Animal Spirits Podcast - There Are Too Many Rich People (EP. 421)

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

On episode 421 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss a nervous stock market rally, U.S. corporate exceptionalism, how the stock market bottoms, the worst decade ever for bonds, rich people who don't feel rich, Apple vs. Meta, Bitcoin's market cap, the upper middle class is getting too crowded, private equity vs. youth sports and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Flat Rock Global. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only). Sign up at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits Flat Rock funds are available exclusively to RIAs, Family Offices, and Institutional Investors. Visit https://flatrockglobal.com/animalspirits 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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Check out Flat Rock Global. they offer three funds. Yep, one is a diversified private credit fund, Flatrock core income fund, that's C-O-F-X, as the ticker. Two, middle market CLO, double B-Notes, Flatrock Enhanced Income Fund, FRBDX, and three is the CLO Equity, Flatrock Opportunity Fund, FROPX. Flatrock funds are available exclusively to RAs, family offices, and institutional investors. Visit Flatrockglobal.com slash Animal Spirits to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, every week you and I do a lot of preparation for this show by filling a Google Doc, as regular listeners know. I don't know how many pages we have this week. 29.

Kind of like. 29. Okay. But sometimes it's just like a buffet of anecdotes and articles and charts, and it's just a jumbled mess. And we kind of just jump from topic to topic. And there's a little bit of that this week. But there's one resounding theme that I noticed as I was trying to fill the dock and refill it again this morning and put some more stuff in. And the theme is, and I think this is like one of the big trends in just household finances and maybe of the economy in general.

Hang on. We're talking recent themes? Yeah, this is a theme that's been growing. It's just there's too many rich people. I think every category we have something. And I want to sort of weave all these stories together and then at the end give a grand sort of thesis here. but that's just my takeaway from this week's trend is that everything is sort of coalescing into

there's just there's too many rich people and it's having an impact on a bunch of different ways and sectors. Can I, Daniel, you mind making a meme here? I want the meme of the guy pointing into the mirror put Ben's head on him and the caption is your middle class. Okay. That's not bad. But, right?

Go on. We'll get into this. No, I'm going to, I'm just planting the seeds here. That's where we're going. We're going to take you on that ride today on the show. And then at the end, I'm going to tie it in a nice, neat bow for you. That was a teaser, foreshadowing. I love it.

Well done. All right, here's another theme that we've been discussing. I'm going to describe this rally as a nervous rally. It doesn't feel euphoric. And as I'm saying that, I hear the voices in the back of my head. the listeners that I'm making up and the listeners that might be real, Michael, what are you talking about

a nervous rally? Are you seeing XYZ? Bitcoin, the AI bubble. I mean, you don't have to squint to find pockets of what's bigger than excess. Can such a thing exist?

Jim Kramer came out with a new acronym last night that is going to apparently take the market down. Yeah, it certainly seems like there is, if you just were looking at price, for sure, the chase is on, okay? Like last night

I took... But doesn't that always happen off the lows? The whole chase is on thing where we always get a massive bounce from a bear market, big correction. Yeah, but, but, but, but before all time highs,

you bounce and then it's like, then what, right? Like, let's see how it behaves over the next XYZ days weeks. but the market won't give back anything. We had tariff-related news on Friday, or I can't remember when, market was down for a second. The stock market can't even bother to pretend to care about tariffs anymore. Trump was talking about tariffs are back on Europe and Canada over the weekend. At 30% I think there was the story.

Futures, this was Saturday, so who knew what features were going to do, but they did nothing. Market was up yesterday. The stock market does not think those tariffs are coming. Otherwise, right, it just doesn't believe anything anymore. So I was at the movie theater last night, took Logan to see Superman and IMAX. We'll talk about it later. And in the theater, while I was in there, there was a massive, massive rainstorm. Torrential downpours, which was sorely needed because it's been humid as anything over the past couple of days.

That's a middle-aged dad comment to make. We really needed that rain. I'm going to tie it back. We did need that rain. And guess what this market needs. This market needs a little rain. The Vix is at 14. Everything's going up.

If you're not making money right now, I don't know what you're doing. And we can use a little slap on the rest. And maybe we'll get it. Or maybe we won't. So you want like a healthy 5% to 7% correction. We need it. We need it, baby. All right.

So getting back to the nervous rallies on the funny thing is, though, that the things that people think we need, like we rarely get them on time, right? Yeah. It doesn't, it really happens like that. True. You know what we could use here and that doesn't happen. So we spoke about the S-Tax index from Schwab last month. And we got an update last week, and it's more of the same, Ben. So here we go.

Stacks. I'm sacks. You always mess these things up. Every time there's an ETF or you always try to say a letter and then the word afterwards. And you always screw this up. My mom always messes up sayings. Like, you're like my mom in this. You know, like she can't ever get the saying.

I guess you're kind of like that. You're talking about K. Webb and Caleb. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Guilty starch. But what do you, what did you call it, the grain of sand instead of a grain of salt? Yeah.

Take it with a grain of sand. Yeah. Okay. All right. This is Schwab. As the S&P 500 index set new record highs in June and climbed more than 5%. Schwab clients gingerly dip their toes in the water but stayed cautious. The Schwab trading activity index S-Tax climbed for the first month after three straight declines,

but by less than 2.5%, and not much above, not much above, maze two-year lows. So, of course, we've got a rip-worn bull market and at least Schwab investors. Now, maybe Robin Hood investors are different, but Schwab investors are being ginger. I was getting ready to pull the Robin Hood chart on you and tell me that people are nervous. Well, okay. Do you know how much Robin Hood is up over the last year? 300%. 350% in the last year.

Nvidia set new highs in June, but Schwab clients sold... Robin Hood has up 127% in three months. Don't tell me, sir. I am a market... Okay. This might be news to you. There's Robin in stock. It's not news to me. I bought it the IPO. Damn it. I should have held on through that 95% crash and then I would have been made whole. All right. So, Nvidia said, you remember that when we had the whole thing and I brought the IPO? Yeah. Wait, are they bigger than, are they bigger than Coinbase yet or not? That was my other thing.

Mistakes were made. Coinbase had 100 billion. I think Robin is right. There's neck and neck. All right. Here we go, Ben. Clients... Robin was at an $88 billion market cap now. What did it go public at? $10 billion? $5 billion? $50?

Yeah, I don't know. No, no, no. Was it that? Anyway, the AI giant. So clients sold shares of the AI giant by a large margin for the second month in a row. Infotech was the biggest net sell sector on a dollar basis for the fifth month in a row. Are you listening to me? For the fifth month in a row, technology stocks were the most sold component, sold sector at Schwab, which is the second largest or largest asset

matic custodian on the planet. Okay. So it is a nervous rally with pockets of euphoria, for sure. And maybe, maybe, maybe, this is what is keeping a floor under the rally is the fact that people are just not being let back in. And that is what happens in a bull market. It doesn't let you back in. And that is why the chase is on. Because it won't let you back in. It's almost the Isaac Newton thing, too, of the people who did sell or have been selling.

And then it keeps going up. Then they go, oh, shoot, I got to get back in. Right? Isaac Newton did it with the South Sea bubble. That's what happens, too. That's why the chase happens because, you know what? I'm up 40% in seven weeks. Take some money off the table here.

Yeah. And then for the next two months, it goes up again, and you go, oh, crap, I got to get back in now. Yeah. I can't wait. Yeah. All right, Ben, this is another theme on the show that we've been talking about, not recently, but forever, about how we need more people in the stock market. I mentioned listening to Bernie and Rogan last week and a lot of IR cast on our corporate overlords. Get in the stock market people.

