Animal Spirits Podcast - The Dollar Dump (EP.408)

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

On episode 408 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the tariff tantrum, why a falling dollar matters, yields are rising, betting markets on recession predictions, sentiment is falling off a cliff, buying stocks when they're down 15%, the unintended consequences of Trump's trade policies, panic in the stock market, when you should sell some stocks and much more. This episode is sponsored by NEOS Investments and Fabric by Gerber Life. Learn more about NEOS Investments and their offerings at https://neosfunds.com  Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at: https://meetfabric.com/spirits. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Nios investing. Today's volatile markets, option-based ETFs may be a compelling opportunity. It makes sense. This is the time for these kind of strategies, right? More juice in the premiums? Well, you get more juice in the premiums, but also the premium income helps reduce volatility. And in downturns, that's when options-based strategies tend to work the best. True.

Right? That's when they outperform. So Nios Investments offers a suite of options-based ETFs, looking for higher monthly income, tax-efficient manner, and the ETF wrapper. learn more about their offerings at neosfunds.com. That's neosfunds.com to learn more. Today's show is also brought to you by Fabric, by Gerber Life, which is a term life insurance that you can get done right from your couch, all online on your schedule.

I know we all complained about how busy we are. You'd be covered under 10 minutes, no health exam required. One of the first things I did when I had kids was get life insurance. I don't know how tardy I was. I think I was pretty, I think I did that before the five. two nines. I definitely did. So my very first policy is going to run up in a few years. Our oldest daughter, Libby, just turned 11, and I got a 15-year term policy that is about to expire. So I'm thinking about, do I need to get another term policy? Did you ladder your maturities?

I did not. So I, it's all you have? Yes. Ben. I know. That's the insurance guys are be mad at me. So I need to use Fabric by Grubber Life to see if I can get another policy. Meetfabric.com slash Spirits. That's Meetfabric.com slash Spirits. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash spirits. That's Meetfabric.com slash Spirits.

Policies issued by Western Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about market. 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, welcome back. How was your vacation? You don't sound like you care. That was one of those. How are you doing? I don't care. That's true. No time for that.

The dock is loaded. I can't tell if being on vacation during a bout of market turmoil was a good thing or a bad thing. I'm going to say it was a good thing. I would have been an agony. It was tough. It was so the day that we had the big 10% thrust higher, however you want to call it, I was on a dolphin cruise with my family. So we went on the little canals of Marco Island

And these dolphins are swimming in like two feet of water It was majestic It would come right up to the boat Dolphins all around us We saw manatees and stingrays It was very cool And at one point my phone is just blowing up And I'm getting alerts

And I'm getting slacks And I'm getting text messages Like oh my gosh Are you looking at this And it was like the stock market is up 9 or 10% Or something And I looked and I thought Oh cool

And I put it back down And I kept watching the dolphins Good for you I saw my iPhone screen time. I think I get it every Sunday morning. So earlier last week, I apologized to Kobe. I felt bad. I was in his bed, putting him to sleep and I was on my phone, like the entire time, just scrolling. Usually on vacation, I'm, you know, at night I'm reading and sitting on a beer or something, and I definitely was on my computer once everyone

else was in bed more. But it was also good to be just away from it and seeing all the people that just aren't really paying attention to don't know what's going on. So a lot of records were made last week, including we've got 50 pages in the Google Docs, got to be close to a record, including my screen time. I think I was on my phone for seven and a half hours a day, which is way off the charts for me.

2020s is the decade of things that have never happened before, right? We just keep getting them. So I told Kobe, I apologize that I've been on my phone so much, and I tried to tell them, like, it's for work. There's a lot of things going on in Daddy's World, so... I was showing him stock charts. And I said, are these lines going up or are they going down? And so I was trying to explain to him like, this is Nike.

This is Disney. What other companies do you want to see? And he goes, what about Hollywood? Oh, no. You're turning your son into a technical analyst already? So he asked me to show him a chart of Hollywood because the day prior to that, he was asking about why Minecraft, which he's seen twice now. He was asking why Minecraft isn't at home, why can't you watch it on the

couch. What do you show him Netflix or Warner Brothers or what? So I told him, well, when he asked about Hollywood, I was just like, how did, why do you think about Hollywood as a business? Because the day prior, he asked why isn't Minecraft on the couch? And I said, because the business of movies is Hollywood and Hollywood needs to make money by putting them into the movie theaters. And so he asked me to see a chart of Hollywood.

Interesting. But what would your choice be to show Hollywood? That's a good question. Maybe Warner Brothers, Disney? Paramount. Not Paramount. Not Paramount, I guess. But anyway, interesting week in the market.

This hit me hard. Our friend Michael Antonelli tweeted, hearing everyone's thoughts 24-7 is the worst thing to happen to society, some mosquito. Now, chill out. The actualies, I'm sure it's hyperbole, but it's a good point. And I think especially we're going to talk a lot about some of the survey data that's coming out. And while there is a lot of uncertainty, I think the charts, as crazy as it is, the charts are not commensurate with the action and the damage. Like, there's no way that this is more uncertain than in October 2008

when the future of the financial system was legitimately in question. Like, there's no fucking way. I want to talk about the sentiment stuff, too, how quickly that shifted. I do think, though, that social media and Twitter especially has been, for me, following this, a net positive. Following along on Twitter, I think this has been the best Twitter has been in a long time. I think it's been, obviously there's always the bad stuff and the bad actors and the people that are just out there to troll or put out disinformation.

That is always going to exist. But to try to understand what's going on, I think Twitter has been very helpful. Yeah. I would say that for people, though, that are not target date fund investors like yourself, for people that might be on edge, I think Twitter is the worst place in the world. Because I wrote about this last week in a post called, Who Are You Listening to? and the reason why I wrote it was because in it like fighting the markets are hard enough without social media when you're seeing your account go down and all you have is just just the

actual traditional media it's really scary when you have people professional investors calling for a collapse or 3,800 on the S&P 500 you are like the more you see that the more likely you are to push a button that you're going to regret and I felt that two Sundays ago, I didn't even, yeah, I think it was two Sundays ago, or was it last, I have no, yeah, two Sundays ago when Bitcoin was down to 77,000, somebody that I respect was calling for Bitcoin like 10K. And I was like, oh, shit. And I really had the feeling of maybe I should, maybe I should just take my profits and go home. But the point is replace Bitcoin with anything. Like if you're, if you're on edge and you're seeing everybody's thoughts to Michael's point,

that's not healthy. I agree. This is, to me, I think I tweeted about this to put it on Blue Sky or something, I've never had a period like this where more people that I trust and respect are worried. That like it doesn't feel like there is even a contrarian voice out there. There's the partisan people who always say, yeah, I'll do whatever you want. But there's no one I trust and respect who's going, yeah, this is actually a pretty good thing. There isn't one person I know who's saying like, yeah, this is fine. that's the hard part is like you can't even find usually in any of the last 15 years even during

COVID people immediately there were certain people who said like in April okay the worst of it is over we're economically we've so I do that part scared this is the one that got me from the Wall Street Journal because they were there were all these stories about how Trump linked and said Trump played his cards close to the vest he told advisors that he was willing to take pain a person who spoke to on Monday said he privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger recession, but he said he wanted to make sure it didn't cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversation. So what do you wonder about?

