Animal Spirits Podcast - The Worst Bear Market Ever (EP.329)

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

On episode 329 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: why long-term bond yields are rising, the worst bond market sell-off in history, when good news is bad news for the economy, continued strength in the labor market, boomers are holding up the economy, Michael Lewis book review, why millennials are more prepared for retirement, and much more! Today's episode is sponsored by our friends at YCharts! Start your free trial and get 20% off your first subscription at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits-referral. Register for the Oct 18th webinar at: https://ycharts.zoom.us/webinar/register/5416962561718/WN_FbGphtSBRPmzoiIYPWiFgw Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at Whitecharts. Every quarter, Whitecharts releases a top 10 visuals resource. It's packed with data and, of course, visuals to help advisors easily communicate complex investing topics with clients or prospects. Okay, so Whitecharts is hosting a new webinar, October 18th, kind of give a deep dive into visual deck. Topics ranging from the value of long-term investments to the art of crafting the right retirement portfolio allocation, all packaged. and convenient, editable, that's a tough word to say. Editable, that does not roll off the tongue, that's right. Editable slide deck that you could easily leverage during a meeting your conversation,

which is probably the best part about visuals, is just being able to show people, explain them very easily. We have a link in the show notes to register for Whitecharts webinar to receive your own copy of the top 10 visuals for clients and prospects, slide deck. And remember, 20% off, as always, if you tell them Animal Spirit send to you and sign up for your new subscription. Welcome to Animal Spirit. 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 Riddholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholds wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I have to start the show, unfortunately, with a quick word on the events in Israel. I wrote this down because I don't want to go off the cuff. This is too important to have anything taken out of context or potentially say anything

I didn't mean to say. So here we go. All right. I know people don't come to our show for takes on such things, but it would feel callous. to not acknowledge what happened over the weekend, especially as a Jewish person who, like most Jews, lost a lot of their ancestors in the Holocaust. I know that the Israel-Palestinian thing is super complicated,

and I will not pretend to be an expert on the matter. But what those animals did, raping women, kidnapping children, and killing babies is unconscionable and should make any human being sick to their stomach, regardless of any affiliation that you might have. supporting the Palestinians and supporting what Hamas did over the weekend are two very, very different things. And to see people chanting gas the Jews and city streets and death to Jews, forgive me if that scares

me more than just a little. All right, that's all I want to say to the matter. Please emails, don't send them. I know that this is a sensitive topic, but not interested in having it back and forth on this. I think the one thing that this sort of brings up to me is just that if you're in a place where you don't have to worry about barbaric things like that happening, just count yourself lucky. It is kind of crazy that I guess if you look back at the whole human species, we're a very barbaric species at times, unfortunately, and obviously we haven't rooted all that out yet.

And it's just if you're lucky enough to not have to worry about stuff like that and you have to worry about stuff that doesn't really matter, as bad as that, I think, consider yourself lucky. Like what we talk about. Yes, yes. You're in a pretty privileged position if you don't have to worry about some of the crazy things that go on in this world. All right. No easy way to say it to the show, but that's what we're going to do.

All right. Just another reminder that myself and a lot of the folks at Red Hillsworth Management are going to be in North Carolina during the first week of November. I think it's like November 7th is the Monday through the 8th. Is that right? Yeah, that's a six. Okay. We're going to be doing

with live taping at the Compound and Friends. We're holding that at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which should be a good time. So we'll have links on the show notes if you're interested in meeting us there.

One more thing. I, along with our president, Jay Tenney, I'm going to be in Philadelphia on October. It's a Wednesday, 25th, at the Schwab Impact event. If you would like to meet up,

shoot the breeze, as I say. you know where to find us. You take the bus to Philly or the train? I'm taking the train. So I planned on, I wasn't going to do it overnight. There's no need. It's only an hour, 20 minutes. But I was going to do dinner there.

And you know what? It's opening night at the garden. So I will not be, I'll be in and out, shooting in and out. Take the 520, get to the garden at 640, walk right in. Credit to you for pivoting to the Knicks so quickly and just pretending the giant season doesn't exist. Yeah, they're dead to me. It's over. All right.

So last week, we spent a lot of time. talking about rising interest rates, and I wanted to put a little more meat on the bone there because a ton of people, we kept saying, like, we don't know why rates are rising, and a lot of people wrote in or commented and said, I know exactly why rates are rising. Here's the reason. And I think some of these theories are worth discussing. So, like, the bear's take, of course, the doomer take is, listen, debt is spiraling out of control, and our politicians are crazy and constantly causing problems, and they're holding the country hostage every 45 days with the potential for government shutdown, that has to be it.

It's the debt thing. And my rebuttal to that is, I mean, we've been, the debt thing has been going crazy forever. What all of a sudden, like, flip the switch? Colin Roche said, again, good theory. Why is the dollar index rising then? So he has a chart showing the U.S. dollar index rising. If this was the end of the U.S. empire, as we know it,

and the debt is out of control and people are losing faith, why is the dollar rising? You would expect the dollar to be crashing in that scenario. So we could dismiss that. Yeah. I also think, like, I'll only believe the debt spiraling out of control thing if and when the Fed loses control. Because the Fed sounds like they want rates to rise right now. And if I think that Jerome Powell could snap his fingers and cause rates to plummet if he said one sentence.

If he said, listen, we're going to go buy treasuries or interest rates would plummet. That's when I'd be worried if the Fed tried to bring interest rates down and they couldn't. That's when I'd say, okay, maybe it is the debt thing. and maybe people are, it is kind of out of control. Other people have said supply and demand, there's too much debt. I do think that's part of it that the Fed probably screwed up the Treasury market when they went in to buy. And the same thing with the mortgage market, they bought a bunch of bonds. And when they got out, there was this vacuum created.

That wouldn't make sense to me. How about this? Now, here's like the more Goldilocks take. Five, and you always give me a little bit of shit for poking the bears, which is kind of fair. But I think that there's also a good reason for being more optimistic this time. Like 5 to 6% nominal GDP growth, if that's what we're in, is consistent with 5% to 6% 30-year treasury yields. Look at the table I put in here. I did a blog post on this.

Average bond yields, average inflation yields, and average nominal GDP growth by decade. When inflation and growth has been higher, rates have been higher as well. Wait, hold on. Break this down again? What are we looking at? So this is average 10-year bond yields, average inflation. inflation rate and average nominal GDP growth by decade, which is kind of funny. No one ever, GDP growth is always on a real basis. It's the one thing that we always inflation adjust.

Most other things we don't inflation does. No one ever really looks at nominal yield. I get why people do it, but so in the 90s, nominal GDP growth was almost 6%. Inflation was only three, and then bond yields were averaging seven. Now bond yields were coming down then. They're going up now. Maybe that's why people don't like it as much. But Matthew Klein and his recent post at the, what what does you call it, the overshoot? The right level of interest rates at any point in time. Wait, hang on. Wait, can we just go back to your table? What's the takeaway here? The takeaway that is that if we are in a new regime of higher economic growth, then higher interest rates make sense in light of that. And it's not only bad news that rates are rising because if rates are telling us that that economic growth is going to be higher, then that's consistent.