And I know our listeners are in the stock market. So this is, you know, I'm preaching to the choir. But it's for the shareholders, okay? And we need more people participating in the stock market. So S&P Dow Jones indices for the 12 months ending June 2025, the net dividend rate, this is not just the increased by $44 billion. I had chart go at Matt make us a chart of total buybacks and total dividends. So what are these greedy corporations doing for their shareholders?

I'll tell you. over the last 12 months, they have returned $1.67 trillion in the form of buybacks and dividends to their shareholders. $1.67 trillion. Get involved, people. So I saw, I completely agree, obviously. I saw, I saw, I saw, I thought you were taking the other side of this. Yeah.

Leave the stock market alone, people. But I saw someone the other day trying to say, like, this is the lowest S&P 500. dividend yield since 1999. And we know what that meant, right? That was, but you can't look at the dividend yield anymore as a meaningful indicator of anything because there are just more buybacks than dividends. You have to add these together for the buyback yield. You can't compare dividend yields now to the past because buybacks are a form of dividend. They're basically the same thing, just in a more tax-efficient manner. All right, speaking of owning stocks, and I completely agree, why try to fight the corporations who you know are really good at making profits in becoming more

efficient over time, just own them. So Sam, Sam Rowe pulled this from Savita at Bank of America, and she says the U.S. isn't exceptional, but corporate America might be. Corporates have either adopted or dropped out of index. Moreover, productivity gains have kicked in since COVID, necessitated by the onset of labor inflation. They show productivity going back to the mid-1980s, and it just keeps going up into the right, much like the stock market, give and take here and there. But I totally agree with her that, and I think I've been trying to make this point for a while. a lot of things about America that's not exceptional anymore. Our politicians are not

exceptional by any means. Think about the politicians we had in the past. Teddy Roosevelt and FDR and JFK and some of these people, Abraham Lincoln, and you go like, these people were like superheroes walking amongst us. We do not have that anymore. Also, can you imagine if Teddy Roosevelt was on social

media? He might have upset a few people. By the way, in the exceptional category, you forgot to mention movies. That, well, yes, not exceptional anymore, right? Still exceptional. No, no. I told you there's not many aides.

But I agree with this. Our corporations in the stock market are like the one thing that we're probably most exceptional on that besides spending money. Can I pat myself in the back if you allow me? Thank you. One of the earliest articles I wrote pushing back against the Cape Crusaders. And it's probably not around anymore that old article because your old tumble, Tumblr account got taken over by an Indian porn bot, and they had to get rid of it.

That's a true story. Should we tell that story real quick? Because people are like, what are you talking about? So our friend Phil Perlman, who I love dearly, had a huge impact on my life and Ben's life. And now we're all, you know, because he got us. He introduced the two of us together. Did he? Mm-hmm.

Our first dinner together in New York, Phil made it happen. Oh, no kidding. Do you remember where it was? I don't know. All the New York restaurants. All right. So this is what year are we talking about, 2014? Phil told me to, so Phil was at Yahoo and Yahoo had bought Tumblr, which was like the substack of its day.

And they had this great idea where if you put the cash tag in, like AAPL, your article would feed into the Apple feed. So anybody that was searching Apple, there's like the news stories, your article would be there. Boy, did Yahoo drop the ball on that one. They could have, oh my God, mismanaged to say the least. Anyhow, I was, so Phil encouraged me to write more, to which I owe him a great debt of gratitude, which, for which I can never repay. Love you, Phil. And one day I was in Barry's office and I get back to my office and I see a million DMs from people that don't northerly DM me. I'm not a, I mean, that's a lot. And I'm like, whoa, what is this? And so what happened was

my Tumblr got hacked by some sort of porn account. And I'm not talking for professional porn. These were amateurs at best, quite graphic photos. And so every, and it was updating every three seconds tagging Apple and Microsoft. And so the Yahoo servers got attacked by a porn bot, a Michael Battening porn bot. And then I got an email from the editor. I'm like, dude, this isn't me. Okay.

What do you want me to do? And you had to like lose your blog, basically. You do something. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the, that shut it down for me. Anyway, oh, so the post that I wrote, the post that I wrote, which was not on Tumblr, we could still find it. Probably, we're talking 2015, 2016, maybe. I said one of the reasons why companies are earning the valuations that they are these days is the revenue per employee. And I compared, I believe it was Facebook, to the first billion dollar corporation, which was U.S. Steel.

And U.S. Steel was earning, you know, $1.40 per employee in revenue. And Facebook was like, you know, 37 bucks or something loony. Michael Sembless has 20 years of eye on the market. And he did this retrospective where he looked at some of his most important charts and calls over the years. And the one that you and I have talked about the most, I think, that I just wanted to highlight again is just the fact that the stock market bottoms before anything else. And he did this great thing where he went back to the Great Depression. And he showed like bank failures versus the Dow. And the Dow turned up way before bank failures stopped, and he looked at European equities in the 2010 crisis, bottoming way before the unemployment rate.

And all these different, the financial crisis with defaults and savings and loans crisis with high yield spreads and all these different examples. It's a great run of charts. And then he did this other chart that it's got all these different symbols on it. It looks a little bit like the Illuminati, you know, like the stuff you've seen in a dollar bill. but he did all of these things and he shows when these things happen from the beginning of the recession and all these different financial crises

and how stocks are almost always the very first thing to go. And he was saying, this is one of the biggest lessons that I've learned over the years is just that stocks start to move before the news ever does. And this is one of the hardest parts

about calling the bottom. Because even in the last, in April, I don't know, I mean, the news didn't get completely better, right? You had one or two headlines of Trump saying, hey, maybe I'll back off, but there was still a lot of uncertainty when that the stock market bottom. Same thing in 2022 with inflation. Also, also, a corollary of this is also makes it difficult to call the top. Because now that we know this lesson, we are very quick to say, like, we're very quick to suggest

that the stock market is always all knowing and forward looking. And while it is true during all of the bare markets, the market goes first, it's not always true. Like the market has predicted in the last three recessions, whatever the line is. And this is a feather in the cap for technicals because the fundamentals, they just don't help you. If you are of the, if you are inclined to time the market, you can't do it with fundamentals. Because to say that they're backwards looking is an understanding.

Yeah, you could still be getting good news at the top. It could just be less good news. And you go, wait, why is the market rolling over? This is still pretty, they're still growing. Yeah. At 15%, just not 20. Charted Matt at Exhibit A has consensus earning expectations. for S&P 500.

And look at this thing just continues to go up into the right. This is something. So obviously no one believes tariffs are going to be as high as anyone's.

Like that is just people have completely just ignored that at all. Like the whole, A, we're going to do 30% tariffs on like that. Nobody cares. Right?

It honestly does. It seems like that. All right, here's a piece that I wrote this week. I thought this was kind of interesting. I looked at, I think 2020s are the worst decade ever for

bonds so far. So I decided to kind of test this theory. Because someone wrote me like, hey, I've owned TLT for the last 20 years or something. And I've been getting just slaughtered this. So I decided to look at this. And I looked at nominal returns by decades. So I did this for five-year treasuries, 10-year treasuries, and long-term treasuries, which is like 20-plus year. Because I think there was a few years in there where like 30-year treasuries went away. And anyway, 20-plus years. And on a nominal basis, you can see these are some of the worst returns. But you have to look at this on a real basis because the 70s and the nominal returns were pretty good. So I did this on a real basis.

