Animal Spirits Podcast - The Cost of the American Dream (EP.384)

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

On episode 384 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: changing narratives in the markets, why interest rates are rising, why you should never take macro advice from hedge fund managers, why the S&P 500 is so hard to beat, living paycheck-to-paycheck on $150k, why the 2020s inflation was so painful, 7% mortgage rates, the downside of Waymo, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Global X and Kraneshares. To learn more about Global X’s entire suite of ETFs from covered calls, fixed income, emerging markets, and more, visit: https://www.globalxetfs.com Keep up on the latest out of China at China Last Night and learn more about the KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF at: https://kraneshares.com/kweb/ Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Subscribe to The Unlock newsletter: https://www.advisorunlock.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

Today's show is brought to you by GlobalX. Since 2008, GlobalX ETFs have been committed to empowering investors with unexplored intelligent solutions. GlobalX specializes in exchange traded funds that offer exposure to the artificial intelligence ecosystem, including themes like data centers, robotics, semiconductors, and cloud computing. To learn more about GlobalX's entire suite of ETFs from covered calls, fixed income, emerging markets, and more, visit GlobalXETFs.com. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing.

Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, hello, how are you? Hi. Hi.

So you and I had a conversation with Jared Dillion on his concerns about private equity, private credit, and all the activity going on in there. That dropped on Monday on the feed. I thought we were pretty clear that there was not an endorsement and that we were pretty verbal about the fact that we disagreed with a lot of what he was saying. Podcasts are not endorsements. I personally don't think this is the biggest short ever. That's my disclaimer.

Fair? Fair. All right. I am a shooter down of narratives. That's my stance in the market usually. Like, I think that there are, I think we're far too quick. You're like the Shaq gift thing. I think we're...

Duncan and Daniel. Make that for bed. I think people are far too quick to describe narratives because it makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you have your hands on the steering wheel if you go, well, this market is going this way because of this. And this is moving down or up because of this. And I think that just makes people feel better. Ben is such a narrative swatter. that if the markets move decisively one day after the election,

he's going to say, who knows? Who knows what's driving them? It could be noise. Who knows? Yes, I will be saying that. So this is a tweet from Bill, a guy I follow on Twitter who has a SpongeBob SquarePants as his avatar. So must know what he's talking about.

Pretty good follow, actually. He shows a picture of the 10-year treasury yield, and it goes up and down and up and down. And every time it peaks, he kind of says, uh-oh, watch out, it's Bond Vigilanties. And I feel like we see this all the time. Remember when rates got to 5% last year and everyone said, all right, here it goes.

It's fiscal responsibility about the U.S. government. That's what's causing the rates to go up. Then rates come down. And it's like, okay, there was a recession. Then rates go back up. It's like, no, no, no, bond vigilantes again. And I just think people spend way too much time trying to shoehorn their own personal narratives on markets that are moving for reasons that probably have more to do with where people

are putting their money than anything else. Yeah, I don't disagree. But just for the sake of argument, sometimes the market is wrong. And sometimes the narratives are wrong. So just because the market might move, and I don't think we're saying anything different, sometimes people are just wrong. And that leads into, like, the positioning part of it is that the narratives were wrong, and then the narratives need to get unwound.

So it's right. There is something there. You agree? Yeah. Like the bare market got on a mound because everyone thought there was going to be a recession. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

So, all right. So what we're talking about here specifically is the fact that the narrative now is the Fed cut rates and interest rates are rising, what gives? What gives? Why is this happening? So Jim Bianco has a great tweet showing all the previous instances after the Fed first cut rates of the 10-year treasury yield. And unlike any other time, going out 25, whatever,

we're now 30 days outside of that, interest rates are, the 10-year are significantly higher, and that's never happened before. So, again... It is interesting, though, some of those other times rates did rise a little bit. There's not nearly as much as they are now. Yeah. So anyway, Warren Pyes, I think, has the correct take here. And he said, Warren tweeted, many are misinterpreting recent price action. The move from 3.6 to 4.25 in the 10 year does not signal

a policy mistake. Instead, it is the unwind of recession insurance buyers. And when I saw this, I was like, yeah, of course. Same thing with me. I saw this and I go, oh, duh. Yeah. So it's a few things. It's, so on TV, we have a lot of people talking about the deficit and the bond vigilates, so we'll get to that in a second. But Warren's point is it's a combination of, number one, economic strength, a justified higher treasury yield. But more importantly, and most importantly, and this is why narratives do matter, is because there was a lot of people buying protection for, buying protection in case a recession happened, that would send rates lower.

We didn't get a recession. we got actually economic, I don't have, strengthening or accelerating, but we got decent economic news. And now that trade is being unwound, pushing rates back to where they probably should have been in the first place. Right. The idea was, you're getting a double whammy. The Fed's lowering rates and the economy and labor markets are weakening. So that could be in a recession. That means law is going down. And that didn't happen.

So now people are selling bonds and that pushes rates back up. And that, to your point, it makes sense. It makes way more sense than all of a sudden the deficit matters. all of a sudden, although, why do you think gold is rallying? It's weird. I looked at this, and over the last year, the S&P 500 and gold are both up roughly 40%. And I couldn't find another time in history when that's happened before, ever. It was close in the early 80s, but it's a bizarre thing. And a lot of people said, well, it's because of the fiscal deficits.

And I don't know, that almost sounds too cute to me. It's bizarre because most people assume gold does better when real interest rates are are lower, but rates have been going higher. So, well, even this is semantics. Let me ask you this while we're on the topic of narratives. Is it fair to say that gold is going higher because more gold buyers are, in fact, worried about the deficit? And it could also be true that in actuality, the worries about the deficit will prove

to be unfounded. Both things can be true, no? Fair. That's certainly possible. It's just, it's bizarre to see the stock market and gold go up like this. It would have been hard to come up with a narrative ahead of time for that being the case. What if just risk assets are going up? I don't know gold is not traditionally a risk asset, but it is a risk asset.

Look at this chart. It shows the big, this is from Bank of America. It shows the biggest inflow to gold funds since July 2020. Now, is that because investors are worried about the deficit? Is it momentum and that's just it? But why does momentum exist? So it's really hard to know. Also, look at Bitcoin.

Is Bitcoin a deficit story, or is it a momentum, a risk-on story? I have no idea, but it doesn't not matter. This is what you want for your diversified assets, though. You want them all to go up at the same time, right? You don't want them to go down at the same time, but you want them to go up at the same time. That's what you want. Risk on for the win. Yeah, risk on.

