Animal Spirits Podcast - The Cash-Returning Machine (EP.343)

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

On episode 343 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: setting return expectations moving forward, US Large Cap stocks generating a ton of cash, a bear market in used cars, an update on Bitcoin ETFs, Great Quarter Guys, driving in a blizzard, and much more. Thanks to Nasdaq ETFs and Fabric by Gerber Life for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about Nasdaq ETF offerings, visit: https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/nasdaq-etf-listings For more about life insurance from Fabric, visit: meetfabric.com/spirits 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.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   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. Wealthcast Media, 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

Today's show is brought to you by NASDAQ. Ben, I think we might take for granted how incredibly easy and efficient ETFs are in terms of trading and execution. These were revolutionary technological advances for investors to access different areas of the market at super low cost, liquidity, all that sort of stuff. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that you don't think about. And then there's the people who keep the price where it needs to be within the NAV. And, yeah, there's a lot that goes on to it that is a lot easier that people just hit buy or sell and don't think about. In 2023, NASDAQ welcomed 21 new issuers. Another 20 existing ETS were launched with $6 billion in AUM that was previously listed on other exchanges.

To learn more about NASDAQ and their leading edge of market quality execution and form, visit NASDAQ, Dack.com and hit the link to the show notes. Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life. I didn't really think about life insurance until I had kids. I think that's a lot of people, family, you have people to worry about. It makes sense. There's a lot of decisions in finance that are hard to make. Like, should I go this way or that way?

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Prices are subject to unwriting and health questions. Click the link in the show notes. It's Meetfabric.com slash spirits. 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 Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain

positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, congratulations. This was a heck of a two-week, three-week run for Michigan sports. I'm very happy for the Lions, better than them all season, better than them this weekend. I think they were a little bit fortunate to come out ahead that felt like a very, very evenly matched matchup. Could have gone either way, but they came out ahead. They were the victors. Sometimes when you have a lot of good things go well in your life, you expect the other shoe to drop and the opposite to happen, right? Of course. Hey, a lot of stuff has been going well.

Something bad's going to happen. But I look at this the other way. There was a lot of bad stuff that happened for me as a sports fan for many years. And now the good stuff is the other side of that. This is the other side of mean reversion. So, yeah, it was a very good week. I keep telling my oldest daughter who really got into football the last year, year and a half or so with me and now watches all the games,

that listen, Michigan winning a national title and the Lions winning a home playoff game and then having another playoff game at home, don't expect this to last. Enjoy this while it's happening because it's, this stuff doesn't come along all the time. Things cannot have lined up better for you guys. You have another home game against the Bucs, which let's be honest. I mean, the Bucks kicked the shit out of the Eagles, but they're not a very good team. I mean, you should take care of business. Are you going to the game?

No, but my sports fandom is at all-time highs right now, right? Right? Obviously. Got to be. Bonds are trading 10% stocks are at all-time highs for me. That's what we're looking at here. I will say one thing, not to nitpick here, but the second down at the end of the game where he passed to St. Brown, that was an insane play call. Absolutely insane.

If that was an incomplete pass, it would have been, I mean, that was crazy. I said Dan Campbell is the three times leveraged. Dan Campbell is, he's the three times levered NASDAQ 100 ETF. You're going to get the white. Guys a maniac. Congratulations. That was awesome. I told my kids, like, I'm setting expectations.

saying this cannot be the baseline for expectations. This has to, this is the high, this is when things are going well, but it's not always going to be like this. You know, we could, this is going to be bad years too. That's what they call transition in this business. I wrote a piece this weekend about the historical returns for stocks,

bonds and cash. I've used this before. Demoderin at NYU posties every year. It's an annual return list. This year he actually added, so he does stocks, bonds, and cash, which is S&P 500, 10-year treasuries, and three-month T bills.

And people on the Internet are like, Well, how can you say cash has a return? It's like, well, of course, if you bury under your mattress, that's not exactly cash. Cash in investment terms is T-bills, right? Which actually does have a return over inflation or long term. Anyway, so I did this chart, and I show stocks, bonds, and cash, and it shows the range of results, and then the average, right? Stocks are the highest average, then bonds, then cash. And these are, you know, stocks are close to 10% over the last 100 years, call it.

Bonds are 4.5% and cash is a little over 3%. and people liked this chart, but it somehow slipped into crypto Twitter. And I talked last week about how I don't include crypto on my asset allocation quilt, right? And someone posted this chart here, and he said, what's that, Cager for ants? And he showed Bitcoin versus traditional assets in Cager, which is compounding return, and shows Bitcoin gold and S&P 500. And the S&P over the last 14 years is of 11% per year, pretty good, and he shows Bitcoin at 260% per year.

And a lot of people were saying this to me with crypto. Like, look at the last, even the last 10 years, it's 50% per year, and 80% per year over 8 years or whatever. And I was hoping some of these people were being facetious, but I think a lot of them were being serious. And if this is really your return expectations for this asset class, this is delusion. Right? You can't expect every 10 years to reset and start crypto from the beginning again. That only happens once. Like, Bitcoin compounds at 50% for even, you could check my math on making this up.

Even another five years, it's going to be bigger than the S&P 500. Right. It's just not going to happen. If crypto were able to match the stock market over the next hundred, that would be an amazing accomplishment. That's probably not possible. And people look at these huge returns. And anyway, it's a, I think that's the most important thing for an investor to not completely

screw up their financial plan is not in not to have their expectations get too high because I think that's that's like the one way you get scammed I wrote my book about financial scams and the biggest red flag is always returns are promised that are too high right like this person promised me 30% annual returns and if that's not a red flag to you I don't know I don't know what else is if you don't have the right expectations for financial returns can be in reality like what's realistic from, especially from a starting value that's in the trillions of dollars for assets in crypto or anything, that's the expectations going to whack is a huge problem for people, I think. I think that's, yeah.

I agree. Bet it's 2024. Is it still the new year? Can I still say something that we're going to do for the new year? I don't know. Larry David said January 7th. We're saying happy new year. All right.

Well, I'm going to extend it to the 16th. Okay. One of my resolutions is we're going to, we're going to not spend a lot. of time on this podcast, talking to the comment section, talking about dumb things people on the internet say. Because most of our audience are smart people, and we don't need to spend time on nonsense. But don't you think the comments are really good lessons for people, too? Because I feel like people need reminders of this stuff. I mean, yes, sometimes. Also, you just, you just created a New Year's resolution for me. You called it for yourself, but you just gave it to

me. Well, it's for us. This is our podcast. Okay. We're going to focus. That's like saying my New Year's resolution is Michael's going to lose 15 pounds. That's what you just did. This is our podcast. My New Year's resolution is also to teach you geography because that was an all-timer last week when you literally thought we were in Kansas City, Kansas.

