Animal Spirits Podcast - The Fed Should Cut Already (EP.348)

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

On episode 348 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the people you see on every vacation, the cure for the loneliness epidemic, the biggest driver of stock market returns, the John Bogle expected returns formula, the best returning stock might surprise you, Bitcoin ETF flows, why there won't be a baby boomer retirement crisis, and much more! Thanks to YCharts for sponsoring this episode! Supercharge your client conversations with the latest and greatest data from YCharts’ newsletter. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits-referral. Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. 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 Y charts. By now you're likely familiar with Y charts and all the data and charts that we use, but they have a new resource called the Advisor Pulse. This is a LinkedIn newsletter, which is interesting. I've been, Josh talked me into posting more on LinkedIn in recent months, and there's actually a decent amount of engagement there. People read and comment, and they're actually kind of nice, too. LinkedIn is not a bad way to go.

Yeah, so the first edition, they look at the S&P's journey to 5,000. And they had this cool chart where they look at, like, how long it took to break some zero to 1,000, 1,000 to 2,000. It's kind of interesting. Wait, what? So it shows the amount of time it took to go from whatever, the start of the S&P to 1,000, and then 1,000, 2,000, 2,000 to 3, and it kind of breaks them up into different segments. So check out the link in the show notes for this. It makes a lot of sense. So if you want, it helps with client conversations, data, all this stuff.

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

Michael a couple weeks ago, I was on the road to New York, and I said that there's people that you see on every airplane, right? Went through that little bit. But you and I both did some traveling recently because it's not enough to have a fall break and a Christmas break and a spring break and a summer break. Now we have to have midwinter break.

Hang on. What's your fall break? I don't know. We have a fall break too, like four days off in the fall for the kids. They have a lot of breaks, is what I'm saying. So we had a midwinter break and went to Florida. You're still in Florida right now. It's too much. I think I've learned my.

limit that I'm I feel like I should be going home today and now I've come down with something a little under the weather four nights is plenty five nights is too much there's a line a fine line and I'm on the side of it with kids that's true yeah so we're we went to a little trip in the in the keys at a nice little resort down there never been I told you it was like it felt like I was in the show bloodline which is a good show for one season it was one of my favorite seasons first seasons of a show ever. It was really good. Second season was okay.

Third season was abominable. So we had a vacation on the ocean and then a pool. And I thought... Where'd you stay in a house? No, it was actually this little resort and they had townhouses. So it was great for a family. So we have five. So going on a trip somewhere is always a pain because it's hard to find a hotel room or

resort that can hold five. Yeah. But this place had three bedrooms and a long. which is huge for kids because we go through so many clothes so it was more of a townhouse kind of resort so we liked it i'll give you the name of it later maybe they can sponsor if they want me to say their name kidding so i i thought you've turned into ultra-capitalist i'm just going to hold them hostage so i did the people you see on every airline flight and i've realized after going to a number of resorts over the years that there's people you see

at every resort too so i've got resort people you see Okay? And I'm sure you see this where you are. First one, overly PDA couple in the pool. You know, they've got their arms around each other and they're kind of, they're just sort of hovering together in the pool. Like one unit. Yeah, like one unit. You see them. I don't know if they're on their honeymoon or what. There is the Southern Dad. And I see this at every resort. He's probably from Alabama or Georgia or Tennessee. And he's loud. He's holding court and telling stories all day. He probably has like 18 Miller lights.

And you can tell he's either halfway in the bag all day, but he's also somehow coherent, even though he's been drinking all day. And he probably has one of those bucket hats on. You know this guy, right? He's Southern. He's telling stories all day. All right. Next one.

There's these group of old people. It's either a family reunion or just friends. They're in their 60s, and they're in a circle all day. They got their chairs in a circle, and they're drinking out of nondescript cups, right? It's probably halfway full with vodka. and they're just drinking all day, they're overly tanned, and they're just in a circle,

like playing cards. They go into the water together in a circle. That's the old people. There's also... I got a list here. Okay. This one is me, to be, if I'm being honest. There's the entertainment dad

who tries a little too hard to keep his kids entertained. We're constantly doing games, you know, jackpot in the pool. I was throwing, you know, my kids jump off the edge of the pool and I throw the football to them and they catch it.

Like three other kids are like, hey, can we get in this game? and their dad is like, hey, guys, I can throw the football to you, but they wanted to get on our game because it was, you know, that's me, the entertainment dad. Also, they could tell that you're the college football dad. Yeah, there is the first time parents who just everything their kid does is the greatest thing in the world.

Like, yay, you jumped into the pool. I'm sure we were like that, too. And then, of course, there's always the sunburnt old lady with really bad tan lines. Like, she changes up her bathing suit and you can see the tan lines. Okay. So that's what I got. Very good. Any additions?

Any additions? I did see a dad. So there's a basketball court here, and I did see a dad who was playing. It was a very odd pick-up game of basketball. There was kids of all ages, and there was like an 11th grader football player who had, like, a 13-year-old guarding him, and he was just twice his size. And the dad was super enthusiastic about it. like nice passes and it was just way too enthusiastic.

I was actually, I was actually had to bite my tongue because I was just watching him laughing. He's like overly competitive, dad. Great look. No, no, no. Good idea. Good idea. Good idea.

That means you messed up, but it was a, yeah. Yeah, no, it was a good idea all day, all day. I had one experience that I didn't put as much thought into the bit as you did. Again, I'm under the weather, so my apologies. Too many, many devices. You know, I only had one. Okay.

My greatest find on vacation was we went to a restaurant on the water, and it said drinks for two or three. And we got a 32-ounce Miami Vice. Probably a little overkill. Wow. Yeah. I said that's a bull market drink. So, JFK, which I think I'm done with it. I think I'm upgrading to LaGuardia.

I love the new LaGuardia Turnul. Yeah, it's great. Wait, before you get into this, I have one more vacation thought. You always hear people when they get to a vacation destination or on the plane, complaining to someone about their travel experience. This airport was crappy. I got delayed. Literally no one cares about your bad airport experience.

Right? Like things I never want, things no one cares about is your fantasy football team, your dreams, your child's accomplishments, or your bad travel experience. Everyone has bad travel experiences. No one wants to hear about it.

