Animal Spirits Podcast - The Teflon Economy (EP. 468)

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

On episode 468 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss: NBA Finals ticket prices, AI's lack of impact on the labor market, one day of carnage in the stock market, prices drive the narrative, the Mag 7 is underperforming, tech is eating the stock market, the SpaceX IPO, the first $1 trillion ETF, the retail trading boom, the crypto winter, sticker shock on new car prices and more. This episode is sponsored by Nuveen and ClearBridge Investments. Learn more about Nuveen’s comprehensive private markets platform at https://www.nuveen.com/en-us/insights/alternatives. Rising geopolitical tensions, continued market uncertainty, stocks backed by can offer more predictable cash flows as volatility increases. Visit https://www.clearbridge.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

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Clients of Ritholds wealth management may maintain positions in the security. is discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, Friday was a really ugly day in the stock market. One of the ugliest that we've seen, hey, see what I just did there? I don't even have a data point for you. And you could say, come on, Michael, it's lazy. You're hosting a podcast.

You can't even tell us it was the X worst day or whatever. I do three podcasts a week, three market-related podcasts a week. One with you, Animal Spirits. I do what are your thoughts tonight with Josh? And I do the compound on friends. And credit to me, I've gotten pretty adept at making sure that there's not too much overlap in what I'm saying, which is harder than it sounds because I have stats at the wazoo. But as I'm opening the show right now, I have no stats for you today.

I'm sorry. I'll be the stat guy for you. How's that? Okay. You got stats great. So those are, I got stats for what are your thoughts about the nature of Friday stock market, sell off. It was ugly.

And what precipitated it was a way better than expected labor market report. And it is just very rich in irony that the actually, wait a minute, the job market's good. AI is not killing the job market. Wait a minute. Is AI not effective? Hey, wait a minute, is growth too strong and the labor market is heating up too? Does the Fed need to cut? It's just, it's very funny that that could be the story.

Now, I will push back against that narrative to the extent that such narrative is not just one that is born in my head. Good jobs market equals bad stock market. That would be kind of ironic, I guess, in some ways like, hey, yeah, this means AI is not working. Yeah. So my read of Friday was two-fold. Number one, I love that the stock market will still slap investors down anytime there is a whiff of danger. I think people looking for reasons to sell as opposed to reasons to buy is something that you don't see at a top. There's still things that happen inside the market where stocks will just get smushed instantly.

I think there's still a lot of fear out there, even though the VIX is 17, even though the stock market has done so well, Anytime there is a remote, a sniff of, uh-oh, we're getting long on the tooth. Like, investors get real bears real quick. That was one of those middle-aged dads looking out of the rain. It's raining today in Michigan. God, ah, we needed this. Law needed this. That was one of those.

Yes, Ben. And also, positioning. Things were extended. I think investors were looking for a reason to sell and excuse to sell. And on the economic front, it is just freaking incredible. The labor market was softening, has been softening. It's part of the conversation that the econ nerds have been having for the better part of the last year. And we keep saying like, this economy is Teflon.

I don't know when we first said that. But first it was soaring inflation accompanied by higher interest rates, an aggressive fed hiking cycle. Then it was a commercial real estate collapse, okay? An absolute frozen housing sector. I remember when commercial real estate was. going to take the whole economy down? Yes. I forgot about that one. Then it was, do you remember the maturity wall? I think we're hitting in in 2020.

Then it was tariffs, okay? Then it was higher gasoline prices. I've been worried about maturity wall since 2011. Okay. And now it's the threat of AI. And you just can't kill this economy. It is funny because if you look at the data, you have this Wall Street Journal chart in here. Non-fron payrolls changes from one month to next. The labor market was slowing. We were getting a decrease in jobs. And now it's coming back. And it's kind of crazy. So there's some exhibit A charts in here that shows like the three-month moving average of jobs growth. And it is trending up.

If you were doing a technical analysis on this, you'd say this is breaking out, right? Job growth is breaking out. We have continuing unemployment claims have basically been steady for the past, I don't know, three years. They have not ticked up at all. Job openings in the U.S. economy are now rising from one month to the next. This is crazy to me that job openings are rising. And so obviously the Goldilocks situation would be, okay, fine, AI is not going to destroy all the jobs. It'll make people more productive.

That's the best case scenario here, obviously, right? But I think people have been waiting. I made a joke after the Spurs lost game two the other night. I said, Wembe is like the labor market. It's inevitable, but it's not quite happening yet. Sorry, I didn't mean to like throw a dig in you after last night. So I think people are going to keep having to wait on this. I honestly think if AI is going to have a big impact on the job market,

it's not going to be until we have a recession. I think that's when people will pull the trigger and not rehire, but I don't think we're going to see a massive change. I'm on the other side of you. You have been for a while, and I think eventually you're going to have to finally admit you're wrong because the data is not supporting AI. Hang on.

Hold on. Hold on. It's not like I've been saying this for three years, about a couple months. You've been pretty strong about AI is going to totally disrupt the labor market. Since March? I think it's been a while. Yeah, that is a while since March.

All right. I think it's been longer than that. I think you are in the camp that you think this is inevitable, and I don't quite feel that way. I don't know. Inevitable seems strong, but I, I mean, because that's 100% chance. But I do feel strongly not in,

I wouldn't say inevitable. But yes, I do think that you're going to see AI impact in the labor market. I really do. Well, of course it'll have some impact. I don't think it's going to have the impact. Oh, there it is. The Grand Rapids Hedge. I'm, the impact that the tech people keep saying it's going to have, I think they are totally

completely wrong. When they say AI is going to take all the jobs, I think they are ridiculous and they're wrong. Yeah, I mean, I'm not, don't, don't put me in the 10% unemployment camp. I'm not saying that. Right. But I, of course it's going to have, but obviously it's not impacting the labor market yet. The numbers don't bear it out at all. People can worry about it all they want. It's not having an impact. So you're obviously correct. Job openings are rising. The unemployment rate is a 4.3%. We're adding jobs every month. You are correct. To the extent that it's showing up in the data now, it is clearly not.

And it's clearly not to the extent that it caught investors by surprise on Friday. And they said, wait a minute. We know what it's a rehash what happened on Friday. We know what happened on Friday. Yeah, but it's a combination of, hey, oil prices are causing inflation expectations arise. And now if we have a strong job market and wages start rising again, too, then that's, yeah. So do you, this question sounds ridiculous given that we've, We're looking to have a modest balance for the second straight day.

Was that the top? Obviously not. But you're right, it was a slap on the wrist. We said this last week. Listen, these stocks are going to get hit. And I have some numbers for you. Micron was down 13%. This is in one day.

Sandus was down 12%. Western Digital zones 11. Dram, which is that Round Hill ETF, we talk about the memory storage, was down 15%. South Korea was down 14%. SMH was a semiconductor was down 9.2%. And then the cues were down almost 5% in a day. Wow.

You're right, that was a big. And Sherwood News had this chart where they showed 2026's big winners became the big losers on Friday. And you can see there was a lot of lot of stocks down double digits in a single day. Look at that chart. Yeah, that's good stuff. That's a great chart. Dell Intel. Like, it's these stocks, and they pair it with a year-to-date returns and these stocks had hammered.

This is kind of a mini-1987 situation in a lot of ways. In 1987, the stock market was up like 45% going into 1987, and then it crashed. That's like these stocks have like their own individual mini-1987 moment. Yeah. It's too much. So this is this type of data point is one that I love. There's a pile of historical data points that people bring out that I throw in the dustbin. But the ones that I keep coming back to are the ones that are based on human behavior.

for example, this one, from Blue Cardic Market Insights. He said, or they said, dip buyers have been rewarded pretty well in this bull run. They see a 2% down day on the SEP 500 like on Friday and they buy the dip. Since the start of the bull market, there have been 13 other 2% down days. Four days later, the SEP was higher 11 of 13 times. So along the way, these slas, on the wrists have been bought up. Right.

People saw 10% stocks down 10% I'm going to buy those. By the way, that introduction that I gave to that tweet was didn't match up. I thought I was going to serve up another tweet. I thought it was like more behavioral based on that. Hey, hand up, my bad. So exhibit A, Matt and team at exhibit, I also have this thing that shows the total number of 1% down days on average is like 31 per year. We've had 11 this year so far.

