Animal Spirits Podcast - The Most Confusing Rally of All Time (EP.410)

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

On episode 410 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: a wild month of stock market performance, bear market rallies, a shift in tariffs, Amazon fighting back, an update on earnings, thoughts on conferences, a new Netflix recommendation, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Innovator ETFs. Visit: ⁠http://innovatoretfs.com/⁠ to learn more. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is sponsored by Innovator ETFs. We have had Innovator ETF founder Bruce Bond on the show a number of times on Talk Your Book. People are worried about tariffs and political uncertainty and market volatility. And Innovator ETF pioneered the buffer ETF. I guess it was back in 2018. We talked to him right away, I think. And so these ETFs allow you to better define your upside and your downside. One of the best calls of our career.

We knew it right away. Right when we saw it, that this is going to be a big category. Yeah, so they have buffered levels from like 9% losses to all the way to 100% covering everything. BlackRock says $650 billion outcome oriented ETF space is their projection. Visit innovatoretefs.com to learn more. Brought to you by Cebo, the Exchange for the World Stage. 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. We are coming to Chicago. Tuesday. 3rd, 6 o'clock. Riddholt's Walth Management is opening up a new Chicago headquarters at the Salt Shedd.

Very cool. Very excited about that space. And Josh and I are doing a compound on friends with Knaw Kippur, CEO of Morningstar. We're going to be at the Chop Shop. Again, that's Tuesday, June 3rd at 6 p.m. Who knows? Maybe I'll be on stage. I was going to say, Ben will be there.

Ben, a little teaser. Ben might hop down. We might do something a little extra. for the crowd. And someone asked me last week. For the Sparrants fans. Someone said, I might not be able to make it to this one. And I said, well, now that we have this Chicago office, we're going to be doing more stuff there.

We're going to be leaning in. Yeah. So, absolutely. Great spot. One of the best cities in the world, as far as I'm concerned. And we're going in the summer, which is the best time to go. All right, Ben. The past couple of weeks, we've been switching around the dock a little bit.

Not like every show, but what I mean for the audience is Ben and I have a Google Doc. And we've got, I don't have many categories we're up to at this point. Got to be a Baker's Dozen plus, right? Yes. And usually it's static. But a couple of weeks back, we put tariffs up front. Today we're going to put the stock market back up front. Usually we don't do that.

But these are crazy times. They call for crazy measures in the Google Doc. All right, here we go. The stock market is now. back to where it was post-Liberation Day. In fact, the NASDAQ is even higher. And is the S&P higher?

Let's just say it's right around there. So it's... Wait, so I looked at this. The S&P at the worst closing was down 11.2% this month, just on the monthly basis. And now it's down 1.5% as of the close on Monday.

We're recording this before the market opens Tuesday. This bounce doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I kind of... So I've been... I don't know if bullish is the right word, but like calm down. And I think I think the sell-off made sense. I think perhaps was it overdone in some areas in the short term, maybe in some areas. That made more sense to me than this bounce does.

I'm having a hard time figuring out why the balance was so strong. Like to say that the stock market is in the same place and that there's going to be no impact to earnings, sentiment, valuations on a go forward basis sounds. insane to me. And I am usually a, I'm wrong, the market is right type of guy, right? I'm not the type of person who thinks that a hundred men can beat up one gorilla. The market is right. I'm wrong if I disagree with the market. But in this case, I don't think I'm wrong. This doesn't make sense to me. That's a lot of guys, 100 people. Is it too easy to say that this is like COVID? Because I put the Jim Kramer thing in here. And this was the thing going around back then.

And it was the heading was the Dow's best week since 1938. And then on the bottom, it says breaking more than 16 million Americans have lost jobs in three weeks. And the stock market was taking off in April 2020. The stock market saw over the valley. Is it just too easy to say, oh, it's just doing that again? I hate that comparison. Are you making that comparison? No, I'm saying like that, I think that's the comparison that people are trying to make here.

That, oh, the stock market's forward looking. Everything's going to be okay. I'm with you on this one where I would, the one I think in COVID who said, we're going to get new highs again this year because of all the bazooka that Powell was throwing at the market. But the difference this time is the government is not coming to the rescue. And I guess the hope of the stock market is just, okay, he's going to cave. He's going to cave. He's going to backtrack. And that's the hope. The question is how much damage has already been done or will be done in the next, I don't

know, three, six, 12 months. It's not a matter of, it's not a matter of caving. The tariffs aren't disappearing. I get, you've been, and you keep saying that if, if mainstream are publicly traded, it would be down like 30 to 40 percent. And I tend to agree with you there. And I guess you could say like the Russell 2000 being down more is kind of an example of that. But I agree. The interesting part of this is just that the stock market rarely makes sense.

Is that that, that's a thing to be that. I mean, that is a, no offense. That is ludicrous. What's the other explanation? And we're trying to, we're talking it through. Just people keep. I think it, is it just people keep buying? We're going to talk about that in a little bit.

bit. Here's a potential explanation. Perhaps if we were to be more granular, take a scalpel out and really look at what's going on the market because not everything's moved. I'm sorry, I hate that word. Granular? Yeah. Granular? Why? I never liked it. I feel like it's a word finance people use to sound smart. No offense. I can't, you can't accuse me as trying to sound smart. Fair. All right. But if we were to say, I don't know. But you listen. If you use that word, though, you do like, you're kind of like, eh, I sound smarter, don't I? The word that I hate is grok.

When people say, I couldn't grok it or I'm still trying to grok. Just say fucking understand. What are you a robot? But I feel like if you're a finance person and you say granular or robust is a good one, if you say those words, you do sound smart. Orthogonal? I don't know what that means. I wouldn't be able to use that one in a sentence either.

There's people that use Delta in conversation. That's a punch in the nose, metaphorically. All right. Sorry. What do you want to get more granular about? If you were to look at different areas of the market, because it's, I'm talking about the indexes, and you would say, all right, well, this stock is down a lot more than the market.

Look at like the casinos. That makes sense. Traffic to Vegas is falling off cliff. Look at the airlines. Destroyed. That makes sense. And then you were looking at other areas that are holding up Netflix. Well, that makes sense.