Remember airplane Twitter? That's how you know somebody was a dork if they're like literally tweeting about to like American Airlines. I had a bad travel experience this past, week. I'm not going to tell people about it because no one cares. It happens to everyone. Yeah. So the line at Clear was super backed up. I've never seen it like that before. And I thought about this the other day when I was online at Philly Pretzel Factory for

pretzels for Super Bowl pickup. The line was just a mile long. And whenever you're standing online, that's longer than it should be, especially clear. People pay for that, you know, it should be faster. There's always like a group of like they should. they should people. My wife and I had this exact conversation this week, I swear. As if they hadn't thought of that. Yeah, sometimes things get backed up. They should X, Y, Z.

There's always that they should person in line. And then someone in line always chimes in. It's like, yeah, yeah, right. So I'm never, I don't engage. If somebody's talking overly loud and wants you to look at them and like giving them an acknowledgement, and I won't do it. I keep to myself.

All right. That's a good take. I like that one. So I came away from vacation with a take. Now, if somebody think this is overly obvious, dumb, but I'm going to go with that anyway. So we talked in recent weeks about I'm a grumpy old, what's the grump of Grand Rapids? Because I'm anti-vision pro, because I think it's going to make people lonelier. So Derek Thompson had some more...

Wait, you're going on the record. Like, I know you, but you're really, you're going to, that's going to be, you're sticking that claim. You're, no, no, no, no. So I'm going to turn this ship around here, okay? So Derek Thompson. You're going to Grand Rapids Edge it? So Derek Thompson had this piece called Why, I, Americans suddenly stopped hanging out. He gives all this other

other data. American men since 2003. They reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by 30%. Unmarried decline is even bigger. Teenagers, it's like 45%. Teenage depression, all this stuff. So Derek goes through the whole list of people aren't hanging out as much anymore. They're not socializing,

blah, blah, blah. So I'm on vacation and it's because we're addicted to our screens and all this stuff. And side note, all this stuff about teen, anxiety, and depression and stuff. Like, I'm not completely poo-pooing it. But I don't know. It was a pretty lonely existence before cell phones and social media. I was very lonely when I was a kid at times, I'm sure. Like, it was hard to get a hold of your friends.

No one asked me how I was feeling. No one asked me if I was depressed because no one talked about that stuff. Because we didn't care. Literally, over the summer, if you couldn't get in touch with your friends on the telephone, I remember looking out the window in my living room. Seriously? Just staring. Yeah, if you had a friend who wasn't listed in the phone book,

you could not get a hold of them all summer. That was it. Yeah. So it's not like this is the only lonely time. So anyway, there's part of that. But so my thing was I'm on vacation. I keep reading all these stories about the loneliest end up epidemic and no one's hanging out. And that's probably true in everyday life. People aren't hanging out as much anymore because they have more options of stuff to do. One of the reasons we used to hang out more as friends is because there was literally nothing else to do. We had to entertain each other because life was boring. But you go on vacation, there's no screens anywhere, right? Sure, people are taking pictures to make their friends jealous on Instagram. But there's no screens. At one point, my son goes to me, why would I be on my iPad? We're in Florida. And you look everywhere. People are day drinking and socializing and playing volleyball and going on jet skis and going on boats and going on fishing expeditions.

And the simple solution to the mental health problems in our country is more vacations. You crack the code. How's that for a take? Yeah. But it is kind of, like, if most of our day-to-day existence is going to be screens that are stapled to our face, and we're going to be lonely or not hang out as much anymore, then I do think that vacations have always been a thing to get away and relax,

but it's probably more important than ever to have these, especially with the work from home stuff of not seeing people for those kind of jobs. That's, I think, why this ramp up in vacations and traveling since the pandemic is not a one-time blip. It's going to keep going up. Yeah. One of the downsides of vacation is just the price gouging.

These companies, so I'm... It's crazy, right? And you have to pay it. You're on vacation. I'm staying in a Marriott, drinking my Starbucks. This is like $6, I think. And an ice coffee is $9. And what am I going to do, not drink my coffee?

It's $9. I feel like that should be borderline illegal, though. $9 for an ice coffee? The prices are ridiculous. Yes. I agree. Last night, Robin and I went out to dinner. And the martinis were half off.

And I've been a martini guy on this vacation. That's what I've been drinking. Robin got a... That's such a middle-aged guy drink, by the way. Martini's? Yes. I like the flex just because the glass looks so cool, but that's a middle-aged guy drink. But I've been switching it up.

Before I leave, I get an espresso martini. Last night I started with a cucumber gin martini. I'm mixing it up. Anyhow, Robin got a margarita, and we got the bill, and we wanted to make sure they did it. The service was terrible. Again, they were overbooked. We ordered a barata and never came.

Her drink didn't come until the meal came. And the waiter was very nice, so I don't want to bust his chops too much. But he charged us $31 for her margarita, which is a bit aggressive, no? He poured Don Julio. Just a tap. And then for the espresso martini, we shared it. We got tequila. He said it's not half off.

We said it's fine. We just want tequila. And that was $25. Did I say anything? I didn't. So you know how the people who do wisdom posts all day long? Like the wisdom quote of the day is your life will be better if you have more uncomfortable conversations quicker.

So I ordered Miami Vice at the bar. The guy gave me a Pina-Claude instead. Guess what? I didn't want to have that uncomfortable conversation. I just left. Is that on me or is that on him? No, that's good for you. Although there's definitely a line.

I mean, if it was like, I'm trying to think where, at what dollar amount would I have said something? Probably 40, I guess. But I was talking to the bartenders. waiting because he's like, hey, we ran out of this, we ran out of this. And the guy is talking about how, like, this is the busiest week they've had in a February ever. And I just do think that everywhere that we went and the airports and the getaways and the experiences, all the expeditions and stuff, everywhere was packed. And it's, I don't know, it's February. It's not

even spring break yet. It can't continue forever, or can it? I feel like is this the type of that's going to continue until there's a recession? I guess, I guess it could be. But people are still spending money. That's for sure. All right. Are we good to the vacation talk? On to the markets? We're good.

Okay. So one of the things we talked about, I think last week, is that one of the reasons the stock market is going up is just fundamentals are better. We talked about how there's that relationship. You see prices and earnings are both going up over the long term, over the short term, who knows? But over the long term, it really is fundamentals. And Drew Dixon had this awesome piece at Albert Bridge Capital. Did you read this? So I've never seen it laid out like this, but this is amazing.

Stick with me here for a second. He said, you've surely noticed what happened in VDIA lately. So blah, blah, blah, well, okay, Nvidia has a $1.7 trillion market cap, and in the last five years, a stock is up 1,700%. Guess what else is up 1,700 percent? Earnings. We can stretch the same thing with Google. Over the past 14 years, earnings are up 885%.