So this year has been, you know, we had a minor little correction, but there haven't been many big down days like that. So that was kind of, again, we kind of needed it. The thing that I think is interesting is that I love, one of the things I love about the markets is how the price always sets the narrative. And this is obvious. But on Friday, when things were crashing, it was like, oh, maybe this AI stuff isn't working. Maybe it's like any, and when prices are going crazy, you're like, okay, this AI trade

is going to last forever. When prices come back in, you go, oh, wait a minute. You start looking at the skeptical arguments make more sense. It's so funny how the market does that to you. You can't help it. We are two piece in a pod, Ben. I wrote this in my notes, and I forgot to put it into the doc. I'll read you what I wrote.

But I wrote down to myself the exact same thing that you just said. The market and psychology is just the ultimate mind-fuck, forever and ever, for always and ever. I found myself recently thinking, yeah, I guess this is just going to continue. Right. And the market really does twist your brain. It's awesome to feel like internalize and to watch. Right.

So you watch other people behave and you're like, oh, you're idiots. But like, of course, we all feel it. Like, and it's really, it just really is the best. Yeah, you can't help it. Because there was all these anti-AI stuff that came on a Friday and it's like, oh, that makes more sense now when the market is down. And the market comes back up and you, oh, those people already. So last week, you said, the fear will come back soon. And it's funny because there was a Wall Street journal article saying market route leaves Wall Street bracing for rockier times. Investors to confront challenges from the latest inflation reading and SpaceX IPO in the days ahead. Of course, Dalia was calling this another. He said, he said Friday's tumble was important, a move that highlights the central role that global craze for artificial intelligence and other way to stocks is played in the record run. He said, market and economic concentration is in one new sector that is highly volatile on risk. It is super popular among unsophisticated investors.

That's classic bubble stuff. Just stop talking. How about that? That's enough. I know. I would love a punch card. I've said this before. You get five punches on your card.

Like when you go to your local deli, and you get five punches, you get a free sub. Like, if you call for a crash five times, sorry, no more crash calls. You can't do it. Dalia's got 36 punches. There should also be a window of time. Yes. Because I'm pretty sure he said it was 1937.

2015. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote about it. Just maybe say, hey, you know what? I'm just, I'm out of touch with markets. You got me. This is harder than, this is harder that I thought. I'm using an old playbook.

Yes, for 10 years calling a bubble. You can't keep calling it a bubble. Okay, this is interesting to me. So this is another exhibit A1. A lot of plugs here for them. They looked at the S&P 500 versus the 493 in the Mag 7. And the 493 is outperforming both the S&P and the Mag 7. And a Mag 7 is underperforming the S&P.

Which is surprising because people have talk about that mag seven concentration. But now I feel like the concentration talk has moved to no, no, no, no, no, because the 493 includes all the memory stock. So, of course, it's just AI concentration. But I feel like people are moving the goalpost on this now. I agree with both things you said. And I also do think that the concentration that's happening in the semis is notable and fair.

But, yeah, I don't think, I don't think that most people would would think that the mag seven are underperforming. I don't think I knew that. It was surprising to me when I saw it. Yeah, I thought. So this is one from Bist. speaking of concentration. So they put tech and comm services together.

And comm services essentially was a sector that was spun out of tech a few years ago for reasons unknown. I don't know why they did that. They should have just kept them together because the biggest holdings are Google and Facebook. I think the other things that are in there, though, is like, where do you put Disney and Netflix? Yeah. I know. It felt weird at the time.

It still fears weird to me, but I get it. Yeah, I don't know why they did it. Anyway, so if you add those two together, those two are now 49% in change of the index. It's half the index. So it's basically, it's tech. Tech is half the index. Yeah, when you think about it that way, it is kind of...

With all the other nine sectors, it's the same as all the other nine sectors combined, which is kind of nuts to think about. If you want to be long stocks and you say, all right, this is just... Listen, if the AI trade ends abruptly, we'll probably all have to come tumbling down with it. Let's be honest, there's probably going to be a few places to hide. But I do think that, like, Berkshire is probably... probably a good place to hide. It's not quite, it's, it's not quite.

Hey, they just bought Google, though. True. It's not quite lagging to the extent that it was in 1999 when it was down like 30% going to the top and, you know, the NASDA was up a billion percent. But if look at Berkshire compared to the index, like it's, it's, there's no bid. Nobody wants it. The funny thing is, is I was thinking about this in terms of diversification. Like, how do you diversify away from this?

I've been getting tons of, I've been doing the whole podcast circuit from my book. And I've been going to a lot of questions about. diversification. And hey, you're worried about the AI bubble. What do you do? And yeah, you put your, you could, you could diversify into not just, and like, there's a difference being going to cash and timing the market versus like diversifying away from certain segments of the market. And so we think about dividend stocks or value stocks or high quality, whatever. But it's funny, the value stocks. So South Korea, according to Ed Yardin, trades at eight times forward earnings. We've talked about this. The reason that the valuation is so low is because the earnings are so

extremely volatile. And it's funny. That EWY, which which is the South Korea MSCI ETF, was up 240% at one point this year. After the dropout, over the last year, it's only up 190% of the last year. So it's funny when you look at, but anyway, I looked at the Russell 1000 value, and I thought, wait a minute, because Micron has the huge earnings expectations coming. So the valuations probably look pretty good. You know what the number one holding the Russell 1,000 value is? I know it's Micron. Micron.

Yeah. It's kind of hilarious. Yeah, it is. So it's, and Google is in there as well. So it's Amazon is in there. It's because tech is 50% of the index, it's hard to get away from it. It's really hard. Here's how you get away from it.

This chart does look like 99. If you compare SPLV, which is Invesco's S&P low volatility ETF, make a chart of that compared to the market. And that looks 99-ish. Because it's gone literally nowhere. So this has less than 1% each in comm services and tech. Literally, no exposure there. It's 25% utilities, 21% financials, 18% real estate, 12% of the utilities are kind of tied

to the AI trade now. True. But this is less than 2% in tech and comm services. This is the place to hide. I'm not saying that this is a good investment. I don't recommend it. But if you're really, really, really worried and you want the anti-AI trade, this is probably a decent place to live.

My point is if tech makes up 50% of the index and you're trying to hide away from it, you're making a huge, huge bet. So it's part of your portfolio. But if you're trying to make that, like, that is essentially, if you're going totally ex-tech, that's a huge market timing indicator. Yeah, X-Tech is nuts. It's really hard. Yeah, you have to nail it.

You have to nail it. It's really, really hard to do. All right. So shocker, Eric Bell-chunis, we talked about this last week. S&P 500 will not fast track SpaceX. It'll take at least a year, probably more. He said, this is while considering every other big boy index is in five to 15 days. So this was surprising to people.

They thought S&P was going to bend over. I listened to your talk last week on talking wealth about the whole index thing. And so I guess the, what was the guy's name, Aaron Dillon? Aaron Dillon. Yeah. It was really, it was worth listening to. But he made it sound like, listen, they take feedback, these index committees. They take feedback.

They're not just doing what they want. And so there must have been enough blowback where they said, all right, fine. People don't want, because it seemed like there was blowback. That was, I'm glad you said that. That was my biggest takeaway, too. And when he said that, I was like, oh, yeah, of course it makes sense. Like, S&P has a committee that picks the members. Now, it is, the rules are relatively straightforward.

It's not exactly the biggest 500 stocks, but it's pretty damn close. Obviously, there's exceptions. Like, like, like Tesla was an exception. SpaceX is an exception. And yeah, obviously enough of their pension funds, whatever, enough of their institutional clients, the giant pools of money said, guys, please, please don't shove this down our throat. We don't want it.

And so great. All right. We'll see what happens. So my general lead of SpaceX is the general sentiment is finance is bearish, tech is bullish. Is that pretty fair statement to make for the most part? Yes. So I, last week, guys.

said, listen, this doesn't bother me that much. I don't think it's going to have an impact either way. So Nick at dollars in data, we work with, said, all right, fine, let's like try to put some numbers on this. And he looked at what it'll make up with the index. And we're using estimate still. So he's looking at the NASDAQ 100. He said, SpaceX, if it's three times the float, it'll make up 70 basis points, essentially.