Crowdstrike. That makes sense. So maybe the market isn't so. stupid. Maybe the areas that are going to be impacted by the market are getting by the tariffs are getting walloped and the areas that are going to be less in the eye of the tariff storm are holding it better. Okay, get into some stats here because I feel like if you just took all the tariff stuff away and you looked at just the way the market is reacting. Okay. This seems like the market is deciding to look past this for now. Yes. Yes, it is. All right. So there

was a there was a Zweig breadth thrust last week. That was a mouthful. a breadth, a Z-B-T, bread-th thrust. And what that means, it's when the 10-day exponential moving average of New York Stock Exchange advances minus declines, or advances in declines, I'm sorry, moves from below 0.4 to above 0.615 within 10 trading days. So in English, what that means is stocks go from really oversold, right? like washout to really overbought in 10 days. So a huge reversal.

And what you're measuring is panic selling to panic buying. And when panic selling to panic buying happens in a short period of time, historically, quantitatively, that has been the bottom. So Ryan Dietrich has a chart showing all of these instances and the market was higher 100% of the time, both six and 12 months later. And it looks like, I don't know, what is there? Like close to 20 on this list. Ryan also says he has two more data points, all saying the same thing.

To say this one more time, what we've seen the past two weeks isn't what you see in bare market rallies. More than 70% advances on the New York Stock Exchange six times over the past 10 days. Never lower six and 12 months later for the S&P 500. And then finally, the S&P 500, awesome from Ryan. The S&P 500 is up at least 1.5% for three days in a row. this is not stuff you see in bear market rallies or short covering rallies. You see this before times of strong performance, higher 10 out of 10 times and a year

later up 21.6% on average. Now, I love these data points because this is capturing psychology of the market, right? It's capturing what happens when the crowd goes from, oh, my God, get me out to oh, my God, get me back in. And Ryan charts us out and 100% hit rate does mean that this can't be the time where that it fails. I guess what I would say is like there will be an impact on earnings, surely, no? And you would think that sentiment valuations should get compressed. We shouldn't be trading at 21 times earnings the same way we were before all of this happened. Like there should be some sort of impairment. Now, I guess maybe a counterpoint is like, all right, I mean,

this is ridiculous. I'm grasping at straws. I'm just throwing shit against the wall. While the S&P 500 is down 5% year to date, that's still, I don't know, 900, I'm making this up, $800 billion in market cap wiped out, whatever the number is. It's still like not nothing. My devil's advocate here would be just that markets move faster than ever when trying to put these moves in the context of past moves. That'd be my only pushback that, well, what if this is different? I guess the other thing would be maybe the stock market is saying, you know what, I'm sick of all the sentiment readings saying we're going to go into recession and doesn't happen.

Show me a recession this time. If we get a recession, if earnings do slow considerably, then I'll fall out of bed. But show me first. Nah, it doesn't work like that. Too cute? It doesn't work like that. But you're right. If we get a recession, the stock market is going to, it's going to test the lows again.

It has to. You would think so. All right, let's talk about this. One of the things that we were saying during the heat of the cell, off was easiest thing in the world is selling, right? You're scared. You want to make yourself feel better. You want the pain to stop.

Easiest thing in the world is to sell. Hardest thing when it comes to investing is getting back in once you've panicked sold. Now what do you do? I'm not trying to be cute. Like, seriously, imagine if you sold two weeks ago, what do you do now? Because we're having this conversation academically just for fun. But for the person that's like, I can't believe that rally.

At this point, that's why it's so hard. can't psychologically admit defeat. You can't say, well, I'm going to buy back in. If you saw two weeks ago, you're getting back in today? No way. Okay, so what if this is a massive dead cat bounce? That's the idea. So, chart kid Matt did this one for us, and he looked at it in a dot-com bubble,

which is not the perfect description, but I think the action is worth considering. Because I think you could make the case that this year could just be big rallies, big falls, big rallies, big falls, and we go nowhere kind of deal. I would take that. So he looked at the market rallies of at least 5% during the dot com bubbling shaded him here. And there's, what, seven or eight of them? No, there's 10. There's 10.

It says that right in the header. Can't fool me. So this is, this comes from Exhibit A. This is our chart of the week. So if you are a subscriber to Exhibit A, this will hit your inbox. Is it Thursday? I think, yeah, Thursday, every Thursday morning. it's a topical, timely chart that you could use to show to clients,

Exhibit A4 Advice.com, 7-day free trial. But the point is... Wait, wait, and we heard some feedback from advisors who are using these charts saying, I love the chart. I also want a description. So we're going to be providing some commentary as well. Yeah. The point is, with these bare market rallies,

and now that we're predicting them, it's that in heightened uncertainty, you can't let yourself get too high or too low. because this is possible. And imagine if you got all bolt up every time you thought you were out of the woods and then, holy shit, I can't believe I fell for it again.

Yes. That like whipsaw, seesaw, back and forth is dangerous psychologically. I looked at this last week and it was 15 trading days that we'd been through April 24th. And in four days, we were down 12%. Then we had that big 10% up day.

Then over the next seven trading days, the market fell 6%. Then over the next three days, It was up 6%. It felt like four months in 15 trading days. Those are the kind of, and that's why this is now the calm before whatever comes next, I guess. Like, the market is kind of chilling out and taking a breath and then... Well, also, the VIX is below 25.

So do you think that the next bout of volatility is going to also come from announcements out of the White House or is it going to come from economic data? I think once we first hear the... I think it could be a bad earnings report. I guess that's going to be a while on it. Well, here's an example. So UPS just reported. I think they're laying off 20,000 workers citing declining demand.

The stock is flat pre-market, but the stock has been obliterated. I mean, absolutely destroyed and no bounds whatsoever. So we could go from a period of, remember, the inflation report was the most important economic data point. I think we're going to go back to labor markets where the unemployment rate every month is going to be really important to pay attention to. And if that sees a huge tick up, I think you could see a massive sell off. How's that? Yeah. I agree. I agree. So the Wall Street Journal has done a really good job of talking about investor behavior. And I love it because

they're pairing anecdotes, our favorite with the, you know, interviewing the people on the street or whatever with actual data. So they said so, because last week we asked, well, who's selling? If retail's buying, who's selling? So far this year, hedge funds have sold over a trillion dollars more shares than they have purchased, even as individuals have made $50 billion a month in net stock purchases, little interruption, according to JP Morgan. So hedge funds are getting out. Now, is this the idea where, because people want to figure, oh, who's the dumb money here? Is there dumb money or is this just completely different time horizons? Yeah, that's it. I think a lot of the degrossing from the hedge funds was just like these companies have risk limits. And so they're not making like

fundamental buy sell. They're not like panicking. It's just following stuff, right? Yeah, this is just like, Our risk limit's triggered. Boom. Oh, Besson is speaking. He reminds me of, he reminds me of Will Ferrell and S&L. What character was he playing? Where he had kind of like the smushed face. He was like the scientist.

