Animal Spirits Podcast - There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett (EP.411)

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

On episode 411 of Animal Spirits, ⁠Michael Batnick⁠ and ⁠Ben Carlson⁠ discuss Warren Buffett's legacy, no one can guess where the market is going, a 9 day win streak for stocks, Americans love to buy the dip, the next recession is going to be wild, Wall Street is very bearish, retail is bullish, Bitcoin didn't decouple yet, a housing market slowdown, the benefits of drinking and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Fabric By Gerber Life  get 20% off your initial YCharts subscription by visiting: ⁠⁠https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family by visiting: http://meetfabric.com/SPIRITS Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠[e-mail]⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to by Y-Charts. Ben, you know what's not easy? What's that? Turning something that's qualitative, like feelings, into something quantitative. That's like the whole wealth management business, right? That's true. But I'm talking specifically about how do we quantify your ability to take risk? White Charts did that.

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And I didn't know if I needed to have another one. Guess what? I ran through the fabric app for getting a review, and it literally took me seven minutes to go through the whole process. What are all your measurables? What's your health history? All this stuff. 57, 175.

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Britholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spurts with Michael and Ben. I'm going to be doing some throat clearing on this episode. Forgive me, I've got a little something. You're a throat clearer. Yeah, I've got allergy stuff. I had to go see a doctor about it even.

Really? I have a septum issue. I've always had it, yes. So they had to give me medicine for it. So on Friday night. yeah on Friday I said man I'm having a horrible allergy attack I'm allergic to pollen and all you know the seasonal stuff but then I lay down at night I was really feeling it

and I got some nose driftage I said this doesn't feel like allergies it feels like a cold you know what this story sucks let me just stop let me just stop the story you do you do get sick a lot though do I don't think you're just okay it seems like you're sick all the time Robin thinks I get sick all the time she is the most Robin is very she's a great wife I'm in Boston tonight.

She allowed me to go to the Nickyam. But she has no sympathy for me when I get sick. She doesn't want to hear it, which is fair, because I'm a big giant baby when I get sick. I feel like when you're an adult, you don't deserve sympathy for being sick. If you just have a cold, you don't deserve sympathy from anyone.

No, I don't want sympathy. I just want her to acknowledge. Yeah, you're sick. She doesn't care. My wife always gets mad to me for showing a lack of sympathy, too. But I don't want any when I'm sick. Like, when you're adult, you just have to, like, when you're the kids,

you have to weigh down them handed foot and you have to be very nice and, oh, I'm so sorry, you're sick, but when you're adult, like, you don't get sympathy from anyone. You have to power through. So, over the weekend, I took advantage of Berkshire's annual meeting to take a walk during Logan's T-ball game. Using an excuse, got us to the Buffet. It was five hours long, at least on the quarter app, it was five hours long.

Half of that was a break. I mean, a kid's tea ball game is about that long. Baseball is the most brutal sport as a parent, don't you think? That's not great. So, but I got through three and a half hours of it. So I got, I think I think I got the most of it. Did you listen to it? I didn't.

Are you, you're a CliffsNotes guy. You don't, you're not a Buffett guy. I did the Cliff Notes. I did the Cliffs online. Everyone was sharing. And it seemed like a victory lap kind of thing. It was funny how some people were like, whoa, Buffett's stepping down. I don't know.

Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean victory like having to think? What do you mean? Just like it was a victory lap just for his whole career. People were celebrating. It was, I thought it was very, it was very nice. You know, people were sharing the, his compounded gain of like 5.5. million percent or whatever it is, which is just absolutely insane.

It is kind of like when someone's grandparent dies and they're like 92, you don't, it's not like shocking. It's like, oh, they were 92 and they died. Yeah. Can I, can I, uh, I feel like I should take the mic. No offense. I put him three and a half hours. You did not.

So have it. I did pull some quotes, but have at it. Thank you. To me, well, there's so many big takeaways. I don't want to say the biggest one. I just have some notes. He's so sharp at age 95. It is absolutely insane.

The recall, the math, the fact that he took nothing but live questions, like off the dome, unprepared. A matter of fact, one of the live questions had me dying. Somebody asked, it had to be a Chicago guy. Like, hey, you bought Portillo's, the hot dog stand, right? They do roast beef, too, I guess. Roast beef, yeah. Amazing roast beef.