So Colin Roche, had discipline funds, had a post called, we need to talk about bond vigilantes. And he's saying, like, listen, the government spending as a percent of GDP was really high during the people. pandemic. Now it has normalized. It's basically he's not that worried about it anymore. And he had some good points basically saying, because Elon Musk has this thing where he says we're going bankrupt, a lot of people do. And there was a Paul Tudor Jones hit on CNBC where he talked about this. The headline was, Paul Tudor Jones has market reckoning on spending is coming after election. We are going to be broke. And Cullen went through the history of this and show that there was a piece in 2013 where Stanley Drucken Miller made the same exact claim. And my whole point

on the fiscal deficit government spending thing is sound the alarm all you want, but give me a line in the sand. You can't just scream from the hills every two or three years. Government spending's out of control. We're going broke. Just wait. It's going to happen. That's the thing that that makes me mad. And Paul Tudor Jones has been on this beat for a while now, no? So yeah, so he take him shared a post from CNBC in 2018 where he says this. I want to own, this is Paul Tudor Jones in 2018. I want to own commodities, hard assets, and cash. When would I want to buy stocks, when the deficit is 2%, not 5%. Now the deficit is, I don't know, 7%.

So he was saying, you know, he's worried about it back then. So again, this is a guy who is very smart and he's a good investor, but here's my good rule of thumb. Wait, he's a trader. He's probably, yes. Dude, in 20, so I wrote about this in 2015. In 2015, he said on CNBC, we are going to be broke really quickly unless we get serious about dealing with our spending issues.

That's 2015. And guess what? He's a trader. I'm sure he's done fine. You know what I mean? Like, he's not married to his views. If the market proves him wrong, like truck and Miller, I'm sure he's like, listen, this is what I think, but I trust the market over me, and I'm going to get longer short based on

where the market is going, not where I think the market's going to go. But, again, it's a mentality. Here's my rule of, here's my rule of thumb, that people are probably going to get mad at this because I'm talking about their heroes. But you never, ever, ever listen to hedge fund guys talk about macro. They are terrible at spouting macro. Think about it. Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Drucker Miller, Ray Dalio.

These guys have been wrong on macro in the Fed for 15 years. Yeah. And these are some of the smartest best. And guess what? Their portfolios have done fine. Yeah. But if you took their macro takes at face value, you got your face-up dog. The macro takes in public.

Yes, in public. It's not like you're speaking with them for 10 hours. Right? They're on TV for a couple of minutes. Yes, but the stuff they say sounds very into. I got a ton of people asking me about Paul Tudor Jones. And I went back and I found all the times he's been talking about the Fed and the deficit and spending. And my whole thing is like, listen, if you're going to talk about this, then you either put your money where your mouth is. And he said he's shorting bond.

So he is. But guess, like you said, he could change his mind very quickly. Well, guess what? Short bonds. Don't listen to these people about it. Short bonds has been a good trade. I wouldn't be shocked if he's taking profits here. It's possible.

Right. Yeah, that's the thing. The timeframes that these guys manage in, the deficit in the government debt, if it's going to be a problem like everyone keeps saying it is, that's a very long time horizon bet. I actually saw Druck. Somebody tweeted about Drucker earlier yesterday. I don't remember who it was. That 25% of his portfolio was short bonds. And guess what? He made money. And he said, I wish it was bigger. George would be mad at me right now or something like that. Speaking about George Soros, who always said go for the jugular. Yeah. So I just don't listen to these people on macro. That's my whole thing. It's not worth it because it'll change their mind or they change their portfolio. All right. Torsten's locked chart of the week.

The S&P 500 doesn't care about rates. So this is corporate business net interest payments are near record lows. And this says there's a percentage of, let's see, net interest payments. Yeah, this is one of the craziest charts from the rising rate period. So he shows where the Fed started hiking rates since then, interest payments have gone down. The net interest payment have gone down near record. This is not a chart crime, but it's, there's, it's not. not in time, it's not really showing the full picture. Because if you take out the 100 biggest

stocks that have these gigantic cash piles, you know what I mean? Here's the thing, though, that gets me. Remember, for years during ZERP, people were saying, there's zombie companies all around us, and the Fed is propping up zombie companies. And we've turned the stat about 40% of Russell 2000 companies don't have a profit. Yeah. Where are all the failures of companies now that rates have been 5% for two years? We had higher bankruptcies in 22 and 23. And it's moderating a bit. It wasn't, It probably wasn't the wave that we should have expected given the, to your point, the years and years of the zombie company talk. That's my point is that these higher rates should have been more on these companies.

And if there really were zombie companies, they would have been failing left and right. So maybe just maybe they weren't being propped up by the Fed. I think a lot of these shitty companies were being propped by the Fed. The scooter company that raised $3 billion, whatever. Like all the, come on, all those free money companies. No, that wasn't being propped up. They all went to zero. That was being propped up by venture capitalists.

though. Because of free money. All those companies went to zero. We're never going to agree about this. But venture capital does not borrow money. They don't operate on leverage. It's not, dude, it's a mindset. It's a mindset of free money.

Come on. I'm sorry. Just agree. To use the Charlie Munger, you'll agree with me because you're smart and I'm right. Like, come on. I don't think venture.

Venture capital is propped up by cash flow, is not debt. Where do you think the cash comes from, the money was free. It was a party. It didn't matter. It cost nothing. Have had it.

Let's move on. All right. Torson Slocke, another chart shows Nvidia is bigger than, the Nvidia market cap is bigger than Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Italy, almost as big as Japan, which is just insane that in 1989,

Japan was 45% of the global stock market. Now, Nvidia's half as big as they are. These are the kind of charts that it's easy to like, ah, whatever, it's, this is insane. And also not actionable. And I feel like market cap comparisons have cost investors a lot of money, myself included. Like, oh my God, it's, remember when Apple had a trillion dollars, that was going to be

the top? Yeah, but don't you think this is more of a saying how bad things have got in Europe as opposed to how good things are in the United States? It is wild. Don't get me wrong. But like, all right, cool. Yeah, we know. Now what?

Someone sent me this letter from Giverney Capital Asset Management. I don't know who they are. I apologize, but they have some good stats. So he says, the return on equity today, so this is for the S&P 500, is around 20% while pre-tax operating margins exceed 16%. I think sometimes investors, or maybe just this investor, forgot how exceptional these figures are. A generation ago, an ROE of 14% and profit margins of 10% were considered good. Then he goes to compare that to European stock markets. trades for a P.E of 13 times, earned a 12% ROE and you grow earning 7%.

U.K., 4P.E of roughly 11.7 times, ROE of 15% earnings your oath of 5. Just saying how it is in, like, it is all these big companies, but they've completely changed the dynamics of the S.P. 500. It's the fundamental, stupid. You can't talk about the market. You can't talk about the top line without talking about the bottom line. Yes. So, so we, our thing last week where we talked about the U.S. being the envy of the world, economically speaking, which is from the economist, I got some pushback from some Europeans. I got a really nasty comment on LinkedIn, which you don't get

a lot of nasty comments there. What was the comment? Well, the one I's heard for most people is, yeah, but Europe has a bigger safety net, which is fair. Yeah, yeah. And they list all the other ways the U.S. has screwed up. The guns and the school shootings, fair. We have our set of problems. I agree. And there was a piece in fortune where they talked about this guy from Norway who runs, what does this guy do? He runs Norway's $1.6 trillion oil fund. And he says, 1.6 trillion. He says America's attitude towards failure is helping propel the nation ahead of its European counterparts. He says, Americans' attitude, where is it? Oh, workers have a better work-life balance in Europe, but they aren't as ambitious as people are on the U.S. So that's like

the, he's saying, listen, people probably actually live better in Europe, but the ambition in America is why we're pulling so far ahead economically in market speaking. And that's the kind tradeoff where you stop and think and you go, is it worth it? Like, which one's better? Where you take eight weeks off a year and you take a nap every day at 3 p.m. And you kind of work 30 hours a week? Or there's not a good, there's not a right answer. Well, there's no right. Yeah, there's no right answer. It's a, that's a personal preference thing. And then the other other piece of pushback was inequality, which we mentioned. But I want to remind people that researchers, this was also in the economy, showed that two-fifths of the rise in

wage inequality of the past four decades has been undone in the past four years. So it actually has gotten better. Anyway, that was pushed back from animal spirits. All right, Goldman Sachs via Sam Rowe again. He's our Goldman Sachs go-to, isn't he? Is Sam Rowe the king of the Via-Via? Yes. He's the Michael Scott of podcasting.