He said, for every $100 you have invested in VTI, it would be $110 in SpaceX. For every $100,000, you have invested in the Q's, you'd have $680 invested. You said 100. So for every $100,000 in VTI. Yeah. Every 100,000, sorry, you'd have $110 in SpaceX. So he's saying, let's say like Demodrin says, this thing is going to price at $1.8 trillion. I think it's worth $1.2. Nick says, all right, fine. Let's say it's 30% overvalued and it immediately falls back to that fundamental value that the finance people think it is. You'd lose like 21 basis points or something from the cues.

Three basis points of VTI. It's not, it's meaningless. It is meaningless. I think the, again, the anger is. not necessarily, hey, I don't want to lose money because SpaceX is overvalued. I think most people that are thinking about it logically, like you just laid out, get that. More of the anger is the mechanics and how Elon is seemingly forcing this in limiting the flow, limiting the supply to push up the price. I think that's probably what people are more upset about because it's, come on, there's just, there's more important things in life to worry about than a couple of basis points.

Yes, that's a good senior quote for a yearbook right there. But the contrarian in me keeps thinking like, man, everyone in finance thinks this thing is way overvalued. Is it really that easy that this thing is going to be overvalued? Or is it just like, ah, he's going to pull around out of hat again? What did, hold on, let me just grab this. Aaron actually emailed this to me and I haven't had time to read it. All right. So Google to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for compute capacity at XAI data centers.

I didn't read the details of that. But I did see people saying that like, it's a little. It looks a little bit, the timing seems a little bit funny and the contract seems a little bit loosey-goosey. Here's the one. Morgan Stanley sees SpaceX's revenue reaching $3.4 trillion in 2040. Now, here's what I'll say, Ben. If that is even in the ballpark, even in the universe, in the galaxy to stretch the space analogy,

then yeah, okay, seems cheap. Because you know what? The finance guys don't know shit about tech. And sometimes the finance guys being sober, right? And sometimes they just, their imagination won't let them run wild. Okay. If we are even in the vicinity of a local generational top because of the supply, the IPO, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This will be the quote. Right. Right? This will be the thing that we point back just like, wait a minute. Did somebody really say that SpaceX was going to have $3.4 trillion in revenue? Or did I make that up? This will be the quote that we look back and say, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Are you kidding me?

What are you people thinking? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't obvious to you. Were you guys even paying attention to anything? We'll say, all right, there are going to be some very interesting knock on effects from this in terms of how local economies are impacted. I don't know that the SpaceX liquidity unlock will have an impact on the macro.

that seems to be a bit of a stretch. Yeah. But imagine buying a house right now in San Francisco or Austin, and you're competing against these people. Right. Unlimited budget, apparently, effectively. So the journal did an article about some of the SpaceX employees

who are about to become overnight millionaires. And they said this one guy moved to Northern Italy. And I say this one guy, I was about to say, I'm not going to try to pronounce this name. It's Jay André Lavoy, I think. Good enough. moved to northern Italy five years ago and bought a hotel in Ponteba, which has been,

which she has been renovating. It also said this guy left the company like 2015. So he got his early shares and bounced. His stake is valued at more than $20 million. This is great quote. I don't want to just die with a pile of money in the bank. Love it. Love that mentality.

But this guy's buying a hotel. So this just be like all sorts of like bizarre things that happen as a result of like a giant windfall of money. Ben, we've spoken, we've spoken a, uh, a little bit about this company Hyperliquid. We mentioned Patrick O'Shaughnessy's company Colossus did an incredible profile on that company. So you could see where SpaceX is trading. Let's say, Hyperliquid.

So Hyperliquid is a blockchain-based company that brings markets, 24-7 markets, and anyone can make a market. and it's, I mean, the company is really, really on fire. SpaceX, so the IPO is priced at 120, I believe, right? I don't know. Okay. I'm pretty sure it's 120 bucks. And SpaceX is now currently trading at $158 a share on this thing.

And there's, there's volume, dude, the 24-hour volume. Take a guess. I was going to ask that. What's the volume? Take a guess. I don't know. $5 million? $118.

Okay. $118 million. So, you know what? That's enough for me. I mean, that's the price. Honestly, $118 million in volume. That's good enough for me. In 24 hours?

The volume in this thing trades is going to dwarf that by 20 times. What are you talking about? That's nothing. That's enough. $118 million worth of volume. You don't think that's enough to make a market? $118 million? I don't know.

Is it? I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know. I'm not a market maker. I'm speaking pretty confidently about something I know very little about, but I don't know. It seems like a lot of money to me. Okay.

158 bucks of shares where it's currently trading on hyperliquid. So my thing that I've said for a while now is the market only has time to worry about one thing at once. And that could be a boom, it could be a bust, right? We only have time for one risk for one fancy object. Do you remember? It feels like a year ago now that gold and silver were like the biggest story. Remember silver going nuts? At one point at the end of January, silver was up.

64% on the year. Gold is up 25% on the year. Now both are either flat or negative. Silver's down four and a half or four percent on the year. Gold is effectively flat on the year. Does that not feel like six cycles ago? That happened? That was like the biggest story. And then we just kind of move on and forget about it. I think that's one of your best insights that you've been. I don't know when you first said that, but it's so, it's so true. Remember private credit? Right. We moved on. So Cliffwater just reported that they got, I think they had 14% redemption requests in the first quarter and 17 in the second. I think that's what the number was. Who cares?

And I know people care, but like, there's too much other shit to focus on. Yeah. And right now all the attention is on SpaceX. But that was, that had all of our attention. And now who cares? All right, this is a great email. I wanted to share a funny story relating to Michael mentioning. He writes down the reasoning whenever he decides to buy or sell their stock.

I've always done the same. I don't trade very much, but I do research on really anything and everything because there's a price I'd buy almost anything. Back in April and May of 2025, I was looking at Micron in the 70s and 80s. After some time, I decided not to buy it as I felt that its product was a commodity and it would be easy to compete with them. Plus, blah, blah, blah. Okay.

So anyway, last week, I bought a picture frame and put that sheet of my notebook in my office, just to remind myself how absolutely stupid I can be. All I can do is laugh at myself. Everything is so clear in hindsight. And sometimes all you can do is laugh. And the sooner you are honest with yourself, the better of an investor you'll be. Maybe now is a good time to share my next story. So wait, so just so this guy said, you look at Micron in the 70s and 80s, it's now $970 a share. Yeah. Just so we know. Okay. All right. So it turns out, Ben, That markets are efficient. Wait a minute.

I just, I wanted to say this. You guys sold Nvidia in like 2018, man, selling your next tickets early. Don't say you guys. Sorry, you're your ticket partner. Sold in video in 2018. Okay. As I was looking at all the stories, I'm sure. Okay, go ahead.

So, timing the market is hard in the stock market and in the sports ticket market. All right, bear with me. This is going to take five minutes. I told the story before a week or two ago. My friend, a lifelong friend, we have been through many sports battles together between the Giants and the Nix. He sent me a screenshot of us selling the tickets. And I said, what is this? And he said, we spoke about this.

I don't remember speaking about this. I would not have sold the tickets. So here's how this season tickets work. Everybody sees the prices. But, all right, back up. This is the hottest ticket in the world. People are really upset. There's a lot of like econ spillover into what's happening.

And this is very simple. And I don't want to sound like a dickhead because it's easy for me to say because I'm not getting locked out because I do have tickets. All right. So I'm not trying to sound insensitive. But this is supply and demand. Like I don't know what people are so up in arms about because this turned into like Bitcoin essentially.

They're not making any more tickets. They're not making any more tickets. So the Garden did bizarrely release 500 tickets, both. on Sunday at 10 a.m. and then at 2 p.m. And then they released another batch, a small batch yesterday before the game. That was very bizarre. But there's only 19,000 tickets, okay? And the garden is sort of like the Federal Reserve, maybe more powerful. They can set prices, but then there's a whole market outside of them, right? Like how the market, the Fed controls the short end of the curve. So the problem is this. Like friends of mine were like, this is

bullshit. I've been a lifelong fan and I can't get it to see my team play for less than $9,000 ticket. Okay, but if the tickets were $2,000, then there would be three million people that wants to buy 19,000 tickets. Exactly. The, the, there is, this is not an, this is not an economy-wide story. No, supplies meeting demand. Okay, but anyway, but all of those, all of those prices that we saw, to bring it back to my story, all of those prices, all those screenshots, they were bullshit. I could list my house for $4 million. Nobody's going to buy it. So you could have listed years and you wouldn't have sold them for $10,000 or whatever they're showing. Exactly. All right. So, Let me come back to reality.