And you look at this, the crazy thing is, is that real returns for bonds were negative, like basically the 40s through the 70s. But look at how bad real returns are this decade. There's not another decade that comes close to being as bad as this. And so my question was, why aren't more fixed income investors freaking out about this? Is it just because... I mean, you know the answer, right? Yeah, I do know the answer. It was a rhetorical question.

yields are higher now. People went into T-bills to hide. I mean, if you sat through a 50% drawdown in TLT, and the thing is, TLT is still, it's been down 40% since October 2020. Well, I don't, but I don't think you touch on the answer.

I think the answer is, it's the stock market. Well. The stock market is glossing over a lot of the paid in the bond market. That's true, but I think part of it is, too, that just you see higher yields now,

so you don't care as much. Right? So it's like, okay, yeah, that happened, but now yields are four or five So it's fine going forward. And also, I just think, I think if you didn't move some of your money into T bills or short-term treasuries, then you just weren't paying attention when those yields were much higher.

I'm just trying to play this, like the, think about if the stock market had fallen 50%. And three years later, it was still down 40%. Yeah. That's TLT. Yeah. And obviously, well, you can hold bonds and maturity. And these are long-dated assets that pension funds and insurance companies use. and it's still, it's kind of wild to think about the fact that, like, this, this really has been

the worst bond market that we've ever seen ever. Yeah. Yeah. Good observation. You're absolutely right. Ben, during COVID and in the aftermath, there was, there was a lot of turmoil in the job market. Good turmoil, I guess, because it was the first time, in a long time, that it was labor over capital. Remember all those fast food signs we were showing all the time?

Yeah. The best way to get. an hour at McDonald's, holy cow. The best way to get a job, the best way to get a raise was to switch jobs. And that was the big thing, right? It was like sticky wage inflation. And if that continued to rise at the pace that it did, then we were in for a world of pain. And it's come down dramatically.

Now, obviously, if you do the cumulative effect, it's still not nothing. but this is heading in the right direction. It's funny that you think this is heading in the right direction because a lot of people would say, no, the other thing was good news. This is bad news. But from like an economic market perspective, you think this is good?

No, 8% wage growth is not healthy. I don't know. Some people would disagree with you. No, I don't think so. Because the people that were the recipient of 8% are job switchers, probably on the bottom half of income. and those are the people that are most disproportionately hit by higher inflation.

Yeah, but they got, they had the best, best inflation-adjusted income gains, too. You think the bottom 50% are thrilled with their economic situation looking backwards? Are they ever? I'm just saying they got the biggest real inflation-adjusted income gains of any cohort. True, but we know it doesn't matter because people don't think in real terms. they think in sandwich terms. That's true. I'm just saying if you're looking at this,

I agree with you. Unemotionally. Unemotionally. The Fed chair and economists would say, this is a good thing. All right. Wage inflation is going down. Most normal people would go,

this is a bad thing. I want my wages to continue to go up by a higher percentage. Yeah, but the human being knows this is not the lowest. You're financing brainness. Okay. Mike So I'm not financing brain this. This is real shit.

You are. I would rather see people earn more money. How's that? I think that's a good thing. Dude. This country is upside down because of inflation. What are you talking about? It doesn't matter that people got real wage gains.

They're still paying $14 for a Chipotle label. But that you just said it. They got real wage gains. That's inflation adjusted. It doesn't matter. It doesn't to their psyche. Right. And so that's everything.

That's the only thing that matters. Matters how people feel. That's it. That's the only thing that matters. Okay. We're not going to relitigate this. All right, this is the chart from Mike Sicardi. Household leverage.

Liabilities to net worth is the lowest has been in 50 years. This goes back to 1960 from J.P. Morgan. This is kind of unbelievable. So we had a huge, everyone levered up to the hilt heading into the Great Transfer Crisis. Obviously, you can kind of see why that happened. But now that households have repaired their balance sheets to a degree, which brings us back to 1970s levels or something,

like this is the whole thing. Even if we have a downturn in the coming years, households have the ability to lever up if they need to. Is this the 1937 analog? Where does 1937 bet it on to this chart? I just... Is it still 1937?

Yeah, it ended in 2015 and it started again in 2020. This is just it to me. And this is why I just betting against the U.S. consumer, like, I would need to be given a very, very good reason. And I have an anecdote here.

In my neighborhood, you don't have this a lot in Long Island because a lot of your houses are just built in, I don't know, the 50s and 60s, probably. But in my neighborhood, it's relatively new and a lot of three car garages. And I'll be taking my, I take my dog for a walk all the time. I have a zero car garage. Not that I'm complaining, but we don't have garage.

That's right. You have a big muddrum. This is the trade-off you've made. You know, the jackass who built my house, built a garage so narrow that you can't fit a car in there. You could probably fit a toy truck in there. Well, definitely not a big truck, right? So my point I'm trying to make is, I've seen three car garages and people have the

garage is open where they're doing stuff in the summer. especially, where they have so much stuff that they can literally fit one car into a three-car garage. Yeah. Because their stuff just surrounds it. And this is what you're up against if you're betting against the U.S. economy. People who have three-car garages full of so much stuff that they would rather park their car or a truck in the driveway than, like, have less stuff. Right? All right.

This is my first foray into this. I teased at the beginning, rich people who don't feel rich. I wrote a blog post about this as one. I had a guy who reached out and said, all right, I'm going to get a lot of heat for this on Twitter, but I'm going to share anyway. And so he shares all of his stats, and he gives me all his money.

And he said he makes a base of 300. He's got all these different bonuses. I have a quarterly bonus, an annual bonus. He must be a software salesman or something because it's all kinds of bonuses. But he says him and his wife make like 600 grand. And he walks all his expenses. He's got really high student loans.

They pay like $5,000. but he gives me his mortgages, car payment, utilities, gym, apps, food. What stands out in here? All this stuff. Well, he pays $500 a year for a bug guy. He has a dog, but here's the thing. He also has a rental mortgage. He owns a rental house, and he pays a property manager for that.

So he says, listen, I make $600K a year. I have a rental property, and then I put away like $60,000 a year between investment accounts. You can see how it feels tight, even as I approach $600K because of my wife's in my student loans, and we have five kids. Five kids, obviously. Bro, you're saving $62,000 a year in investment accounts. That's the thing.

So I think... This person's doing great. I understand they might not feel like Donald Trump, but $62,000 a year in investment accounts. Yeah, plus he owns a rental property. So I think that's the idea that I think people had this... So this is the one that got me. So he said, every year I do my own tree maintenance, chemicals, long care, pesticides, mulching, and that's a decent lump sum.

I think maybe there's this idea that, like, the lifestyles of the rich and famous that, like, once you hit a certain point, like, you just pay somebody to do everything for you. And that's not really realistic. Listen, if you own, I think the core, if you own another house, whether it be a vacation property or rental house, like, you're, you're wealthy. If you have the ability to own two properties. Yeah, this person has money.

Wait, but he talked about doing his own stuff, and I just wanted to bring this back to myself, because that's what I like. do here. Of course. Um, listen, as a man of the people, uh, I don't have a big mudroom like you. So we realized like our mudroom is way too small and it as opposed to like trying to reconfigure me to do it. We decided to get like a locker set for our, because our kids support stuff is just out of control, right? The shoes and the cleats and the bags and backpacks and coats and everything. So I got some lockers on Wayfair. And I probably could have just paid the wayfar. I don't know what you pay them to assemble it for you. But it's these huge

lockers. You know that all they look, right? In one for each kid we have. three kids. So my dumb ass is in the garage last night because we're going to put them in our garage because we don't have enough room in our mudroom. And I'm putting it together, you know, with an Allen wrench and a screwdriver for these huge things. And I'm sweating my ass off because it's 90 degrees out. And I'm in the garage. And sometimes there's tradeoffs in life where you have to do some stuff yourself. You can't pay somebody to put together a wayfair chest. That's beyond the pale. Right? You just have to do it and suck it up. It took me forever to open the box and put everything up and sometimes you just have to do stuff yourself.