The Harry Carey one? Is that? All right. So another good one, though. They talk about how the Yolo traders are still here. And they interviewed a few people. Yes. Yes, that one.

Yeah. Harry Carrey. Okay. Harry Carey, not a scientist, but he played a scientist. Okay, so they interviewed some of these people who are just saying, listen, I can see the building burning, but I'm running in. And so they said, they interviewed this one guy who says, it's a screaming buying opportunity. And this is, they're talking about when the stock market really got crushed here. He keeps 90% of his seven-figure portfolio in a cryptocurrency and related stocks, such as Bitcoin buyer strategy.

I'm running straight into it, he says. 37-year-old marketing director said he wouldn't mind it. if that the price of Bitcoin sank 6% a day. He says, that's what I'm after, making decades of returns in weeks or month. I truly think volatility is where fortunes are made. Not untrue. Now this... Easier something dumb, but not untrue.

Yeah, so this one made me want to crawl out of my skin. This guy, Patrick Weiland, who is a content creator and day trader said, the kids these days say no risk, no Rari. And then they say that Rari is slang for Ferrari. I don't believe the kids are saying that. this is one of those things that the things you say on the internet don't translate into real life. Remember on the curb when Larry David said no one says L.O.L. in real life. Or actually, you know, like some things don't translate.

And again, if I said no risk, no rari, I think I'd have to crawl out on my own skin. Anyway, so they talk about... There actually, there are no risk, no rari poster. Should I buy one for you? That sounds awesome. So he says, you have to be aggressive when you have such big swings in the market's hard to be risk-averse. Now, there's two camps of looking at these kind of statements. one camp goes, just wait. Oh, just wait. These people, when their comeuppance comes, they're going to get slaughtered. But what would you rather have them do, rush for the exits? I think that for years, it's been beaten into people's heads. When there's volatility, it's a good thing to buy. When stock prices are down, that's when you make your money. So you could quibble with the vehicles they're using, because these people are using levered ETFs and they're trading very speculative stocks. But, Who would quibble about what kids are doing with their money?

Isn't this what kids are supposed to do with their money? Aren't they supposed to take risk and learn? Well, these aren't kids. These are 37-year-olds and, you know, these are... Sounds like kids to me. So, but I think on the net, this is a positive development. People have learned. Now you could say, listen, just wait until there's a lost decade.

These people are going to be sorry. But who has a good experience during a lost decade? Who likes that period? Right? Who is that good for? Oh, what was that saying that one of the, an old person said either to us at her inbox or on the internet? Damn it. This is a weekly occurrence now. You're trying to pull something from that middle-aged brain of yours.

Oh, man. It is just not happening for you then. Oh, oh, Buttercup. Buckle up Buttercup. Okay. That's right. Where did that come from? I don't know.

Isn't it just a saying? Okay. I feel like there was somebody that actually said that. But I, the thing of like. Yeah, buckle up buttercup. Oh, yeah, what are you going to do? Old people tisk, tisking you like just, you just wait. Yeah.

What are you going to do in the last decade? Yeah. So that's, I would rather have this than people who are cowering and scared. I wrote a blog post about this saying, if you look at UBS did a study of millennials in like 2014. And their risk aversion was so high. They wanted nothing to do with the stock market. Duncan's getting out of the game.

just said, don't look a gift horse in the mouth? You've always been great with your sayings. But millennials in the 2010's following the great recession because they lost money or their parents lost money, they wanted nothing to do with risk. And now it's all anyone wants. And so which one would I rather have? People who are in the fetal position and wanting nothing to do the stock market or people who are rushing into the building while it's burning.

I'd rather have people who are taking advantage of volatility, even if they get stopped on the risk every once in a while. Um, this idea that like, people need to do this or investors need to, it's, hello, which investors? There are like 1,400 different pockets of the, of personality types and time horizons. And if you are looking for confirming evidence or evidence that you want to fade or whatever, like you could find it anywhere. Yeah, I agree. All right.

Here's one from the compound. Duncan put this out. I asked for this one. Almost 4,000 votes. Is this a dead cat bounce? 58% say yes, 42% say no. Is there a definition of a dead cat balance, like a quantitative definition? I think it's one of those you know it when you see it kind of deals.

I don't think there is... Let me ask you this. What if we just saw the lows for six months and we retest them in the fall, then this is not a dead cat balance, right? Because to me, a dead cat bounce rose over pretty quickly. I would agree with that. It's got to be within... Well, then in that case...

Yeah, I don't know. I would say the lows that we put in two weeks ago good for a little while. Maybe not, but I don't know. It's just weird how quickly it happens now. I think that's what messes with people. I just think that was a pretty quick panic. That was a gnarly bare market in a really short amount of time. Oh, just busting balls. But seriously, that was only a 19-ish percent decline. Is that not a bear market? Give me a break. I mean, the textbooks will say no, honestly, because they have to draw the line somewhere. I'll give it to him.

All right. This is like Bill Simmons always like getting annoyed about how Carmelone is always in the record books and he'll draw the line at like a random stat, like a P.R of like 43 to like cut Carmelone off from all the things. How about this? What if what if we the people change the definition of a bare market to 19 percent? We get three more bare markets in there. No, it would be like five.

I look at this. Oh, really? It's like five times. All right. This is a citizen's arrest. Bear markets are down 19 percent. Stamped it. Boom. Bang the gavel. All right, let's move into tariffs. I think this is good news. This is from Jake Sherman. He says Amazon will start displaying how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs right next to the product's total listed price. I think this is a good thing because my worry here is that companies raise prices from tariffs. And some of them just when the tariffs, if and when they go off, just kind of keep them on, keep them higher and take the margin. So I think restaurants should be doing tariff surcharges. Car dealerships should be doing tariff surcharges.