So the way that my tickets work, I'm in the lower bowl section 109, row 20. They're good seats. They're not amazing seats. They're certainly good enough, better than good enough. Yeah, I was there. Those are good seats. Yeah, they're good seats. My face value for per ticket for the season is like $2.25, something like that per ticket.

Round one was $3.80. Not terrible. Round two was $5.50. round three it starts to get jacked up to 750 and the finals it's 1350 so you know it's it's not an insignificant amount of money it's a lot of money before this before the series started as i've now said five times my friends sent me a screenshot what he what he had hoped for was that we would sell our tickets um we made a three thousand dollar profit and he thought that we would trade down and go in the the two hundreds right and he thought that essentially we would get paid 500 bucks

to go to the game. Right. You're shorting him essentially. Correct. He got caught naked. So, and then we compounded the problem. So we sold our tickets too early and simultaneously we bought back in too early. And then simultaneously we waited too long to sell. So it was jab, jab knockout punch. All right? So we sold those tickets in 109 for 4,400 for game four. And then we bought in 111, so even more diagonal, so worse seats, we bought those for $7,500 a ticket. All right. So now we're in the hall already. We're in the hole already.

And then for last night, for last night, we paid $8,000 a ticket, $8,000 actual for ticket for Section 200, okay? So now, now we are working with our broker who was, bless him, he. He was so patient. We were really being a pain in the ass. Because the amount of anxiety that we felt, because now, so now, we need to sell these, our original pair, the seats that we own, we need to sell game three for $12,000 apiece to break even.

And when I say break even, I just mean no worse off than we would have been financially, meaning we spent $13.50 a ticket, all right? So to get back to square one, albeit with worse seats, but to get back to square one financially, we need to sell each ticket for $12,000. Now, we listed them for $18,000 first because that's what the market was pricing at. That was not the clearing price. That's what they were listed at. There was no transactions there.

Now, it's easy to say in hindsight, because we didn't know, but we just kept lowering them. And my friend and I were texting each other back and forth, like, we don't want to like harass our broker, right? He's like, but we're watching it all fucking day, dude, on Sunday, all day on Sunday. It was so stressful because now we're like, oh, no. If we sell them for like, if we sell them for like 7,000, like we're going to take an absolute bath to be in worse seats. Now we're turning what should be like a blissful moment of like zen, like euphoric zen being in the finals.

It is, it is beyond stressful. So I go to sleep on Sunday night. And at this point, the tickets we wanted them to sell already, obviously. I wake up on Monday at 4.45 in the morning and I see they still haven't sold. And now I'm like, it's 4.45 and I'm just staring at this point. space. And my friend's text me, he's like, are you awake? Like, neither of us could sleep. We were so anxious about selling these tickets. So finally, I said, Jason, I'm giving you to 10 o'clock. That's my line on the sand. We're not going to be the last assholes to sell these tickets.

Like, I'm just going to just, he texts me back like 20 minutes later. Dude, we just sold your tickets for $9,000. I'm not going to take a commission. Thank you. This guy's a mensch. But I felt like I was beat. My head was held underwater. And I just caught like a gas of of air to breathe, the amount of, like, relief that I felt. Anyway, this was a giant cluster F. The amount of stress. So it, so ultimately where it shook out was we ended up paying $2,800 per ticket instead of $1,400 per ticket.

But once it was done, I said to my friend, all things considered, anybody that I know who's a Knick fan would put a knife in my throat to be able to go to both games for $2,800. Still a lot of money, but not $11,000. True. But someone paid more than the annual contribution limit for Roth IRA for your tickets. Which tickets? Oh, yes, $9,000 a ticket. 9,000.

Dude, I spent $8,000 for Section 200. Now, it was sort of funny money because I was using the proceeds, right? Like, it wasn't like coming out of my pocket. But this is not an economy-wide story. This is a, the Knicks haven't been here in forever and rabid fan base and lots of money in New York. Yeah. So a lesson in efficient markets. Lesson learn.

Don't sell early for final tickets. Whew. Man. Okay. Speaking of IRAs. Oh, oh, oh. What? One part of the story that I omitted.

So I was with Matt Middleton and Chris Chari from Futureproof. We went to the watch party for game, game two, I believe. And we're at Roberta's, which is a pizza joint, a classy pizza joint, a classy pizza joined across from the garden. We're upstairs having dinner and drinks. And I'm talking to Matt. And he's like, oh, you have season tickets? I thought, where are they? So I said 109. He goes, what row were they? I said 20. He goes, no fucking way. He took out his phone. He goes, what seats are they? Middletons, Middleton bought my seats. Matt Middleton bought my seats. What are the freaking odds?

So he timed it good. He got an early. It's a cherry on top. So it was his brother-in-law that bought the tickets, and it wasn't me that sold. So Matt and I didn't transact with each other. My partner, Matt's brother-in-law. Anyway, supply and demand and timing the market. Okay.

I'm sure you wanted to be a sweep. I'm happy if this thing goes seven because I'm enjoying the basketball. Being an observer from the outside. Of course. Not having a dog in this. Of course, yeah. So I will be in San Antonio for game five. All right.

I was hoping for a sweep, obviously. I would rather not travel, but the sports are tough as shit. They're a really, really good team. Yeah, I think it's been a great, I think it's been a great series so far. I'm enjoying it. One other, I know I'm grabbing the mic a lot,

so forgive me, but one other thing. I think that's an appropriate time to say this. Last week, I gave grace and gratitude to the world, just like acknowledging that life sucks a lot for a lot of people. I had years of blackness in my personal life, and I'm enjoying myself, right?

Like, things are good and it's nice to be grateful. And I'm not like the most spiritual, religious person in the world. The fact, I'm not at all. But it is sometimes funny how the universe works. So on that day, later that afternoon, the backstory is such. I had worked out of my house a year ago when I moved in. And the person that did the job was a referral. He got referred into me from a friend of mine.

So I texted him, hey, work looks great. Thank you so much. How do I pay you? That was on September 2nd. I never heard back from the guy. I'm saying to my friend who referred him, he didn't get back to me. He's like, oh, yeah, he did the same thing to me. He just, whatever, just like a few months gone by and he didn't, you know, he eventually

came back to me. Like, all right, that's a little bit weird. Noted. So by October 30th, it had been basically two months. I texted him again. I said, hey, as much as I would love to not pay you, I owe you money. Like, you did a job. How do I pay you?

Ghosted. I got a text last Tuesday after we recorded the pod. Hey, it's so-and-so from so-and-so's office. What's your email address? We're going to send you an invoice. And I reacted. I reacted. I said, this is really strange.

Who does business this way? I haven't heard from you for a year. And you just text me like, what's your email address? You owe us money. They're like, oh, well, I'm sorry, we're just trying to get paid. I know, but this is bizarre. Like, who does business this way? And she said, you seem pretty upset.

I said, yeah, I am upset. Tell him to call me. And now, had they said, hey, sorry to sit through the cracks. We're trying to get more organized. I'm pretty sure I would have just said, no problem. It happens. But I just thought it was weird that there was no acknowledgment. of it or anything. Just in, hey, what's your email address? You owe us money. Like, I tried to pay you

twice. Is this must be flush if they're not seeking out people for a year, huh? I thought I did the right thing by even proactively saying I owe you money. It was, it was like not, it was not 400 bucks. It was like a decent amount of money. So he calls me and he said, you know, I was really taken aback by the way that you reacted. Now, I didn't curse or anything like that. Like I'm not, I don't, I don't treat people that way. That's like not my, that's not my MO. But I was, I was stern. I said, yeah, Tom's call me. I am upset. You know, I'm a local guy. I've been in this community for years and I've just never seen anything like this. I did a job for you and I gave you an interest free loan. I'm like, I know, but I'm a business person too. And I just think it's weird

that when somebody tries to pay you, you just, you just go with him. I just, I think that's weird behavior. I'm sorry. And he goes, well, you know what? I've been running around for the last six months, taking my six-year-old to the oncologist, I'm about to go high. And I was just like, it was such, it was such a fucking gut punch. You never know what someone else is going through, right? It was. So obviously, I'm just like trying to calm down. And I could hear how upset he was getting.