He doesn't want to cause the depression? The fact that that conversation even came up, and obviously people who are putting this stuff out want to get this out there to make sure that he doesn't do something like this, I guess. But I don't know. That kind of thing is one of the reasons that I think it was okay that people were freaking out. If you hear stuff like that, I think it's okay to say like this could, this, In some path, this could have gotten really bad or could get really bad if he keeps pressing that button.

We'll talk about the stock market later. Do you agree that the worst of the tariff-induced panic is over? I would say unequivocally, yes. I'm not saying that the stock market bottom, the bottom is in. But I don't think we're going to get another Vick spike to how high it got. Oh, like a two-day period of 10% down. No, that was just like, oh, my gosh, the shock and awe. Right.

So the good news is the ability for tariffs to shock us is probably behind us. Now, the potential bad news is like, all right, well, what does this do to earnings? Ultimately, again, we'll get some of the confidence stuff, but it's bad. We could have a double-dip correction because the worst of this correction could be over, but if we actually do go into recession, then it's going to probably roll over again. So that's the hard part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could easily foresee a scenario where the low is from last week or the week before

don't hold ultimately, but I'm just saying, like, the panic from tariffs, I think is behind this. The floor has been set very low in terms of like, whoa, this is, it could be that bad. I think, yeah, you're right. Colin tweeted, uh, China tariff changes in the last 10 days. April 2nd, 54% to April 8th, 104% to April, 9th, 14% to April 12th, exempts, exempts electronics bringing average rate rate back to 104% my head is spinning. And then, of course, Trump was tweeting Sunday night. I never made any exemptions, but they were, were they not executive orders that came out on

Friday that said that, or, or, or, I don't know, I'm losing track of time. But the messaging gets sloppy at best. Nico Harrison thinks this is very well done in terms of planning. Okay. So let's talk about like what's going on inside of the market and what has markets, people like us, paying attention. Mike Byrd tweeted, the drop in the value of the dollar during an S&P 500 selloff of this magnitude is really astonishing. There have been 16 sell-offs of this scale or larger over five days over the last 45 years. During 13, the dollar rose.

This is the sharpest U.S. dollar decline during similar conditions. And the dollar is traditionally a safe haven. As our dollar-denominated bonds, our bonds, you had the worst two-week plunge for the dollar since 2009. You could say, listen, currencies are cyclical. This could be a head fake or whatever. The reason this is concerning to people is that this next one from the New York Times shows the 10-year treasury versus crude oil versus the dollar. And you have the thing happening at the same time is the dollar is falling while yields are rising. That's the thing that's kind of scary.

And while the stock market was crashing. Yes. So those two things should not be. Usually it should be if yields are rising, that tends to portend a stronger dollar. So the fact that you have them diverging like this, because we've had yield spikes for the past three or four years that's like, yield spike again, then back down. Then a spike, then down. Like that stuff, the narratives are always changing, but it's the dollar divergence in the flight out of U.S. assets. That is particularly concerning. Jim Bianca tweeted the dollar index and U.S. 10-year yields. And of course, these two lines track each other very, very closely until last week they diverged hard. The dollar crashed, the dollar plunged, yield spiked. Here's a great chart from, uh, from Cameron

Dawson and, uh, her colleague at New Edge showing the 10-year treasury yield and economic surprises. And again, they tend to follow each other. Not quite one for one, but they tend to go the same direction. You saw a sharp divergence, which is the city U.S. Economic Surprise Index falling, so downside surprises and yields going up. Traditionally, when there is a flight for safety, people buy bonds, people buy dollars. And the opposite has happened this go around. The most nervous I was was on Tuesday night when it was, I was watching and I was on Twitter until like midnight and people kept posting charts of the 10 years going up, the 30 years going up. That's when I, and obviously, that's what it sounds like made Trump blink to

is the bond market and the bond market kind of really scared. But that was the thing that I was going, oh, no, this is not, this is not good in a, in a crisis where 10 years, that was the most nervous I probably was. 30 year yields rose 48 basis points, according to Germany, that Deutsche Bank. That's the largest since the 1980s. The 10 year had the chart from Bianco, largest gain, weekly gains since the early 2000s. Here's another good one. This is from Yens, Nordwig. It's a bit wonky, but I think it's important.

If you are interested in understanding what's going on in markets right now, this simple chart is illustrative. It shows the euro dollar that used to trade very closely with the rate differential, CFA stuff, right? Okay. But now the euro, US dollar is moving for entirely different reasons. The rate differential is moving sharply against the euro, but the euro dollar is exploding higher.

This is the simplest way to illustrate how the ongoing asset allocation shift away from U.S. assets is leading to the correlation breakdown. We've got a lot of stuff later than that, but it's the flight out of U.S. assets ultimately. Listen, I don't think, me personally, I'm not terrified of a bare market, right? Like, this is what we do. They happen, right? We help people build that into your plan. We help people through bare markets.

But when you have something like this and ultimately, like, The fear is, the big fear is the move away from U.S. assets. Our greatest strength is our ability to export the dollar and import so much capital going into our markets. And if that is breaking down, then the entire world is going to look very different. I don't know that I'm there yet. You're not doing a very good job of getting out of the scare stuff. Getting out of the scared stuff?

Now, you're talking about how if you follow on social media, it's all scare stuff. Let me allow some... No, but I'm saying, I don't know that I buy that. I think that people are being a little hysterical, even though the data clearly shows, yes, there are assets moving out of the U.S. right now. I have, it's hard to have, like, not have the cognitive dissonance. I have the one part of my brain is saying, yes, getting hysterical makes sense here. This could be bad. And then the other part of me is saying, hey, chill out a second, okay?

I'm sorry, getting hysterical never makes sense. There was a store from the Atlantic that says there's no coming back from Trump's tariff to America was the world's economic anchor, thanks to the president, it may never have that role again. Yeah, see, I will fade that all day. Sorry. Okay, so I pulled this up, the top 25 holdings in the Vanguard World Stock Market Index. 22 of them are U.S. companies. Here's the thing that I will say. Coming into January 2025 was probably the biggest lead the U.S. has ever had over the rest of the world economy.

Now, you could, I'm not saying this is the best economy we've ever had. Obviously, it wasn't. No, it's not. But we were lapping the field. So I think you could say that we probably had the biggest lead then. and the lead is going to shrink from this. I think you could say that, like, listen, whatever we're doing here is probably going to make the rest of the world step up

and they're going to play catch-up a little bit. But we have a huge margin of safety. We have the biggest best corporations. Here's the thing. If you are really worried that Trump is going to crash the economy and he's going to keep pushing these buttons, I don't know. We're two and a half years away from people who are going to be trying to become the next president campaigning, right?