And today I feel like I have like a, I don't know what the, you know, carpal tunnel or something from doing turning stuff, but, um, can I say something on the, on the, on the rich people stuff? Yeah. It depends where you live. I feel like that's the thing on the, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's response to that from so many people. We're always talking past each other, $600,000 in one place, you could live like a king and 600,000 dollars in another place.

you could, it just depends. Yeah, everything is relative, right? It's a lot of money wherever you live, okay? Let's be real. It is. But relatively speaking, it might not be. And that's a reality of life. So here's one that I will give people that,

and sometimes maybe you and I are too harsh on people that, like, make a lot of money, and it is good to see both sides. But I think there is a certain level you reach where you get that level, and it feels like you're getting screwed. So Bloomberg did this thing. They did an analysis of financial aid data from 50s, selective colleges. So they're looking at some really good schools here. And they show that in many cases, middle-class families making between $100 and $300, earn too much to qualify for meaningful aid, but too

little to afford college out of pocket. They said the squeeze starts at $150K when families are expected to fork over 20% for tuition. At 270K of income, families are expected to pay about $61,000 a year. Most schools cut off financial aid at about $400,000 of year of income. And they have this graph here, it shows. And so you can think if you're whatever, however you want to say upper class or right next upper class, like if you just hit that level and then you get no help at all, because below those levels, you get a ton of help. Like the average discount for college from the sticker price, Ron Lieber did this, is like 50%. No one pays sticker except for like international students and rich people. And if you are just at that threshold of being rich but

not like super rich, I'm sure I can see going, geez, I'm getting hosed here. So I think I'm actually very empathetic to people with money and the realities that having money is expensive, right? Like, I'm, I don't, I like, I love, I love, it's a funny way to put it. Having money is expensive. It is. It's true. It is. I love success. I celebrate it. I don't begrudge these people. However, I don't want to hear any complaining. We under, that's the thing. Yeah, like, nobody wants to hear that shit. Because this pals and compare, whatever problems these people have, pails and compares, anybody with, with $60,000 household income would trade their problems for their problems. So I don't want to hear it. But I understand. You can't, like, act like a victim.

Yeah, I totally understand. You can say, like, listen, it's not as good as people think it is, but you can't say like... Keep that shit to yourself. Yes. That's my... Yes, that's the point. All right. I just want to shut this out.

My jet ski insurance went down by $105. You must be a good jet ski driver, huh? That's a lot, no? That's not bad. All right, so I threw this... What's a depreciation schedule on a jet ski? I top-tick the shit on my jet ski. What does that mean?

I bought out the very peak of the market. I can get a new jet ski now for what I still owe on my four-year-old jet ski. Oh, because there was like a shortage of supply. Yeah. Happens. Yeah, whatever. Okay. So here's a math problem that I asked chat Chabit to solve for me.

I said if $4 million represents 5,000 percent growth of X, what is X? And now I'm thinking it might be like, well, if you could just do this into chat, GBT. How is anybody to learn anything? Right? And it spelled out the equation and how you do it in very simple CFA-like terms and magic. This is the stuff I can't wait for my kids. When they have a question, I want to help them through it, but I also want to like put it into this and have them show the steps. But so that's the thing. Like there's a lot of like, remember the show, are you smarter than a fifth grader? Right. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff where like you might know the answer, but like solving for it and learning and like teaching is really difficult.

is magic. I really do think AI tutors are going to be like a huge, huge help to young children. Especially people who can't, families who can't afford a tutor or don't have time. The parents don't have time to help their kids. I think it's going to be wonderful for those people.

All right, let's talk about the whole pay package thing. You talked a little bit about this, but I feel like the resounding conclusion already from everyone in the tech field is just, Listen, Facebook is going to win. They're spending the most on AI engineers. All the good AI engineers are going there. Mark Zuckerberg is cutthroat.

He's going to win at all costs. And Apple is screwed. Do you agree that that's kind of the consensus now? Yes. And I feel like people are making conclusions way, way too far in advance and way too soon. Listen, would I, would I, are the better odds on this happening? Yes. I'm, I'm just thinking through the human nature aspect of this, of, of,

what happens to all the other employees at Facebook that go, wait a minute, you're paying these 12 people this much money and we're our department's getting a fraction of that? Like, are we sure this is going to go? Like, remember those super teams, the NFL? Remember that one year the Eagles got like 10 pro bowlers in the agency? Oh, yeah, the Sean Jackson, Michael Vick team?

Those guys. Is there a chance that something like this happens at Facebook where it's like, hey, we assembled the dream team, but everyone has different agendas, and they've already made a bunch of money, and is there a human nature component where this just goes wrong? No.

That's all I'm trying to consider. You think, no, it's... I mean, these people are robots, it's fine. Perhaps, but where are they going to go? They're still getting the best pay package of meta. But is giving someone the best pay package really the... I don't know. That's a question I'm asking.

The other thing is, I'm just... No one's giving up the smartphone for your Apple smartphone, right? And the AI has to get to you somehow. Mm-hmm. why is Apple still not the best way to do it in some form? Maybe they're not going to extract as much value as they did from, like, the app store. But even if Apple's behind an AI, I think pouring the dirt in their grave seems a little premature.

That's all that I'm saying here. All right. I think that people are jumping to conclusions before anything has happened yet. My naive opinion on the situation from things that I read is that Apple corporate culture is just nothing like these other companies. they are set in their ways. It's very rigid. They're not innovative. They're not fun.

So it's hard to pour dirt on the grave of the greatest company of all time that has a three and a half trillion dollar market cap. That's all I'm saying. But they're not. I mean, history would tell you this happens all the time. Yeah, but they're not growing. They haven't grown for years and they're not, it doesn't look like they're in the game at all.

So the only reason why you would say it's premature to pour dirt on their grave is just to be a contrarian. because there's no signal that they're doing anything. Fair, but who has made the best hardware of the last 30 years for everything? Yeah. The AirPods. Hardware's not the game anymore.

But you're going to need to deliver the AI through good hardware. And by the way, their only growth channel is software. But isn't, I mean, maybe that you just say, hey, like the hardware is the commodity. It doesn't matter. But somehow, in the transition period, the AI is going to have to be delivered to us somehow. If you're going to have your own AI assistant, you're going to need the hardware for it.

Well, if Johnny Ivan, Sam Altman unveil something that is as mind-breaking as they might be working on, then it might be time to worry about Apple. But, yeah, no, listen, they're fine. All right. So, Visual Capitalist did this thing, like, what are people asking chat GPT? And nearly one-third is software development questions. It's interesting. They said the biggest gainer, though, is economics, finance, and tax.

up by more than three times in the past year. And then the second ones are like AI learning and history. And so I'm sure if you compared this to Google, this is a way more highbrow level of what people are looking for from this thing. It's just interesting to think about the stuff that people are asking. It's like it's not the junky stuff that you ask Google. But the funny thing is, most people probably ask more junky stuff than they do highbrow stuff. The average person, sure.