You know, it's funny. I actually, geography is something I take pride in. I don't know if you knew that about me. I did not. So maybe you probably couldn't tell from last week's blunder. But yeah, that was an L. That was Big L. I still haven't recovered.

We had a lot of people who say, I get it, Michael, I get it. You know, we have like, we have like a dozen people who like all your really shitty horror movies. It's like you probably have a dozen people who think they're in Kansas City, Kansas, when they're really in Kansas team, Missouri. Same thing. Yeah, probably higher. All right. Torsten Slok, did you sign up for his daily emails yet?

I was really late to this. Two or three months or so I've been doing it, and I don't know. forward every five is a really good chart that I like. So he shows S&P 500 PE minus MSCI world PE, world excluding U.S. obviously, and it shows the ratio of PE, just keeps going higher and higher. He's just saying that it's very expensive relative to international stocks. And I think it was last week we talked about on the show. We talked about the sector returns and saying, gosh, maybe it really is different this time with technology and that sort of thing.

And I wanted to talk about this chart. using some other data from Julius Bear, which I used to have a colleague who worked originally at Julius Bear. And if you go to their website, they spell it bear as B-A-R, but an A with the two dots over it. Is that bar? How do you pronounce that? Well, it's bare. But the two dots, I don't know. I've been going through a lot of spelling stuff with my kids recently, and trying to figure out the English language especially is it seems really ridiculous because my phonetically everything should be phonetics don't you think can we agree to start over and say it should be spelled how it sounds I'm in the same boat yesterday Kobe said to me uh why is chef

not S H why is it C H and I was like you know what I said yes sometimes the English language is pretty dumb. And sometimes things, because now he's like, I could spell this, I could spell that. He spends a lot of time telling me what he could spend, what he could spell. And yeah, dumb language. Right, we do a lot of reading with my six-year-olds. They're like, we should reboot it. Yeah, they're like, this word doesn't sound like it's spelled. Like, yeah, I know. A lot of them aren't. Anyway, so here's what Julius Bear says. Interesting piece here on cash flows. From a broader perspective, we believe the S&P 500 is deeply misunderstood. The amount of equity capital circulating around U.S. public markets has been trending down since the early two

So we talked about this before. There's way fewer IPOs and there's not as many companies become public. But they say overall the S&P 500 is morphed in from a cash raising machine into a cash returning mechanism, which is interesting. And then they show these large cap equities as cash generation machines and it shows the free cash flow margin to cut off to qualify that for the top quintile of margins for free cash flow. And look at this thing since the 1980s just took off from, I don't know, call it,

five to seven percent range to now the top quintile is over 20 percent in terms of free cash flow margins. The stock market has never seen anything like this before with these tech companies that have the margins and software eating the world and all these things. And I really do think, that is, I don't, I don't, I'm not necessarily sure that that means that returns going forward to me different, but the composition of the stock market, it's, it's vastly different than was in the past. On the open of the show, I said that we take ETFs for granted. But I, I, I, I really think that last week I made the case that like, if ETFs came out today, there would be, there should be the same excitement over crypto as there is ETFs and just corporate

America and capitalism. And the fact that you're able to invest and take ownership in Apple without doing anything, without working there, it's pretty, without having any family members who work, it's pretty incredible. You can own the best companies in the world. And the way that they are. generating returns for shareholders and have been consistently going back decades. And yet, bear markets are part of it, obviously.

But just really, really, really remarkable. So here's another stat from Julius Bear. The combined amount of dividends and share buybacks as a percentage of revenues climbed from 4.7 on average during the 2000s to its highest 8% towards the end of the last decade. So this whole idea of going from the equity markets are where new companies are started and stuff. And now it's more mature and cash is being returned. I thought that was a really interesting take on where, and it's almost like going from baby boomers as savers to now spenders and, you know, using their money. It's, it's like, it's just a different phase of

where we are in equity markets. Hold caveats aside. I'm not talking to the, to the internet comment people. Oh, bear markets don't exist. No, I'm not going to do that. You just broke your resolution. We're not talking to the comment. You said we're not talking to them. I'm talking to You. Okay. Now I lost my train of thought. So wait. So before, so your counter thing. So William Bernstein, he wrote all his like beginner intermediate books at first. And then he wrote these little pamphlet books. And I think a lot of them were just, uh, Kindle based. But it was investing for adults. And he said, listen, I'm going to talk to this specific group that already knows all this other stuff. So that that's you with the commenter thing. Yeah. I'm talking to the people that no bear markets exist that know that stocks go down. I'm talking to you, Ben. We already know that. We already know that. We, we, we, we, we, we. We, we. We, we. We. We. We. We. We. We. We. We. exist on the internet, you literally cannot get away from commenters. It's impossible. So, I had a train of thought, and it's gone. Fine, because you know what? I keep coming back to my brain? Like, the fact that GH doesn't make a sound, like, sigh? What is that about? It makes absolutely no sense. You're so right. Let's start from scratch. So the other ones for my kids are

would, could, and should. Why are they spelled like that? With the U and the L, why? Yeah, it's just nonsense. Okay, so here's getting back to, I found my train of thought, jumping back on the train. These companies, you could make the case that they are conspiring, colluding, not colluding. But they're manipulating markets to go higher just in the way that they are so ruthless and skilled and efficient at generating more money, newer products, more innovation. like, why would you fight that? And they have more tools than ever to be more efficient now than they did in the past. And it's going to get more efficient with AI and stuff if that all comes to fruition.

The efficiency of gains are going to go up from here, not down. Do you think that all of the obsession over macro and interest rates, and of course it matters a great deal, not trying to minimize it, but earnings drives the market. Earnings drives the market over the long term. Not every year. See, not talking to those people over the long term. How much money is AI going, like, that is going to be a gigantic source of future revenues and profits.