You know, his lip was quivering. And it was just, it was rough. And it was a good reminder. Like, you hear people say this a lot and you don't really like take it to heart because people go on with your life and whatever. But really just like to try to be nice and because you never know what somebody is going through. Right. And people usually don't experience that because 99 times out of 100, who cares?

Everybody's going through some shit. And 99 times out of 100 people are just being jerks and whatever. But there are some people who are going through real shit and you're like, oh, geez, okay, that that explains your mood or your reaction or. Yeah. So it just, it was one of those things that I hope that I know I will take with me forever and ever. Because it really. Yeah. It's a good reminder.

Yeah. I agree. All right. I got no transition from that. I'll talk about young people. I just try and be nice. That's a good story. You're right. It's a good way to frame life. Okay. From the Wall Street Journal, Gen Z can't get enough of Roth IRAs. All right. From the last 10 years, a share of all individual retirement account owners who are under 30 years old has doubled from 5% to 10%. This is great news. Total IRA contributions from Gen Z grow 65% in the first quarter of 2026. Fantastic.

I looked at this from the Federal Reserve. This is corporate equities and mutual fund shares by age. Under 40. It's up threefold since 2020. The ownership of equities for people under 40. This boom in the 2020s has been such a great thing for young people, getting involved in the markets. And it's because these are lower. But just wait, Ben, until 1937 happens.

I heard from people. What happens when we have a 60% crash? It is so tiring. I'm so sick of it. Okay. If we have a bare market, what do you mean if we have a bare market? That's, that's, that's what happens in markets. You have their markets. Right. What, they're going to lose some money and learn some lessons and move on with their life and buy stocks and lower prices? Yes, exactly. I think it's okay to like take good news for what it is. All right.

From Bloomberg, Katie Grafield, Vanguard, VLO hits one trillion dollars in assets for the first time. This is the first ever. And they show the, the, the, inflation. this year. So it's had like 70 billion of inflows this year, which is nuts. So Bloomberg says this is this was one thought unimaginable for the ETF industry. Which is kind of crazy because there's so many different S&P 500 index funds, right? There's not just this. SPY still has a ton of assets too. There's a lot of different. So it is kind of crazy that this is this is the one that did it. Yeah, SPY has 770 billion in assets under management.

So it's crazy. But you contract this with another one from Blue All right. Retail investment trade room, individual share of trading in stock has doubled since 2010. So from 10% to 20%. So it's kind of weird to juxtapose the fact that there's all this money in Vanguard, there's all this money going into Roth IRAs for young people, right? That is reasonable investment behavior, right? These people are doing good stuff.

And then you have this stuff that says there's 20 already SpaceX-length ETF that file and those will get eaten up. People will invest in them. There's already filings for anthropic and opening. I'm sure it's three times SpaceX and three times Anthropic and all of this things. And I think it's hard for people to have both of these ideas in their head at once. Yes. That people can be behaving responsibly and irresponsibly at the same time.

Yeah. There's people that are drunk and throwing up all over the dance floor. And there's people that are at home asleep on their couch. Who made the analogy with the market about like, church in the casino. Was it Buffett? I can't remember. Okay.

Yeah, that is a Buffett one, I think. Okay. But I've been saying this, you know, Josh and I have been having this conversation a lot, that I think the degenerate behavior is really distracting people. Like, they're focusing more on that than they are SPY flows or VOL flows.

Exactly. And those are the things that matter. I agree. This was interesting on any quality. I had never seen this. So you and I have shown this chart before of the fact that the middle class is getting hollowed out, not because people are getting poorer, but because people are getting richer, right? People are moving from the middle class to the upper class and the upper upper class, right, in the rich. So I think it's, what, 36% of families were middle class in 1979, went down to 31%. But that's because the upper middle class grew from 31% from 10%. So these guys did this piece and they wrote about New York Times. But this is interesting. The share of wealth held by the middle class fell 8% in 2022 from 24% in 1989. So middle class wealth fell a ton. But the share by the upper middle class also fell from 39% to 50%. This is of the pie, right? So this is not that their aggregate wealth fell. It's that their share of it. That's because the share

of wealth to the top group, just 3% of families more than doubled, rising to 53% from 26%. So this is the hard part about wealth inequality is that everyone is getting better, but the pie is getting bigger. And the question is like, does it really matter that the middle class is not being howled out? They're moving up. They're getting richer. Does it really matter, I guess, in the grand scheme of things that, like, just the top 1% or the top 3% or whatever it is is having so much more money. Yes. And my only, my only answer to that is like politically it matters probably more than anything else. Yes. Like, it's not, it's not like this is taking away from other people in some way. But politically, this is the problem where there's too much power in

the hands of two few people like this. And that's where the big problem is. And it feels like things are being taken away. Yes. That just that number was shocking to me. The three percent, top three percent is see their wealth double. In that real class, the share fell. Think about what Elon and Bill Gates and Bezos, like think about what their wealth

alone, just those three people, does to this chart. Yes. Yeah, exactly. You know, like, because Elon's going to be worth a trillion. It's kind of hard to wrap your head around it, though. Right. All right. Why don't you read this email and I have a defense for myself?

No, I want to do this with some data. Okay. Right? I don't want to like... I have data. Okay. Yes. All right.

Somebody emailed Ben a couple weeks back. Ben's defense of today's economy versus the 1970s put me over the edge. Any review of real numbers show that today's economy is objectively worse on big ticket items like housing, health care, and education. To say otherwise is logic-defying. Which was not my point, by the way. Okay, by the way, I read this wrong. I think, yeah, he's right on that.

Housing, healthcare, and education, okay. Sure, televisions have gotten cheaper, but you need to watch them while living in your parents' basement. Who does? Yeah, I mean, come on. Everybody's living in their parents' basement. The coup de grace in all of this is that even though the 1970s were challenging, it was mostly afforded on one salary, not two,

that most young couples need today. Shocking boomer analysis from bed. X-O-X-O, X-L, long-time fan. So I said, you mind if I read this on the show? And he said, please do, I love you guys. I said, I assume you're a young person. And this threw me for a loop-in. The guy said, no, I'm 54 years old

and also a six-year-s fan so I could take the heat. This person was born in 1972. Does their perspective of the 1970s hold any water? No, of course not. I don't remember. I don't have visions of the economy when I was six years old or something. Okay.

Now, in fairness, we have no visions of the economy from the 1970s because we weren't there. So my whole thing was there's no way that you can say the sentiment should be worse today than it was in the 70s. The 70s was objectively worse as an economy. He says, no, no, you're wrong. So guess what? I wrote a whole chapter about the 70s in my book. Okay? I did a chapter called The Great Inflation.

I did a lot of history on this. Okay? I just have a couple things I want to read from my book, okay? Combination of factors including excessive government spending the Vietnam War, supply chain issues, and oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil shocks contributed an unprecedented inflation in the 1970s. Okay? From 1968 to 1981,

the inflation rate averaged 7.5% per year. It ended the year with double-digit inflation three times, 1974, 1979, and 1980. There was in a single year

in the entire decade when inflation came in below 3%. In 8 out of the 10 years, the annual inflation rate was above 5%. This is the craziest one to me. From 1961 to 1982,

the USA was in a recession for one-third of this dreadful period. Okay? one third of the time over a 13-year period or something, the U.S. was in a recession. What was the unemployment rate? It was 10%. It got to 10% as well. Yes.

There was three recessions between 1973, 1983, 1982. It was brutal. That was my whole point is that you can't say that the economy today is worse than then. You just can't. I'm sorry. No, no. Yeah.

