Animal Spirits Podcast - The Fed Needs to Cut (EP.365)

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

On episode 365 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: why it's finally time for the Fed to cut rates, when valuations will matter again, the best hedges against an AI boom-bust cy...cle, what would cause housing prices to fall, no one moves anymore, how tragedy can provide some perspective on your finances, bull markets lead to lower crime rates, bad drivers, 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 YCharts 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/animalspirits 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 Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Feel free to shoot us an email at animalspirits@thecompoundnews.com with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 When planning for life's most important moments, sometimes the hardest part is simply knowing where to start. That's why we're here to help. When you pre-plan and prepay a celebration of life with us, every detail will be handled with simplicity and professionalism, giving you the peace of mind that you've done all you can today to remove any burden from your loved ones tomorrow. We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.
Starting point is 00:00:44 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 discussion. in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I still don't get the hot dog hamburger analogy, but what I do know. Fold a piece of paper.
Starting point is 00:01:12 When you fold it when it's up top the bottom, you fold it and it's skinnier, so it's like a hot dog bun. You fold it from side to side, it's wider, so it's like a hamburger bun. All right. You never got that analogy in school? Nah.
Starting point is 00:01:24 All right. They didn't teach that to Indiana, I guess. You should have stayed longer. Should the Fed cuts rates? Ben, I went to Trader Joe's over the weekend. Actually, I went to Trader Joe's. I was wearing a Tropical Bros shirt, not this one. I was wearing one that I never won before.
Starting point is 00:01:40 It's got flamingos on it. And you and I were just talking the other day about how Tropical Bros is a great conversation starter. And it's just great looking and comfortable and all the other accolades it deserves. But the guy at the counter said to me, great shirt. And listen, I'd say 90% of the time that I wear a Tropical Bros shirt,
Starting point is 00:02:00 I get a comment probably rounds closer to 100. But he goes, that shirt looks like where I want to be. And I said, I agree. Great shirts. So now we have a collab at Tropical Bros. Oh, yeah, we do have a collab. Compound Media has its own Tropical Bros. collab.
Starting point is 00:02:15 But Trader Joe's, okay. So I checked out, and here's what I got from Trader Joe's. I got a pint of yogurt, plain yogurt. I like to use it in my smoothies. I got two bags of chips, the delicious corn chips from Trader Joe's. Do you have Trader Joe's in Grand Rapids? Yeah, I got one right down by the street from my office. You know the great corn chips are like Fritos?
Starting point is 00:02:37 Okay. Never had them before, but sure. You should. So two bags of chips, pico de gallo, hummus, and a thing of donuts. Guess how much I was? I don't. You just named a lot of stuff. Are you trying to go viral here with this one?
Starting point is 00:02:54 Exactly. I named a lot of stuff. and it was $27. Okay. Again, to reiterate, yogurt, two bags of chips, two dips, donuts, $27. And I thought, it's over. Inflation is over.
Starting point is 00:03:09 Food's been a lingering issue. That sounds about right to me. That price? All right. How about this? Sounds right, reasonable? Most of the smarter economic minds that I follow that are like more of the sober variety,
Starting point is 00:03:24 I feel like are saying, you know what, I think it's just time to rip the bandit off in cut rates. Colin Roche had a piece at Discipline funds this weekend. He says if Thursday's relatively high jobless claims future persists through this year, then we're likely to trigger recession warning according to his metric that he follows where, you know, the trends are going in the wrong direction. There are numerous other signs that cutting could be appropriate, rising unemployment, rising claims, following hourly earnings and core PCE that is likely to be at 2.55% in May.
Starting point is 00:03:48 He's saying we're close enough to the 2% to 2% target. Let's not get cute here. Let's just do it. I don't understand. I was talking about this last week, and I don't think I was emphatic enough on the show on TCAF, saying, why wouldn't Powell just give an inch? He's acting like it's still stubbornly high.
Starting point is 00:04:06 No, it's not. No, it is not. It's time to cut. I also think the cutting of the rates is also a signal that, maybe we won. We beat this thing. It's not, nothing's ever over when it comes to the markets of the economy, but when we discussed earlier in the year,
Starting point is 00:04:20 maybe it was even last year, I understood the rationale. Listen, we're so close. You don't want to spike the ball in the one-yard line. But at this point, I think we scored a touchdown. And I still feel that the Fed in the future is probably going to get more credit than they deserve. I think the economy was so strong that it saved the Fed. They wanted to put people out a job and it didn't happen.
Starting point is 00:04:40 But at this point, the unemployment rate is rising a little bit. Things are still, people will use anecdotes. Say, no way, the Fed, they can't cut rates. This is crazy. But even if they cut rates 25, 50, 75 basis points in the coming months, rates are still relatively high from what they've been for the past 20 years. Ben, last week you used, you were talking about people that are, have been bearish, were bearish during the GFC and are still bearish, and they just can't let it go.
Starting point is 00:05:08 Credit Steve Isman from the Big Short, he's been talking about how incredibly dynamic the U.S. economy is, and that and the AI revolution has held up the economy. He's like one of the rare ones that got out. It is. And, yeah, I don't think cutting rates doesn't necessarily have to mean the economy is tanking and we're going to go into a financial crisis. I think it's just following what's going on. So apartment list had this national rent inflation, and it's been negative for, I don't know, six or eight months now. If you look at the euro-year change in rent, which would probably surprise some people, and they're comparing it to the actual CPI rent, which, as we've talked about, is a different calculation because that is backward-looking, and this is using current data.
Starting point is 00:05:50 Conner Sen quoted something from Real Page. The U.S. median rent income ratio for market rate apartments has recorded 15 straight months of decline. From Aprilly rent to income-based perspective, rents are now at their most affordable levels since January 2021. I feel like that's big news. It is big news. So rents have been slowly declining.
Starting point is 00:06:07 Incomes have continued to go up, meaning it's more affordable now. And this is where the inflation numbers don't take it into account. And Jeremy Schwartz, our friend at Wisdom Tree, has been talking about this for months and months and months, that if you take out, if you put the actual rent inflation, what it is now for that CPI component, because that's the biggest part, inflation looks pretty darn low still. Under 2%. That's a case to cut. At defense target. So why would they remain restrictive? Well, game stop, right? People use these anecdotes of, well, of course, I know. I just rolled my eyes big time. Come on. No, really, what are they doing? I don't know. Matthew Klein had a piece about this.
Starting point is 00:06:48 U.S. CPI rose 0.006% between April and May. Essentially, didn't rise at all. He said, moreover, disinflation is broad-based, while a few categories experienced notably declines like airfares, subscriptions, computer software, and gasoline, each which fell by almost 4%. The really notable feature of the latest data is that there were so few categories
Starting point is 00:07:07 that rose by very much, if at all. So, yeah, I agree. I think it's okay for the Fed to take a little bit of a victory lap, even if they'll never do that. But I think that first cut is the sign, Yeah, we won. Ben, would you allow me a thought of experiment that sounds incredibly topy and will likely draw the ire of some listeners? Yes, because every anecdote has to be a top or a bottom, right?