And productivity in the economy, hopefully, as well, right? Which falls in the same category. Now. We're long-term bullish. Our stocks are already getting the benefit of the doubt of the AI? Is it overhyped? Did we discount it? I'm not talking to those people.

talk it to you. Okay. All right. I think one of your greatest things you came up with the last year was a Grand Rapids Hedge. Thank you. Credit to you. So the Wall Street Journal had a Grand Rapids Hedge. Okay. So here's this, here's the headline I put it in here. It won't be a recession. It will just feel like one. Economists. Oh, come on. Economists inserve a pairback probability of recession, but still see anemic growth in rising unemployment in 2024. So they say one reason a growing economy may still feel like a record recession to many is a wide wide dispersion and performance across industries, cyclical sectors, those most sensitive to the economy's ups and downs, are likely to struggle in 2024, even if there isn't an overall

economic contraction. Says who? Well, this is- Oh, economists say. Economists say, economies. So they were basically saying, listen, last year we said, yes, for sure there's going to be recession. Now we say, okay, no recession, but it's going to feel like a recession to certain people, which is, I don't know, basically explaining a diversified economy. Yeah, isn't that literally how it always is? Doesn't it always feel like a recession to certain people? Well, yeah, this year to the housing market, to realtors, this was a recession, to construction people. Guess what? For the 4% of people who were unemployed, yeah, it feels like a recession. Yeah. The technology industry went through a mini recession there for a while.

And more cuts, more laughs. By the way, did you see that Uber is shutting down Drisley? I thought that was interesting. They paid $1.1 billion. Drizzly is an alcohol delivering service, which I have used in the past. Shutting it down. Of course you've used it. And then you probably complained about how expensive it was. Excuse me. Come on. You're going to show a receipt. I've only used it as gifts. I'm not that lazy that I would, that I can't go to the liquor store. Maybe that's a good thing, though, is that, is that, yes, people paid up for convenience during the pandemic, but come on.

You can get booze anywhere you want. I'm saying. Why do you need to have someone delivered to you? No, no, no. You deliver it as a gift for others. Okay. I bet you at least half of their customers are using it to buy other people alcohol. Which probably should not be a billion-dollar business.

1.1. Yeah. Okay, good charts from Goldman Sachs here. Recent increases in asset prices of strengthened household balance sheets, leaving the net worth as a share of disposable income at the highest level in history aside from 2022. So it dipped a little bit, but still very high. Here's another one. With household wealth near all-time high, it's unsurprising that the savings rate is low, which does make sense. It shouldn't in personal finance theory, like you should always be.

saving a steady amount. But the fact that people's net worth is at an all-time high is probably one of the reasons that a lot of that they're not saving as much anymore and a lot of that excess savings got spent because why do I need to hold on to this savings and keep saving more if I already have all this money, which kind of explains the economy and not so, right? We're going to talk about this later in the show. Bank of America reported earnings and spending was up 4% year over year where spending was down

I think 8% was on gas which obviously was a significant tailwind to consumer spending last year there's just no doubt about it I don't know if airline prices are coming down I don't know why I'm using

annex data here because there's definitely real data on this in fact I know the BLS reports on it has to be the vibes are all based on anecdotes though aren't they true how many how many conversations have you with people in the last few months about what you paid for gas. People love to tell you what

they paid for gas. We do this. You want to pay for gas this weekend? It was $2.75 or whatever. People love to say that. Yeah, that's conversation filler, which I'm not opposed to. So we're going to California. We're taking the boys. Don't tell them. We're taking them to Disneyland and I think Universal has Mario Land. Hang on. Before you get into this. So we've done this before, too, where we don't tell our guys about a trip. Do you think that's more for the kids or the parents? Because I feel like that's way more for the parents than it is for the kids. Well, of course. Why, I mean, if we tell them, they're going to ask every single day, are we going?

What are we going? When are we going? It's like the Tommy boy with surprises. Can I open my eyes that, Dad? Yeah, we're going out there on a Tuesday and one-way tickets. Listen to how great my wife is. So, one-way tickets are $168 to California. Doesn't that sound like crazy cheap?

Yeah. 168 bucks why am I getting one-way tickets you ask because robin I'm staying in California because we're going to do we're going to do a work event out there I'm staying in California she's taking the boys home oh cross-country what a hero she's a saint right good woman all right I thought you're going to tell me your Disney how much Disney's going to cost you're going to save that for later uh I don't I mean I don't know how much Disney costs I'm going to need a cost breakdown of your all the different lands Universal versus Disney versus whatever.

You got it. All right. So this is something that you brought up, too, about, like, remember the retirement crisis? So here's another tors and slack one. U.S. retired population. In 2010, it was 37 million. It's now 53 million, and this number is just going to continue going up and following this trendline because demographics are pretty easy to, unless we solve death, it's right?

Demographics are pretty easy to figure out. Scott Lincolm did this tweet about American net worth by age. He did the median and the average, and he did it by every five-year increment, right? 20 to 24, 25 to 29. Look at the higher ones. 60 to 64, average net worth is 1.7 million. The median is almost 400,000. Pretty similar for 65 to 69.

70 to 74, the average is 1.7 million. The median is 433,000. Even 75 to 79 is 1.6 million and 341,000. Call it timing luck or whatever because housing prices went up and asset values went up and all this stuff. but people, not everyone, obviously, we have to, sorry, I don't want to talk to the commenters, but most people are doing way better in old age than I think anyone would have thought possible 10 years ago, 15 years ago. There was a lot of books written on the upcoming retirement crisis.

Charlie Ellis wrote a great one that had awesome stuff about it, and it was like, it was called The Coming Retirement Crisis, and it was a really good book, and I don't know, it seems like most people of that age are probably doing okay. It's really surprising. I don't think anyone predicted this, right? Like, hey, people in terms of most of them are going to be fine. Add Social Security to this and, I don't know. All the boomers are doing great.

I'm so glad that you wrote a post on debunking the $400 in checking account myth. So I was listening to a podcast with an incredibly, incredibly smart person. And he said that stat. And I was like, no, that's not true. You should read Ben's blog. And I was just thinking, and I think this is important in especially in our time. And it's always important, but especially now. I think one of the things that I'm good at is I can hear somebody who I respect and enjoy.

And I can hear them say something either dumb or something that I disagree with and not write them off completely, which I think is unfortunately, like people do that so often. Oh, this person said that they're dead to me. It's like, come on, you can't people, I mean, I say shit all the time. We both said dumb stuff before. So we got an email recently that I responded to it. I said, yeah, listen, that was a dumb comment. I, the minute I heard, I said, yeah, that was, I wish I didn't say that. Hey, sometimes people get just, just take it easy on people.