Wait, because they could take away the surcharge. Yes, because if we don't make it a surcharge, so that's, I think this is good news. I hope all companies do this, and guess what else that's going to do? Wait, wait, was that a Van Carlson take, or did you lift that from somebody else? Hey, man, this is organic. I'm getting granular. That's a good take. So I saw the story, and I thought, yes, because I'm worried about companies that are going

to keep prices higher. This happened, remember when commodity prices shot up during the Ukraine, Russia World War Yeah, the homebuilders, they said, they said we're taking it to margin. Yeah. So I hope, and this will also keep the political pressure on tariffs to be like, listen, I can see this on my receipt. There's going to be so many viral receipts of tariff surcharges in the months ahead. I think that's going to help with the political pressure. I love it, Ben. That's a, that's a hall of him take. Right. So a lot of people are saying, well, why did Trump have another shift where he kind of sort of backpedaled? He backpedals it. It's kind of like, I don't know, two steps forward or one step back or maybe vice versa. But I think this did it. So the CEOs of the nation, this is from Axiose. of the three of the nation's biggest retailers, Walmart Target and Home Depot, privately warned him that his tariff policy could disrupt supply chains, raise prices, and lead to empty shelves. I think they kind of scared him. I think they showed him some of the China data that these ships are starting to be empty. And I think they said, listen, man, this is not going to be good. Consumers are going to be pissed. And it might still already happen. But so this is from the Wall Street Journal, the port of Los Angeles, one of America's biggest gateways for imports from China. Executive Director told port officials Thursday to expect a 35 percent drop in import volumes in two weeks as essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased. Bookings out of China fell 60% in the past week. So here's my question. It sounds like

we're going to get some empty shelves. What is the economic impact of that? Is it more that people are angry? Because people could change their habits and say, well, that one's not there, so I'm going to buy this one. Or I can't get this now, so I'll wait and I'll buy something else. Like, is the anger going to be bigger than the actual economic impact of this. Yeah, I think so. Because when you say empty shelves, it's not like the whole store is going to be empty. Like what's going to, what are people not able to buy? Right.

There's going to be some things. Well, here's one. We talked about this a little bit. We had Derek Thompson on the show and he talked about this, but the Wall Street Journal dug into it. Today, around 95% of imported strollers come from China along with three quarters of toys and infant furniture such as cribs. So they'll go through here and show like almost everything you need to buy for your baby.

If you have a baby coming, toys, cribs. Strollers, that comes from China. They're going to be some really pissed off parents in the months ahead if they can't get this stuff where it's really, really expensive. Yeah. Would you have known what percentage of this things come from China had we not gone through this? No.

So, yeah, baby stroller is obviously a critical piece of gear for parents of young children. Is there a single baby stroller that is easy to fold? like why don't they say why don't they have a big make it red or like the button or the thing you pull is never widely known or easy i don't know how many strollers we have i had a good one where you just picked it right off from the seat where you just and the whole thing just collapsed i feel like they were they were never easy to fold up and then undo all right anyway not to so not to minimize the impact of of strollers and how important they are But for the stock market point of view, so what?

That's my saying. To your point earlier about Main Street being worse off than Wall Street, we're going to get another one of those things where, again, I think we could see a scenario where the unemployment rate is rising, the stock market is going up. Why does Google care about strollers? Not an extreme example, but Google just reported last week and revenue up 10%. Everything up double digits, $90 billion in revenue. And if those companies do have to,

tariffs on whatever, their chips and such semiconductors, they have big margins to eat a little bit of it, right? Now, I know the knock on effects. Like, tariffs are bad. It's a tax. And so there'll be less money in the system, right? Like so, but I'm just trying to understand why some things might be looking past the tariffs, why some companies and why some investors.

Oh, I agree. This is going to be worse for Main Street than Wall Street, I think is the way I'm thinking about this. Yeah. So I definitely, like, I don't think anybody is saying like, all right, we're good. We made it. We haven't even. So the, the different. between now, and I haven't, I haven't, you could fact check me on this, but all of the other

periods, all of the other breadth thrusts, I'm guessing came after the economic damage. Right. We haven't even seen it yet. So that's why this is just, that's why I take that data with the grain of salt, even though I'm a fan of it, is because we don't know how bad this is good to get. Now, maybe, maybe the market is right. I mean, I guess that should probably be the default position is that we're wrong and the market is right. And so the market is looking past it and we'll find out if it's right or wrong. Think about how bad sentiment is now and we haven't even felt the impact. Like how bad does sentiment get if people do start getting laid off in big numbers and the economy really does start slowing and prices are higher? How bad does sentiment

go then? Yeah. Now I will say, not investment advice, if you were panicking two weeks ago and like you were like really, really close to pulling the trigger and you were like losing sleep over your portfolio. What a gift this is to be able to downshift. Yeah, if you want to take some risk off the table. Yeah. And again, we're not big fans of extremes, but hey, I'm 80, 20. I'm going to go to 6040. Great. I don't see that as a huge problem.

No, do it. All right. What's the email here? Hey, guys. I wanted to give you a dispatch from a small business. I run manufacturing for a small business that exports products to China and other countries. China was about 20% of last year's sale. after the election, we started talking about tariffs immediately.

No one imagined that tariffs would be anything near what Trump announced on his on Liberation Day. We were already slowing down due to uncertainty, but on April 3rd, it was like a bomb went off. We've about a quarter of our hourly workforce on layoff and are looking at further cuts. To me, this is like seeing a recession happen in real time. We've laid people off, stopped ordering ingredients and packaging. We have import products sitting in China that we may have to destroy cut capital, spend the safe cash, et cetera.

This is happening small businesses everywhere. I don't see how an aggregation of these actions won't cause a recession. Yeah. We've gotten a handful of emails like this from different businesses being like, we have no idea what to do. We're paralyzed. And so, yeah, what do you do when you're in that situation? You try to cut costs and survive and lay people off. That's why I think we're going to, it's possible we could see a really bad employment report in the coming months.

And that's what wakes people up. All right. From Colin Roche here. I think the idea that a lot of people have and why some people still back this idea is, listen, we need to fix the system. I think there's a big difference between fixing the system versus fixing some stuff on the edges that's not perfect in this country. So Colin Roche says our broken monetary system leads to number one worldwide in wealth, number one in total GDP, number one in GDP growth in the G7, number one in global corporate profits, and number one in GDP per capita in the G7. 20. Obviously, some people don't care about relative rankings. I personally do. And I think, listen, like, there are certainly areas we can improve on as a country. But saying we need to blow up the whole system is just, it's an economically illiterate argument that has no basis in reality. It's like going to the finals and then trading your best player.

Sorry, we keep using an analogy, but. We would ever do that. All right. So back to the shipping stuff and the shelves and all that. Tracy Allaway had a blog post showing that this is the weakest quarter since 2015 and the 10th weakest on record overall for shipping quarters. And six of the worst happening during the financial crisis. Just the amount of goods being shipped?

