Animal Spirits Podcast - The Mother of All Bubbles (EP.389)

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

On episode 389 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: US exceptionalism in markets and the economy, losing all of your retirement savings, yield sells, financial nihilism, the downfall of the CFA, the greatest trades of all-time, a 10 year outlook on housing prices, the bull market in podcasts on YouTube, the psychology of tipping, and much more! Thanks to Public for sponsoring this episode. Visit: https://public.com/compound and lock in a 6% or higher yield with a Bond Account. Animal Spirits survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZBBJ69Q Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Subscribe to The Unlock newsletter: https://www.advisorunlock.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Public disclosure: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by public. Ben, I have a confession to make. Okay. Over the last couple of years, like so many other fine Americans with interest rates at levels that we hadn't seen in forever, not in my investing career, I accumulated more cash than than I otherwise would have. You are the cash on the sidelines right now. But now, do I just take all my cash and invest into the stock market? I mean, I've been investing in the stock market, of course, my whole career.

I want to maybe get some yield, lock in some yields, some bonds, if you know what I mean? Know I'm going with this? Yes, I think a lot of that cash is going to move into bonds. So at public.com, they have a bond account, and they invest in individual bonds, corporate and high yield bonds. You can lock in, like, a yield of 6% or higher right now, is it individual bonds. You actually do lock in the rates. For the record, I'm a stock guy, but I need some dry patter, right?

I want to be able to be aggressive if and when we get a healthy correction. Yeah, so you can go to public.com, check out their bond account, 6% yield or higher, lock it in, because we don't know these bond yields are going to be here forever. Lock it up. Yes, brought to you by public investing member FINRA and SIPC. As of 92624, the average annualized yield to worst across the bond account is greater than 6%. Yield the worst is not guaranteed. Not an investment recommendation.

All investing involves risk. Visit public.com slash disclosures slash bond dash account for more info. 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 Riddholt'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.

Ben, welcome back. Yeah, good to be here. I was here last year last week, though. I just disappeared it. You got a little bit of a tan. You know, it's rare when people come back from vacations and you don't tan. I mean, you got a little bit of tan. I don't really tan that, you know.

I tan over the summer when I've got constant exposure to the sun, but I can't just go to a tropical place and get a tan. My face will melt off. I've never seen you with a tan. I've never seen you with a tan before. No, I bronze in the summer. Although when you get back from a vacation, people say they make a joke about you not getting a tan, it's like, right. Ah, yes.

You know, those people? But there is the thing, you just get a little color. There you got, ha. You look alive again. You look alive again. It really does. Yeah, I've got my vampire winter shade going on. It is, that's one of the depressing parts about winter.

It's like your complexion matches the snow. I have more travel thoughts I'll share in our travels from part of the dock. Well, I've also got something of a teaser myself. And the ad read to public, I dropped a reference, a line, if you will. Lock it up. You lock it up from Wedding Crashers. Rob and I listened to the Wedding Crashers rewatchables on the, on a drive this weekend. Wow.

That was a time capsule. I'll get to it later in the show. It was 2018, or 2018 when they did that show. And it was very, very interesting listening to it now to tell you where the environment was when they first. And we'll get to that later. Okay. Anytime I make it an announcement for Red House Management, Potential Employee, I say housekeeping.

I don't know what else to call it. It's not housekeeping. Announcement. It's like morning announcements at school. Sure. All right. I've said this before and I'll say it again with a twist. We have a booming office in Southern California, Los Angeles.

A little south of Los Angeles to be exactly specific. And they need help. Now, here's the twist. They need an incredible advisor. to help them grow their business, this person needs to be amazing. What this person doesn't need, a book of business, which is often a prerequisite for moving. If you are this person and you're an incredible advisor and you love the operations part of it, I don't mean operations, opening accounts, trading, that sort of stuff, but just a lot of the

support that a lead advisor would need, we need help. Someone who's organized. Yes. Yes. And we've had a lot of luck finding employees through Animal Spirits. We're essentially like a junior LinkedIn here. This is, yeah, I'll say this is, we're Riddle 12th management's Monster.com. So every time we put this out there, is Monster.com still a thing?

I don't know. But our best employees have all come from Animal Spirits, not to break. So if you think that's you, reach out to us. Okay. Financial Times has a piece called The Mother of All Bubbles. I feel like we've had at least one of these articles since 2013, like every six months or so. I looked back at, for some reason, when I saw this article, I looked back in 2015, it was actually a zero hedge piece that Robert Schiller went on and said,

everything's overvalued. Everything. Housing, bonds, stocks. When did the, when is the origin of the everything bubble that people were throwing around there? I mean, that's mid-2000s. Yeah, it's probably been a decade. So, but this, I thought this piece was interesting. Set aside the title for a second. So the whole, The whole thing here is just how much money, like we've talked about the U.S. economy and markets being the envy of the world, the rest of the world, and part of that envy is now flows and everything is flowing into here. So they say, united by the faith and the strength of the U.S. financial markets and their capacity to keep outperforming all other economies, global investors are committing more capital to a single country than ever before in modern history. As a result, the U.S. accounts for nearly 70% of the leading global stock index up in 30% in the 1980s, and the dollar by some measures, trade. Is it a higher value than at any time since the developed world abandoned fixed exchange rates 50 years ago?

May I? This person is saying, and by the way, this person, they wrote another bombastic article that we discussed years ago. I just can't remember which one it was. Okay. I think you mentioned that. Yeah. So this isn't their first rodeo here. Yeah.

Anyway. Conveniently choosing the 1980s, which I believe was a trough in U.S. market cap. True. Yeah, that's true. We're following the 70s. Yeah, so it's like, oh, we're 70% up for 30% at the lowest. What if you started at the 90s or the late 90s when we're about where we are today? How about that?

True. This is interesting too. The U.S. now attracts more than 70% of the flows into the $13 trillion global market for private investments, which include equity and credit. I just listening to the sheer amounts of money pouring in here, that part is interesting, too, though. I mean, there's just, there literally is no other country, region that comes anywhere close to us. Yeah. Now, I didn't read the article because I think I understand what this person is trying to say. And I don't entirely disagree with the message that I think that he's saying, which is that everybody is all in on the United States. And there are potentially opportunities elsewhere. Is that the TLDR?

Yes. Yeah. It's just a contrary intake of if everyone is this excited about the U.S., then this can't last or this can't possibly be a good thing. You have to take the other side of this. Okay. So if you're a contrarian person, that's what you say. Reasonable. No, but reasonable. So look at this chart that we had, a chart can make for us, showing the relative returns of other regions of the world.

So we looked at emerging markets, international developed, China, Japan, and Europe. And we had Matt annualized the differences. So on a one year, three, year, five, year, 10, year, 15, and 20 year, the U.S. is outperforming every market and every time frame except Japan has outperformed us over the last three years. And I believe this is adjusted for dollars. So for the point of view of a U.S. investor. And yeah, U.S. stocks have beaten the crap out of all these countries for a long time. Now, we've looked at charts historically of like U.S. minus international and rolling various timeframes. And there's always been mean reversion. But it doesn't mean that it has that it has to

mean revert, right? Like we've been, we've been waiting as global investors for a long time for for this to change. And now the danger is, of course, like, all right, well, is now the time. to dump your international stocks, like right now when everybody is so pessimistic. So it's hard. There's no, uh, the problem is this is the magnitude of the outperformance has been worse in the past. Like Japan outperformed the U.S. and the rest of the world in the 70s and 80s by a much larger amount.

But the amount of time that this one, this cycle has lasted. I think that's the thing that we haven't really seen before. It's a long time. And it's not, it's not without good reason. It's not like people are dumb. No, the U.S. has aren't that. So, so Jake, quote, skyed this. Are we doing that?