The $400 one, though, I refuted that $400 emergency expense thing with facts and data and all this stuff to back it up. But you could refute that by anecdotes. Go to a restaurant. Go to the mall. go go to the airport yeah that's right go to the mall none of the all how many what percentage what was that bullshit number was it 40% of no it couldn't be that high how high was it was it was yeah it was like 40% but so it was the way i equate this is wait hang on ben i'm sorry the stat was 40% of americans are we sure so it was 63% can come up with the cash 37% cannot what horseshit exactly so i had a

I had a guy in college who was always short on money and he had to borrow $100 from another guy, right? So we borrowed $100 and didn't pay him back for months. And he kept saying, I can't afford to pay back. But every night, this guy was out at the bar or he's going to a party and he's buying a case of beer or whatever. And we wanted to say, man, you can't afford it. You just don't want to.

And that's the thing with a lot of these. So anyway. By the way, I understand it sounds like a weird flex that I'm good at listening to people, say things I disagree with and not writing them off forever and not killing them. But seriously, I feel like so many people do that. Oh, I heard what this guy said. What an idiot. It's like, come on.

Okay. I usually do that. I'm not like you. I'm not as, I write people off. This was really interesting from the... Wait, you do? I don't know, some people. No, if it's a really smart person who keeps saying dumb stuff over and over and over again, not just a one-off. That's different. That's different.

Okay. That's different. Fair. This is interesting. So the BLL has this report of, in March 2020, 33, 35% of U.S. private sector business establishments that were born in March 2013 were still in operations. In other words, one-third of businesses created in March of 2013 survived for a decade. Two-thirds did not. I think this is another reason that you have to be long-term bullish. Two-thirds of all, I think for most time periods is probably even higher than this. Two-thirds of all businesses of the past decade and change completely failed

and people still keep coming back and creating new business look at this next one this is from Joey Politano America's new business boom business applications are so much higher

than they were before the pandemic people continue and they're probably delusional in many cases to start a business and the majority of them fail yet people keep trying well this is one of the reasons

why our market will for this foreseeable future trade at a premium to the rest of the world. And not to brag, but we are a nation of entrepreneurs. That's what we do. We start shit. Some of it doesn't always work, but that's what we do. If you think about the stuff you have to go through to start a business and the risk

you have to take, it's immense. And people just, and I think a lot of it is, like, you have to have the right personality to do that, the, you turn off the risks in your brain or whatever it is to think. Like, I can do this. and thousands and thousands of people think this all the time. Oh, we're collectively delusional. I'm sure you see this all the time in your town where you'll see a new store open,

like we got a bread shop and bakeries. And Robin and I laugh, it's just like, well, who thought this was a good idea? This is so obviously not going to be here in 12 months. We're delusional. Somebody took real financial risk to do these things. Right. Even when the odds seem infinitesimally small.

And that collective delusion, is actually a positive for the economy overall because, yes, a certain percent of those hit and they work and they go better than expected and then the people who failed think, like, I can do it again. I can do that. And, yeah, it is kind of amazing.

We got a new, we got numbers, the New York State Empire Manufacturing Index, I think that's what it is, plummeted in January. And listen, I'm not going to pretend to understand what goes into this, but like really, really low, going back to like 2020 levels low. I don't know if this is the canary in the coal mine or if this is just noise or if there's,

I don't know. But Renaissance Macro tweeted the empire manufacturing current conditions imploded to negative 43.7 in January, the lowest in the initial stage of the pandemic. However, the six-month outlook improved to a three-month high. So really, really weird. If you look at this chart, the current reading does not look like any of the others. It's very odd. So, like, the current reading crash, like, oh, things are getting worse or bad.

Like last month crash, but the look ahead is breaking out. The forward one is rising. I think our ability to forecast has been just disintegrated by so many people trying to forecast all the time. And you're like threading a needle. Like, well, right now it's this. And if three months it's going to be this and six months, I just think, I don't know, has the internet broken? Ben, you're right.

I bet on the Eagles last night. What was I thinking? What was I thinking? That was a Long Island hedge because you were hedging the fact that if the Eagles would have won, you would have been pissed. Now, I have to admit, I was smiling ear to ear. Best money I've ever spent. But, yeah, forecasting is difficult.

Forecasting is difficult. Did COVID, like, just drive the nail into the coffin of forecasting? Because I feel like forecasting has gotten worse since the pandemic. For everyone. Did it, did it just screw? Are we just in a really tough period to, to wrap our hands around? I've said this before, I'll say it again. There is life before the pandemic.

We shook up the snow globe, and then there's life after. And we're just still on the other side of chaos. That should be a movie. Remember the Sliding Doors movie with Bleneth Paltrow? Pretty good movie. I never saw Sliding Doors. Pretty good in 90s movie. I don't know.

Based on the stuff that you like versus what I like, you probably wouldn't like it. It's a romantic comedy. That felt like an insult. That was a backhand, front-handed, is it a front-handed insult? I don't know. You know, we got an email. We got an email with the headline was, I hope I'm not too late. And it was somebody like, Michael, whatever you do, do not watch the holdovers.

It's a film. Ben likes it. You're going to hate it. And thank you to that person. I wasn't going to watch it. I already came to my senses. I take umbrage. It is not a film.

I don't like films. This is a movie. I think you should actually watch it. It's a good movie. I do love Paul Giamatic. Especially if you're like excited. Okay. Obviously, one of the hardest things to predict is inflation.

So the new CPI for December came out last week. We've talked about this before. CPI, less shelter, is at 1.9% through December. Remember, because the rent component is so much higher. It's like 6% still in coming down. This is an interesting one. Food at Home, which is groceries, now growing at 1.1. 0.3% below the overall rate of inflation, this stuff is going to matter eventually, right?

I know, but I know it's cumulative. Does that count as talking to the commenters if we're talking about inflation being cumulative? Or can we assume, listen, every time you say, every time you say, I know, we're talking to the commenters. Okay. All right. But I think you, I think you underestimate the fact that some people need clarification occasionally. I agree.

But I'm not talking to those people, Ben. I'm talking to you. And I don't want to waste our audience's time who knows damn well what time it is. Okay. Okay. The current drawdown, here's Morgan News on the inflation reading. The current drawdown from Lizanne Saunders,

she tweeted this for Mannheim, use vehicles. Who is this, Mannheim? Is it a company? It sounds like one of the bad guys in like Diehard 6. First name, man, last name Heim? Yeah. It's in a 21% decline by far the world's on record. This is great news for everybody.

Well, not everybody. It's not good news for me. I am stuck. I am so far underwater on my wife's car. It's not even funny. I thought you were going to talk about your Jeep because this is where the comments were actually good. There must have been 25 comments last week saying, you know what? The problem is Michael's Jeep.