Yeah, right? all right um jensen wang was on msnbc on morning joe i don't know if you saw any of this uh interview he did this whole thing on ai and just how listen the people who use ai are going to be the ones that that thrive he said it's not like it's not likely that you lose a job to AI you're going to lose a job to somebody who uses AI and you probably say like oh that's what the guy who's developing AI would say um but i i just think that and i think you're on the i think you're on the team like AI is going to steal everyone's job and we're all going to be doing nothing. What?

A little bit. That's kind of your corner. Dude, that's not a little bit. AI is going to steal everyone's job and we're all, that's, no, I'm not. AI is going to steal your girl. So, but here's the thing. I keep thinking about all this stuff that we've gotten in the past 20 years or whatever, 25, 30 years that has made us way more productive and way more efficient.

Internet, email, Zoom calls, smartphones. All this stuff has made us way more. efficient than we ever could have been before. And it all it does is make us work more, right? It hasn't made us work less at all. Exactly. Because now there's so much more time, there's so much more time to work now. This is what AI is going to do. It's going to be steps that you take with AI that you never would have taken before. Like, people are going to be checking every single email, every single presentation, every, like, dude, it's great for my ADD. I love it. Give me more. But I just, the AI is going to do

the same thing. It's just going to, it's going to make us more efficient and it's also going to make us work more. Good. I love work. That's my conclusion. All right. Let's go on a crypto. What do you got here?

All right. A few things. Bitcoin is $2 trillion. Does anyone care? I mean, I know some people care deeply, but. I feel like we've kind of moved down from the market cap thing of it. It's kind of, so you did this chart here. It's kind of crazy that Bitcoin is the same market cap as silver.

Right? It's bigger than levered loans. it is probably going to pass U.S. small cap equity. It's $2.4 trillion, small caps are $3 trillion. I consider it like one of the big tech stocks. Like once all those companies started hitting trillion dollars, people stopped worrying and caring about their market caps, right? Yeah, when they hit a big round number

and Nvidia hit $4 trillion, we celebrated or yay, fun. But I feel like people don't care as much as they used to. When Apple hit a trillion dollars, it was enormous news. Yeah. And then you get used to it. I feel like maybe that's how's happened to Bitcoin. That's also crazy, though, that CryptoX Bitcoin is $1.4 trillion. I just keep coming back to the idea that so many people, even in crypto, thought, well, Bitcoin's not the thing.

It's everything else. But Bitcoin really is the thing. Why can't there just be another Bitcoin? It was like a dumb thing people said. Yeah, I'll just make another one. Yeah. So we talk a lot about, and Balchunis is the go-out of this and his team, about showing the data with IBID and all of the other crypto ETFs, and I think they're about to hit

$100 billion, which is wild. There's just, there's still a lot of demand for Bitcoin, and it's not just coming from ETFs. Bitwise has a chart showing corporate Bitcoin adoption, quarterly Bitcoin holdings up into the right, and of course, most of this is strategy, but there's others. Mara has... But this is the thing that you can... This is the innovation Michael Saylor did, is he got other companies to do this.

Like him doing it, got other companies to do it, and in turn, increased the demand for Bitcoin. Yeah. Like, you and I saw him in Miami, speaking at Future Proof. Yeah. And some of the things he said were legitimately insane. And Bapasani was interviewing him. And it's like, it sounds like a person, they pulled off the street to talk about crypto. But so the stuff that he says sometimes sounds so insane and crazy.

But what he's done, he has pulled forward demand. in Bitcoin by getting people to copy him. I don't know. I wrote it this a year ago, six months ago. He, yes, he sounds crazy. And maybe he is crazy, but he's hardly stupid. He called his shot. This is what I wrote. He called his shot. He leveraged literally the volatility of Bitcoin as a feature to create this escape velocity and this flywheel effect for issuing more shares, more velocity, more options, more demand, and it fucking worked, and it continues to work.

And I am definitely not saying that it is going to work forever. I don't own the stock. But there is and continues to be a whole lot more demand than supply for Bitcoin. And I don't know what changes that. The story of crypto from its infancy is just that the narrative behind it and what it will be able to do is constantly changing and evolve. and never exactly right, but the belief in it is the thing that always stays true. So it's like the narrative and like it's going to do this and it's going to do that and

we're going to do this with it. And even if these things don't come true, as long as people keep believing, then that, the narrative behind it doesn't matter. I'll tell you one thing. We got a lot more emails about Bitcoin when it hit $60,000 than when it hit $120,000. I don't think we've got to say, in fact, oh, no, we got one. We got one email about Bitcoin over the last couple of weeks. you're right it it's just the shock value of it has worn off and now people are just used to it a little right it's it's crazy anyway sign of the times gray scale filed to go public uh and you and i i don't know if it's dropping next week had a very good call call with david laval at grayscale who was very

involved in in pushing the case to convert to the et f and i don't know that i was super duper excited to have that conversation, only because I was like, well, we've spoken about Bitcoin before, like, all right, guess we're doing it again. And it was very good. He was a very, very good guest. Your back-handed compliment to most of our talker-book guests is, I thought this was going to be boring, but it wasn't. Good on you.

All right, let's talk about real estate. Back to there being so many rich people. So I'm not going to lie. I like perusing the real estate section of Wall Street Journal. And they show these, like, opulent houses. And it's just fun to, so they showed that Paul Newman and Joe Ann Woodward's, It was Manhattan home sold, and it was a one-bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park. Look at the views of this place.

It is just wild to see how, like, people with, not like the millionaire next door live, but like people with money live. Like it is. This is money, money. But it was interesting, reading the article, it was interesting that it wasn't even really that this used to be Paul Newman's place. People just wanted, you know, but it's a, so they said, 3,000 square feet, one bedroom. It was listed for nine, sold for 14, 40% above asking. But then they asked the guy, like, the realtor who did this, he said, listen, if you were fine with having a fantastic one better, you were never going to find a better one than this.

What was crazy to us was how deep the market was. The irony he said was that the week of the showing took place, the weather in New York was terrible. It was raining every single day like monsoons. It was the worst time ever to launch something like this. It just shows that none of it matters. Dude, there are so many people with money that will never have kids for which a one bedroom like this is highly desirable.

And I don't know how many there are, but there's a lot. So, but his, the thing that was interesting to me was he, this is a person that I'm sure deals in only rich people listings like this. And he was surprised at how many rich people showed up to buy this place. So it feels to me like this rich people cycle will never end. But I don't know. It feels that way. It feels that way.

We know it will at some point, but it's, for now, it feels like. I mean, every cycle feels like this. Like, this cycle will never end. Obviously, well, all right, good one from Business Insider here about baby boomers dominating the housing market. They own roughly $20 trillion worth of real estate or 41% of the country's total value, despite accounting for a fifth of the population. Millennials, by contrast, make up slightly larger percentage of the population,

but own $10 trillion or 20%. So they're gaining. But then they talk about, like, what's going to happen when boomers eventually die or give up there? And it's saying, remember we got the email from the guy a few weeks ago saying about the basis? Like, his parents did not want to sell their $4 million San Diego place because when they die and pass it along, you get up that step-up basis. So the kids don't have to eat the capital gains taxes. So they say between 2025 and 2035, the number of boomers are projected to decline by 23 percent, or almost 16 million people. And then the next 10 years, 2035 to 2045, it jobs by another 47% or 23 million people.

So obviously, Father Time will have its say here. But they also said a lot of the kids who are inheriting these houses are like, oh, God, I don't want this house. It needs all this work or upkeep because the parents have been living in it forever. I just think the next 10, 15, 20 years of this transitional phase is going to be a very interesting time in the real estate market. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of rehabs for sale, I think, in the coming years. No doubt. Or millennials who got boxed out of the housing market will just live in their parents' house.

