Animal Spirits Podcast - The Envy of the World (EP.383)

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

On episode 383 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: stock market return expectations for the next decade, why there's no euphoria, Nvidia is a unicorn, the American economy is unstoppable, millennials are richer than expected, sports gambling is coming for ETFs, how to buy a house right now, Netflix won, coaching youth sports, and much more! This episode is sponsored by YCharts and CME Group. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only). Sign up at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits Access CME Group's valuable educational materials and trading tools and learn more about what adding futures can do for you at: cmegroup.com/equityfutures If you're interested in applying for a job with Ritholtz Wealth, visit: http://careers.ritholtzwealth.com/ 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 Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at YCharts. Michael, I was on Y charts this morning. You know what one of my simplest, the simplest features is for me? I'm thinking of looking something up and I'm doing some initial research. Just the search function. You type in whatever you're thinking about looking for and a million different things pop up. And you can say, oh, I want to look at that. No, I actually meant that.

Just a Trevor Trove of information on Y charts. Did you say, you said Trevor Trove? Treasure Trove? I like it. No, let's stick with it. It's a Trevor Trove. That's a new one. I did reach out to a friend named Trevor recently, so tons of stuff.

My dashboard is great. I got the stock market dashboard, fixed income, asset classes, U.S. economy, real estate. Not to brag, but I'm, I know my dashboard puts yours to shame. That's possible. What do you have that's better than me, though, on yours? I've got my 52-week high list, the low list, biggest gainers. I got it by asset class, my sector. Don't worry about what I got.

I have a lot more, too, but it's proprietary. Okay. If you want to get your proprietary dashboard from whitecharts, go to whitecharts.com, tell my animal spirit sent to you 20% off when you sign up for your first subscription with a company, whitecharts.com. When the rest of the markets slow down, the futures market keeps moving. Did you know that CME Group SMP 500 and NASDAQ 100 futures trade nearly 24 hours with great liquidity? In the ETF markets, volume and liquidity lessons after 4 p.m. until the next morning, But with futures, you get trading opportunities both day and night.

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management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirist with Michael and Ben. Let's do a little plug here. You know what? I want to talk before we do this plug. I want to do something that I don't think we do this

a lot, but this is just a podcast thing I noticed. If you talk about anyone, a brand, a person in your life, any podcast, you have to say shout out. Hey, shout out

to my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, right? Shout out to that guy who said this. I think we need a new term for the shoutout. I'm sick of the shoutout on podcast, right?

That's what everyone does. Everyone, right? I mean, it's a, it's a guy thing for sure. I didn't know what we were doing with shoutouts, but shout out to the guy at every well, who has a ponytail? Ah.

True ponytail or a wrette? So that guy's always on the dance floor first, probably? I was out of wedding over the weekend, and there were several ponytails, but at every wedding there's at least one older gentleman, not casting judgments, but there's at least one older gentleman with ponytail, and I respect the hello to that guy.

So shout out to him. He's sweating on the dance floor at some point. Yeah, of course. Right? Okay. Here's a plug. Here's a shout out to the unlock. This is our advisor-only YouTube and YouTube channel

and newsletter. So it's advisor unlock.com. We wanted to create content that's specifically for advisors, because we know that's a big part of our audience, but we know it's not for everyone. Yep. Right? So we're going to be ramping up the content there.

Josh did a talk with Michael Kitses recently. You're going to be talking to Meb Faber coming up. I talked to Sruly Associates, Sean O'Brien. We're leaning in. Yeah, we're leaning in. Lots of interesting stuff for advisors there. We're going to be sharing stats and data and research. It's going to be fun.

So check out advisorunlock.com. if you're a financial advisor and want to learn more. All right. Another plug. Sorry. It's a season of plugs. We have three financial advisors in California. It's not enough.

We need more. We are overwhelmed with the amount of people in the great state of California, which I'm in right now, actually, who want to work with us, and we need help. We need more advisors. If you're an advisor in California and you want to know, what it's like to be an employee at Ridholt's wealth management, please, hiring at writholdswealth.com. And in fact, there's actually, you know what? I'll do you one better. I'll make it easier. Link in the show notes. Because there's another role that we need. This one's a little

bit more specific. We are, our tax team is ramping. We have one, two, three, four. Do we have five people on the tax team now? I think so, yes. Okay. We need more help. Everybody's in Philly. So again, a little bit of a more targeted pitch here. But if you are, If you are in tax or looking to get into tax, specifically, we're looking for operations help, but we're always looking for tax filers. I guess that's a CPA. Or what's the certification? I can't remember the certification outside the CPA.

Enrolled agent. We're looking for you. We need help. If you're in the state of Philadelphia, nope, the city of Philadelphia. Sorry. See, I do know my geography. The state of Pennsylvania, the city of Philadelphia, reach out, hit the link. We need your help.

We need more CPAs in the RIA industry. Yeah. It's true, right? Yeah. All right. On to the show. From Sam Rowe, friend of the show, we estimate the S&P 500 will deliver an annual... Eh, eh, eh, wait, whoa, whoa.

It's a via. It's a via, via. Yeah, well, yeah, this is via Goldman. I was getting that. Okay. So, from Goldman, Sam always, Sam has, Sam is the best aggregator of Wall Street research. Would you say that? Is that fair to say?

He has his finger on the pulse, so to speak. Great chart here. He has the distribution of returns from the SPN. So Goldman estimates the S&P will deliver a nominal return of three percent during the next 10 years, which is the seventh percentile. since 1930, roughly 1% on a real basis. I didn't get into, I don't think they get into what the whole reasoning behind this is,

that being their baseline. I don't know if it's, it's got to be mean reversion. Valuations, mean of version, yes. So, yeah, maybe this is more like the GMO style of things. So I decided to look at this, and I looked back and said, okay, how often does the S&P actually give a return of 3% or less annualized going historical?

We have the data from DFA going back to 1926. So I ran this. I created the initial chart, sent it to our chart kid, Listen, he's a young buck. He's got a ton of energy, but I beat him to this one. He said, I was going to create this chart, but you beat me to it. So I still got it, man. Even though a middle-aged guy.

You made this? You didn't make this. You didn't make this. I'm sorry, I made the chart. It told him, he'll format it for me. Okay, okay. Get it? So here's...

So I found 9% of the time we've had annual returns over a 10-year... I did rolling 10-year returns for the S&P on a monthly basis. 9% of the time, it's been 3% or less. But you can see the... the only times this actually happened are we're talking 1930s, Great Depression, 1970s, very small amount of time. It would have been worse if we did on an inflation-adjusted basis, but Goldman's is nominal. And then the great financial crisis. So the only time this has ever happened historically three times, it's basically been three of the worst economic

environments over a lifetime. So you would have to say, sure, mean reversion, but this would have to be probably some sort of financial crisis to cause this. So here's what's not going to happen. I think it's improbable that we would get 3% returns merely with low annual returns. It's, at least historically, and it's N equals two, but nevertheless, the idea that the stock market would just sort of meander and get 3% seems unlikely, it's like that happened in a period where there's a really bad bear market. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, there has to be a catalyst. Okay. So if I had to, if I had to guess, what would potentially be the thing that would cause the market to have this 3% return with a really nasty bear market in there? I would say it's the deficit. And I think that we... Are you saying this to the straight face or not? Straight face.

Straight face. Because you sound like my Twitter replies from last week. Straight face. Not that I think it's going to happen. I'm just guessing if there were to be a bad catalyst. And I think you and I and others who are dismissive of the deficit are dismissive for probably a good reason. It's like literally the people have been crying wolf.

It's the boy who cried wolf for 70 years people were worrying about the deficit. but it doesn't mean that there's not actual wolves. So I don't know how to handicap how dangerous the deficit exploding is. But so I'm not saying this is likely. In fact, I would say it's unlikely. But like, I don't know. If I had to guess, I would say, what would you guess? Like a meteor?