Yeah. Okay. Wow. And it's not going to get better, right? Here's the thing people keep waiting for, like the hard versus soft data. And Federal Reserve had a new research report on this. So they said, we show what consumers have been saying differs from what they have been doing during the post-pandemic period. Consumers say they feel worse, but through the end of 2024, they're buying more, not just spending more than they did in 2019.

And they say this disconnect is hard to figure out, kind of, like the actual economic data. So that's the question people keep waiting for, is, is it going to eventually catch up? So this is Neil Dutt. It's probable that much of the recent upside surprises and hard data reflect pulling forward activity in anticipation of the tariffs. Consumers pulled forward auto sales and consumption on household durables. As an example, firms likely pulled forward some orders too. That likely gives the veneer of strength and recent high frequency data flow.

So he's saying you can't use the data we're seeing now as. Yeah, not to fade Nile Duda. And I only listen to a few calls. I don't want to speak for like every company, but I heard only very marginally was there pull forward consumption. Most of the companies said they weren't seeing it. Maybe a little bit on the margin in auto, sure. Okay.

So this is some anecdotes from Tors and Slok that he pulled from calls. And this is Southwest Airlines CEO said, I don't care if you call it a recession or not. In this industry, that's a recession. So, pull, wait, sorry. Yeah, airlines are in a recession. Fact. Already? Are you sure?

Yes. I am sure. All right. Well, just look, because we see the hard data. We see the number of flights coming into the United States. Look at the stock prices. Airlines aren't a recession. Okay.

All right, Tors and Slock lays out the voluntary trade reset recession. Wait, do you want to read any other anecdotes or that's it? Chipotle CEO said saving money because of concerns around the economy was the overwhelming reason consumers reducing the frequency of restaurant visits. Yeah, I would say a $15 barita bowl is probably the first thing to go. I know you were going to say that. Seriously. Yeah, which is funny that, that usually in a recession, you see prices stabilize or fall, but this is the nightmare scenario for people is, what if we're going to have to raise prices as the consumer's pulling back?

Yeah. Right? Obviously, that's the night. Pepsi's CEO said. Also, same store sales at Tripoli were down only nominally, like very, very little amount. Yeah, I think a lot of this is CEOs getting ahead of their setting expectations. As they should. So Torson's lock lays out, listen, the container ship stuff is going to.

to be messed up for 40 days. Then the trucking industry is going to be messed up. Then we're going to get empty shelves. And he says, he says by the summer of 2025, we could have a recession. This is very, very quick. This is the thing that when you look at the stock market, you go, is it really that obvious? I mean, that'd be a very, very fast recession. Yeah.

Well, it could be. It could be. It could be over before it started. Yeah. So what if there are empty shelves or pockets of empty shelves? I don't want to keep saying there's empty shelves. What if there are things that are in short supply? And that by the time we start to see the short supply,

I don't know if it's five weeks from now or whatever, but by the time that happens, we already have deals. It's like, don't worry, they're coming. And in that case, the market should probably look past it, past a temporary hit to earnings. Possibly, yeah. Like, maybe that's the thing. like, does an economic slowdown force his hand to go, all right, you're done.

We can't keep doing this. You've caused an economic slowdown. Get out of here. You know, we're done with this. Here's Capital One earnings call, and Capital One serves the everyday consumer. They said, the U.S. consumer remains a source of strength in the economy. That's true for almost any metric that we look at. The unemployment rate is low and stable.

Job creation remains healthy. Real wages are growing. Consumer debt service burdens remains stable near pre-pademic levels in our country. card portfolio, we're seeing improving delinquency rates and lower delinquency entries and payment rates are improving on a year-over-year basis moving forward. On the whole, I'd say the U.S. consumer is in good shape. Now, now, and that could obviously change. But coming into this, not bad. All right, there was an interesting article in the journal talking about retail sales and what's going on there. So spending by the top 5% of customers grew about 3%. This is for

last month. Spending by the top 5% of the costums grew about 3%, suggesting that big declines in their stock portfolios haven't made them skittish about making purchases. Thoughts. Too soon to tell? I think economic volatility is going to matter more than market volatility. How's that? This is like a circular argument because it's all part and parcel of the same story. But so long as people have their jobs, well, I don't know if that's true, because rich people always have their jobs. But in general, so long as people have their jobs, they will keep spending money, very obviously. So here's what I've been thinking about. So someone, this meme was flying around Twitter. And it was this, and I hate dunking on young people because, again, if I was young,

and I was so dumb when I was young, too, if I had social media at my fingertips, I would have done so much, I would have said and done so much dumb stuff. So I'm just glad it never was part of my life as a young person. But this, she's crying. She's got a tear coming down her eye and she says when I tell my mom a nine to five the rest of my life would make me depressed and she tells me to get used to it, that's how life is. And all these young people are saying, I can't stand a nine to five and people are dunking on it saying, oh my gosh, these people don't know how lucky they are and also like we need a recession. And my whole thing is we are very, very out of practice for what an actual recession is. Because I keep using the stat that we've had two months of

recession in the past 15 years, and that two months, we had so much government fiscal spending that people were made whole immediately. The unemployment insurance went up, right? People got checks. Like, that was not an actual recession, even though the unemployment rate went up, right? We've never, we haven't experienced an actual recession in a decade and a half. So even if unemployment rate goes from 4% to 6% or 7% and it's a mild recession, but companies are pulling back, I wonder what the dot-com recession felt like because the GFC was It was relatively mild

The GFC was such an extreme Yes, that's the thing I was working at an upscale-ish Italian restaurant And there was people there on the weekend But during the week it was dead Oh yeah, there was a lot of stuff like that I just remember the whole constant drumbeat

Of you are lucky to even have a job Why would you try to get a raise Why would you try to get a job somewhere else In this economy like that drumbeat You do not hear that anymore And that's the thing I think people are out of practice on. And this is everyone, people who've experienced it or not. Like, what does a recession feel like for your business slowing down?

The prospects of the growth in your business. And there are just knock on effects that I feel like people are just so out of practice on. And how about the worry about like, forget about getting a raise, keeping your job, paying your bills. Yes. And the longer that goes on, when it starts to impact like, you know, real life, forget about the stock market. Yeah, we haven't had that in a while. Just, yes. Just that's what I'm thinking is.

