Animal Spirits Podcast - The Fee War Comes to Crypto (EP.342)

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

On episode 342 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the biggest winners and losers of 2023 in the markets, short-term vs. long-term returns for stocks, why the U.S. dominates financial markets, the problem with being right once in a row, Bitcoin ETF fees, Americans are richer than you think and much more! Registration is open for Future Proof 2024! Secure your pass: here! 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. Wealthcast Media, 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 the best, soon-to-be biggest event in wealth management. That's future-proof. It is in beautiful, sunny Huntington Beach, California, September. What are the dates been? 15th to 18th? On the beach, it's honestly, I mean, there's so much to do. It's kind of hard to even name everything that we do out there. You get to see people, see old friends, network, one-on-one meetings, listen to small talks with

groups of people, listen to large talks with really well-known industry people. I go for a run of the beach every morning. I don't. Jump in the ocean. There's pool time. There's drink time. There's eating time. There's food trucks.

There's music. The biggest jump from year one to year two was something called. breakthrough sessions. And what breakthrough was was speed dating. And it's opt-in. So you're not like paired with people you don't want to talk to. And it's 15 minutes. And I think there was like 20,000 meetings or some some crazy number. And I've said this a million times. If you are, if you left future proof and you didn't derive economic value, forget about all of the fun and there's tons of fun. If you didn't derive economic value from that conference, you should probably consider leaving the industry. Yeah. And I think those meetings went way better than we thought.

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Link and show notes, et cetera, et cetera. 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 Redhol's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I'm going to start the show with some exciting news.

We started a tax practice at Ritholt's wealth management. I think this is the third year that we're doing it. And there is more demand from our clients than we have capacity to serve them. Because right now, we've got the absolutely incredible Bill Arteronian doing all the heavy lifting, doing every tax filing. We need help. We need more people. If you want to join us and be part of this rocket ship that is our tax filing, tax practice team, we're growing quickly. We have more demand that we know what to do with.

Great work environment. Great people. Great clients. Linking the show notes to learn more. Reach out to us if you want an introduction. If you are interested or if you are existing, somebody who's preferably, if we could find this unicorn, you're in the RAA industry, you're into taxes. Maybe you even are a CPA, or maybe you're CFP and you're leaning towards tax.

Please, please, please, reach out to us. We have to have a lot of tax nerds who listen to the show. God, come on. Come on. Reach out. So, Ben, did we have fun in Kansas City or did we have fun in Kansas City? Kansas, by the way, Kansas City, Kansas. No, we're in Kansas City, Missouri.

No, we weren't. We were. Come on. Yes. Did you not? Yes. We were in Kansas City, Missouri. Are you kidding me?

We were on the Missouri side. Glad you're paying attention. Are you sure about, no, I don't. Yes. Kansas City. All right. Maybe you're right. Yes.

Kansas City, Missouri is the bigger side. Kansas City, Missouri is the bigger side? Yes. That's where the chiefs are. They're in Missouri. I just blew your mind. Holy cow. We were in Missouri that whole time?

You were in Missouri. You know what? That's why I couldn't use Fandual. I see the list of approved states. I'm like, what the heck? I'm in Kansas. And then when we got to the airport, when we got to the airport when I was on Fandul,

then I knew we were in Missouri. I thought we were in Kansas City, Kansas. It was you and me and 1,100 farmers. And the interesting thing to me about the whole ordeal is the psychology, behind money is always going to be there and it doesn't really matter what the situation is. It's interesting because a lot of the people there were farmers who had a lot of money and it was in this illiquid business of theirs that is their farm because they were saying like,

hey, take how many acres you have and multiply it by this number. This is how much this person is worth. And it's a lot of money, right? But they have this, they have the need or the probably desire to diversify that. And there's a lot of like psychology behind it. And it was interesting just to look at that. Because it's not just business. It's like family.

Some of cases, generations. It was just interesting to think about that from a different angle and perspective. So hearing their thoughts on how they manage their wealth when a lot of it is tied into this land that they own. And you're right. And it's maybe family land has been passed down for generations. But I'm still not over the fact that I'm shook that we were in Missouri the whole time. I thought you knew this. So I'm looking at, I'm looking.

When I Google Kansas City, Kansas, the Kansas City, Missouri City, that's a Wisconsin. that pops up. Is there not a, is the Kansas city in Kansas not like a big downtown metro area? I don't remember the Uber driver was explaining this to us on the way to the airport. You want to totally check out of that conversation. No, I was listed in my head. Okay. What was our favorite quote from the conference? It was interesting because it was a lot of, because it was a, it was an agriculture conference. There was a lot of commodity stuff. So we heard, we learned a lot about commodities and what people think about that. But there was a guy on stage who said, listen, I'm a gold bug.

I pissed more money away in gold. than I'm worth. I just, I like that he admitted it. He's like, this is my personal disposition. I'm attracted to gold and that, that, I, those ideals or whatever comes along with being a gold bug. He was also, he was not surprisingly, he was a big national debt guy. Yes, and it, but it was interesting just to hear at least someone admit, like, it hasn't worked out for me. Being, having this mindset, hasn't, well, at least in this one asset. I thought that was interesting. We both, we both, like, kind of elbowed each other when that comment was said. You know, it's different. Like, When we were listening to some of the panels, it's just a lot, it's a lot of macro, right?

I think it's because the commodity cycle is more cyclical than other parts of the cycle. But it's also, it's much more tied to inflation and interest rates and supply and demand and all that sort of stuff. It is a global asset. So it makes sense. That's why that's the interesting part of, of we always say, you know, most of the time you can probably ignore the, I don't know if you can ignore the macro when it comes to investing. but you don't want to make your investing decisions based on the macro all the time, right? Most people can't do that. Even the hedge fund managers who run a macro hedge fund have a hard time doing that.

But if you're running a business like that, then the macro is really, really important to you. And it's still hard to predict. So the leading to commodities here, I did my annual, I told you I was going to be doing updates of annual updates because this is a fun. The technical analysts always like the month end candles or whatever. Right? I still don't quite get the candle thing. What is it? It's like high, low, average closing. How does a candle work? Open, high, low clothes. Okay. Technical analysts get excited about candles. I get excited about asset allocation quilts, which someone, I think, someone actually had the idea that said, you guys should make a compound capital quilt, an actual quilt of the acid allocation quilt. I said, I'd buy that. Maybe like three people would. So I do the previous 10 years and then I show the 10 year annual. return number. The one that jumped out of me the most, I think, is commodities. They were down 10% in 2023, which makes sense. Inflation fell. Commodity prices fell. They had a decent, pretty good

2021. But commodities are still down 1, 2% a year since for over the last 10 years. And this is using the ETF DJP. And, you know, I'm sure you could have taken a different basket of commodities and it would look different depending on how you weight them and such. But my whole question, commodities is, and I know there's going to be a cycle where they're going to work really well because they are so cyclical. But think about the setup, 40-year high inflation, two wars raging on in very important regions of the world for commodities. Rising interest, I think, what is the environment have to be for commodities to do really well and really outperform? Well, they did really well in 2021 and 2022. But not that much better than stocks in 2021.

and then 2022, they had one year that they outperformed. And that's it. I'm just, if you would have given me the setup, I would have thought commodities would have just crushed. I mean, oil is back below $70 a barrel or whatever. I'm just surprised, given this set up, that commodities haven't done better than they did. And yeah, people are super attracted to real assets. It's like a whole mindset thing. And they did prove to be, at least in the short term, a really good hedge against inflation, but obviously they're not a long-term hedge against inflation. I don't know. My belief with investing in commodities is you've got to use trend. I don't think that they're necessarily part of a strategic long-term asset allocation. That's just my opinion.