This is interesting. It shows the 10-year turnover of S&P 500 constituents. The average going back to 1980 is 36% Over the past 10 years It's roughly a third Of all companies that have changed turnover Or a 10 year period This supports a higher multiple now

More stability Less turnover There's less turnover Because there's less junkie companies That are getting thrown out Yeah, but it's still not that far below My point here is that like This is actually why being indexed one is so hard

Because the losing companies You're out of here We're bringing some new ones in Right? I think this is actually a good diversification selling point. It's not just static, the S&P. Let me do the flip side. Okay.

So investors hold on to their losers, right? So does an index fund until the company gets kicked out. We hold on to our losers until it's a $2 billion company down from 47. I'm making that up, whatever the company is, and then you're gone. Investors also tend to sell their winners too soon. Oh, me as an example. I sold Facebook when I was up 100%. It's probably up 200% since I sold it.

I sold Netflix, by the way, last week. Sold Netflix, bought Disney. Credit to me? I don't know. We'll see. But the point that I'm making, Ben, is investors are too quick to sell their best performers. Guilty is charged. An index fund doesn't sell its winners.

And that's why it's so hard to beat. That is why it's so hard to beat. An index fund didn't sell Nvidia at $1.7 trillion. For better and for worse. Yeah, it's never going to sell those winners too early. That's a good point. This was a good one from the Daily Shot. It shows rolling year-to-date performance in the SEP,

so it shows from the start of the year. And so far, going back to 1999, through where we are at, I don't know, 300 days into the year, this is the best year of this century, basically. Up to this point. Wow. And let me ask you another question about this year.

Is this the fastest year on record? How is it November already? because you're middle age and you're a father. This is what happens. Life speeds up as you get older. And you're going to say, oh, my gosh, it's Christmas already. It's like, oh, my gosh, summer's already here. You know what?

I don't care. I'm always going to be that guy that can't believe how fast time is going. I'm not too cool for the, yeah, it's always, you know what? I'm sorry. You know what it is, though? This is the reason I think as being a parent. When you first have your kid and the child as a baby, you are, I talked about this

Just time slow down? Time slows down And you're constant Because you don't do anything When your child is a baby And you sit there and you're like Jesus, it's only 10 in the morning Can we have lunch yet?

Because you've been up for so long And it feels like you're just You're waiting for time to go And then you like wait for time To put the kid to bed And then as the kids get older And there's more to do You're constantly doing stuff

And now we've got to go here Now we've got to drop off here Now we've got to go to this game That game And you're doing more stuff And it changes with your perception of time Yeah, you know it's so true I know I'm preaching to the choir here,

but this weekend was wild. We had Kobe's flag football at 8. Then we got breakfast real quick. Logan at Sacra at 10. Kobe had a birthday party at 11. Then Logan had football at 1. Kobe had baseball at 1.30. And then we went to dinner.

And I was just like, my head was spinning. And, you know, more of the same on Sunday. It's crazy. It's a lot. I'm not complaining. I love it. But it's just it is... It just goes to the time thing.

It is, when you get to the stage of life, I often talk to my wife, like, what did we used to do before kids? I have no idea what we did with their time. All that free time. Well, I read a lot of books. You know, here's one thing about kids today that definitely did not exist when we were growing up. And I'm not sure it's bad or good or whatever.

It just is, is the after-school activities. Oh, yeah. When I, when I, back in the 90s, I came home, I watched Spider-Man and X-Men. which was awesome, ate some cereal, maybe frosted flakes, had some Oreos, and then played Xbox for four hours.

Like, is that better than having an activity after school every day? Probably not. Definitely not. You want kids out with doing stuff, right? Yeah,

I would think so. Right? Every day after school? It's something. Yeah, it's for us, it's like, it feels like a surprise

when we don't have something. Like, oh, there's nothing going on today? Wow, this is, this is bizarre. Oh,

where were we? Okay, Ben, You had a conversation with Sean O'Brien, the director of retirement at Ceruley, for The Unlock. Which, by the way, we are going to be talking more to our advisor audience. We're ramping it up there. What's that? Yeah, we're ramping things up.

We're ramping things up there. So, Link and Show Notes for the Advisor Unlock, the newsletter on YouTube. I also spoke with Meb Faber about his new 351 ETF. I think the ticker's tax. Very interesting. Very, very, very interesting. So that will be dropping sometime next week. The biggest thing that stood out to me is Sean O'Brien from Sruly told me last year alone,

there was $765 billion in roll over assets from 401Ks to IRAs. There is just going to be a ton, a ton of money in the years ahead that needs financial advice. Ben, I put this chart from your post in the deck, and I don't remember, is this going to be one of those things where we spoke about this like three weeks ago? Have we spoken about this chart? Last week we did, yes. Last week, okay. All right, see?

No, give me, what do you got? What's your take? It felt, I knew it felt familiar. I'm not, no, no, no need to rehash it. No need to rehash it. All right, here's my thoughts. So, we're looking at two charts, 19 to 1989 to 2019 on one side of then 19 to 1989 to 2022 on the other side.

And it's showing the net median net worth by age adjusted for inflation. Yep. And look at us. Look at us millennials. I mean, that's a big takeaway, right? Yes. It's crazy. four years have been very kind to, uh, to millennials.

To everyone, millennials, everyone shot, but yes, but Gen X and Millennials are both head of the game, yes. The relative catch-up of millennials and Gen X is pretty wild. By the way, silent generation does not mean what you think it means? No, we, uh, we missed that when we flub that. Silent Generation is the Gen X of then. So the greatest generation, then the silent generation, then the boomers. Okay.

So silent generation is like the Gen X that no one ever thinks or talks about. Yeah, yeah. Well, we also got a lot of comments on last week was, Y equals calendar year. Duh. Duh. Yes. It felt a lot obvious.

It is weird to think, though, that like the greatest generation, like our grandparents' generation is just not. So you know when you go to parade in the summer and you see the old, the guys walking with their hats that served in the military? Like they're, you know, they're really. The silent generation? The white here. No, but here's the thing.