I don't know. I cannot pick over at Blue Sky, quote tweeted the article and said he did like the the posh spice, David Beckham. What's your real name? Why am I drawing a blanket in her name? Victoria Beckham. Victoria Beckham. Did you ever watch that, Doc?

I liked it. I really liked it. So she's saying the U.S. market is in the bubble of the ages. And David Beckham says, be honest. And she says, I am being honest. What P.E. multibreys are you comparing? Says David Beckham.

And then she says, European industrials with U.S. tech. And David Beckham says, thank you. Credit to Jake. That's a great meme. And I think you can't talk about, to Jake's point, you can't talk about the differences of just straight PEs when the composition of the markets are so different. Now, obviously the question is, the dot-com bubble. Yeah, it's not.

The question is, and this is, you know, this is part of what makes investing hard. That was the mother of all bubbles. This is what makes investing hard. It would be a lot easier if we could see the future. It's like has all of the U.S. exceptionalism and the premium multiples that have been earned, by the way, is all that bacon to the pie? And it's now the time to pretend. And, you know,

we don't know. That's the impossible one to answer. So I had Chartkid create one for me. And I've seen something like this before, but I wanted to see market cap weighting on a global basis. This is just using the ACQI, which is the All-Country World Index, and then the GDP weighting by country. So the US is 65% of the ACWI, global stock market.

But we only make up 26% of GDP waiting around the globe. And the biggest... You should have had one more. What's that? Corporate profits. U.S. corporate profits for the most compared to the rest of the world.

Oh. It's probably pretty close to the market cap waiting. It's probably closer to market cap waiting. The funny thing is, though, if you look at some of these other countries, Germany, France, India, Britain, Canada, Japan, their GDPs and their market cap weightings are pretty similar. They're in the same ballpark. The only other one that really stands out here is China makes up 17% of GDP, but they make up up just 2.4% of the market cap waiting.

Again, a discount that they have earned. Like, global investors are not dumb. So the funny thing to me here is that we seem to have just taken China's share of GDP and translated into market cap. And everything else is kind of close. So I guess the one takeaway here would be like, geez, this makes no sense. How could the U.S. be 65% of the global stock market, but 26% of GDP? and then the, then you have the line.

What's the Simpson thing? Say the line, say the line. The stock market is not the economy. Okay, you've seen the meme. The stock market is not the economy. And the S&P 500 and those big companies, those are not the economy. Right. Right.

That's the whole point. We've talked about this before, that the sheer amount of revenues and profits that come from smaller companies, it's a much bigger number than you think. So you can't really make that kind of comparison and say, like, this has got to come back into balance. Because it doesn't. And it never really has, I guess, for the U.S. Yeah, something has to give. Oh, yeah?

No, it doesn't. It is kind of mind-boggling the sort of U.S. exceptionalism here. Because it is the kind of thing in 10 or 15 years where you look back, and either way, however this outcome happens, there's a fork in the road. One way, the U.S. underperforms or the U.S. outperforms. It's going to look very obvious in hindsight. Either outcome would look obvious in hindsight. Don't you think?

If the U.S. continues to outperform, it'll be obvious. Of course we're outperforming. We have the best companies, the most profits, the most successful. I don't know. How about this? I won't say that because it's not obvious to me today. I mean, I'm just looking at all these pieces. And then the other side of it would be, of course, it's obvious. Did you see all this stuff that the cover indicators of the U.S. is the envy of the world and all this stuff? Okay, so again, there are reasons for this, though. Joey Politano at Apricitas, is that you say it? His upstack. Very good. He talks about America's productivity boom. Now look at the productivity growth in the U.S.

us versus the rest of the world. It's just we're off the charts and no one even comes close to touching us. And this is going back to the mid-2010s and it's only gotten our lead is only grown in the 2020s. I think this is the big one. This is the, if you want to talk about like the American exceptionalism in one chart, he shows America's business boom, the business applications we've talked about. I just took off in the 2020s. I just think this, the risk-taking thing is something that we have that most other countries do not have. Yeah, so you can make the argument that it's structural, and then somebody could say to me,

anytime you use that word, it's probably, you know, anytime you use the word it's a structural thing, then that's already baked into the pie, and everybody knows it, and therefore, like, again, you could spin in yourself in circles. I feel like the guy in Princess Bride, right? The weird thing about this is, I remember, I think I, right when I got out of college,

remember when you first read your first, like, adult books? Because I never read in college or high school, because I was an idiot. And it's so funny, my daughter reads, all the time now, my oldest daughter. And she's probably already read more books by age 10 than I had by age 21. I never read anything.

I didn't start reading until after college. But I read The World's Flat, but Thomas Friedman, read at a college, and I thought, I'm the smartest man alive, because I've read a book. But the thesis of that book was that, like, the fall of the Berlin Wall and globalization and all this stuff,

flattened competition around the world. And you'd have thought that thesis would have made this whole thing much different. Like, why is this? the case. If the globalization in the internet and information technology makes it easier than ever for anyone to do anything and start a job and communicate. Because it's cultural. We support risk taking. I guess that's the only answer. But it's knowing that back then, it would be surprising to say this is the outcome. Okay. Here's another one. Derek Thompson on

Blue Sky. This really is remarkable. He's showing two charts from Jason Furman, labor productivity and non-farm business of the euro area. Europe's productivity growth has collapsed to basically zero. At the same time, the continent's politics is turning away from immigration. Quote, Europe's just a museum is becoming an insult to museums with membership growth and new exhibits. Shots fired. Are we going to do a counter for every time we do a blue sky post here? Like, ding, you know?

Yeah. That's two. Here's an interesting chart. I think there's from John authors at Bloomberg. It shows... Until the election, U.S. and European bank stocks moved in tandem. This is December 20, 23 until the election. And then as soon as the election happened, whoosh.

They went a complete different directions. I guess I understand why U.S. banks did better because of the deregulation stuff. Why did European banks all of a sudden sell off? Because investors were selling European banks and buying U.S. ones. Just a positioning thing? Yeah. No, you're probably right. I don't know.

It's a positioning thing. All right. Speaking of positioning, the constant wondering of where... By the way, this is another element of this is the top, right? This is added to the list of the last 15 years of this is the top moments. What, this conversation? Yes. Every conversation is that this is the top. I was looking back, for some reason, the YouTube algorithm sent me an old Animal Spirits video. And there was one, and it was like 12 months ago.

And it was the Ben Carlson top because I think it was Michael Santoli. told Josh that he's saying Ben's spiking the football way too, a lot, way too much lately on his podcast. And I think we called it the Ben Carlson Top and still. Yeah. By the way, but how is this topic? I think what we're saying is like, we don't know that the U.S.

is going to continue. No, I'm saying a lot of these stories, just shoving it in the face of the rest of the world, saying the U.S., look at how great we are. Yeah. But it's not, this first time we've had this conversation. Like, there's been multiple go rounds of these over the years.

Yeah. Fair. So, okay, Balchunis. ETFs just set a monthly flow record in November with $155 billion, a shocking number given there was only 21 business days in the month. That's $7.3 billion a day about triple the norm, triple thanks to the Trump bump. Yuderdate flows at $983 billion headed to a trillion for the first time ever likely by one stage as wow.

Now, probably a lot of this is crypto, so, but even nevertheless, I just continue to like, marvel at where this money is coming from. Every time we say this, we get a lot of emails about, like, different theories. And it's, the answer is it's not one thing, of course, right? Like, it's, we hear from, oh, it's overseas investors, it's mutual funds. That was the one I heard recently that's overseas investors.