The stock is up 980%. Amazon, up nearly 2,500 percent. the stock is up, or that's earnings, stock is up 2,800%. Microsoft has the last 22 years. Earnings are up 1,150%. Quick aside, do you use a comma when you're doing a percent? That's over four digits, over three digits? Yes.

Just making sure. So earnings are up close to 1,200%. The stock is also up 1,200% or the last 18 years. Same thing with Netflix. So basically, so Netflix's earnings over the last 18 years since going public are up nearly 15,000 percent the earnings are. Guess what else is up 15,000 percent, the stock? It's kind of crazy. He's showing all these tech stocks that everyone thinks are like wildly overvalued and maybe they are at this point. They've basically tracked their

earnings over the long run. It is incredible how stocks tend to track their earnings over the long run, right? Like just how price and earnings converge. It's pretty credit to us. But you didn't see stats like this in the 1990s, because people keep saying, well, this is kind of like the 1990s. And especially with the biggest stocks like this, you didn't see this. Even with the big companies back then, it wasn't even the tech stocks, it was GE and Coke and all these crazy stocks that were trading at 50 times earnings that never should have. It's not the same thing today. I updated my John Bogle expected returns formula through 2023. You've seen this one for me before.

So Bogle said, expected returning for the stock market should be. the average dividend yield plus earnings growth. That gives you returns. And what he did is he went back through time over the decades to 1900s. And he calculated the filler there is a P.E. change. So if you take the dividend yield plus earnings growth, the difference between the actual returns and that should be like how well the devaluations hold up. And you can see in like the 80s and 90s, it was a lot of valuation. That was the big change between the fundamentals and the actual results. 70s it was the opposite. The earnings growth. a lot. The P.E. fell a lot. In the 2010s and 2020s, there's been a little valuation change,

but it's mostly been earnings. Earnings was 11% per year in the 2010s. It's been almost 8% per year now. Even with a small dividend yield, most of the returns in the stock market for the past two decades has been fundamental earnings growth and dividend yields. It hasn't been that crazy. Right? No. So this is the 2020s. We were, this is the first three years? Actually, four years. Yeah. It's kind of, yeah, it is kind of weird because you think that there's no year zero.

How is it 20-24 already? You know, I was thinking about how... There's another middle-aged saying there, guy. I ordered one of the martinis that I had. I think I asked for a vodka they didn't have. They said, it's Tito's fine. I said, yeah, Tinos is fine. And in my mind, Tinos is like a new, like the new kid on the block.

It's like a newish vodka. It's not new. It's been around for... I remember when I first, I first, I first drive. Tito's in like 2010. It's been around for 15 years. Yeah, I was thinking my wife got into the Tito's in the 2010s. I was like her drink and now it's been around for a while. Same thing. Remember the, so Walmart just bought Vizio, the TV? In my mind, Vizio is like the new kid on the block. Not even close. Vizio is probably from the early

2000s. Michael, father time is undefeated. Here's another one. I was watching, uh, so I saw 21 jump straight in the theater and I loved it. I loved that movie too. That's probably one of the few last great comedies. What are the, 10 years ago, probably? There's, no. There's a few scenes of 21 Jump Street where I just was beyond belly laughing. I didn't see 22 Jump Street, so it's on Hulu. I dialed it up last night.

It's not bad, actually. The first half is much, so there's a few belly laughs. The first half is much better than the second half, but it's worth watching if you like the first one. So 20, the sequel is 10 years old. The sequel is from 2014. Oh, wow. Okay. And my mind is, yeah, it's not good, Ben.

My mind is melting from time dilation. I just, I love the car chase scenes in that movie where the cars just blow up from nothing. Really good satire on action movies. All right. One of the most important charts, I think, that explains the stock market. And I think people beating their heads against the wall for why won't the stock market just crash? And why won't we have this financial system come to an end? The S&P 500 margin over the years.

Look at how much this thing has increased. Just put a little trend line on this. it just it's it's it's bottom left to top right and there's been some back and forth but remember this was the people said this is the most mean reverting uh time series and all of finance because it has to be because of capitalism and competition it has to be and Josh sent us something today about walmart and slack saying walmart results were great because of e-commerce and his point was like everything is a tech stock now this is this this is the this chart is a this time is different thing.

Yeah. We've never seen anything like this. Yeah, this is like GMO's big case in the 2010s was this is going to come back to Earth because the reasons you just mentioned, not being able to see the fact that like Amazon and Google and Microsoft and all of these things were just going to continue their dominance. It's definitely this time is different. And so the question we've received from lots of people over the years, is, all right, why don't I just put all my money in U.S. equities? Why not? And Cliff hasn't sort of

piece about this for AQR this week. Remember that new research paper from like a month ago? It was like, why would you hold a 60-40 portfolio when you could own 100% stocks? And it was like owning 100% stocks of the long run is always the best option. And we kind of said, of course it is, but some people can't handle that. And I really liked Cliff's analysis at the end here. And he said, simply looking at historical results and urging investors to buy the thing that's gone up the most over the long term is not financial analysis. It's finger painting. Asis is just a fantastic financial writer. He's so good. The bottom line is diversification works. Theory works eventually. Owning one asset is suboptimal. Extrapolating the winning country over a period of valuation increases is dangerous. Finance 101 is actually helpful and will like they have to do this again after the next bull market. I do believe that it seems impossible now that any other financial market could compete with the U.S. And I still agree with Cliff's conclusion here. Yeah, it's, I agree with both of you. It's difficult to envision a scenario where the U.S. underperforms, either on the way up or on the way down.

It's really difficult to envision. And yet, I agree with you agreeing with him. If we can go backwards, if you can invest backwards, yeah, for the last 20 years, there would have been no reason to invest in anything but the United States. And if you think that the future is going to look like the path. I mean, it's just, this is, this is one of the harder ones in investing, right? It really is. And I, it, so the fact that we're having conversation about this all the time shows why it's

so hard, because there is that financial theory piece, and the behavioral piece and the structural piece, and then the distime is different piece. It's really hard. So back to your age thing. I think one of the reasons you're having a hard time with the time dilation thing, what's it called, time dilation, dilution, is because you're bald. Go on. You can't, you can't tell that you're getting.

getting older. How long have you had your head shaved for? Has it been like a decade now? 10 years. Yeah. So it's hard for you to tell that you're getting older. So here's how I can tell, here's how I see the passage of time. First of all, my kids is an easy one. Like, you see your kids getting older. My oldest daughter is going to be 10 in two months, and that boggles on on, whatever. Tom Cruise. I saw a recent interview with Tom Cruise. And I just watched Magnolia again for the first time in a while. That's like 1999, I think.