So here's Matthew Klein. His explanation is good. He's at the right level and he uses right in quotes. I'm interested at any point in time to the extent there is such a thing is merely a reflection of the underlying economic and financial conditions where better conditions tend to correspond of higher rates. If we end up with 2% inflation, 2% real growth, and a 2% risk premium, then longer yields could be around 6%. So it seems like bad news for people who are borrowing, obviously, they have higher rates. But if those higher rates are commensurate with higher economic growth, then it actually makes sense. And I think that's probably good news. Yeah, I just think the speed at which we arrived at this, quote, right level, that's the part that's alarming. Yes, because the prices, that's the other component is the prices for so many things, especially like the biggest things you borrow for, houses and cars, have not adjusted to the new level of rates, right?

that those things aren't in line with one another. In the past, sure, rates were higher, but prices were, the level of, the ratio of prices was not as out of whack as it is now for cars and housing, which is the two biggest things people borrow for. Yeah, because prices were already, you know, putting the hurt on buyers.

And those haven't come down at all. And so interest rates, it's just making everything very difficult. Yes. But that's, if you wanted to put a positive spin on it, it would be, okay, the bond market is telling us growth is going to be higher, which we just haven't had to think about for a long time because growth has been so much. I mean, if you look at it, the nominal growth in the 2000s and 2010s was in the 4% range. What if it is 6% now and we have 3% inflation? That's a world in which higher rates should be higher. But can we handle that, I guess, is the big question. Callie Cox, regular on the show here. This is an issue. We talked about like the, the, the curve, yield curve, what did we, what did we land on?

Steepening that we're going with or uninverting? Disinverting? I would say disinverting. Steapening is good. Okay. So she shows the last times this has happened, the yield curve has steepened before, but it was only because the Fed cut rates, not the same situation right now. So I think really the bond market stuff really is kind of uncharted territory,

where every time this happened in the path when the yield curve inverted, the only thing that that made it not inverted anymore was the Fed cutting rates. And that's why I think it's so confusing right now. It is weird that the yield curve was inverted and the long it is being pushed up by, again, theories, but economic strength, higher for longer. Yes, which is, we've obviously never had that happen before, right, where the yield curve inverted and then the economy kept getting stronger. So here's another one from Fed Woge here. Normally at the end of Fed tightening cycles, bonds rally. This time has been different.

Investors had priced in and are now pricing out recession with a quick turn towards rate cuts. So this shows 95, 2000, 2018, 2006, the change in tenure yields from six months before to 12 months after a Fed rate increase. And this one is not followed script. Another theory, although I don't know why. I'm sure this is, listen, all these theories, there's probably a lot of truth, right? it's hard to like divide the pie like, no, this is the main reason and this is only a minor reason. But a definite reason why is the amount of supply in the market, the Treasury is still flooding

the market with treasuries. And buyers aren't as eager. One of the big buyers of treasuries is Japan. And now for the first time in decades, they've got a, their interest rates are going significantly higher as well. I don't know what's driving their rates higher, but my point is having the local bonds as competition for U.S. bonds, they're not buying our bonds in the same way that they once were. It is kind of funny, though, that there was more demand for bonds when they were 1% or negative.

Like, look at the, I put this one from J.P. Morgan in here. I found this, I was looking for an old blog post of mine, and I found a post from like early 2021, and it was like investing in a world with no yield, which is kind of funny now. And it shows the breakdown of, I can't remember when early 2021. developing market government bonds by yield. And look at the percentage. I think it was 30% were below zero and over 80% were below 1%. Wild.

Not that long ago. Was there like $3 trillion in negative yielding debt? It was a very high number, which is... Well, the good news is now that's only $1 trillion. Right. But that's my point is that people were clamoring for that debt now. And now it's like, well, it's a supply-demand thing. I do think that the Fed getting in there in the Treasury market really screwed up things.

When they dropped out and stopped buying bonds, I think that messed things up. So, you know, we especially you like to poke the bears, one of the things that they were saying was like the Fed is manipulating the bond market and distorting prices, which is clearly true. They were. There's just, you cannot argue with the fact that what they were doing has had massive, massive, massive ramifications for everything. Let's be honest, though. Interest rates have always, always been manipulated. In the 50s, in the 40s, the government put a cap on rates because they wanted to finance the war.

And guess what? There was huge inflation after the war, and the government still capped treasury rates so they can inflate away the debt. What does that have to do with anything? You're saying, like, look over there. No, I'm saying rates have always been manipulated. People are saying, like, oh, where's free markets? Markets were never free.

That's my point is that this stuff has always been manipulated. I think people have this idea in their head that, like, If we just let free markets take hold, everything will be better. And, like, markets have never been free. That's my point. The Fed has always controlled the short end. But I'm saying the government literally capped interest rates on the long end in the 1940s and 50s. Okay.

But yeah, but that doesn't mean that what they did over the last decade was unprecedented. Yeah. No, I agree that they probably screwed things up for sure. And I just think it's funny, though, that there was so much demand when rates were low. And you'd think it would be way more demand now that rates are higher. Well, that's what I thought. I mean, the thing that I was most wrong about, I hesitate to say in my whole career because I've been wrong about many and many things.

But I didn't see interest rates going. I didn't see the tenure going much past 3%. No, you would have assumed buyers would have stepped in because they've been so star for yield. Now, obviously, you know, had you told me inflation would do what it did, I might have thought otherwise. But anyway, yeah, I thought that if rates got to a certain level, that there was going to be a title wave of buyers, you know, like the you shall not pass, just give me all that rate. And, and again, could not possibly have been more wrong on that one. Bank of America did this thing

where they go back to like the 1800s to show how this is the worst bond bear market in history. I know people are complaining about higher rates, but it's not a general freak out like it is with the stock market. I think Meb Faber put out a tweet last week saying like long-term government bonds are down 50%. Why, if this happened to the stock market, people, people, people will be losing their minds. Why are they not doing it in bonds? Yeah, I think two things, two things. Number one is, by the, that's a great point that the, I saw somebody tweet this, that the crash in long-term bonds, it hasn't been a crash. It's just been, it's been a slow, slow bleed. It's not like there's been like a down six percent day. Right. We're talking like a three-year

slow just yeah um so whereas in the stock market you get panic because you'll get like the down eight percent days and then just people freak out you don't have that to cause freak out behavior even though the decline is measurably the same the other part of it is you know that if you hold on long enough now in this case if you if you're down 55 percent you're going to be waiting uh you know i don't know 10 years whatever it is you will get your money back these are these are treasuries after all. Now, I'm not saying the losses aren't real until you sell. That's obviously not what I'm saying. But you know that at this point, you're in a better position than you were, it's easy to say 50% ago. I don't even sound like, you know, trite here. But that's the reality of it.