Starting point is 00:07:31 No, but this one's going to do it. Okay. So since the great financial crisis and outside of the COVID-induced recession, how many recessions have there been over the last 15 years? one that lasted for, what, two months? Which one? I'm saying take the COVID one out. Oh, take it out.
Starting point is 00:07:53 Well, there's been none. Okay. Since the, yeah, since the GFC, which is interesting, like, counterfactual. Would we have had a recession in, like, 2020 or 2021, short of the COVID pandemic happening? Anyway, keep going. So a little thought experiment. I know recessions are natural, inevitable, I would go as far to say. What if we just keep cruising for like another 10 years?
Starting point is 00:08:19 10 years seems like a bit much, but it's, I don't know, it's happened in place like Australia before. What if the AI revolution is even 50% as big as people say it's going to be? And we just ride this wave for. Now, the clear and obvious, hey, asshole, is we're going to get a bubble and a burst. Yes. The AI boom is what would actually cause the recession because it would cause excesses. And that's what people don't understand is that recessions are typically caused from excesses in the economy.
Starting point is 00:08:53 And so the AI boom, if it happens, the bigger boom would be the thing that causes the excesses and causes the recession. Well, that's such a good point. So, yeah, I forget who said this. I used to hear Mark Dowell said. I don't know if you made this up, but you don't break a leg jumping out of the first floor window. So, and that's sort of been the story of the economy over the last 15 years. It's been pretty steady humming along, far from blister and growth. But what have we continued?
Starting point is 00:09:21 I think the sentiment would have proved to if the Fed, if the Fed signal we're going to cut rates, and we're going to do it, we're going to be data dependent still, and we're not going to, like, cut back to zero, but we're going to slowly but surely bring rates down. I feel like American consumers hate high interest rates, almost as much as I hate high inflation, because we love to borrow and spend in this country. Yeah, I don't think it's crazy to say that there will be rolling recessions, as there always are.
Starting point is 00:09:44 There's always some industries that are struggling. But, all right, no recession in the next five years. Plus 350, higher, lower, making the number up. I would probably take those odds. Meaning, you would bet you would hit that. You would bet that. Oh, yeah. That's pretty good, I think.
Starting point is 00:10:06 I'd say benefit of it out until proven otherwise. No, I think you're misunderstanding. I'm saying, what are the odds that there won't be a recession in the next five years? Oh, yeah. So I'm saying if you give me plus 350 for no recession, I'd take it. Oh, you'd take that. Okay. I think that's pretty good odds.
Starting point is 00:10:22 Okay. All right. From Axios, 2024 will be the U.S. restaurant industry's biggest year ever in sales. Remember when there was thought pieces in 2020 that, like, 50% of all restaurants are going under? Yeah. I tended to, like, actually give some credence to that. But wait, a lot of restaurants did disappear. Yeah, I don't think as many as people thought.
Starting point is 00:10:43 So it's $1.1 trillion in restaurant sales up from $864 billion in 2019. And there was a big drop-off, obviously. And now it looks like, I don't know, we're back on some sort of trend. But that's one thing that you've always talked about. Like, you can't compare current spending to pre-pendemic spending because people have changed their habits. And this seems like one of the areas where a lot of people have changed is just going out to eat more. and not caring about the prices, because we all know the prices are way higher
Starting point is 00:11:11 to any restaurant you go to. How often do you order in a week versus cook? I feel like we've been cooking more lately, but I mean, we probably order in more for the kids than for us. I mean, the thing is, once you factor in, now there's, it's impossible to argue that cooking is not cheaper than going out, but once you factor in, going to the grocery store, preparing.
Starting point is 00:11:40 Yeah, it's convenience. You're paying for convenience and time. Right, right. Especially with kids. This is why I always say the best thing has ever happened to families is the $5 pizza at Little Caesars, hot and ready.
Starting point is 00:11:51 It's my kid's favorite pizza. They still offer that $5? It's like $5.55 now. Sacraligious for New York people, but it's my, for some reason, my kids, it's their favorite pizza, Little Caesars. I do enjoy cooking, but man, just order it is so much easier.
Starting point is 00:12:05 See, I don't really cook. My wife does all the cooking, so she handles all that. You know, I tell you some of my family responsibilities. I dominate the kitchen. Rabbit is nowhere to be seen. She doesn't do the dishes. She doesn't unload the dishes. She doesn't cook.
Starting point is 00:12:21 Now, she does a lot of other things. But inside the kitchen, that's my domain. And I can't believe that that became my domain. You should see how I would love the dishwasher. It's like a bomb went off. I just throw dishes in there. You've sent pictures before. See, this is where I shine.
Starting point is 00:12:33 I'm the clean, organized freak. so my wife tells all the cooking, I do the cleaning, I handle the dishes, and I can get everything to fit in there nicely. And it's all, you know, it goes in the same level or row every time, everything's neat in order. I make that dishwasher. Yeah, I know what I'm doing. That's where I help. All right. Torsten Sloc, chart of the week, he shows the decile P.E. ratio for the S&P 500. And the highest decile, meaning of the biggest companies, have the highest P.E. ratio, the lowest desal. I mean, the smallest companies have the lowest PE ratio. And it's kind of funny because my entire career starting out, I read all the value books you could want. Warren Buffett, Benjamin
Starting point is 00:13:17 Graham, Howard Marks, the price is what you get value. What is it? Price is what you get. There are no such thing as bad investments, only bad prices. Valuation matters eventually. And it seems like a lot of that has been shoved to the side and like, actually, actually, we buy these compounders and you pay up for quality because those quality businesses deserve a higher multiple. Second level thinking has cost me a lot of money. I've got to be honest. So my question is, when is this going to matter again? Be specific. What do you mean? Valuation, because it did matter after the dot-com bubble blew up and value and quality and dividends strategies went on an amazing run. People still somehow forget that the NASDAQ had a great
Starting point is 00:14:03 depression-level nuclear bomb go off and it fell more than 80% following the dot-com bubble. It was that the S&P got cut in half. The NASDAQ was on more than 80%. Yeah. And value strategies did really well, the first decade of the 2000s and feels like since then it's growth and these companies have done much, much better. My point is just when will stocks with lower valuations? When will they outperform for a meaningful period of time?