I never saw Magnolia. it's a really long one great it's mostly the it's a lot of the cast from boogie nights plus tom cruise it's a good one really long but looking at tom cruise then and i saw him in an interview now like i'm seeing the passage of time through tom cruise like it was the first time in my life i go oh my gosh tom cruise is getting older how is that possible tom cruise has wrinkles he's starting to look look his age a little bit and that's how i can tell that the passage of time has happened through tom cruise there you can't tell because you're you're a bald listen ben i I appreciate you carrying me on this podcast today

because I feel my energy is quite low. I don't know. I've got a bug. I've got something. You do look a little under the weather. It's okay. It happens. I'm not feeling great.

I have been thinking a lot about just like aging in life, like a lot. And I'm not sure why. But I kind of feel like, I feel like, I feel like I'm not even, I'm not even like depressed about it. Like I just, I feel like I feel like I'm going to blink in my kids you're going to be out of the house.

I think about it a lot. I think about a lot of my kids too. On the trip, I've been trying to be more in, like, God, this sounds so stupid and, like, but it's true. Yes, but just like. I've given up on being present.

It's not going to happen for me. But my kids want to hang out with me now and, like, me to do stuff with them. And I keep hearing, I hear it all the time from parents who say, just wait until they get older and they don't want to spend time with you where they turn teenagers and then they're grown with their friends. And so as much as I can, I don't want to be like nostalgic for this period in 10 years and be like, oh, man, remember when the kids used to love hanging out with me?

and like they looked up to me and now they don't anymore, they hate me or they just don't want anything to do with me because they hate their parents. So I've been trying to like have that nostalgia now, if that makes sense. I'm trying to have it in the moment. Anyway, I'm working on it.

My daughter's gonna be a teenager soon and you sent me this one, Wall Street Journal. These teenagers know more about investing than you do. Now I looked at the headline and I thought, oh gosh, here we go. There's gonna be my favorite Wall Street Journal quotes in here. I came away relatively impressed by this piece in the people that they interviewed. What did you think?

Oh, me too. Me too. I wasn't sure if we were going to disagree on this. So there's a chart custodial accounts at Chuck Schwab, ages 13 through 19. And there was 100,000 accounts, 120,000 accounts pre-pandemic. And now there's 330,000 accounts. So from the article, almost two-thirds of Gen Z investors said they first started learning about investing in high school or middle school.

That's incredible. compare with 38% of millennials. So here's a quote from 17- I literally did not know what the stock market was until I was maybe a senior in college. Like, had never thought of it once. Like, you hear these stories of people, like I was investing in stocks in the dot-com bubble

in high school, and that was not, I knew nothing about anything until basically after college. Yeah. So Rachel Kim, 17-year-old from Orange County, she said, she invested in AMC, made a 300% profit, quote, for a little while, I got addicted to that adrenaline. But as I began researching more,

I realized it was highly unlikely to continue that aggressive profit. Stocks go up and down. It's fine. It just happens. That's another quote. Since we were young, since we're young, we have the privilege of seeing our investment compound. The biggest lesson would be to start early.

Incredible. The kids are going to be okay, right? The kids are, yeah, the kids are going to be great. And I think some could get this could read this and say, oh, they're gambling. Okay, that's how everybody starts. Everybody starts off, except for Ben, everybody starts off gambling the stock market. And the earlier they start the bet off, I was extremely encouraged from this. I think this is fantastic.

Yeah, and there are so many, I mean, listen, there's ways of finding charlatans and really bad advice these days. But if you look, you can find good advice, and it's easier than ever to find this stuff now. And I think that that's been a good thing. Okay, this kind of blew my mind. Triple net investor. This is absolutely unreal. Abercrombie and Fitch has risen another 15% of the last few weeks and is now eight times in less than 18 months.

It's up eight times. It's the best performing stock in the S&P 1500 index, even outperforming Nvidia by a huge margin. Absolutely no one could have predicted this epic turnaround for a brand that was largely outdated. How? I was never a really big Abercrombie guy back in the past. Oh, that's surprising to me.

I guess I was always American Eagle. Maybe that's because I was, Abercrombie was too expensive for my... Yeah, no, you're a price-conscious shopper. Yeah, so I did American Eagle, which is like the poor man's version of Abercrombie. So I said... Wait, so this chart looks like super microcomputer. What's happening? I have no...

So I decided I'm like, I haven't thought about Abercrombie since, I don't know, 1997 maybe. So I went and looked and I looked on there, and I tried to figure out, like, what's the story here? If you look at their, it looks like the gap now. Like the Gap used to. It's, it's, they're, apparently they, they're big with, like, 30-something moms, and they've moved up. It's not like T-D-Bopper stuff anymore. It's, I don't know, it looks to me like Gap or Abercrombie did, or not Abercrombie, a banana did back in the day.

And I guess they're just- What do you mean? You went into a store? You did some channel. I looked on, no, I went online. Come on, I'm not going to the mall anymore. That's, that's not going to happen. I just went on their website. And, you know, back in the day, it was, it was shirtless bros in six-packs, and it's not that anymore.

Okay. It's still called Enfifference. bitch. So this is, I guess this is, remember how Domino's for a while was this, like, hey, dominoes is outperforming Google and that was like the crazy retail stock. So Abercrombie is that now, I guess. I can't, I can't explain it though. Yeah, like a lot of athlete's stuff.

Right. I mean, it looks like a regular, it's, I don't know. Hang on. I'm going to compare this to Gap. So Gap has gone nowhere for, Gap is at the same. same price it first hit in 1998 right now. Hoof. Okay. I don't know. All right. You know my favorite, one of my favorite Jerry Seinfeld bits is the newspaper thing where he says, it's crazy that if you just take all the news from one day, it fits in those 16 pages or whatever. Jeremy Herpetall,

which is one of my favorite econ mythbusters on Twitter, looks at spending on food per family. And he says, family spend less on food today than any point in the past. And it was like 44% of a family budget went to food in 1900, it fell to 20% by 1960, and it's 9% today. And it's crazy that this was even, this didn't really go up that much higher. So 2021, it was 9.5%, 22 was 9.9%. I know that we have a lot of other categories to spend on these days, but it's not like families spend less on food now, and so they just save more money. It's that they spend less on food and they spend more on other things.