Yeah. Like, we've never gone through a transition like this before. I'm just curious how it's going to play out because I don't know. I mean, I guess my, I think my take is, I haven't thought deeply about this. It's going to happen at a glacial pace. Yeah. Boomers will be done. It's not going to be all at once.

Boomers will be done for 25 years. Yeah. True. Maybe we need to build. But think about, do you notice all the senior living places that go up all the time? There's a lot. We went to the July 4th parade a few weeks ago. And there was like four senior living places in the 4th of July parade.

Like advertising? Yeah. Yeah. All right, survey of the week. We spoke about the drug surveys last week. And Ben astutely called out that it was complete BS. Somebody emailed us. I was in middle school in the early 80s, not to brag, but I'm old.

I distinctly remember a survey about drug use that we took every day. year, I think, to support Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign. My friends and I laughed about how we just said yes. We did every single drug, every single day on every single question. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, PCP, crack, uppers down, his blues, reds, et cetera. We had no idea what these drugs were, but boy, did we do all of it? That's what you do when you are a 12-year-old boy and little old lady tells you no. Surveys are bullshit, especially surveys and middle schoolers.

That's what my friends and I used to do, but I feel like kids these days wouldn't do that because they're worried that people are going to, it's online, so someone's going to actually read it and bust them or something. Yeah. sticking with the people are rich, and this is really not that topic, but it's just people, you know, there's just a lot of money out there. Prime Day. U.S. retailers drove $24.1 billion in online spent from Tuesday through Friday, up 30% from 2012, and there's some funkiness with like it was a four-day week. But either way, like even if you strip that out, people

have spent a lot of money on Prime Day. I feel like we have Prime Day once a month. It happens all the time. It does feel like. It has to happen multiple times a year. It's not just one year. Did you buy anything on Prime Day? I did. I came on what I bought. We buy something on Amazon every day, so probably. That's true. All right, somebody sent this to me. The FedEx guy knows me now. I came out to get my wayfar stuff yesterday out of the back of this truck.

Hey, it was on me. Great to see you. Yeah, one of those. And being a man of the people, guess what? I helped him get the heavy boxes off of the truck. You said that twice now. Are you, like, saying that I'm not a man of the people? That's what it feels like. No, we've always had this push and pull.

I mean, were you ever a cabana boy, a bus boy? A waiter. My first job, I was a bus boy. Were you ever a... I was a bank teller. Bank teller. That's not a minute of people. I worked with my hand, sir, for years.

Don't tell me. I had to count the money with hand by hand. Somebody sent this to us. It's a reel on Instagram. Steve is a first-time buyer. Got approved. Zero dollars down. He bought a...

I think it's a two-year-old. old BMW. I don't know what this is. Is that a three series? Of course, I can't tell. It's not even new? No. $986 a month for 84 months. That's a screaming deal. And it's going to break down. Could you imagine? By 36, by month 36, that thing's breaking down and he's going to have like a $7,000. And the dude who's the dude who's accounted is, is the broker, of course. And he's like flexing for this kid. Like, no money down. Oh. All right.

Well, this poor bastard is going to spend $83,000 just on car payments to say nothing of repairs and maintenance, $83,000 for a two-year-old mid-sized small BMW. I went to Audi this week, by the way. Needed my first oil change? God, those freaking thieves. Unbelievable. You're going to spend more on your Audi than this guy did on his BMW. They're like, all right, it's your first year check.

up, we've got the oil change, the duster, the pollen, the fluid breaks. I'm like, all right, how much is it? $1,44. I'm like, could you please break that down for me? Yeah, it's $340 for the oil change. I'm like, just do the oil change. You know, as a theme of the man doing his own stuff, I went to get my old change for my wife and there's like an internal filter.

And they showed me how they took it out and then they took it out. Hey, they show you it's dirty. You know, hey, you need one of the other? I'm like, yeah, fine. But then they, oh, we don't have any in stock. Come back in a week. And I just put it in an Amazon and bought the thing myself for $12. And guess what? I installed the filter myself.

That is good for you. Good for you. I mean, her car's probably going to blow up because I put it in it backwards or something, but I did it. And then they tried to get me out like, oh, you're a car, your tire. I'm like, you know, don't even tell me how much. I don't want to do it. No, the answer is no. Thank you. All right. Speaking of, let's not speaking of nothing.

It's just a lazy transition. Travel. All right. There we go. We're talking travel, Ben. There was, it's just so funny of fast things change. how decimated Delta and all the airline stocks were in the first quarter as Europeans and foreigners were not coming to the country.

So, all right, I guess that's over now. Today, and there's so much money out there. That's from the email, not from us. Don't you think that the sentiment stuff is just people are willing to change their minds on stuff so fast? Like, think about coming out of the presidential election. Everyone said, New York is going way more conservative. And then immediately, they're going to vote in a first.

socialist mayor. Like, you can't trust people on anything they say anymore. Sure. Right? I don't even trust you. Me neither. I received an alert from the airline. Would I volunteer to take the 230 flight instead of the 1245 flight?

I selected a bid of $600, which was the max on the app, and thought, let's see what happens. No problem for me. I can do a little work. When I got to the gate, the agent told me she could offer me $2,100. Jeez. I didn't ask any questions and asked to sign immediately. $2,100 to take a flight that's three hours later.

Wow. Imagine being a single person. And you'd take that every time, wouldn't you? I'm sure I told the story about when I was in Chicago how my flight got delayed, we debaward, whatever. It's no big deal. I am not one of these people credit to me that Hems and Hall is about these things.

I mean, listen, sometimes it could be a huge pain in the ass, especially if you're stuck on the airplane. But having a little delay, assuming that you're not in the airplane, just go to a lounge, do some work. No big deal. Speaking of lounge. Well, I guess you should say, okay, if you're with your kids, it's a big deal.

So I will qualify that. Yes. Having a delay with your kids is that's terrifying. Our very own Nick Majuli today Had a piece And I think he pulled this from his new book The Wealth Ladder a little bit of it He said the death of the Amex Lounge

Why the upper middle class isn't special anymore This is really good stuff Getting back to our themes First of all he calls out your Bahamar place He says My Bahamara place Yeah you've sold it to a lot of people He says maybe too many people

He says I was told Bahamara was a place to go It's an expensive resort That has a water park casino And lots of dining options The only problem There isn't enough space for everyone to enjoy everything If you don't book ahead, good luck getting a reservation at one of their prized restaurants. If you don't wake up early, forget about getting a chair by the pool.

Picture it. You're one of the nicest resorts in one of the most prize vacation destinations in the world, and there are literal millionaires scrambling to get pool chairs at 8 a.m. What the hell is going on? Nick said, I'll tell you, the upper middle class is getting too big. There are too many people who are millionaires and multimillionaires and simply isn't enough space to accommodate them. Why do you think the Amix lounge is a zoo?