I don't know. Well, there just have to be some sort of financial crisis. And I don't see a financial crisis on the horizon that, like, that you could forecast. Well, how would you? By definition, how would you see a crisis coming? There were people who forecast. I guess the GFC. People forecasted the GFC crisis.

And a lot of people who forecast it had been forecasting the repeat of it ever since and hasn't happened. True. But, I mean, let's handicap. You're a probability guy. What's a percentage of the deficit and the federal debt actually leading a crisis in the next decade? I would say it's 10% maybe. It's pretty low for me. Oh, you think that's high.

I'd say that's pretty low. I've been giving betting odds. Like, I would say, like, oh, plus 790. A lot of our audience are not degenerate. So I'm going to convert the plus 790 talk into a percentage. So I would say, I don't know, 3%, like, I don't know. Is that reasonable? So that's very low.

So in that case, it would be plus, I'm making this up, plus 2,600. I don't know. Yeah, it seems unlikely. Yeah, so it means it would have to be something else. Remember, a couple weeks ago, you brought up the fact that the rolling tenure returns and five-year returns aren't that high historically. So I looked at this, this 13.4%, this is through the end of September, annual returns over the past 10 years, puts it ahead of like 62% of other returns in that period.

So it's in the top two-thirds. But not, it's not like this is like the screaming highest 10-year returns we've seen. It's just been pretty good. Here's another potential downside catalyst. AI just doesn't do what we think it's going to do. Like, that would do it, right? Or that could do it. Yeah.

Given how much market cap these companies command, if it doesn't bear the fruit that we think it might. The question is, like, let's assume this for whatever the reason. We're not going to guess what it is if this happened. But if we did have meaning of version for whatever reason, so what do you do about it? That's the thing. So one person is saying, well, you sell everything. You go to cash or whatever.

The logical person, me, would say you diversify. Because I agree. Maybe to your point, AI, the boom and bust, that's probably a much higher percent of risk. Even if we do get AI being everything everyone wants, we're going to get a bubble and a bust out of if it is. That's the bigger risk to me. say we're like 10 times more likely to have a bare market caused by an AI bubble than a deficit

blow up. So here's another one from Goldman that looks at the level of market concentration versus equal weight outperformance. I don't know if this is a form-fitting graph. I saw this talk floating around. What is this? All it shows is that as market concentration gets really high and then peaks, equal weight tends to outperform after that concentration happens.

And so I think this might be a little bit of torturing the data here, but I think the point probably stands that if you're so worried about market concentration being the risk, then you diversify into other factors. Equal weight, mid-caps, small-caps, value, quality, dividends, whatever it is. And I think that's the answer. If you're really that worried about low returns, that diversification is the answer. Uh-huh.

Probably not the answer everyone wants to hear, but that's the simple answer. question. Seeing all these charts and stuff, where's the euphoria? The economy remains pretty strong in a good place. The stock market has been going gangbusters for a couple of years now after we had the 2022 bear market. Sure, there's some speculate. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of euphoria. Invita? Yeah, I guess invidia. But has like the election year thing just totally drown out any ability for people to have euphoria? Like, it doesn't seem like anyone is, like, cheerleading the stock market right now. Well, because, yeah, the election is sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

Understandably so. Okay. I just, I guess with a great run we've been having the stock market, it just doesn't feel like everyone's like, all right, everyone in the boat. Also, people don't, like, we don't cheerlead bare market, bull markets anymore, nor should we, right? Like, I don't think it's responsible to like, like, I think it's probably a good thing that there's still a wall of worry.

That's true. Even in the 2021 meme stock craze, I don't know, everyone knew it wasn't going to last. It wasn't like everyone was like, all right, this is the, I feel like, I feel like, that is another thing that died with the 90s. The dot-com bubble when everyone was feeling so good about the markets and everyone was just rip-roaring. Yeah, I think that's over. I don't think we can have that.

You can have the speculation and the high valuations and such, but I don't think you can have everyone cheerleading it, right? Which is good, because that was not good. Yeah, not really. Speaking of the video, here's your, so this is your euphoria. Great tweet. Well, well, I think, Or maybe not.

No, I think this is fundamental value. I think there's like fundamental justification. One year ago, this is from Beth Kending. One year ago, NVIDIA was estimated to generate $79 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2025. Now, NVIDIA is estimated to generate more than $125 billion. So fundamentals have been outpacing even the enormous share gains, or at least keeping up, whatever. Like, very impressive. This company is a unicorn.

It's a one of one. It's a one of one. Here's another great shot. I forget who this was V of you. Oh, this is also Goldman. Goldman Sachs estimates Microsoft is scaling. What's CY25? Something year, is that current year?

I don't know. Got me. Okay. Microsoft is scaling 25 and 26 CAPX faster than hyperscalor competitors. So they're estimating Microsoft to spend, what was the tweet here? Damn it, I didn't put this in the notes. I don't know, like $85 billion in a few years. spend on cap x what so but isn't the you know how after the fact there's always that that's that's

that's what the euphoria is it's in corporate balance sheets corporate spending which is funny because they're they're just investing in their businesses that's the euphoria tech tech companies are investing in research and development or whatever I don't know that sounds pretty good to me I guess one of the things is after the fact then when a bubble burst or whatever the bull market ends People always look back for like, this was a sign. Remember, it was like American mortgage or something. There was some mortgage company that reported earnings like 2006. Everyone was like, oh, that was it.

That was a community in the coal mine. Isn't it this time whenever this happens, whenever the bull market ends, it's going to be an Nvidia earnings release or something? And everyone will look back and go, that was it, right? That was the thing. I'll tell you where the euphoria is. Oh, calendar year. Duncan sent us to it.

It's calendar year. Can't fool us. Oh, my God. That's embarrassing. Same on us. Okay, listen. Imperfect. We're not perfect.

bald, so clearly not perfect. Here's where the euphoria is. Speaking of plugs. Ah, but I'm... Here's the euphoria is. I asked my ticket broker this morning. I said I shut up to ask. How much does it get into the World Series?

$1,500. That's a starting rate. I said, okay, I'll probably get to set this one out. I don't know. I mean, that's... That's wild. Do you care about baseball? I can't see you being a baseball guy. Not really.

So I grew up, I grew up a big Yankees fan, and I just got bored with it. I stopped watching probably in, like, 2010, 2011. But, like, it's a World Series. I want to go. I mean, I grew up a Yankees fan. Yeah. But that's a bit steep. All right.

So remember when we were talking about how we were just kind of guessing, hey, once the Fed cuts rates, is the stock market going to be a sell the news moment? Is that too obvious? I think we kind of had that discussion, just laying it out there and just talking about it. It's kind of funny that rates were the sell the news and it cuts. I think Joe Wisenthal created this. It's mortgage rates when the Fed cut. I think you could put any rates on here.

Yeah. Treasury is whatever. The Fed cut mortgage rates went up. I think mortgage rates are back at 7% almost, which is just insane to me. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But the rates were the sell-the-news moment. Yeah. So let's say the Fed does get back to people keep talking about the neutral rate is 3%.

I don't know if it's just going to be Fed's going to find everything easy and it's going to get back to 3% and everything's fine. Or they just have to overshoot. But let's say 3% is the number. Doesn't it just make sense that the tenure should be at four or four and a half, whatever it is? Doesn't that make sense historically? It does. But on that topic, I was, so the past couple of weeks, we were talking about like a really nice bullish backdrop for repudies. I'm taking that off the table now.

Oh, okay. That was quick. Listen, when the facts change. Wait, why? What's changed? The very quick acceleration in the tenure. So you think rates going up makes. But aren't rates going up for because the economy's strong?