It's a trading strategy more than a, yeah, it's tactical, not buy and hold. The one thing people always say is, why don't you have crypto on here? Where's crypto on every year? A handful of people say, why don't you include crypto on your asset allocation quilt? And here's the thing. I only include assets that have an ETF. There's no crypto ETF. It is true. I'm using ETFs here, but here's my cutoff for crypto. So my theory is, I don't think you can use crypto as an asset class before 2017-ish, because how many people had the ability to invest in crypto before then? If you could figure out how to invest in crypto before 2016, 2017, you were like a technology master. I'm sure I couldn't have figured it out. And so that's

my cutoff. After we've got 10 years' data from 2017, which is when retail people really jumped in, then I think I will be willing to include crypto. How does that sound? I mean, that's kind of nonsense. You don't have to be a genius to figure out how to buy crypto at Coinbase. But no, the point is, are we supposed to include the returns for Facebook from the time they had a seed funding? That's what I'm saying. If you include the time from Bitcoin starting and use those as returns, it's like giving the returns for the stock for the stock market since the companies are a seed stage.

It's ridiculous. I understand. I understand. prior to pick a date, 2014, crypto was like a nanotech. That's my point. It was so, so, so small that those returns. Listen, you don't have to defend yourself. This is your quilt.

Somebody wants to make their own quilt. They can make their own. And maybe I'll start it from when there's an ETF. So starting in 2024, possibly. Although it's already a few days into 2024 and there's still no Bitcoin ETF, so it's going to have to be 2025 now. Clock's ticking.

Come on, Gary Gensler. All right, you actually asked me for an update in this. I forgot I did this, a sector quilt, which just doesn't look as pretty because they keep adding sectors, which I'm not a big fan of. I don't like that they broke out communication services from technology. I don't either. I'm the same way. And it basically ends up being similar returns, too. But they added real estate and communication services.

So this, it looks like it's an incomplete chart before 2015 or after 2015. No, why this is, no way this is quite dumb. the way, so communications, it's 24% Facebook and 23% Google. Right. So half of the ETF is in Google and Facebook. Does it really need to be its own sector? I agree. And then you've got Netflix, Verizon, T-Mobile, but just, I don't know.

It was similar to the other asset allocation quote. It was kind of a worst-to-first type of deal. Energy was up 64%. Yeah, I just don't like change with sectors. I felt we had a good thing with financials, and then they spun out real estate into its own thing. Same thing with tech. I'm a nine-sector guy. How about this, though?

Getting back to the commodity thing. So energy stocks are up 53% in 2021, 64% in 2022, and they were down a little less than 1% in 2023. Our energy stock is actually a better bet than commodities. If you wanted to make the commodities bet, why don't you just own XLE? Is that actually going to be a better bet for you? It's hard to envision a commodity sugar per cycle

that doesn't include energy participating, right? I mean, listen, if you're asking, would I rather own, would I rather buy and hold energy stocks or commodities? It's not close. I'd rather buy energy stocks. Yeah, but I don't think people would look at it that way. And I think maybe they should. Well, no, because, again, I think the thing about commodities is that people are attracted to hard assets. Yes. It's a whole mindset. There's something tangible. I think the most interesting one here, too, is consumer staples were down 0.8% in 2022. And that felt like an amazing year. And they were down 0.8% in,

2023, and obviously, that felt like an awful year. Same exact return. Again, although no rhyme or reason to this whatsoever. Like a tech. Tech was a top performer in 2019 and 2020. In 2021, it only gained 35% to was the fourth best performer. And again, so tech was the best in three

the last five years. Unbelievable. So four out of the past seven years, the best performer has been tech. Two out of those seven years, it was energy. and the other only filler is health care. So, yeah, tech dominance. I don't know. It has the feeling of this time is different with tech, doesn't it?

How so? Just that you keep waiting and waiting and waiting for the mean reversion. I know we had a tech recession in a lot of ways, but it's just so, so big now. It feels like tech is kind of the stock market in a lot of ways. Yeah. A lot of people just dying for our tech mean reversion. needing it.

Yes, which, I don't know. More on tech in a minute. Here's one of my other favorite charts, S&P 500 annual returns. I do a scatter plot on this. I have to say, this was not an easy chart to make. I think I had to look it up on Excel. I can't remember where I saw this initially.

I've made this before. Have you? It wasn't easy to make. I feel like it was hard to do for some reason. And I had to save it so I could remember. But it just shows from year to year how all over the place, things are in the stock market.

Obviously, there's more above zero than below zero, which is good. But this is one of those little rhyme or reason. I think that's my whole ethos in the short term is that predicting what's going to happen, especially in like a year period, is more or less impossible. Now look at the next one. I broke out through the end of 2023. Wait, can I just say one thing? Annualized returns.

Just before we move off this chart, I saw an article a couple of weeks ago on Yahoo finance. there's an interview with Harry Dent, and he was talking about prepare for like an 80% crash, you know, as he often does. And someone like him. Yeah, it's very, he's trying something new in 2024. The reason why I think people are so susceptible to that sort of predictions is because the truth of the matter is bare markets are catastrophic.

Like those, and they don't come along often. And I'm not talking, hang on, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about the bear market from 2022 or the COVID bear market. I'm talking about the 50% bear markets that he's predicting. So in 2009, for example, the S&P 500 at its lows was all the way back to where it was in 1996. I don't think that you could underscore, understate how devastating

an experience like that is. Somebody, Todd, I'm forgetting his last name, tweeted an article from a Los Angeles Times reporter at the bottom in 2009. And of course he, you know, sold.

But it was just, they're backbreaking and devastating. And I think that's why there's so much attention for that sort of, for that sort of, like, reporting. Well, that's also why there was so much doom and gloom throughout the 2010s, because that was so fresh in people's minds. People got so, so bearish and couldn't get out of that mindset when that crash happened.

I agree with that, that those are, just like the people still today worry about the 1970s inflation experience. And I think that's why so many people thought that the inflation experience coming out of the pandemic was going to be just like the 70s, because there were still people alive who remembered that period. and it's obviously scarring to them. So what do you think the implications are of just investing where you could have literally, in the case of 2009,

13 years of gains wiped out in, you know, under two years? William Bernstein updated his Four Pillars book in 2023 for a second edition. And his whole, because he talks a lot about bubbles and booms and bust, and he makes a similar point as you that, like, that is surviving those things is important. The Charlie Munger thing of, listen, you're going to have to sit through two or three of those 50% crashes, and sometime of your life, you're going to just have to ride it out. That's Munger's thing, right? You do it.