He's right. There's too many rich people. So he says since 2007, the median network, of a U.S. household has increased from 173,000 to 193,000, up 11% after inflation. But among the top 10%, it went from 1.3 to 1.9 million, a 49% surge. This is why it doesn't feel special to be wealthy anymore, because there are more wealthy people. And this is why people who are objectively rich don't feel rich. Well, because, yeah, they live in neighborhoods where everyone's doing everything that they're

doing. And it's fucking expensive to do with everything that everyone else is doing. And you go, I have this, sure. they have that. I don't have that. And that's the thing that screws with your head. That happens at every level of the income scale. Yes. At every level. That's the thing. It never stops. Yeah. But even like even people without money, there's there's people within the people without money group that are the rich people in that group. Yes. You're right. Yes. It's it never ends. And you can make the case. I'm not saying that anybody would go down, but just in a vacuum that people there are happier, relatively speaking, than a small fish and a big pond that

can't afford to keep up. Oh, definitely. I told this story before. I think I wrote about one of my books. We went on a canoe trip in college, the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan. And the guy who ran the canoe, he lived in a trailer park or in the little trailer next to the river with his wife and newborn daughter. And didn't make a lot of money. He drove people with their canoes from one end of the river to the next in his bus, and one of my friends got to talking to him. And I was like, you seem to live a pretty simple life out here, you know? And like I said, yeah, I run a canoe business. I don't make a lot of money. It's basically enough to put food on the table. But I don't want for much, and we're happy out here. And I still remember, like,

my friend was blown away by this, wanting to go in like investment banking or something. And like, he's like, maybe I should, maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. And I was too young and naive and stupid to, like, have it even compartmentalized, but there's probably some truth in it. Like, I'm out of the rat race. I'm just out of it. Yeah. All right.

Sticking with this theme, which you, Ben, were right to point out. Wisenthal tweeted, shake shack says it's due by chocolate shake is the most expensive milkshake that's ever sold, and that it's had lines around the block of people waiting to get it. Okay. Remember Pulp Fiction? That's a $5 shake. How much is this thing?

It's $9. Okay. At Shake Check, too, at a fast food place. We had a listener of the show, send me some Dubai chocolate because I mentioned that my son is really into the Burj Khalifa. So he sent us this Burj Khalifa thing and then some Dubai chocolate, which I didn't really know was a thing. But kids tried it. They liked it. Not bad.

Did you try it? Yeah, I think it was okay. More wealthy stuff. Youth sports are a $40 billion business. Private equity is taking notice. So they talk about how Josh Harris and David Blitzer, and Harris says, I think he's the founder of Apollo. Is that right? Yeah.

So you're not quite there yet, right? But they're talking about, listen, they're buying a baseball camps and flag football fields and youth sports leagues. And they're creating a collection of youth sports properties. And they say that the youth sports industry, again, it's $40 billion. By comparison, movies grossed last year, $9 billion. So just saying that this is a huge, and obviously it's kind of an apples to orange. oranges. You're not quite there yet. And this is something that I've had many conversations about because I have both daughters in travel soccer. My daughter is also on, my oldest daughter

is also in a travel basketball team. So I complain about this, but I'm hypocrite because we do it too. But it's one of those things where they, if you have your kid in the YMCA rec league and you go, oh, like, they're one of the better players on the team, but are they being held back because the other kids aren't very good and the competition's not good? And then, all right, let's go up to the big leagues. And then you go, oh, wait a minute. My kid's not the best. best player anymore. Now they're on like an All-Star team. And then it's like, oh, well, you need to get them trainers. That's why. So then we have people who have individual trainers for their kids because, well, my kid's going to play in college someday. The Joneses or whatever it is in youth sports

is off the charts. Yeah, I can't imagine. It's, and I understand, because there's not enough facilities for them to do this stuff. So buying this stuff, I always say, like, I want to buy some farmland and build a big warehouse for volleyball, basketball, soccer. indoor tournaments, because parents would pay for it. That's a great business. It is. You're never going to have a lack of people. Yeah.

All right, Ben. We were talking. I was talking with John. John was in Big John, our producer was in the Bahamas. And something came up about that time that I applied to be a central banker. And this is how good my life was going in 2010. So I found the Google chat. I found it.

And we're going to read the story. I haven't even read this, okay? I literally copy and paste and I wanted to do it blind with you. So I'm going to be me and you be my friend, okay? Okay. All right. I heard back from the Bermuda. This is true, by the way.

This is a line for line. I heard back from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. They asked me what position specifically I am inquiring about. I looked and I'm completely unqualified, but who knows? Whatever it is, it's worth a shot. Is that the person you met with the other day? No, it's in Bermuda. Oh. Oh, do you mean like the central banker Bermuda? I believe so.

Ha, ha, that's awesome. Yeah, pretty funny. Who knows? Worth a shot. I thought for a sec that Michael Batnik is out of me. Oh, I thought for a second of that maybe it was a main bank there that has branches here. I saw it in the financial times. There was a position for a hundred K tax free. So I thought I'd shoot a resume. Never going to happen, but hypothetically, if the job was right, I would go. And I'll visit you on the Sandy Beaches.

L.O.L. So how did you, how did the quasi-launch interview the other day go? He had some good advice, by no means, an interview, but he said he might be able to introduce me to a few heads. Yeah, that didn't happen. None of that happened. Did not introduce me to anybody. So, wait, you actually had a meeting with someone from the Bermuda? No, no, no.

No, that was just, I was flailing hard. Can you imagine me, a central banker in Bermuda? What would you have done, first day? We're cutting rates. Let's get everybody around the Miami Vice. We're going to double the Miami Vices on the island. I'm going to fix this island real quick. All right.

I don't know how this happened, but my TV downstairs isn't working again. I don't know if it's the wall or what. Remember my line of the TV, which I still use, but I still use the line of the TV. Now there's two lines. I don't care. not buying anything. I'm finishing my coffee. All right.

So my TV downstairs, this is a Sony TV, and it just won't turn off. And so I unplugged it and plugged it back in, and it turned on. And now I can't get it to turn on or off. It's just, well,

it's just off. I bought a new remote. Guess what? TV has been on for four days downstairs? I don't miss it. I think I'm just going to... My son has broken like 12 remotes of her, so I'm...

But I don't know it's a remote thing. I don't know what to do. And I think, I mean, at this point, I mean, at some point, I'm going to have to do something. You need a new TV, yeah. TVs are so cheap today. Just buy a new one. I don't want to. I've just decided I'm out of the buying nice TV game because you get a new one every three years anyway because something like this happens.

So I'm just not buying the nice high, I'm buying the lower quality ones now. I don't care. So I did that for the boys in their playroom. The problem with like the cheap TVs is it's the speed. Like the apps just don't work as quickly. And they degrade so fast. So I think that you're right In terms of like picture quality

You know, whatever They're all fine I think it's like a software issue Buy a new TV man I don't want to Do it I mean I'm sure I'm going to have to But anyway

What do you got this week, Ben? Recommendations All right Listen to Andy Sandberg On Good Hang with Amy Poehler Continue my streak of Listening to just the initial episodes Of a new celebrity podcast

Because they always get their best guests their friends in the first like six months and then it trails off. I'm a huge Andy Sandberg guy. He seems kind of guy who's always in a good mood. Well, he's done TV for a while and he still does, he has a podcast and he does a lot of different stuff.

But he was talking about how, from the point that he was eight years old, he wanted to be on Saturday Live. Now is the dream of this from eight years old. And I think, gosh, my twins are eight years old. They don't know what they want to do tomorrow. And I wonder if that's because you and I were both late bloomers. Like we weren't the kind of kids who, we weren't

reading the Wall Street Journal in our dorm room in college or something, right? I bloomed when I was approximately 29 years old. Yeah, we were both late bloomers, for sure. And I wonder what's better. Like, deciding from an early age, I'm going to do this and then getting it or, or like, becoming a late bloomer. I guess there's probably pros and cons for each. Right.