Yeah. Yes. Nevertheless, I think that from, I'm just saying, like, from the stock markets perspective, we were in like a Goldilocks environment with more Fed cuts on the horizon. All right. We needed rates to come down to help make the stock market narrative. Or stay where they were, not to go from three, six, up to four, two in three weeks. Like, the game has done changed.

So, is the Fed going to go next time or are they going to pause? Boy, you are a momentum macro trader. Listen, I go where the puck is. But are you worried because borrowing rates are higher now and that's not going to help consumers? Because that would be the biggest worry for me right now, which is interesting because wouldn't that mean, I feel like I'm like the guy in your Princess Bride meme you always talk about, like, but if rates go up and people can't borrow as much, isn't that bad for the economy? Never fight a land more in Asia.

No, listen, I'm not, all I'm saying is that it was like very accommodative environment for the stock market. And now it's not. That's all. I'm not like predicting anything ugly, but I'm just saying like I'm less bullish than it was three weeks. So the stock market was pricing in lower yield and they didn't come. Yeah. I think that's fair. All right.

The economist wrote this special report and this is the cover is just great. The envy of the world and it shows the dollar rising and it says America's economy is special report. They wrote like seven or eight different articles all about how basically the U.S. economy is kicking everyone's ass. We're the richest nation in the world. We have more productivity. We're energy independent. There's all these charts that I put in here.

I'm not a magazine indicator cover guy, but the economist doesn't have a dubious track record with these type of things. So we prefer not to see this. So they talk about, they go through this point by point saying how we've left every other developed economy in the dust. We have a bigger share of economic growth. We're more productive than all these other countries. again, energy independent. Our financial markets are by far the biggest, best, and most liquid in the world.

They had this stat that to be in the top 1% in the U.K. is a household income of like $250,000. In the U.S. it's more like $700,000. Whoa. That's crazy, right? And they kind of go through all this stuff, and they say, and the final piece in the special report is the only thing that could stop us is toxic politics. They're saying that's the only thing that could stop the U.S. train. And maybe to your point, that's how the deficits get us somehow the politicians can't figure it out. They spend too much or they don't fix anything or they break something.

Here's how they end of the report. There will, of course, be downturns, doubts, and drama along the way. But if you want to bet America, the economists will gladly take the other side of the wager. That's kind of where I found, you don't, you're, that's where I fall on this too. Yeah. I think getting back to the negativity thing, like, I feel like we're not celebrating this stuff as much. Like, we are, the U.S. economy is crushing the rest of the world. No one is even close to standing in our shadow.

Okay. Yes. There's no one, no one. But a lot of it, a lot of it is like mega cap tech. And I think that a lot of the- I don't buy, no, that's the market. So everything else, though, the economic growth, you really think that's all from tech?

I do. I don't think that our, like, GDP is going gangbusters. We're going to be at 3.2% of it, but it's also we have. But listen, I think, I think, so some of the, one of the, I think, the reason why people get mad at us for reporting the good news. It's like, listen, it's true that for asset owners in this country, people have never been wealthier. It's also true that for people without assets, inflation has hurt, even though real wages have done better. And I think here's here's something. And this is not, this is not an original thought. I can't remember who said this. But

I think that people get mad at us and others for reporting the good news because they feel like they have a moral high ground to be like there's a lot of that with the internet you guys are so insensitive yeah you're doing well but how about the rest of us or the little guy who's not keeping up like I think they feel they have the moral high ground when they say that and I like I understand that sentiment even though I think it's annoying but I get it I also think those people need to read a history book, too, because in the Great Depression, 2% of people own stocks in this country. Now it's 60%.

40% of people owned homes back then, 65% of people own homes today. Like, two-thirds of the country does own financial assets. It's obviously concentrated in the hands of the few, and it's still any... And the economist even says, listen, the biggest problem in the U.S. is inequality. Like, they compared us to all the other economies, and guess what? Our inequality is the worst, too. They use, like, the Jeannie coefficient, which I don't know what that means. P.S. That's a, that's a name you don't hear much anymore.

I think both of my, both of my grandmothers. Is it Jenny or Jeannie or Jeannie? Well, both of my grandmothers were named Virginia. And they're like the one, my one grandma, her nickname for my grandpa was Jenny. That's a name you don't hear anymore, Virginia. But that was like a, you know, 1930s-ish name. Here's another name you don't hear anymore ever. Hyman.

So my grandfather, my great-grandfather. So I'll get to this later in the show. You know what? I'll get to that later in the show. Okay. Good character in The Godfather. So they do, the economist even talks about this, the fact that inequality is the worst. And they kind of ask the question, could we be the biggest, most baddest ass of all economies if we didn't have inequality? No. Capitalism and inequality are like peanut butter and jelly, unfortunately.

Yes. Like, it's one of the downsides to the upside is that wealth gets concentrated. But my whole point is read a history book. There's never been a period in history. Nobody cares about history. When everyone has been lifted up. This is the most people that have been lifted up. And think about it, we've been pounding a table on this for months. The people on the lowest end of the income spectrum saw the biggest gains in both wealth and income in this cycle.

And no one talks about it. No one cares. I think if you'll allow me to quote myself, people don't compare themselves to their ancestors. They compare themselves to their neighbors. So nobody cares about. We don't compare ourselves to other countries either. We don't compare ourselves to other countries either. Nobody cares.

I got someone in someone from Turkey responded to a tweet being like I can't like if we had the economy you guys had like I would be so because they have like hyperinflation there like they have true problems economically speaking but this is part of it things are so good that all we have I don't want to say that that's ridiculous. All right. Let me reframe this. Complaining is like part of our national pastime. Like we love to complain. It is. Matter of fact, let's just go here for a sec. So Bucco Capital tweeted and then delete it. I guess the this tweet is I guess the response. I guess the response. were just so annoying. See, what I do is I, because I did one of these soft landing tweets and went crazy and got 10,000 likes or something last week. And once the gremlins come into your account, I just mute the conversation. You have to. So Bucco Capital tweeted something like, or he quote tweeted and said, so the original tweet was, I have a friend who him and his wife make $3 million.

They show me their spending at 7. I saw that one. Did you see that? Okay. And Bucco quote you, he's like, listen, if I had, if I had $3 million in income, and I ever complained about anything financial, like I'd stand myself. You know,

something like, those were the sentiments. And so somebody replied to him, and I never thought about this way, but okay, somebody replied, all these I have a friend, shit posts are just engaging farming, period.

Online lonely, online lonely adult version of a five-year-old playing house with their imaginary friends, so it makes him feel temporarily better, more important, less insecure. So this person's thinking like, dude, all of these fucking stories, And they're not real.

And they're not even real. I totally agree with that. I think most, how many, 90% of online videos aren't real, I think? They're like staged. So the idea that somebody can make $3 million and I understand that they might feel, they might feel like, holy shit, I'm in a pinch because I'm spending so much money, right? My, my mortgage, this, my that, fine, I get that part of it. But what asshole would dare say that out loud?

Like that, keep that shit to yourself, idiot. So maybe, so I, so I, I. I do think that this person's retort was fair. Like, it's just engagement farming. Yes. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that. Right. Do you think anyone really goes to their whole family budget with friends?

Like, we spend this on this and no, no, does that? They don't know either. No one knows what their actual budget is. Oh, yeah. And it got so granular as to, like, how much they spend on food and this and that. And I just, I don't, I really, I don't buy it. Sorry, not buying it. I agree.

Put a bow on this. I am a glasses half full guy, so I probably look through. most things with rose-colored glasses, but I do think it's okay to celebrate when things are going well. And I feel like no one will do it this year because it's an election year. But I'm willing to say, like, things are pretty good right now. They're not going to be good forever. They are pretty good right now. And people are going to be missing this economy when it's not here anymore someday. Here's more good news. According to gas buddy data, the median U.S. gas prices dropped to $2.99 a gallon. I paid $288 this weekend. Not bad. By the way, here's another point.