You used to think that, oh, those are World War II veterans. No, they're Vietnam veterans. It's kind of hard. There are no more World War II veterans. I mean, I know there's probably a handful, but there. in their 90s. Oh, I know. I mean, think about how old Matt Damon was

in saving Private Ryan, and that came out in 1999 or something, right? Remember when he flashes forward and he's old? Or is that Tom Hanks? That was Matt Damon. Matt Damon. Okay.

All right, paycheck to paycheck. This was from Axios. They did a look at Bank of America card data and they said, among households making $150K a year or more, nearly double the median household income, 20% live paycheck to paycheck using their definition of paycheck to paycheck.

And then they say, this is a study. And they say, how can that be? And then this is the answer from their senior economist. One reason is that higher income households may have bought larger, more expensive homes, and consequently have bigger mortgages. And often along with bigger homes come bigger insurance costs, property taxes, and utility bills. So it's not like people who make six figures living paycheck to paycheck

are like in the poor house. They still have this financial asset. They have more bills. Yes. Yes. They bought bigger houses. And technically, they're still. saving in that house and building equity, it's just that they probably spent more than they

should have because their income rows. Yeah, I don't know what the line is and it's person to person, but at some point, like, your spending will rise faster than your income. Yes, for a lot of people, that that's the reason. And they make the point, too, that a lot of the paycheck to paycheck stuff doesn't take into account the fact that people are already saving in 401ks and it's just coming off automatically. I don't think it. Okay, this is a question that I hate. Are you better off than you were four years ago. Gallup asks this, and they say the majority of Americans feel worse off than four years ago, so they have this economic confidence indicator, and they say 52% of people feel worse off, 39% say better, and 9% say were the same. And now, if you took

objective data, housing prices are up 40%, stock market is up 80%, net worth is up 50% over the past four years. And if you remember, four years ago, guess what we were living through, the pandemic? People were still wearing masks. We had all these weird rules about going inside places, schools were opening and closing. If you objectively look at, you're better off than you were four years ago, and it has nothing to do with the president, right? So this is not a question that people answer, honestly. When they answer this question, they're really answering,

who am I going to vote for? Right? Like, this is another sentiment question that you can just throw out the window. It doesn't mean anything. Well, yes and no. I think that you're right, that objectively, if you were to just look at people's bank accounts, their real estate, their brokerage accounts,

their retirement accounts, if they have one, objectively, most of the country is better. If you put a number on it, I'd say 80% of the population is doing better than they were four years ago. Yeah, I would agree with that. But it does matter in the sense that, like, there is definitely a mood in the country.

But, like, look at this up. But don't you agree with that? There is definitely a mood in the country. Yes, but again, I think this is the kind of question. I think you can now throw out, it might have made sense in the past, but now you can throw it out the window because of how polarize everything.

is, like, look at this next one from the Federal Reserve. Assessment of your own financial well-being. Going back to 2017, it's basically flat, right? It's about 75% of people, 70 to 80%, percent, somewhere in that range, say, my financial well-being, I'm doing good, I'm doing fine, but the national assessment keeps going down. Yeah. So this, so my point is that, like, how you ask the question, if you say, are you better off than you were four years ago, everyone instinctively goes, ah, this is a political question. I know it. I'm going to, but if you ask, how are you doing on your own and don't put the politics in it, you say, oh, I'm doing great.

I don't even know if I should sort of like hesitate to even share these thoughts, but, but whatever, I feel like if you're offended by this, oh, is this like, are we living in like a post-political world or maybe I'm projecting that like, I was talking to Josh about this yesterday, I feel like sort of people are, are less on edge and more over it than they were in 2016 and 2020, but perhaps I'm just over it. That's me too. I'm totally over. I want this to be over. I think the, I wish we had like a week-long election cycle. Like, I don't need to be 18 months or whatever, however long it is. It's way too long. So, like, I do kind of feel like a lot of the country would agree with that. But I also

don't know if I'm like literally just making that up, if I'm just projecting my thoughts into the rest of the country. Yeah. Some people obviously love it. Some people are really into this. And they go into the battle every day and I don't know. I do have some thoughts on the election polls in betty markets, because I thought that the lesson we took from 2016 and from 2020, and pretty much all of the in-between elections there is that you can't really trust the polls anymore. Like, you can't trust, it's not like saying the pollsters are putting their finger on the scale and they're leading us astray, but it's like what percentage of people actually,

what percentage of people in your life would answer a phone call from a pollster and answer, answer honestly? One percent of people you know, like, how many people do they have to go through to get the people that they actually get for the polls. I know they're doing the best they can, but I guess I'm surprised. I got a call the other day, and I don't even know why I answered. I thought of somebody else, and I hung up. I mean, I said, sorry, good luck with the election night, and that's not a good time. So, yeah, who answers? I don't know. I'm surprised that the amount of people who take, who live and die by these polls and the

election betting markets saying, like, look at the polls, look at the betting markets. It's, they take it every day the movement as fact. And I thought the whole lesson was supposed to be, whoa, whoa, well, let's pump the brakes. And, like, we, maybe we, the whole, the way to do it now is, like, we don't know. So just be careful. I don't know how anyone can have certainty either way at this point with the election. That's my stance. So everyone has an opinion.

Whether or not, like, you really are watching the news and, like, are really personally invested in the outcome, everybody's an opinion. I just think, like, for me, it's just, it's been eight years. You know what I mean? It's just, like, you can't, it's hard to keep up the same level. of anxiety because it's just exhausting. Yes, but I don't know that that's going to go away. Seems like this might be the new world. I don't know.

So what, Nick Holas had some thoughts in the betting markets. Oh, yeah. It's funny to me because it was 50-50, then 45, 55, and 60-40. And to me, that's a toss-up regardless. But some people, again, take that as like, no, this is gospel. I take the betting markets as gospel. I don't, I can't believe anyone in the markets thinks that way. So now we have betting, we have liquid betting markets.

Robin Hood just rolled this out I guess it's it's been legalized Cali she has it, polymarket, Robin Hood. So there's a lot of volume on polymarket and people are saying like listen it's a rap like actual betters like actual dollars not just opinions are putting their money where their mouth is and they're saying it's I don't even want to throw out a number

but it's skewed to Trump I don't know what the actual number is Nicole says it's like 6040 Okay so Nicola says it doesn't it's really noise until you get to 70% in a betting market I guess it's like the analogy that I gave is like it's like the weather like if this is 65% chance to rain, it's probably not going to rain. But the funny thing, Hillary was at 70%.

She lost, so even then. Okay. So anyway, but there's a whale coming in from France that's been reported on in Pollymarker that's betting $30, 40 million. And Nicole has made a point that I was like, oh, yeah, of course. Now, we can't prove this, but it, you know,

it sounds reasonable that if you're betting that sort of money, this is like real money. And perhaps, just perhaps, it's to influence other markets. So if there is a perceived outcome, likely outcome for one winner over the other, in this case, Trump, it has geopolitical impacts on currencies, sure, some certain commodities.