And that's happened to Berkshire, I think, a few times in the last 40 or 50 years. But Bernstein says, okay, if you know that you can't handle those periods, then hold more cash. Hold more money and T bills or short-term bonds or cash. And even if that's not what the portfolio optimizer would say makes sense for you, you should have more equities. If you can't hold through, then you just have to hold more cash. And I think that's probably the answer, unless you have a better solution. No, no, I think I think that's it. I mean, I think that's exactly right.

Most people are not able to see their liquid net worth get cut in half, especially, like, I think it's one thing if you're, you know, in your early 30s and stocks are crashing and it's like a blessing, even though it doesn't feel like it. But if you're in your 50s or your close to retirement, forget about it. It's just not practical. And I think for most people, especially for retiree, the way to think, about this is like how many years worth of spending do I have in something like that, cash, short-term bonds, T-bills, whatever bonds that can see me through? And if is four years enough, is three, is two,

is five or six, I think that's the way to turn that dial is, can I, you know, if we have a five-year bare market or something, that that is catastrophic and really long. So that's the way I think about it. Also, you mentioned Harry Dent. You saw the piece about the rich dad, poor dad, guy saying he's like a $1.2 billion in debt. And if he goes bust, the bank goes bust, so it's not his problem. You know, I'm, I'm changing my tone on him. He's, he's winning me over. If I would have never known him to be a real person, I've ever seen it in person, obviously. I would, I would believe that he was a Charlton created by AI because he checks all the boxes. Yeah. It's got to be, is it a bit? I don't, I honestly don't know. It almost seems like it's a bit,

but it can't be a bit. Okay. I don't think so. All right. So getting, back to stock market stuff. Like you talk about the bad, let's look at the good. So I updated annualized returns through 2023. I did five years, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and then all the way to 20, 28. Five year returns. This is for the S&P 500, almost 16% per year. But the consistency of this chart is what is, I think, the magical part of the stock market. 10 years, it's 12%. 20 years, it's 10%. 50 years, it's 11%. Now, obviously, there's time periods within this data where things look really bad, the worst one, and I think it's going to be the worst 30-year period in history for the stock market, at least modern history, if you start

from 2000, we're at just a touch below 7% per year. And so that's going to probably be the worst 30-year return. That's always my favorite stat, is an 8% per year return from the peak in 1929. For 30 years from there, you got 8% per year, and that's the worst 30-year return in the S&B 500 history. I think we're going to get that from the year. 2000. That is pretty bad, considering the pain that you had to suffer for those returns. That's not great. So you live through an 85% crash and still got 8% return. I think that's unbelievable. Because move it forward two years and your returns were probably 16% per year or something. I'd rather just be in cash and avoid the hassle. But my point is that the short-term

returns are so all over the place and the long-term returns are relatively consistent. And even if we don't get these returns going forward, people keep saying that, it is quite a wonder that the stock market can do something like this. I feel like there's a certain segment of the population that doesn't just know a lot about this stuff who thinks that it's manipulated or it's propped up or whatever. But the reason why the stock market goes up is because earnings go up and dividends go up and the value of these companies goes up. You know what I was thinking how like some of the Bitcoin evangelists who denominate everything in terms of the price of Bitcoin, you know, where it's just like a religion for these

people. Imagine if there was those people inside of the stock market who are stock market zealots that were like and just proselytizing all over the world. Like, listen, here's the deal. You could own a piece of Apple. You can actually own a piece of invidia. You can own a piece of the best companies in the world. Like, imagine that cartoon character existed, but it's just as reasonable as the Bitcoin Zones out. I'm probably as close as we could get to that. I push the stock market as much as I can.

So the thing is, so since 1928, the stock market is up 9.8% per year. That includes the 1929 to 32, 85% crash. That includes a 50% crash in 73, 74. It includes 1987. It includes the two 50% crashes we've lived through. all the bad stuff that you can throw at it and it still did 10% per year. I think that's amazing.

And I do think it's reasonable to think I don't know if that can happen going forward because we've taken away the left tail in a lot of ways, but it's still impressive. Totally. All right. When you're a forward thinker, you don't just bring your A game,

you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money, and agents, so you can transform tomorrow. Workday, moving business forever forward. Torson Slocke from Apollo had a piece on the market cap of the Mag 7, that it's four times the Russell 2000.

He was saying this is a picture of the AI bubble. And he's saying the Mag 7 is the AI bubble. It's way bigger than the whole small cap index. And then these charts we've talked about before, how these seven companies are bigger than Japan, Canada, and the UK combined. We've kind of beat this one to death. But I thought his follow-up was interesting. Look at this next one. It's not just the U.S. stock market that dominates the rest of the world. This is the U.S. Treasury market. Total value of government bonds. I've never seen this one before. The United States bond market, and this is just treasuries, is pretty much the same size as the bond markets in China, Japan, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. So it's our bond market, too. And this is why the U.S. is so dominant in all facets, because we have the two biggest most liquid markets in the world in

treasury in the U.S. stock market. We got an email speaking of Apple. In my predictions, I was pretty pessimistic on Apple. And somebody in our inbox said, one thing about Apple that is not in the price, like they haven't said anything. They've been very coy on what they're doing with AI, if anything. If they end up with a new product or a new service or platform or whatever, like nothing AI related, including the headset, which is the first new category in a long time. None of that is in Apple. And I thought that was a good point.

Like, if that happens, Apple could have another monster year because nobody's expecting it. Would you buy the glasses? Not yet. I'm not going to buy the first edition, but they, I can't wait. So if they said, you can watch the Knicks game Courtside every day because you wear these goggles

and you have to pay a thousand bucks. Whatever you have to pay for it, you would do that. And, like imagine being on an airplane and watching something equivalent of a movie on a movie theater side screen. I can't wait for these things. I can't do it. You're going to look like an idiot.

You can't do it. You're going to look like an idiot. Dude, people used to think wearing an AirPods made you look like an idiot. And I agree. I don't think you're going to be seeing people walking on the streets with these things on. You probably will. And Silicon Valley. No, I can't wait. I think these things are going to be monsters.

Can it really be that much better than an 80-inch TV? Yes. You think so? Yes. I don't know. But I don't know. Okay. We've talked a lot over the years about Kathy Woods' predictions for Tesla and how the, here's

bull case and the base case. And the FT did something about this. And then looked at the current bull bear case for 2027, bull base bear, right? And it's from the current price, it's just an astronomical leap forward. The bear case is $2 trillion to market. happy. Didn't we do this last year? That's kind of... Yeah, but so they have to be this good charge.

But, I mean, the thing is is that I think the reason people still take these semi-seriously is because their bull case from whenever it was in 2017 or something was right. Yeah. Like the first one they did was right.