And you're not saying that. I don't know if he's saying that because it sounds like he's talking about big-ticket items. Like, yeah, maybe the housing situation as well. worse? Yeah, and you also had 18% mortgages by the end of that. So, anyway, tell you what, 54-year-old guy who called me a shockingly boomer analysis. At least, I'll send you a copy of books. You can read about it. All right. This is a fair question. Some opposed me the other day. Okay? I wrote about how AI is flattening the world in some ways in terms of international stock markets. South Korea and Taiwan and China and Thailand

are all outperforming the NASDAQ over the past year or so, like crushing them. And this guy says to me, okay, fine. The U.S. is spending close to 10 times more on AI CAPEX than China is, but their models are only a nose ahead of China's models and they are closed source. How can that possibly be justified? At a minimum, the U.S. should be three to four years ahead. And I said, give me a source on this. I need to back it up.

And he said, all right, fine. This is from Jeffries. China's AI industry has reached a milestone where its top models not perform in 90% of U.S. levels, but they're spending 82% lower than U.S. peers, as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and meta. So what's the question? Why aren't our models more ahead? No, the question is, like, are the returns going to be there for these big companies,

the hyperscalers? If China is able to do this, now the thing you would say is, well, it's kind of circular because China is just stealing from them, right? So China can't really get ahead without stealing from them, I guess, is the point. The question is, are these, are the U.S. investments going to pay off for the hypers If China can just replicate this stuff, then 90% of what they do. And I guess Kai Wu said, listen, the code is not the moat. I think that was his point.

Like, these hyperscalers are not going to have a mode on this stuff. It's not going to be like the other stuff. I think of the opportunity said that we have to monetize these models is just way greater than China. For example, and this might be, this actually might be a very ignorant statement because I don't really know what the deal is in China. So, but what I was thinking is think about the monetization. of Reels, for example. Like, given that China is a state-run country, I'm guessing.

Actually, you know, I don't need to guess. Totally ignorant here. They started TikTok. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so, see? I caught myself. I thought it was an interesting question. Call myself saying something.

Hey, credit to me. I caught myself making shit up. Hand up. Yeah, I don't know the answer. This is interesting. A couple charts. This is from the Financial Times. They showed since agenic AI came, the number of app releases is through the roof, right?

It became easier to build your own app. The question is, like, how many people actually have good ideas? And it shows that the app reviews are right where they were, and apps with significant usage that actually dropped. So all these new apps are being created, people have ideas, and no one is using them. Bob Bailey had this other thing where he showed weekly ebook releases. When chat GPT releases, there's a ton of new ebooks because people, guess what, you can use AI to help you write. It's not helping. There's so much, like scientific papers submitted, took off like a rocket ship.

Same for lawsuits. The question is like, where's the quality? If there's no quality and everyone just has crappy ideas that they're implementing, like, what's the point of it? And I think there's going to, it's, you know. A lot of spaghetti being thrown at the wall. Yeah, that's the thing. You still have to have some quality.

I'm still getting used to this. I do this thing every year in my blog where I do the best books I read every year. I do my favorite fiction book, my favorite nonfiction. So I took all those blog posts and I uploaded them to Chad GPT and I said, I need some new fiction books. I'm the well as run drive. Got nothing to read right now. I need something new. Whatever I'm trying to read, it's not taken with me.

So I took all my books that I read. Look at all my fiction books. Give me some suggestions. So it gave me some like a bunch of suggestions. But this is, I'm still getting used to it. They recommend a straight man by Richard Russo. And it says, this is Chad Chabbyt talking. One of the funniest novels I've ever read.

I just, I looked at that and I just, I can't. That's good. I'm still getting used to this. The fact that AI is talking to us like a person. Did AI really read this, I guess? It's, I don't, kind of. I don't know. I thought that was kind of funny.

All right, let's do crypto for a second. All right. Did you read this thing from Joe Eisenthal? No. He wrote a piece at Bloomberg about the crypto winner, and he said 12 reasons why this crypto winner is worse than ever. Okay? And he gives, he's saying like, basically,

you can no longer say we're early. crypto Twitter is dead. Institutional adoption already happened. The regulatory environment is already as favorable as it could possibly get. AI boom is crowding out access to electricity. There's a growing concern about quantum computing. He goes to all this stuff. And he said, the biggest one, which you talked about last week is AI is taking up all the mental share, mental market share. A few years ago, maybe if you were a smart tech person, crypto seemed like a cutting edge. That's no longer the case. Here's the thing that I think is the most disheartening for crypto, is crypto was a risk on asset.

We've shown that it's not a risk off asset. It hasn't helped hedge against anything. But it's risk on. And that's the weirdest thing to me now that we are fully risk on in a tech boom. And crypto is not keeping up. That's the thing that would have me the most concerned about this. Yeah. Yeah.

There also seem to be just a bit of apathy. Because what is the next catalyst? It's already, it all already happened. Yes. We do say this every time as a crypto window. They're like, what could pull it out of this? What's the next cat out? But now it does feel like after the ETF came out, like what else was there? There's nothing. And not helping matters is the fact that Michael Saylor finally sold some Bitcoin. I don't even know what the story is to, I guess they needed money for stretch, the preferred out of, you know, a little bit out of my depth here.

But whatever. The point is the person who said, sell a kid if you have to, don't sell Bitcoin, sold Bitcoin. And then they bought. $100 million worth of Bitcoin? It's really weird. I don't get why they sold it and then bought it. I don't know. I don't know. But they're really big, bigly underwater on their Bitcoin holdings, right?

Strategy? Well, if you price it in dollars. One Bitcoin, still one Bitcoin. It is interesting that simultaneously this is happening. And this could have been huge news, but nobody really cares. So the largest U.S. banks plan to launch a token, this from the journal, plan to launch a tokenized deposit network next year, and attempt to stave off threats from crypto companies that are seeking to wait deeper into their territory under President Trump,

the new network will connect traditional payment rails with the infrastructure that digital assets run on. It will be operated by a real-time payment network company called the Clearing House, which is co-owned by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, City Group, Wells Fargo, and other large commercial banks. Here it is. The move marks one of the most significant efforts yet to open up the crypto world to the banking industry. It would allow tokenized deposits to move instantly across blockchain technology. with 24-7 settlements. Now, we've complained about this over the years.

I sure have. Why does it take my money to go from JP Morgan to whatever, a custodian, whatever, like, why does it take seven days to settle? It's because they're not speaking the same language. They have their own rails. They have their own rails. Like, if there is an integrated network to allow settlements move faster, which I hope is inevitable, this is awesome.

And it's on blockchain, but nobody really cares because it's all. about the price. True. That's the thing. Let's say they did this. Does it really help the price at all? I don't know. No idea. Okay. This is the bottom in crypto. We just marked it right there. Okay, I want to talk about going home to God's country, northern Michigan. I've been home to last, we had two soccer tournaments in the last three or four weeks in Traverse City where I'm from. Michigan, it's right here. See, right there on the mitten. That's where it is. And I was thinking about this a lot because I got a question from a podcast listener. I said, hey, my wife got a job there. We're thinking about moving there. What do you think? So I had a few back and forth with this guy. I'm like a Michigan travel agent. People always ask me like, what restaurants and bars should I go to in Grand Rapids? But anyway, this guy wanted to move to Trevor City. He asked me what I thought. And I said, five months out of the year, it's probably one of those beautiful places on earth. Like, from Earth, like, from Earth, like, from the weather. The other seven months out of the year, it's brutal from the weather. But every time, when I was 18 and I graduated high school, I wanted to get out there so fast. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, right? I mean, I feel like I'm in a fishbowl. It's a small, like, touristy town. Get me out of here. I don't want to. And I had friends. And I had friends. And I had friends.

friends who like stayed in the area and settled down and had the families there. I'm like, you're nuts. There's no way I could stay in my hometown. I wanted out of there. It was too small. But now every time I go back there, I realize like, oh, you idiot, this place was amazing. What were you thinking? And every time I love it when I go back there. And I like, but now I, my parents are there, it's a peninsula. Traverse City is in a big peninsula. It's like 18 miles long. And each side there's a bay. And every time I go back there, I go for a jog along the bay. And this road goes right along the water. It looks like Caribbean-style water. Like the bluest of what you've ever seen. And I see all these old houses that used to be there now torn down

and built in these huge mansions, right? And the place has been discovered. And that's what I told a guy like, listen, it's a great place to live. It's probably, it's not a great place for a job market. Because a lot of people who have homes there now, it's seasonal. Yeah. And it's really bad. So there's a story someone sent me of Potoski, Michigan, which is just an hour and a half north of Traverse City. It's another lovely town right on the water. The cost of available homes have more than tripled since 2020, rising from $310,000 to $1.1 million. Again, since 2020, this is like one of those places where people discovered it in the pandemic. And they said half the, half the homes in the city of 5,800 have been scooped up out-of-towners who are typically only there to summer. And the question is,

like, how do regular people live there? And they said that they've been interviewing people for the schools, and they have to ask, do you have housing? We've had a lot of people turn down jobs because they couldn't find housing. So these, like, beautiful places, like, how do you have people who are teachers and police officers and firefighters and working at the shops downtown. We went there to vacation a couple years ago, and on a Wednesday, the restaurant was closed and it said, not enough staff.