Okay. I'm sure it's all these things. It's just, it's so much. And just, wow. Yes, so much money. I think one of the themes continues to be, there's just a lot of money in the world, and it needs to find a home.

Yes. Everywhere. All right. Jason's why, has been doing wonderful work in the last year or so, just pulling things to light of shady practices. And he has this story from last week that is really sad. And it talks about these people who,

what was the fun called, yield? What was it? Max. Yield max. One of these companies was promising a guaranteed return of 15. A firm called yield wealth. So, yeah, yield wealth, 15.25% return. no losses at all.

And this one guy took his $760,000 retirement fund. And his wife is like, I don't know. This is not 60 years old. And he talked to his wife about it. And he said, I can't handle the volatility of the stock market anymore. This guy's going to give me a, this place is going to give me a guaranteed 15%. Took all of his money out of his 401K, every single cent, rolled it over. And now all of a sudden stuff stopped coming in.

There's no income anymore. This place was some sort of Ponzi scheme. and it's gone. He says, with the promise of, this is from Zweig, with the promise of such high income and a guarantee against loss, says Graham, it sounded like a perfect solution. Which is just,

a tale is old as time, unfortunately. But here's my question to you. So I've said this in the past that the best selling point, especially for retirees or people who are conservative investors, is yield. When you said the best,

you made the easiest thing to sell. The easiest sale you can make is yield. Yes. You don't need to know anything else. What's the yield? 9%. in. 10% in. 12% in. Last week, I had a handyman in the house doing some things that I'm not capable of doing, like screwing in a light bulb, for example. And he saw my charts on the screen.

And he's been here before, so he knows that I work in money or whatever. And he's like, hey, let me ask you a question. Where would you, like, invest $50,000? And I said, well, like, What are you looking for? What's your risk tolerance? What are you looking for? Nothing too risky, you know, maybe some income. So I explained to him. I'm like, all right, well, the risk-free rate is 4.2% is, right?

That's like what you can get from the government for 10 years. And so anything, if you're looking for income, anything above 4% has to have a level of risk. 6% is more risky than government. 7, 8 is more risky, et cetera. So if I said to him, hey, there's a product that's, you know, 11% principal protected, whatever, whatever, done, two seconds. Oh, yeah. But funny that not to go too much of a tangent on this. He's like, all right, well, because he's like, you know, I'm something not too risky.

Like maybe some income. And I tell him that he can get 4.2% or whatever. He goes, what about Tesla? So, you know, that's a little separate conversation. But my question is this. So how many private credit fund scams we're going to see in years ahead? because these things are opaque and kind of black box and don't worry what's in there. No one really knows.

I think the scams in that space, there's going to be a lot of them of just yield promise. It's private, illiquid stuff. Don't worry about it. There's going to be scams there. For sure. I'm not just to be very, very clear, this is not in a scam bucket, like separate conversation. Today, speaking of private credit, BlackRock announced that they're buying HPS, which is a private credit company, I think they have 150 billion in assets management, a lot of money.

So in the past year, BlackRock has bought Prequin, global infrastructure partners, and now this company. BlackRock is making a huge push into private markets. And here's a quote from the Wall Street Journal, from the CFO. Combining public and private credit is a future of fixed income. And there's no reason to not believe what BlackRock says it's going to do, it's doing it. So that is going to be another interesting wrinkle over the next coming years in the fixed income world. There's private credit getting into being coming with public. The fact that BlackRock already owns half of the homes in the United States, I mean, got to believe them.

Stop. That is a joke. I'm not going to email. I've got an email from BlackRock in the past. We have. I told her the one I got was someone asked me to change a headline of my blog. And I was like, no, I can't. And by the way, it's Blackstone that owns half the houses.

And, of course, that is a joke, too. So Logan Motashami does all the work swatting away the non-truth spewers about this. It's like 2% or something. It's like 1%. It's very, very low. The terms of institutional investors that own homes. The amount of individual investors that own homes, right? Right.

Like dwarfs institutional stuff. Yes, the individual renters. or individual landlords own lower homes, single-family homes than institutions. Jeff Petack at Morningstar, remember last week we talked about leverage mania? There's a new place called the one-in-one funds. I don't know who's running this, so it's just a new fund company. But it's the Cory Hofstein return stacking. So it's Bitcoin and ETH, NASDAQ and ETH, S&P and Bitcoin, S&P and ETH, S&P and NASDAQ, and VIX.

And it's these, it's using options to add leverage to a portfolio, so you can have a different... I like this idea. These really, these aren't terrible. Actually, it kind of makes sense if you understand. If you understand. The key word, if you understand, I think these are perfectly viable products. Yes, I actually think these are kind of interesting.

But you know that the ones that just go psycho and go way above this are going to get more assets. Of course. The reasonable ones aren't going to get a lot of assets. All right, so you saw this thing about the Enron. post yesterday. What happened? Can you please explain

to me at the necklick? I don't know if it was a meme or the community note said it was a crypto scam masquerading as a bankrupted So there was a tweet saying this is at Enron from Twitter and says we're back, can we talk?

And everyone's going Oh, Enron's back. This is a sign of the Times and it was, I don't know if it was a meme or a joke or scam. Well, hold on. Before it, just a little bit of color because I saw Jack,

our friend Jack Wrain's tweet about it this morning. All right, this is from Sherwood News. The college company had owned the Nryd trademark since June 2021. allowing it to legally sell merchandise with the Enron logo. And that trademark is now owned by Gatos's new Enron Corporation. For those curious, the college company also owns one other trademark. Birds aren't real alluding to a Gen Z conspiracy theory that birds are actually government agents.

So, all right, so I'm still not clear what's going on here. What's going on here? I don't know. If it was a crypto scam, though, or something, my whole thinking is that the 2020s is kind of morphed into the decade, especially for young people of like financial nihilism. and if this was a crypto scam thing, the whole, all the meme coin stuff, like I guess it comes with the territory,

but I think on the one hand... Wait, can you explain why you're saying this is a crypto scam? I didn't, like I said, I didn't click the video. Oh, the community note for Twitter says that. A crypto scam masquerading is bankrupted and around corporation. Got it, okay.

Got it. And I just think the one positive net benefit of all the craziness that's gone to the markets in the 2020s is that we've got more people involved in the markets. And I think people have up their risk-taking. Millennials have their own death of equities thing where they wanted nothing to do with risk

following the great financial crisis and Gen Z is like no give us as much risk as possible and but with that comes like I feel like this like nihilism of the meme stocks and the meme coins and the shit coins and all this stuff and I feel like that that is the down that is a double edge the other side of the sword where it's like

just like stuff doesn't matter let's invest in the funny thing or that part is the thing that's kind of depressing to me. Yeah it is but like like every other previous generation, they'll learn and they'll, right, like we all did. We all went through our shenanigans early on. But I do think that getting more people interested in investing, like just the concept and the, even if it's not like the right pathway to start is unbalanced, a good thing.

But the, the, maybe another, another side effect of this is CFA candidates going lower. Like, why would a young person look, try to figure, do fundamental analysis, like, deep work when you could just buy shit coins and make money. Yeah. So Mike's a Cardi tagged us on this and it shows the CFA exams taken per year and the huge drop off in 2020, obviously, but it's, it came back a little bit and then now it's way lower than it was in the late 2010s and it doesn't have been coming back. And they, the Financial Times gives it some reasons for this.

They say the pandemic was part of it. I guess a lot of the tests were taken in China and the shutdowns there slowed that down. So there's not as much growth in any emerging markets. I mean, no offense to the society or the Institute. I mean, Ben and I are charter holders, but, like, it does seem a bit antiquated in today's world, though. A little bit, yes. I'm sure that that's part of it. Like, when we were coming up, like, banking was sexy, right?

