A company that produces this much, yeah, this size, this mature. I mean, Tesla did a bunch of equity raises, I guess.

Like, I was scouring all the LLMs. Like, when has this happened before? They're like, never. This is new. So here's, here's, like this has never happened before. Here's their press release. During its Q1, 2026 earnest call, Alphabet announced that its 2026 CAPX are expected to be $180 to $190 billion. And that it expects 2027 CAPX to significantly increase compared to 2026.

The equity offering is part of Alphabet's plan to fund its investments in a balanced way while retaining a healthy balance sheet. There are other sources of funding include strong operating cash flow over the last 12 months. They generated $174 billion of cash flow and debt issuances over the last year. They raised $85 billion of debt. So people are rightfully saying like, hey, wait a minute. What in the world is going on? $175 billion of operating cash flow issued $85 billion worth of debt just over the last 12 months and you still need more money. To me, the clearest, my reading from this is I should buy more Nvidia.

I own Nvidia. I should buy more. The narratives I was thinking about this is, obviously this means there's so much demand. Yeah, so they needed money this bad that they had to raise equity, which is, to your point, crazy with how much capax they already produced. The other one is these are way more capital-intensive businesses now. And if they can't fund everything with cash flows, like that potentially changes the business model.

And those are the two things that I came away with here. So I forget the exact details. They did $10 billion in a private placement with up. Berkshire, they're doing a $40 million at the market equity offering sometime in the third quarter. And there were some preferreds in there. Now, this is like nuance that really who cares. Part of this is to pay the tax bill.

So they issue a lot of stock to their employees that is treated like cash comp. They have to pay income tax for that. So they're doing that. I saw somebody making good points like, well, cash is fungible. They could, they don't want. They could just use it from operating, right? But they did say that's part of the use for this. So the stock is doing what in the pre-market.

This morning it was down 2.5%. The stock is down. The stock is, oh, the market is open. The stock is down 4.5%. So to me, this is going to be very interesting how the market digests. So there goes the discount right away, huh? You said they bought it at a 4% discount? So Google's at 355.

So we'll see how the market digests is over the next couple of days in sessions. But it will be interesting to think about this in conjunction with all of the new supply that's coming to the market. I feel like we just need to start putting a file together for the thing that signal the top, right? Because one of these things has to be it. Remember when Google raised money? That was it? Yeah.

Not that easy. I'll talk about South Korea real quick. So someone from South Korea sent me a picture of my book at a bookstore there, which is kind of cool. People sent me pictures from India and South Korea and New York of seeing the book out in the wild. It was kind of cool. And so I wrote back to the guy and I said, hey, how crazy are things in South Korea? as far as investors go. And he said, it's crazy than you think.

It's the speculation is nuts. So I got a few charts here. Wait, hold on this speculation thing, like, are you hearing from friends? No, I'm really not. You're right. That part of it seemed like I was hearing from more people in the 2021 meme stock thing than I am with this. So I guess, is it possible that this is, obviously retail is involved,

but it's possible that so much of this is really just professional investors in these. and not individuals. I don't know. So over the past 10 years, the South Korea E-TF, EWY, is now outperforming the S&P-500. All of that outperformance and for the past 10 years has come

in the past year because it was wildly underperforming to 20204. This is from Bloomberg. We talked about how South Korea passed the UK before, past Canada. Now South Korea has a bigger market cap than India, which has actually kind of stagnated a little bit.

South Korea is just going nuts. Eric Belt-Chunis, The two times S.K. Heinex ETF in Hong Kong has grown AUM 10 times this year. It is now the third biggest ETF in that market accounting for 8.5% of all assets. A leverage ETF, a single ETF is almost 10%. He says that's insane. It would be like an ETF in the U.S. having $1.3 trillion, which doesn't exist. It also trades. It trades over a billion dollars a day, which is the U.S. equivalent of $150 billion, which has never happened before. Holy crap. And now everyone, of course, it says, it's two stocks, idiots. Yes, we know that.