So that's the national price. I'm here in California, beautiful Coronado Island. And I saw a gas prices for like $5,0.90. So I think a lot of this discourse, it's like we're talking like aggregate national stuff. And everything is like very much segmented. The nation is not homogenous. That's true. But we live in a homogenous time being online.

Yeah. So it's a weird, yeah, it's a weird dichotomy. All right. I think Mike Sicardi tweeted this from Bank of America. We expect 13% year-of-a-year earnings growth in 2025 for the S&P 500. okay great well i mean holy cow we'll take it all right so but this is the again the the concentration risk is that how much of that growth is coming from a handful of companies yeah right so so yeah that's the downside all right from the washington post we've talked about

this a little bit but i wanted to pull out a few things in this data that we haven't talked about before so they looked at median net worth by age adjusted for inflation before anyone asks this is inflation adjusted. So they did Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silent Generation, which when did we go from the greatest generation to the silent generation? Who decided to make that? Were boomers sick of being told their parents were the greatest generation? Didn't want to call them that anymore? Right? Like, are they going to change, are our grandkids going to change our name from Millennials or something else? Anyway, so they look through 2019, millennials were lagging pretty much every other generation, and now we're at the same age,

and now we're way ahead of any of these other generations in the 35 to 39 age. range. Gen X is also ahead where baby boomers were. Here's what's interesting, though. Look at how the silent generation peters out like immediately. Like that whole generation die young because, I don't know, they all smoked two packs a day, didn't take care of themselves, whatever. I'd never heard of sunscreen, whatever. Look at how much the baby boomers just keeps going up the older they get. That keeps going up and it's not rolling over. And also, again, Gen X is way ahead. So this was a one-time shot in the arm, I think, as far as housing prices, that all this stuff happening at once. But we've just, we've never seen anything like the baby boomer generation be this large, with this much money, live this long before.

And their wealth is just going to keep going up. So we'll get later in the show to some of the wealth transfer and we'll rehash the conversation we had last week about the guy complaining that his parents were giving him money. So my dad asked me if I would, speaking of the son of generation, my dad asked me if I would, take a drive to the neighborhood that he grew up in, a place called Far Rockaway, which is in Queens. It's like on the border of Queens and Nassau County. So my dad grew up, I would say poor. I don't even think like lower middle class is like fair.

He grew up poor, and he grew up in an apartment complex. And his grandfather, imagine this. His grandfather, Hyman, who people called Henry, that's my middle name. That's where I get my middle name, which I hated growing up. Really? I like Henry. Well, now I like it.

but he shared, my dad shared a bedroom with his grandfather from the time that he was 11 to 17. Can you imagine? Yes, that is the thing that doesn't happen anymore. You don't get those kind of stories. And it was, by no means, a big bedroom. Like, I think there was bunk bed in there. So, this is the stature.

Can you imagine the teens, the teens of today taking that? No. So this is the stock that I come from, Ben. This is my heritage, my lineage. so Hyman was a tailor and so when we pulled up to the building my dad showed me that this was the bus stop where my dad would come home for work every day so my dad's dad was worked in a department store like never like just a bunch of random odd jobs and so we were driving around and my dad said he didn't know he didn't know anybody lived in a house

like that was like people with money everybody that he knew lived in the in the apartment complex and I said did you feel poor growing up and He said immediately, no. Like, immediately, it was a, no, did not feel poor. So we're driving around, we're driving around. And then I guess he thought about it. And he said, he just like five minutes later said, I didn't feel poor because I didn't know what rich was.

Right. He knew everyone else around him was living in the same type of environment, right? Yes. So, and I think that my dad's experience is pretty normal of what it was to grow up in the 60s. And just, again, my dad's. dad saying, I didn't know what Rich was, they didn't, like, they were living in fish bowls, right? So there wasn't all this access to the outside world. Right.

They didn't know it. My dad were always used to joke, and I think it was tongue-in-cheek, but half-serious. He always talked about how, like, they used to have to rent presents for Christmas. And I think his implication was always that, like, we never got anything. Because he grew up with four other brothers and sisters. And my uncle still lives in the house, and it's a tiny house. I can't imagine having five kids in his house. But, yeah, again, that was a lot of people grew up that.

way. And I think that's why you always get the intergenerational battles because, listen, I struggled. I did all this. And that's the same thing with the millennial boomer thing that we were talking about. Yeah. But my dad was like, no, I had, you know, we had, we played ball outside in the lot. We played a steep ball. We had pizza. We went to the movie theater. He's like, he didn't have, like, presence and stuff like that, but like, didn't feel poor because he didn't know what it was. Yeah. And he couldn't be on social media all the time seeing other people flunk their lives or whatever, right? Yeah. It's interesting.

So, yeah, the generational divides are stark. And then, of course, our grandparents, like, my grandfather was in Africa in World War II. You know, like, it's just the generational divides are, like, comical how different our upbringing was compared to our parents and their parents. Yes. My grandfather lied about his age to get in the war at age 17 in World War II.

It's, yeah, that's a whole other. Yeah, and here I am. I have a ticket broker. Right. that you talk to, like, once a week, apparently. Okay, so there was a tweet, um, yeah, there was a tweet.

Somebody tweeted the end of shrinkflation. Tostitos is adding more chips to bags after sales decline. And I think one of the things about the shrinkflation that really, really pissed people off, it's like, yo, we're not fucking stupid. Right. We know what you're doing. Like, there's more. air in the bag and fewer chips.

It's so insulting. Yes. Right. Just raise the prices. Yeah, I agree. That's always really bad when you open it up and it's just, yeah, tons of air. Oh, anyway, one more thing on this. So my dad brought over, so this is Friday, we spent the day together, and my dad brought

over a box of my stuff from growing up. And so it was, you know, nostalgic to take it. you dripped on memory lane and see pictures of me as a kid and stuff. And then I saw some of my report cards. I didn't share this with you, right? No. You shared a few things, but I don't think that. Okay.

So I was talking to my dad, and I think about, like, my childhood a lot in terms of how I treated my education. And I think this is just a nature versus nurture thing. Because I grew up in the same house of my brother and my sister, and they did not behave the way that I did. I was a little bit rebellious. I don't know if that's because my parents got divorced and it was like a subconscious thing. I don't know, but I didn't give a shit about school at all, like, was completely not motivated

by grades. And I just, I just had, like, this inner delusion that, like, things would be okay. That, like, yeah, I don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I'll be fine. I'll be fine. And my parents were always, like, disappointed that I was underperforming my, like, potential, but they didn't know what to do because also, like, I have, like, attention issues.

So I don't think that there was any environment in which I could have thrived in school. So I saw this one report card. Now, in, like, fairness, this was my senior. year. So I was already admitted to the Kelly School of Business as an undergrad, not to brag. It was like top 15 at the time because I did well in my SATs. But listen to this report card. So you were pre the days when every kid gets taken to a doctor to diagnose ADHD or whatever. Correct. It was before those days existed, kind of. Yeah, yeah. So I never did my homework. I was never able to pay attention. Like, obviously.

Not a shocker to the audience. I don't think. But I did well on my SATs and I did well enough in college to get into the Kelly School of Business as an undergrad. So, all right. So post getting into college. So I was already in. It's my senior year. These are the teacher comments. More effort needed. Difficulty with subject matter.

Inconsistent effort. Low test grades. Not working up to ability. Work is satisfactory. Frequent lateness. More effort needed. Inappropriate class behavior. So I sent this to my friends and they go,

which one did you have satisfactory? Because that was the only mildly positive thing. And that was phys ed. Another friend of mine said, 13 absences. I can't imagine why you had difficulty with the subject. better. So it's okay to laugh about this now because, you know, obviously it turned out okay, even though it could have not turned out okay. I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me.