Like, being an investment banker was cool. Now, of course, I couldn't be an investment banker because I got kicked out of college twice. I graduated Queens College. Didn't know anybody. I was not. I just never would have an investment banker because I couldn't handle the hours. Well, I mean, I wasn't even, there was never happening for me. Let's be honest, right?

No, well, me neither. I didn't have the grades or the pedigree. You did a sort of pedigree for that. But now, yeah, but young people don't want to be an, who wants to be an investment banker? I'm sure there's still a lot of people from the Ivy Weeks. But yeah, I'm sure tech is much more sexy. Of course, you're right. But, like, it's just not as cool as it used to be.

No, no, no. But I'm surprised that because more portfolio. And one of the other reasons they give is that just the rise of passive investing in ETFs, you don't really need the portfolio management skills. The funny thing to me is a lot of people. do throw shade on the CFA. And for me, it helped me in my career. It helped me get jobs.

Whether it helped me become a better investor, that's another story. But it helped me get jobs by taking it. And I think it did help me early in my career. It is funny, though, because people always talk down on the CFA. But you know what the person who started the CFA was? Whose idea it was. Was it Ben Graham?

Benjamin Graham was the one who, it was his idea that got the CFA rolling. Can I, I don't know if I ever told the story on the air. I don't even know if I ever told you the story, Ben. In 2000. In 2010, a friend of mine that left Mass Mutual. And by the way, I was thinking about this the other day. You know what is going to, what do we say he's going to die with boomers? Why do you tidy underwear?

You know, with the blue and the yellow stripe. I did a whole blog post on it. It's like, I'll find it. Here's another thing. Shooshines. I literally used to wear a suit every day because that's what everybody else said. and I got my shoe shine because I was an impressionable young idiot

and that's what I saw people doing. That's going away, right? But you ever get your shoe shine, Ben? Maybe once, but yeah, I don't think so. Go get your shine box. Anyway, okay, so my friend who left Mass Mutual got a job as a wholesaler at Pimpco. And he got me a job interview.

And I was sailing through, dude. I was, I, I, I spoke to two people, was doing great, personality was shining through, making jokes, showing interest, developing rapport, and then I get to the hiring manager, and I'll never forget it. I went to his office, mahogany, grease back hair, the whole thing, exactly what you picture a Long Island branch manager to look like. And I think this is for an internal wholesale. I'm pretty sure, yeah, of course it was. Because you don't start as an external. There's an internal wholesaler position. And, yeah.

We're talking, we're talking. He looks down to my resume and goes, CFA candidate, what, that's not what this job is. He's like, wait, this, you know, this is like sales position, right? This is not an analyst position. I don't think this is right for you. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's a turnoff? I was like, I'm only doing it so I can get a job.

I'll stop right now. I'll stop right now. And I didn't get the job. And I'm like, I'll never know. I'm, I don't know, 85% sure that had I not. had that on my resume, the job was mine. Listen, we don't want people who know about markets on this job, okay? They'll learn it here.

Yeah, this is not the career path for CFA. But isn't that wild? Like, what a fork in the road type of moment? I applied for an analyst job at a bank or at a college, and it was analyst in name only. It was also a sales job. And they asked me, like, what are you interested? I'm like, well, I'm a number person. I want to, you know, and they're like, no, no, no.

We call this analyst, but really, this is a sales role. Yeah. I'm a markets guy. Yeah. All right, Ben, last week or a couple weeks ago, we were getting a little bit worried about the fact that everybody's pretty excited. The wall of worry is nowhere to be found, right? We like having a wall of worry.

I don't know there's a wall of worry per se, but it did stick out to me. Dietrich tweeted, A-A-I-I-I-Bairs are. I don't number bulls for the first time since late April. They're curious, no? You usually don't see a bear spike in a bull market like this. Very unusual. No offense to the AII, people. I've done talks to them in the past.

I've written articles for them in the past. Is this survey useful anymore? I don't know. Well, look, the bears are always like at least a third. When you say useful, I don't know that it's ever, again, No offense. I don't think the point of it is to be useful. It's just, hey, this is what it is. I don't think that anybody's ever, like, made money trading this consistently, but it's just, no, it's just interesting. That's all. I doesn't know if this is a good fear and greed gauge even

anymore. Oh, no, it is. It is. Because I, I'm pretty sure that the bear spike in October 2022 was the bottom. Oh, okay. But no, it's just funny now that it's spiking now. It's a different spike, to be clear. It's not, nowhere near what it was at the bottom. But nevertheless, it's just there's more bears and bulls in this sort of market. I'll take it. Okay. All right. Wolver is back.

We're rebuilding a brick by brick. It's back. Okay. Black Friday. You a Black Friday guy, Ben? I buy a bunch of stuff online. I got a bunch of packages waiting for me when we go back from Dominican. How many T-shirts did you buy?

Okay. No T-shirts. The one you're wearing? I didn't buy any T-shirts. I did buy a lot of the same type of long-sleeve t-shirt. shirt, if you will, like just a plain long-sleeve shirt. I can't help it. There's so many sales and they know where to get you. They get you right on Instagram. You know what the thing to do now is, too? You go in and you put something in your cart and you go, yeah, now I'm going to leave.

And then they send you an email saying, hey, we saw you put that in your cart. Here's an extra 15% off. Fine. All right, yeah. You do look at the numbers and you go, oh, everything's 60% off. We were walking, we went to the movies the other day, which I'm going to talk about later. And then walking through the mall, my daughter wanted like a Christmas sweatshirt or something. And one of the stores said, like, 50% off everything in huge letters. And then in really tiny letters below, it said exclusions apply. And I thought, you know what? It's not everything.

I want to talk to the manager. I saw rag and bone, they got me. It said 80% off. And I'm like, nothing I bought was 80% off. But guess what? They got me in the door. Credit to them. Yes.

Shame on me. Up to it always gets you. Okay. So Adobe Analytics, consumer spent a record $6.1 billion online on Thanksgiving. up 8.8% year-of-year. Adobe Analytics expects consumer spend the record $10.8 billion online for Black Friday, up 9.9% over year.

And Cyber Monday rule will remain the year's biggest shopping day driving a record $13.2 billion in spend up 6% year-of-year. Somebody, I saw somebody tweet a video of like Black Friday. Remember back in the day, people would line up at Best Buy at 5 in the morning? My wife and her parents used to get up and go at like 4.30 in the morning to places while I was still sleeping in.

This is something our kids will never know about, right? Like people waiting. The other day I had my, for some reason, I didn't have my, I always had my phone plugged in and an Apple car play on. And I didn't, for some reason, that the radio came on. And a song came on, and my son goes, who's seven, he goes, what song is this? Put on this other song I like. And I said, oh, I can.

It's the radio. Let me plug my phone in real quick. Radio. Who needs a radio? And he goes, what's the radio? And I'd explain them what it is. Well, they play music. And because then the DJ came on and started talking.

He's like, who's this? And I had to try to explain to what the radio is. And his mind was blown. He's like, I don't get it. Yeah. Why would you, why would you listen to this when you can just pick the song you want? Total. I said, no, in the past, you listen, but you'd have to listen for an hour to get the song

you like. They might play it. Maybe. By the way, the Black Friday shopping thing was the, was the, one of the scenes in Thanksgiving, a very fine horror film that you will never say. Anyway. Oh. I was showing Kobe clips on YouTube of old basketball games.