Well, yeah, duh. By the way, just getting back to my point, the comment we made a second ago about retail investors, I think retail investors that are trading all the way in. Like, if you've been involved in the stockbrook, you are all the way in. I guess my question was like, is it pulling in new people into the market the way that 2021 did? I don't think so. That's true. I think we pulled forward a lot of demand. This is an interesting dynamic. Kevin Gorda tweeted quite the gap. The SEP 500 continues to stretch relative to its 200 moving average, like how far stretch we are above. Yet the percentage of members of trading above their 200 moving average continues to struggle

to move higher. Whatever, not really surprising dynamic. We know what's going on. We're back to worry about concentration again? Yeah. It's a lot of the, a lot of the mega caps doing the heavy lifting. And yeah, people are all in on tech. Cumulative flows into tech a year to date, or actually since the March low, my bad,

is this is from Todd's zone. It's like $30 billion. And the cumulative flows X tech is negative four. billion. Did this do this do Dan Loeb on Patrick's podcast? I didn't listen yet. He was basically like, yeah, this is by far our biggest exposure is tech. And, uh, you know, I mean, makes sense. This is, this is where the market is. If you want to, if you want to get out of X tech now, you're, you're getting rid of like half the market. It's a, it's an enormous bet. We haven't spoken about money market funds in a while on the other side of the spectrum.

there's now $8.28 trillion in money market funds. I don't necessarily want to say that this is going to like, in fact, you know what? I was 100% right here. I was 100%. You called this. I'll give you credit. Yeah, I was 100% right. You said this money's not leaving.

This money's not leaving because it's just, yeah, go ahead. It helps that people thought the Fed was going to be keeping lowering rates and that would do it, but the rates have stayed pretty steady and we're still getting, what, three and a four percent for money markets. It's not bad. So I don't think this impacts the stock market at all. There's probably personal finance farmifications here. No, I agree.

Yeah, credit to you. You called this one. Okay. Heather Long, let's look at the other side of things. This is stunning, she says. Personal savings rate in April 2025 was 5.5%. Personal savings rate April 2026 is 2.6%. It's a sharp plunge.

It underscores how squeezed Americans are right now with higher prices and income's not keeping up. Maybe you can explain away that some of it by baby boomers retiring, but not all of it. Now, a lot of people saw these numbers and said, oh, my gosh, how is an economy like this with a booming stock, and all this stuff, and people can't afford to save money, that's the intuitive way you read that. The counterintuitive way you read this and how it actually works in reality is, no, no, no,

no, no. The wealth is so much higher, people think they don't need to save as much. And this happens all the time. This happened in the 90s. This happens in every boom. The savings rate decreases when asset prices boom, because people's wealth is up and they don't need to save as much anymore. Nailed it.

I mean, my savings rate is way down. unproperly because exactly what you just described. Right. Mike Zucardi posted a chart from Bank of America that shows just that. The savings rate tends to be negatively correlated with household wealth. When wealth goes up, you...

Of course it is. Of course it is. You're afraid to spend in bad times. Duh. Right. Yes. All right. This is...

From Torson Slok, he says... Uh, is a chart showing the U.S. ADP Weekly employment. He said it is Javon's paradox playing out in real time. Cheaper technology is creating more demand and more jobs. And this would be amazing. This would be an incredible outcome. We will see. I don't think that, I think it is way too early to draw any conclusions, like ridiculously early to draw any conclusions. But I hope it happens. I hope that all the future.

And fears that I shared, I was, the Satrini report bummed me out. I'm not going to pretend like I wasn't bummed out. I would love, I mean, we would all love for nothing more than for this to not be the case. This is, this is, there's certain segments that are going to be disrupted, obviously. I think the hardest part is the people who are in technology are the ones who are seeing the biggest disruption right now. And there's, the people in technology are like running around their hair on fire because they see what's happening to software developers in their space. and they're going, no, you people don't get it. You have no idea what's coming.

And I can't tell it. I think they don't get it. I don't think they understand human beings as a group. I think that's a big part. I'm overgeneralizing. No, I definitely agree with that. I think the emotional intelligence, the EQ of tech in general,

is a lot lower than other industries. That's not a slight. So Kevin Ruse, no, their IQ is higher, their EQ is lower. That's the computer brain. Like, we all know people like that. Kevin Ruse tweeted an AI lab, how are you spending the last 300 days of work? Bucco Capital retweeted and said,

increasingly think the only options for AI labs are to end up in prison or as government employees. I think he's being happy. I mean, I'm guessing he's being hyperbole. But he said rhetoric and outcomes they are pushing for are completely incompatible with current society. They're either wrong enemies consumed. Right.