How long has Apple been a publicly traded company for? How many years? That's like my North Star. I have a lot of faith in the American corporation and the American consumer. I have way more faith in the corporations figuring this out. And I mean, right or wrong, Tim Cook went to the White House and asked for a reprieve and he got it. What do to be right or wrong? Right. Well, is that good. He did what you had to do. Yes. But my point is that small businesses can't do that. You can't be a small business and go to the White House and get a reprieve on your products from tariffs. So there's going to be people who are going, the rich just get richer and the small businesses guy is screwed.

That's the right or wrong thing. Yeah. But you're right. They have enough money in their war chests to manage this. And they will figure it out, even if there's a period of disruption. Like these are the biggest best corporations in the world. Eventually, whatever the situation is, they're going to navigate it somehow, even if there's some pain in the meantime. So I think that I am probably most worried.

the probability of a recession, if I were to guess, is as high as I felt it's been in a long time. Yes. That's a good transition. But wait, but wait. What if we only, and I would say this in my base case, I'm not expecting a catastrophic recession. What if we get a moderate recession and we get through this, even with tariffs? What do we look back on this period and say? Like, we really are unbreakable.

Another reason for people not to panic. Like, what would be the takeaway if we really don't get, if the worst doesn't come to pass? I do think that a moderate recession would be my baseline just because consumer balance sheets are so strong, right? And we've already proven we handled 40 year, 40 year high inflation in 2022, and we brushed it off like it was nothing. Like, so I think higher prices from tariffs and stuff, I think we can handle it. Do you, so you mentioned the probability of it. So this is Cal she has it, and I'm sure it's different now. I pulled this up a couple days ago.

They were saying it's a 52% chance of recession. It got as high as 65. and then when there was some deals in place, it went down. Do you think we can trust these betting markets to get the recession calls right in advance? I think directionally. Like, what percentage would it have to be where you say, all right? I mean, would it be 80% or something? What percentage would it have to hit for you to go, okay?

Yeah, I guess that sounds about right. Okay, so here's some Neil Dutta. He was on odd bots last week. I don't know if you listened to that one. I did. Joe, by the way, speaking of like, I wrote this in the post, but who do you listen to? Joe and Tracy are killing it. Yeah, they're doing, they're doing an odd-bats like every day.

It's great. People keep, we've gotten a lot of requests to do more emergency animal spirits. I don't think that's, our thing is like, let's wait and see whatever, everything comes and then put it all together. Also, if our emergencies are just respond to the headlines, they're stale in six hours. Yes. We had a few people comment, too, like, hey, guys, this stuff has already old news. It's like, everything's old news. Right.

Right. What do you expect? Everything's changing so fast. I was thinking about, like, it's funny how resilient humans are, how quickly we adjust to the current landscape, whatever the landscape may be. And I was really, like, yearning for the days and it was only five months ago when there was no major headlines in the market's just like, oh, Apple was up half percent today just because I said this the other day.

Can we go back to worrying about the AI bubble as our biggest concern in the market? Remember that was like, that was the biggest concern like, will there be an AI bubble? That's what everyone's worried about. So anyway, so Duda, he commented on that podcast, and he said, for a business economist like me, calling a recession is sort of beside the point. I don't really care if Enber declares a technical recession. I'm used to when I take an economics outlook

and combine it with a market call. Right now, I see very little reason to think growth perks up, and thus I see every reason to remain cautious on the equity market outlook. For the economy and stocks, we're still going to sell the rip by the dip situation. He's just saying, like, this is the most worried I've seen him in years, obviously.

he's saying even if it doesn't really become a recession, it's going to feel like one. But to your point about the sentiment, so this is from Bob Elliott, CEO confidence has fallen to its weakest since the GFC, which is crazy that it's lower now than it was during the pandemic, which was one of the most uncertain periods we'll probably ever live through. To your point about the sentiment, if the market and the economy matched the sentiment, then yes, we are coming for a very, very hard landing. But I do agree with you that the sentiment changes so fast that you can't even compare it to the past anymore. Yeah, if the sentiment ends up, if the economy ends up reflecting the sentiment as of today, then game over. Right. I just, you know, I still remain a bit skeptical in terms of taking the sentiment too literally. Yes.

All right, let's talk about the factory stuff and the, because I feel like this has brought up a huge debate about the manufacturing. sector. So this is from Frank Lunds. He said, this is from the FT. There was a survey asking, America would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing. 80% of Americans agreed. Yes, if more people worked in manufacturing, we'd be better off. Then it said, I would be better off. That's a shockingly high number. Wow. It is very high, right? You wonder if that's like that, but it's a throwaway because then the next question is, I would be better off if I worked in a factory, and 73% of Americans disagreed. And only 2% of people actually do work in a factory now. And that number is probably going to, so I, so they put this in a chart. This is our problem with

surveys usually. It's like, yeah, sure, great. Everyone else can work in a factory, but I don't want to. Right. But look at this chart here. I share this on Slack before. It's all employees in service providing sectors and all employees in manufacturing sectors. And you can see manufacturing has, has stagnated pretty much since the 1950s. It hasn't really gone anywhere. It's slowly but truly drifted lower. But look at how many more people work in service industries now. This is just our economy. We're a service economy, whether you like that or not. And I don't know how tariffs aren't going to change that.

The Wall Street Journal did a really good post about this called How the U.S. lost its place as the world's manufacturing powerhouse. And they said after the 1950s, manufacturing's role in the U.S. economy began to slip. Some of this came about merely because Americans were becoming more affluent and devoted more of their spending services, such as travel, restaurants, and medical care. Quote, you get richer. You can only buy so many cars and you start buying services. So objectively, this is a good thing.

Now, I don't want to dismiss the NAFTA, particularly the world, let's say the WTO concerns about like the opening up of China and how that really detonated a lot of middle America because it did. They said in 1999, the value of Chinese goods exports came to only about a tenth of the U.S. less than Sweden's. So in 1999, China exported less than within. Sweden exported. And then the World Trade Organization happened in 2001. And then by 2008, Chinese exports surpassed the U.S. in just nine years. Pretty remarkable. Look at this chart.

Total goods exports to the world. U.S. versus China. So it definitely was an inflection point. It poured gasoline on a fire. I think one thing we've learned is that our country is not very good at helping industries that are the pivot. The pivot is the hard point. Which is a great point of conversation for now. Like, are we going to be able to help people who are disrupted by AI? No, we leave people. We're probably not. That's the problem.

Like, capitalism leaves people in industries behind. It just does. It lifts people out of poverty on the whole, but there are certainly people that get left behind. I mean, if this thing that happened over the course of a few decades gets people this mad, how mad are people going to get at AI? Right. Just imagine. One of the things that we don't really capture, though, is services.

And if you look at services exports, we're over a trillion dollars. China is, I don't know, 400 million, 400 billion, excuse me. Yeah, that's what we're good at, right? So I see a lot of people who are putting out posts, it's economists and pundits and analysts putting out posts of here's what the impact of tariffs are going to be on the economy, on GDP, on spending. And while I appreciate the people that are putting in that time and effort, and it's kind of funny because you can throw it out the window two days later when the tariffs change.