The other thing is that not every bond investor is invested in long-term bonds. And here's a thing, you had an escape hatch. If you had the, because I know a lot of investors thought like long-term bonds are the best hedge. When the stock market goes down, people rush into long-term bonds, and they are great, a great hedge. And so a lot of people had long-term bonds as, like, their safe part of their portfolio, even they're more volatile. You had an escape hatch with 3% T-bill rates and 4% T-bill rates, and then 5% T-bill rates. So if you have stayed in long-term bonds this whole time, you're down 50%,

like you have no one else to blame but yourself because you had a better alternative with higher yields and less volatility that you could have gone into. So I think that's part of it is not everyone who is invested in fixed income, most of them are not invested solely in long-term bonds. True. That's a good point. That's a really good point. It's not like TLT is 60% of anybody's portfolio. Like when you're in the stock market, sure, there's defensive sectors that hold up better, but the stock market crashes. Everyone feels that pain. You had an out in fixed income. I think that's true. Also, your retirement is riding on stocks in a different way than it is

long-term government bonds. So just different. I made the point last week that I just, I've never been a fan of investing in long-term bonds. And that was like a painful thing when long-term bonds were in this, you know, long, long, bold market, but they've always been way too volatile for me to have it make sense to be in a portfolio when you already own stocks. Yep. Yep, fair enough. All right, Jeremy Schwartz, with a good threat, do rising treasury yields make stocks unattractive and too expensive? I mean, this is the crux of it, right? Like, everything prices off of interest rates, mortgages, credit cards, stock market. Jeremy says the nominal equity risk premium comparing earnings yields to the 10-year treasury yield

is at its lowest level in about 20 years. And the earnings yield is just the inverse of the PE. So that's what that is. However, stocks are real assets. So the more appropriate comparison is versus tips. Jeremy then says tips yield surging past 2.25% for the 10-year are providing some real alternatives. But even, okay. Sorry, let me just fast forward.

Okay, a 5% earnings zealed would double purchasing power in 14 years. A 3% equity versus tips is consistent with long-term 3% edge of stocks versus bonds. So I bungled the shit out of this. But the point, we'll put this in the show notes. But the point is that if you compare the equity risk premium using real rates, stocks do not appear dramatically expensive. Now here's the thing. if you are a dumer person and you're saying inflation is going to be higher, you should be buying

tips hand over fist right now. Tips are the real yield on tips of 2 to 3% is not only an amazing relative deal for the past 15 years or whatever, like relative to history of tips, which only goes back to like the mid-1990s, this is like an insane buying opportunity for tips if I've ever seen one. You know what doesn't feel like happened over the last three years, although according to this chart from back of America, it did happen. value is outperformed. Now, I don't know.

So they're showing the value versus... They're showing value versus growth through your annualized return. And they said value wins again in the shift to a 5% world. Does it feel like value stocks have outperformed over the last three years? No, because it felt like you had an 18-month window

where they did and then it just reverted. I'm looking... I'm doing the Russell 1,000 growth and value right now. So three years. Yeah, okay. Over three years, the Russell 1,000 value is up 30%. The Russell 1,000 gross is up 24%. I would not have, if you would have bet me on that one, I would have lost.

So not dramatic, but this is over three years, definitely not nothing. And if you look at, let's say, if you look at small value versus small growth, that's where the spread is. So over the last three years, over the last three years, small values up 31%. Small growth is down five and a half percent. I mean, I know that we've mashed together kind of a bubble with a bear market, but three-year returns of up 30 percent

is considering everything that's been thrown at us is pretty darn good in the stock market, correct? Damn good. If you measure that against all the headlines and all the economic data and everything has been going on interest rates rising the Fed being so aggressive and you got 30% over the past three years that's a that's a pretty good deal damn good deal uh all right let's talk about the labor market last last week was very odd we had soft data out of ADP think estimates uh actual came in

it like almost just barely half over half the estimates they were expecting to see like 150,000 jobs created private payrolls and it was 80 something like that and then you guys at non-informed payrolls on Friday, doubled expectations. Blewed out of the water. With inflation, wages, not really rising that fast. And look at, but look at this, though. So wages, we're working on about, I don't know, four months' worth of wages rising faster than inflation, though.

I really like this one that shows when wages are rising faster and when inflation is rising faster. And so, yeah, wage growth is coming in, but it's still above inflation, which I think think is pretty good news. Heather Long... Wait, Ben, that's a good point. We spent so much time. And when I say, way, I mean, people that read headlines and I guess us to a certain extent, lamenting the fact that interest, that, yeah, wage gains were happening, but not as quickly as price increases. And now we're going the other direction. And it's not like anybody's really celebrating

it. Yeah, no one really cares. Heather Long did the zoom out. 2.7 million more people are employed now versus a year ago. Wage growth a year ago was 5.1% now it's 4.2. Inflation was 8.2% now. Now it's 3.7. She said almost no one predicted this good news story, which is true. So Jason Furman also, who's been relatively bearish on the economy, said like this could actually be quite good, this employment report. So I want to talk about finance brain when it comes to economic data like this, because the jobs report numbers were on the news on Friday at her house, and my wife goes, wait a minute, that sounds like pretty good news to me. right? And I said, yeah, that's a good news. More people have jobs and, like, the labor market

remains very strong. She's like, so she's an occasional listener to the show. And she said, well, if this is good news and you say inflation is coming down, why are you and Michael talking recessions last week? And honestly, I was like, well, because the economy's doing good, so the Fed's going to have to raise rates, and that could be bad. It's like, if you take the finance brain element out of it and you just looked at this on the face value, you say, wages are rising faster than the inflation rate. The labor market remains very strong. Unemployment rate remains very low. Economic growth is as high as has been since like the 90s. That sounds like all good to me. And then the finance brain has to come in and say, no, no, actually that's bad because

it means the Fed's going to have to throw it some recession or something. If you look, you know, you know what I'm saying? It's like, I had a hard time explaining it to her. Like, no, the good news is actually bad news. That's how you have to think about it. Well, because, honey, the market is forward booking. So, like on Friday, when we got that number and futures were lower, I thought to myself, you know what, I'd rather the stock market go down on good news, on good economic news and anticipation of rates stay higher for longer, then markets rally because we get a bomb of a report and the Fed is going to back off. And then what happened? The numbers were good. The stock market sold off and then it came back. It was like, good news is good news for an afternoon.