Is the family budget just the Jerry Seinfeld newspaper bit? that something gets way cheaper, but we just, we fill that vacuum and that void with spending on something else. Like, iPhones become a necessity and computers and internet, all these other stuff that we never paid for before fills the gap. Saving, spending, investing. That's it. Those are the three things you do. But I'm saying if one category, if we solve the energy thing tomorrow, like there was a, what's the, what's the rock in,

avatar? The rock and avatar. Ebyquium or something, whatever the name is. It's a cool name. I can't think of it. Whatever they're mining an avatar, if we found on a, on a meteor or somewhere that hit the earth that, like, we don't need oil anymore. We don't need any energy sources. Energy is solved. No one has to spend money on energy anymore. We would spend money, we'd spend that money on something else.

Yes. Is what I'm saying. Yeah. You save what you save and you spend the rest. I mean, I know that's like incredibly obvious. There's only so many things you could do with it, But, yeah, you find a way to spend the money. Yes. I think that's what I'm saying. Okay. So it sounds like the UK and Japan are basically headed for a recession.

Joey Politano broke it down by country. U.S., Canada, Italy, France, it's all the G7 companies, countries. Britain just saw a decrease in GDP. Japan did too in the fourth quarter. U.S. is still way higher growth than anywhere else. Is it, is the Fed getting too cute here? I know, like, yeah, inflation came in a little higher than I expected last year, but if the rest of the world is slowing down and rolling over

and potentially going into recession, isn't it time just cut rates already and not, everyone keeps worrying about inflation re-accelerating and things getting, if the rest of the world is going into recession, I don't know. Isn't that a bigger worry than like, let's wait until September to cut or June or just cut already? What are they waiting for?

I feel like that's a bigger risk to me than inflation re-accelerating and seeing the 1970s. Interesting. But we did, I mean, I know it's only one month, but we did just see consumer prices, producer prices go up. You're not worried about that? You think they should cut in March? I think this is probably going to be a blip. Without having any foresight into what inflation is going to look like going forward. But I, again, if the rest of the world is slowing, what is going to cause inflation? Is it just we keep people keep spending money and wages are higher than inflation? And that's what it is? I don't know. I think. think the Fed is to try not to get too cute here and just cut rates already and not not mess around. And I feel like they're going to blow a tire on the landing here or something potentially. I think that's a, that's a bigger word for me than inflation re-accelerating. So, Ben, you think that, you have an article in here where you say everything is bad news.

Explain yourself. All right. Someone sent this to me. Young adults are getting used to living on a financial cliff. Millennials and Jen's ears are pulling in big. your paycheck, but much of their spending power is feeling short-term purchases like groceries and vacations, not saves. Okay. Young adults' wealth is growing. Short-term purchases? I've never heard that phrase before. I know. Let me read this for you. Young adults' wealth is growing, but they're still living and spending in the here and now. Many feel they don't have a choice. The net worth of Americans 18 to 39 surged 80% since the start of 2019. You and I talked about

this, like the young people have seen the biggest increase of any age group. But much of the gains are from investments that climbed alongside stock markets and largely don't translate into disposable incomes. So why young people are pulling in bigger paychecks are still pumping that cash into price your everyday expenses from essentials like rent, of course they're still spending on rent, literally have to regardless of the economy, to luxuries like leisure travel. I just feel like no one ever looks for a silver lining anymore. Like what's the opposite of a silver lining. You know, that's what people do these days, is everything has to be bad news, and I think people just, I know there's part of it is the doom porn where more people will click and talk about this stuff, but I feel like some people just want to be miserable. and they just can't accept good news for what it is. I think you're getting caught up in the news cycle.

Like you're seeing articles. Articles are always pessimistic, and they've been that way forever and ever and ever. I feel like they're worse now than ever, though. That's the problem is, I feel like the news media is beating us over the head with negativity. And for a certain subset of people, it's working. And it's making them more negative about everything. That's what I don't like. Just report the news.

Don't give me your opinion on why you think it's bad every time, even though it's objectively good. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like it's always been that way. Maybe it's worse now than ever, but... I think it's worse now. Well, listen, I would personally was not reading the news in the 1970s, so I don't know. Well, that's the thing, is we didn't have as much access to news back then. There wasn't as much spin or analysis or opinion or... All right, Fred Kruger. Is this a real Fred Krueger?

tweeted, he quote tweeted Matt Hogan. So Matt Hogan from Bitwise announced that their ETF crossed a billion dollars. said, Bitcoin ETF from small fund no one had ever heard of until a month ago, scoops of $1 billion in assets in 30 days with eight other competitors in the mix. That's a good point. Obviously, we know who Bitwise is, but they're not a household brand, you know? No. The fact that they were able to get a billion dollars is pretty impressive. So I was underwhelmed by the Bitcoin ETF launch. You said I was being too pessimistic. I'm not going to say I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong, but I think the strength of the money still pouring in

means that, like, maybe I was too pessimistic at first. So I shares one now is $6 billion. Fidelity Bitcoin ETF has $3.8 billion. Bitwise has 1.1 and ARC has 1.1. So those four big ones have over $10 billion now. I'm impressed with the strength. So I was underwhelmed at first, and now I'm like, I'm whelmed. You're well.

Well, outflows into GBTC are slowing and flows into the ETFs are still coming in. So I'm impressed with the continued strength of the flows. This is more impressive to me than the initial burst of money that came in. Yeah, I agree with that. We'll never know for sure. But I really don't think that a lot of the money, what is it, $8 billion? I don't know how much came out of GBTC since the ETF launch.

I really don't think that most of that money is going into ETFs. Because unless it's in a retirement account, not a single person is dumb enough to pay capital gains in order to save 100 basis points or whatever it is. Yeah. And there was also a lot of people who were just making that trade for their arbitrage. And I feel like those people already closed it.

Right? For them, it was, I'll pay the taxes because I got a 40% return on this in six months or whatever it is. And I think that that's done. Yeah, so it's impossible to, I'm going to guess, I don't know, 10 to 15% left GBTC and went into one of the ETFs.