And I think that's the most dangerous place to be as a pundit or as someone who's trying to predict the future is being right once in a row. And because at that point, you've got all sorts of goodwill, and it doesn't matter how many times you're wrong because you can point to that one time you were right.

And so I think that's why, so they put some other ones in. And then they actually show, here's the current price, and here's what the case was in 2020, and in 2021, and in 2022, and those ones didn't quite, didn't even come close, obviously.

So I guess... Not impossible. That's probably pretty unlikely. Mostly impossible. Speaking of Tesla and Elon, so Elon's just gotten so famous and powerful. Bloomberg has a podcast that they're dedicating just to covering the business of Elon,

which is fair game. I mean, it's massive. He's a incredibly powerful and influential person. Twitter is such a hellhole. He did with all this, he was fighting with Mark Cuban last night calling Mark Cuban a racist. It is really, really ugly, what goes on on Twitter.

And I think, like, I wanted to throw on my phone yes. I'm like, why am I scrolling on this bullshit? Think, like, the good thing is that for most, I think most of our listeners are blissfully unaware of the nonsense that is Twitter. Like, I know that it was a big part of our professional development, and we still use the platform a ton for research and, you know, met a lot of incredible people. But do you think that most people, most people,

are just not on Twitter. Right. And the people who are on it are really on it. I still just come back to you have to have the right filter. So I follow finance people that I know will share stuff. I find interesting charts and stories and such and then sports stuff. That's my Twitter experience for them. Maybe some pop culture.

It's hard to avoid some of the ugliness. But you know, like, you know when you're texting with somebody just thinks to get lost in translation? I don't know if they're texting with a smile. It's something you don't know intent. And that's Twitter. It's just hard to communicate with strangers when you don't know. the intent and uh whatever enough to that people people keep well people keep commenting about how how if

i was a billionaire why would i spend all my time fighting with people on twitter or you know because bill acman is doing this and Elon Musk and i think it's just the human condition that it doesn't matter how much money you have you're going some people are just going to get the dopamine or have the desire to do this right so you watch that that show like the murder at the end of the world whatever, to share their opinions and try to influence others thinking.

Yeah, but... Yeah. And they want the adulation. They want the likes and they want the retweets. But you saw that show at the end of the, the murder at the end of the world

or whatever with Clive Owen. I'm still only partly the way through that. We're falling a little behind a TV. But his whole thing is he's this, he's like this Elon Musk, Steve Jobs type guy. And his,

he's using his billions and his power to create these new... He's like doing backroom deals and he's like the Illuminati kind of guy, right? We're going to fix the climate based on this one group of people and that's like the movie star thinking of this like

the billionaires are doing these backroom things where they're going to save the planet and in reality it's like they just want to post they want to be a poster they want to tweet you don't get like the like if i had all this money i would do something super and obviously Elon musk has some really cool stuff but he also he just wants to be a poster and i think that's the human condition i want to post and i want the retweets and i want the memes yeah yeah okay uh from goldman they did the close to numbers for mutual and ETF inflows and outflows, money markets. I think the most impressive thing. Seven trillion. Well, the most impressive thing is that out of the seven trillion, it was 1.3, almost 1.4 that went into it. It's the relative percent in that, in those assets that went

into it. Right? So we're talking, what, 20 percent of the assets came in in one year? That's the part to me that is just mind-boggling is how much. And the fact that money is, still pouring into bond funds. Bonds went through their worst bear market ever in 2022 and partly in 2023 as well, and money still poured into bonds. People didn't flee the, I mean, maybe some of that money that went into money markets came from bonds, but there was a net positive flow into bonds in 2023. Only 95 billion into U.S. equities. Not much. I think that's relatively surprising the bond thing that people didn't flee en masse because bonds got crushed. I think they said, man, those losses were terrible, but yields are higher, right?

Mm-hmm. All right. Bank of America, remember this was a bad thing? Passive now accounts for the majority of U.S. down-and-sheld A-U.M. This is 2009 to 2023. This is just the fund world. Passive went from 20% to 53%. But it's important. This is just the fund world.

Yes, not the whole stock market. Nothing to say about direct ownership. Yes. As far as the fund world goes, this should be. in my mind, 80-20. I think that's possible and probably should be someday. There will not be a day of reckoning

where this chart flips. If that's what you're hanging your head on as a professional manager, I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. Those days are over. I agree. Ben Johnson did good work over at Morningstar. He made a chart of ETFs, the top 20 ranked by average daily AUM, showing total value traded.

So there is... So this is showing the relative value being traded every day, more or less. Out of the total, how much is being traded? And then I guess in English, what's like the average holding period? You're able to impute that from these numbers. Did I make... That's a real word, right? Impute.

That makes sense. So SPY, for example, is... Trax the S&P 500. The average holding period for that is 17 days. It's got $400 billion in assets. total value trade is $8.7 billion. IVV, on the other hand, and VLO, which is the I shares in Vanguard, S&P 500, ETF, the average holding period is 262 days and 200, is it 85, 65, whatever.

So, IVV, VOL, those VTI, holy cow VTI. The average holding period for VTI is 665 days. Wow. So there are ETFs that are bought and held, their ETFs that are traded, even at index level. I just thought this was... So SPU and QQQ is average holding period is 15. So those are used more as placeholders or hedging vehicles or shorting vehicles, those kind of things, because they're big and liquid. And it also makes sense that Vanguard funds are bought and held longer. These are the monsters. These are the monsters. SMP, SPY and the Q's alone accounted for roughly

36% of total ETF trading volume. And then he says with the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETF seemingly the imminent. It's worth known of that biddo ranks in the top 2% of ETFs that's ranked by lowest average holding period, just eight days. Okay. So whenever Bitcoin ETFs are here, and we'll talk about that in a little bit too, there's going to be a ton of turnover in the average holding period is going to be very low. I would think so. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, some good news. Survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They asked who expect their financial situation will be better off over the next year. This goes back to 2014. And we're coming up.

We are coming up. Inflation is abating, sort of for the most part, except at the bagel store. I went to get, I got a bacon, egg, and cheese on a wrap. And Kobe got like one of those little Mario cookie with its face on it. 15 bucks. All right. Whatever. Not great, but whatever.

But $9 for bacon, egg and cheese. Here was the part that really earned. me. We were with a bunch of his friends. I got two of them, a soda, a seltzer, soda, and a chocolate milk. $8. And I wanted to be like, come on. Come on. This is not, this is just not right. Eight dollars for two drinks. Okay. So who are we blaming for high food prices? because I think it makes sense with wages going up in the service industry that food prices would be higher. I'm sorry.

Because it's either higher wages or re-flation. A 300% markup or whatever it is? So you're in the greedflation camp then of this. That's greedflation, absolutely. All right. I will buy that. I will never go back to the bagel store. I guess especially when you consider how much of the service industry

is still tip-related in many ways. Or they're trying to, right? They're not everywhere. You're just buying food as getting tips, but that makes sense. There's another chart, share of respondents who say it is more difficult to get a loan versus a year earlier. Super high compared to the past, not surprising at all. And the question that I have is, we'll look at that as chart. Why didn't this have a bigger impact on the economy, the availability of credit?