So they're using this 30. And oil and... So they're using this $30 million to push the narrative here and then investing like $200 million or whatever it is here. So this is sort of a, I don't really came about this 30 because I'm really going to make money on the peso or the whatever. I like that take. I'm just surprised at the amount of markets people who've seen this stuff that like the markets are, we've talked about it already. They're not always right in the fact that people are taking it as gospel.

That's a thing that's surprising to me. But I guess people are, again, looking for certainty. It is interesting. The market seems not, I mean, there's no volatility. And it's like people, you talk about like all this anxiety about the political outcome and all that sort of stuff. not that the markets end, I'll be all, but it's just, it is interesting that the market seems to not be bothered. So would it be more surprising to you or less surprising if we had, like, let's say we have the election night and whatever. I don't know how long it takes to figure out who the winner is. We have the winner.

And there's just not much moving to the markets at all. Would that surprise you more than seeing a big move more? No. Okay. I think that would be shocking to a lot of market people. If we just had kind of a, eh, stock markets up 50 basis points or down 50 basis points, but not really a big move in either direction. I wouldn't be surprised with anything. If you tell me that somebody wins in the market, it's down 2.5%. I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised.

All right. Some about the American dream. So, visual capitalist, somebody sent this to us. The American dream costs $4.4 million. And they broke it down by the lifetime costs. So retirement, owning a new car, a wedding, raising two children, owning a home, pets, yearly vacation, and a funeral. Hey, I can't afford a funeral if I'm going to be paying $4.4 million.

for those stuff here. Sorry, dump me out back. So, um, what do we think? I think anytime you add these cumulative totals like this, it's, it's going to look weird. Yeah. And not, because if you ask someone, how much money you're going to make over your whole career, like, I don't think people would have, people would understand the, I, I saw something, I saw Dr. Post this on Twitter a couple months ago saying, I'm in my, I'm like 40 years old, and by the time I retire, my lifetime earnings will be like $10 million. And I thought like, $10 million, that's crazy. And I looked up, I think the number is probably for a doctor like $2.50 a year or something to get that. The numbers, you know, I'm not, it's direction the right. It's not accurate. But the cumulative

total probably makes things seem worse than it actually is for most people. Is that fair? When you say worse, oh, you made the cost? That sounds like a lot of money. cost look way higher than... Here's the question. How many people actually get to these levels? Of what? Spending?

Yeah. $800,000 for car. By the way, speaking of cars, dude, Audi still has my car. And they're not... I haven't heard anything from them.

I'm just... I think Robbins put 5,000 miles on the loner. Driving to the ground, man. I don't care. Good. As all, I'm not putting my... Like,

but it's just, what sort of... summer services this. They've had my car since August. I heard from them once. That is crazy. Parts of supply problem? I have no idea. I don't care. Keep it. Okay, back at the envelope from American Dream. So if you make an average of 150K for 30 years, that's the average. That's like $4.5 million. So that's the number. So does that square a little better in that? When you put it that way. When you put it that way. All right, Ben. Where are we go next. All right. The Wall Street Journal had a piece on how inflation has cooled, but

Americans are still seething over prices. Seathing, that's like, that's not just mad, they're seething. They interview this woman, and she says, it's hard to adjust, a 54-year-old engineer from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. You lived with these stable prices all your life. Mentally, it's hard. And she's saying, like, we've had to make some changes. And the thing is, like, prices haven't been stable your whole life. There has been inflation. And I looked at this. I had chart kid macro. You're never going to win this, Ben. No, no, I'm just, I'm making a point here. Just go with me. Okay. So inflation in the 2010s, which included a period of deflation, obviously, coming out of the crisis, was 19% roughly 20% in total for the whole decade, right?

So we had, I think it was like 1.7% inflation, very low, but we still had 20% rise in overall cumulative prices. We've now roughly had that same cumulative rise in the first five years of this century, right? It's been 22% cumulative inflation. So my whole thing is that we could have 0% for the rest of the decade, and people for a long time would still... Obviously, the cumulative for this decade is probably going to be, what, 30% now? It's going to be higher, maybe even more, 35% after all said and done, depending on what it comes in at.

But the fact that we pulled forward and compressed it, that's the thing people can't handle. They need the slow but sure rise, and it's kind of like early success. If you look at all the stats of the people who go bankrupt from winning the lottery, it's way higher than people who just have a regular stable income. So the people who slowly but surely build their wealth and their 401 carrying their IRA from age 25 to 65, they're far less likely to go broke

than the person who wins the lottery at age 25 and pulls it all forward. That same thing applies to inflation. It's the earliness or the pull forward of the volatility. That's the thing that affects you psychologically. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's the problem.

It could be the same cumulative price rise, but if you compress the time horizon, it totally screws with your perception of everything. Yeah, well, are you, are you, have you mentally adjusted to the price of everything? I'm, I'm still like $24 for sale with chicken. Like that will, I don't know at what point will that not boggle my mind.

It might take me four years to digest that. I don't know. I guess the, the new normal thing is just kind of, I don't know if there's anything that I've looked at that I'm like, oh my gosh, it's probably housing prices. for me. Like, when I first bought my house for what it, they just sold the house that we, so we bought our first house. We lived there for 10 years. We bought it in 2008 crisis. So we brought

it at a fire sale price. And we sold it for a hefty gain. And the people that just sold it again after we sold it to, because we get the Zill alerts, you know, it's like they sold it for how much it's, it's that, the housing prices thing to me is probably the most shocking. Yeah, that's going to take it that's going to take a long longer time. All right. Last comment on politics. I just, you know, just to get ahead of the comments or whatever. Oh, you're going back. All right. The last thing. I understand that like us not having to really worry about who is in the White House is a position of privilege. I understand that's a position of privilege. I understand. I understand. I understand. I understand. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Should we just delete that whole thing? I know. No, it's probably best, but no, I don't think we said anything that's too out. I know, but you know we're getting emails, whatever we said.

Okay, from Bloomberg, back to normal, food inflation. Americans are now spending the same percentage of expenditures on food as they did before the pandemic. So food makes up 7.4% of consumer spending the lowest since before the pandemic in February of 2020. And they, I don't know who wrote this one for Bloomberg, but they're saying, like, what if it was transitory? They look at the average, the CPI back to average, I know. But the question is, what happens to make it come back? I think that's the thing that people are... When you say it, come back,

can we talk about price levels? No, no, no, no, that's never going back. Higher prices. What's the thing that makes inflation get back to 5%? What would it take? I have no idea. You see what happened to oil yesterday, down 6% on the day?

Oil just goes into... Oils in a lost... Two decades, are we almost oil? It's crazy. It's funny. There was, like, concerns about, like, the end of oil, like, that we would run out or something.

Yes. And obviously, I don't know shit about energy, but like obviously alternative energy, clean energy, just as a lot of supply, which is a good thing. So oil is now at $67 a barrel that first happened in the spring of 2007. All right, so on a real basis. So even on a nominal basis, oil has gone nowhere for almost two decades. That's insane. Yeah. This is not great.