Starting point is 00:14:30 That I don't know. I'll tell you when this will matter and this is not a helpful answer. answer. It's when the growth rates disappoint investors. Yeah, it's an expectations thing, right? That's the whole... The thing is, and you can't argue otherwise, as high as the expectations have been, fundamentals have done even better. Fundamentals have exceeded. That's why these stocks keep moving higher. Yeah. And they've totally done better than you would imagine. We were sharing charts today. Apple was trading for a sub-10p ratio in 2016.
Starting point is 00:14:59 So some of these were low valuation companies. Not all of them have been high the all the relational time. So I got interested in the market cap rankings after looking at these deciles. And I had our chart guy put this together for us. And I was tempted to do a pie chart, like your famous, infamous pie chart back in the day and just show all the tiny little slices. Remember you had? And it just went viral. Oh, I remember. Yeah. But I did a bar chart instead. And because I just did a quick scroll. I pulled up all the S&P 500 stock by market cap from Y charts and I exported it. And there's way more smallish companies than you would think. think, it really is a tail kind of event with the apples and Microsofts and NVIDIAs of the world.
Starting point is 00:15:37 So I looked over 400 of these companies and the S&P have a market cap below 100 billion. I mean, that's 100 billion is gigantic. It's kind of funny that's now you're considering that small. So, but the bottom, like 60% of companies are 45 billion and below. The smallest one is 6 billion. I don't know. I mean, I'm just saying that the size of the multiple of these largest companies, to the other companies is enormous. You're saying 100 million is still pretty big, but compared that to $3 billion. And that's my point is that the biggest ones are so much bigger
Starting point is 00:16:14 than all these other companies. Like, they're not even in the same ballpark. If you look at the price of sales ratio for Apple, in the 2010s, it fluctuated between two and a half times on the low end and four and a half times on the upper end. And then it just completely busted out of that range. And I'm not saying price of sales isn't necessarily the right metric, but just to show you where it's traded at, and now, just this past week or past month, it's busted out to an all-time high of nine times. Now, obviously, that's anticipation and hope of the upgrade cycle and the AI and all that sort of stuff.
Starting point is 00:16:47 But, yeah, expectations are continuing to creep ever higher. I don't have it yet, but I'm going to also show the performance by these deciles. And I'm guessing the chart would look exactly the same, where the lowest valuations have seen the lowest returns and the highest. My point is, unless investing has fundamentally changed forever, this is going to matter at some point. I just don't know when. It has to, right? You are going out on a limb.
Starting point is 00:17:11 It seems like some people are thinking, though, that, like, no, it's never going to matter anymore. I think there is a cohort of people who really think this. Like, valuations literally don't matter anymore. You don't think that's a thing that... I don't think that you would get anybody to say that out loud. Now, they're behaving as if it doesn't matter. And guess what?
Starting point is 00:17:31 Guess what? That's been rewarded. So why wouldn't they? The meme of the guy throwing away the intelligent investor book, I feel like a lot of people have really taken that to heart. Yeah, they should. Yeah, wild, wild stuff. Eric Soda tweeted, in the past 21 quarters of earnings calls, which goes back to 2019,
Starting point is 00:17:52 this quarter marks the fourth fewest number of times the word recession has been mentioned. Every time you say Eric Soda, I take a sip of my Coke zero. And my pample-moose. Is that really what it's called? Okay. You know, it is interesting how brands come in and go out of favor. I saw somebody tweet a chart of, like, where did LaCoy come from? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:18:16 One day it was here. That's true. Who owns them? I have no idea. Someone, does Coca-Cola own them? That's a great question. Pepsi? Google it.
Starting point is 00:18:26 Google it while I'm talking. Okay. I saw somebody tweet a chart of the company Burberry and the drawdown that that stock is in your fashion guy. Remember that brand? Oh, yeah, with the brown scarves and such, right? With like the brown plaid. It used to be a very, very popular super high-end luxury brand.
Starting point is 00:18:48 And it's like a 50, 60% trend. I don't know what happened to it. But it just got me to thinking about, like, man, brands are, it's a fickle thing. Like as strong as some brands are. globally dominant. Like, nothing's permanent. Yeah. National Beverage Corp, ticker Fizz, F-I-Z. Oh. And is that the, oh, yeah, the F-S. I remember people tweeting about that. Well, they own F-G-O? That's a Midwest staple right there.
Starting point is 00:19:13 What's F-G-A-F-G-O that never really took off, but... How do you spell it? F-A-Y-G-O, like Rock and Rye. That was a great... You want to have a nice soda pop. I feel it's a Midwest thing. I didn't even know it existed still. This looks like, you ever see the brand tab? My first grade teacher used to drink that all the time. You know what the greatest, one of the greatest pops growing up? Remember Tahitian Treat? No.
Starting point is 00:19:42 It was like a red with a palm trees on. Oh, you used to love Tahitian Treat. My favorite throwback soda, hold on, I'm Googling this. Tahitian Treat. My favorite throwback soda is Cherry 7 Up. Okay, that's not bad. Tahitian Treat. What the,
Starting point is 00:19:57 No, I've never seen this. This looks like something you get in. I can't imagine how much sugar was in that thing. Yeah. I think we went far off track here. All right, so anyway, so getting back to recessions, I don't know how we got to where I was, but getting back to recessions, it's over.
Starting point is 00:20:12 Mission accomplished. Yes. I'm not saying that they need to go from five and a quarter down to three, but start the process. Yeah, I agree. Let's do it. Rip the bandit off. I mean, at this point, imagine just remaining too tight
Starting point is 00:20:27 for too long, and creating a recession? If they fumble the ball on the goal line, yes. Just come on. I think that seems like a bigger risk to me. Ned Davis' research has net worth to personal disposable income, the ratio. And this looks like a chart of Apple's PE ratio, I guess. So they say the value of equities in household real estate have substantially contributed to the surge of net worth, obviously, which stands at a remarkable 6.7 times disposable income.
Starting point is 00:20:55 And look at how much lower it was in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 60s as well. It's so far off the chart now how much wealthier people are. And I've never been a big believer in the wealth effect. But this is unlike anything we've ever seen before. So how does this change people's behavior? Or does it? It has to. Yeah, Josh and I have been talking about this a lot.
Starting point is 00:21:23 It's sort of like a circular argument. Like, I think people are more driven by their income than by their net worth. That I agree with. But your net worth would be at an all-time high in a good economy when your income is also doing well. How about this? There will be, we've already talked about stats about baby boomers, more baby boomers retiring than you'd expect from the trend. There's going to be way more baby boomers retiring in the years ahead than otherwise would have
Starting point is 00:21:50 happened because they look at their bottom line and they say, really, I'm going to waited out three more years, I'm already, I've got enough money. I'm fine. Yeah, that's for sure. Look at this next chart. I only included this. It's showing household net worth by different generation. I know we've spoken a lot about this, but they slipped a generation here that I've never heard it before. It's millennial, gen X, boomers, and then traditionalist. Do they just make up a... I thought they called that the silent generation above the baby boomers. I've heard of silent. That's pre-boomers, right? Yeah. What is traditionalist? Is that the same thing? It sounds like some sort of cult that they made up on a TV show.