But I don't see how you can possibly try to quantify what's going to happen. here because there are going to be so many unintended consequences and behavioral changes that it's almost useless to try to say like if the world remains exactly the same in a vacuum this will be the impact because the world is not going to remain the same companies are going to change consumer behavior is going to change and one of them we've seen so far is that already Europeans are canceling their travel plans to the U.S. huge it's cratering that's in that this is just one segment right yep visitors from Western Europe who stayed at least one night in the U.S. fell by 17%.

Last year, international visitors spent more than $253 billion on U.S. travel and tourism related goods and services. So, yeah, some of these charts are wild. The FT did this post. Austria, Denmark, Germany, and it's just

crashing. Not surprisingly, travel and leisure stocks are getting hit really hard. Las Vegas Sands is down 18% just since Liberation Day, down 30% year-to-date. A lot of that's China. So, but the airlines are getting murdered, the hotels. But you wonder if, if the dollar keeps dropping, though, travel, because for years now,

it's been cheaper to go to Europe for Americans. Eventually, it's going to be, if the dollar keeps dropping, it's going to be cheaper for Europeans to come to America. Yeah. We got an email from a listener who has friends in Europe and they've traveled the world together and they got an email, these people from Germany, they wanted us to share. A, we've taken the decision not to travel to the U.S. The latest developments by the U.S. government's worry us and disappoint us too much.

The tariffs will seriously endanger the world's wealth. We all know that production of neither bikes nor phones nor toasters nor anything else. We'll move back from Asian to the states. The hourly rate of the average American simply makes it too expensive. Instead, the tariffs will hurt the world tremendously. The U.S. inflation will grow very strong, as many companies need to raise prices to cope with tariffs. Like us, if we don't do that, we will go out of business. Additionally, we read about situations in the German press where German tourists and

visitors are being detained in the U.S. despite having a valid reason of being the country and holding ESTA. All that together does not make us feel welcome as Germans, as Europeans are basically not Americans. I'm truly sorry. I wish we were not in the situation. I hope something happens in the U.S. Anyway, it goes on, but they're not coming. And they are, this is not an outlier. It's in the data. No, I think there's a lot of people outside of the U.S. who are looking at us and not happy. So here's my question, though. So Torson-Slock posted this chart of total foreign holdings by instruments. So he says, foreigners own 20% of our stock market, 30% of treasuries, and 30% of corporate bonds.

Could the big outflow, a decent outflow, just sort of cause a further sell-off in these things? Could this be a structural thing going forward? Where we've had a huge growth in foreign investors. Does it matter? I don't know. Sure. That's one of the, that's one of the unintended consequences questions, I guess. Hard to dismiss it. I think also would be impossible to say, like, yes, this will happen. Right. But one of the reasons. that international stocks of doing so poorly is because people in their own countries and selling them. So I do think this is the perfect encapsulation of why you diversify

internationally, right? This is all people were asking for the past five years. Why would I ever own international stocks? A situation like this, this is why? This data point just hit the tape. Tell me if this inspires confidence on up in. Wisenthal tweeted, the outlook for new orders from the New York Fed regional manufacturers literally hit the lowest level in the history of the survey. So it's hard to... Again, we'll see if actions match sentiment. That's the thing.

It's hard to imagine this not impacting earnings. I just don't see any way around it. Now, the degree and the magnitude is up for debate, obviously. Yeah, margin. I keep saying, companies are going to protect margins over workers. So I think the next thing down is corporations and companies are going to be protecting costs. And that probably means layoffs are coming.

Here's another thing. Ryan Peterson tweeted this. Met another U.S. manufacturer who has decided to produce their product overseas where they won't have to pay duties on component imports. We're going to see stuff like this, where you're going to see stories of companies just completely making everything overseas, and it's going to be the opposite. Again, these corporations, the plans are so haphazard that corporations are going to be able to figure out loopholes. They're going to be able to figure this out, even if it's going to be a painful transition period.

I worry more about the workers than I do about the corporations. this point. Same. The news flow is dizzy. It's really, really hard to predict or make sense. You know, it's a weird phenomenon that we're going to see. The data by definition, backward looking, doesn't matter. Like Bank of America reported, I think consumer spending was up 2% year over year in March, something like that. It's like, oh, great, the consumer is still spending, but it doesn't matter what they did in March. Right. So the next earnings season is not going to matter. The forward stuff's going to matter more than the past stuff. I would imagine that. I would imagine that stocks will not move on what they did in the previous quarter.

Now, earnings beats won't matter. It's almost always forward-looking data or forward guidance, but now more than ever. So Conner sent tweeted no way of really knowing when we're on the outside. Oh, I forgot to mention this. And like there was a report that the Fed would step in into the treasury market if they had to. No way of really knowing when we're on the outside, but I think it's hard to disentangle. Quote, Besson seems to have a little more influence and the VIX is around 40 in the bond market was disorderly last week.

Then he said, since April 2nd, there's been a shock to consumer business confidence, 10-year yields and mortgage rates are up about 30 basis points. Investment grade on high-yield credit spreads are wider. The aggregate tariff burns up a lot. All Volbex pauses are welcome, but getting back to four or two conditions would be hard. So Nick Tamareos responded, the question about who has influence is misframed. Trump is acting off of his instincts and his instincts may be guided or reinforced by different advisors at different times. When his instincts are hawkish, it said that his hawkish advisors are influential Navarro. When market concerns override, then Besson will appear to be influential.

And so it's just, it's difficult to predict what he's going to do because he acts off of instinct. I was reading Mark Rubenstein substack, net net interest, which is easily one of my favorites. And he was talking about the post was about the bond market and the James Carville quote that went around. Right. From Bill Clinton. So it's a really, really good post. So he grabbed the quote from the art of the deal where Trump said about the way that he behaves. most people are surprised by the way I work.

I play it very loose. I don't carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you've got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops. And it's difficult to run the country that way. Well, especially a trade policy where businesses are literally hanging on all the way.

Yeah, it's. So, Ben, you mentioned earlier, like, there's not. All right. So there's obviously parts of conversations that are political. How could it not be? But there's a big difference between conversations where the politics bleed in versus like a partisan conversation. And I think what you were talking about is there's not really a pro-tariff economist or a legitimate pro-tariff economist. This is nothing to do with red or blue.

Ronald Reagan was against tariffs. George W. Bush was against tariffs. Milton Friedman is like the father of Republican economics. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing. This is a Donald Trump thing. There's a big difference. there. Right, right. Yeah. So, Nasim Taleb tweeted, give credit where credit is due. True, economists know little about Tala risk and finance, but they understand trade, and I've

been studying it for the past 400 years. So Matt Darling, we tweeted and said, you know it's bad when Taleb starts saying economists have a point. It is kind of funny that during the election, people said economists are part of the problem, and now economists are part of the solution. It all comes full circle, I guess. Another part of this is, like, what does the Fed do? Because we got an inflation print that went negative last month, no? So here's the thing. I was going to talk about this later.