It's about things going up. Bill McBride tweeted seven-year, the 30-year, excuse me, the 30-year mortgage is now 7%. That sucks. It's unbelievable because the conventional wisdom was always, okay, rates go up much higher. You have the same level of activity. Prices have to fall. Instead, the housing market has gone, no, no, no, no. Rates go up, activity falls. Prices go up a little bit. And that's what's going to happen again. I think, I was listening to Joe and Tracy. They had somebody on top. talking about the spread between mortgage rates and the 10-year. And like, why is it so high?

It's like investors demand a premium because it's the term is like there's negative convexity in the mortgage bond market. Yeah, that was a very good episode. Yeah, because if rates go down, people prepay and that's it. Like, you just get your money back and now you have to invest in lower interest rates. And we know, we don't know, we think that rates are probably to go down and people are probably going to refinance. And so mortgage buyers, mortgage bond buyers are demand.

manding a premium as well they should. Yeah. Yeah, that was a very good episode. Tom Graf, I think it's the guy's name. All right. The Wall Street Journal's coming around to the Ben Carlson Way of Thinking. America's primed for home renovation resurgence, and they show the amount of spending has gone up considerably. They talk about the amount of $35 trillion in home equity. They did this poll where they say, they recently polled almost 500 households, and they broke down into two groups of people with renovation. 30-somethings planning work in the $60,000 range, and then older homeowners eyeing updates that will cost $30,000. And they say the former are motivated by marriages, babies, and career changes. They are less sensitive to interest rates and prone to remodel

sooner. And I think you and I fall into this category. And here's what I'm going to make the pitch for people ask us a lot about home equity line of credit questions and stuff and renovating. If you locked into 3% mortgage, your capacity to borrow is way, way higher than you think. Because if you had to buy a new home right now, you were forced to and you had to take on that 7% mortgage and a higher home price, you'd be borrowing more money. So that's why I'm okay. taking out a home equity loan of credit and barring a little bit because if I was in the market for a new house, I'd be borrowing more anyway. Now, the opposite, the, the frugal person would say, no, no, no, you just save it. Save the difference. That's, that's the thing. And that makes sense

to me too. To each their own, you know, there should be, not that I would read it, but there should be like a new homeowner manual, a handbook, if you will, for some of the things that you need to know. Like, for example, oh, your boiler has filters that need to be. changed. And if it's leaking, don't just put a bucket underneath it for four years, actually look into it. And I say this because... 40 years? Three, I don't know. What did I move in here? Yeah, five years. How often do you have to change the bucket?

We change the bucket. It's called in my house. There's a big difference between 60 degrees inside and 60 degrees outside I learned. Yesterday, I took a warm shower because my hands were starting to freeze. My fingers were starting to freeze as I was typing. You have no heat in your house right now? I have no heat in my house. So I called my HVAC guy. Shout to Raphael. Why don't you sell your power? Sell your peloton if that's going to, if you need to like, he's showing me the boiler and the filter. And he's like, Michael, dude, you got to stay on top of this stuff. And I was like, nobody ever told me. So we were, we were going to get a new dishwasher. Our dishwasher finally kicked the bucket because we used it all the time, at least once a day.

And I'm going to show you a picture of it because it's got a nice new rack for putting things in nice and orderly. And they're like, if you buy this lower end model, you have to change the filter once a year. And if you buy this higher end model, you don't have to change a filter. And I'm looking at the lower end model, which we currently have. And I go to my wife, I'm like, I've never changed a filter in a dishwasher. What? I didn't know that that dishwashers had a filter. Yeah. Did you? No. Obviously, you don't. The way that you load your dishwasher. Of course not. Actually, Raphael came from my house. So I was laughing with him last night when my, when my hot water went out last night. It'll be fixed today. But credit to me, what a husband I am.

You have Raphael and Tito. You basically have the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles running a house over there. So I filled the bathtub for the boys and I didn't realize that the hot water had conked out. So Bob said, all right, they could skip one night. It's fine.

She goes, but I need to think about it. So I filled a bathtub and I boiled like eight pots of water. Did nothing. Did absolutely nothing. The water was still freezing. You're living in medieval times. Yeah, how did people do it back then? But anyway, so I called,

I was joking that I called Raphael probably four years ago when my air condition conked out and all that I needed to do was replace the filters you know like there's like you have like vents up top in the ceiling and there's just that little tiny filter that you get from Home Depot for four bucks do you know about that? Yes.

Yeah, of course you do because you're a homeowner. I didn't know about that. I let my father-in-law tells me when to do this thing but I don't know them. Here's my one pitch on renovation project. To your point, to each their own. Here's what I will say. If you want to do a, if you really want

do a home renovation project, you want to redo that kitchen or a bath? Like, I don't think you wait. I don't think you wait and say, I'm going to wait for, I don't think prices are going any lower. If that's your thinking, I think if you have the means, you do it. I don't think you wait, if you wait a year, if you wait a year, the price is going to be higher. If we had another year, the price is going even higher. I don't think the demand for this stuff is going down. Insert the Jennifer Love Hewitt, uh, me, what are you waiting for? There you go. By the way, I think they're bringing it back. I don't if they're making a show. we spoke about. It's a show or another movie, a rebut of

what I know what you did last summer. Terrible movie that scared me in the 90s. Not a good movie. Great cast, though. Right? Sarah Michelle Geller. See, that's mine kind of horror movie. Oh, Ryan Felipe. You definitely love that guy in the 90s. Oh, Freddie Prince. You were definitely a big Freddy Prince guy.

Freddy Prince Jr. Were you not? Come clean. I mean, she's all that is, listen, she had glasses on and her hair and a ponytail. They took the glasses off, put the pony down, and she's beautiful. I was a, not another teen movie guy. That was hilarious. That introduced us to Chris Evans.

That was a funny way. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Oh, actually, speaking of movies and scary stuff, somebody emailed us. It is Halloween after all. By the way, we have a Halloween party on Saturday night, which I'm not a Halloween party guy. That might shock you.

So what are you going to wear for your costume? So I wasn't, I'm like not involved in this. So Robin, like, picked out, like, she got, I'm going to be like Coach Dable and she's going to be a ref. So coach, that's the coach of the Giants. So she got me like a headpiece and a, I don't know, I don't even know what she got me. But I woke up this one, I'm like, wait, I don't want to do that. I fucking hate the shots. I can't stand, I can't take it anymore.

You should wear your, you should wear your headset you're wearing right now. I should be a podcaster. No, I'm saying wear the headset because the coach was a headset. No, she got me a headset. Oh, okay. But I just, I don't want to be him because I hate us. But anyway, oh, I'm sorry. So I distract myself twice.

So somebody emailed us asking a, horror movies, like slasher movies from the 80s, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddie, et cetera. And he was wondering if those movies are like so dated that if somebody was to wear a hockey mask on Halloween, would kids today just think that they were being a goalie? That's a good question. I think, I don't...