He was asking about the Hornets for some reason. So, remember back in the day before HD, it was, you couldn't see anything? No. And he goes, what do you say? Oh, he goes, why do they look all glitchy? I can't see anybody's numbers. He called it glitchy. I'm like, this is what TV used to be like.

We didn't know any different. We didn't know any different. Anyway. All right. A lot of spending, a lot of spending. From GDP now, we're looking at 3.2% real growth in GDP for this quarter, according to the model. It's, this economy just won't slow down. I don't know.

I mean, I was thinking about this the other day. We were on Derek Thompson's podcast, plain English, in like January, 2023. And he was like, right now, I'm putting you on the spot, recession or no recession this year. And it was, we all kind of like, ugh. Gun, you know, gun to my head, I'm going to say no. Think about how strong the economy has been since then. Everyone felt we were still going intercession back then. Not us.

It's amazing. All right. Torsten Sloc charts of the week. He shows 73 million people are receiving Social Security benefits right now. Now, he shows total federal spending. It's like almost $7 trillion. Social security is about $1.4, $1.5 trillion of that. So we'll call it 20% of the total, I guess.

I know people want to make the government more efficient and cut spending. I think if they ever decide to touch this, that would be the biggest mistake we could ever make. There's ways you can make Social Security more efficient and raise the age for young people getting it or something or change the, but like trying to take Social Security away for people, I think would be the biggest mistake they could make. So many people rely on this as their only retirement. Yeah, this is really the third rule. I don't think it's on the table, right? Nobody's talking about Social Security. I don't know. I hope not. All right, we got an email talking about inflation and how it was obvious that we'd get it with the stimmy checks.

And so, hold on. What's the point of this? Oh, basically, it's like, what is happening now that in five years will be painfully obvious to look back on? It's always a good, it's always a good, like, mental exercise. Yes. He was saying that a lot of the stuff we've been talking about is regret minimization and they're talking about their friends with this. But, like, things that seem obvious now with the benefit of hindsight. like looking forward what would be like we were so dumb like how did we think that was a thing

i feel like no matter what happens though the hindsight always kicks in so quickly in the recency of yeah of course that happened we that's recency bias right there found it you're because your recency biases with the election everybody thinks that the hindsight that pass is obvious i don't but i don't think that that's like something that we do that often with i don't pretend that i don't pretend that the past was was obvious that's not that's not my thing. Okay, so the thing that seems obvious now is that everything's great, right? The markets are rocking. Crypto can't go down. Like, that's the obvious stuff now that in a few years, you go, oh, of course, the economy couldn't possibly keep going up forever like this. The stock market

couldn't possibly keep going up forever. That would be the thing people would go, oh, yeah, duh. Like, it couldn't keep just going like this. Could be. That's the simple one, right? Yeah. It's something throws a wrench into the economy. I think the tariff thing, if that ever really was a thing, I don't think the markets are discounting that at all right now. No, you're right. I don't know. Like, I know we've spoken a lot about how we've been in a secular bull market, which we have. But like, I think we lose side of the fact that we just had a really, we just had a bad bear market. We did. We just had one of the worst years ever for financial markets.

It was. A combination of stocks and bonds. And it lasted, it lasted when did markets peak? Like, whatever, late, late, uh, mid-2020. We had a two-year bare market, and it was pretty severe. Like, Google got cut in half, so let's not forget. Let's not act like that didn't happen. How about this as a hypothesis? Not predicting this.

Are your arms crossed? Is that okay? No, I just, body language. I feel like... Yeah, like you're scratching your chin. Go ahead. Interest rates. I think being at long-term average levels,

four or five, six percent rates, I think people are going to look back on this in five years and go, oh, man, we should have locked those in. I don't think that's, I don't think that's sustainable, higher interest rates like this. How's that? Okay. 7% mortgage rates, 5% bond yields, 12% private credit. I don't think this stuff is sustainable. I don't see how the economy can continue to rock higher with rates like this.

I think rates have to come down if we want things to keep progressing. Not a bad take. All right. All right. Real quick on crypto. Sorry. Damn it. You guys are in my head.

Like the one guy. This, I'm not having a guy. We had 50 people tell us. Keep talking about crypto, but one guy didn't want us to. I can't shake. I can't shake him. Going to the airport next week. Imagine I see him next week.

That would be something. Anyhow. Not halving it. All right. Somebody tweeted, if Sailor sold, he would go down as having placed one of the best trades of all time. 14.9 billion dollars so far. That's how much he's up on this trade. To put that in perspective, here's some of the biggest in history. John Paulson's bet against subprime mortgages. Paulson's hedge fund earned approximately $4 billion by shorting

subprime mortgages during the financial crisis. George Soros, when he shorted the British pound, profited $1 billion. You know, you have to address that for inflation, but whatever. Jesse Livermore made around $100 million short in 1929. That's the equivalent of over $1.4 billion today. So, again, Sailor's up around $15 billion. Okay. I hate to split hairs here, but you can't make this comparison. Sailor used his publicly traded company to raise money.

He didn't raise money from investors that make a place a bet. You could say, like, the greatest investment of all time is Apple buying back shares for the past 10 years because they made, you know, so you can't, you can't make this comparison. I'm sorry. That is not a trade. It is a trade, but he's using the balance sheet of. a publicly traded company. That's different than... Okay, okay, okay. Fair enough, but nevertheless.

It's a good trade, but you can't compare to these other trades. These other trades were like, those were legitimate hedge fund trades. This was a publicly traded company that he was doing it with. You're right. You're right. So not apples to apples, but he deserves credit on the loss. And he says here, I'm not selling. Yeah. So he said I'm not selling. So we were hypothesizing, like, what could potentially stop this? And so we've got Mara, a company of, what is Mara?

Is Mara a Bitcoin mining company? I have no idea. I've never heard of it before. Mara Holdings announces a $700 million private offering of interest-free convertible senior notes doing 2031. Proceeds will be used to acquire more Bitcoin. So if a lot of other companies do this and they get the same advantage that Michael Saylor does, maybe the premium on micro strategy will shrink and maybe it will start to go

into other companies. And there was a third company that started to do this. So possible. still remains an incredibly exciting show. Bitcoin didn't really crash, but micro strategy starts going down. Yeah, possible. That's a possibility. Possible.

Okay, from our own Nick McJuliet of dollars of data, he had three predictions for the next 10 years, and I pulled out one, I thought was interesting. He says, U.S. residential real estate will underperform inflation. And he shows this graph from Schiller that I've used in the past, too, that basically shows for the first, I don't know, for 100 years or so, I didn't. an inflation-adjusted basis, housing prices basically went nowhere. 1,900 to 2000, housing prices on an inflation-adjusted basis went nowhere. Since 2000, they've taken off like a rocket chip.

Yeah. And Nick says, basically, it's risen too much too quickly. As a result, I think it'll have a negative inflation-adjusted turnover the next 10 years. I would take the other side of that. Me too. Yeah. I don't know about this. Although, I'm not sure.

How about this? I'm like, I'm not sure. It's not a terrible prediction. Yeah, it's not a terrible prediction, but... I don't know. I don't know what stops this train. It's close. I would say, like, this is sort of a toss-up.

Like, either side would be like plus 110, minus 110, that type of thing. Or minus 110 each? No, I don't think so. Well, I mean, a lot of it depends on what inflation is, but. Well, to me, that's the thing. It's like, what's inflation going to be? Because I still, I don't think that house prices are going down. I'm making this up.

I think they'll go up on, you know, 2% to 3% a year for the next decade. So the question is, what's inflation going to be? Yes, but the thing is, if inflation is higher, that's good for the housing market, typically. Good how? Higher inflation is better for a housing market because it costs more to build a home. It costs, replacement costs is higher.