The point is if everyone in AI is right, that whatever, 50 million jobs are going away, something's going to happen. Yeah. So we're not just going to let that happen. A friend of mine shared with me a YouTube video on somebody walking through Google's Gemini Spark, which is like the eugenic stuff. Like here's how it helps you throughout the day, right?

So this is coming. I mean, it's here. So I haven't messed around with it yet and engaged. But here's an example, a few micro examples of something that I would love to have. I don't want to be on Twitter. It bums me out. It's a cesspool. However, that is where we get amazing content for the show.

Yeah, if you have the right filter in place, Twitter is still great. There's tons of gold and there's great aspects of Twitter, but I don't want to be engaged because I get drawn into the negative aspects of it, okay? So, but I need it. So, like, I basically want, like a, I want my agent to go through all of our transcripts, our podcast transcripts, find out the people that we pull charts from all the time, like My Iscardi and Carl Kintini and Bautrinas and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and just deliver them to me like Daily Chartbook does, right?

So I'm sure I can build that. I'm sure that exists. So I will look to do something like that. So that's what Gavin Baker was on Patrick's show and he said, what do you use it for? He said, I take all the podcast by AI and I have, I have it summarize it for me. Here's another example that's going to exist. If I wanted to know the price every day for what a Chipotle bowl cost in New York City. And I wanted the AI to track that over time. It could do that very easily.

It could go into Chipotle, create an order, and then just not hit submit and find out what the orders, right? And just do that every day. So I could see the trends. Like, you could do that. Okay. Why would you need that? You don't. But just as like, we're covering Chipotle, right? We talk about it. Now, of course you don't need it. It's a silly micro example. But my point is the possibilities are endless. Okay. Like for, for, so, um, I am going to the NBA finals. But this is why AI is going to lead to more work for people. I, I listened to a big tech person on a podcast a few weeks ago. And he was talking about how awesome it is and how it's going to destroy all the jobs. And he's, I just, I don't see how it doesn't destroy every job. And the host

asked him, what is like the coolest thing that you've used AI for? And he said, you know what, I had all these pictures on my phone and had AI go through the pictures and like sort them in different buckets. And it's like, what good, what, no, but what good does that do you as a human being. It's just something that's kind of cool to have. It doesn't actually do anything for you. It's just cool to have. It's very cool about it.

You're giving yourself more work with AI. That's the thing that's going to happen. I love it. More work. As a hyper attention sort of person, I love more work. People think that it's going to save them time. It's just going to be doing more tasks that you weren't doing before. Yeah, sure.

Of course. Of course. Here's another thing. Like, I want to monitor the ticket situation for the NBA finals. I have to check it all the time. It's annoying. If that could be automated, if you have an agent do that, and of course you can. Right.

Fantastic. All right. So it's all happening in news that's not happening. God, what terrible segue that was. That was super lame. Michael Saylor earlier last year in February 2025 tweeted, sell a kidney if you must, but keep the Bitcoin. Well, well, well, look how the tables have turned.

This is a Washington Journal strategy. The Bitcoin hoarding firm founded by Michael Saylor, said money that it sold 32 Bitcoin. I mean, it's 32 Bitcoin. It's not a lot of Bitcoin. But nevertheless, he sold 32 Bitcoin last week for roughly $2.5 million. Markets first sales since the depths of the crypto winter late 2022. Why? Because they need to make payments on, I don't know if it's their preferred stock, whatever it is.

He told the Washington Journal, if you sold one Bitcoin to buy 10 more Bitcoin, technically, you sold the Bitcoin, but economically, you bought nine more Bitcoin. That's like Kenny Atkinson language. analytically, they won't. Give me break. Come on, dude. I think that this is short-term, negative for crypto, long-term positive. If they're a forced seller of Bitcoin, I think that's actually good.

I don't think him being the face of Bitcoin is good for crypto. I think actually, if they're forced as a seller, I think this is a good thing long-term for crypto. It depends how much crypto they're forced to sell. But I agree with your general statement. So Bitcoin is at $68,000 and going lower. How's strategy? It actually wasn't even that, right?

Oh, no, okay. It's more of it today. It's down 7%. Don't you think that a lot of it was kind of priced in? Like, people knew this was coming? What do you mean? I don't know. The stock's already in a 70% drawdown or something.