There's literally something called the Jeep death wobble. Like, did you get this taken care of yet? No. How is there a problem with a car called a death wobble and it's not like a crisis? I'll just drive around my death wobble, no biggie. No, it's only a problem

if you're going over like 50 miles an hour. So guess what? I'm avoiding highways. So you can avoid the highways and just put your emergency flashers on? I'm just avoiding the highways. I just can't believe there's something there's literally something called

a death wobble that can go wrong with the car. That sounds bad to me. Piece of shit. Unbelievable. Okay, but the Mannheim one, this was easy to predict. They used car prices crash, and we were saying, like, this is not something that can last.

Where used car prices were more than new car prices, and they were going through the roof. That was an easy one to predict. Like, okay, this is not going to last. Here's another good one, though. Here's the way. What's a website that gives you, like, a good estimate of your car? Oh, does Carvana do it? There's a couple of them.

Track your car's value online. So let's just see how screwed I am. But wait, don't you always expect your car to be relatively underwater? Isn't that just always the case? You drive it off the lot and it's down to 30% or something. Oh, it's CarMax. 20%. It's CarMax.

Hold on, 2019. CarMax lowballs you, by the way. Throw it out there. CarMax lowballs you. They don't want to pay very much. They lowball you. Ooh, this is brutal. All right, so...

A car is not an asset. It's depreciating hunk of metal. Okay, so I could probably get $25,000. Fred and I owed like $34. So you got to hold on to it. That's it. I'm stuck. How long is the lease? I own it.

Oh, oh, you bought it. Okay, well, no towel for you, I guess. Traded in for minivan. All right, here's another piece of good news on inflation. Wage growth tracker from the Atlanta Fed, 5.2% as of December 20203. So we're talking over 2% real wage growth this year. That's a really high number. That's very, I mean, obviously we're making up for loss. time. That's a very, this is tailwind kind of stuff for the economy to continue to be

not really, really strong, but pretty good. Pretty good. All right. Crypto ETSs. I would say the overall state of the economy, it's pretty good. It's fine. It's not, we're not booming, but it's healthy. All right. From Yahoo Finance, spot Bitcoin ETS, which launched last Thursday, have already attracted a significant amount of investor interest in the first two days. So in the first two days, inflows were $1.4 billion, according to our friend Eric Belchunis at Bloomberg, who was, I think, 24-7 on the crypto-ethefts stuff. Baltunus was trading 24-7. So volumes were $3.6 billion.

However, Balchunis noted that these numbers may be adjusted due to transactions awaiting settlement. Grayscale had outflows of $819 million. So maybe it was a little lower than that. I know it's two days in. Does that, that doesn't sound like that much money to me. Am I missing something here? Maybe it'll be higher. I don't know.

It sounds like a lot to me after two days. You predicted $100 billion in Bitcoin ETFs in the first year. There's no way we're getting to that. Hang on. Hang on. We're not going to hit 10. Sir, I walked that back. Okay, so what was your final prediction?

50. 50s, no way. Which is still, that's still very aggressive. 10 might be aggressive. No. I mean, I's probably going to settle in at 5. maybe seven? Probably based on what?

Based on the first couple days of flows, right? You could extrapolate out a year based on two days? Come on now. What are the odds here? All right. No, you know what? You're right. By the end of 2024, we're not going to be at $10 billion in crypto unless Bitcoin.

$50 billion by the end of $20.24 is plus $350. Oh, it's like plus $1,000. There's no way it's going to hit $50 billion. No, it's not. All right, we're going to have to have some ETF. People chime in here. 50 billion? It brought in a $1 billion in the first two days of trading.

That's nothing. Okay. Times 250 trading days a year. That's $125 billion. Do the math. The money was waiting in that first day. There's more money waiting. All right, listen, I don't know.

I'm guessing. $50 billion plus $350. You think it's plus $1,000? Oh, yeah. There's no way it's going to get the 50. If you're the book, You're going to give me 10 to 1? If it gets 50 billion, yeah.

What's my payout then when it doesn't happen? One. Okay, fine. All right. So how does the, is there any impact at all from the 24-7 trading of crypto on the ETFs? Is it just the open and close are really, like a really, really, really wide range? Is there just more trading the open?

Like, what do we get here? Yeah, interesting. Will there be a flurry of activity at 930? and as we approach four? I don't know. Yeah, I just, I don't, because obviously there are ETFs elsewhere. And Europe has had Bitcoin ETFs in Canada and places, but is the 24-7 trading nature of these things, does it make it any different?

Or, I don't know. I would guess that because it trades 24-7 and there's not going to be an unusual amount of order of buying and selling at 930 as a percentage of the overall transaction pie, but I don't know. I don't know. Okay, this is from Barron's. A lot of people were, a lot of crypto people were mad at Vanguard, because Vanguard said, first of all, they're not going to offer crypto ETFs. And then I think they also said, we're not even going to allow the trading of crypto ETFs on our exchange. So it says spot Bitcoin ETFs will not be available for purchase on the Vanguard platform. We also have no plans to offer Vanguard Vanguard Bitcoin ETFs or other crypto-related products. And people are really mad at Vanguard. To which I say, I don't know, They can do what they want. Wait, hold on. Which people are you referring to? Crypto people.

The people that were not talking. Okay, not comment there's crypto people. Okay. No, there was a lot of people who were saying that were complaining about Van, these are actual stories in Bloomberg and Barrens and people were complaining about this. This is not without precedent, right? Vanguard hasn't, like, could you trade, could you trade triple levered ETFs?

Right, I agree. Vanguard. Vanguard can do what they want. And honestly, this is, and I'm. Let's be honest. They're going to break down it someday, probably. Even if they don't have their own for a while, they'll allow trading. They'll probably break down.

Maybe they just want to see how things go, since this is a relatively new product. But I don't think they will. They know their audience. Listen, I would- Jack Hogle is smiling, looking down smiling right now at this, though. Yes, he's saying, well done. Way to hold the line. Vanguard, DIY investors or advisors, they're not trading this stuff.

And you can trade everywhere you want. Go trade somewhere else with this stuff. I don't think this is a big deal It's their prerogative, I agree Yeah 50 billion, huh? Plus 350 All right

That should have been on your 10 predictions list So I could come back and put an X through it Did I say anything? Did I have a break? Oh yeah, I did Bitcoin 100,000 Yeah, we'll say We'll say All right,

global funding by fintech startups sank This was in the information sank over 50% in 20203 Remember how white hot fintech startup ecosystem was, and this may be collective delusion that they were going to disrupt banks. I pulled this from Bank of America's Q4 earnings call. So Bank of America added over 600,000 net new checking accounts. They added 4.6 million credit card accounts and a record 3.8 million consumer investment accounts.