But it just got me thinking, like, my kids have no, my kids are eight. They have, what do you kids doing? They got to get their act together. I have no ambition. But he talked about, he talked about lazy Saturday, or lazy Sunday. it was the first viral YouTube video ever pretty much from SNL and his and I still remember to this day

getting the email from my friend being like you have to watch this and I gotta be honest I didn't get it like it wasn't funny to me I thought his other stuff like that one for whatever reason and it's still probably one of the most biggest

most well-known viral videos but I always liked dick in a box of course but I'm on a boat and I told you to listen to that on your boat didn't I when you got it but I still there was a friend in Chicago

the week after that came out, who rented a boat in Chicago and just played that song obnoxiously on a loop all day. Like, that's a joke? Yeah, one of those ones, like, you can't tell if it's a joke on it. Have you seen F1 yet? No, I have not. What are you doing? The kids are going to camp the first week of August.

Then I'm going to see a bunch of movies. So I was in the theater last night, and I was just with Logan, just two of us, at a giant screen. I'm just like, this is the best. I love being in the movie theater. That is your safe space. right? It's your happy place.

But you got to see F1 in the theater. I think you could skip everything else. Like, I will. I can't, yeah. Everything else can be seen. Give me your Superman. I still got more, but give me your Superman. No, you could finish. Okay.

Somehow my son got into Forrest Gump and he watched like three times in the span of a week. Tough move, yeah. What about, what do you do? Did you fast forward? We had to fast forward a few scenes, yeah. But I was thinking if Forrest Gump was released today,

because when it came out, it was just beloved by everyone. Oh, the best. And it still. There were some, like, people that tried to Zag and Forrest Gump, get out of here. But I feel like if it came out today, because it's a movie that you, if you wanted to,

you could nitpick a lot of it. I feel like it would get nitpicked to death if it came out today. Whereas in the 90s and it came out, people were just like, oh, this is great. I haven't seen it in a long time. I don't think I need to. Honestly, it's still, it still gives you like the goosebumps. Like, it still pulls you in. I'm like, ah, this, it probably didn't age well, and it still works.

And my son absolutely loved it. Finally, one more. This is a dumb one. I thought I got movies mixed up. My daughter and I are still seeing. all the sports movies, which shout out to our friends at Benchmarks here. I think Alex Morris pulled this up. I mentioned that my daughter and I loved watching Miracle. And one of the guys from the team, OC, works at U.S. Benchmark Series ETFs, right? FM. Investments. And they sent us

to sign Jersey. I just got to the mail yesterday. Awesome. Like made my daughter's year. She thought it was the coolest. I scored some big time cool points there. So that was signed USA jersey. We're going to get that framed. I can't wait. So, it recommended heavyweights to us after all these sports movies being watching. And I thought it was Little Giants. I got those two mixed up. Oh, I love Little Giants.

Heavywates is a comedy, no? Yeah. Do you know who wrote it? Ben Stiller? So Ben Stiller basically plays himself a little lighter version of himself in Dodgeball in this movie. This was his... Dwight Goodman. Initial Foray.

He basically played the same character as Dodgeball in this movie. I can't believe you're out on Dodgeball. It makes no sense. But this movie, Ben Stiller was pretty funny. The movie itself was terrible. Not funny at all. all. My daughter still kind of liked it. Judd Apatow wrote this movie. Oh, get out. It's a movie about a bunch of overweight kids who go to fat camp in a summer, which again, this movie would

never be made today. No. Because it would be body shaming stuff. But I couldn't believe it said written by Judd Apatow. And it was not funny at all. There was a fat camp by me. It was called Camp Shame. Seriously. Seriously. And Goldberg from The Mighty Ducks went there. Oh, he was in heavyweights. Oh, of course he was. So he actually. He went to that camp in real life. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I just thought another movie that never would be made today. It was terrible.

Are you super dry on shows because I am and I don't mind it? Super dry? Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. We just finished a Wrexham again. I'm still in on that show. What do you fix it?

Welcome to Rexum. What is it? What's it called? Welcome to Rexum, the Ryan Reynolds soccer one. Roundback ony. Okay. So I watched, I watched Jaws 2 because I listened to the rewatchables and it was so funny. Chris Ryan and Simmons were just

Not Ryan Fantasy We're having a great time Like literally belly laughing Talking about the movie So I fired it up And I forgot that I saw it I saw it when I was very young

And it completely blacked out of my brain Because it was so bad But I remember Like when I got to the end And did you see Josh 2 ever? Long, long time It's been 30 years So do you remember the scene at the end

Where Shider has the the metal electric pole and Jaws bites down in it and blows it up. So I remembered that part of it. So I saw it. I don't know if I was nine years old. I had no memory of it. But then I rewatch Jaws.

It's the 50th anniversary. Jaws still plays. I watched that last summer again. Okay. So they're actually doing a re-release in IMAX, which I thought about saying, but I'm not going to now that I just saw it this week. And it's amazing how good Jaws is, was and is,

considering that it was, you know, the first summer blockbuster in 1975 and how terrible Jaws 2 was. I'm trying to think of a... It's because Spielberg made it. Yeah, of course. I'm trying to think of a parallel, like in modern times,

like just an iconic movie followed by a sequel that was inexplicably disastrous. Yeah, especially like that. I mean, they had to do the money grab for it, but you're right. I'm sure it exists, but unbelievable. Yeah. Jaws still works.

Yeah, big time. Big time. Okay, so Superman, I was, I'm not a huge Superman guy. I'm not a big D.C. guy, to be honest. And I wasn't super duper looking forward to this movie, but it was a ton of fun. Okay. Like, it totally worked. It was, I was glued to the screen.

It didn't drag. We saw it at 7 o'clock and Logan sat up through the whole time. He liked it? Did he like it? Loved it. So, like, it's not the dark night by any stretch of imagination, but it was, it was really good. And there's been a lot of really bad Superman movies. So this rocks.

If you have kids, I highly recommend it. When I get to the theater, this is what I do. I get a small popcorn, no better, watch my weight. And I finish it probably, well, depending on when I walk in, I finish it in the coming attractions. I start the popcorn and then I finish it. See, I always tell my kids, they can't have any of their stuff until the movie starts. Okay.

Don't touch it until the movie starts. So I'm probably, I don't know, how long to take to finish a bag of popcorn? Five minutes, five, six minutes. Boom, gone. I asked Logan if he wanted some. He said no. You like Tom Cruise? And I have popcorn all over the place.

I get up and there's a bag of popcorn underneath me on the seats. So in the middle of the movie, Logan told me, asked me for popcorn. And I said, it's, wait, popcorn. Finish it an hour ago. He's like, no, I want popcorn. So I'm like, dude, do you really want popcorn? He said, yes. So I left mid-movie to get a bag of popcorn.

And I came back. Now, we're at an IMAX, okay? And I come back and it is one of, it's a light scene. So it's, it's the theater is fully lit up. Okay, you could see everybody. And I trip up the stairs. Like three steps in front of Logan and the popcorn flies everywhere. And, uh, I laughed because what else do you do?

It was funny. Did everyone in the theater laugh? I don't think so. No. No. I would have laughed. Didn't play. I would have laughed here.

So half the, so I, I, I, I, I, I, there was half a bag left. Uh, anyway, Superman. Good moving. Smooth move. All right. CF one, damn it. It's the only one I want to see. I will.

Trust me. Thank you. You didn't make a hard enough sale when you gave me your review. So now I, I'm, I'm, we're definitely going to see it. Okay. All right. You can, you can give us an update on your housing situation next week. Okay.

Our minds would like to know. Oh, my God. An hour 13 on only 29 pages. We're getting very chatty, you and I. Getting very chatting. Sorry, Duncan. Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you, everyone, for listening.

Thank you, Duncan, and the whole production team. We'll be back next week. Enjoy the weekend. Oh, go.