And so when these places get discovered like this, and this is one of the things that were like there's no places undiscovered anymore, like I'm sure it's like this, like with San Francisco, we talked about the anthropic people. How do normal people live in these places anymore? How do they come there if they didn't already live there? It's impossible.

Yeah, it's sad. I don't know what the, short of building more housing find, I don't know what the actual solution is. Like, all the beautiful places now have been discovered by people. Well, here's a pretty dark reality. There is no solution. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is, this is, this is what it is.

And there's no, there's no body who would benefit from changing it. Like, nobody, nobody is incentivized or powerful enough at the government level. It just sucks. It's sad. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, you're right. That's kind of my takeaway. All right.

We spoke about this earlier. So Blackstone's private credit fund, B-Cred, investors ask for 10% of their shares in the second quarter, up from 8% in the first quarter. It was $4.4.4 billion. They're going to cap it at 5%. Yeah, Cliff, why, we did this already? Just interesting, nobody cares.

Like, whatever. All right, it's happening. It's still bleeding. But so they're going to lose 5% per quarter for the next two years, probably. Is that fair to say based on like the, or at least for the next year or so? I don't know if it's quite that clean because there's money coming in. Oh, yeah. to offset some of the money going out.

And there's like all sorts of credit facilities and stuff. So I think this is the point of the gate, right? It's like maybe I don't know how this plays out. I don't know people. Slow it down. I guess maybe if it's three more quarters and the private credit world doesn't blow up. Like the headlines sort of slow down and the returns are still fine. Then people say like, ah, you know what?

All right, it turns out that it was much ado about nothing. I'm not predicting that, but that could slow it down. The big story in the panic of 1907 was J.P. Morgan, the guy, told his bank tellers to count the money out slowly so they could stop the bank run. and like every day they gave out less and less money and that was the way to stop the bank run. That's like that's what this is. All right. You've talked about your car buying situation.

I want to talk about mine. You've got a car broker. I'm still a man of the people and do the shopping mine in my own. But I'm relying on Chad TPT heavily in the LLMs for looking at cars. And I'm having enormous ticker price shock because the last time I got my lease three years ago,

I had a ton of equity in my old car still. And like the transition was easy. So it was relatively cheap. Now, I can't believe how expensive things are. Buying a new car. And I'm doing all these price points, and I'm... ChatGAPT is really, really good for giving you...

Like, here's what you should get, right? They're giving you advice on like, here's what you should get, here's what you should ask for. And I'm looking at all these cars that are on the road everywhere. I'm looking at these huge SUVs. And I told you, I don't want the big one because I want to be able to get into a parking spot. But I'm looking at not even like high-end luxury cars,

just like Suburbanes and Tahos and Expedit. and Wagoners and Lincoln Navigators. And these cars all, like, if you get, like, even a decent package on them, we're talking, like, 1,500 to $2,500 a month for these. These are cars you see everywhere on the road, and it kind of boggles my mind. Even, like, the, I don't know, Honda Pilot and the Volvo XC90, we're talking, like, well over $1,000 a month for these.

And you see these everywhere. How are people doing this? Right. It's not like there's like, it's not like one person in your town has a wagoneer. Yes, they're everywhere. You go to a soccer game. The whole parking lot is full of them. And so anytime you tell, we talk about what kind of cars we're thinking about it are getting, people are apt to say like, oh, you idiot, don't get that. It's a piece of crap. Get this. Or this is actually the version of this, what you should get. And so I told you a few weeks ago, I can't, I looked at, I went and looked at a Lexus. And I'm like, I just, my kids destroy the cars. I can't do it yet. Maybe like when the kids are older, I'll get something nicer. So I'm going to get like a Kia. I'm like trading down.

I'm getting like a Tiki Teli ride, which is pretty nice car. They're nice. They're nice. They look nice. It's like a step-down version of like a Hyundai essentially. But the guy told me, we can't keep these on a lot. They're selling so fast. We can't keep them here. Maybe he just says that.

It's hilarious that like $54,000 is like the affordable car. Yes, exactly. That's my point. That was like the affordable one. When we were, I don't know, say in high school, What did $55,000 get you? Like an M3? An unbelievable car.

I guess that's my point. And again, I don't want to drive an SUV anymore. I would love to drive a sedan. But I have to because we have kids with sports. We have big benches and chairs and we have carpooling. And so I needed more room. Anyway, the sticker price shock was totally real for me, though. Yeah, it's crazy.

All right, stick with personal finance. It's funny when people get up and ups about. Guys, I am listening all the time. Something driving me crazy wanted to send over. I am 53 and guess what? I am considering early retirement. And guess what age? 55.

Good for you. Ben continually says on the show, I don't know why everyone says 55 for early retirement. Do you continually say that? I feel like I've never heard you say that. I do. Because people look around, no. No, because every time we get a question of early retirement for ask the compound,

people say they want to retire 55. You said an asset comment. Okay. Well, anyway, this person is up in arms, Ben. But he has a point. For anyone with a 401K, it is not that complicated. The rule of 55 allows you to access 401K money without penalty. I don't think it should be surprising that without that, with that out there,

people consider 55 for early retirement if they can afford it. All right, good for you. We've talked about the rule 55 many times on Ask Compel, by the way. And the thing is, I'm having people in their 30s tell me this. So this guy's, like, not many people know about this rule of 55. Come on, man. No one knows about this. Well, anyway, I asked Claude about it.

and it gave me whatever, a bunch of paragraphs. I copied and paste it to Bill Sweet. I said, this is true. And he said, yes. Yeah, we talked about it. Bill is the one who schooled me on it. I didn't know about it either, really. I guess my point is, like, just, you know, just chat and Claude giving you pretty

rock-solid answers on personal finance stuff. It's cool. It's obviously, you know, a potential threat to advisors, but it's making it for a better, better-informed consumer. It's good stuff. It's great. Yeah. The thing that we've been talking about is, if you're,

you're an advisor, you're going to have to deal with a better informed consumer. Which I think most advisors are like, good. Yes. Right. It's easier. Kitsis have said this. Like, I used to spend time educating people on a mutual fund. I don't want to do that.

Honestly, we've had thousands of conversations with people over the years. The hardest people to have conversations with are people who know absolutely nothing. Because you have no idea where to start sometimes. Like, you feel like you're starting from square one. If someone is actually understands and you just have to fill into details, that's an easy conversation for us to have. We do that in our sleep. Yeah, you're right. You're right. So I've been doing the podcast tour for my book.

I've done a lot of them. And it's interesting, I'm noticing like themes and stuff, but I had two conversations last week that really stood out to me. And both of them were dealing with guys who are 80 years or older. So I was on, Jeremy Schwartz has a podcast with Sirius XM Radio called Behind the Markets, and he brings on Jeremy Siegel every week to talk for like the first 15 minutes and have a podcast afterwards. And I think Seagel is, you is 80 years old. I think he's 80. I looked. And his love of the markets, like, we just had to like wind him up and let him go. He gets so excited to talk about the markets. The guy loves the freaking markets and talking about the economy. He's like a child. It's so great. Yes. He's so

excited. And then I talked, I was on Robert, Robert, Robin Farsad's podcast with Paul Merriman. Paul Merriman is 83, I think. And he's still teaching people about investing and saving. He has a podcast, he has a newsletter, he teaches people how to like save and invest. And seeing these guys in their 80s still do what they love. That to me, that is the dream. I know there's a lot of people who have the dream of early retirement. We talked about the guy before. I get questions all the time for people about I want to do the fire thing because I hate my job. And I think if you actually do find something you love to do and you're still doing it, that is the dream to me. Yeah. And these guys still love what they're doing at 80 years old. And I think to me that's a dream. I know other people,

other people would say, you're nuts. You think I'm going to keep working that old? But that, to me personally, that's the dream. I agree. And the thing about dreams, Ben, is everybody has their own dream. Am I right? Yes. And it's okay.