Yeah. So anyway, the continuous strength of the, money going in is, that's impressive to me. And maybe it will get to, what, did we say 20 billion was the line in the sand for us between right or wrong by the end of the year? I can't remember. I feel like there was a lot of goalpost movings. Will Clemente tweeted, roughly 70% of Bitcoin supply still hasn't moved in at least a year,

while ETFs are seeing $500 million of inflows today. Don't need it to be an economics PhD to know it's set up to happen next. And that's more or less my thesis on Bitcoin. Yeah. Part of me thinks, though, the 70% of stuff that hasn't moved, just never moved. so why does that ever matter? Just because the... Right?

So obviously it's going to be... That's why the margin is always going to move the price in this. But if that piece has literally never moved because all these people who got in earlier are just never going to sell, then the price is always set on the margin regardless. So, all right, we got an email. I would like to share my experience yesterday

doing an $11,000 emergency transfer with Bitcoin, with my experience doing international. wire transfers. Done many wires over the years, living in Southeast Asia as an American. Okay. So, Bitcoin, copied and paste of one address, paid $2.30 in fees. Total time from my wallet to father-in-law's bank account was 90 minutes. That actually sounds kind of long, no? I'd be freaking out. Yeah, that's, yeah, still quicker than wire transfer and such. He said, to be clear, the Bitcoin part took about 20 minutes while lightning is under one second. I'm not exact sure what that means.

a save so I could send from a bookmark if I need to send again. Wire transfer. Cannot initiate on evenings, weekends or holidays. Yesterday was President's Day, and this is a life or death situation related to his heart. Need name of bank. Need a swift BIC code, which verifies the correct bank is being sent to. But in my experience, some weird holding companies. Okay.

Need account number, full name of account holder, full address of account holder. There's zero updates. Even if you call the banks, they could sometimes see that a wire is in process. But beyond that, you get no status updates. That's true, too. bank calls me to verify before beginning the wiring process from my account to the other account takes from 24 to 96 hours oh shit okay i have to go through the whole thing again in full except maybe the bank okay um that's a lot he said there are very few apps that cross any borders vamo cash app etc

and there's zero that cross from the u.s to communist authoritarian run nations not to mention spending limits through apps and moving from to and from bank accounts but bitcoin salt doesn't have a use case that's obviously tug on cheek hopefully someone will figure out that's something besides speculation of this pet rock, shoulder shrug emoji. Well, interestingly enough, Citigroup just put out a report, bringing traditional assets to digital networks, exploring tokenization of private markets. I do think that, I wrote a piece about this, that in order for a crypto to really take it to the next level, it's got to do something other than just go up in price. Yes. Still waiting. But I agree, the whole transfer thing,

that's always been the biggest use case to me is like we're going to fix the rails of the financial system. It's like, it's just will the financial system allow that to happen? Well, the banks allow that to happen. So, yeah. That makes the most sense to me. Okay, Redfin put out a story about housing demographics. The typical U.S. homeowner has spent 12 years in their home up from six and a half years two decades ago. Ben, what do you think, what do you think is the reason? for this. They have a great chart. Homeowner tenure has doubled since 2005. Yeah. Oh, I think a lot of it was back then people were flipping homes faster. So that was part of the bubble thing. And to me, a lot of people saying this is a bad thing because it reduces housing supply, which it does. But

to me, this is a great thing. People are staying on this is longer. From an investment perspective, you're not paying those fees to switch your house all the time. Like the fees are egregious, the frictions, to sell your home, realtor fees and closing costs. costs, and it's expensive to sell your home. There's a lot of frictions involved. So people staying in their house longer is actually a good thing to me. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. The 3% thing, obviously, is part of it, but this number has been going up since way before 3% mortgages. So the article says that nearly 80% of boomers own their home, nearly 80%. And if that's a case, and it is a case, what do you think about this statement? There won't be a retirement

crisis. I tend to agree. A lot of people say, well, there's a lot of these people don't have retirement savings, but if you take the wealth they've made in their home and social security. Yeah, but tap that equity. Yes. There's going to be, yes, there's going to be a need for a lot of equity tapping in the years ahead because that's the biggest asset for most people.

40% of boomers have lived in their home for at least 20 years. Another 16 have lived for 10 to 19 years. For Gen Xers, more than one third have lived in the same home for least 10 years. So I think for millennials, it's going to be different. I think they're going to be hopping around more. I don't think they're going to be happy. What do you think? Yeah, see, you're a little.

You're part of the problem spreading this negativity. It's not negativity. I think millennials aren't going to be. I drove through an older part of town. My kids wanted to go to a park on President's Day that has these, like, enormous slides. And it's far away. And I drove through an old neighborhood in Grand Rapids

that is probably 1950s homes. And I just can't see millennials being okay, staying in an older home for that long, I think their tastes are just different. How long? A lot of baby moors didn't grow up in the H.G. TV era where they felt they need to always have the newest and best thing for their house. I think young people are going to have that mentality.

How long are you going to stay in your farm style? What's the name of that house called? Oh, modern farmhouse? Modern farmhouse. Yeah, yeah. How long are you going to stay in that house? At least till the kids are in high school or out of high school, out of the house. But I have a 3% mortgage. I'm not going to give that up.

Yeah. And I have, yeah, no reason to change. This is Torson-Slock, too. The share of U.S. population that has moved in the previous year was as high as 20% in the mid-80s. And now down to 8%, call it, people are moving less. Again, I think that people say that that's a bad thing for, like, the dynamism of the economy. But I think you could make the case that this will remain lower because people are going to stay in their houses longer. and because of the work for home trend.

People don't need to move to a different city anymore to get a better job. So I think this number is going to stay low. Hmm. All right, I can't imagine what the bearish case would be for housing because if 8% mortgages after a 50% increase in three years didn't do it, I don't know what will. Kevin Oakley tweeted this.

Website traffic where home billers hits an all-time new high post-super Bowl. Conversions are still lagging, but this is people on the hunt for a new place to call home. All-time high. Again, maybe the boomers selling their houses in 2030s will have an impact. But I think for the foreseeable future, call it three to five to seven years. Even a recession, I don't know if that's going to put a dent in the housing market. Is that two rose-colored?

What would be the reason to be bearish on housing? Unless mortgage rates stayed at 8% for five years? I have no reason to be bearish on housing in the U.S. The price of housing. Throw it to my face in the future if you want. I see no reason to be bearish. The price of housing. But 66% of people already own a home.