Like I have a hard time. Like I think about this a lot, like what was wrong with me? But I just think I just didn't have like the constitution to do well in this classroom environment. I think about the nature versus nurture thing a lot, especially because we have twins. So I feel like I'm watching an experiment play out in real time. And it's bizarre because I keep falling more and more to the nature thing. And which is a weird place. to be as a parent. But I think for some kids, there's only someone you can do as a parent, I think. Right? Like, I'm sure your parents tried a lot of stuff to get you to do it. And some kids just don't respond. So my dad said, my dad said, my dad said, like, me and mom spoke about

you, like, all the time. Like, we didn't know what to do. Yeah. And he said, like, what are you going to do? Because my younger son, Logan, like, he's an angel. He's, he's not going to have these issues. But Kobe is, like, my son. And he said, like, what are you going to do if, like, if, you know, not God forbid, but if he has these sort of issues and I said, I don't know what the right answer is. Because if my parents, and I got grounded a lot for like, you know, bad behavior and stuff, but

if my parents pushed me harder and they did, they did like try it. But like if they pushed me hard, I would have like dug my heels in even more. Yeah, you would have pushed back. So I don't know what the answer is, but I have a friend from high school who married an older woman who already had some older children.

And he talked about disciplining one of the young kids kept getting in trouble and and trying to discipline him. And he said, we take away everything, we punish, we have consequences. And he said, whatever, the kid doesn't care about the consequences. So how do you punish someone

doesn't care about the consequences? That's what, that's what I was. Like, I was grounded the entire eighth grade. Right. And I just didn't care. Yeah. So, but to your point, as a parent, you want to do everything you can,

but at a certain point, you kind of go, you hope they figured out someday. And you obviously did. It just took longer than your parents probably would have hoped, right? So my parents always did trust. that, and I'm obviously sad that my mom didn't see this, but they trust that I would figure it out.

And like, it took a while, obviously, but holy shit, I was a disaster. Late bloomer. That's okay. All right. So this, I feel like, this is from Eric Palchunas, introducing battle shares. And you can pick companies, I guess you go long, one, short one, and it's like, NVIDIA versus Intel, Tesla versus Ford, Amazon versus Macy's. I like these.

See, so to me, this is the sports gambling application. of markets, right? This is, I'm going to pick a winner and a loser or whatever, and there's just going to be ETF parlays now, I guess. Is that where we're heading? That's exactly right. So there's like a hard line of people that think, like, this is garbage, toxic, this is not investing.

Jack Bogle will be rolling over in his grave. And I can probably be huge. Yeah, I under, well, I don't know. I'm not sure about that. I understand why people feel that way. I think that I am just more, like, this is gambling. and again, I don't know that you should, but it's like, but people are having fun. And I know investing shouldn't be fun, but nobody's doing this in their 401K.

Nobody's going all in on this stuff. Like, it's people that are, that are probably for the most part being relatively responsible with these products. Do you think it's fair? I read the stories about sports gambling and how it's the worst thing to ever happen and it's going to ruin people's lives. And I don't know, I feel like the people who are going to have their lives ruined would have it ruined by something at some point anyway. I don't think we can protect people from themselves.

all caught. It sounds like a really bad way to look at it. I think of the Jack Nicholson. The Jack Nicholson Giff. You're coming over to the dark side. You know, I know it's like a not, it's an uncomfortable thought to have, but. So listen to this one. This wasn't, this was in the Wall Street Journal. I've never heard of this guy before. The story was really good. So it's Archie Carris, a gambling legend who made and lost a fortune dies at 73. And they talk about how this guy showed up in Vegas with $50 to his name in the 1990s. He borrowed 10 grand and he basically doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled his money until he got the 40 million bucks. And so there's a story about him. And it says, he was up 35 million at the horseshoe one night. And this is

one of his friends, a famed poker player, said, I saw it all in the box. And he said, he walked up to him and said, Archie, do you know what an annuity is? Basically being like, cash out, man, you're good. And it said people try to talk him into like investing his winnings and taking somebody off the table. And he said he just couldn't do it. And he basically lost all of the time. And they said, it took him longer. It was faster to lose it all than it was to gain it all. And he said, in 2021, he said, I tried to invest my money, but I'm not an investor. I'm a gambler. That's who I am. That's my personality. So it was like the things that made him win that money were also the things that made him lose it. And that's just some people's mentality. Right? Yeah. If you have that

you can't walk away. You like the, what is it from the heat? The action is the juice. So that's, I'm a gambler. Now, thank God, like in my, in my 401K, I don't, I don't do anything, right? Like I said it and forget it. Um, but I think that, I think that a lot of people, listen, it's hard to say a lot of people. Who knows? It's individual. But I think, I think that people hopefully are able to compartmentalize, okay, this is my gambling account, right? Like, this is, I'm gambling, I'm having fun. And, yeah, it's probably not going to go well, like, financially, but I'm having fun. And then this is my responsible retirement money.

I think we all know people who have just an addictive personality, whether it's smoking or drinking or drugs or, but you've figured out, but there are people who literally can't control it. Like, they have an addictive personality, and that's just what everything for them is all in or nothing. Yes, yes. All right, Ben, I got an email last week. This is pretty cool from Gmail. Like, who is this person? So I scrolled over their name and Google said their birthday was two days ago. And I say that to say, that's just like one tiny, tiny thing of where this is going.

Like, some of the stuff that we're going to see over the next couple of years is going to blow our faces off. Well, I saw the video of the new Facebook glasses where you walk by a person and then you'll hit the button. It'll scan and tell you everything about them. Dude, I need that. We all need that. So I'm here at Stocktoberfest. We do not need that. That sounds awful to me, but that's where we're going because people just share so much information that...

Okay. I saw two people that I'm like... I have to know their name. Speaking of this, I'm not going to show this story, actually. I don't want to get myself in trouble. But there's people that, like, you should know by their name and you don't. Oh, yeah. I'm like this with all the parents at the different...

I'm like, who's that guy the dad, too, and who's she the mom? I don't, my wife knows everyone and I don't know one. I, like, who's that guy I was just talking to? So the story that I'm not going to share is the one that I shared with you about calling the person the wrong name. Ah, yeah. So I coached my first, I coached my first, my first flag football game this weekend. And I got the text.

So I'm like the third coach. I'm on the side line. I harangued the boys and they don't listen to me. You're basically the guy who stands behind the coach pulling him back if he runs out to the ref. Like, guys, if you're not standing with Coach Mike, you're not getting in. And they're like, Mike, you got to do a better job. I'm like, ah. So I got the text, like, hey, you're coaching on Saturday.

And I'm like, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. I've never coached. You're the head coach. Okay. Yeah. Both of the coaches were out. And it was only, so a lot of the boy, like half the team is on a baseball team, like a travel baseball team and half the team is not.

And you can imagine the half the team that's not, like Kobe, my son, are not the greatest athletes. Right. So we were completely under, we were complete underdogs. We had to call up two people. So it was five kids that I know, two strangers versus the second best team in the league. And I was nervous. Like I was, I didn't tell Robin, but I was actually nervous going into this.

I was like, anyway, credit to me, we were down 14 to 6. We scored a touchdown. And the ref called like shield guarding, flag guarding. Ah. And then one of the, so it was working. We were getting down, it was fourth and goal twice, and we didn't convert two times, down 14 to 6, stopped him twice.

And one of the boys on my team goes, hey, I want to be the quarterback. I want to be the quarterback. So I'm like, but it's working. Like, we're doing well. He's like, but I want to get a chance. So I'm like, okay, but if it doesn't work, I'm going back to this boy.