In higher inflation environments, housing prices actually do better. It's good for people that own a home. Yes, that's what I mean, for housing prices, yes. All right. Torsten Slack also had his U.S. housing market outlook, and I thought he gives 10 facts that kind of summarize everything because it's like a 100-page book.

I don't know if you went through this. But some of these are interesting. So, median age of all homebuyers is now 49 years old, up from 31 in 1981. And to me, that's all baby boomers. Right? That's just, you have a huge demographic that controlled it back then and it controls it now. They predict, their model predicts housing prices will increase 10.8% in the coming year. That would be a pretty good start to being inflation.

Let's see, 40% of homes don't have a mortgage. Record high household equity, 73% of housing values. that's how high equity is. 36% of Americans are record high say they would rent if they were going to move. So they wouldn't buy. More than half of all mortgage is outstanding have an interest rate below 4%.

And let's see. So are they saying that like there's just so much more demand than supply? Yes. That'd be my basic thesis for why housing prices will probably do better than inflation because I don't think in the next 10 years

we're going to build enough homes to meet the demand. Yeah, that's not controversial. That's the thing. Yes. Okay. Wall Street Journal article. They have an article saying that people are now buying houses before they get married. So people who are moving in together. I think that the number was 75% of people moving together before getting married. I'm guessing that number is way, way higher than it was back in the day. Whoa, this seems like a big mistake. Oh, yeah. I think so too. So they say, let's see, 555,000 unmarried couples said they had bought their home in the previous year, according to, to census data. That is up 46% from 10 years ago. So way more people are doing these. Unmarried

couples account for 11% of all home sales. And that steadily increased in the past two decades, even while marriage rates have fallen. They show this chart here of this. This is just, this will not end well on it, right? Well, the thing that I'm, are you thinking because like, what if they don't get married, how annoying and ugly is it to split house? Yes. Yes. If you break up with some, I don't know whose name you put it in, how that works, do you start fighting over, well, I put $25,000 into this house and you didn't. Yeah, this sounds awful. Breakups are already ugly enough as it is, but I understand why people do this, though.

People say, hey, we're going to get married in two years when things are, make more sense and we're out of school or whatever, but we're going to buy a house now because why wait anymore? Yeah. Yes, but, yeah. Is this a picture of you? Okay, so my sister sent this to me. she's my sister my younger sister is going through and taking all of the old old pictures that were printed out can you believe we used to have to do that you bring

a roll of film in and they would develop it for you and like three days later you to go pick it up and she's taking all those photos my parents have and digitizing them and she everyone's around she'll tell me one she sent me this one i must have been i don't know five years old there or something because we're eating ice cream that carpet is that carpet is incredible so that this is my house yes that i lived in for i don't know 10 years and look at the carpet. Houses were so disgusting in the 1980s. Yeah, it's true.

Can you imagine anyone right now moving into a house from the 80s? Especially young people who've grown up on HGTV. Houses were just, I mean, even like the 50s and 60s sometimes, if you watch the graduate, like some of those houses I would live in today.

Like those were sleek, they were cool looking. Houses of the 70s and 80s are just disgusting. Speaking of 70s and 80s, Did you watch the yacht rock documentary? I did not, but I'm a big yacht rock guy on my boat. Of course you are. Who's not?

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So you liked it? Yeah, it was great. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know a lot about the era and the stories behind it. I know the music, of course, but yeah, a lot of fun. It's one of those things where it's hard to, I'm sure they go to this in the dock. It's hard to define what it actually is.

Well, here's how the dock opens or one of the lines that tickled me. It's not that it doesn't rock. That made me laugh. Okay. They're trying to, like, describe the shada. It's just that it's not rock and roll. Right. But it's catchy.

Right? It's, yeah, it's fun. It's fun music. It's bone music. That's what it is. Okay. All right. There was an article in the Welsh journal by Ben Cohen,

why everyone is now watching podcasts on YouTube. And you and I were a little bit late to convert our, although it feels early now, I guess, in hindsight, we were a little bit late to convert our podcast into a video. because we were thinking, we were dead wrong on this. Yeah, dead wrong. Who wants this? We had a bunch of people ask us,

say, why don't you guys put the whole pod? Because we were showing, I think we did video clips back in the day. And then a bunch of people said, put it on, put the whole thing on YouTube. We said, no one's going to watch that. Well, also, to be fair, I was like, we didn't have the resources to do it.

Right. But, but, but anyway, so they showed the U.S. Sheriff Weekly podcast listeners. And kind of wild. Spotify grew in the flat, outlined, Apple is going down, and YouTube is now ahead of all of them. I did not realize that Apple's share has fallen as Spotify's because Spotify and Apple were basically neck and neck in 2020.

Well, remember Overcast? Like, Overcast sort of stopped working for me. It got glitchy, so I dropped it. This year, YouTube passed a competition and became the most popular service for podcasts in the U.S. with 31% of weekly podcast listeners, Sega is now the platform they use most. 150 million people in the U.S. now watch YouTube on their TVs every month. in the final stretch of his campaign, President-the-like Donald Trump appeared on more than a dozen shows

that collectively drew more than 100 million views on YouTube. Daniel X said he's the CEO of Spotify. If you said five years ago that people would want to watch people talking and sitting in front of a microphone, I'd say probably not. Oh, speaking of, by the way, our video is not going to be on Spotify. Yeah, Duncan did this with Asset Compound 2 and showed me, and it's really cool.

It's really cool. So I was watching the Mark Andrews and Joe Rogan video. Did you watch? We don't need to get to that. But I love the option. It's not like I'm like sitting holding my phone watching it. But like it's kind of like concurrently, you have the podcast going. And then there's the video too on your phone.

Yeah. And if you want to check on the video, you can. Yeah, if you want to check in, you can. So anyway, so we're, so our podcast is going up normal times Wednesday, Wednesday, Morty at 8, and I think our video is going to be up. So if you want to wait or whatever, you have the option now, what is the time is it going up? What time does it go up?

So the video goes up later the same, like this. Later the same day? Wednesday, 5? Wednesday evening? Once day. Okay. Duncan? What do we got?

Actually, you know what Duncan get in here? I have a blunt pick with you. Duncan. I don't know. What time is our videos going up in Spotify? It'll be around like 530 to 630. It depends on the wind. of the episode. Some weeks you guys are going like an hour and 20 minutes, other weeks,

55, you know. Okay. All right. Well, Duncan, you, uh, you kicked the hornet's nest over the weekend. On Slack, Duncan was saying that what, New York Cityers or New Yorkers are so elite. And I said, you know what? I want to defend your take. You know what? I want to quote you. What did you actually say you, you, you, you, Sean and I were joking about how a New Yorker can't be a man of the people, quote of that. Oh, yes, yes, yes. All right, defend your take. Well, it's just, I mean, a man of the people is someone in touch with the common man, the common person. And it doesn't feel like the average New Yorker. So you're saying the most populous city or one of the most populated cities in the United States cannot know what it's like to be.

Well, the examples I was giving you guys are that I feel like to be a man of the people you have to actually care about the people around you. And I gave you some examples of, you know, where New Yorkers, the bystander effect just don't ever come to the defense. So you're moving the goalpost. You're moving the goalpost. Now you're saying that New Yorkers are rude on the streets. In which case, I would agree with you. I would agree. Not rude.

I was getting examples of people being in altercations and things like that. And no one stepping in and coming to the defense of their fellow, you know, citizens. Michael was very hurt by your statements about the everyday man. I didn't say Long Islanders. Okay, fair enough. That's true. All right. Well, thank you.