Starting point is 00:22:28 Nope, never heard of it. Never heard of it. So that money goes to the baby boomers, which eventually goes to the millennials. Yeah. Vlad Tenav from Robin and tweeted that they surpassed $20 billion in overnight trading volume since launching their 24-hour market last year. How's Robin Hood doing? I feel like you were...
Starting point is 00:22:47 Really well. Dipping your toes in the water there for a while. I wish. Okay, so this is like a $10 stock forever. it seems like her sub 10 and now it's above 20 so it's it has done pretty well the last couple years yeah i mean a lot of that is probably the and still still in a huge drawdown from the IPO price and from the initial spike but yeah so that that's a stock that's come back people just love betty and gambling and i'll skip my head to that baseball gambling story ben
Starting point is 00:23:13 you're going to love this all right were we talking we were talking before we started about your little league coaching this afternoon oh i'm not coaching i'm a i don't nothing about baseball But my son is- Let's be honest. Let's be honest. You don't need to know anything to coach seven-year-olds. This is, yeah, this is true.
Starting point is 00:23:31 Although the guys who coach my son are very serious. They're like sons of coaches. So they're like, no, put your back foot this way. That's stuff that I wouldn't know about. But he's playing in the first and second grade championship game today. So big game in our household.
Starting point is 00:23:43 I didn't even, before the season started, I had no idea there was even playoffs. And we're like, yes, season's done. And they're like, nope, three more playoff games. So we're in the championship. Thank you. All right. My friends sent.
Starting point is 00:23:54 this to me. I don't know if this is real or not. It looks like it's on Reddit. Betty are my kids, the Little League Baseball Games question mark is the subject. So for any of you who have kids that play Little League Baseball games, you're aware of how mind-numbingly exhausting these games can be. It's so difficult watching from the stands as Little Timmy pitches his 11th straight, four-pitched walk in a row. That being said, me and a couple of the other dads decided to make the game's more fun if we had some action on them. Pretty standard bets to start. Who wins the game? Number of strikeouts. How many errors Tyler will have when the first three innings a catch or, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:24:24 Lo and behold, the idea has really started taking off. Every game I go to now is spent collecting cash and tracking bets. I'm sure this is fake, but it's still funny. The wise would kill these guys. I hardly have time to watch. Another problem is that I've stopped caring about my own child's performance. Hell, half the time I'm actively rooting against him. Anyways, I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions on easier ways to track the bets,
Starting point is 00:24:46 perhaps a site that will do it for me, I would say that what I'm doing is a little immoral, but with playoffs coming up, the amount of money to be made is huge. Any advice is appreciated. It is pretty funny. And this would be the, it would be impossible for the little kids to throw these kind of things
Starting point is 00:25:00 because they're not smart enough to do that. But. Any chance this is real? Probably. Again, some of the other parents would shut it down. But if it was real, it's, that's pretty good.
Starting point is 00:25:10 Yeah. Well, but he's not wrong. Baseball is sort of boring. In fact, it's incredibly boring. Who's kidding here? Yes. Somehow it's my son's favorite sport. But it's kind of fun to,
Starting point is 00:25:19 But ours has a good, they have like a set amount of time. Like this, the games have to be done within an hour or they're done. So that I like. An hour. That's phenomenal. I'm a little concerned about if he gets older and keeps wanting to play, the doubleheaders and such. That'll be tough to stomach. But this is what we do.
Starting point is 00:25:38 All right. I want to talk about AI. So I just think it's funny how quickly the narratives shift. And this is just something that happens in society at general, like, in large, I guess. for a while it was, geez, chat GPT came out. Google is done. Google is, they're finished. They're behind the eight ball. Did you see this product they released? It stinks. And then it was like, whoa, whoa, actually Google's okay. They've got an AI strategy. And Apple, Apple is done. They have no AI strategy. They're amateurs. And it's kind of funny because last week, Apple had a huge pop.
Starting point is 00:26:12 And some people were claiming that Ben Thompson was the reason. He wrote a piece at Stratory that was saying Apple intelligence is he gave it very positive glowing reviews and saying this could be very good for them. And his point was, in his art, I don't know if you read this, but he said when you watch the movie, Her, which is always my favorite AI example, like that's all I want from AI, give me the assistant in my ear. He's saying, even in a movie like that that's trying to look at the future and think about what this could be someday, you needed hardware to actually interact with the AI.
Starting point is 00:26:42 And he's like, if Apple is the way that that hardware is interacted through, they have to be a winner. If you're using your AirPods and your iPhone to interact with the AI, Apple just has to come out of this okay at least, right? That was his whole point. And apparently right after his column came out, that's when the stock took off.
Starting point is 00:27:01 Ben Thompson added $79 billion to Apple's market cap in 20 minutes. Right? But I was thinking, a couple weeks ago, I said, you know, what are the best AI hedges for the boom bus? And you said, oh, that's crazy. we can't think that far ahead yet. But isn't it just with these bigger companies getting
Starting point is 00:27:18 so much bigger, isn't the simple answer just small caps, midcaps, value, quality dividends, international stocks, whatever, anything but the NASDAQ 100 heavy concentration. Isn't it just anything that breaks the market cap, that's your AI hedge? Because these bigger companies are obviously
Starting point is 00:27:35 the ones that are going to, at least for now, be the beneficiaries. Yeah, I've started to hear anecdotes people that should not be asking about NVIDIA, asking about NVIDIA. Right. You know? Yes. I hear a lot of that too.
Starting point is 00:27:51 And the reason why those anecdotes, you know, whatever, we all know what they are. But at some point, like, really and truly who's left to buy. Right. You know, when they start coming from people, you're like, oh, if that person has heard about it. Yes. I agree. There's rumblings of that. I don't like to make investment decision on that, but it's something.
Starting point is 00:28:16 It's not nothing. All right, Ben, I have a question for you. With all of the money that's coming into crypto in terms of the flows, by the way, we plug, we did a podcast with the bankless guys that we released on YouTube on Saturday. I think it's also on our feed, but it's on YouTube as well if you want to check it out. It was a really fun conversation. Yes, that was a more fun conversation, I thought. But it was podcast versus podcast, which was fun.
Starting point is 00:28:44 It was good. With all the money that's come into the ETF and everything else like that, why hasn't the price of the coin's done better? And it's an answer, it's a question that I just, you know, I don't know enough to have an intelligent answer for because you would think like with all this buying pressure, right? Why isn't more money? Why isn't the price doing better? Right. So we had the run up and then it's kind of slowed from there and just kind of treaded water, but not any further, even though more money is coming in. So Jim Bianco tweeted something from J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan is basically saying that a lot of the money that's come into the space is a rotation from existing digital wallets on exchanges. So it's saying that it's not necessarily new money coming in. It's left pocket, right pocket type of situation.