Is it just because? Maybe it was it availability. Maybe it was just the terms were just higher? But isn't this what matters? Did people front load their borrowing? Or were the cash cushions just that large where the borrowing didn't make much of a difference? I don't think Main Street small business owners

like front run borrowing. I think that's what's showing in this chart. It's really hard to get a loan than it was a year ago. And obviously it impacted businesses everywhere, not to minimize or poo-poo it. But just in the aggregate, it didn't impact the overall economy. I'm with you.

It's bizarre. How about to say it definitely. Not say it didn't have an impact. It didn't bring the economy down. Yes. We had to talk a couple weeks ago with an international portfolio manager, and I said, listen, we had this regional bank crisis here. Why didn't we get something like that in Europe? And we didn't really have a good answer. But rates went from negative to high really quick. Why weren't there more blowups of rates going from 0% to 5%? That is relatively shocking to be that there weren't more banks or hedge funds or overall. over levered, whatever, that blew up from that. Things have been relatively orderly. Same thing with bonds. Yeah, it is surprised. I just, I would have expected more blowups. I guess that's a, that's a good thing. All right. June 2022, U.S. inflation rate, 9.1 percent. U.S. unemployment rate 3.6 percent. Now, U.S. inflation rate 3.1 percent. U.S. unemployment rate 3.7 percent. Wow. Yeah. Pretty good.

I tweeted this. And boy, did I find, you talk about Twitter. I found the dregs. Somehow I got tweeted into politics, Twitter on this one. And that's the part that I wish I could just, just cut me off forever from Twitter is, I'm on this team, and so you're an idiot, or I'm in this team, and this is great. And not having context. And I, anyway, don't look at this next one. Give me your guest. Jeremy Horpidal. Did you look at this already? What was the median family income in the U.S. in 2022 for a married couple with the children under 18 living in their house. Median.

For income. I'm sorry, per couple? Median household income. If you have a child under the age of 18, married couple. So two incomes, yep, ish? $150,000. New York has warped your brain.

Correct answer is $120,000, which... Hold on. Hold on. First of all, I wasn't that far off. Okay. It's not like I said. It was $300,000. The median income, the median income, the median for two, ostensibly, two, two earners. So I said 75 and it was 60. Not that far off. But my point is just that I think one of the reasons people are always so, people in this country are richer than I think most people will assume. And maybe income doesn't mean you're rich,

obviously, but look at this next one. Bernie Sanders retweeted this thing saying, 63% of Americans do not have $500 in the bank. And Bernie Sanders is, His finance stuff is just so far off kilter with buybacks, and he's claiming that Vanguard and BlackRocker and oligopoly. Anyway, we see these stats all the time, and we debunk them. 63% of Americans do not out of $500 to pay for an emergency health care bill, and that sounds like an awful place to live. This Matt Darling guy who does a really good job at myth-bussing these things,

he says median household net worth is $192,000, including $8,000 in checking accounts. That means more than half of people, more than half of households in the United States, it said $8,000 or more in a checking account. But I thought we can't pay for a $400 bill. Yes. Obviously, that is not true. All right.

You and I were walking around Kansas City, Missouri. Not Kansas last week. And the downtown, it was a, what, a Tuesday or Wednesday, I think, Tuesday, whatever day it was. And the downtown was dead. We asked a lot of people, what's going on here? And we don't mean it was quiet. There was, there was, we could see multiple blocks. with nobody on the sidewalk.

And we talked to people, and they said, they said, listen, it's like this since the pandemic. The weekends are bumping here. And if there's a game or something, like it's a ton of people and people come to have fun. But during the week, people just aren't coming in. People live in the suburbs and they don't want to come into the office anymore. And I experienced this.

I went to Cincinnati a couple months ago, and they said the same thing. And it felt really quiet. And I said, listen, people just don't come into the office. Or if they do, it's one or two days a weekend. It's just not as busy. And so you and I were talking about this and saying, listen, the commercial debt, people know about this.

Like, people have been predicting the end of this commercial real estate market. Like, what is the reckoning here? Because this has to have an impact. So the Washington, or the Wall Street Journal says there's a staggering 19.6% of office space in major U.S. cities that weren't leased as of the fourth quarter. That is above the previous records from 1986 and 1996 and 1991 is the highest since 1979, which as far back as a date it goes. The bulk of the space, this is someone in New York who were. at a real estate brokerage. The bulk of the vacant space are buildings that were built in the 1950s,

60, 70s, and 80s. Why would any business want to lease a building that was built in the 50, 60, 70s, or 80s? They don't. Right? So if you're a business who wants people to be in the office, you've got to give them a reason to come in. You're not going to lease some old building.

I mean, unless you retrofitted it or something. So what's the endgame here? What happens? Is this just death by a thousand cuts? Yeah, I have no idea. what the future holds for these office buildings that nobody is going to be occupying for the foreseeable future. People keep saying,

well, turn them into apartments and condos, but how expensive is that and how long does that take and what are the rules and regulations on that? That seems like it makes sense in theory, but I don't see that happening very quickly in practice.

It sounds like something that's easy to say, oh, just, yeah, just convert them. Yeah, how? Right. With whose money? I don't know. So who loses on this deal? Do the banks lose?

Do the real estate investors? Does ever, I mean, I'm sure there will be winners, like the distressed debt people will be winners, but who's on the hook for these loans? Bars and banks? I don't know. I don't know enough about this to even comment. But I mean, the weird thing is that the risks you can see coming clear as day are rarely the risk that take things down.

So the idea that commercial real estate is going to take the system down, I guess not impossible, but I would say highly unlikely, given that. It's so in our face. Nobody's, the bonds have all been marked, right? Like, nobody's going to be caught off car. Like, oh, shit, there's a problem in corruption. Yeah, no kidding. We know.

Everyone knows. People have time to prepare for it. Whatever that means, I guess. Yeah. The Financial Times had a piece, and they looked at books and literature and publications, going back to 1600. I don't know how they did this. And they looked at words per million related themes of progress versus caution in English,

French, and German books. and they show that progress and future are on a huge decline in the last, call it, 50 years since the 1960s or so, and caution we're in risk are increasing. And they're saying this is a bad thing. Unfortunately, this is what people want. But the weird thing is, like, people complain all the time about our education system stinks, and people are so worried all the time and about the future. but then why do we keep creating innovative companies and technology having technology breakthroughs? Like, is it just that people say they?

So it's not like we're not talking about progress in the future as much anymore, but we're being more negative than positive. So why do we keep having all these innovative companies and breakthroughs happen? I don't see the connection. I think that's a non-sequitur. I know. I think it's like watch what people do, not what they say. People say the, you know, I'm more cautious and worried and progress.

No, I think just there is more demand for negativity for. from the readers and the general audience and there is for positivity. Yeah. And I'm saying that negativity hasn't had an impact on the world, really, besides social media or whatever. But like, it's not, it's not just, quote, the media's fault. They're doing what they think is going to be most profitable.