We went to a... There's this house, 10 minutes from our house that the people do a crazy Halloween. Like, it's... Their house is on a trail, and they do these crazy Halloween decorations. People walk by it and look at them. And, like, you walk by stuff

and it moves and jumps out of you, whatever. And there was Michael Myers' mask and it freaked the kids out, even though they'd never heard a scene of that movie. So I think it still plays. Oh, interesting. I'm not a big fan of, like, haunted jump-out people, even though, like, horror movies.

I took Kobe to one a couple of years ago, and he wasn't scared because he had no idea, but it was, like, dark, and there was, like, I did not enjoy it. That was too scary for me. You can't, even being a horror movie guy? Like spook walks, whatever they're called. Okay.

Doesn't do it for me. Question from my listener. We're expecting our second child this month and are coming up on school decisions for our oldest. We're thinking through the public versus private K through 12. Spreadsheet warrior perspective, the opportunity cost of private school is gargantuan

well under the seven figures over time. However, there are upsides to it that we value. We have access to highly rated public schools in my area. So this is an option as well. Since you have young ones, I'm sure you've thought through this at length. Curious, your opinion. Disclaimer, this is obviously like,

this is up to you. My thinking is if you have a highly rated public school, I don't see the reason. I think private school, unless you have a kid that needs a certain specific area or something, I don't,

do you think the private versus public is really going to matter for your kid if you have a good public school? That's how I think about it. And I went to a private school when I grew up. Oh, you did? Well, Catholic school.

Does that count? Yeah. I would have been just fine going to a public school That's my line of thinking I don't want to Alpine I know nothing about private school I'm sure there's people who have very strong opinions on this But it depends on where you live

There's great public schools where I live So it wouldn't even occur to me to send Your kids are going to public schools? Yeah My kids getting out of daycare and going to public schools Was like the biggest raise I've gotten In the past 10 years That's just my line of thinking

Especially if this person is a spreadsheet warrior Oh so let's be out I'm a man of the people I'm a public school guy, okay? That's who I am. Or you could split your children up and send one to private, one to public and see which one ends up better. But it depends.

Like, if the option is sending them to like your crappy public school, like why would you do that if you could afford to not do that? So I don't know. It depends. But yeah, they have highly... Okay, this is a good feedback on Waymo.

I was one of the earliest people to take an unsupervised ride in a Waymo here in Phoenix. They're fun and yes, like magic. For about five minutes. Then it gets oddly boring. They're one of my favorite things to do with visitors.

However, given a chance, I will take Uber 10 times out of 10. Why? Because they're painfully slow and kind of annoying. They won't go a millisecond over the speed limit. They won't pass public buses. They take dumb routes.

They often won't drop you at your exact location and will make you walk, et cetera. I've seen some videos where there's bumper to bumper traffic and the Waymo won't just nose out and get in line, so no one lets them in. So I can see the painfully slow part would really get to me. Because I've been in Uber's in New York before where they're weaving through five lanes of traffic

and they're getting you there fast. like. Waymo sounds like socialism. I can see how that would that would be annoying. That actually makes sense to me. That sounds awful. All right. I got some stories. Okay. Kids puking in the middle of the night. We've been pretty darn lucky on kids puking in the middle of the night. But the other night

my daughter, my oldest, came in the room and said, hey, I threw up and I walk in a room and there's a big pile of just sitting there. Smelt does not go away. Oh, no, not at all. And she, she for 36 hours, couldn't keep anything down. keep water down, couldn't keep food down, she threw up everything. And when that happens as your kid, it basically just puts a speed bump in your life. Like, it's, your whole life has to stop when your kid is sick like that. Like, my wife had to take her to the hospital for IV fluids.

We've always been lucky with that, but it's, that's tough. She's better now. All good. Kid puking in the middle of the night, though, like, I was like, oh, man, we've been so lucky. And then she threw up so many times. Awful. Awful. I've got a teen fashion take.

Okay. Okay. Okay. This is coming from a guy who was Mr. GQ in his high school, remember, right? Voted on my peers. Wait, what does that mean? Literally, Mr. GQ? Like, that was the superlative that you won? Like, in your senior year yearbook, you vote on, like, this person is most likely to be a CEO someday. This person, I got Mr. GQ, meaning I was best dressed in high school. So we've been going to some of the high school football games for my kids. Now they have friends are getting older. They want to go to the games and whatever run around. They don't even watch the games. They just run around their friends. I've got to take on teen fashion. It's time to step it up teens, because I think the teens look like they work from home. They're wearing all pajama pants and joggers, and they're not, you know, where's the jeans with a flannel shirt and the vest? That's what I wore in high school to the football games.

I mean, come on, and that still plays today, you know? Wow. I didn't see one pair of denim on a kid in high school. They're all wearing joggers or even, like, pajama pants. Like, step it up, kids. Like, have some respect on yourself. That's my teen fashion take. I was a slob of a looking kid in high school.

I definitely, like, stoned all the time. Just backwards hat. Dirty backwards hat. I don't know. Not a teen fashion guy. Again, it might surprise you. Okay. I'm just saying, like, I think the pandemic probably changed things in them.

But, like, I was, I'm shocked at the amount of kids that are just way too laid back. Like, have some respecting yourself, teens. How about the mullet? There are a lot more mullets these days The mullet is prominent I don't mind it I'm not gonna lie I forgot to

I forgot last week I No no I didn't forget it It was this week I'm sorry On the on the plane ride home I was sitting next to a dude That was using a handkerchief Which is just so gross Who uses a handkerchief

This dude was wiping his nose For four hours Yeah it's gross I mean, throw it away. It's walking season up in the northeast. Great walking weather. And I was walking around my town, which I do frequently. On phone calls, business phone calls, I might add.

That's your thing. And every time you're on calls me, I see this. I'm always walking. I saw delivery for like the big water jugs. I think the brand is Crystal Springs, like the big ones, that go, like, I guess, upside down into somebody's water tower. How is that still a thing?

Those are good, though. You have those? No. What do you mean? You mean, like, the water cooler? For the water cooler for the house? You have that? Oh, no, no, not for the house.

But those things, when I was in college, we lived in Philadelphia for a semester, and we had that, we had one of those in our house, in our apartment. And that was the greatest thing ever on the weekends. Just the cold water waiting Yeah. I got it. We had that in college, too. But for homes, what's wrong with the Britta?

Oh, okay. I don't know. Yeah, that's a good point. Most refrigerators come with a water filter, too. But listen, I'm a, I listen to the market. So obviously, there's demand for there. So maybe I'm wrong. All right. I've noticed two bubbles, Ben. Bubble number one. Bubble number one. Water bottles? Not this one specifically. I don't know what this is. This is called Zulu. Gigantic water bottles. I walked into Target. And there's a whole section. of oversized water bottles, a whole section. This will not be a thing at five years. The thing is it starts young.

Did you have a water bottle when you were a kid? No. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know kids of water bottles these days. My kids have water bottles at all times. Like, my kids have the big Stanley Cups. They have a water bottle. They have a house water bottle. A school water bottle.