Starting point is 00:29:32 So people would say, why would I have my own cold storage thing if I can just put it in E.F? I guess, yeah. Okay. Someone actually emailed us. and asked, hey, I'm thinking about buying Bitcoin for the first time. What do you think about me buying it on an exchange versus buying it and holding it myself or buying the ETF? And to me, it's a no-brainer answer. You buy the ETF through a financial intermediary and let them worry about the risk of holding it.
Starting point is 00:30:00 Yeah. Right? The only thing that I would say to that is if Bitcoin crashes over the weekend and you want to add to it, you can't do that to an ETF. True. So, yeah. Do you think Robin Hood would not want to add ETF overnight trading then because you can buy Bitcoin, you can buy Bitcoin straight through Robin Hood? I don't know if they do EETF overnight trading for crypto. I just don't know. Maybe they do. Yeah, they probably should. All right, latest. Hey, oh, latest, latest, uh, do you get, do you get, um, perturbed if someone doesn't say, God bless you? F2's
Starting point is 00:30:39 Oh, there's an interesting question. God bless you, etiquette. Well, all right. If somebody sneezes once, God bless you. They sneeze again, 50-50. The third time you're out. You only say, God bless you twice. I'd say once. More than that, it's overkill. You can't say, God bless you twice. Is it annoying if the person says, God bless you every single time you. If you're in a sneezing fit, it's like, all right, relax with the God bless you. Thank you. Yeah, we're trying too hard. All right. Latest Redfin report shows. that the median house was up 4.4.
Starting point is 00:31:12 By the way, speaking of this, can I just say now it's maybe a good time to read this email that we got? Okay. About Ben. Oh. Awesome as always,
Starting point is 00:31:21 one question. Is Ben the kindest and most gentle hater out there? Maybe. Think about it. It's like a sneak attack. One day you wake up and realize Ben hates
Starting point is 00:31:31 almost everything about you, but he still seems super nice. So I'm like the player haters ball for Shepel show. I'd be like the, the nice one, hating on people with kindness. You know, you know, spoiler, that wasn't an email. It came from one of our employees.
Starting point is 00:31:51 That's fair. That came from Eric. All right. That's fair. And in Ben's defense, Eric drives a big car. So Ben's kicked him a few times. Listen, yes. Eric lives in Texas.
Starting point is 00:32:08 He has to drive a truck. That's like there's a contractually obligated. So. You tilted them a little bit. I don't hate truck people. I hate the fact that they take up too much parking real estate. It's really hard to park with all the trucks in the lots. All right.
Starting point is 00:32:25 Home prices up 4.4% year over year through June. Another record, obviously. And this stuff is seasonal. It usually goes up through the summer. Then it backtracks a little bit through seasonality. Is there anything? So they said all prices are decreasing. declining in a few places, Austin and Fort Worth and San Antonio and Portland. So a few,
Starting point is 00:32:42 few places. But short of, like, the great financial crisis-like situation or all the baby boomers dying off in the 2030s, are there any, like, realistic scenarios that would cause housing prices to fall on a meaningful basis right now? Because I don't, I can't think of any. Good podcast, like that. What are you eating? Sorry. Listen, I sneezed twice and I grabbed the airborne just in case. Oh, okay. That's fair. It's probably seasonal allergies, but a little extra vitamin C never hurt anybody. All right.
Starting point is 00:33:16 What if rates fall and there's an unlock of supply? Now, we know demand's not going to – demand is what it is. It's always going to be there with the demographic situation. But is it possible that enough supplies unlock to push prices lower? I think that's probably being a little bit too cute, but possible. Yeah, I think it would be an unlock of demand, too. I think that's the problem is falling rates
Starting point is 00:33:40 would unlock a lot of demand as well. But demand hasn't gone anywhere. Unless you say that people have stopped shopping because there is no supply, that could be... That and people who live in a house right now would say, I don't want to move somewhere and pay out 7% mortgage rate,
Starting point is 00:33:55 but if it gets to 5, then you go... No, I'm saying if rates fell. Yeah, but I'm saying in that scenario, you'd be wanting more people who'd want to buy. I understand, but I'm saying it's not impossible to see rates fall and prices fall.
Starting point is 00:34:06 It's not impossible. It's pretty hard. I think it'd be pretty hard. So this is from... Plus 460? Yeah. I just don't see it. Justin Fox created this report that shows Americans are still adventurous.
Starting point is 00:34:22 They just hate moving. And he shows the percentage of Americans who move each year keeps falling with the lowest on record 7.8% of U.S. residents reporting the Census Bureau in the spring 2023. They lived in a different place than they had a year earlier. This was in the 20% range or so from the late 40s through the early 19th. through the early 1980s, and it's slowly declined ever since. And now it's just-
Starting point is 00:34:42 Yeah, moving stinks. But also, it's not just, houses are also getting better. We spoke about this a million times. Starter homes are just not really a thing anymore. I think that's part of it. Do you also think that this could help explain the further travel boom happening? Like, instead of moving somewhere and being more adventurous that way,
Starting point is 00:34:58 I'm just going to travel more and get out, get away more. Too cute? Okay. Once the last time you moved? When did you move into your house? 2017. It's easy because we moved, it's easy for me to know because my twins turned seven this year and we moved when they were a month old to a bigger house.
Starting point is 00:35:18 What would have to happen for you to move right now? Something drastic. Very drastic. As far as I'm concerned, we'll be in the house until at least the kids are all out of high school. So I wish I bought a home on the water because I didn't, I guess when I moved, I didn't know that I would be a water guy. But guess what? I'm not moving.
Starting point is 00:35:39 Even if rates were to fall, I'm still not moving. It's too much. You're close enough to the water as it is, right? Yeah. It's nice to have that view. Nice what? It'd be nice to have that view, obviously. But you're close still.