Everyone is out of practice for this. By the way, this is not you calling for a recession that people need to slap on the wrist. No, I hate people that say that. I do not want a recession because I know it's bad. Yeah, why do we need one? We need a recession. Yeah, why? I'm just saying.

So that people can go through the misery that you went through? Yes. I'm just saying if it happens, I think it's going to be fascinating to watch what the reaction is from people that haven't experienced one in a while. Like, do we get an overreaction where the sentiment readings and people's feelings about the economy are way worse. than the actual recession itself. You're going to look at it and go, oh, GDP fell 2%. You know, like that was a recession and people are freaking out.

Like, that's a scenario I could see happening. Yeah. All right, this is interesting from the Atlantic. There's a store from the Atlantic saying that the 2010s, it was cheap Uber's and DoorDash that were subsidized by VC companies, and now it's AI. So they say, like, through the end of May, open AI offers college students two months of free access to chat GPT Plus,

which is $20 a month. I pay for that one now, do you? Chat Chb-T, I don't. Plus, okay. Wait, why do you need to pay for it? It offers you more bandwidth and the ability to, like, do more queries and, I don't know, they talk me into it. They also said all these other ones, Google and perplexity, and they're all offering

college students free or discounted versions of chatbots. And they say some young people are already hooked. In their recent, A.A. OpenA.'s recent report on college students chat GPT adoption, and the most popular category of non-education or career-related usage was relationship advice. Imagine going to an AI bot and saying, help me with my relationship. In conversations with several young users,

I heard about people who are using AI for color matching cosmetics, generating customized grocery lists based on budget and dietary preferences, creating personalized audio meditations and half marathon training routines and seeking advice on their plant care. Amazing.

It's pretty cool, isn't it? Like, if you think about... I've been using it more and more in the quarter app and it really is like nothing short of magic. It is. And to think that it's going to be everywhere

in everything in not a long period of time, it's remarkable. It's going to be one of these pieces of technology where I feel like it's kind of like Google just kind of slid in there and people are sort of using it and not really realizing how amazing this is. I think it's going to be like that

where people just kind of take for granted like how cool this really is. I've been using it way more too. Anytime I have a question now, I go to Chad GPT instead of, instead of Google. And the answers almost always are perfect the very first time. That's amazing. I mean, you know who's in trouble? The analyst community. Maybe not today, but like the young-ish crew crop of analysts, there's just going to be far, far, far fewer jobs in the very near term. This would be way, way less hiring. You could do so much more. What kind of analyst are jobs you talking about? Financial analysts

Maybe No 100% All right 100% This thing Josh and I are talking tonight

What are your thoughts about An experiment that Adam Parker went through And it's game over I mean obviously It's going to make people more efficient You're going to be able to do So much more

With less people Yeah But I also feel like at a certain point There's the baseline Where everyone has the same stuff Like, your AI chatbot for your company is not going to, like, set you apart when everything and everyone has that, right? That's just going to bring up the baseline for everyone. Yeah, I'm not saying that.

I still think it's going to create other jobs, too, that we're not even thinking of right now. Yes, I agree. All right. This is a chart. Not a great one from Lance Lambert. It's the median age of first-time U.S. home buyers. And it was range-bound, as you would imagine, from the early 90s all the way through the pandemic. And as housing became completely unaffordable, the median age has shot up from 32, 33 pre-pandemic, up to 38 today.

Not great. At what point does this become like the political issue? Because obviously inflation was the political issue in the last election, which is kind of funny because then we got a guy to tear us. But because I think the problem is 65, the homeownership rate in the country is 65%. Most people are happy with the situation as it is. Well, I think that the average 38-year-old doesn't have a lot of influence in this country. That's what I'm saying. At what point does this become such a big problem that it finally becomes a federal government issue that, like, we need to make it easier to build more homes.

I just feel like it's surprising that this isn't a huge issue yet. Yeah. I guess to your point, the young people just don't have a lot of power at the moment. All right, Ben, last week or maybe two weeks ago, we were talking about what advisors would do. with illiquid assets. Right. And on the Blackstone call, Jonathan Gray said, while it's still early in the second quarter, overall access across private wealth, we have not seen a pullback in sales.

We raised $11 billion in the channel in the first quarter, up nearly 40% year over year, 40 to the highest level in nearly three years. B credit, again, on the way, that's private credit with almost $4 billion raised on the back about sending performance. Here's one of the things about private assets. Even if they do run into a little hiccup and performance is bad or something, it takes so long for the actual end clients to see it because the marks take so long to happen, it's not the kind of thing where all of a sudden one day you go, oh my gosh, look at this.

It's a very slow, slow burn. Right. So maybe I, yeah, maybe I'm saying I agree with you. It's not slowing down, at least according to Blackstone. And if anything else, the, the, I, idea of illiquid assets that don't mark themselves during volatile markets for some people is going to be seen as a positive. Yeah.

Okay. Surveys of the week, I think I got two here. This is from UGov. Americans are likely to have favorably use of castles and chivalry, but not the Crusades or Inquisition. And they ask people, how do you feel about the Black Plague? And 9% of people say very or somewhat favorable. And this just gets to our point of the surveys. How many people are actually like answering these?

correctly, how many people actually understand what they're being asked. I think that's just like, click, give me the $15. Yes. All right. Here's another one from John Burns. Survey of U.S. adults. What is the ideal number of children for a family to have? And two children peaked out in 2011 has been falling.

Three children or more has been rising now, so now that zero, one or two kids is almost the same as three or more kids. How do you explain that? I mean, given how old the median home value is, given how expensive everything is, How do you explain this? This is a myth buster, not a myth buster. What is this? What do we call this, Ben?

This is a plot twister. So this is, this says it's a Gallup survey of adult 18 plus. So I would need to break down by age. So I wonder if older adults are saying, I want more kids. I want more grandkids. I don't know what, but this shocks me because how many people do you know that actually have three or more kids? You.

You said, yeah, me, right? No, I know. And guess what? We had twins. We didn't plan it. Yeah. Most have two. Kobe today was on the iPad, and he said, hey, Siri, and he calls her Siri.

He says, hey, Siri, tell Mommy, I love her. So it said, or text Mommy, I love her. So it opened up the text to Mommy, and it wrote, I love her. And then I said, no, no, no, Kobe, you have to tell it. You have to say, I love you. Tell Siri, tell Mommy, I love you. So he deleted her, wrote you with the heart. Adorable.