If you look at the inflation data coming down, if they would have just not done any of this other tariff stuff, the Fed would be cutting and interest rates would be falling right now. So they say that I totally believe that because no one cared about the inflation print because, again, it's past. People don't remember about the future. but inflation data keeps coming in much, much softer than expected, that would have been

very good for the Fed to say, all right, we're going to keep cutting. And I'm guessing bond yields and mortgage rates would be much lower than they are now. Yeah. Problem is, though, we've got the consumers expected change in inflation rates. The highest reading since 1981, it's up, they expect 6.7%. Now, again, I don't know if this is going to be accurate, but people certainly believe. it is. And it's funny, like, what, what are the, what are the, what are the, some of the order is going to look like from the month of, of April and March? People front running the

tariffs. The data is already said retail, retail sales were higher because people are. The data is, the data's going to look very weird. All right, so a lot of consumer sentiment stuff. Tim Murayos tweeted, consumer sentiment amongst self-identified independence is now lower than it was at the low point of Biden's presidency when gas prices and inflation were soaring. Toys and Slack had a bunch of sentiment data. Consumer sentiment families with income and greater than 100,000 or less, both dropping like a stone. 12-month economic expectations in terms of what are they expecting for unemployment is spiking. Hey, listen, people usually don't admit when they're wrong. I think my one prediction in after the election was consumer

sentiment would fly. I think that's wrong. Okay, hand up. Well, it was right at the time. I know. People were very excited. Record high share of consumers think business conditions are worsening. Significant decline in household income expectations. So months and months ago, we were like, what is going to, what could change consumer behavior? Because ultimately, we drive the economy. 70% of GDP is consumers. And I said it has to be, it has to be a loss of job. So I still think that this stuff is super as concerning because people's expectations can

change their habits, but I think if they don't lose their job, they're going to continue to spend, albeit at a lower level. I did not witness people reining in their spending on my spring break last week. There was, places were full, people were spending, but you're right, if we start to see a bunch of layoff announcements, and I don't, if the tariffs remain this high, I don't see how we don't see that, where companies just say, no, no, no, we're not going to take a hit to margins. We're going to cut costs mercilessly to survive this new reality. But the question is, all right, so how much, how much, or how?

How much margins are they, how much margin impact are they going to take? How much are they going to pass on to consumers? And how many people are they going to lay off? A lot of unknowns. No and unknowns. I'm guessing the latter two are the things that are going to be the most impacted. They're not going to want to take much of a hit-to-margin. But there's going to be certain companies out who say, I can't increase cost as much

to my product. I think everybody's preference in the real world should be let's let the companies eat it. But unfortunately, we know that's not how it goes. That won't happen. margins increased during 9% inflation in 2022. Let's talk about the stock market. Let's do it.

I looked at the best days ever. I have a list for a keep of the best days and the worst days in a folder. And yeah, I do this. You collect bad days and good days. I've been having a lot of bad days lately. So the best days ever, this was the 10th best day since 1928, as far as I could see. That was April 9, 2025. Yeah, up 9.5%.

By the other, for the NASDAQ, the NASDAQ, it was the second best day ever. Okay, that makes sense, which goes back to, what, 1970? So the other days in this list, though, are 1929, 1930. It's all 1930s in 2008, which I thought we had one of them in 2020, but I guess it was just 9% or so. So take it for what it's worth, these weren't, I guess the 1933 ones were close to a bottom. Obviously, the other ones weren't. We've talked about this before, volatility clusters during a down market. So that that update didn't signal like, this is it, it's over.

but this other one is crazy too so Sherwood I think this is Luke Cabo looked at the range of sessions from like the low to the high like what was the lowest point of the day and what was the highest point in the day and this one is up there

and most of them are now on this list I think this goes back to the 80s 2008-ish and that was a crazy so we were actually down 70 basis points at one point to start the day and finished up 10%.

These ranges are crazy and to your point About the panic, we're not going to see, I would assume, unless the bond market completely eats it, this kind of panic again. We should have mentioned this chart earlier. This is Bank of America, Global Fund Manager survey. It's a record number of global investors intended to cut U.S. equities record. Will we see it, though? Yeah, that's very quick.

This is, again, this is saying what they think they're going to do, not what they are going to do. Well, because what if, what if stock stage a great rally and they just missed their opportunity? Because look at how far people stayed underweight in 2022 through 2023. Yeah, honestly, this chart, not poo-pooing it, but it looks very noisy. That's my, yes. Again, I think this is people telling, you have to watch what they say now what they, or what they do now what they say. All right. So let's, let's do some data.

Now, when you're looking at, like, technical damage, there's a million different stats that you could cite to, defend whatever point you're trying to make, okay? So I don't want to say, like, take this as gospel, the end I'll be all, but because it's just one data point, but I think it's important. So Chartkids showed that on Trump tariff pause day, 98.2% of the S&P 500 stocks advanced on the day. He looked back since 1990. It's only happened 15 other times.

If you go out six months, the win rate is 100%. And what that means is basically you can only get a day like that after a washout, right? So intuitively, it makes sense. The word everyone likes to use is capitulation. I'm looking for capitulation and maybe we had it before then, right? You know, the movie industry was survived till 25. That was the mantra during the writer strike. My name mantra for the stock market this year is get fixed by 26.

Okay. because there is probably going to be a lot more volatility in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Ryan Dietrich tweeted a chart, a table, excuse me, that show is that big gains tend to lead to much higher prices. So he's looking at days where the SEP 500 gains 5%. And what happens next? One month, three months, six months, 12 months. And 12 months later, it's higher 91% of the time. problem is between now and then, at least historically, and this is mostly 2008, so again, take

it with a grain of salt. But there can be a lot of red between now and 12 months. So you got to survive. All right. Let's look a little further out. I did this yesterday with Chartkid, and I said, so I looked at this and there's, for some reason, there's been a lot of historical 19% drawdowns. Oh, yeah. I went to ask you this. Near bare markets. I meant to, and I was mildly annoyed because I was saving this for the show in the Michael Santoli said it on TV. 19% drawdown. So was my call for avoiding a bare market right?

I'm joking. This was a bear market. Yeah. And the funny thing. So the one in 2018 was 19.8% and you and I at the time said, no, no, no, this is a bear market. Of course it was. And so was this.

And so there's other ones in 2011. There was one in 1988, 1988, 1998. And then 1976 to 1978. So this has happened a lot of times. And I don't know why. Yeah, does a 21% downturn? feel worse than a 19? Of course not. It can be a break. It's a bare market. So I looked at, okay, and I wanted to keep this simple. Let's say at the end of a month, you go back,

I went back to 1950. You look and you're down 15%, which is kind of in the range we're at. You know, we were down 19 at the worst. Now we're down 12 or something. So I said, if you look at the end of the month since 1915, you were down 15%. What happens if you buy? Okay? Probably made money. I wanted to use the end of the month because I wanted to use total returns. I'm not a price return guy. So I look at the average returns. One year later, you're up on average 15% and you're positive 83% of the time. Three years later, you're up over 40% and you're positive 96% of the time.