But we don't need 47 different variations of water bottles. Here's another thing that we don't need 47 varieties of that I think is in a bubble. Greek yogurt. You know how much I love to grocery shop. I'm a big Greek yogurt. guy. Who doesn't love Greek gilker? Do we need 40 brands? I agree. There's too many of them. A lot of shelf space. Get the zero sugar ones. It tastes just as good. I don't do that. You don't need all the fat and sugar. I need it. Okay. All right. Recommendations. Can I go first? Please.

All right. You said you went to see the movie trap in the theaters recently. One or two ago, when you explained the plot to me, you said, hey, it's a serial killer who is brought to a concert with his daughter, and they're trying to trap them in. I thought, wow, that actually, and you said The ending's kind of ridiculous, but the premise. No, no, no, not kind of ludicrous. I will insert one more thing. I went with a friend. And so we had a great time literally chuckling at the absurdity of it.

Had I watched it by myself on my couch, I probably would have maybe thought definitely. This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Oh, my Lord, was it bad? But did you have fun? Not just bad, but bad because it took itself seriously. That's the problem. No.

You don't think it took itself too serious? No, not at all. I thought Josh Hartnett was very cringe and I'm a pretty big Josh Hartnett fan. Here's the other thing. There are no serial killers anymore. I don't think serial killers can't exist anymore. And also, he's a parent who's a serial killer.

There's no way you could have time to be a serial killer as a parent. Do not nitpick N-night. Don't nitpick M-night. Like, stop. It was, I liked the Cabin in the Woods one. This movie was really, really bad, like in a cringy way. Yeah, no shit. But, okay, so you didn't even have fun.

Like, I had fun watching it. I had to finish it just because I, but the, it just, it was off the, the plot itself, like, how he kept escaping. It was, it didn't make any sense. Exactly. Okay. Speaking of serial killers, there was a movie on Netflix called Woman of the Hour, where by Anna Kendrick, I think she directed it too.

It was a true story in the 70s of a guy, which is obviously got to be the height of serial killers, the 70s. I feel like all of them took place in the 70s. Yeah. That was like serial killer decade. And it was this woman who went on the dating game show, you know, where you have one woman sit and then there's three guys on the other side and you can't see them and they answer questions, it was that show. And there was a guy who was literally a serial killer

who went on that show and she picked him as a date. It's, and it's one of those stories where the true story of nature of it is better than the movie itself, but it's only like 90 minutes, so not bad, but it's one of those ones that, I've never even heard of the serial killer. I think this guy killed anywhere between 10 and 130 people in the 70s. Speaking of dating shows, how great was singled out? Remember Jenny McCarthy and then Carlin? Yeah, I would watch that. when I got home from school, for sure. Who hosted? What was the dude's name? Chris something?

Chris Hardwick. Yeah, great hair. Not bad. I started watching The Penguin. I'm two episodes in. So I'm guessing I'm going all Michael Battenick takes here. Here's my one nitpick with it. Good show. No, no, it doesn't even, just wait until episode four before you, but for fine. No, but the only nitpick is not with the plot, but it's with just, I love Colin Farrell, but him in the fat suit and the makeup, like, it's hard for you.

me to take it seriously knowing that he's in all the makeup and stuff. Okay, I understand. Come back to us after episode four, okay? All right, I'm two episodes in. I like it, but that's my only nitpick. Okay. Um... What do you got? All right, I, uh, I saw Adam Neiman, a film critic who I very much enjoy,

tweet something about a movie, like a horror movie that he like will judge people's taste based on this movie. And I'm like, huh, this doesn't even look familiar to me. So I googled it. The movie is Kill List, by the way. Kill List. So I Google it, and it shows, Ben, look at the dock. It says, it shows, I'm already watched. Check. And I'm thinking to myself, whoa, that's a cool feature.

How does it know that I watch this? Wait a minute. I don't remember watching this. I've never seen this movie. So I fired it up on, I think it's on Prime. And it turns out I did watch this movie. And it is a very good movie. So who knew that you watched it?

Google did. Look at this. I put it in the dock. It says already watched. Check. Interesting. And I had no memory of this movie. Until when I got it, it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, very good movie.

I didn't forget I watched this. I feel like you could get in trouble with some other types of adult entertainment and that. I was talking to, speak of horror, Terrorfire 3 crosses $50 million at the worldwide box office. It officially becomes the highest-grossing unrated film, even surpassing the highest-grossing NC-17 films. Damien Leone, the creator, tweeted that. I don't love the terrifying movies. It's just not necessarily for me, but it is incredible that there's so. people love this shit

horror is like really killing it at the box office I guess the indie horror is the one thing that can really break through those are like microcaps that go to like right?

Because they cost nothing to make so one of those movies is a movie called Strange Darling which I believe I've pounded the table on here before what I love this movie

and I so here's what I do that I don't know about you I don't watch trailers for these movies so like yeah glad I do too like yeah I'll see the trailer I guess if it's on

but I don't go seeking out trailers. Oh, because they give away too much in the trailers these days, right? So, I just, I raw dog it. So, like, I was talking to, uh, to, uh, arts and a couple of, of the guys that we work with about another movie called Mads that I saw Sean Fantasy tweet about. So, I'm in. If I see Sean Fantasy tweet about a horror movie, I'm watching it. I had no idea what it was about. And arts is like, oh, I could have already probably guess the twist. I'm like, why are you watching the trailers? Just go watch a movie. If I, just go watch a movie. No expectations. So anyway, strange darling is one of these such

movies. Like, again, I could probably guess a twist. Like, just go watch the movie. Strange Darling, Table Pounder. Great movie. I'm sorry. You're the opposite to me of Sean Fentasy. These are movies just don't do it for me. So no offense to you, but I just won't watch. No offense taken. We watched Mrs. Doubtfire with our kids the other day. So good. I don't think there's anyone past or present who could have played that part that Robin Williams played. I think he's the only person who could have played that. Did I call him the greatest committee actor of all time? The thing is, I don't think he's, there's, There's no comedic actors who could also pull off what he did in Goodwill hunting as well.

No. He really was a one-of-one. So I saw that movie. That hit home because I saw the movie, I think I saw the movie like a year after my parents got divorced. I was like six years old. I feel like the 90s had a lot of divorce movies. You don't see those as much anymore. It's true.

I love that movie. Yeah, it really did. And my kids were into it, too. How great was Pierce Brasden? The whole cast, even the kids were great. What a movie. What a movie. Yeah.

All right, Ben. Happy election week. No, that's next week. Happy Halloween. Do we need to tease our election special we're doing? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, no, what are your thoughts next Tuesday? It's election night. So on Wednesday, myself, Ben, Josh and Callie,

we are going to talk about the market's reaction to the election. And maybe there will be a big reaction, and maybe there won't be. We'll record animal spirits as usual on Tuesday. So the Wednesday show will be, well, I'll share my thoughts about if this person wins this will happen, if this person wins that will happen. So I'll have those two forks made up, those two paths. But yeah, then we're going live on Wednesday.

Tune at the compound. Email us, Animal Spirits at the CompoundNews.com. See you next time.