The Italian beef there was amazing. And so Buffett was like. I do like hot dogs, but I don't think we own that one. And I immediately Googled it. And it says Portillo's, I said, who owns Portillo's Hot Dog? And it's owned by Berkshire Partners, which is a private equity firm based on a welfare. Oh, that's right. And I'm thinking like, that guy definitely went to the meeting, telling all his bro, is like, I'm going to get it.

I'm going to find out why he bought our hot dogs. Oh, that's tough. If he gets to the mic and then that's the question he asks. Yeah. That's tough. But it was so funny. Even the way Buffett answered, he's like, I don't, he's like, I know most of our companies.

I know we own a lot, but I don't think we own that one. I don't know that one. Turns out they don't own that one. It is kind of amazing. Him and Munger both lived, so Munger was, what, 98 when he died or something? 99. And Buffett is, yeah, 94, 95. And he talked about how he drinks like five Cherry Cokes a day and he's still fine, which

is obviously a little bit of a survivorship bias. But so I think the longevity piece is he talked about, well, it may be happier people live longer or something. I buy that. It's such a DNA role of the dice, though, don't you think? Yes. So I've been talking with Phil about, like, health and taking care of myself and stuff. I'm, like, so conflicted because, yeah, I probably enjoy food and booze a little bit too much.

But I do feel like it's so much DNA. You know, like, obviously, there are things that you could do at the margin to make yourself healthier. But I feel like your fate is preordained. You're just rolling the dice, huh? I don't know. Not, not, the dice has been cast as far as I'm concerned. Okay. That sounds to me like you're just giving yourself a free pass to eat and drink whatever you want, but.

Is that what it sounds like? Yes. All right, so Buffett is a one of one. Yeah. He, uh, there will never be another like him. At one point, he made the comment about never having institutional investors. Not to say that there weren't institutions that bought a stock, but the way that he built Berkshire over the years.

Here's the other thing. Here's the other reason there's never going to be another one of him. I think of it kind of like Michael Jordan didn't come up. up in the social media era. So he was scrutinized, obviously, by sports writers and such. But he didn't grow up with that kind of spotlight where he had to be on all the time. And it's just a different era. If you watch all these billionaires tripping over themselves and making themselves look like idiots on social media these days,

the fact that Buffett made it this long and never really made himself look like an idiot, that is the thing that I think it's almost impossible these days for rich and powerful people to stay out of their own way. The fact that he did that for so long makes me respect him even more. Well, remember Baby Buffett? Was that the cover for Ackman? Yeah, well, there was Ackman, and there was David Einhorn, and there's been tons and tons of this is the next Buffett. But that's the big thing.

You know, Ackman is to Buffett as Jerry Stackhouse was to Jordan. Yeah, or Harold Minor, maybe. No offense, Detroit, but. So I pulled a few quotes here. He still has some good quotes. He just says, they ask about the stock market. He says, nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow next week, next month, but they spend all their time talking about it because it's easy to talk about.

It has no value. I think it does have value because it's interesting and entertaining, but that's where it has to end. And this is why I think the idea of, like, you can have your own opinions and feelings about the market, but you just can't act on them. Right? The people, you know, I've been feeling very bearish lately because of the trade war, but I didn't act on it. And I think that's the thing he's saying is like, you can have all the opinions you want. Don't use them to think you know what's going to happen next in the market. Right?

Yeah. You know what I always love when he talks about investments that he's made, where the cash flow is now larger than the investment. That is so badass. For example, he said that they're now earning, I can't remember with the numbers, significantly more. I don't know if it's 10 or 20x, more in earnings on their investment in Guy code than their purchase price.

Imagine paying $100 for something. And in the future, it's kicking off $2,000 a year in cash flow. Wasn't that the idea that they make more in dividends on Coca-Cola than they did for their purchase? Something like that, right? Yeah, yeah. Because he's been holding it for so long. He talked a little bit about trade. Maybe you can give me more color, but he just basically said, like, we're not, we should not use this as a weapon.