And there's more desire for negative headlines and positive ones. Yeah, they're giving the audience with them. I also think maybe people in the past had to be more overly optimistic because things were so crappy back then. Like, if you read any history books, even in the past couple, like, people were, things were really bad back in the day. Now things are so much better, people just have more time to be overly pessimistic. I highly doubt there was ever a period where the society at large was super optimistic about the future. I'm sure there's been, you know, bouts of it sprinkled throughout history.

Like the roaring 20s and such, but I'm sure there was plenty of pessimistic people, too. Can you just imagine living in a world without a heater and without air conditioning? No. And people didn't really start brushing their teeth until like the 1900s. Did people just go around smelling really bad with really bad teeth all the time and just no one said anything because that was that was the world? I think so. I think about that all the time. Hygiene back then?

Yeah, how bad? When did deodorant get invented? Probably in the last hundred years, maybe. Oof. Yeah, not pretty. This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed.

Walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways. We're not going to find it in the news because the police covered everything all up. On August 8th. This is where the story really starts. Weapons. So the supply chain issues has been fixed.

That's good news. how much of, we're looking at a chart of supply chain pressure subsided, it's basically round-tripped and then some. I feel like this is as responsible for inflation as anything else, including, like, the stimulus. Yeah, it was just, but it was mashing the supply chains with increased demand from the stimulus that was double whammy. Remember all of the ports, the ships in the ports of Los Angeles? Yeah, people were trying to figure out.

Like, what if we stacked three instead of two? People trying to figure that stuff out? I guess we got it, huh? I have noticed that a lot of the car dealerships now are way fuller than they were. That was one of my anecdotal things for a while is that the car dealership parking lots were just empty. They seem to be fuller now. My Jeep, my Jeep, I've got to take it in. I was, like, I can't drive it anymore.

Once I'm, if I'm going on the highway above like 50 miles an hour and if I hit just a very normal bump in the road, the entire thing starts shaking. like aggressively, like the tires, like I feel like I'm going to crash. So I have to retire my vehicle. I've got to get it over to the shop or whatever. Scary. I don't know what's going on. That doesn't sound good.

Isn't that the thing with Jeeps, though? They're not very good highway vehicles. If you have the top that can come off? This, I'm telling you, the entire car was aggressively shaped. I thought it was going to crash. Okay. Did you just hammer the gas? All right.

All right. Is the crypto fee war, the fastest fee war, history. Yes. The Bloomberg guys are all over this. James Seyford and Eric Belchunis. So they listed all the ones that are coming out from Arc and I shares and Bitwise and Vanek and Wisdomtree and Vesco and Fidel and all them. And the fees are, I think, as low as 25 basis points is the lowest one. Maybe 20 and they're doing some fee waivers. And like Bitcoin, Bitcoin isn't doing their waiving fees for six months or $5 billion. Yeah.

So what these are doing something similar? So these places, no. First mover advantage is a thing. So they want to get money in. But I think a lot of people were actually surprised at how low these fees were. And I kind of am too. The fee war basically happened before any assets even hit these things, which I think is a good thing for consumers. But I'm surprised at it as well.

And then Grayscale just said, Eh, eff it. We're charging 1.5% and we're going to milk this thing for as long as we can. And I guess just retire it once money comes out. Are they just hoping that, listen, people probably have gains, maybe. They want that. Yeah. It's a good business decision.

Why would they lower fees? They already have $27 billion in assets. Shouldn't this be an SEC thing, though? What? I don't know. just doesn't seem fair. If all these other places are offering fees that low, that they can just keep their fee high because some people might... That's capitalism. I don't like it. All right. Listen, and I don't like the Bigel store charging $8 for Bigel. Guess what? I could take

my business elsewhere. True. This is greedflation. All right. We had a tweet yesterday. It cost less to buy a Bitcoin ETF for a year than a single trade on Coinbase, 40 to 60 basis points versus 25 basis points for a retail sale trade. Obviously, if you hold your Bitcoin at Coinbase, paying it up front. This is kind of like brokers versus AUM advisors, right? If you hold it, that's fine. But how does Coinbase continue to, what do they bring to the table now that ETFs are available? Why would anyone transact on Coinbase, unless they already have money on there? Why would they ever get another new customer with an ETF that exists? A few things. Number one, you could only trade the ETF from 930 to 4. And Bitcoin moves like hell.

And so people want to trade when they want to trade. That's one reason. Fair. And that's one reason. I'm just kidding. Isn't that going to go on, isn't Robinhood going to have that immediately where, like, hey, we're going to allow you to trade the Bitcoin ETF around the clock. Someone's going to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Also, Coinbase is going to be a major custodian for a lot of these ETFs. So they're good benefit from that business. Although there was a research report. I think Josh was sharing it with us that it's going to only add.

They're projecting it to add. had like only 5% of revenue, not a huge line of business. But what's good for Bitcoin is good for Coinbase. More activity, more trades. Also, it's a global market. Like, Coinbase is a global custodian. Yeah, I guess there already are ETFs around the globe and Coinbase has been fine. I just, where's the growth coming from them? Because custodian, that's, you know, that's a takeoff a tiny slice. Yeah. One last thing on Coinbase. There's also people. There's also people people that just want to feel like they own the physical Bitcoin, even though we know it's equivalent. There's people that just don't want to deal with Wall Street. They just want to own

it through Coinbase. Yeah, but don't you think those people already exist? How many new people coming in are going to go, I'm going to choose physical Bitcoin over an ETF? Very few. All right. John, our production guy, says, you have a death while. We'll probably lose track bar. He says he can crawl under there for it if you want. He said it just Wrangler. thing. Dude, it's awful. It's just very scary. Okay. All right, Matias Dorda from Asadash tweeted. We were talking about like, will there be a sell the news? Won't there be? And, you know, who knows? Nobody does. That's, uh, that's, we'll say. Is it priced in is the hardest question to make about, especially about the future as you can better said. Like, what's priced in is the

hardest question answer? We'll find out after. But so, Mattias made a good point. Look what happened when the first gold to ETF was listed in New York Stock Exchange, you're bringing in many more potential investors. So, wait, when did GLD come out? Like 2006? 2004. Okay. That makes sense.

Those are a different world back then, but I wouldn't be shocked either way. This is one of those times where I would not be pounding the table that Bitcoin is going to moon from here because of the... No, you know why? Because even though we said that, like, there's permanent... there's permanent supply that's been taken off the market. All right, fine. So then forget about those people.

They don't matter then, right? It's the float for all intents of purposes as much smaller. So it's really the marginal buyer and seller. Now, the question is how many people front ran the ETF, right? There's a lot of people that thought that the ETF was going to come to market and they bought Bitcoin and they plan on selling it into the ramp. So I don't know. We'll say. I would not be surprised.

I would not be surprised if it goes to $50,000 immediately. I would not be surprised if it goes back down to $40,000 immediately. I would not be surprised with either outcome. They listed 10 Bitcoin ETFs on here. How many are still there in five years? In five years? I would say... I mean, there should be, what, three of them?