The banks are not getting disrupted. No. And the Silicon Valley Bank hiccup, what was it, a three-day banking crisis we had? Remember how scary that was for three days? Doesn't that kind of ordeal just make you realize that, oh, yeah, one of these little upstarts is never going to be able to take on Bank of America and J.P. Morgan at this type of business, no way. Another chart in here that caught my eye was checks, very much.

versus Zell. And you could imagine what this looks like. Zell is going to... Do you ever have to write checks anymore? It's... I do. What an antiquated process that is. Literally writing out the number in words.

And I was a bank teller one day. This is probably one of my worst jobs ever had. So if you write the number of $1,000 check, but in the words, you wrote 100, the bank has to take 100. The words supersede the number. Did you know this? I didn't.

Did you know? I don't think I ever told this story. I tried to get a job as a working in a bank, not as a bank teller. It was, this was a J.P. Morgan in 2010, this is when I was during my unemployed days. I couldn't get a job working in a bank, which is not, which is not that difficult of a job to procure. What were you trying to do? I was trying to get a job in the bank. Like, a friend referred me.

Maybe to be, like, a private banker or whatever, like, one of those roles, rejected. That's a tough, that was a tough labor market, though, right? It was a, well, in my defense, I have two things. It was, listen, it was 2010, so I don't think anybody was hiring. But I also, I think I was, like, weird looking with my young, balding head of hair. It just, there's probably something about me that people look, they're like, nah. You're in between. All right, what's your Zell thing here?

Oh, but just look at this chart. So it's checks-ridden, which is going all the way down. It's just secular decline. It's like the newspaper. And Zell transactions, it's 2 to 1. And this is going to be 3 to 1, 4 to 1, and 10 to 1. I sent to Zell this weekend, matter of fact. Do you know who owns Zell?

Is it J.P. Morgan? It's a collection of seven of the biggest banks collectively owned. What's the name of the company? It's kind of like Hulu. Oh, I think it's called Early Warning or something like that? Hold on. Who owns Zell? Early Warning Services.

Zell, which launched in 2017, stands out from the peak packet few ways. It's owned and operated by Early Warning Services, which is co-wined by seven of the big banks, and it's not publicly traded. So, look at that. Talking about FinTech. They own it. Did not know that.

Okay. They literally own it. You're right. So these big FinTech breakthroughs are, owned by the banks. Yeah. You know, here's another thing, speaking of fintech. Oh, wait.

Who owns Venmo, though? Is it PayPal? Yeah. Okay. So, Carter, which basically, for those unfamiliar, Carter created like cap table management, and it's a huge company in Silicon Valley. They tried to create a marketplace for secondary shares.

And you can imagine it's a little bit odd, given all the information they have, that they're also trying to, Like, people, people were not too thrilled by this. A company, quote from the information, companies didn't want to create a market for employees to sell their private shares, whether it was out of fear of volatile prices or of tripping up on regulations that limit how many non-employee shareholders a company can amass before going public.

Just another example of a young fintech company. It's just difficult. These are, these are, you're playing with the big boys. I'd be curious to hear if the secondary stuff, if the secondary stuff completely dried up. in, you know, 2022 and early 2023, or if there were actually more activity because some people needed to sell because their other options were not going to come to light. I'm guessing it mostly stalled, right? The secondary markets for this stuff?

You would think that maybe there would be more demand for these shares as prices came down dramatically? Yeah, that'd be interesting to see. Lastly, from the information, remember the creator economy? Oh, yeah. That was like a remember the retirement crisis? We're part of the creator economy, right? Isn't that us?

Sure. Absolutely. We're creators. I have the creator in my recommendations for this week as well, speaking of it. So funding for global creator economy startups fell 58%. And they showed, like, how much money's been invested. And the peak was just... The peak was $2.5 billion a quarter.

Where is it now? $2 billion? I'm sorry. Can't read this. Ben, what is this? Whatever. It's a fraction, fraction, fraction. And most of the money was spent on marketing.

That's not because what else are you going to spend for creator economy, right? All right, let's move on to Great Quarter, guys. Jamie Diamond, and he's not usually upbeat on these calls. I think he tends to have a more cautious tone, which is understandable, that he's probably the largest risk manager in the world, or certainly one of them. He said... He said... came in like 2022, right? Yeah.

He's at a very strong labor market means all is equal, strong consumer credit, so that's how we see in the world. That makes sense. Banks have, I feel like banks and credit card companies have been a good tell

on the economy here. Obviously, that might not always be the case, but if you would have paid attention to a lot of the bank and credit card earnings calls, you wouldn't have thought the economy was freezing up imminently.

I listened to BlackRock as well. Just a shout to the quarter app. It's so, It is so sick. Now they, there's like names and titles of who's talking when. Yeah, it looks really good. It looks freaking incredible. Just the whole look of it, yeah.

It's a joy, a real joy. All right, an analyst asked BlackRock a question about money market funds. And this was Robert Capito's answer. I wake up every morning salivating about the $7 trillion that's sitting in money market fund accounts waiting to move. And in order for it to move, we have to have a wide plate of products. And that's what we've been developing in client solutions. A lot of this is going to come from digital wealth, which is a $17 billion global market, which is growing at 15%.

So he's talking about like how money market funds are going to, if they move into risk assets, probably bonds. Anyway, I just thought that was an interesting take there. So if you have all that money, that's like a target on the back of that money market funds. Like, we are looking to financial services are trying to get that money out of air. Salivating. As quickly as possible and put it into something out. Yeah.

Here's one more quote. So I think history shows when the cycle stops, that's when people first start to re-risk. We saw about $40 billion come out of money market funds to us as people re-risk, and then there's market volatility and it stops. So I think we have to get to what people will feel is the end of the cycle in rates, and then people will look. So it is going to be very interesting to see what happens. with money market funds. That's one of the things that I would, if I could like, so like the general consumer economy is so far behind like the regular news, you know, like the news on NBC or ABC or whatever, CBS. When the Fed starts cutting rates and people see

inflation at two, two and a half percent or whatever it is, that stuff's going to have, and gas prices are at 275 or whatever, that stuff's going to have to be on the news. And that's going to change the way people feel about some stuff. And I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens when the Fed does start cutting rates. And people go, wait a minute, whoa. Yeah, so my... I think it's going to be a sea change. My inclination is that inertia will keep people in money market funds. But I'm not positive.

I'm just guessing. Like, I don't know. Yeah. It's going to be very interesting. They're going to be sold big time. All right. Home insurance. All right.