First play of the game, first play of the drive, pick six, now we're down 21, 6. I'm like, all right. But I have a lot of sympathy now for the coaches because when I'm on the sideline And they're in the huddle. I'm like, what's taking so long to call the play? And now that I was in the huddle,

it felt like it was two seconds to get the boys to like even look at me and pay attention to line up. Little boys are animals. I talked about this on S-Compon last week. Like, you tell them everything they're going to do in the huddle, then you break the huddle,

then you have to tell each person individually at the line again what they do because they don't listen. Yeah, and there were a summary place where I'm like, all right, run to me, run to me, run to me. And I'm like, dude, I said run to me.

You literally ran the opposite direction. See, here's my plan. as a flag football coach, if I ever was one, you put the boys in literally the same spot every time. You don't do any reverses. You turn and hand it off, and that's it. You make the simplest plays ever. You know what? Credit to me.

So there was, so we just it was quarterback, get open. And we ran that play like eight times in the wrong. I'm like, again, again, again, again. We just kept running the same play and it was working. Yes, exactly. Keep it simple. All right. Let's do this crypto stuff

real quick. I know we're running along here. Nate Karasi tweeted nearly $1 billion into spot Bitcoin ETFs in the last two days. For contacts, only eight out of the 560 ETF launches in 2024 have taken more than a billion dollars this year. So I saw a tweet from Holdal Capital saying the most frequent question I get is, who is selling Bitcoin? And interestingly, it looks like the Megawails, the people that have, these are the addresses that have 100 Bitcoin plus are buying the shit out of Bitcoin. The sellers are the 10 to 100 Bitcoin. So that's anywhere from, I guess, is that 600,000 to 6 million? So you didn't make like buy an island kind of money, but you made enough money.

It's like, okay, I need to take them off the table here. Yeah. So it's like the, not the whales, but maybe the dolphins that are selling. A16D did a state of crypto report 2024. And the big takeaway for me, anyhow, was just stable coins. That's like the killer use case, I guess, for now. Stablecoins are only a decade old, and now they're a top 20 and rising holder of U.S. debt. That's kind of wild, right?

Huh. Interesting. Yeah, that's like the Trojan horses get people in, right? They showed the cost to send U.S. dollar internationally. $44 for international wire transfer, and it's less than one cent now on one of these L2 platforms. And then lastly, they show stablecoin activity has grown despite crypto market cyclicality. So they show a spot crypto trading volume, and of course, it went parabolic into 21, crashed during the bear market, has come back. And stable coins have risen and risen and risen, completely uninterrupted by the absent flows of the crypto market. And then lastly, yesterday, Stripe just made their biggest acquisition ever.

They are buying a stable coin platform company called Bridge for $1.1 billion. So shit's getting real there. So volume is still pretty low. I looked at Ibit is the biggest ETF, the I shares one. it's $27 million, roughly. The Fidelity one has $13 billion almost, so I was way wrong on this. You were right, I was wrong.

Credit to you. Thank you. An ETF flows. All right. Peace from the Wall Street Journal on home prices. They talk about Builders offering buy-down still. They give these stories of people coming into by the house and be like, listen, I can't borrow for 7%.

And they talked about how a builder offered someone 4% for the first year, 5% for the rest of 30-year loan, which is pretty good with a seven-year loan. mortgage rate. Around three quarters of builders recently used rate buy-downs that covered entire 30-year mortgages according to John Burns. I've said this a few times. Is this still the best way to buy a home if you're going to do it just to build and get a buy-down from a builder? Build. Build. Baby build. That sounds the right to me. Making plans over there? I am. So, sorry. I'm going to opening night of the Knicks on Friday. And we play the Pacers

at home. And Friday night is awesome. So the World Series. So my friend keeps texting me about, are you down to swap our tickets for tickets that are higher up in Madison Square Garden, but have a view of a TV so that we can watch the Yankee game? So he keeps texting me. So I apologize. Yes, I'm texting you back.

Sorry. All right. This is from the Wall Street Journal, Home Purchase Mortgage Application Index. And in, you know, 2020, it's really high. 2019, 2018. 2023 and 2024 are way, way low. And we haven't gotten much of a spike. Actually, things have fallen, even as mortgage rates have fallen.

My take here is that this is just, this is bad. And I can't believe we haven't had more, like, ramifications from just a lack of activity in the home purchase market. There's just, like, no activity going on at all. And I think rates are going to have to get to, like, 5% for this to actually move the needle. Yeah, well, how's that happening? I don't know. All right, here, this is also bad. So this is from Freddie Mac, and they did, they do, like, a state of the economy every month.

and they said, renter households between 25 and 44 of age earning at least 75 grand, inflation-adjusted. And this was 1 million people in 1984. Now it's 3.3 million today. And look at the jump since 2015-ish. So tons of people in that 25 to 44 range. Again, inflation-adjusted earnings of 75 grand early, there's just people who are being priced out of the home market.

And this happened in a hurry. That's awful. Yes. I guess this is, I don't know if this is a positive or not, but this is from, Lance Lambert. 25% of mortgage borrowers have rates above 5%, so obviously 75% below. But look at this, this is, there's only 22% of people that have less than 3% and 35% that have 3 to 3 to 4%.

So we're talking, 55% of people have below 4%. So it's whiting out a little bit for people who have 5% and above. It's, I don't know, it's almost 50-50 now. So it's like slowly but surely people are working their way up. And I think as we whittled down that 3% mortgage, like, that's going to be what unfa does this stuff for people and has some more activity. And people are not just sitting on their 3% mortgage. I hope. That's not good, as I say.

No. All right, let's do some great quarter stuff. So, Netflix, stock that I'm up 100% on, no big deal. You never sold? I never sold. No, I bought it. I sold it for a healthy profit, and I bought it back. Okay.

Okay. In Q3, revenue grew 15% years. You, Isaac Newton did. Remember, he bought South Sea shares, sold it, and got back in. But it was the second time they got him. Yeah, but he bought, yeah, and then he, then they crashed. All right, so revenue, up 50% year over a year, operating margin, 30% versus 22% last year, which is insane. As membership was up 35% quarter over quarter.

And they think they said that, I don't have this in the notes, but I think they said that 50% of sign-ups are now choosing the cheaper version. You can, the U.S. and Canada, which is their most mature market, saw 60% year-over-year increase in revenue, which is kind of wild, like their most mature market, 10% and 5% growth in average paid memberships and average revenue per member. Engagement on Netflix, they say, is around two hours per day. That sounds high, no? Wow.

Yes. So they say that for the full year, they expect $6 billion in free cash flow. So I think the market cap is like $350 billion, maybe a little bit more. Sounds pretty $3.3.30. Their stock chart is unbelievable. Over the last five years, inclusive of a 75% drawout on over the last five years of stock, it's up 180%. Just an insane move. And obviously, way back at all-time highs again.

The stock is feeling a bit rich here. I don't want to sell winners, but I don't know. I might sell this. So look at this chart from Alex Morris, Netflix trailing 12-month EBIT per average paid subscriber. And if you're listening, it's just up until the right. I mean, they are absolutely dominant. But the game is over.

And of course, it's reflected in the stock price. Like, as I just said, like, it's $6 billion in free cash for the year. And it's a $300. What did you say billion dollar market cap? 330. So we're, I'm not saying Netflix is going to drop 75% again. It feels like everyone's done the Victor lap. Isn't there going to be a time the next five years where everyone goes,

oh, Netflix is done again, these other streamers are coming up? I don't think so. Are we over that? No, no, no, no. That shit's over. They won. They won. All right.

It's both. I guess if they had football, I'm willing to concede. Well, no, no, they have. They have Christmas games. Okay. Yeah. I guess so. Dude, they won.

All right. Amex, total build businesses. Goods and services has been hovering between 5 and 6% for the last. five quarters, but travel and entertainment is coming down. So this is from Q3 to today, Q3 of 20203 to today. 13% there's year-over-year growth. 13%, 9%, 8%, 7%, 6%. So that's coming down.