But you agree? Bad news being good news. Who roots for that? Right. I am sympathetic to the fact that so many people have been, like, so many economics people have been saying, why are people so unhappy? And we've talked about all these reasons for a while now. We've, we've, like, dissected it a million different ways. CNN had this piece and it says, here's why the shockingly good job support is going to cost you. And it talks about, and it's all doom and gloom and bad news. And this person says we should never cheer a bad job market, but a job market that has remained this healthy for this long, really. isn't excellent news for average Americans struggling to pay their bills. And again, getting back to the inflation piece of the thing. I don't think people at this point, it's been going on for so long. No one wants to view. I'm sorry, fuck off with this headline. Seriously. Right? It's really, it's like that that's just, I don't see the news for this stuff. This is, please click on my article because that's how I get paid. Yes. This is the stuff where it's like, yes, there are legitimate reasons why people

haven't been celebrating the economy, but like trying to like take good. actual good news, and then spin it so it's bad is, I can't stand that. Maybe people are nervous because we keep saying a recession is coming, and that's giving them angst. How about that? Yes. Well, yeah, people have been talking about it for 24 months now, 18 months. All right, just back to the job support. So remember this chart that we spoke a lot about in 21 and 22, that the best way to get a raise was to change your job, right? So they showed the change in annual pay versus job savers, I'm sorry, job stayers versus job changers. And those are, so the job changers wage growth has completely rolled over and job

steers as well. So the average hourly earnings was up 0.2% month over month. That's lowest in at least a year, and down to 4.15% year over year. The spread that it got to, that was crazy that at one point you were getting 15% or 16% wage growth for people who are changing jobs. Yeah, pretty wild. This article from the journal about older people spending, I thought was really interesting. And another example of you see the headlines, you think about interest rates, why aren't they impacting spending, why aren't they impacting the economy, you probably wouldn't have

thought that there are more older people relative to the population than there ever have been before. So 65 years are older. It's 17.7% of the population. It was 13% to 2010. So it's the highest on record going back to 1920. Okay. And their behavior has changed dramatically post-COVID. A lot more of them are retired. A lot more of them are saying, you know what? I've spent my entire life saving. It's now time to enjoy myself. And that is impacting consumer spending dramatically, given that they're, again, 18% of the population. And if you just looked at interesting, You never would have, you never would have thought about that. The Wall Street Journal has been all over the consumer spending stuff these past few months

and years. And this one is, yeah, it's great. The chart that shows the 65 and older share of consumer spending just going up into the right, like a long-term stock market, it's, it is crazy. So what is it? 22% of spending last year up 15% from 2010. They have a few YOLO things in here. Like, all my life, it was safe for this, save for that, said Maureen, 66 of Cape Cod,

Massachusetts. Now that there's money in the bank and I'm spending it. ways that bring me closer to my friends and family than I did before. Good. Yeah, and she said she's spending 25% more than she did in pre-pendemic. I do think there is something to that. The boomers, a lot of people probably had some friends die or, you know, my parents are getting up there in age, and they're starting to have friends get some really bad health problems. Like, all the time I hear, you know, this person has this wrong with them. And this person, we have to visit the hospital. And I think there's something to that of. Absolutely. Absolutely. The average household led by someone

age 65 and older, spent 2.7% more last year than in 2021, even adjusted for inflation. So they have the most wealth. What's the number? Like 40% of all mortgages are paid off? That's mostly boomers. They have a ton of equity in their home. They're going to spend the money and they're probably going to say, screw the kids and grandkids with their inheritance. Let's enjoy this a little bit. Most of them, some of them are, it sounds like. American cruise lines, which gears its cruises towards older consumers, said it has seen double-digit sales growth this year, driven largely by boomers. Long cruise ship thesis here?

Over the next, like, 20 years, it's going to be all boomers taking cruises. I mean, cruises have done very well this year. Here's the quote from an economist. Our large share of older consumers provides a consumption base in times like today, when job growth slows, interest rates rise, and student debt, loan repayments begin again. Is there a cruise ETF? I don't think so. Oh, wow.

Oh, there's a hotel airline cruise. Yeah, that's, oh, Jets is the ETF for airlines. So there's a crew, C-R-U-Z, which is hotel, airline, and cruise E-T-F. It's had a pretty healthy pullback. Yeah, it's up 13% year-to-date. So it's not like killing it. And these things are still, you know, it's interesting. These things are still well, well, well, below their 20, 21 highs.

Right. Right. Yeah, they got killed, right? So, let's see, Carnival, for example. Even after the rally, carnival's in an 82% drawdown. Royal is down as bad, down 33%. What's Norwegian? Norwegian is down also 73% from its hot.

Yeah, so a lot of pain in these stocks. I'm surprised that with Carnival down 80% or 90% there hasn't been some consolidation in this industry. You'd think it would make sense, right? Because all of their ports and their ships and stuff, you'd think Royal Caribbean would buy Carnival or something like that. Maybe in one, Tom, Whammergams. What the hell was his name?

Yeah. That's right. He was a head of cruises. Duncan shared this with us from last week. Do you think there was a poll 3,000 votes? Do you think the U.S. will have a recession in 2024? 63% said yes. And unfortunately, I'm in that 63%. But I'm only 51% confident. All right. I'm 63% sure that it's going to be a second half story, too. How about that? We're putting a time frame on it.

I don't know. All right. More about bonds. Eric Balchunis says the Fed Fight has transformed bond ETFs into cash incinerators. So the top three cash incinerators, meaning the money you've bought in versus the money that's been lost to investors.

Vanguard total bond market ETF, which is, I think the biggest bond market there is, the ag and then 20 plus year treasury. Based on what they've brought in for flows versus their losses are the top three cash incinerators. I've always said that Vanguard was destroying American's wealth. But the thing is, I know people always say, like, investors, the stock market is the only place where stuff goes on sale and investors run out the door.

People are running in to buy treasury bonds right now as they're crashing and yields are going higher, which I think if I'm trying to nail the bottom in long-term treasuries, again, that's not my sandbox. I don't want to play there. but the behavior of people rushing in to buy in a crash is actual rational behavior for once. Like people always say, oh, investors are the worst. They do the opposite. When they should.

This is the opposite of that. People are rushing in to buy when prices are down, which makes sense, correct? Yes. Buy when there's yields in the street. But people keep selling stocks. This surprised me. U.S. Stock Mutual and ETFs. So mutual funds and NETFs are on track to record outflows for 11 consecutive months,

the longest streak since the stretch ending in March 2020. Thoughts? Buying bonds, selling stocks. I'm going to go back and blame the boomers for this again. Fair? Like we, instead of 6040, in the last 10 years, we've overweight to 80, 20, or 70, 30. Now we're going back to. And that's actually precisely right.

I would love to have a breakdown of age in this. type of, like we did with consumer spend. But I think that's absolutely right. Remember like eggflation, beeflation? Lots of flations. A lot of flations. So UN Food and Agricultural World Food Price Index. Definitely stopped going up.

And not just like year over year. I mean, the actual level. Right. It's crashed. Prices are coming back down. Right. And this was a huge, huge spike, too. Wow, that's a surprising chart. Remember corn prices in February 22? It was corn, wheat.