So this is getting crazy. So this is from a, like a beehive newsletter. People are passing this around. And it's called highest and best. And it says, home insurance premiums are rising by double-digit nearly everywhere, but they're still the highest in Florida. I had an annual average of $9,200. In Jacksonville, Florida, a real estate agent said 25% of buyers who signed contracts for sales backed out after receiving insurance estimates. 15 to 20% of homeowners in Florida are choosing to forego property insurance because it's too expensive.

It's called Going Bear. If you were in Florida and this was the case, or this happened in New York because you're, whatever, there's a hurricane every year or something on the ocean. Would you just roll the dice? No. And not get insurance. Because that's, you'd still get it. Listen, I don't mean to be insensitive. If you can't afford the insurance, don't buy the house.

What literally happens if you're, if you have massive home damage? What, you move? Your family's fucked. I don't. But at that high of a price, it's crazy. And it's going to, the prices are not going to go. The insurance costs are not going to go down. unless the government caps them or something

and says, we'll wake up the difference. I know it's not easy to just, like, say, tell somebody to move. I don't know. It's a tough situation, but you can't, you can't own a home without insurance. Listen, I'm a gambler,

but not like that. Not where it's like make or break. The number of people who are rolling the dice, it doesn't surprise me. I guess this makes up for no state income tax in Florida. All right. Here's a good one for you for being nil-age. I'm thinking about this one.

So Lindyman tweeted this one. Once you hit your 30s to 40s, you start seeing a divide among men. Half of them are in the I'm writing this out until retirement. I'm shutting it all down. And the other half are constantly working on new projects and still moving. I'm a ladder guy. I have way too much spilkis to shut it down. But don't you think that there's a middle ground too where I feel the whole hustle culture kind of annoys me where like you always have to be doing this and starting companies and optimizing and.

Yeah, chill out, bro. I don't think you have to be full bore like that all the time. So I was listening to the Michael Ovitz's podcast with Patrick O'Shaughnessy last week. And I think you mentioned this last week, too. So Michael Ovitz was talking about how he does, to start his business and create CAA, which is the agency. And he had some amazing stories on that podcast. But he talked about a lot about his work ethic. And he started out by doing 250 to 300 calls a day.

And he worked seven days a week. And Patrick even asked him, like, how did you find time for family? And he's kind of like, I feel like he kind of felt bad answering. he's like, well, I worked seven days a week, and I had one week of the year on Christmas where I stopped worrying. Other than that, I was working all the time. And that's how I built the business. And I thought about it. I, speaking of getting old and having a faulty memory, you always talk about this, I keep forgetting stuff too. I forgot I read the book on Michael Ovitz a couple years ago. Who was Michaelovitz? And so the great, yeah, it's a great book.

So the great thing about reading on a Kindle, which I do now, is that I highlight stuff that I want to go to later. So I went and I said, oh, I'm going to look at my highlights of that book because I haven't read it in a while, and I forgot. And he talked about this in the book, and he said, in 1979 when I was 33, Ted Ashley at Warner Brothers took me aside and said, I'm going to give you some advice. He grinned ruefully, and knowing you, you're not going to take it, but here it is. I could have worked 10% less, and it would have made a difference in my professional success, but I would have been a lot happier.

And Ovid says, he was right on both counts, and I didn't take the advice. I see now that I could have worked as much as 20% less, and it wouldn't have cost me. And kind of looking back at that and said he could have been, fine if he wasn't working just, you know, balls to the wall. I think that's probably my biggest change. And you talked about how you, if someone says something dumb, it doesn't bother you. My big thing that I'm middle age and I think that one of my biggest changes in life is that I don't look at someone like Ovitz and his success and think, man, I want to do that. Because when I was younger, I probably would have. Like, why didn't I work that hard? Being at the point

of my life I'm in now with kids, I can't imagine working seven days a week. for 15 hours a day and have it always be on my mind, that's the one thing that I think I've let go in middle age is that looking at the people who are super successful and not thinking what they had to do to get there. But here's the thing about people looking back on their regrets in life. You may have regrets, but have given the opportunity,

I don't think he would change. If Michael Ovitz could go back 40 years ago, knowing what he knows now with his regrets, guess what? I honestly don't think it would change a thing. I think people are who they are, and it's very easy to look back with regrets, but I don't think that they would necessarily change people's behavior, if given a time machine. I kind of agree, too.

The reason they're successful in the first place is because they have to work that hard, regardless of whether, like, they could cut back and still be fine. I agree. It's a personality thing. Yeah. And guess what? Michael Ovitz wouldn't be Michael Ovitz if you worked five days a week, because that is the most competitive industry in the world, or certainly one of them.

somebody would have, there would always have been a Michaelovits. If it wasn't him, it would have been somebody else. But I don't want to give us too big of a pat on the back here, but I feel like you and I have struck some middle ground where we are constantly reading and researching and thinking and talking about the markets and all this stuff. But we've also know how to shut it off when we need to. And I think that's a hard thing to do if you really want to be successful in your career. Speak for yourself.

I, no, seriously, I don't shut it off. I'm not good at it. I'm not going to pretend to look back with regrets because I think, thank God, I spend a ton of time with my kids. So I don't feel like they're getting shortchanged. Yes, listen, am I, do they see me on my phone too much? Yes. But I am who I am.

But that's what I mean, though, that you, but you're not, you're not missing time with your kids because you're working all the time or something. You're still finding a way to do both. Correct. I am very, very. And this, a lot of this is due to COVID for a lot of families. I would have been in the city five days a week. That's just what it was.

Yeah, true. Yeah, that, that, I think that probably did save you a lot. Anyway, it's a really good podcast to listen to, but it just got me thinking about this stuff. So people just love the NFL. It is wild. Oh, I have to take a retraction time. Last week, I said, what happens if you're in Kansas City or Miami? So if you were in Kansas City, Miami, the game was aired on your,

local stations. So Peacock paid $110 million to the NFL for these rights, which is a lot of money. But the Washington Journal wrote that it drew 23 million viewers. It was also the largest event ever for internet usage in the U.S. accounting for 30% of web traffic, making Saturday the single highest day of U.S. Internet usage in history. And now the $110 million question is, how many of the X million sign-ups we don't know are going to stick around. And that's the bet that Peacock is making. Obviously, NBC Universal owns Peacock.