We should do what we're good at. Everyone else should do what they're good at. Was that basically, he didn't go into it too much, did he? That was it. Okay. And I love how he always says he sings the praises of capitalism and just saying that, like, I liked this part. He said capitalism in the United States has succeeded like nothing you've ever seen. it's a combination of this magnificent cathedral,

which has produced an economy like nothing the world's ever seen. I can't talk. And then it's got this massive casino attached. And he said it's very important in the United States that the next 100 years make sure that the cathedral is not overtaken by the casino. I thought this was a really good point. The people, I think he's kind of,

and maybe you can correct me since you listen to the whole thing, I think he's kind of getting into the financial nihilism aspect of it. Like you can't view all of this stuff as it has no meaning. There's earnings and profits and dividends and all this stuff. That stuff matters, not the day-to-day stuff people are paying so much attention to. Is that what he was getting at? Yeah, people lose out of the fact of what are we doing here. We're actually investing in businesses.

Any other takes from your three and a half hours? That's a long time. How many games did your son have? No, well, I didn't. It wasn't. I listened to it over the weekend in several different arenas. I listened to it while I was doing dishes. I listened to it while I was driving and this and that.

Two times speed. That's right. He was talking about the volatility of the last 45 days, and he wasn't poo-pooing it, but he was just putting into context, which is, I think, what I was trying to do. Relatively speaking, it was nothing. It was fast. Somebody had a good take today. I forget who tweeted this.

Has ever been a 19% rise and fall now? We're not back to Altam Highs, but without any fiscal stimulus or Fed intervention? Didn't even have enough time to do it, did we? I'm sure in the past, just not in recent history. Did you read the Jason's wag piece on how there's never going to be another Buffett? I didn't tell you're marked. I just didn't get to it. Okay, this is very good.

And he talked about not only does Buffett have a computer for a brain and he's one of the smartest people ever, and he's got the temperament. And he's got the whole package as an investor. But he also says, as a young investment manager, Buffett would wander through his house with his nose in a corporate annual report, practically bumping into the furniture, oblivious to the comings and going as of family and friends, while his kids played at an amusement park, he would sit. on a bench and read financial statements. Buffett was there physically, but mentally and emotionally, he was often a world of his own, fixated on tax loss carry forwards and amortization schedules. So Zweig is saying, listen, Buffett, this is one of the only things he cared about. He put all of his time and effort to the detriment of his other relationships. And basically saying, like, if you're going to emulate him, this is the kind of stuff he was put on this earth to analyze businesses.

Yeah, pick stocks. And he did that. to the detriment of his own his own relationship sometimes with friends and family and Zweig was saying that's one of the reasons there will never be another Buffett is because this is all he cared about really.

So I forgot to mention this is actually the top of my list that I skipped over. He said that he thanked Tim Cook, who was in the audience, and he said it's the only earnest call that he listened to. And I was thinking, huh, so interesting.

Me, who fancies himself the modern Warren Buffett, I listened to a lot of earnest calls last week. And the reason why I listen to the earnest calls is I get a lot out of them. And I was thinking, some of the value that I got in the earnings calls last week, I listened to Starbucks and this to Spotify. And I thought, hey, wait a minute.

As I saw the after hours market reaction, I'm listening to the calls and I'm thinking, these aren't that bad. I mean, very different companies. Spotify probably just, you know, the stock tripled. It's a big deal. It was down a little bit in the pre-hours. But the earnings call was good. They delivered. Listen to the Starbucks called Brian Nichols.

I texted Josh. I said, because I was thinking like, do I sell? I believe this guy. And the numbers weren't that bad, and I believe the story, and I listened to him. Now, obviously, I'm kidding, me versus Buffett. But his thing is, he doesn't need to hear the story. You know why? Because he's read every financial, every annual and quarterly report of these companies that he follows for the last 20 years.

He doesn't need to hear the bullshit spin from the CEO or the CFO. He sees the numbers. He knows. He doesn't care. He doesn't care what the spin is, right? Yeah, he doesn't need to hear the story because the story is in the numbers, and that's all he needs. So just a remarkable investor. The biggest loses on the planet are the Buffett haters.

I'm sorry. Trying to be a contrarian. I agree. Is he a perfect person? Is he a perfect investor? Get a different hobby. Yeah. I also wanted to mention the Alex Morris book, Buffett and Munger unscripted.

I've been going through this thing. And the way that he set it up is so great because there's all these different headlines. And it's really easy to go through and find what you want. So I've been looking for anything on like time horizons and volatility. And we had him on the pot a couple weeks ago, if you missed that one for Talk Your Book. It's great. The book is really, really helpful. It's all of the meetings in him and Munger talking.