Remember we talked to Sal from Tukrium about how his whole thing about agriculture was people find a way. They're going to be, like, when prices go up, farmers will plant as much on their land as they can. And I think that's probably what happened. Because remember, there's all those crazy stats of, like, the Ukraine produces 30% of the wheat in the world or whatever it is. And people are saying that there's going to be, you know, people are going to run out of bread. And the fact that we didn't have disruptions is pretty crazy. Prices went up, but then they crashed right back down. Speaking of corn, I was in a, I took the boy's pumpkin picking yesterday.

And Kobe and I went into a corn maze. I'm never doing that again. It was awful. Did he get lost? I couldn't figure out a way out. It wasn't even fun. Like, it was stressful. Just walk right through the corn.

Thought about that. But I, so I picked them. I opened, like, my Google Maps. And you could see the maze from the sky, which is kind of neat. But it wasn't precise enough. Wait, you did a Google Maps in the corn maze? Yes. It wasn't precise enough to get us out.

We were in there for like, I think, like, 50 minutes. So I was, I thought we did the pumpkin picking thing this weekend, too, and there was a corn maze. didn't do it. But all this other stuff. Smart. Yeah, we didn't do it. You could feed the ant. They had the petting zoo, and they had all this stuff.

And we have, you know, five or six of those farms around us. And it just got me thinking that it's so funny to me that this is how farms make money now through millennial parents and people who want to post pictures on Instagram and go pumpkin picking. Because we could have bought a pumpkin at our local store, right? You know, as we're walking out of the store. But, you know, you wanted to go to the pumpkin patch to do it. And all these places, these farms are doing so well, they're seemingly doing well.

because they're, like, building these new, like, these huge new restaurants and in areas and to shop and, like, they're all expanding. And it's just funny to be that. How much should your pumping and picking experience cost you? Actually, I mean, it wasn't that much. I don't know. 60 bucks for some candy apples and pumpkins. So hours was $60 to get in.

It was $15 a ticket. Oh, see, we didn't have to pay to get in. And then we had to pay, I paid $20 to get stuck in a corn maze for an hour. We spent $30 on pumpkins, pumpkins. Do you have to pay to get into the place and then pay extra for the corn maze? Oh, yeah. And then we had to pay, you know, Rob, we got like some popcorn and waters and whatnot. We've always spent the $120.

Okay. Yeah. Corn maze was free for us. But what's the number? Like in the 1800s, 80% of the labor market worked in farms. And it's just funny to me that farms now, yes, they still serve a purpose, but now it's for millennials to do something with their kids on Saturday. And that's how they're making money. All right. We talked about Michael Lewis last week. I decided, like, enough with the interviews and stuff, I just have to read the book.

So this weekend, I... You're a source guy. I read the book, and my initial takeaway is that I'm not mad, just disappointed. And I think the reason the reviews are so bad is because this could have been an awesome book. It could have been really, really good. and I honestly think that he had this idea in his mind of it's the underdog story and I'm going to the underdog story and then the stuff came to light about the fraud and I think he just couldn't he tried to put some stuff at the end about it I think he just couldn't turn it around enough and I just think that he liked him too much I think he the thing the stuff that I did get out of the book like I wouldn't recommend reading it really if you've read a lot of the stuff. I don't know if there's no, the only new stuff I really got out of it that he was

much more of like an alien than I thought. Like, he seems like he was an alien sent to Earth to learn human emotions. Right. And that's the, that's the thread that Michael Lewis almost didn't pull off on. He talked about how he realized that he had to like smile, he had to like force himself to smile. It wasn't just that he didn't have empathy. He didn't like have happiness in his life. He had to like practice smiling in the mirror. He had to like practice human emotions. And the thing to me, he could have easily been a serial killer or a person who committed fraud on this scale and like became a made of billions of dollars because he he was so robotic and that part to me was the biggest but the thing is the thread there was okay he learned how to like have

these human emotions to get people to like him because the effect of altruism stuff was all bullshit he just wanted people to like him obviously the next leap forward would have been okay that's how he committed fraud too because he he could trick people he learned how to trick people and he didn't make that leap i don't know Lewis wrote the conman toversky book and i think the, my biggest takeaway here is that human nature is just undefeated that like even studying the behavioral stuff doesn't shy you away from like your own blind spots and in human nature stuff. So it wasn't like, I didn't come away being like, Michael Lewis is a fraud, everything he did before this. I think he just is a guy who really, really likes underdog stories and he wanted to write

another one. And his character he chose was this like totally out there person. And he just, that's the story he wanted to stick with. And I think he just said, you know what, screw it. I'm sticking with the underdog story. That's what I'm, that's what I'm doing. So I didn't come away saying like Michael Lewis was in the bag for him. I think he just, he liked the guy. I think that's, I think that's as much as what happened. So I, I don't know. I would say it's like, I don't know, it wasn't like a page turn or either. It was kind of hard to get through. I'm skipping it. Thank you for that. I think it's, I wouldn't, I wouldn't read it. Okay. So I wanted a fact check a little bit from last week. We talked about how,

there's not that many homes being sold. And I said, it's more than you think. And you said, no, it's all new home. So I'm fact-checking us here because I didn't know. So I reached out to Logan Motishami on this. So I said, like, how many houses have sold? I actually found it on my charts. U.S. existing home sales for the past 12 months, that's how to read this chart. It's crashed, right? It was above $6 million for a while. But it's only back to like 2009, 2010 levels, which doesn't sound great because that's a bottom of a real estate fair market. But four million homes in the last 12 months have sold, existing homes. Are you using this chart to support the fact that people are selling homes?

Because this does not do it. Yes, but look at the next chart. U.S. single family new houses sold, 675,000. That's my point is that like there are still existing houses turning over more than new houses. So yes, it's about as low as it's been. But I don't know, 4 million out of 160 million or so households is still, there's still activity happening, even though it's way lower than it should be. Well, I brought charts, too.

All right. The mortgage purchase index, does this look like there's activity going on or not? Because this is basically, I don't know, I mean, it's, I don't know, when does this chart start? I can't really say, is this early 90s? The mortgage purchase index is basically as low as it's been over the last 30 plus years. We talked to a friend in recent weeks who works in a loan department. and it sounds like they work on commission. And like if you're in that situation, how bleak does the world seem to you?

From years and years of refinancing activity and house sales and all this stuff, because even if rates drop from seven and a half to six or five, sure, there's probably going to be some more demand. Like, there's going to be more activity in the housing market, but you're not going to get a huge flood of refinancing at that point. I think that the whole loan industry was living off of refinance activity for for years, right? And that, that, that's just not going to come back for a long, long time, maybe ever to what it was at the peak? Yeah.