I don't know more today. Oh, I think, I mean, it's down 7% today. I don't know. I don't know what's priced in. I think that was probably a result of crypto being down. I wonder how the people who went all in and this stock are doing it. Because there's a lot of people who talked about. We heard from a lot of, right?

Yeah. I, uh, it's, it's sad. I don't. All right. Let's talk real estate. And I read this real estate story about real estate agents are quitting the slow housing market, which is like there's not a lot of activity, right? So of course, people, here's a line from the,

Kim Taylor, better career in the housing market. Mid-20203, she launched her own brokerage account with her husband, all right? She started out a team of seven agents and quickly bought six more aboard on board. By 2024, high mortgage rates and prices were weighing on demand, homesat of the market. most of her agents had to find other part-time work or full-time jobs to say float. Her husband took a job last year working for a school district. She said, we became a bleeding artery. The last 11 months

had been the hardest of my career. And so this is happening to realtors all over the country, of course. And the thing that the hard part about this is, this is nothing that these people did personally. They didn't create this. They had no control over this. The fact that the housing market boomed, rates went lower, then rates went higher and the housing market slowed. These people had nothing to. This is just bad luck. And I think that the housing market boomed. And I think it's important to recognize that. You talked about like all the stuff going well, the beginning of the podcast for us. Some of this is just great timing. Obviously, hard work. Yes. But like right place, right time too. And sometimes you're just in the

wrong place at the wrong time. Absolutely. I think that we have earned a lot of our success. but I freaking met Josh at the train station by an absolute miracle. And had I not met Josh, and I've said this a million times, the reason why I am so appreciative is because I was eating shit. Like my life was going really poorly. I was 25 and I was my only friend that was unemployed and I was unemployable. I was in a dark, dark spot. And it was my fault.

It absolutely was my fault. I was staring at the consequences of my own actions as a stupid young idiot. These people did nothing wrong. They were in a booming industry that they were rug pulled. And I mentioned like I mentioned the strategy investors that said they lost their money. I mean, there's degrees of sad. That was like a choice that they made and whatever. This is sad.

This is truly sad when people's actual livelihood is being torpedoed. And it is interesting. that so much of the conversation during the boom time were these people don't deserve 5%. What are they even doing? Right. The typical agent with two years of experience or less had three transactions in 2024 earned $8,100 in gross income.

The typical agent that completed 10 transactions earned $58,100 in gross income. So it's not like these people are rolling in it, right? From there. Brutal. Really sad. It's up. And so obviously there's people who are leaving. And it said about 71% of agents served the NIAI. in 2025 said real estate was their only profession, the lowest proportion on record,

meaning they have to have other jobs to stay afloat. All right, Ben. So movies are having a moment. AMC Entertainment records highest May attendance since 2019. Man, I nailed the movie trade and I bought the wrong stock. So I bought IMAX. I've held the IMX for a long time. It's doing fine.

Wait, IMAX did okay, no? No, IMAX is doing fine. But AMC is up, well, I mean, I'm not buying A, It's a, it was under a bucks. I'm sort of half joking. But it was up, it went from, it was up like, I don't know, 40% in the last two days. Yeah, but that's just because it's like maybe not going out of business anymore. This is still a slash-it-up, like 99%.

No, no, I know. It was sub-2 dollars. I was teasing. But, but what's- It's literally done 99.4% from the highs in 2021. What's especially interesting. By the, that was so weird that AMC was and GameStop were the two, faces of that period.

Just what a AMC? What? At least the boom right now is like a real thing. That, that, you're right. That was, that was not a real thing back then.

What makes this current moment in cinema so very interesting and exciting is that the two gigantic hits over this and last week um, juxtaposed with what happened with the Mandalorian is exactly what you want to see. So, Star Wars earned just $6.5 million on its second Friday.

Six and a half million dollars, dude. That's a 70% drop, a 70% drop. So the fact that backrooms, which opened to $81 million, by far, by far, by far, its biggest opening weekend, an obsession, which is going to cross $100 million. Like, both those movies are going to smash Star Wars is unbelievable. So I listened to I listened to the big picture

did a podcast with this guy Kane Parsons who was the director of of backrooms he was 18 when they greenlit

this movie he's 20 years old What was the story he was a YouTube he was making movies on YouTube that's what he was doing so I came home

and the next morning actually Kobe said Daddy you saw backrooms and I'm like how do you have backrooms he goes it's on blocks. So Backrooms was a YouTube series. There's been over 224 million views across 22 videos.