I'm on the road right now, and for the first time, my daughter from her iPad is texting me. So it's like, hey, good morning, and she's doing the emojis. And it's just so weird to see your kids grow up to the point where they're now texting. And she's texting her little friends. And it's so weird. All right. This is from the Wall Street Journal. They say the 19 richest households saw $1 trillion wealth increase in 2024, a rise that exceeds the size of Switzerland's economy.

They're showing that this is the top point zero, zero, zero, zero one, right? These huge is now almost 2% of the total, which is kind of. of insane. They show the number of billionaires has jumped from almost a little less than 1,000 in 2021 to nearly 2000 now. Share of household wealth by the 0.1% has gone from 8.5% in 1990 to 13.8% today. Here's a stat that I figured out this week that is very probably should have gone more viral than it did because I think it's a great. The top 1% owns 50% of the stock market. The bottom 50% owns 1% of the stock market. Wow. That's kind of of crazy, right? So here's the thing.

Now, you have to point out the pie is expanding. Yes. It's not great, but the pie is getting bigger. Yeah, the bottom 50% is... There's 2,000 billionaires. That's crazy. In the U.S. So some people look at these numbers and go, just wait until the torches and pitchforks come out, right? It's going to happen. There's going to be a revolution. I say there's never going to be a wealth inequality revolution in this country because we just love rich people so much. Does White Lotus count as a revolution? Think about all the show. I always think about this, the John Hamm, your friends and neighbors show.

You could greenlight any show about rich people right now that paints them in kind of a derogatory light and people would watch it. Where are you on that show? I really like it. Are you up to date? I watched the first three, I believe. Okay.

I think four is where it starts to go a little bit sideways from me. It's a fun show, but yeah, it's not a leap, but that's fine. I enjoy it. But I just, I love the idea of these very rich people. And someone told me it's supposed to be Westchester, I think. Yeah. Or maybe Connecticut. I don't know.

Same thing. But just this idea that you pointed this out last week that, Like, this is what my life is going to be. And so I... Did you hear that speech, by the way? Yes. Did that head a little bit? It was good.

But the whole thinking of just like, even for really, really rich people with these gigantic houses and all this wealth and all this stuff, it's kind of like, oh, really, this is our life? It is. Yeah. I think everyone, everyone, like, they get there. And yeah, and we have great lives. And those rich people have, in terms of, like, luxury, they have everything.

And it's like, all right. So I go on three vacations a year. I drive a nice car. like, what else? It's it? So remember you told me that you listened to the Neil Brennan Block's podcast and caught up? And so I had, I was supposed to fly down to Ohio for the speech I'm giving, or I was giving. So I'm down here right now. And my flight got, got delayed. So I was going to miss my flight and I didn't want to. So I just drove here instead. And so I put out a bunch of pocket. And I caught up on a bunch of the Neil Brennan Block's podcast with all these

celebrities. David Letterman and Nick Kroll and how good was the Letterman one very good but here's my here's a constant theme among all these I let's say like five of them all these rich and successful people talked about how they're in therapy how they practice meditation how some of them are going on ayahuasca because it helps them get grounded and I just think like they get to these levels of success and realize like it's not what I thought it would be it's this really this I'm not I'm still not happy. What is wrong with me? I need to try these other things and then they'll ground me.

And they're just, for some people, there's never going to be that thing that's going to satisfy you. One of the things that I'm most grateful for in life is like discovering that, I don't remember when or how or why it first occurred to me, that monetary success and material success is not an answer. Because there is, if it were, you wouldn't have all of this overwhelming evidence of people with everything that are absolutely not happy. Miserable, right?

Now, I think everybody would agree, okay, fine, I'd rather have more than less, and I'm not saying that I would rather have less than more, but just that if I was never the type of person that said to myself, if I get this, then I will be happy. Right. I mean, I had those thoughts when I was younger that if I can just make this much money, then I'll be happy.

And then the goalposts are constantly moving. So I think once you get that and the white bulb goes off there, then you go, okay, this is like this for everyone. And it's not going to do it for me. It's, I need, and having kids totally helped shape me in that way of not, not concerning myself with that stuff as much anymore, not caring. And how about this? At the ultimate top, their insecurities could not be more in display.

Think about all the billionaires that, that are tweeting and embarrassing themselves because they want the likes. They want people to like, hey, man, like, yeah, you were a dork in high school, but you're pretty cool guy now. Right. Like, they can't fill that hole, that empty hole. They might have billions of dollars, but they still need public adoration because they were dorks in high school. Yes.

It's both sad and also kind of uplifting that, like, oh, okay. No one has it figured out. Yeah. All right. So, Ben, these travel charts that we mentioned earlier, fewer Europeans travel to the U.S. Look at that chart. So, yeah, airlines aren't a recession. Las Vegas tourism declining.

Type of stuff that you see in not great economy. right now perhaps perhaps perhaps this is just the excess of all of the people were drunk for the last three years going on vacations all the time it had a slow eventually right so maybe that's what this is instead of like a bigger picture thing I don't know um but it's slowing very fast in a lot of places that's the thing yeah oh one more one more speaking of travel one more Chicago announcement Ben and I on June 25th back in Chicago we're going to be at the morningstar conference which I'm told is at the Chicago Navy Pier. I've never been there.

Oh, I can't wait. We're going to have a fun time in Navy Pier. What are we going to do there? There's a Ferris wheel. There's rides. Oh, what did you show me? There's like a simulator? Yes, Chicago, I can't remember the name of it.

We did it, though. It's really cool. One of those things like the Disney ride where they lift you up and you have the big huge screen and they blower at you. I'm all in. It's really fun. I'm all in. All right, so June 25th.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. that's a great big conference um i had a conference anecdote so i i gave the speech in columbus to all these all these are these the type of people you see at conferences oh yeah definitely but this is a good one so i have one person so i gave a speech and it was a bigger conference on i thought so it's it's all the fpa societies of ohio got together and i don't know three or four hundred people pretty big at a pretty big ballroom and this is i want to give give some applause to this guy at every conference it's always a guy there's always one guy in the front row when you're giving a speech who is constantly nodding his head

and like looking at people like, you know, he's and he's always in the front row, very front, very center. And guess what? That guy. Usually bald. Usually bald?

Yeah. But he's constantly, and he's writing stuff down and he's nodding his head. What was your speech about? Risk and reward. Which is the name of my new book. I finally decided on the name.

Okay. So I gave a speech about risk and reward and how to think about managing behavior and volatile time. and all this stuff. So it was a, it was fun. Good group down here.