It's really, really good. I had chart can make this for us. They have a lot of cash on hand. I don't know what the number is. It's a lot. And on an absolute basis, it's a lot. But even if you adjust it for a percentage of their market cap, it's a lot. It's only been higher in 2020 and in 2005.

And he got a lot of questions on this. And there's a, I mean, there's a lot that goes into it. Number one. a $10 billion deal doesn't do anything for them. It's hard to put money to work at that size. But it's also true that he is waiting for a fat pitch. And he spoke about how you can't time these things. He doesn't know if he's going to get a great deal tomorrow, next month, next year,

in the next five years. But eventually, there'll be a pitch for them to swing at. And right now they're just not finding anything of size that they can put to work. So think about this in real estate terms. If you're someone who is buying like multi-million dollar houses, if you're shopping, your shopping list is very small. There's not a lot of multimillion-dollar houses out there, I guess depending on where you live. That's the same thing with him. And one of the things I read today on this Buffett and Munger unscripted was he was talking about how Ben Graham never had, he didn't never wanted to be Buffett or Munger.

He wanted to keep his partnership small. And they were saying that his partnership was like $12 million. And Buffett was saying Graham didn't want to build a, but he, he didn't want to build a, he, Keenith huge thing like we wanted to. He wanted to keep it small because he just found it interesting. And his life goal was never to be like one of the richest people alive. It wasn't really a game to him. So I don't know.

Don't you think the fat pitch thing, they're going to be waiting for a very long time? Like they're just at that size, they're one of the 10 biggest companies in the stock market now. Yeah, I don't know what type of pitch they're waiting for. I mean, these are ridiculous examples. But like Nike's down 70%. Disney's was down 50%. I mean, there was a million. things to swing at.

Now, I'm not saying that those are the right businesses for them, but... Does it also seem like the fat pitch thing doesn't work as well anymore because markets move so much quicker?

Like, he didn't get time to buy... Remember in 2020? He didn't buy anything. He was selling. Now, hold on. There's, like, I'm going to write a post about this,

I think, if I can get to it. But I was looking at the, the returns of stocks over the last three years. And there's a lot that are down a third or worse. Like, a lot. How about this?

How about this, though? It was easier to find fat pitches back in the day when Buffett was just starting out that it is today. Way easier. Well, there was things when he started that was literally trading less than the tangible assets. Right. Where you could buy, when you buy a company, liquidated everything, buy it for a dollar, liquided everything, and get $1.20. Those days are long gone. I mean, obviously. So of all the Buffett numbers of outperformance, I think he has outperformed, Brookshire has

outperformed over the past 10 years. And you can see, I put the chart in here. It was basically neck-a-neck for a while, and just recently, it kept going up while the market was going down. But the fact that he outperformed over the last 10 years when value investors basically became extinct, I think this is honestly one of the most impressive things he's done. The fact that he outperformed in a concentrated market that was driven mainly by a handful of stocks and tech stocks, the fact that he timed that so well to buy Apple and outperforming the S&P is kind of amazing at that size. Because he always says, size is the enemy of outperformance.

Yeah. It wasn't him who pulled the trigger on Apple. But nevertheless, the fact that Berkshire outperformed the last 10 years is wild. The craziest out of immoral is this. I think Mab is one that I first saw tweet this. And it's hard to believe that it's true. That if Apple fell, I'm sorry, if Berkshire fell 99% today, it would still have been outperforming the S&P 500 since inception. That is kind of mind-blowing, yes.

It would be kind of painful if you were shareholder, but yes. That's a good one. All right. Let's talk about the stock market. Bespoke, tweeted. Wait, people keep saying that now. is such a, people have been saying this is a terrible time to be a long-term investor and a great time to be a trader. I don't know if I agree with that. I know that the volatility thing

has been good, but this has been such a whipsaw market. Do I think traders are getting killed too? If they're not just explicitly betting, I don't know. All right, go ahead. I can't imagine trying to guess this market, as well I'm saying. You're not a trader. You wouldn't know. The SEP 500 is on a nine-day win streak. It's been more than 20 years since the index had its last nine-day-win streak. Me too. I don't get it. All right. So I looked at the drawdowns at the lows. So the S&P, this is closing, was down 19%.

The NASDAQ 100 was down 23% and the Russell 2000 was down 28%. Now the Russell's down still 18. That S&P's down 8 and the NASDAQ 100 is down 10. And we're recording this Monday afternoon. We had to move our schedules around because Michael had to go see a Knicks game. Hardcore fan, man. You sent me a text the other day of it was game six against a pistons and Brunson hit the three to seal the deal.