No, I'm asking you, bearish on price? Yeah, if you're bearish on prices, what would cause you to be bearish on prices? If 8% mortgages didn't do it, what's going to? No, house prices are not going down. So I like the Wall Street Journal's real estate section, and they had this, I think it's good anecdotal evidence of the housing market.

So they had this home, this piece on this neighborhood in Beverly Hills called Beverly Wood. Sorry, I couldn't get it out there. I needed like a change of battery there. So they interviewed a, they said over the last 10 years, this Beverly Wood neighborhood is blown up. The guy, this realtor says 10 to 15 years ago used to be able to buy a house for two to 300 grand. Today you can't buy land that any of the prime streets for less than $3 million. Three million dollars, $3 million buys you a 6,500 square foot lot. And I'm sure there's a little bit of exaggeration here. There's no way that stuff went from 2 to 300,000, but 3 million for a lot.

But they were basically saying a $2 million home now attracts a circus in most cases. If you price conservatively, you're looking at 10 to 20 offers of houses going 100 or more than asking. Isn't it crazy how, like, all of a sudden a market will just wake up to the new realities of, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, you could have bought an affordable house in this neighborhood. Now, good luck. It's never going to happen again, probably. it's just like markets just kind of wake up to this new reality like there's a flip that just switch that was flipped driving around Fort Lauderdale

all of these houses on the water with yachts in the backyard where is all this money coming from I pulled up the real estate prices for I don't get ever All these houses are seven million bucks Look at the Zillow one I put in here And my wife and I were talking So we've talked in the past in the recent weeks

about Florida home insurance and how expensive it is. They don't seem to care because driving through the keys, it's so tiny. If a hurricane came through there, it's just, it's gone, basically. It's like, I look at hurricanes now. That's what I'm saying. If the hurricane came through, there's no protection there. But I guess people just don't seem to care. Is it just the simple fact that baby boomers are retiring, we said four million baby boomers retiring every year? Is that the thing that's just propping up Florida housing prices? Like, they just don't care. Listen, I'm retiring. I don't care if there's a hurricane that comes through. I want to live on the beach. I don't care if housing insurance is high. I have money. I'm moving to Florida.

You're going to pay higher prices. Also, side note, is Florida the worst state for driving of any state in the United States? Oh, my Lord, they're bad drivers there. And I don't think it's the old people. We drove from Miami to the Keys on our trip. And just like the left lane people and the going way slower than the speed. People are in, like, cutting across lanes. And I don't think it's even old people. I think it's mostly, like, tourists and people from different states. I think it's the cultural problem is that you have people from all different driving cultures.

Florida has to be, this is recency bias, maybe. They have to have the worst drivers ever of any state. How is the drive to the kids? It's a fun drive that you'd want to do maybe once in your life. Why? Because it's like a two-lane road, the whole way. It's very slow. It's like one road going the whole way down there.

here's another thing about you saw this story about in dana point california how there's like these huge 15 million dollar mansions that are about to fall in the water i did not see this picture okay but that that picture is wild wow okay so i feel like so they're saying the funniest quote tweet on twitter was it's like this is a 16 million dollar home that's about to fall in the water because of a mudslide and the person said i don't think that 16 million dollars reflects true market value anymore which is kind of funny but look at how close they built these houses to the cliff, this is rich person overconfidence. Only a rich person would look at this cliff and say, let's build six inches to the edge. We'll be fine. Only a rich person to do this.

Yeah. Like an obscenely rich person would look at this and say, yeah, that looks safe. We live in the state on a huge fault line with earthquakes all the time in mudslides. Let's build right up to the edge of the cliff. Yeah, what's the insurance for that house? So anyway, that's another thing with Florida why people keep just paying the high prices. I think it's rich person overconfidence. Here we go. Americans are bad at the economy. Round two survey. Two-thirds of Americans believe the economy is worse than the media makes it out rather than better. So it's not just the media that's negative. It's people. 82% of Republicans and 66% of independents believe

the economy is worse than the media's portrayal, and the half of Democrats also said the media viewed the economy too favorably. I've been hitting on media for causing too much negatively. People say it's actually worse. 75% of those polled wrongfully believe that wages aren't keeping up with inflation. That view is held by the majority of Republicans, independents, and Democrats. In August, the unemployment rate was 3.8% close to a 50-year low. The poll found that 51% wrongly believe employment is at a 52-year, 50-year high. Oh, boy.

Once again, Americans are bad at the economy. I rest my case. And I don't think it's going to get better. I don't know what's going to help. All right, Dave Ramsey. Maybe prices continuing to moderate? I think it's, I think the echo chamber of social media and I think it's too far gone. All right.

The, the journal did a piece on Dave Ramsey. The title was, Dave Ramsey tells millions what to do with their money. People under 40 say he's wrong. On their own, for the first time, young professionals are craving sound financial advice. They just don't want to hear from Dave Ramsey. the well-known and intensely followed a 63-year-old conservative Christian radio host has 4.4 million Instagram followers and 1.9 million TikTok followers. Wow. And Liege is Moore who listened to his radio show and podcasts. His message is brutal

and direct. Avoid debt at all costs. Pay for everything in cash. Embrace frugality. This is kind of wild. A University of Copenhagen researcher conducted a study that found that when Ramsey's radio show entered a new market between 2004 and 2019, household in those cities decrease their monthly expenditures by at least 5.4%. It sounds almost impossible, but... I don't believe that. There's no way. Yeah. Somebody tweeted, I can't remember who's...

Somebody tweeted Dave Ramsey as a walking recession. That's not bad. But plenty of 20- and 30-year-olds are pushing back largely on TikTok, the hashtag Dave Ramsey wouldn't approve has 66 million views. Many say they don't want to eat rice and beans every night, a popular Ramsey trope, or hold down multiple jobs to pay off alone. They also say Ramsey is out of touch with reality, with their reality. Yeah, that's probably about right.

So here's, I have two thoughts on this. One is it's okay to like put context around financial advice. And Dave Ramsey has a very hard line on stuff. And I think it's okay to put context around it and say his advice might work for some people and not everyone. That's fine. I don't think, I don't like the idea of young people pushing back and saying, I'm going to be screwed financially because I, woe is me. I'm just going to doom spend and whatever. I'm not going to plan ahead for my future.

That I don't like. If that's what they're pushing back on, that's the wrong strategy to take. Yeah, I agree. I also think this doom spending culture to the extent that it even exists and it's not something of the media made up. I mean, that's something young people,

that's not a forever thing, right? No, but you also know that, listen, young people who can't afford a house right now have the highest incomes they've ever had and they also are richer than they've ever been. What else are they supposed to spend their money on? Of course they're going to blow their money on stuff. I feel like we said this last week.