Thank you for that. People are going to love this. Agreed to disagree, Duncan. Thank you. Uh, okay. I have a few more vacation thoughts. New York, New York walkers, yeah, not, not the, not the, not the most polite bunch. Yeah, but if there's seven million people, you're bound to run into some bad apples.

Yeah. All right, anyway, just getting back to the podcast stuff, for a decade, podcasts were something you listen to while you were doing something else, driving, working out, unloading the dishwasher. That's, that's where I do. Most of my listening. That was a passive experience. Now, an entire generation has been conditioned to think of podcasts as something they can actively watch any time on any kind of screen, a phone or computer TV,

which might sound nuts to you, but to young people, it just sounds normal. It is. Yeah. We've talked with a demographic breakdown of how people consume things. And young people, YouTube is their thing. I got a new TV last year, and it's a Google TV. It's the interface. And when I pull it up, it'll have the streaming channels and all the options and movies.

And then there's a YouTube thing. And it'll give me YouTube recommendations. And to your point, I think a lot of people are watching YouTube even on TV. Yeah. Yes. Is it most people who watch YouTube Watch it on a TV? It could be.

Listen to this. Since the pandemic, video podcasts have been growing fast than audio on Spotify. And the number of users watching video podcasts increased 88% of the past year. Wow. Would never ever have guesses. No. That is crazy. All right, Ben.

So you have more vacation thoughts. Hit us. A few final thoughts. So people are very anti-tipping in the United States. States now because they're just bombarded with it, right? The button, you have to tip for everything. People hate tipping now. It's become a thing where people actively hate it.

Tipping is fun at an all-inclusive resort because everything is already paid, so it's a psychological thing. It's mental accounting, but we went with an envelope full of cash to tip people, and I'm Jim Carrey and dumb and dumber. There you go. There you go. It was fun because you're not paying for anything else, so you don't mind tipping. And the people there, like, the service is so good.

loved Dominican people were so good. I talked about how great the lazy river was. Someone sent us this saying, next time you're in Houston, stay at the Marriott Marquis downtown, and they have a lazy river in the shape of Texas. That sounds kind of awesome. It's not just a lazy river, it's in the shape of something. Remember, we were in Houston, and I ordered us four margaritas.

I think I poured class as well. That's right, and you had to have to talk with them. Unbelievable. They're going to give us the great seat by the waterfall. So I mentioned the lazy river being amazing. There's a great way to ruin it. So we were going around, and then there's a flotilla of, like, 20 people on a family reunion. And you know people are, like, all attached together, you know, on their tubes.

You know people are serious drinkers when they, like, get a new drink every time they get around the Lazy River. But they also drink out of the thermos. Like, they bring their own cups to drink out of. Yeah. Just the cups, you know. Like, if you bring your own temperature-controlled cup, you're a serious drinker. Yeah. Like, you're not messing around.

Yeah. And one of them threw up in the Lazy River. You got to be kidding, man. Had to evacuate. Yep. How old? Luckily, it was towards the end of that. These were older people.

Just a little over-served. You showed me a picture of what was Brock Party shirt? Is it NSFW? I can't remember. It was a big BROC. And it was a dad. We were on a snorkel trip. That is NSFW, by the way.

We have kids that are listening back. Okay. So we took a trip to a snorkel thing where we went out to the ocean. Snorkel thing. I do a snorkel things are great. It was fun because my, You know, your kids, you always want them to do certain things, and they're going to be their own people.

But the one thing I want for my kids was I wanted them to be adventurous. My kids are very chaotic, and they're sometimes hard to control. They're kind of nuts sometimes. But they're very adventurous. They, like, one of the things that I always, like, roller coasters are always great to me. I always love to go on excursions when we go on trips. And so they got in, they've never done snorkeling before. We're snorkeling, and there's sharks and stingrays in the water.

Like we saw these nurse sharks that we could swim with. And my kids did it right away. So that was kind of cool. But the thing gets over at like 10 a.m. snorkeling. And then we're on the booze cruise portion for the next two hours. And, you know, I haven't drinks during the day for the whole trip, and it's kind of like, I need to take

it easy, you know? But the music starts playing, and the Dominican people have the best rhythm of any nation on earth, I think. And they start dancing, and it's like, you know what? I'll have a coca loco. I'll have a few drinks. I don't know. Eight drinks before 11 a.m. And in my mind, vacations like that

are like a wedding. Everyone is having fun. Yeah. Right? Everyone's in a good mood. everyone is drinking, having fun, smiles on the face. Just the vibes are immaculate. That's my kind of vacation. Yeah. And also, you got your home alone shirt on. We made the joke because on our way back,

our first flight got delayed for whatever reason. We were flying into Charlotte. And we, the time, because we had to do the, go through customs on the way back, and then catch a flight. And it was tight. We had like a half hour to go through customs, get your bags, recheck your bags,

go through security again, get to your gate. We had to run through the, the airport. Awful feeling. First time my parents, my kids ever done that. Awful feeling. Also, kind of exhilarating.

Nah, that's around this. You don't think it's kind of exhilarating? Like, are we, aren't we? Are we? Aren't we? I was running and I had my backpack on and then my daughter's backpack on. And so I got backpacks everywhere.

I run into this guy with a backpack. He goes, hey, bro, what's up? I said, hey, man, we're going to miss a flight. You got it. Go ahead. It's cool. All right. Oh, one more.

So we did a lot of swing in the ocean. My son loves the bodyboard riding on the waves, the waves are pretty big there. You could tell me the most scientific reason or the simplest reason for why the tides exist, why tides go up and go down. And to me, it's always going to be magic.

Yeah. It makes, can you imagine being someone before we had information and seeing the fact that the ocean goes up and goes down? Like, what sort of gods did they think did this in the past? Yeah. Don't you know? No, it's the moon and the gravity. Yeah. Sure. It sounds like magic. How about magic?

Yes. Okay. our own Bill Sweet, our CFO, my accountant, said confirming my first flight out or bust mandate and Bill is sharing a chart from the New York Times that shows a percentage of firm of flights, excuse me, arriving 90 minutes late or more. And it starts out relatively low at 5 a.m. It's just 2.3% of flights. And then it goes up. The later you go, the more likely you are to be delayed.

And there's an interesting part of the article. So Bill is saying he's an early flight guy for this reason. So listen to this, Ben. This is some shit. The average flight today from Kennedy Airport to LAX is slower than it was in 1995 in every conceivable way. Planes face longer delays leaving the gate, take more time taxing before taking off, and spend more time in the air.

But here's some shit part. Okay. They're gaming the system, Ben. They're gaming the system. Why do today's flights arrive more early than often, even though they're slower? Airlines have extended their scheduled flight durations even more than the flights have lengthened in actual duration. the average scheduled flight from JFK to Los Angeles

has increased 23 minutes since 1995. I noticed that. They always go, hey, we arrived early. I feel like every flight now this has a right. I feel like they do this on purpose. Yeah, they're moving to goalpost. They're telling you that the flights can be three hours. When they know damn well, that it's two hours and 42 minutes.

Yeah, because on our flight back, we thought we were going to be late. And the captain goes, you know, I'm going to take like a shortcut here, try to get the wins. And it's like, no, you're not. Yeah, you're lying. So there's a chart that shows the percent of flights arriving at least three hours late. and it's terrible. It's at an all-time high.

Why should it be this way? It shouldn't. It shouldn't. I don't know. I feel like every time I go to an airport, I wonder how we do this every single day. How are millions of flights around the world taking off and going? Like, how does this not get totally screwed up all the time?

New all-time record at the airport this week. 3.087 million people. See, to me, that's a wonder that it, that it's anything. That it all works as well as it does. Okay. We're going very late, so we're going to save my story about my... I got a new outy. I can't believe it.