Yeah, it's rough. All right. All right. So here's the something's got to give in the housing market that we talked about with inflation. So this is Lance Lambert from Black Knight. To get back to pre-pandemic housing affordability, one of the three things would have to happen. U.S. income spike 55 percent, home prices fall 35 percent, or mortgage rates fall 4 percent. So that would be get back to three and a half percent. You know, whenever you say

something has to give, no. That's when you know that nothing will give and whatever you think has to turn will not in fact turn. But out of all these three things, the only one that would make sense to me would be mortgage rates. But at that point, housing prices probably, if mortgage rates fell back to three and a half percent. Home prices gained 35 percent. Right. Yeah. So this is, yeah, something's got to give, but to your point, it's probably never going to give. Ben, a couple of weeks ago we spoke about the fact that a lot of companies are raising funds to purchase or provide liquidity to private equity funds. Jason's why tweeted, if someone asks you to define chutzpah, you no longer need to say, quote, like when a guy who killed his parents asks for clemency because he's an orphan, you can say, quote, like, private equity providing loan shark liquidity to investors in illiquid P.E. funds. Well said.

If you asked me to spell Hutzpah, not a chance. Right? But yes. I mean, the thing is, I was talking about private equity being in trouble like seven years ago. And somehow that, I think because they have the illiquidity in the really long time horizon for their funds, I think they can just kind of tread water and tread water and tread water. And you don't really see the bad stuff hat like trickles in. It's not like a stock market crash. I think they're able to push things out and push the bad news out and spread it out so much that it doesn't seem as bad as it really is in a lot of cases.

Yeah, the bad news like, you know, vintages from 2017, like they'll start coming in slowly. Right. But it takes a while. You don't see it right away. All right, here's an interesting survey from Redfin. 59% of recent homebuyers say purchasing a house is more stressful than dating. Of course it is. Who are the other 41%?

Yeah. If they had Tinder for houses, if you could just match up to a house by swiping left or right, that'd be way easier. Do you think that dating is like 10 times easier these days with the apps rather? I don't know. You know, perspective, I guess, is important here. speaking of that and real estate. I'm just glad I didn't have to go through the app dating phase.

I don't think I would have, I would have not liked that. I think I would have, I think I might have enjoyed it, even though I'm not very social. I don't know. Who's to say? Who's to say? I think if you did it, though, let's say you were single. Robin dies in a car accident, plain accident. Sorry.

Sorry, Robin. Do we put up the picture with you with your hair, though? And then you show up to date and you're bald? Is that I would play it? I'm a proud, I'm proud to be bald. I'd roll with it. That's true. I was taught, so I've spoken over the years about, uh, the way that my town is set up,

houses are on top of each other. I'm looking at my window right now. My neighbor is, I don't know if that's 15 feet. Doesn't look like it. Maybe it is. Houses are on top of each other. Everything's very densely populated here. Um, and somebody was talking to me, somebody who moved to Long Island was talking about

maybe living in this place or that place, and they went to, I think it was Jersey they were talking about. And I've thought, like, man, it would kind of be nice to have, like, more land, you know, to not have my neighbor yell at me when I light a fire in the backyard. That would be nice. But then I can, this never occurred to me until they mentioned it. They said that this place that they were looking at was a non-starter because the houses were like almost too remote.

Now, this is hardly rural areas. But your neighbor might have been, I don't know. 100 feet away from you. And if you wanted to go to the supermarket or the bagel store, you have to drive, you know, 15, 20 minutes. And it never occurred to me like, huh, yeah, I don't know if that sounds so great. I don't know. Maybe it is. I guess in the back of my mind, I always thought that that would be appealing to me. But in a weird, having like the land is in being so secluded, especially with kids, I think you want to be in like a more neighborhood setting. Yeah. Again, it just always sounded nice to me. But then when they said it, I was like,

I never even thought about that. Yeah, it is kind of nice having neighbors, even though they yell at me about my fire. You know where the best of both worlds is? We live in a neighborhood in the Midwest, but you have more room. Yeah, that's probably, that's probably the sweet spot. It's like, yeah, I would like neighbors,

but could they be like, I don't know, 20 feet away from me? Right. Do I need to have the, do I need to have the rascals, like banging on my door? Could call me a Logan play every afternoon at 4 o'clock? Probably not. Probably not. But maybe that's something nice about it.

All right, Ben, we rolled our 401k over to Fidelity. And when I say we, I mean us and our colleagues at Riddholt's wealth management. I never realized they had like the website, like my 401k.com. Something like that, right? Yeah, oh, is that it? Something 401k.com? I mean, Fidelity is the biggest 401K platform in the world, I think, right? Yeah.

If you type in 401k.com, it brings you to Fidelity. That's a pretty good get. There we go. Okay. So, I tried to log on, and it said, like, you already have a login, like create a new one or something. So I had to my social, whatever, whatever. And Mass Mutual, my former employer.

So I was like, huh, do I have a 401K for Mass Mutual? That's news to me. I don't remember making any money. So I clicked on something. I don't know, career earnings or whatever. And in 2009, I made four, not to brag. I made $4,919. And how long did you work for them for them?

The whole year? The whole year. And then in 2010, I followed it up with a banger. $253.16. So what do you have, like, $300 on a $4.1 there? Not bad. No, Ben, that was my total earnings. I know.

That was my total earnings for the year. Now, you might say, well, how the hell did you live on $4,900? Well, I didn't. I didn't. my eyeball, like my eyeball was twitching for like 10 months. I was under such stress and I don't think I really realized it. I guess it was manifesting physically with my eyeball twitching. But I worked.

So when I got, when I got, when I got, that's 100% commission job, obviously. Worse. Worse. I had to pay them. I had to pay rent. So you can imagine me. I was a balding dufous with longish. hair, slick back and balding, wearing a suit that didn't fit and shoes and a tie every day

to cold call. So how did I even like live? So when I was dismissed from college, I came home and I was a full-time waiter, like six days a week full-time. It's all I mean, I had nothing else to do. Now it wasn't a great time to be a waiter given that it was 2007 and eight. It was a recession. But it was good enough for a kid that worked six days a week. So I probably saved like, I don't know, I saved a lot of money. I worked there for like two and a half years, six days a week, like literally six days a week, because I had nothing else to do. None of my friends were home.

So I saved maybe 30 grand, maybe 40, something like that. And I lived at home. And so that's how I was able to, you know, make it work. So you were the millennial living at home. God, it was, those were not my best years, let's just say. I saw this thing in here about qualified total pay. And I was like, what is this? So those are your paychecks.

Those are my paychecks. Did you find money in the 401K? It was like $100 in it? No, there was nothing. There was nothing. There was nothing. And then, uh, anyway. All right. Is this before or after you talked about the changing your mind about the calves and the magic in the playoffs?

This was probably right before. Okay. I mean, I was definitely confident in my assertions. Man. Hey. You know, adversity and everything like that. Okay. That's true.