So someone emailed us from Australia about the fees, the convenience fees from last week, saying the government announced they're threatening to ban surcharges by 2026. It's just at the look-in-to point, but they say Australians lose $4 billion a year to these fees. And they said that Visa and MasterCard threatened to remove scam and fraud protection if that occurred.

So that could be like the use case of we could have a, they could actually test us out if they got rid of those fees, those 2% surcharge fees on credit cards. All right. It just seemed just so egregious. It's ridiculous. So U.S. Consumer Services build business. Okay, check this out. So we speak about this every time American Express reports.

Millennials and Gen Z, year for year, 12%. Percent of total, 33%. Gen X, 37%, only 4% growth. I'm not sure the, that's so interesting that millennials and Gen Z, their growth is growing, their spend is growing so much faster than Gen X. I'm not sure what's up with that. Baby boomers, no growth. Zero percent growth, 30% of the pie.

So to your point earlier, Ben, about millennials and Gen Z, carrying shit, you know, the Paul Rudd meme? You ever think we'd be here? Nope. All right, lastly, not last actually, almost lastly. Commercial services build business. No growth here. What does that mean?

I guess it's like business spend? Okay. No growth. Aren't Visa and MasterCard way better than Amex, though, as far as usage? It's different businesses. But yes, but yes. But business cards, it's Amex. Okay.

And then look at their credit metrics. We're talking about like credit cards that are 90 days past due. I guess maybe it's a different color because it's American Express tends to be a wealth. or more affluent customer base, but nothing to speak of fear. Numbers seem low to me, yeah. Nothing to speak of fear. All right, we talked about the inheritance thing last week, and someone sent us a comment.

That was a follow-up. It was the, what is wrong with our parents? Why don't they give us more money? I wrote a blog post about this. I got a ton of feedback from baby boomers, especially. A couple from, like, younger millennial people saying, hey, but a lot of baby boomers, a lot of them had the sentiment of, listen,

like, we grew up with a scarcity mindset. Our parents were in the Great Depression. That's one of the reasons we're hoarding this stuff. worried that we're going to run out of money, right? So there was a lot of that mentality. I heard from a few people being like, listen, our big thing is we're going to spend on travel and family trips. So every year we're taking the kids on a cruise or on a trip to Mexico or Hawaii or something. And that's like our thing. We're going to pay for all the travel. I actually like that one. Like spend your experiences together. You know what resonated with me? Somebody said

my perception, which could be inaccurate, is that there's some entitlement to the millennial writers of comments. If I detected that of my kids, my response would be, your mom and I worked for 40 years. Okay, that's not what I was talking about. I guess the comment was like, I don't want my kids knowing how much money I have because it's going to demotivate them. Yeah, there was a little bit of that too. Right. So to me, that makes sense. But somebody emailed us a post on Reddit. And this person said the original poster, because I said to you last week, I need more context. Yeah, we don't know what's, yeah. What if this kid sucks? He's like mad at his parents. What if he sucks? And somebody wrote the original post.

Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but take it, you know, let's just assume for this argument that it is. The original poster is a carhead and is dropping tons of money on his big truck RAM-1500 hobby shit on a credit card. Also doing full room house renovation on credit card debt. Also did a bunch of crypto mining shit that obviously didn't pan out. If the base habits that got him $20,000 in credit card debt aren't fixed, they can pay it off monthly and he'll just end up back at square one.

His parents likely paid off his cards multiple times and he just racked it more debt. So, again, I assume this is true, this kid's an asshole. Why should his parents help him at all? It sounds like they're doing plenty for him. Yes. And my only thing would be, if you have young people right now who are looking to buy a house, helping them pay for a down payment is a, that's an investment that you make in your kids these days if you can't. That'd be the one place where I'd say as a boomer, like, you should step up to the plate if you can help.

But I don't think. I know this is happening all across the country because we see it in the data. It doesn't seem fair. But, yes. But let's say that you are able to help your kids out financially. You have great kids. They're hardworking. They're responsible. They're trying to raise a family. They're doing all of the right things. And they just need help with the down payment. Like what as a parent could you, what could be better than that? If you have a child who's not ungrateful, who's not always has his hand out and you want to step to them and help them out, I think that's like a beautiful thing. To me, that's what money is for. Yes. I totally agree. And it's unfair that certain people don't have that help. from their parents. But if you can, I think that's the place that you help today. So, Ben, you wrote in here the worst part about switching from cable to YouTube. What's wrong with it? So I'm, I don't know, a month into YouTube TV full-time. I got rid of cable, I mentioned. Two things that are bad. The first is you can't channel surf anymore. It takes way too long.

Ooh. So that's the part I don't like. You can look at the guide, but it takes a while for it to cycle through and it change. And YouTube does kind of know your habits, so you kind of get in. So especially sports, I like the ability to see the force screen and stuff but if I want to go from game to game to game much quicker It's not as easy It takes, it just, there's an extra step that takes too long And the commercials on YouTube TV are 10 times worse

Like, obviously it's election year, so that makes it, that doesn't help But all I want is a few jingles that I'll be stuck in my head all day Like you don't get those commercials, you get like Are you having, are you having Switcher's remorse? No, no, I still like it. There's nothing that I miss besides these are just the, I'm nitpicking here The commercials are awful. My kids are like, I hate elections because that's all they see is on YouTube TV

is just election commercial off election commercial. So my kids are like, we're done with elections and we don't know what it is. Ben, you shared a picture with me, Duncan and some of the gang, a picture of you failing to crack an egg on the flat service. I don't believe you. What did you smash the egg? I did it to. Well, you sent us the video of the guy dropping it and smashing it, right?

He dropped it and it broke in the middle And the crack worked But then it left remnants of the yoke on the It doesn't. What did you do? I did it twice. Just like the video you showed me, I did exactly what that guy did.

I didn't just know. Just just hit it a little bit. You shove your thumb up there And it just, it breaks out so nicely. But anyway, funny, the next morning after we I do it on the side of the pan. Last thing. After the day after we were talking,

I grabbed an egg out of my refrigerator. I opened my cabinet to get a bowl Look at this picture. Somehow, I just smashed the egg right against my countertop accident. Ew. Yoke everywhere. Gross. Nice.

All right. Let's get to recommendations. So I was on an airplane coming to San Diego. And there's a dude that went to the bathroom with the socks. What are you doing? Oh, shoes off on the plane? What are you doing? That's a big no-no, too.

Oh, that's gross. Okay, I watched First Man, the Ryan Gosling movie. Actually, great cast. You ever see that one? Yeah, the weird movie. Do you think it was kind of weird? So, I think I have to revise my take a little bit on my no-drama rule on an airplane. I would say specifically a drama that's longer than two hours.

Because if I watched this at home, I probably would have turned it off after, I probably would have given it like 20 minutes. Pretty slow. In fact, very slow. But for the story that they were telling, which is Neil Armstrong, it had to be slow and methodical because there was a lot of character stuff. So I was able to get through it, and I quite enjoyed it within the context of the airplane ride. Okay. I remember not liking this one when I saw it.

Yeah, because it's not a great movie. Yeah. Like, it's pretty boring. But on the airplane, I think it worked better. All right. I was watching the bike riders. I'm about probably got 40 minutes left. It's a weird movie.

So to me, it felt a lot like a Bronx tale in the sense that, like, it's kind of, like, gangster stuff aside. It's like an enjoyable movie. It's like pretty good, but it just feels like... First half, probably better than the second half, right? Okay. It just feels like weirdly hollow. Like, um...

There was just something off, but I liked it. Yeah. Like, Tom Hardy's accent was horrible. Um, Michael Shannon's character was weird. Like, the whole thing just feels, I don't, I'm probably not articulating this well enough. But it should have been better with the cast, right? It should have been so much better. And the subject matter, yeah.