Every young person feels like homeownership is out of reach. Yes. Now, it's true that homeownership today is super unaffordable, but it's always been that way. Maybe not always. But as a young person, the idea that you're going to be able to save up enough for a mortgage or down payment seems, has probably forever seemed. And yet young people are still on track versus older generations. All right.

You read this piece about the woman who is a business reporter and got scammed out of 50 grand? No, bring me up to speed. Okay. You're out of touch, man. I've unblocked. You have. Okay, so there's this, there was this piece going around, and she's a business reporter. She called, got a call from Amazon, and they put her in touch with someone who claimed to be part of the CIA.

I'm yada yaddi-ying over a bunch of the details, but she handed someone over a box of $50,000 in cash through her window in a shoebox, got scammed. These people said we're part of the CIA. You can't tell your husband. You can't tell a lawyer. Give us $50,000, and we're going to give you $50,000 back tomorrow, and it's going to solve all your problems. and she got scammed. Her whole point was like, listen, if I can fall for,

I'm not the person who can fall for a scam. If I can, if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. And of course, everyone dunked on this saying, no, you're just an idiot. What's wrong with you? But here's my take, though. People are going to get scammed out of so much money from AI.

Like, you say there's going to be no retirement crisis from the boomers. Think about how many baby boomers are going to get scammed by AI scams in the years ahead. There is going to be a wave of financial scams in like anything we've ever seen as AI comes, and it's the new, new thing

that people aren't paying attention for yet. People are going to get scammed out of so much money. Yes, yes, yes. All right, recommendations. Have you ever seen The Good Shepherd? I saw it in the theater, and I hated it. You saw it in the theater. That's all I remember.

Yes, it was Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Who else was in it? De Niro. It has an incredible cast, let's see. So it came out in 2006. it did $100 million at the box office, which that would never happen today. Never ever. It was just,

it was not good, and I never watched it again. Listen to this cast. Matt Damon, he's really the main character. Bobby D. Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci,

Alec Baldwin, William Hurtt, Billy Cruttup, Eddie Redmayne. He's the guy that played Stephen Hawking, I think, in that movie. Michael Gambon,

who played Dumbledore, John Totoro. I mean, just a wildly good cast. And yeah, the movie kind of sucked. I mean, I didn't hate it. Like, it just, it was probably like a 6.4. Just not great. How do we still have airplanes without a screen on the, on the seat in front of you? I feel like the last four planes I've taken have no screen. Ooh, I only fly Delta. I'm full American for some reason. Um, what else did I watch? Oh, American Assassin is on

Netflix. You ever see that one? No, what's that? That's just garbage. It's a garbage action movie. Michael Keaton? Would I like it or not? Do you like garbage action movies? My son would like it, I guess. No, I don't know. It's not for him. It's very violent.

Okay. It was fun. What else? Oh, I already mentioned 22 Jump Street. I heard you talk about True Detective with Duncan. So the ending was not good. we agree yeah so it turns out that like

there really wasn't anything supernatural going on yeah it was just so but but but I haven't I have an unusual take I think I didn't like the ending how could you I didn't like hate watching the show outside of episode four I had like a decent time watching it

even though I didn't like it does that make sense I'm just confused so I don't read as much as I used to in the past, so I read a lot on planes now, since I don't have a screen in front of me. So there's this new book by this guy called Ed Zwick. It's called Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions. He is a director, a producer, a writer of Glory, Shakespeare, and Love, the last samurai, Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, my so-called life, like really plugged in guy.

And he tells a bunch of Hollywood stories. And in between this chapter, as he gives creative advice, he's learned from directors, producers, actors, actresses over the years. And he put in here from Cindy Pollock. He said, listen, kid, plot is the rotting neat the burglar throws to the dog so we can climb over the fence and get the jewels, which are the characters. And I thought of that, as I read that quote, I thought of this show. Like, the plot was okay. Like, the twist ending was actually okay, but I didn't care about one character in the whole

show because they made them all so unlikable. Yeah. They didn't give me anything with the characters. Right? I don't remember the, I don't even remember the plot from season one of True Detective, but I loved McConaughey and Woody Harrelson's characters so much. That's what was so good about it. Yeah, it wasn't. It was disappointing.

All right. So I, and the character thing is what draws me in. So I started Mr. Mrs. Smith last night on Amazon. It's Donald Glover and Maya Erkine, who was in the, remember that plus one rom-com someone gave us on this? Oh, I like that. Yeah, she's in this. Like 10 minutes into the show, it's like, I'm in. Really?

It's a spy. I'm really into spy stuff lately, apparently. So the last two episodes of Slow Horses was just two of the best episodes of an action spy thing I've ever seen. It was so good. But Mr. Mrs. Smith... You do love counterterrorism. It was very good. But Mr. and Mrs. Smith is...

It's a take on the movie, but they take it in a different direction. And just the first five minutes of the show, you're either in or you're out. And I was completely... And I watched one episode, and I think it's going to be really good. I'm in on Mr. Mrs. Smith. It's on Amazon Prime. I was listening to the rewatchables, the Forest Gump rewatchables. Where do you stand in the Forest Gump?

I mean, it's one of the greatest movies ever. Okay, I just was making sure of it. You can pull holes in if you want. Yeah, I mean, certainly a lot of nits to pick, but there were, like, they played a line from, that they, maybe cried. It's like, the people who hate friends or else people who hate Forrest Gump. Like, come on. How do you hate Forest Gump? But I was, I cried listening to a clip that they played.

I can't remember which one it was. but what a what an amazing movie I saw that twice in the theater really what year was that 94 something like that yeah great movie

you need to go out and get some sun it'll make you feel better sit by the pool get some sun how many times the day are you putting sunscreen on six yeah I'm not sure what's I don't know if it's in my head

I don't feel good I physically don't feel good thank you for carrying me during this episode this was like go have three beers by the pool to pass out for an hour no no no no no That's a hard blow. That'll totally help. You can't get a hangover in the sun. It's true.

Wait, what? I'm joking. Oh, okay. But doesn't that feel like it? You don't get as bad of hangovers when you're in a nice place. I think that's science. Test it out for me. The sun is like my kryptonite. All right. Animal spirits at the compound news.com. See you next time. Okay.