That's okay. That's what makes a market market. Siegel is just a phenomenal. Yeah. It was really fun to talk about market history with him. You know what else was really fun? I went to the movies on Friday night. Okay.

And I saw obsession. Okay. That's the other YouTube movie? like the one last week backrooms or the YouTube movie so backrooms was backrooms was a YouTube channel whatever it's called I guess I didn't realize the extent to which people had already been watching this as a show on YouTube and that

so it had a built-in audience which is really smart yeah I didn't realize the extent of that so I believe the director's name is Carrie Barker of Obsession he did he's done he did like a short horror movie called the chair which is very good I watched that and he has another one called Milk and Suriel with an S

that is also, I believe, he released on YouTube. So anyway, he is a director that has put his stuff out on YouTube. So he was a known on it today. And this movie obsession was made for $700,000, give or take, whatever it was,

well under a million. And I sent this to the boys who I talk movies with. This was on Friday night at 7 o'clock. This movie's been out for is it two full weeks, three full weeks? Look at how many seats were available. Full?

Basically full. Now, this is my type of movie. It was so fantastic. I'm not giving anything away. It's in the trailer. This is a horrible movie that I would like or not? I don't know. I don't know. It's not deranged.

Well, the plot. There's some horror movies that I don't mind watching. It's not too, I don't like the deranged stuff. I would not classify this as deranged. The plot is such. this sort of losery kid has a crush on a girl that he works with. He's afraid to tell her. He misses his opportunity.

He's like, I'm such an idiot. I had my champ, blah, blah. He makes a wish. He finds something in a store. It's like a, you know, it's a chashky. It's called One Wish Willow. You break it, you make a wish. And his wish is I wish that she would love me more than anybody in the world.

And his wish comes true. And it goes just off the rails. It goes off the rails, and it was fantastic. I don't mind the premise. Maybe I'll check it on. It was such a good movie. Did you like, well, maybe in the same sort of universe has talked to me. Did you like that one?

I think I saw that one. Okay, I thought you did. Well, anyway, I just, I love the fact that young people are going to meet. When I grew up, we did that every single Friday night. If we didn't have a game going on or something, we would go to the movies. My friends, we would meet at the movies. We did it every single week. It didn't matter what we were seeing.

We'd see something. I love that young people are going to movies again. That's what's happening because the theater was packed, dude. And it's just great. So, He Man came out of a flop mess of the universe, not a surprise. Scary movie, had a really strong opening. Obsessions in Back When We're still going strong. Movies are having a real moment, a real moment.

This was interesting. You guess what? I guess I did used to watch horrible. I wouldn't see all the saw movies in the theater. You know, I used to watch these back in the day. So I just can't believe it's still going. This is elevated horror. It's like, it's thoughtful.

You know, it's, it's, it's, it's well done. So there was a guy in front of me in the front row. And it was full of kids. And like I said, with, with backrooms, nobody was on their phone. Like, people are genuinely, um, enveloped in the movie. Did I use that word, right? I was about say enveloped. Sure.

I don't know. I feel like I'm like, maybe, whatever. There was a guy in the front row who's, who's, who's had his phone out. And I seem scrolling. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, this movie is rocking ass right now And you're scrolling on your phone So there's one violent scene in the movie

Like, well, there's a few, maybe two But there's one particularly, whoa, violent scene in the movie. So this guy who had been scrolling, he gets up right after that scene And he walks out And I see behind him, His child gets up and follows him.

And the kid was 11 or 12. Now, it is weird because from my 41 year old vantage point. I'm like, this guy should be arrested. Like, that was some scarring shit for life. Like, that was so, so inappropriate. My dad took me to see 8mm when I was like 13. And I saw all the hard movies when I was like, I don't know. You know what Tarantino said in his book. He said, he used to go see movies when he was like five years old. And he said, his mom one day said, I would rather have you see it here than watch the news. Anyway, that's good. So I,

we started the second season of four seasons on Netflix. I think that's a show you originally recommended me on Netflix. So it's Tina Faye, Will Forte. I'm a huge Will Forte fan. I think he is hilarious, like subtly funny. Coleman Domingo is one of my favorite newer actors that, like, he became an actor in middle-eight. I love him.

And I, it's, this is not a show that would be on HBO, like, from a quality perspective, right? But for some reason, I really enjoy this show. The way that they approach friendship and marriage and middle age. I just really think that they tapped into that perfectly.

Probably because it's written by Tina Fey and she's so talented, but I really, my wife and I really enjoy this show. Are you watching season two or not? No, Robin watched season one without me. I thought you were the one

who told me to watch this show. I think I did. I said you would like it. I watched like the first episode. Okay. I really enjoy it. So it's on Netflix and each show, each episode is a half hour.

I think there's six or eight episodes. And the way that they do it, the show is each two episodes, each, they have two episodes each for one season and one vacation. So every time is like either a holiday or vacation. Oh, that's good for me. Which is really, yeah, which works. I finished your friends and neighbors last night, season two. The show went a little bit off the rails at the end, like a little over the top.

But then they always kind of bring it back. And I feel like that show still with the family stuff really works. And so I'll watch season three. It's great. A little off the rails. Happy to hear that. Did you finish half man? I know I keep figuring out, but.

What did that show? That's kind of show that kind of sticks with you in the back of your brain for a while. Like, oh my God, what did I just watch? Now, that was depraved. Yes. But just the performances in that show, I thought it was really, really well done. But yes, very depraved. Not deprave.

My daughter and I are still plowing through 90s rom-coms. Okay? So we did like Notting Hill, my best friend's wedding. You've got mail in the last 10 days. And every night, I'm going to milk this for as much as I can because my daughter says, hey, can we watch another rom-com tonight? And I know in a couple of years she's going to say, because she's 12 years old.

She's going to be like, get out of your scram, Dad. I'm already getting some of that. But it's just, 90s rom-com, just the vibe of them is hilarious because they wouldn't work today. The vibe of them wouldn't work

because they would just get destroyed. So like Notting Hill, Hugh Grant works as a guy who works at a travel bookstore. All they do is he's called travel books. He's like this beautiful, charming man and he works at a travel bookstore. And while you were sleeping,

Sandra Bullock takes tickets at the subway in Chicago or whatever. And I just think it's so funny that they have like these beautiful charming people in these like whatever jobs. And it's like, no, a beautiful charming person doesn't have that job. Yeah, of course. Not a Hillis. Not a Hill is such a good movie. I'm like, man. And I, so we watched you've got mail last night too. And I've been, I had to explain my daughter, like how AOL worked and you've got mail and stuff. But Julia Roberts was so good in that movie. I was like, how did she not, how did they not carry over to her in like her 50s or something? Same with Tom Hanks.

Those two both peaked in the 90s and in the 2000s and never kept it going. I would have bet a million dollars they both would still be making like fantastic movies today. Yeah. Hard to keep it going. Anyway. Watch Michael Jackson documentary. That was fun. So my daughter went to see the movie.

I know. It's getting weird. My kids, like Logan was always asking us to print stuff. He wants us to print like Michael Jackson things from the color. And I'm like, what do we do with this? That's what I say, like, what obligation do you have as a parent to, I don't know. Anyway, on that note. Yeah.

Okay. Email us. Email us all of your 70s economic takes, always sweating them away. Don't worry. You know what I love? I love that we get emails like the, like the 70s Philly guy and the 55-year-old guy. And people are like playfully dickish to us. Yeah, they don't mind.

We don't mind either. No, they're fans, and it's, it's, it's, it's, we love it. So thank you. We appreciate it. We appreciate it. We appreciate any of course that. Animal spirits at compound news.com. We'll see you next week.

Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.cair.cair, every style, every home.