We don't know. There were a lot of people on Saturday complaining about Peacock and making jokes and saying this is going to be hard for people. Obviously, people figured out. But for me, as someone who still subscribes to cable and owns has a subscription to every streaming service available, I just sat back in my chair and thought,

this is easy for me. And I don't care. which streaming service NFL goes to, I'm going to be ready. Because I have all of them. This was my time to shine. And, yeah, so. Ben, how are you holding up? I know there's a ton of snow in the Midwest. We had a huge blizzard. We probably got, I don't know, 24 inches or something. We drove up north like an hour. And it was really bad driving in the blizzard. And it thought to me was when my daughter was born, she's going to be 10 this year. I remember having conversations with people at the time saying,

I wonder if by the time she's 16, if we'll just have self-driving cars and she'll never have to drive a car. Now I don't believe that, but I was driving through the blizzard. My wife has, she got her new Palisade, and it has the thing on cruise where you know your cruise automatically

keeps like a car distance in between you. The new thing, it's like a little, it's like taking baby steps to self-driving car, right? But in the blizzard, all the sensors for that cruise stuff went off so she couldn't use cruise control. So my question is, we do have the technology that improves

for self-driving cars. we have them someday. How do they handle a blizzard? I don't know how a self-driving car could actually make it into blizzard. When all the lines are covered up in, there's going to have to be a system override for these kind of things to be manual. Because I'm a really good blizzard driver, not to brag. I think I can drive better than a blizzard than a self-driving car. I'm sure you can. That's hilarious. All right. I saw this great tweet. The tweet was, we've come full circle and the picture is white claw zero percent alcohol oh you mean seltzer water yeah thanks for that yeah but it's in a cool can really incredible all right

recommendations ben somebody email somebody sent us a video of this is old this is original youtube there's like 2010 this video it's got almost four million views a guy did a bit where he just holds doors open for people, like way longer that is normal. I said that's a pet peeve, but he does it's a joke. Like, it's just so many people. They're like doing this. The half jog. The half jog.

It was very funny. All right. We asked the audience, was 2023 a good year for movies? And 77% of the audience said no. I saw a, I saw a very good movie this weekend. And I'm talking about killers of the flower moon. And I am. We started.

I'm not through it yet. Okay. I really enjoyed it. I'm surprised you liked it. Because you didn't like Oppenheimer. So here's the problem. I told you. I ate an edible before I saw Oppenheimer.

And that's on me. Which is totally on you. I can't see the reasoning ever to eat an edible before Oppenheimer. Totally. I think by hour 245, I was doing one of these. Yeah. You know, my head was going and I was waking up, jerking my head open. It's a weird thing to say.

Okay. So if I saw Oppenheimer, the way that I watched Killers of the Flower Moon, I probably would have had a much different feeling. And I think I do need to revisit Oppenheimer because I'm the only asshole that didn't like it. So Killers of the Flower Moon, just classic Marty, De Niro and DiCaprio were just on fire. See, I'm only an hour into or something. Their characters seem weird to me. I'm still kind of tepid on the movie

I saw it's I got like four hours left so So I broke it into I think three different settings If I saw it If I sat for three hours and 15 minutes in the theater I don't know that I would have enjoyed it I don't know I probably wouldn't have I probably would have said this is ridiculous Boy, you're a movie theater guy

I know but three but three 15 True 315 that's too much Someone needs to play some limits on Marty I think though Someone needs to say like no more than two and a half hours for a movie Yeah we need He needed guardrails. He needed guardrails.

Oh, and the actress that played DeCaprio's wife. I forget her name. Lily Tompkins, maybe? Gladstone, I think. She was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed. I'm Lily Gladstone.

I'm sorry, Lily Tompkins. Lily Gladstone. And you know what? Obviously, expectations played a part of this because I was not expecting to like it. And I was pleasantly very surprised. See? You do like films.

Godzilla finished. The Monarch Legacy of Monsters. a little bit of a valley, and then boom. Episode 6-3 was, but the ending was awesome. Loved it. Loved it. All right. I watched The Creator on Hulu. This is Denzel's son, who in the lead, and it's an AI movie. It's like a two-hour-long movie.

It's a good action movie, but it left me with a weird taste in my mouth. I think you'd probably like this movie. My son, who's just an action movie junkie now, he watched like three times. He loves action movies. violence. He's probably going to be a serial killer someday. But the weird part about it is, so there's these AI robots, and they make them look like humans, obviously, and you can't really tell the difference to have, they have this little circle thing in their back of their head. What kind of AI robots would you like to see in the future?

Because in the movie, they had robots that looked like robots and the robots that looked like humans. What would you prefer? Because I don't think I can have robots that look like humans. It's too, and I know some people are going to want that for companionship, and I think it's too weird. I can't handle robots that look like humans. you're going to live in a world where robots look like humans? Or is it going to be like I Robot? Which, by the way, I love that movie. Me too. We watched that one recently too. But here's the thing about the creator. I don't want to completely give the plot away, but let's be honest, it's an action movie. It doesn't really matter. Not, not. Don't, don't, don't ruin it. I'm going to watch it.

Okay. I'll be curious because the good guys in the movie are not who you think they would be. So it's kind of bizarre. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. Understood. And I rewatch Fargo, one of your favorites. But I think I did it because we had this huge, huge snowstorm in Fargo. And I told my wife, I'm like, I feel like we're driving through Fargo right now. So I watched the movie. And I feel like there's certain movies that, depending on the weather, they hit differently depending on the weather outside.

There's some movies that I will only watch in the summer and some I'll only watch in winter and Fargo is a winter movie for me. Totally. You know what? It might be my favorite movie ever. I know it's like I would really have to think about that, but that's how my much I like it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's in consideration for my, I know Francis McDormant won the, she won the Oscar right, but William H. Macy. He's amazing. He's so amazing in that

movie. But yes, that, that, that was a weather movie for me. That's all I got. Uh, all right. All right. Uh, what, one other thing to kill us the flower moon. So, Brendan Fraser made a cameo. Oh, okay. You just wrote it for me. So, no, that's, you know, I did it. So Tom Wamsgans or whatever the hell you pronounce his name? That's, he's British, Brendan Fraser. I don't know if we ever said that. No, I can see that, though. Yeah, but could you see him doing a movie like The Mummy? Yeah, it's Brendan Fraser. Now, you could see Tom doing The Mummy? Sure, why not? I just poke close to that theory. Use your imagination. All right, he's 60% of Brendan Fraser. All right, Animal Spirit. Oh, I forgot to open up the show.

We got so many fantastic tax people reaching out to us. So really, really excited about the outreach. Who needs LinkedIn when you have animal spirits? What's that? Who needs LinkedIn when you have animal spirits? There you go. Animal spirits at the compound news.com. Personal lemas, personal responses. Keep them coming.

We'll see you next time.