So the Atlantic has an article. This is the why you can never plan your career path out. like if you would have told yourself back then you're going to do this and this isn't going to work out and this isn't going to work out and this isn't going to work out but someday this is going to work out you would have said no way it is not right like all this like I had so many jobs back in the day that I just didn't get and every time I was just heartbroken like why didn't this one work out why didn't that one work out and you never realize like sometimes not getting the job you want is like the best thing that can happen dude I almost moved to San Antonio to be an internal wholesaler And the only The only reason why I didn't... Good river walk there. The only reason why I didn't go is because my mom was dying.

And if she was healthy, I would have gone to San Antonio. Can you imagine? How many of those forks in the road in your life have there been? That's like the luck stuff I'm always talking about that way. Who moves to San Antonio

to be an internal wholesaler? This asshole. Yeah. You turned to do a cowboy, maybe. Airlines are just, banks now. I'd picture myself with a cowboy boots. Yeah, I could see it. They make more money from mileage programs and from flying planes. Okay, so this is interesting. Wait, how? Listen, consumers now charge nearly 1% of US GDP to Delta's Amex card. Holy crap. So, so that's $268 billion is

1% of GDP. So $268 billion is swip on the Amex Delta card. Pretty wild. Delta obviously does not make conscious of billions of dollars in credit cards. In January, they reported, by the way, I own Delta, the stock. The company reported it received around $5.5 billion in 2022 through its Amex partnership. And there was some hemming and hauling because they tried to change like the mileage and the rewards. So Delta has... They said they're not, I saw a couple weeks ago, they're not going to let as many people into the, into the lounges anymore. It's overrun.

Whenever I flew last time, there was a line like, how? Halfway down the airport to get in there. Why would anyone want to get in there? That's why you got to go to the exclusive one. But even that, they're raising it still. So Delta reports it has 25 million active members in its Sky Miles program. 25 million. 30% of them carry Delta-affiliated credit cards.

So yeah, everyone's doing it. And now there's some sort of, not some sort of, there's people are getting pissed. So you're going really contrarian lately. You're buying Delta. You're thinking about cruise ships. You're buying utilities. I'm not buying cruise ships.

No, you're thinking about it. No, no, no, no, I have no, I have no interest in cruises, none whatsoever. You're on a contrarian play, though, here, contrarian run lately. Yeah, listen, this is why I don't bet big, because I know that my natural instincts are losing trades, right? And so for me, it's a hobby, it's a game, it's fun, it keeps me stimulated. And I love it, even though I'm not good at it, which is why every two weeks I, in my 401K, boom, and in my taxable brokerage account, boom. Speaking of 401K, by the time older, this is from Wall Street Journal, a Vanguard study says that by the time older millennials meet median retirement age, they'll be able to replace

60% of pre-retirement income with Social Security and savings from sources, including 401k and individual retirement accounts. Gen Xers and the youngest baby boomers, by contrast, are likely to a price of about half. And they say, well, why are millennials doing so much better for retirement? What changed? 4-1Ks, they became automatic. They had this guy from Kenneth Adams, 34. I wasn't thinking about retirement at all, said the Austin 10th.

Texas resident. They sent me this letter saying they were going to auto enroll me and I said, okay, I'll do what it says to do. He's increased it over time. He now puts in 12% and has an emergency fund. So the auto enrollment feature is going to save so many butts in retirement, I think, for people who have a 401k that it's, I think that's, I always talk about social security being the biggest retirement program ever. I think in the future, auto enrollment into 401ks is going to be an even bigger net positive for most workers that have it, have the ability to do. It's so funny. so dumb, right? Like,

yes. It's such a simple sort of thing. You have to opt out instead of opt in, and that saves people, right? Mass of ramifications. It's almost comedy, like, how big of a deal this was, just a simple change. It's that simple as like, take the choice out of it. Unbelievable. Last week, we had Kaplan Schweiser, sponsor the show, and we got, we actually had a decent

amount of feedback from CFA enrollees, CFA, CFA, what do we call them? Territor holders? Aspirational CFA, aspirational CFA charter holders. Oh, okay. I forget what the proper term is. Candidates. Boom. Candidates.

There you go. My God. It's fun getting old, right? You just can't think of words anymore. Just basic words. All right. Hi, Michael and Ben. Longtime listener of the pod and TCA, very timely, Ed, with Kaplan for CFA

study materials, blah, blah, blah. I'm currently waiting for level two results that are coming out in October. I passed level one December 2019, and then COVID through a big bunch of my study plans. A big part of why I started the CFA program was to switch career fields. I've switched jobs twice and we've got a, okay, fast forward four years. I'm wondering if it's even worth it if I fail level two to sit for the exam again with the advancements in AI. I think I've seen chat, GBTTS past level one. I think certifications will always hold weight, but from a more practical standpoint would be more advantageous for me to just master AI. I think there's interesting question. Now, I didn't know chat GPT has taken the CFA. I would have said prior to the

AI angle that this person is coming with that the CFA charter holder or the CFA certificate is for people that are either analysts, right, at an investment bank or portfolio managers. It is really, it's really. It's really. not for people that are looking to get into wealth management. That's not the test to get into wealth management. If you love one of those two fields and, you know, being an analyst or portfolio manager, then yeah, it's probably required. Now, to the AI part of it, I don't, I don't know that AI is going to make, you know, human analysis less valuable. I guess it probably is. That makes sense. But I would say, like, forget about the AI part of it. If you are not in love

with the idea of being an analyst at a bank or a buy side somewhere, then don't do it. Or sell side, yeah. If you want to find a job in portfolio management, getting the CFA charter hold is not going to make you a better investor, but it will make you more appealing to employer, prospective employers.

That's the way I look at it. And I don't know, if AI tools are going to be so great, like eventually everyone will use them and sure some people have better tools than others, but I don't think AI is going to help you find a job better than the CFA. Unless you can have AI right, like a good cover letter and resume for you?

I don't know. All right. One more email. Subject, prepared foods. Dear Animal Spirits, and the last show, Michael inquired into how fresh prepared foods at grocery stores were.

I'm a manager of a prepared foods department of a high-end grocer, and I think I can help answer that question. In our chef's case, which is what they call the cold, fully cooked behind the glass. Ben, you don't know about this, apparently. We have required to throw away

most foods on the sixth day. There's a lot of different kinds of prepared foods. That's all I'm saying. We are required to throw away most foods on the sixth day after it is made. In reality, we try and cook two batches a week of each item, so it usually is more like four days at the longest. Okay. At the end of the day, we would always put quality first,

and I would never sell doing... At first, I was a little sad that Ben didn't know what prepared foods are. But to be honest, I never really ate prepared foods before I worked in the industry. I'm a huge fan of the show. Here's the thing. At my grocery store, we have... There's prepared foods is there's a buffet, but there's also the meats that have been prepared and seasoned already, and then there's, like, there's four, there's four different kinds of prepared foods. I didn't know which one you're talking about. There's a buffet that's ready to go. Then there's a preferred foods that they heat up for you. And then there's the ones that already heated up. And then there's the meats that you can cook yourself that are prepared. Do you cook? I don't know if you ever, I'm guessing you don't. I'm not a cook at all. No, no way. So what do you guys cook? Does she cook or are you guys order in hers? We're more, we do more ordering out now. But. She, yeah, she's a good cook.