Starting point is 00:35:52 Yeah, moving stinks. Huge pain in the butt. I agree. Okay, some sad news. Jonathan Clements, who writes for the humble dollar, also was at the Wall Street Journal Forever. He's written a number of books. pen to peace this weekend
Starting point is 00:36:05 basically saying I didn't feel so great I went to the doctor they told me I have lung cancer and maybe 12 months to live and credit to him for writing this and saying like don't feel sorry for me
Starting point is 00:36:19 I'm not maybe at peace with it but he you know and he says listen I haven't I'm a healthy guy I haven't smoked since 1987 or something it just it's a thing that happens and he's 61 years old probably one of the most sober personal finance writers that there is. And I think the biggest compliment I could give him is that there's a lot of times that he writes
Starting point is 00:36:39 stuff where I'd go, oh, geez, I wish I would have thought of that. I wish I would have written that. And just obviously very sad. And I traded some memos with him and he seems being good spirits about it. And he's like, I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I'm just, I'm going to, you know, it is what it is kind of thing. I'm not going to feel sorry for myself. But I think this is hearing stories like this and dealing with stuff with this,
Starting point is 00:37:01 with friends or family members where this stuff happens, I feel like I'm hearing more and more of this with people where you just never know. And I think this is probably one of my biggest personal finance shifts in recent years is I'm not just going to save everything. I am like if it's coming down to between like should we spend this, should we not, it's almost always for me going to be yes, I'm going to spend it and enjoy it now. And I look back, 2021 to me was like a boom time for investing and saving.
Starting point is 00:37:30 and I always chart my how much I save each year, you know, and I have kind of targets. Of course you do. And I feel like I got caught up a little bit in like, geez, everyone is investing in everything, and that year especially. And I feel like you and I together did some investments. And I look back and that was like the year that I saved and invested the most money. And part of that was probably pandemic related and pent up, whatever. But now I look back and I think like, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:37:57 Obviously, I'm going to continue to save up to a certain point. point, but after a certain level, I don't think it's worth it to continue saving anymore and just to have that money in the bank. I just, I don't see the point of it anymore. That's the stage of life I'm in. Yeah, I'm completely agree. I am, yeah, I completely agree. So today actually marks the 13th anniversary of my mother's death. And that changed my life in many ways. one of the biggest ones was just like the incredible reminder of how short life can be and how fragile it is. And it is cliche that tomorrow's not promised.
Starting point is 00:38:41 But it's hard to live like that if you've never experienced like tragic loss. And so it is weird. For me, that's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. But in some ways it's the best thing. And that might sound weird. I know Stephen Colbert did a bit about this, but it really is true that it has allowed me to just enjoy life to the fullest. And that's, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:39:10 I don't really know what else to say. It's a powerful, like, thing to think about. But to your immediate point, in terms of, like, you having that shift, I think that for a lot of people that can't make that shift, that are just natural warriors or whatever, what would have to happen for somebody like that to change their mindset about money? It's almost like, I don't think anything could happen.
Starting point is 00:39:32 Yeah, and I was. Because oftentimes it's like a byproduct of like their childhood or something. Yeah, the way you're brought up and personality and I was like that too. I was a big, I was always a big saver. And kids were the big change in my life that, that like knocked me out of that a little bit.
Starting point is 00:39:46 Like, no. Like spend money on spending time and experiences with them and enjoy that now because it's not going to last forever. That's the thing that, like, It shook me out of it to be like, no, no, no, you want to say yes to more things. It doesn't have to always be spending money. It could be time, but.
Starting point is 00:40:01 I'm definitely a spender. I think that I probably have a lot less money than I should, like, net worth. But I just don't care. As long as you're being, like, reasonable and responsible and not, there's obviously a balance you have to find. Not like, oh, fuck, I could die any day. So I'm just going to blow everything. Yeah, right.
Starting point is 00:40:19 And yellow, right? There's a balance. But I don't think over-saving is healthy at all. Yeah. So, having that, I just don't, having that, like, that certain level. Like, if I had this much in my portfolio, then, like, that doesn't impress me at all anymore. Like, or it's not something I strive for to hit, like, a certain level. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:38 No, I'm all about spending. Spend, spend, spend. Enjoy your life. Anyway, check out the piece on Humbold Dollar. It's really well written for a difficult situation and thoughts and praise of Jonathan. He's a really good guy. I've traded emails over the years. He's always been very kind and, yeah, very nice guy.
Starting point is 00:40:52 Yes. Yeah. Really sad news. Sam Rowe tweeted a chart from Bank of America the 50 richest people in the world owned wealth equal to the poorest 50% of the U.S. And this is at the root of so much negativity that we see everywhere.
Starting point is 00:41:14 And how many of those people do you think are just like rich hedge fund people that no one even knows? Because a lot of the rich people you know they are. On this list? Yeah, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, people know that. All of these people, all of these people, you know who they are. Okay. So, I mean, for the most part.
Starting point is 00:41:28 That makes sense. But I think this is just another thing that social media has amplified and not for the better. Because a lot of these rich people, they didn't used to have a microphone. Like, we didn't know all of their inner monologue. And now, yeah, the Rockefeller back then, no one really had any idea how much richer these people were than them. Yeah, and now they're in your face. And I'm not just talking about Instagram, but like, their thoughts about everything. I think.
Starting point is 00:41:54 Yeah. And I, and, uh, but a lot of the, the negativity just stems from, from shit like this. Okay. Yeah. I, that is a kind of a depressing chart when you look at it like that. Yeah, the top, yeah, 50 richest people in the world own wealth equal to the poorest 50% of the U.S. So, so we've talked about the insurance crisis a lot lately. The Wall Street Journal had one out today, I believe, uh, on insurance costs for condos.
Starting point is 00:42:21 And they give some examples. They say board members of this. Highland Park Community Association, braced for rising insurance costs last year. They were shocked to receive a quote for over $170,000, which is more than four times what they paid in 2022. They say a lot of 12 issuers declined to even offer quotes because wildfire risk in California.
Starting point is 00:42:39 This other place in Colorado said their policy went from 110 grand to 960 grand. And they basically have to go to all these people that live in the condos and be like, listen, here's a one-time assessment or your HOA feature are going way up. I guess this is the downside of a condo. Like, having a condo has to be great in a lot of ways because, like, you just pay some money and people take care of everything, right? The common areas and the landscaping
Starting point is 00:43:03 and the snowplow, whatever, if you're in that kind of area. But when it comes to this kind of thing, you're screwed, right? There's, like, there's nothing you can do besides move. Like, we talked about, like, the cost of owning a home last week. I feel like some of these association fees
Starting point is 00:43:21 for, like, a condo, or a shared space, like, that's even worse when you actually like pool all together, right? Yeah, rough. Yeah, I'd be nervous if I was in one of those places in like California or Florida, I guess, that those costs are just going to continue to jump. What's this FBI think? Did I put that there or did you? You did, but I think it ties into last week when I said that crime decreases during bull markets.
Starting point is 00:43:47 Oh, yeah, you did. Yeah. That was from the hitman. So the FBI just, that's right, that's why I put it in here. The FBI just announced a crime as plumbent of the first court of 2024. This is from Kyle Griffin tweeted this. Murder decreased by 26 percent, rape by 26, robbery by 18. All right, that's good news, obviously.
Starting point is 00:44:06 Right. So the economy does well, crime goes down. That is, yeah, that makes sense. We just freakinomics that thing, didn't we? We did. You had an experience in the gym? Okay, so last week I was in the gym. I get out of the shower, I get around to clean out.