I know there's a lot of S&P 500 ETFs, but there's really... I'm not going to name names, but I think this one... So one, two, three, four. Are gone or loud? three. I think four, maybe five. We'll be here in five years. I think half of this list will not have assets and we'll shut it down. I don't love any of the tickers. Hodel is probably the best one from Vanek. I'm surprised there's not a BTC. I guess Fidelity has FTBTC. I'm surprised someone didn't just get BTC. Yeah. All right. We got an email, a good email on paying down a mortgage

with a 3.6% rate. We heard from a bunch of people about this. Another reason, Another good reason you could have mentioned in favor of not paying down a cheap mortgage. Interest on balances up to $750K is tax deductible. So the effective hurdle rate that you need to clear for it to make sense is even lower than the mortgage rate of record. Also, people sometimes conflate the payments that go into an escrow account with a mortgage payment, even though these are costs like property taxes and insurance that you would need to cover whether or not you had a mortgage.

Once you strip out the escrow payments and net the tax advantage, your mortgage effectively costs much less than what you would see your account, leave your account each month. I think that's a huge portion of it. Is that if you're insurance and your taxes are rolled into your monthly mortgage payment, that exists regardless of what you're doing. So that's a really, really good point.

I don't think people net that out. Payment in your house doesn't go away just because your mortgage is paid off. Right. So I thought that was a really good point. But yeah, the tax part of it is, that's a good one. Ben, I shared this chart with you,

this tweet with you a couple of months ago. we were talking about like once upon a time in the 50s a family could own a home a car and send the kids to college all in one income. Yes. Yes. That's been a meme for a lot of people. And people say that like they're so smart. But then this was the best dunk on that I've seen. Matthew Chapman. Percentage of Americans who owned a home in 1950, 40% now, 66%. Percent who owned a car in 1950, 50%, which is crazy. This number, this number kind of shocks me. Percent who won a car now is 91%. That's way higher. than I would have assumed.

A percent who had a college degree in 1950, 5%. Percent who have a college degree now, 44%. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And I think people warp their brains into thinking that the past was better when it- Morgan had a great chapter on this in his book, same as ever, talk about how everyone thinks the 1950s were this like, you know,

a beautiful time period. And it's just very easy to debunk. Yes. Yes. It sounds, yeah. I think it's the pictures, honestly. Like the picture that you include of the... Have you ever seen a 1950s house?

Do you know how small the 1950s house is? How many people are signing up to live in one of those today? How many millennials who are going to sign up to live in a 1950s house? And guess what? No air friars. No mudrooms. How do you even live? No mudrooms.

Did they have mudrooms in the 1950s? I think not. Bedrooms are so small, you would put three kids in my mudroom back in the 1950s. That is true. They would have been bunks and five people to live there. All right. You know, I lived in a bunk bed. Oh, I had a bunk bed when I was growing up.

Oh, yeah. I had to share them with my brother. So when we went to my father's house, my parents were divorced. When we went to my dad's apartment, we shared a bunk bed. Wow. I just, I haven't thought about this in a long time. So it was a one bedroom apartment. It was my dad's bed and our bunk bed.

In the same bedroom? In the same bedroom. That is something. I think that's something that. A lot of people don't, there were so many more shared bedrooms back in the day. Now it's like everyone needs their own bedroom. Yeah. I agree.

All right. Actually, actually, my father shared a bedroom with his grandfather. One of my uncles still lives in the house my dad grew up in. Not a big house bandy means. Very tiny by most standards for today. My dad had four siblings. So it was five kids in this house and I have no idea how they fit. Yeah.

So we talk about the 50s. My dad grew up in the 50s literally as a seven-year-old boy shared. a bedroom with his grandfather. Could you imagine? Right. I think there was a lot of that, yeah, that people don't understand what it was really like. Yeah, the good old days, the good old days. L-O-L. Yeah. All right. Sports are both dumb and great. How's that? Do you ever step back and think, like, why do we care so much about this stuff? But I, let me to have like a, like a moment here as a middle-aged father. So my kids got really into Michigan the last two years. my twins are six, my daughter's nine going on 10, she got really into it.

So I brought her to her first game this year at the big house, and it was awesome. And they played on January 1st against Alabama. My double reverse last week, my double jinks reverse worked. And it was on January 1st, and we had nothing to do. So I just drove around with the kids all day trying to run errands and take them to the park and stuff just to kill times to tire them out before the game. So they would actually sit and watch it. and we were listening to like the Michigan fight song and Mr. Bright said that they sang at the game

and my kids are screaming at the top of the lungs and they all have Michigan shirts on and I thought like I honestly I almost got choked up because I'm like oh this is the stuff this is why we do this because it's something to do with my kids like that's where I am at life like oh this is okay and so Michigan won the national championship last night and I'll let the kids stay up and watch it two of them

the two young ones didn't make it they fell asleep in the couch but but it was like it was one of those things where you know when they always say in psychology, when you achieve the goal you thought you wanted, it feels like almost a letdown. Because it's like the journey along the way. And I thought like, of course. But I had that feeling last night. And I was trying to tell my kids, like, enjoy this because, you know, this might never happen again for you ever. Like, this could be a one and done thing. And, but I'm, you know, I was probably talking to more to myself than them. But that, that's a, you know, like, you know, try to

enjoy this because they're whatever. They're all below 10 years old. So they don't, they don't know. And also, my kids got so lucky. The Lions are one of the playoffs the same year, Michigan won the national championship. So I'm like, listen, guys, it is not always going to be like this. There's going to be a lot more heartic in your future as a sports fan. Well, congrats as a Michigan fan. Lions caught a tough break. I think the Rams have a serious chance of beating them.

I do, too. That's going to hurt ones. But I'm just glad they made it. It's a tough break. I'm waiting from the Lions. We got an email, Ben, from one of our younger listeners. And I'm reading it thinking, like, it's a little weird. just, it just sounded a little weird.

It felt like it was coming from someone who spoke of, it was English was their second language or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't flow. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. That's exactly right. So then he ends it with, P.S.

This email was written entirely by chat, GBT, except this part. I hope that shows that I can be fairly tech savvy. I'm still mostly an idiot. I want to express my gratitude, nothing else, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? Somebody asked us a couple of weeks ago about, like, networking ideas and stuff. This was super clever. And I spoke to this gentleman.

Great kid. that was really It was a good way to stand out That's how you do it I couldn't tell if it was lazy or enterprising But I guess I'll fall in under enterprising Here's my first AI request We were at the hotel in Kansas City, Missouri

And every time you walk into a hotel room Who popped up on the screen every time A.C. Slater A. C. Slater. Can we please replace Mario Lopez with someone else? Can I have a pick of like 50 different celebrities that I can choose from As an AI version of them?

So it's not Mario Lopez? He's looked like 18 years old since he was 15 years old. Yeah, nice guy. He's got the dimples, great. I'm sick of seeing him every time I walk in a hotel. Can it be someone else besides Mario Lopez? That's all I ask for, AI. Give me someone else.