Five years, it's a 66% of the game and you're positive 92% of the time. Over 10-year period, if you bought when the stocks were down 15%, and a lot of times they went down way worse than that, of course, right? 100% of the time they were positive and you were up almost 200% in total on average. Ben, I see this data, and we're role playing, okay? I'm a nervous investor Ben don't show me this

it's different this time do you not see what's happening do you not see that the global order is the guts are being ripped out we're hurting our friends and making deals with our enemies or whatever a nervous person would say

what would you say to the person that says it it is really and truly I know I know you can't say this but it is different this time Hey, listen, I got a lot of comments from people saying, people felt betrayed by me because I actually put out some negative sentiment in the past couple of weeks. People saying, wait, when did Ben turn into a perma bear? And the thing is, I think there's a difference. Wait, somebody called you a perma bear or did you just make that up?

No, yes, I'm sure they were being tongue-in-cheek, but there was people who were saying, when did Ben turn so bearish? I think we've been trying to be realistic about this whole thing and tell it like it is. And if you look at the history of all markets, hubris has often brought down markets before. There's been many instances of this where hubris and overconfidence in people's positioning. I've studied this.

My whole Don't Fall for a book was about the people who have brought down industry because they took their ideas too far. So this kind of thing can and will happen. But that doesn't mean that you give up on the stock market for the long term. That's two different ideas in your head. had competing with one another. And cognitive dissonance says you get rid of one of those ideas,

but I still can hold on to both of them. That. All right. That didn't inspire confidence. Ben, the stock market has fallen and risk and risk off assets aren't working. Stocks are falling, interest rates are going up. It's different this time. It's going to get much worse. What are you talking about? How is it not different this time? I don't think about all the stuff that the stock market has been through over the past 100 years. World wars, high inflation, low inflation, stagflation. Discraced presidents. It's still up 10% a year.

How's that? Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. I mean, this is why it's called the risk premium. Yeah. Right? Stocks return more than bonds and cash because they're risky. You have to eat it sometimes.

And again, I have more faith in corporations than I do in any other institution in this country right now. They'll figure out eventually, even if there's some pain in the meantime. And guess what? To your point. there's been a lot of really nice returns and sometimes you have to eat it on the other side of it. How about this? If somebody were to ask you this question, all right, you want to get out of the market. I understand. You're scared. I'm scared. We're all scared. What would be your plan for getting back in? Okay. Well, let's go. Wait, hold on. Hold on. I'm not done.

Okay. So the person would, would answer something nonsensical. No offense to anyone, myself included, because what would be your plan for getting back in? I'm going to get back in the dust That's not how it works. I'm going to get back in when we fall 10%. What if we don't? So if we can accept that getting back in is probably a fool's errand, that you're probably not going to be able to time the market, getting out and getting back in at the right time,

what is a better strategy or what is more realistic, that you can survive and endure some of the pain? Well, how about it? Or that you're going to nail the reentry. And when you frame it that way, it's like, come on. How about this? Like, to people that want to do something, How about a change in allocation?

So Christine Benz did this thing, and she said, like, maybe you should sell some of your stocks. And her point was, especially if you are either nervous or you're just older and don't have as much time, she's saying, put aside the young people. You should be on your hands and knees praying for this because you can buy at lower prices. But she says if you haven't built up enough short-term reserves because you've been focusing on your risk tolerance inside of your risk capacity, your retirement plan is that much more vulnerable to sequence of return risk. That means if you encounter a lousy equity market early on in retirement and need to spend from that declining equity portfolio, that much less of your investments will be left to recover when stocks finally do. So she's saying, listen, even with this current downturn, the stock market in the U.S. is still up 15% per year for the last five years.

If you don't have enough liquid reserves, like take your allocation down if you're that nervous. Go from 90-10 to a 70-30 or a 60-40 or a 50-50. I'm 1 million percent on board with that. if this is really and truly too much for you, that means that if we do roll over, you're probably going to panic. And so if you have to get yourself right to do what you got to do, absolutely. Yeah. But yeah, you're talking, we're having different conversations.

You're talking about going from all stocks to all cash and then trying to get back in. Correct. If you don't have rules in place to guide your actions there, you're toast. Correct. It's never going to work. Okay. I love this tweet from Balchunas. He said, market timing will never die because humans, but man, it took one on the chin today.

And he was talking about the day when the market rallied 10%. I have to imagine a lot more people just joined Vanguard's not changing course, regardless of what I see or here at camp. COVID rallied to the same thing, which could be why the inflows seemed to get stronger with each new crisis. I think we would honestly... Going on your intuition, I'm scared, I'm out, I'm, oh my God, I'm missing a back. It doesn't work.

I think we would need like a seriously a five-year bear market to get people to change their behavior. And even then, it would only be on the fringes. I don't think people are going to change their behavior because so much of it is automated today. I just don't see this big shift where everyone just decides to get out and, you know, I'm done. I don't see that happening. I mean, here's how it happens. We have like a five-year 60%.

Yeah, it would have to be really, because that's what happened after 2008. That was a whatever, two and a half, three-year thing. And there was a lot, there was a decent amount of people who gave up on stocks. for a long time and regretted it, obviously. Let's move into crypto. Okay. We haven't talked about crypto much.

So, one of the soccer dads, I've heard him, he was a late comer to being a crypto evangelist, and he went down the podcast hole, and now he's all in. I hear him talking to the other dads all the time, about Bitcoin. He's a big Bitcoin guy.

And I kind of stay in the shadows on that. I don't want to get into these conversations. My only thing I wanted to say was, aren't you a little late to be, I feel like the evangelists, Like, you either were one and have stayed or you, it's a little late for that. But crypto people would say you're never too late. So one of the other dads said, listen, this guy's been talking to me forever about Bitcoin.

Like, I think he kind of talked me into it. And he says, I think I'm more on your line, Ben, of being more reasonable, boring, long-term investor. What do you think? What would you tell a friend in that situation who just now is getting into Bitcoin and crypto? In terms of buying it? Yeah. like I would I would say I would say it's super volatile I still think that it has the potential for asymmetric risk reward like I don't think that the stock market is going to gain

3x over the next 36 months I'm not saying that crypto is or will but it can and so if somebody wanted to have exposure to crypto today and they had they're starting from zero I would explain to them that it is super volatile, make you puke assets or probably dollar cost average if you want to get in. That makes sense. The one thing I wanted to say is that like the life-changing money is probably already made for most people.

Yeah, it's not going to go from zero to $85,000 again or wherever it is. Even if crypto does 10% a year over the next five years, that takes it to $220,000 or something, I think if, I know the expectations are way, way higher than people think, but even if the crypto industry did the stock market over the next five or ten years, I think that's a win. I know people in crypto would not think so, but I would think so.