Starting point is 00:44:23 I'm a head down in the gym guy, earbuds in. I work out. I don't really know anything there. I don't talk to anyone. Do you shower at the gym? Tend to shower at the gym, usually. I did have one experience with an animal spirits listener there. Said, hey, I'm listening to you right now.
Starting point is 00:44:39 Yeah, thanks, man. But there was a guy in the locker room, and you know how you get on a plane sometimes, and you just know, like, oh, no, this person's going to want to talk the whole plane ride. You just know those people. so this guy comes in and we're the only two in the locker room and I swear it felt like you had paid this guy to go have an uncomfortable small talk conversation with Ben for 10 minutes he kind of walks in and he goes hey man how's the workout
Starting point is 00:45:00 and I said and I go I'm not bad and he goes then he goes what'd you do today and I said I don't know I just lifted some weights for cardio trying my heart is not to have this conversation
Starting point is 00:45:17 shit. He goes, so, and I'm sitting there in my towel, like, trying to get dressed. And this guy is just, you know, big smile. He's a young guy. He does this for a living. It feels like small talk. And he goes, so do you find that you feel better after you work out? And I'm like, is this guy doing a podcast interview with me right now? I don't, and, and proceeded to ask these kind of questioning. You know, I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I'm like, I got to, I got to get out of this. Like, and so I was nice to the guy and cordial, but this is a guy who just loves small talk. How did it end? How did it end? I finally, I got dressed very quickly and have a good one, man. One of those. But this guy did remind me, though. So I, there was a
Starting point is 00:45:59 smart list podcast with Arnold Schwarzenegger a couple months ago. And he said when he goes to the gym, he rides his bike to the Gold's Gym every day. He said it feels like his life is in black and white. And after he lifts weights, he comes out, everything's in color. And I feel like that is for me to whatever the endorphins or whatever you get from working out, like the good feelings, that's like meditation for me. Some people have to meditate to get their head in the right place for me. It's working out. Like if I go a couple days out working out, I start getting ornery and annoyed.
Starting point is 00:46:29 All right. Well, let me ask you this because I hate working out. I hate every minute of it. The good feelings that you get, does that happen during the workout or after? Because I get the after. I do feel better after. But I hate doing push-ups. I hate all of it.
Starting point is 00:46:43 I guess I don't mind it, but for me, it's just like, I have to get this done. And yes, and afterwards, it's like I feel better about myself. Okay. So it's an after thing. You don't actually enjoy the act. Yes. I don't enjoy drinking the beer. I enjoy the feeling the beer gives me after I drink it.
Starting point is 00:47:01 How's that? Good analogy. That's what it is. But yeah, a lot of, too much small talk. I couldn't handle it. Yeah, no, that's a nightmare. We got a million emails about the airline overbooking. we did what's the summary i can't really summarize it i guess i can let me just read it uh this person
Starting point is 00:47:20 works for an airline i work for an airline that explicitly does not overbook however it can happen if there are cancellations and needing to move customers to other flights our network model is a little different but with the hub and spoke model of your american united deltas they have a couple of things i play for one they have a certain expectation of people who will late cancel or no show which leads to selling 78 seats and michael 74 seat model the other thing at play is that you have a lot of customers, especially when it's not a hub-to-hub flight. So when Ben is scheduled to flight Delta from Grand Rapids to, what's DTW? Detroit.
Starting point is 00:47:52 Then to Charleston, and something happens to either his flight to Detroit or flight from Detroit to Charleston, Delta could put him on a flight through Atlanta or LaGuardia to get him there more or less close to when he was really planned. That opens up a seat and removes it, blah, blah. So he said, finally, there are always people who buy a ticket last minute and will pay top dollars. So the line essentially acts as a broker. Ah, airline brokers.
Starting point is 00:48:11 Are there airline brokers? A broker-scopper where the person who bought last minute will essentially pay for the voucher and have someone else taken off. Either way, there you go. So there's a bunch of factors apply. Oh, interesting. So sometimes that voucher could be someone paying a higher value
Starting point is 00:48:25 and then that payoff trickles down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, all right, there you have it. Thank you for everybody that emailed us. All right, Ben, I saw an incredible almost accident the other day. Bad drivers really are something, aren't they? They're everywhere.
Starting point is 00:48:44 And I feel like it's only getting worse. All right. So there's a, let me line this up for you. There's a main road called Merrick Road, and there's a gas station right before the entrance, the on ramp onto a highway. So you could leave the park, you can leave the lot and basically pull right onto the highway, okay? So Merrick Road, it's two lanes. So there's a person in the left lane who is about to move into the right lane to then get onto the highway. It's a very fairly common thing to do. You move the left lane to the right to get onto the highway.
Starting point is 00:49:14 The person exiting the parking lot, I guess I don't know if they didn't look at all or so that they were in the left lane and just said, oh, I can go. But like without having the wherewithal to think, like it probably wasn't out of towner. But either way, this is the amazing part. So she pulls out of the gas station,
Starting point is 00:49:30 the person who is going from the left lane moving to the right lane, like aggressively swerved back into the left lane, you know, and then like in front of her to like, get into the highway. So the person honked as was their right, like an aggressive honk. Like, what the fuck? Like, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:47 So I'm passing her, and I see this is her reaction. Complete bewilderment. She had no idea what just happened, that she almost just caused a massive accident. The look on her face was priceless. I'm surprised there aren't more accidents, to be honest. I see people staring at their phones in their car so often, just not paying attention. or, to your point, just being a bad driver and not understanding.
Starting point is 00:50:11 It was unbelievable. She was called a mass accident. I completely was in the dark. I get yelled at by my wife quite a bit. For what? I'm a honker. If someone does something bad and they cut you off or they do something,
Starting point is 00:50:24 I don't mind giving a honk on the way by to be like, hey, just reminder, you're a shitty driver. I don't mind reminding people that. My wife was always like, why you can't honk like that? And I don't mind giving people a little honk just to let them know like, hey, get better.
Starting point is 00:50:35 Well, if I could brag, and I know a lot of people that are there above other drivers, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say that. I'm an above average courteous driver. I'm very courteous. So my biggest pet peeve is when you stop and don't let somebody in, they don't give you the wave.
Starting point is 00:50:47 That drives me nuts. But if I'm driving like a single lane and I'm making a left turn, I will purposefully pull over to the left as far as I can so that the person behind me isn't stuck. That's the type of driver I am. So they can scoot by in the right. Exactly. Yes.
Starting point is 00:51:02 I'm thinking about the person behind me in life and in lanes. All right, speaking about that. Car dealership guy tweeted, slowest selling luxury brands right now. You want to look without, you want to guess without looking or are you already looking? Are we at Porsche or what? No.