Any other conference anecdotes or just that, just the head nodding guy? I love the head nod guy. He gives me confidence as I'm giving my speech. Yeah, that's huge. And then there's always,

when you make a joke, there's always one person who laughs a little louder than everyone else. That also gives you because occasionally there's a joke that falls flat. All right.

Oh, I meant to talk about this a few weeks ago. I listened to Eli Roth was on, on the town, Matt Bellany's podcast. And he is raising money for his movie company on Republic. If you want to check it out, go to republic.com slash horror section. You should be an investor because you already give them some money. You know what I should give this guy some money.

So he raised $2.7 million. There's $1,160 investors. Wait, what do you get for it? The valuation is $55 million. And there's different. So if you invest $100, you get access to the investment. newsletter, a digital stock certificate, an investor town hall with Eli Roth, an entry into a raffle for announcing credit. So is this like being agreeing by a Packer's owner? Yeah, if you invest

$666, you get a signed stock certificate, pretty cool. You get an invitation to meet and agree with Eli Roth. And Eli Roth has some big hits. Cabin fever, I saw it in the theater. Hostel, also saw in the theater. I actually saw Cabin Bieber. Hostel 2, Part 2, too much, too much gore. Thanksgiving, I quite enjoyed. Eli Roth is a legend. He was the bear Jew and a glorious bastards. He shows that the box office for Freddie Kruger, $590 million, ghost face scream, $911 million, Halloween, $855 million, and Jason's $75 million.

So I think it's cool. You can be an investor in the movie company and, you know, own a piece of it. So I like it. Yeah, you would have a bunch of other nerds. All right. Yeah, it's fun. Lucas Shaw tweeted, not tweeted, Lucas Shaw wrote a blog post on Bloomberg.

Blog post on Bloomberg, article in Bloomberg. Yellowstone is one of the most valuable franchises in Hollywood. It shows have generated $2.9 billion in sales and $700 million in profits. That's wild. Geez. Audiences have spent more than $450 million buying DVDs and downloads, and they're cooking up three more series in the world.

I guess so. This is nuts. The show's 1883 and 1923 cost almost $20 million an episode. I guess that makes sense because the sets are so old and big and sprawling. So I finished 1923, and it was interesting because there were seven episodes

and the last episode was like two and a half hours or something. It was a bizarre ending, correct? Bizarre in what sense? I liked it. I thought it really limped to the finish line. That made, spoiler alert. She dies. She died? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. I thought it was like good, not great. But it was, I enjoyed it. I thought the ending was very perplexing. All right. You always talk about going to the movies by yourself and how you like that experience. And I just, I've, I've never done that.

I don't know why. I just, if I'm going to watch a movie alone, I'd prefer to do it at home. Here's what I like to do, though, especially if I'm traveling by myself at a conference or something like this, I know, and I never would have done this when I was young. younger. I love going to the bar and having dinner and drinking by myself. That is a great experience. Right? With your AirPods with your AirPods in? I don't, I will sometimes bring my Kindle, sometimes just be on my phone, sometimes watching games. Either way, it's great. It's great. I probably didn't have enough self-esteem as a young person. Like if I was 24, I would have

wanted to sit at the bar by myself. Now I'm more than happy to do that. Like I have an uncle who goes, he'll go to the bar, bring a book, and drink like two or three pints. And, like that he that's one of the things he does that's a good experience all right i don't have a lot of recommendations this week just one i told you i listened to a bunch of the neil brandon podcast and so i finally went and watched it was based on his Netflix special called blocks and i finally watched that and it was very good i it's funny he even says like why do my stand-up routines have to be so gimmicky because three mics he had three different mics and each of them was a different type of comedy or story and blocks is this different thing of things in his life

that, like, mess him up. I just thought it was really, really well done. He's probably one of the most intelligent, deep-thinking comedians there is. Yeah. Right? Like, you can tell that guy is just very, very intelligent. Yeah. Duncan says that he invested $666 for the bloody certificate.

But hold on. Duncan, get on here. Duncan, you're not a horror fan and you hate gore and blood. I mean, yeah. I like Eli Rotha. Okay. Who doesn't? Wait,

are you serious that you did it? Yeah. I thought he was kidding. I thought he thinks are cast. I'm in. No, I'm in. No, artist supporting artists. I'd love to say it.

Yeah. Duncan, did you see sinners? No. Okay. Would I like it? No. Okay. Well, it's a film.

Your film Guy, but there's also a little bit of blood. It's not super gory. I actually think you would enjoy it. I think you would enjoy it. Maybe I watch. So I saw, yeah, I've no recommendation.

recommendations either. I have an un-recommendation, if you will. So I saw The Wolfman in the theater with my friend Brad and what yours is this? The Wolfman is 2010. And we still joke about it as being the absolute worst movie either of us I've ever seen in the theaters. Actually, that's not true. Is that Beniso del Toro? Yeah. So I think Major League, was it Major League 3? Major League was the worst movie ever saw in the theaters. This was second. So the Wolfman was with Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins and they're both wolfmen and they end up fighting each other at the end.

It's absurd. Just horrendous. Oh, and a young guy, Emily Blunt, I forgot about that. All right. So, yeah, worst movie I've ever seen. I just don't find it appealing that the idea of that movie even. Worst movie I've ever seen. That's a good wolf movie.

That's a good wolf movie. All right. So anyway, so I saw Wolf Man, two words. It came out on, it was on, I think it was on Peacock. So I fired it up. Why not? Absolute dog shit. Like not even close to anything remotely resembling a movie.

I don't understand. It happens. Pure trash. And you know my threshold for pure trash. My appetite is healthy. I would have thought you'd like that one. Yeah. No.

Not good. All right. We made another week. All right. I feel like it's the clock ticking down until economic reality. but maybe, maybe everyone's wrong. Everyone's been wrong in the past. Listen, how about this?

I pledge to you the listener that will not be my beat. I am not going to spend the next four months saying just wait. We'll take a week by week. That kind of data comes out monthly in most cases. So we're going to start seeing an impact by, I'd say, May data. I think that's like the, right, May or June, that's going to be the tell. I would think so. All right.

Come see us in Chicago, June 3rd. Ben will be there. The whole argument crew is crumming out. We'll have a great crowd at the chop shop. I'm told the venue is sick. We'll drink some alerts. Old styles. You know what?

I will drink some allure. I will do one. Nasty. I will do one. All right. Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.

Don't go.