So I think Hogan tweeted this, that crypto was outperformed the S&P for the last like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all the twelfth. Anyway, but it's been, it's been a brutally volatile asset. So if you are just coming into it, like, you ought to expect, you ought to expect some pain. Thinking about the volatility, I think after watching the crazy back and forth in the stock market, I would never do this, but I understand really. estate investing more and more each year. Just the fact that the volatility is completely laundered out of the system. And there's obviously other risks there. And I'm speaking mostly of residential real estate investing, not commercial, because obviously there's parts of that that get hit. You can't overstate how brutal it is seeing prices on the screen every day,

like for your mental health. And I know you can see the Zestimits and stuff, but I understand that side. It's just not for me, but I understand it more. And there's obviously other risks. Yeah, but wait, hold on. Who's checking the Zestimate every day? Well, true. But, and there's other risks, because I had a friend who said, listen, I was trying to build out a portfolio of rental properties. And I bought one in 2021, and the plan was to then refinance it and then buy another one, and then refinance that and buy another one. And then when rates shot up, my whole plan got, now what? I can't do that anymore. And so there's other risks to the investing in that space. But I do get it. So mortgage rates are back above 7% now, which is crazy. So that is housing just going to be.

be stuck for for a very long time. I don't know. I mean, if the economy softens, you would expect interest rates to come down. I don't know. I do think so I was, we were in Marco Island for spring break, and there was houses for sale everywhere, for sale signs all over a place. And I looked up on Zillow and tons of price cuts. I do think in certain areas, it's going to be kind of a buyer's market. And if you could, if you could stomach the 7% mortgage rates for now and say, listen, they're going to come down. If you really think the economy's going to crash, guess what?

Mortgages are coming down. I do think you could probably be in a very good negotiating position with people this spring. I think it's probably not a bad time. Are your wheels turning? No. I did see myself more of retiring in Florida, though.

The older I get, the more times I go there. It's also funny because you see the, it makes sense why the houses are more expensive there. They're building a bunch of houses. around there because they're knocking down these old houses and building new ones. And they're building them with cinder blocks as opposed to framing them because of the tornadoes, you know? So, of course the houses are more expensive. All right.

This is kind of nonsensical. The University of Michigan respondents making unsolicited comments on government economic policy news. The percentage of respondents making negative comments is we've never seen a chart like this. We've never seen a spike in this data set, I should say. I think it's funny that they actually track this for this long. Right? Unsolicited negative comments on government economic policy news. I guess they track everything. But it goes back to 1995. All right. This one was floating around. I thought it was interesting. So this is for unusual whales. 60% of general admission ticket buyers at Coachella used

buy now pay later to finance for tickets per billboard. People love to dunk on the buy now pay later stuff. It's a better financing option. It's better than a credit card. I get it. But let's say, yeah, let's say if you change this to 60% of people used credit cards to other tickets. I use my credit card for everything. What if young people are just, using these as credit cards. They probably are, right? Yeah. So this is kind of a non-issue to me. I know people love to dunk on it and say, oh my gosh, people are borrowing money

to, no, they're using the system to not pay it right away, right? I think so. Are you still a Howard Stern listener? I can't remember. I know you've always been a big fan. Do you have time to listen to him anymore? So yeah, so

Howard Stern is, it was a very, very important person to me. like I grew up watching on E back when my mother told me to turn him off in the early 90s. That's how I got to know Howard's turn. I would watch the replays on E at night.

And I was a daily listener. Well, I listened when he was on the fan, not a fan, on K Rock. But I got serious when he went over, what year was at, 07? I don't remember exactly. That was huge news. And I listened every day

until probably 2019. And I let my subscription lapse, which I have very mixed feelings about. Like, I feel bad that I don't listen anymore, but, like, I listened for almost 20 years. He's, he's out of stories. Yeah, you hate to run. Yeah. But I do love Howard. I asked that because there was, he had Mike White, the creator of White Lotus on, and White went to town on a lot of people, and the Hollywood Reporter did this piece that kind of pulled

out the best quotes. And it was funny, because he was mad at people for nitpicking the show. Season 3, which I get why people nitpicked. There was a lot of stuff to nitpick. I've never been a big fan of nitpicking TV shows and movies. Like, I understand that these things aren't real, and I'm okay to suspend reality. Hang on. Didn't you nitpick last week?

Or was I thinking about somebody else? I'm sure what did I nitpick. Weren't you nitpicking how unrealistic it was, the ending? White Lotus? No, I never did that. You didn't? I'm going to check the tape. I enjoyed it.

Okay. I think I said there's stuff you could nitpick, but I liked it. I still enjoyed season three, even though it wasn't as good as the others. I'm so tired of complainers. You're so right. Like, I think that White Lotus became so big that people like, yeah, it wasn't as guinea. Well, there's a lot of people these days who their whole personality is,

I hate the thing that's popular. So I get that. So I would agree with the overall sentiment that this was easily the weakest of the three seasons. I enjoyed the hell out of it, even if there are plenty of nits to pick. But I was thinking about this because it was just great characters. That's the thing I like about. it. At Passover, somebody in my family. So there's a couple. So what are you doing the situation? You know when like when a couple is so united on the show that you disagree with? Like obviously

you're not going to like fight who gives a shit. You know what I mean? You're not going to like, you just have to bite your tongue. My wife and I run to this all the time. Yeah. So the two of them were just piling on White Lotus. It was so predictable. This never could have happened. Right. And I'm just like, it's an awkward situation. I wanted to be like, I liked it. But I'm not going to, like, go back and forth. I don't care. Fine. I didn't like it. So anyway, the reason I put this in here is because Stern asked him, like, how much money you're going to make? Because he's renegotiating.

And this is interesting. He said, we are renegotiating right now. I'm definitely curious to find out what the amount is. Because, obviously, it's a huge show. He could ask for a lot of money. He said, I feel like I have financial security for sure. At a certain point of money, you wonder, is this going to make me worse? Is having more money just going to make me more dysfunctional?

I feel like, if you're thinking that way, you're probably going to be okay. Yeah, agreed. Right? So people who don't think that way that are going to probably be in for problems. I was listening to The Midnight Boys yesterday talk about the premiere of The Last of Us. And this blew my face. Which show do you think is more popular, White Lotus or Last of Us? Last of Us.

Why would you say that? Because I set it up that way? No, because it's a zombie thing. People love zombies. Okay. Well, in your personal life. Oh, yeah. White Lotus is more meaningful in my personal life, but I could see last, because it was a big

video game phenomenon. So Last of Us has twice as many viewers as White Lotus. Okay. I'm going to expect of that. Twice as many. Well, it was like not a lot of people watch Succession either. All right, I have some further travel thoughts to get off my chest here. I taught my kids how to play shuffleboard.

They had this little park right down the street from us, community center. You could get the shuffleboard stuff, and my kids loved it. Good fun. And there was a botchy ball court next to it. In retirement, that's going to be my thing. I'm going to be a shuffleboard player and Batchie Ball. Those are my two drinking. Like, a drinking game has to be where you can hold the drink in one hand

and still play the game in the other. I don't know from Bachi Ball. Is that shuffled ball? No, no, no. Bachi ball is where you throw the little ball and then you have the other big ones that you throw to try to get closest to it. It's an Italian game.