All right. You know what's a great service? Uber 1. So Uber 1 is a monthly subscription fee. I think it's like 10 bucks. But you get 6% back on your rides. So if you don't use Uber a lot, then I don't use Uber enough to eat.

I don't use Uber enough to make sense for me. But for people that do, it's a great service. I love it. You spend the $100 bucks. You get $6 back in like cash to use for rides. When do we get the Uber credit card? Don't need it. That's essentially it.

Don't need it. Did you know that do you have Peacock? I think we spoke about Peacock recently. I have every streaming. I have, if it's a streaming service, I own it. So how much of the world is going to know that Chiefs Dolphins are on Peacock

like only on Peacock now if you're a Chiefs fan I'm guessing by now you got the memo Well I had to watch Michigan games were on Peacock this year How many people in Kansas City Do you think are going to sign up

For Peacock And then cancel it And how many are gonna forget to cancel it But this is why You have to buy it This is why the streamers have to Have to add sports though They have to

Because this is how you get new people If you're a Dolphins Chief fan You 100% If you're not going to Maybe you're going to a bar But if you're watching at home, you're paying for the service. All right, here's where Peacock benefited me recently. There's this movie that came up.

I'm moving into recommendations here. This is what they call a transition into business. So there's this movie, The Holdovers I really wanted to see with Paul Giamatti. It just came out. It's a Christmas movie. And it's an Alexander Payne movie. He did Sideways, which was one of my all-time favorite movies. I love that movie.

And I love that the director and writer and Paul Giamadi were coming back together. And a bunch of people who listened to this podcast had email me saying, hey, Ben, you have to watch this. This is a total Ben movie. and I was going to either rent it or, you know, pay the 1999, and I said, I saw that it was coming to Peacock, like December 20-something, December 27th. And I'm like, oh, I'll just wait a week until it comes on Peacock, and it was there, and I watched it, and loved this movie, absolutely loved it. I don't know if it's for you, but here's what it is. It's a Christmas movie, which I already

love. It's a coming-of-age movie. It's just, it's about this kid who is stuck. He goes to a boys' school, like a boys' boarding school that's a way, and his parents go for vacation on Christmas, so he has to stay at the boarding school with one of his teachers. That's the whole premise. It's a simple premise. And it's also, you know when they do the who's in the movie and who produced it and who directed at the beginning of the

credits? And it says, in introducing, you know, it's a new actor, actress. This kid had literally never done a movie before who is like this 16-year-old, 18-year-old kid at boarding school. And he was fantastic. he was just a smart ass wise mouth and he was so good

acting with Paul Giamatti and I loved this movie and I think movies are for me movies are back I've seen four good movies in the past month or so the killer good not great Oppenheimer give it all the awards which it probably will it sounds like past lives I loved and the holdovers

was excellent movies are back for me if you're a Ben movie person and not a Michael movie person you have to see the holdovers. Well, I made a domestic purely box office chart. And I would say we peaked at $12 billion, and now we're at like nine.

So not terrible. I mean, it was looking pretty dire, but substantial growth every year since the pandemic. I am very excited to see the holdovers. Not very excited. That's an overstatement. I love Paul Giamati. So I will see that movie,

even though it might not be a meme movie. He more or less plays miles from sideways, but more neurotic. But he was excellent in it. I thought he won the Golden Globe, and he deserved it. I watched Past Lives on the airplane. Okay. And it's definitely a good movie, but it's not for me.

I was pretty bored. I could see that. You might be bored of the holdovers, but... So these are the top 20 movies from this year. Barbie, Super Mario, Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Oppenheimer, Little Mermaid, Avatar, Ant-Man, John Wick, Sounder Freedom. Taylor Swift, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Hunger Games, Transformers, Creed 3 Elemental, Fast X, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Wonka. Pretty underwhelming.

It's kind of funny how people were saying Barbenheimer was showing that movies are back and it's not just sequels. Look at all the sequels on here. Pretty overwhelming. 90% of them. Pretty overwhelming. Even after I just said this, movies are back. That's because I think streaming is going to save movies. That's where I'm still falling on that. The really good movies, like not great movies, the good movies are going to be on streamers going forward. We did, we did like, we spoke about Clive Owen earlier with that Hulu show. And I think we did a bit on like where Clive Owen go.

But you know what I was thinking as I was watching Home Alone and then Mighty Ducks? What happened to Daniel Stern? He's a huge movie star in the early in the 90s. Great comedic actor. Home Alone, yeah. And also, Emilio Estavis. What happened to him? I think sometimes new actors or actresses just come along and they just get replaced.

It's a good question. It does seem to happen quite a bit. I guess it's like the stock market. John Cusack was an enormous movie star for a while. Huge. I've heard of all the movies and then just kind of. John Cusack's best role? The Rock.

Conair. Oh, wait, Nichols Caj is in the Rock. I just sent Nicholas Cage and John Cusack confused. Wait, is, yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Conair and the Rock are very similar. movies. I did watch one good horror movie this weekend. It was on Amazon called Better Watch Out.

I'm giving you these excellent movies recommendations. You're like, eh, not for me. But there was this one movie where a guy had a foot growing out of his face. It was really scary. So this thing grossed, this thing grossed $20,000 at the box office of the U.S. and Canada. That's a new record for you. Listen, am I recommending this movie? No, I'm not. But it was fun. on Amazon. Let me tell you the premise of this movie. Let me tell the premise of this movie. A young brat is, his parents are going out, and there's a babysitter coming over. And he has a crush on the babysitter. And then the house gets attacked by people and things go completely haywire. It was clever. It was clever. I wish I could say more, but I can't. It was clever.

Okay. That movie has never been made before. Not like this. Not like this. There was a twist. Good little twist. All right. Oh, one more thing. Looking at your list.

My son is into action movies. So we watched all the Indiana Jones movies over Christmas break, which was two weeks long and way, way too long for the kids to be off. But, CGI, here's my take. CGI has ruined action movies. I'm not seeing the last one. I just, I'm not doing it. It was, it was.

Yeah, it was. And I love, love Indiana Jones. And here's the thing. We watch the old ones first, then we watch the new ones. And the CGI, the ability to use CGI, it's like a crutch because now they can make it, it's just so much more over the top. And obviously, the original Indiana Jones are over the top, but they make it look realistic. The CGI I feel like I'm watching a video game.

It's not even like, there's no stakes at play when it's CGI to me. Fargo is slowing, slow down a little bit from me. I mean, I'm still with it, but. Okay, the last episode I thought was really good. Okay, yeah. Did you watch the eighth episode? No, I'm one episode of them. Oh, next week, I am so serious.

so excited because I've been pretty dry with TV stuff. I'm so excited for true detective. All right. I haven't watched it either. Yes, I'm excited. No, it's not out yet. Of course you haven't watched it. Oh, okay. Well, the last season with Vince Vaughn was really, really bad. This one's supposed to be really, really good. Jody Foster. Let's do it. Among others. What's our email? Personal emails, personal responses. Animal Spirits at thecompaned news.com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next year. Next time. Oh, girl.