So I raw dogged it. I had no idea. I didn't see the trailer. I didn't even know that this was a YouTube thing until I heard about this kid. So I went to see the theater and I saw an 850 on Friday night. And there was at least, at least two other earlier showings. So it was on at least three screens. When I left at 11 o'clock, there was a ton of young kids pouring into the theater. So, Art's Bill Arts, who is a huge movie fan, slacked me, okay, I don't, I don't know what to make in back rooms. And I'm going to quote myself because I don't want to freelance. This is how I felt. I said, so I love that this is all happening. And that was also my reaction.

Did I love it? No. Was there some aspects of it that I did love? Yes. More weird shit and risk taking? Yes, exclamation mark. So I saw it in a pack theater. And there were a lot of bright pieces.

So it wasn't just a dark movie. So you could see the audience, right? And every time I looked around me, the audience was enthralled just a dead stare at the screen, no phones, and it was a young crowd dude. Like, it was a young crowd and nobody was on their phone. And Art said, that's exactly right. I don't think I'll watch it again, but it was a singular experience that I won't forget. It's just really cool that we're getting stuff like this rather than IP slot.

And I couldn't agree more. I'll just say the opening scene was, in my opinion, pretty terrifying. but it wasn't like, it wasn't like a scary movie that like, you know, you can't, that a normal person would be too scared to watch. It was something else.

And it's exciting. And then Obsessions, another indie movie, I think broke, broke a hundred million dollars. I mean, and that was another kid. So both these kids were on Fantasy's podcast

and the maturity. So that other guy who did obsession, I watched one of his YouTube shorts called The Chair, which was excellent. What's his kid's name? So these are horror movies Because I have no idea what these movies are about

It's just interesting to me that The horror movie has subsumed the superhero movie But so again the 40 or the 50s and 60s All the movies were Westerns And now they never make westerns anymore That's gonna be horror movies someday They're making so many horror movies is the genre It is.

This is the Western of then Because it's so cheap So this kid, his name is Kari Barker They gave him a million bucks to make this movie I'm impressed. I'm never going to see these movies. I'm impressed. It's fucking so cool, man.

I'm so, so, so excited that we are over the hump. Now, there's still a ton of sequels. You and Bill Arts didn't exactly sell it to me. Will I ever watch this movie again? No. I don't know that that sells the movie to me. Hold on. I want to come back to this for a sec.

Dune 3 is still going to be one of the biggest movies of the year. Like, the sequels and the franchise movies like Mario, like those are still dominating the box of us. But the fact that we're getting this as well, and hopefully there's more of that less of. Yeah, young filmmaker. That's cool to see. I agree. All right.

So maybe we didn't sell the movie that well. Listen, don't watch it on your couch. I mean, you might as well skip it at that point. But going to the movies to see this was an absolute experience. And 100% and 100% worth it. If you were like, now, if you're not a movie person, don't watch it because you're going to go there. Like, what is that bullshit?

Like, fine, don't watch it. No, if you're not a horror movie person, I'm a movie person. I'm a horror movie person. It does nothing for me. Horror movies don't move my heartbeat at all. They don't do anything for me, so I just can't watch them. That's so crazy. I know that you're not alone in there, but I was terrified, at least in the opening scene.

So I love it. I'm jacked to the tease, as Mr. Gossing said in the big short. All right. So did you finish Halfman? We're about one episode away. So that is, honestly, it's one of the most stressful shows I've ever watched. And I almost, after the first episode, I told my wife, I'm like, I don't know if I can finish this show. It's too much.

But then somehow it, like, draws you back in. And it goes crazy, then it draws you back in. And it's that, I can't even explain what kind of show that that is. It is uncut gems. The anxiety that you get from watching Uncut Gems, it's that on HGH. It is... But it's something about it is really well done, though. It is so dark and so demented, depraved and twisted.

All right. So it was so well done. it's one of my favorite shows. Like, it's one of the best mini-series I've ever seen. I thought it was incredible. But it also kind of pulls you in and has emotions to it, too. It's dark, but it also has emotions. It's very bizarre.