She can cook. Like, the kids last night wanted to make chocolate chip banana muffins. And my wife knows I do that. Yeah. That's, that's skills. She's good with, yeah, she's good with, she's good baking it too. All right, recommendations. I saw, saw 10.

Not a joke. I did it. And in the, they had a trailer for the Marvels, which is, I guess, a sequel to Miss Marvel. and I am a sucker for a trailer. It's very rare that I see a trailer that I'm like, that looks bad. You mentioned this a couple weeks ago. I would, I've said this in the past.

I would watch a channel that's all trailers, but not just new ones, historical trailers. Yeah, trailers are great. It's like two and a half minutes of the best of. So I am generally either like, eh, or that looks awesome. And rarely you see something

that looks just terrible like Aquaman. Well, I'm here to tell you that the Marvels looks maybe even worse than Aquaman. And it's really sad what's happened to Marvel and DC. I'm just out. Somebody asked me if I'm watching Loki season two. Nope.

No interest. I think they need to go smaller and just do like a Marvel rom-com. Like they need to do something where it's not the, like the world's going to come to an end. They need to go smaller. So wait, did you like Saw or not? So I made this chart of Rod Tomatoes reviews, both from the critics and the audience for Saw. And the reason why I saw Saw 10 was because it's the only saw where the critics scored it higher than a 50.

Even the first one, which is egregious. First one was great. Critics gave it a 49. So the critics gave this one like an 80. So I did see it. And Tobin Bell, who plays jigsaw, was really prominently featured in the movie. And it was, you know, it was a good saw. Was it a good movie?

Like, yeah, probably not. But was it a good saw? Yeah, I had a good time. It was hard to watch. Didn't he have cancer on like the very first movie, though? So this is a sequel between, this is supposed to be between the first and the second movie. Oh, okay. So they went backwards.

Yeah. So then I came home and I was like, you know what? Let me fire up Spiral, the Chris Rock one from last year. By the way, Saul was like, they made one. It was 2004, then 05, then 06, then 07, then 08, then 09, then 010. They made one every year for six years. I love how one of them is called the final chapter. Then they made three more. Yeah, that's pretty funny. So anyway, so I dialed up Spiral, which was with Chris Rock. Now, back when you were making $4,900 a year selling shopping. did you ever think you'd be making a bar chart of saw movies right uh what's on an hour is it fractions of a penny probably right anyway good times so i have to say and it pains me to say that

i think chris rock is is one of the worst actors i've ever seen i close my eyes he closed my eyes and it's no he doesn't even it sounds like he was reading he's horrendous And the movie was truly repugnant. They tried to make a movie star over the years. It's never really worked. The one of him for Fargo, the TV show, wasn't very good either. The only good Chris Rock role, and I don't have to fact check this, but is New Jack City. It's probably fair.

Yeah, some of the early stuff he did, it was probably the best in like the 80s and 90s. So it's Halloween season, which means that I am even more in my horror movie movie movies. than normal because on all the... It's Halloween season for you all the time. Yeah, but on the streaming channels it says like, you know, Huluene or... We watched Hocus Pocus one and two this week, I'm with the kids.

So I watched The Boogie Man, which is, you know, very skippable. Not great. But I do have a recommendation, an actual recommendation. If you like horror movies. And this is not so much horror. It's not like a slasher or anything,

but it was interesting and well done. A movie called The Empty Man. Now, I was... When I go to see it, when I see a movie like this, So Chris Ryan and Sean Fantasy were talking about it. They did like a horror movie like Oscar type thing from the last four years. And they mentioned this. So I went back and Adam Neiman did they did like an hour on this movie in 2020 when it came out.

And it sort of got swept under the rug because it was during COVID. It was like, I don't know. Very interesting movie. Worth watching. Okay. You need some sort of scale with your horror movies because I can't tell between like it's a good bad one. It's a bad bad one. No, no.

No. The empty man is like legitimately interesting. I would say, like, it's a little too long, but like 7-6. Like, eh, that might be high, 7-4. It's worth watching if you like the genre. It was interesting. There's no good new TV shows on right now at all. Nothing.

Rexom, maybe, I mean, there's nothing. So we're watching the morning show still. It's on the third season. If you would have, like, compared this when it came out to succession, you'd go, oh, this show is good. Apple's spending a ton of money. Jennifer Aniston is in it, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Correll, one of the Duplas brothers, about eight other people that you know from other stuff.

I feel like it lost momentum. It was never good for the beginning. It's always been ridiculous, but the third season has, like, gone over the top of that's ridiculous. John Hamm joined to play, like, an Elon Musk kind of guy, and I can't look away, but just the, it's hard because Billy Crotup is actually the best character, probably, and he's supposed to be the most unlikable. I like that guy. He's really good in it, but the plot lines are so ridiculous.

I was laughing out loud by the end of the last episode, but I can't stop watching. It's just, it's, it's like the most ridiculous show on TV, and I think it's one of these other things like if you've been rich and powerful for long enough like Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and some of these people who are like producing the show like I don't think you can you have enough self-awareness to be like oh wait this is ridiculous you know one day Ben people are going to say that about you you use that card a lot it's true that's why I've never been rich and powerful enough to use that card so we also rewatched last night true romance I probably haven't seen

in 20 years flawless maybe one of the best cast ever if we're talking 90s movies Christian Slater Patricia Arquette Christopher Wock and Dennis Hopper Samuel Jackson, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Michael Rappaport, Tom Seismore, James Gandalfini, Vail Kilmer, Yelkemer, Muracamus, and like seven other bad guys. Doesn't get better. It is so 90s, though. And watching it now, like, there's so much of the stuff that they said in it that they couldn't say anymore or probably wouldn't say anymore. Chris Penn? I don't know if you mentioned it. Yeah. But just like the most 90s movie of all time. And then just seeing all these actors like that you know really well playing like a five-minute role is kind of insane. Gary Oldman as like a drug. If you haven't seen true romance, like, please fix that. The funny thing is, Christian Slater is probably the least likable character of all, and he's the star of the movie. There's so many good characters in this movie. What's his name in the movie?

I can't remember. Clarence. It's Clarence in Alabama. You know what's a good show? That my wife watches the first episode with me, and then she just binges it without me, which is, I guess, fine. Love is blind. okay best reality show on tv all right i'm besides wrecks i don't watch any reality shows anymore

so but okay uh thanks to duncan as always for producing john for helping out on the videos animal spirits pot at gmail.com and we will see you next time