Okay. They had me by the, you know what. I had no choice, and I'm very angry. I'm not mad. I'm angry. So how much money did you lose on your other one? I'll tell the full story next week. I feel my blood pressure rising as I...

Okay. I have a quick story then. Before I left, I noticed I had... a metal protrusion sticking out of my tire. And I thought, oh, shoot. And I go to my, it's the day before we left on our trip. And I pull it out with some pliers and immediately, air.

Tire goes flat. So, shoot, I got a deal with time to get back. Have you ever changed a tire in your life? Of course I have. Man of the people. Duncan, take that. Have you really? I have changed the tire, yes.

How many times? You know what you're doing? This is the first time I've ever, I've done it in the past where I've helped people. Like, I helped a friend in high school. I've never had a flat tire to change myself. I did it. I thank God for YouTube, because I got to, it up, I got all the lug nuts off, and then the tire's stuck. Not moving at all. I'm hitting it

with a mallet. I'm kicking it, nothing. And I go to YouTube and it says, take the spare tire and whack the top of your tire because it's just stuck on there. Oh, tire on tire? Yeah, tire and it immediately came off. So thank God for YouTube. Did it, Bell Tire fixed it for free, back on there. All right, recommendations. We were both of the movies this weekend, I think. So I went on Sunday. We always buy tickets early before we get there, you know. And Wicked, sold out literally all four theaters in Grand Rapids. Nothing. Every time.

There might have been one or two seats, but we have five. So nothing for us, of course. Moana sold out all across the city. So we had to see the red one with The Rock and Chris Evans. Terrible? Terrible. Very bad. My kids enjoyed it, but I don't know who that movie's for, really.

It's not a holiday classic. I watch Christmas movies because of the family element. It was trying to be like this over-the-top action movie. My son loved it. but that's my type of kid really really bad movie that's all like streaming is crazy because

big name stars just show up on TV shows and movies out of nowhere you never heard of it so we were flipping through the other day my kids wanted to watch a holiday movie and there was a Ben Stiller movie on Hulu brand new called Nutcrackers never heard of it just came out

and got to say it was stuff that's been done before it was the parents die and there's four crazy kids and the uncle has to come take him over as a foster parent and he's the big city guy but they live in the rural area.

It's been dumb before. Gotta say, it was actually pretty good. Okay. Not a bad at-home movie. What's greedy people? Oh, and I watch greedy people on the airplane. What is that? Never heard of it. Joseph Gordon Levitt.

And it's the guy from yesterday and the girl from yesterday that Beatles movie. It was the two leads in that. And it's just one of these accidental death. There's money involved. There's a hitman.

It's like five. different stories coming together. Oh. Kind of, kind of interesting, not really well done, and then the ending was very dark, not without expecting. So, like, the kind of movie

you would only watch on an airplane. And you should only watch an airplane. It was decent, but it kind of trailed off at the end. But airplane movie. Okay. By the way, we spoke about this, recently you and I,

about Deadpool versus Wolverine. I just have no interest. I'm not even going to watch an airplane. I just don't care. I totally understand that. It was entertaining to me, but it's not necessary. Yeah. Okay.

So, where do I want to start? Oh, the wooden crashes, watchables. Okay. When did this happen? So I listened to this with Robin on the car, on the way upstate, and August, 2018. Now, if you rewind back to 2018, this is really a trip down memory lane. Not that 2018 was that long ago. But for the first hour, I think it was Bill, Chris, and Sean were talking about how inappropriate the movie was.

And it was a lot of throat clearing about, first of all, the premise, of course, right? Like, think about what the movie was actually about. Oh, just saying like it wouldn't fly today. Yeah. And then there was just like a lot of, like, you know, gay jokes and the only part of the joke was you're gay. I guess I don't really watch old movies and even think that because... Of course you don't. Of course you don't, because it's a comedy, and, you know, it's not, it's to make you laugh,

not to be taking that seriously. Right. But Robin was like, what, why are they doing this? And because it was the height of the Me Too movement. Ah, okay. That makes sense. Right? And it was just like, it was so weird to listen to now.

I mean, that is the kind of movie that probably would never get made today. Of course it wouldn't. But none of those are comedy movies would have got to made. Like, you know how I know you're gay? That whole part from 40 Old Virgin, that would never happen. Right. All of that stuff would never. never be made today. Not saying it should be made, but like, at the time, of course,

we didn't think about it. But anyway, it was just so interesting. Listen to them, clear their, instead of talking about how funny the movie was to talk. It was an hour. It was so much time on why the movie. It was problematic it is. Interesting. It was really, it was really like, huh. Anyway, uh, what else? I don't like, I don't like, I don't really like relitigating the past. Of course not. For a movie? For comedy movie? Especially for a movie. Yeah. So speaking of just things that just pop up on the streamer, they're like, oh, thought, you ever hear of the movie called Father Figures? That's an only one of this one, right? And Ed Helms?

You saw it? I think I've seen it pop up before. I never watched it, no. So it was, it's top ten on Netflix. A lot of laugh at louds for me. Oh, really? It was good. We spoke last week about when is it appropriate to recommend something before you finished it with the book or movie. I'm 45 minutes in, so I feel like I've got a decent hand on the movie.

I don't know how it's going to end. It's probably not going to end great. Who cares? Comedy's usually tail off at the end. Yeah, whatever. Who cares? Guess what? Multiple laugh out louds for me. In fact, there was one laugh out loud where Robin was phone. sleep she told me to turn the movie off. Okay. Yeah, father figures. All right, so anyway, so I saw Moana too. And look at this chart from Axios. Look at that spike in PG at the

box office. Big year for family friend the movies. PG-rated films made up one-third of ticket sales of the domestic box office. That was the problem with the red one. It was PG-13, so there's a lot of swear words. And it's like, should this movie for kids? Okay. So we've already gone late, so I'm going to skip all this. But like, there was a really great article. I think by Ben Cohen in the Wall Street Journal about how Moana became. a sensation. And it did not a, it did not do monster numbers at the box office. But of course, it became a huge hit on Netflix first, by the way. It was on Netflix first because Disney Plus was not a thing. Interesting. So it was the number one movie on Disney Plus, or number one streaming

movie, I should say, in 2020, 21, 22, and 23. So Moana 2, I took my kids to see it. There was a line for Moana 2. There was a line for Wicked. Like you, Ben, I got sold out everywhere. So the only, my local theater, there's no assigned seats. Ah, that's a blast from the past. Yeah, so Moana, too, was supposed to be a straight to Disney Plus type of thing. And it shows. I thought the quality of the movie was really not great, like at all. And the music stunk.

Really? And the reason why Moana is so incredible. That's why everyone loves the first one. It's because the music is incredible. And Lynn Madwell and Miranda was not part of the second one. My kids loved it, obviously. Right? All the kids seem to love it, which is, you know, I guess what I can.

But... Kids have the worst taste. They like everything. But... When is the last time a kid didn't like a movie? True. Right? Kids like everything. But, uh...

But yeah, I was really disappointed. But as a Disney shareholder, I'll take it. Because the movie is doing mega numbers, as is wicked and Gladiator seems to be doing well. So, movies are back. Big time for movies. Big time for movies. Our theater was packed. Okay.

All right, Duncan, sorry for making you do the long edit. Although, do you take advantage with some of your comments, so. You did this on purpose. All right, Ben, welcome back. You look great. You've got some color back in your skin. It's not going to last. Okay.

Where do people find us? Animal spirits at the compound news.com. Where do people email if they want to become an advisor for us in California? You can email us or you can email hiring at writholdtwelf.com. Personal emails, as always, personal responses. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next time.