I can't even, like, compare it to another show before. I'm so excited if you had to see the finale. Okay. All right. Finally, friend of the show, my friend was an executive at Amazon Studios. And two years ago, he called me and told me that I might be in Spider-Man Noir, the Nicholas Cage show.

And he told me that he was writing me into the show. And I was like, oh, my God, that's so cool. And it was like, I think it was two years ago. So as it's getting closer to release, I'm getting like, you know, a little bit anxious. Like, I'm like, am I, you know, this is going to be fun for me. I want to show my kids. So I'm in episode three. Nicholas Cage plays Spider-Man Noir.

And he goes into a hospital with an alias. And his alias is Officer Batnik. So he's outside the hospital. He's going through some fake ID cards. He goes, Battenik, Battenk, Baddick. That's the one. So he goes to the hospital. Who are you?

I'm Officer Battenk. He goes into a bedroom. He goes, I'm Officer Baton. Blah, blah, blah, blah. My kids had, like, no reaction. They were like, oh, Daddy's in Spider-Man. I was like, what? Nothing.

I thought their head was going to melt. No reaction. Okay. I think it's like the coolest thing ever. So thank you, Matt. Hey, kids keep you grounded, right? Sure do. Anything for you, Ben?

Yes, you had the, I was listening to The Rwatchables with Steven Spielberg. And I've never seen, I've never seen Space Odyssey before. Okay. We got to play this clip. So this gave me Nakhis, which is a Jewish or Yiddish word for just joy. This made me so happy. So the rewatchables is my favorite podcast. Not even like I love it's my favorite podcast of all time.

There's not even close number two. And to see Sean Fantasy have this moment of joy brought a tear to my eye. I thought it was so it was so cool to see him get to experience this. So I want to play this for the audience for you guys. So he's he's talking to Stephen Spielberg, which is that in Dr. Strange Love, Major Kong says, Fire the explosive bolts.

And in 2001, the entry hatch sign reads, caution, colon, explosive bolts. Oh. Just his own little. I never saw that. You know something? Look at Sean teaching you about movies. Hey, guys, I'm just saying that I'm having such a good time

talking to both of you about this movie. But that one insight just makes this day. That's great. It totally does. I never saw that. Criterion orgasm right there. Is that the coolest freaking thing ever? That was pretty cool.

So I told you last week, I told you I watched the Martin Short documentary on Netflix, and he interspersed in the documentary a lot of home movies. And he has a cabin on a lake in Canada that they would go to every summer. And the people who hung out the most, because their kids were all the same age, it was Marty Short and his family, Tom Hanks and his family, and Stephen Spielberg in his family. And they said, listen, all our kids were the same age, so it just kind of made sense to do. And they showed all these home videos of these guys. And it was Marty Short and Tom Hanks acting out scenes for Steven Spielberg or something.

It's just nuts. Anyway, really worth a watch. Amazing. Interesting that those kind of guys were friends. So, all right. What a time to be alive. What a time to be an investor. If you like me are enjoying a good time in your life,

be thankful. That's my Jerry Springer. That's my Jerry Springer impression. Take care of yourself and each other. Not everyone is, obviously. Not everyone is. So, all right. You're right.

This is an exciting time in the markets. For the stuff that we do, this is a very exciting time. This is a time, yeah, we will look back on these times. Hopefully with fond memories. Hopefully this doesn't turn into a bubble that burst. But for now, it's really something to experience.

I just know there's going to be pain at the end of the rainbow at some point. There is. There just is. This is how markets work. Everything is cyclical. Is that cycle five to seven years from now? Or is it one year from now or three years from now?

I don't know. There's going to be pain at some point. Prepare yourself for it. It's going to happen. So next week, I will take the other side of that. Barely. I will just offer a week because we spoke a lot about keeping an open mind. I will have the other take next week that this doesn't have to end badly.

Okay. I'm not saying it even has to come from AI. No, no. It's going to come from something. Dad, don't hedge. You said what you said. Okay. Yes.

Everything is cyclical. This cycle will come to an end at some point. But it could last a lot longer than people think in the meantime. All right. Animal Spirits at thecompannews. Thank you very much, everybody for listening, for the emails. Hope everybody is enjoying their early summer. Go Nix.

We'll see you next time. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if, like, What if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if.

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