Starting point is 00:51:16 Okay. But number one is not surprising because it's an interesting type of person. We're not here to judge people for what they drive. That's not what we do here. It's the Maserati. Does Eric have a Maserati too? I hope not.
Starting point is 00:51:28 But let's be honest. The Maserreli driver is a certain type of person. I'm not going to say what type of person. I'll just, we'll just leave it up that. It's a certain type. Okay. I haven't really,
Starting point is 00:51:36 I don't really have a Maserati guy in mind here, but you think so? It's a guy or gal. So, number one is Maserati. Number two, Alpha Romeo. To be honest, I'm not quite familiar with the profile of the Alpha Romeo driver. Is that a luxury car? I guess so. It just says luxury bad.
Starting point is 00:51:51 Jaguar. Yeah, Jaguar's, I feel like Jaguars' days are numbered, right? It had its time. That feels like a very, like, 90s car to me. Like, Jaguars were like, that's like when you made it in the 90s. But this goes to the point where I would make it. about brands coming in and out. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:52:08 I don't know how Jaguar rebounds from here. When we were growing up, BMW was the, that was the thing. If you had a BMW, you made it. I think it still is, no? A little bit. It's still a top brand. I feel like Ranger Rover has leapfrogged BMW. How about this?
Starting point is 00:52:23 I feel like luxury has sort of flatted because growing up and I'm, you know, I was a kid so I don't really remember. But I feel like, I feel like a luxury car was like more rare than they are today. I feel like everyone drives a luxury card these things. There are more luxury brands, too. But it's much more common to see, and we spoke about this, it's much more common to see somebody driving a $75,000 car today than it was when we were growing up.
Starting point is 00:52:45 Yes. And a lot of those $75,000 cars are driving to soccer practice or something, you know? It's like the cars you drive with a family. Round the out of the list. Number four, infinity, number five, Lincoln. Lincoln is luxury brand? Just because McConaughey is the, I would have not put Lincoln in a luxury ban. No offense to Lincoln drivers.
Starting point is 00:53:02 Lincoln's are nice cars. All right. The Navigator? Jaguar and Maserati and Lincoln? I wouldn't put those three in the same list. All right. Moving out of the recommendations, Ben, inside out too. I haven't seen it yet.
Starting point is 00:53:16 Did you take the kids? No, but they can't wait. I think my wife is waiting for a rainy, rainout summer day, no camps, and then take them. But my kids are, they've watched the original one like four times in the last month to get prepared for this. All right. So it was $155 million at the box office just in the U.S. and Canada. That's the biggest opening weekend of the year, even ahead of Dune 2. Very original concept, too.
Starting point is 00:53:36 I love The Inside Out. It's really good. Globally, it did $295 million. Second biggest behind. It's the biggest opening weekend in history for an animated film. Wait, this doesn't make sense. It says globally Inside Out 2's hall is a biggest. Yeah, it says in the U.S. Canada, it's the second biggest.
Starting point is 00:53:59 Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. There it is. You could read. Good job. Credit to you. All right, question, though. Box Office Pro estimated that it was going to do between $85 and $150 million.
Starting point is 00:54:09 I feel like these things are usually pretty good. How is it so far off? Wow. Analysts were way off on expectations there, huh? Way off. All right, Ben, here's a tweet. I thought Under Powers would be a jokey movie like Shark Nato, but Twitter convinced me to give it a watch, and it's really quite good.
Starting point is 00:54:26 The last 25 minutes were amazing. Who has this come from? No. Stephen King. Seriously? Wow. Okay. How many times has it?
Starting point is 00:54:39 My son has great taste. We haven't watched it in a while. He watched it like back to back when he first saw it, though. He's like, I'm going to run that back. Watch it again. Okay. So, Ben, I'm catching up to Dark Matter. Where yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:52 I just watched the last episode and it's very good. And it's the rare one where I think the show is better than the book. And I really like the book. I think they actually, they improved upon the book that the way that they made it in the show. I can't wait for the finale. Very good. Oh, there's one, there's one episode left? Yeah, I just watched the seventh one last night.
Starting point is 00:55:11 Okay, so I'm on episode five, so I'll be caught up to you next week. There's one scene that's not a spoiler at all, but there's one scene where one of the doors that they exit Chicago is the buildings are coming down. Yep. That felt like movie, that felt like movie quality. Yes, I agree. Some of the worlds they go into. It's a very high-quality show. Very high quality.
Starting point is 00:55:34 Also on... As ambitious as it is. Also on Apple. Presum deemnocent, Jake Jellon Hall. I didn't watch yet. Worth it? Oh, yeah. Oh, it's good.
Starting point is 00:55:42 Come on. It's Jake. Okay. Are all the episodes out, or they slow... No. So, I don't... How do you feel about it? They release two episodes,
Starting point is 00:55:49 and then it's one a week. On the one hand, I do like having something that my wife and I could watch schedule because we don't have anything to watch together. But I have the other hand, just let me binge. Okay. So you're always...
Starting point is 00:55:59 watching that one too. Yeah. Okay. So I don't want to like follow the hater tag that I've been given this episode, but I only have two shows that I couldn't get into on Netflix. One of them is another book I could three body problem. It's the same people who did Game of Thrones apparently. I just, I gave it two episodes and it just, it didn't do it. For some reason, it just didn't do it for me. Yeah, I feel like that sort of fizzled out. That was a dud. Just okay. Just okay. It wasn't, It wasn't bad, but it was just okay. And then the Shane Gillis show, the tires. It wasn't great.
Starting point is 00:56:32 It had like an office feel to it. Like the way that they shot, it felt like the office a little bit. It, I, it was okay. I just, it didn't, I feel like I'm quicker to just, eh, I'm out. Well, it didn't get better. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good. The reason why I stuck around, the episodes were like 24 minutes. Yeah, it was quick.
Starting point is 00:56:51 But, I mean, I, I don't know, maybe it made me appreciate what Seinfeld pulled off even more. Like just taking your comedy And trying to turn it into a show a little bit And obviously you had their David to help him So maybe that's not fair But It's hard to do Because Shane Gillis is a funny guy, obviously
Starting point is 00:57:07 I went from no shows to four shows Between presumed innocent, Dark Matter Now the Boys is back And House of the Dragon is back Which is good because basketball is ending Did you watch House of the Dragon? Not yet. We went through a little bit of a lull there
Starting point is 00:57:20 But I will be getting into it. My weekends in the summer I'm not going to be consuming as much content anymore. My weekends are in the summer I'm away from the screen. I'm outside. I'm taking advantage of Michigan weather when it's nice. Yeah. Smart. Same. Check out the compound shirt, tropical burrows.com. Can also get an animal spirits one. Animal spirits at the compound news.com. We'll see you next time.

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