Okay. Great. You never played it before? I don't think so. I'm still on the, I think I've mentioned this before, but having the Airbnb VRBO thing with kids is so much easier because one of the nights, too much ice cream, in the middle of the night. I'm sitting there. I'm about ready to go to bed. I think I'm watching

the markets on my phone. And my daughter Kate comes out and says, I threw up. And I walk in her bedroom and it's literally chocolate ice cream. And she's in the bed with my other daughter because they had to share a big king bed together. And luckily, you know, our house had extra sheets. I threw in the wash, put the new sheets on, back to bed in 15 minutes, no problem. If that would have happened at a hotel, like how long would the process have taken, right? And the whole room would have stunk forever. Yeah. One other thing. So, it's a new big thing these days I guess it's not new new but

it's just very low calorie beeros and Michael of Ultra was the one that really set this in motion so I got a 12 pack of Corona Premium which is their they have Corona Light and Corona Premium which are basically the same thing but Corona Premium is their Mikkel of Ultra and it just got me thinking like where did they come up

with the name Premium and I'm sure it was just someone in the marketing team said like they put it in a chat GPT like what's a word that's kind of similar to Ultra but not Ultra right they just Corona Premium is Just someone, give us a word that's kind of like ultra, but not really ultra. And that's what gave it.

It's an okay beer. One more thing. I think I lost a step. I'm sure you did. Remember me and you did a race a couple years ago? My daughter... I was faster than you thought. You were.

But I think I've lost a step because my daughter plays soccer. And she's kind of like me where I never had breakaway speed. I was always quick, right? I'd probably do better at the shuttle run than a 40-yard dash. My daughter's the same way in soccer. She's quick, but she's not like breakaway. take away speed fast. So she wanted to go for a jog to stay in shape. And at the end, I always tell her the last block, we got to go all out until we're done until we get to the mailbox,

right? You sprint until the end. And she took me off the line. I had to like try hard to come get, I was like ready to go. And she beat me off the line. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm losing a step. I can't believe it. I don't feel like I am, but I haven't seen am. I mean, you're basically mid 40s. I am mid 40s. I'm going to be 44 this year. So, all right. You had a good run. Recommendations. you got um i am like all in on apple tv all the sudden i quality i binge watch seference which was a massive massive mistake that show is the least bingeable most meant to be watched week to week show on tv oh that makes sense actually you want to like think about it a little bit

and let it set in dude i had no idea what was going on not a fucking clue honestly i did you like the finale though Yeah, I love the finale. I listened to podcast recaps, and I still didn't know what was going on. Yeah, it was... That is a week-to-week show. I really, I royally bungled that one. The finale where the iny and the Audi are talking to themselves through video was so... Really good.

Yes, very good. All right. Did you watch your friends and neighbors with John Hamm? I didn't start yet, but it's on my list. So the premise of the show is he's a rich guy, hedge fund, something, something. Geez, rich guys are having a moment, aren't they? But things go south He loses his job

And he's got to keep up And he starts robbing his neighbors Okay All right I did see the preview Good premise I'm a John Hamm fan So I've stuck with him since Madman

Dope Thief continues to be great The main actor is Phenomenal Fonomenal Forget his name But it's a lot of fun Also on Apple And then lastly

I know you're not as into it as I am I don't care that it's predictable And it's curb in Hollywood I mean what could be better Than Curban Hollywood I fucking love the studio I'm really really really enjoying it You're all in.

I'm surprised you like that one as much as you do, but I guess I can see. Well, I love Hollywood. True. So is it a bladed knockoff of curb? Yeah, I don't care. I'm in. I don't know if we spoke about the pit. How phenomenal was the pit?

All right. I was going to talk about this. Two finale. The pit was great. I thought the finale landed the plane and still left some, like, I want to see season two. It's just, it's such a high quality show. And it's not like these new shows where the whole point of it is you're waiting for this big thing to happen at the end. it was it was not so much the it was the middle of the show the meat of it that like the stuff

with the shooter at the concert was so well done and you you think about it from some completely different angle and like I never thought about like the hospital having to deal with this and it was it was so good you know just no wiley doesn't win an Emmy then I think he's gonna win all they're going to win all the awards uh we mentioned earlier in the show survived till 25 I'm thinking like man I am just loaded with TV shows this is this is it yeah like it wasn't it wasn't the movies because the movies have been have been asked this year. Oh, it's backloaded.

You're right. They all came out. But I'm wondering, like, because my friend's like, hey, what are you watching? I'm watching a million things. I don't think I've ever been this busy with TV, but it is because of the writer's strike. It was all. Oh, yeah.

So we also finished 1923 and I told you I really liked the season. The finale stunk. It was just, me, my ever both like, wait, that's how it was like, it was a series finale. Oh, serious. But you know what? Those are like, those Taylor Shetons shows are like very low stakes. You know what I mean?

Like, they're not serious. I just couldn't believe the ending. kind of like, wait, that's how they ended it? Oh, so I didn't love it. Okay, I haven't done any movie recommendations, so I got two with my new scoring system. So I watched a complete unknown on my plane, on one of my plane rides.

That's the Bob Dylan, one of Timmythe's Chalameh. I thought it was really boring. His performance was good, but not nearly as good as Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Cash. I think that's like the Alzheimer. For the, like, there's the Johnny Cash movie, the Ray Charles won with Jamie Fox, and then this, and I think this one is easily in third from those movies.

Like, it was just kind of a boring movie, and people said his performance, was, like, transcendent. I thought, like, he sounded like Bob Dylan. I'm not a huge Bob Dylan fan. I'm kind of a take it or leave it with him. Like, hey, it's got some good songs. Yeah.

I know people love him. So that's, like, a 5.9 for me. Okay? My wife and I watch Civil War on Apple or on HBO. I know you watched that a long time ago. We finally watched it. That's like a 6-4 to me. Okay.

But wait. That is the one of, like, the ultimate examples of meant to be seen in the theater. Because hearing the bullets, whizzing and seeing that on the big screen was an experience. If I saw that on the couch, huge step down. I mean, I've heard people complain about the movie. I heard people that liked it and people hated it. Like the fact that they didn't really explain what was going on. They didn't give us any like even breadcrum of why is this happening. Yeah, I wasn't, I enjoyed the shit out of it. Do you, did you like it? I liked it. It was, it left like, it was kind of one of those

like, oh, that's pretty good. Not great, not bad. So I, six point four. Okay. That's all I got. All right. What a week. What a week. What a week. week. We're going to, we're going to make it. It could be some bumps and bruises. Economy was softening coming into the liberation day. You're going to soften further. But we have faith. We have faith in the American people. Do we not? Sometimes to be a long-term investor you have to survive the short term. That's my talking point. Okay. Animal spirits at the compound news.com. Personal emails, always personal responses. Thank you very much for listening for sticking with us.

We'll see you next time.