It's, yeah, so to me, it felt like a Bronx tail. All right, lastly, actually, not almost lastly. Why can't Elon Musk with Starlink make, like, better internet on the airplanes? That is a good question. Not to be the guy who complains about Wi-Fi on an airplane, but I hate when I pay for it and then it doesn't work. Like, I should get an immediate refund if it doesn't work, right? Yeah, it just seems odd to me. All right.

Lastly, lastly, Alien Romulus, I don't know what's going on here. They're making a VHS out of it. It's because it's like the 45-year celebration of the original one. I guess they're making like a limited number. Who's buying a VHS of anything? So collectors are buying it and they're never, never opening it and keeping it for a collector's item, I guess? I mean, that's just odd.

It does seem weird. All right. I got to do one story time before I get into it. I don't have much for recommendations. You were talking about coaching earlier. And I saw this piece. So I watched the Texas Georgia game on Saturday night and there was like a really bad passenger interference call.

and they went to look at it and the review booth and stuff and as they did, it was a terrible call and it was a interception that seemed like it was going to swing the game and then the fans threw a tantrum and started throwing beer bottles onto the field

and then it made the refs change their call which was crazy. And Jason Gaye wrote about this in the Wall Street Journal. What do you mean it made the refs change their call? Like the refs... Like they called the penalty. They said pass interference and it was a terrible call.

It should have been called. And so that was going to negate the interception that drove, that the guy had the interception all the way down into the side of the 10-yard line. And they threw all these bottles on the field, and then the refs talked about it, and they said, all right, you know what?

No penalty. We're giving it to Texas. And Jason Gaye wrote about this, how it's like, we are a tantrum nation. Like, we throw temper tantrum about everything. And he was saying, like, it's kind of funny that, like, this temper tantrum from the crowd actually worked,

and it got the refs to change their call. And I was thinking of this because we had a huge temper tantrum with a coach this week at a girls' soccer game. And I've seen a few of those this year. We had one in flag football against a team we were playing. We were playing. daughter Kate is seven years old and she plays in a soccer team and it's club soccer but it's it's

four on four it's these these girls kind of like the boys with flag football if they're paying attention half the game you're you're happy right but they this coach the other team was going just insane the whole game and there was two girls were running for the ball they ran into each other one fell down the other girl didn't and our girl was the one was kept standing and she went in and scored a goal and this guy lost his mind the ref was probably 12 years old you know oh my god And the guy wanted to follow because it was a one goal game. And the guy lost his mind. He's screaming at the ref, just berating him.

This kid's 12 years old. It looked like he was going to cry. And I almost wanted to get involved. And so this guy, and again, this is seven-year-old girls soccer. They're playing four and and four. And you're the other coach? Oh, no, I'm not coaching. I'm just on the sideline.

And I had to go up to the ref after the game. Be like, dude, don't worry about that guy. Take it. You're fine. Our coach after the game, he went up to the guy. He's like, hey, man, just take it easy. There's a seven-year-old girls. What are you doing?

and the guy goes, it was a one-gold game. Like, he wanted to win this seven-year-old girl's soccer game. So he threw a literal temper tantrum. The worst part is we had to play the same team again the next day. And it was kind of like after a night of heavy drinking and you did set or something said or did something you're probably embarrassed of. Like, he kind of had that feel and he was much quieter the next day.

But just I can't imagine getting that. It just, seeing those kind of things happens always makes me like just zip it up when I'm ever watching my kids do anything. But there is an interesting life lesson here because it's funny you mentioned this because I had a very similar experience. And I was thinking like the squeaky wheel gets the grease is one of the takeaways, which is kind of annoying, but it's a reality of life.

Like if you don't ask, you don't get. So, all right, so I am also the sideline coach for Logan's flag football. They're five. So, I mean, they're five years old. They're babies, right? Right. And there's 14 kids. So there's always seven kids on and seven kids off.

And we're always rotating. And one of the kids was off, and he's standing next to me, and the mom comes up, I don't know, I don't know these people, the mom comes up to him, and she's saying, this is, and she's talking basically to me through him, right? Right. Now, mind you, it's obvious that I have nothing to do with what's happening here, okay? Yes, I wear a coach t-shirt, but I have no influence on what's happening. So she's talking to me through him. Okay. Do you want to come off the field?

This is your third time off the field. do you want to play? And then she goes, excuse me? And I'm like, yep. She goes, are you, are you a coach? And I'm like,

and I point to my shirt. I said, yep, technically I am a coach. She goes, he's been off three times. And so I walk onto the field and I'm like, hey, to the other coach. Don't turn around, but his mom. And I'm just like, they're five. Everybody's shuffling in and out.

Just what are you doing? And I guess to her credit, he did get the ball. She said thank you to me, which is the right thing, of course. But it's just like... Don't be that person. These people. But it's fucked up because she got what she wanted. Right.

Look like this guy didn't get me wanted, but yeah, it's bad. All right, I've got a couple short recommendations. I started watching disclaimer on Apple TV. This is Kate Blanchett. I've heard multiple good things. I want to get involved. I don't think you want to get involved in this. This is a no, Michael.

This is a no. It's two episodes in, it's either going. to be the thing where it's, it's a mini-series where it's done and you go, ah, or it's done and you go, oh, okay, very, very well, Kevin Klein's in it. It's very well acted, pretty slow-paced. It's like a mystery, you don't know what's going on kind of deal. Something happened when they were younger. Big Kevin Klein guy. I love Kevin Klein, too. I'm going to stand on the sideline, and I'm going to wait for, I'm going to wait to be called in. Wait till a sign. Thank you. Thank you. I think this could break either way. It's good, not great so far. And then I got a rom-com on Amazon Prime that I haven't

watched in forever. It's called A Lot Like Love. Ashton Coucher was throwing, he was throwing heat in the mid-tooth, early 2000s, you know? Amanda Pete. I never heard of this. Who's, who's the counterpart? Amanda Pete and Ashton Coocher. And they do a great job. It's like people who come in and out of their lives for 10 years and they finally get together at the end. And, oh, spoiler alert, and a rom-com, they actually get together. But they do a great job depicting the dot-com boom bus. Like he gets involved in like a baby diaper company that goes under or something. And just a quirky little cute rom-com, but I've always kind of liked it.

It's not rom-com season yet. Give it a month, Ben. It's still Halloween season. And to that end, I forgot. I was watching the new VHS, VHS beyond, which Ben, I'm sure you're not familiar with. But it's a great franchise. It's found footage, horror, sci-fi.

And Robin sneakly likes the shit as much as I do. Because it's found footage, and there's like, I don't know, six to eight stories per movie. And she watched the first one. And she's like, what is wrong with you? I was like, you like, you like it, don't you? It's pretty good, right?

So VHSBiod. I only saw the first two skits, but I don't want to come skits. First two stories. So she hates herself for liking it, though, probably. She likes it. She likes it. Okay. All right.

We need to mention, you're in California for Stocktwits right now? We do mention it. Did we? I'm at Stocktoberfest. This is, so, Hotel Coronado, Hotel Del Coronado, whatever it's called. My favorite hotel that I've ever been to. I absolutely love it. It's just, it is spectacular.

Really great place. Okay. Enjoy. Remember, check out the Unlock. That's advisorunlock.com. Sign up here for financial advisor. Thanks to the budget team as always. Yeah.

Check out the emails for coming to work with us. What's the email again? Hiring at Redholtswalt.com or there will be a link in the show notes. We're looking for advisors in California, tax people in Philadelphia. We've hired multiple people who've emailed us through animal spirits before. I had a conversation last week. One of our new tax people said, hey, I came through the animal spirits email and got hired. email us animal spirits at the compound news.com.

We'll see you next time.