And what did you do? You punched a light on accident and it broke in a bar? There was like a bunch of lanterns above me, I guess. And I didn't see it and I jumped and I punched one and glass shattered everywhere. And they didn't try to kick you out or like say, hey, dude? The bartender gave me a pound. He didn't care, huh? all right so i i'm not a big fan of the whole american exceptionalism as a phrase i just think that

it's kind of i don't know it's kind of disrespectful to the rest of the world but can i take the other side of that go for it we're maniacs that's part of it i just don't like the name i guess go ahead i was at the airport today by the way i am i'm in deep trouble tangent there's a real idea is this a new york thing or is this a countrywide thing i've heard of this but isn't this just going to be a y2k thing or it's not as a big of a deal as everyone says it's it is? I don't know, man. So, I'm going to Colorado next week for Future Proof, and I don't have a real ID, and my fucking passport has expired. So I don't know what to do. I'm getting a, I'm going to the, I don't know if, I don't think I have one. I just, I just order one. It takes

15 days to get here. So I don't, this is going to happen to a lot of people, though. There's no way they're going to hold on this. There's no way. They can't. I hope. not just give yourself some extra time uh either way um my well whatever uh so i'm in i'm in the lounge today um i and people are zacking against lounges airport lounges i i can't be a bigger fan cannot possibly be a bigger fan in the lounge you know i've i've actually never been in one in my life what is wrong with you i don't see the need i it's not like i'm i'm not an anti person actually you know what all right you know i apologize the grand rapids airport Yeah, they don't have one.

Yeah, yeah. That's the thing. I'm a smaller airport. I get in and I go and I don't. In New York, you have to get there earlier. That was very cool. So elitist to me. I apologize.

All right. The lounges are phenomenal, which is very comfortable, free food, charging stations, good couches. It's the whole nine. Anyway, American exceptionalism. I was thinking about this. I'm in the lounge with, I don't know, 100 people, maybe more. And everybody's working. Everybody is on a phone.

call on a Zoom. We are maniacs. It is true. People don't take a lot. And the other thing is so I'm thinking... So our corporate culture, the exceptionalism, it's not a moral thing. It's maybe the opposite. All we care about are profits. So is part of our exceptionalism the fact that we always buy the dip. And just in, I'm talking about like the royal dip here. Like, we always think things will get better. We always think things will get better. And sometimes that's to our detriment. Because people keep saying, listen, one of these times, and, yes, nine out of every ten, nine out of every ten corrections-ish, when you buy the dip, it's going to work out great for you. And then one

out a ten, it's going to work out really, really bad for you, because things are going to really crash. But I think those are pretty good odds that, okay, not every time it's going to, of course it can't work out every time, because otherwise, you know, it would be too easy. But I think the fact that we just think... Buckle up, Buttercup. Even, and sometimes it maybe the over-optimism is to our detriment. I think most of the time it really helps us. Um, I always, I always, also think you were on this early saying, listen, whatever happens, people are going to say, and this whole thing is not over yet, obviously.

There's still a long way to go to see how this plays out. But you can't say that there was nothing to worry about. Like, the market forced his hand. The freak out from the markets was necessary. And here's how I look, here's my analogy. I totally agree with you. So we, have you seen the- Wait, hold up, Ben, you said, you tweeted like people say,

oh, the market overreacted or people overreacted to the tariffs. No, it's opposite. Right. The overreaction is what, cause him to back off. Yes, exactly. So credit to you. I look at this as do you, have you seen the bitter apple spray for, for dogs when you have a puppy? And if the dog's chewing on something or the dog's barking, you spray the apple spray on them once. And it kind of makes them, like, ugh, like, uh, hit, hit them. And then all you have to do the next time is show them the

bottle. You don't even have to spray them. You have to show them the bottle. We do this to my puppy we have, right? I gave her one little spray to get her to stop, chewing on stuff. And now I just pull the bottle out. You know Duncan's listening to this, right? Oh, is it, hey, listen, This stuff is, it's all natural, Duncan, it's organic. But so that's, I think that's what the market, that's one of the reasons I think the market is, is doing better than anyone could have anticipated, is because we know the spray bottle exists. All we have to do is show it to him next time he keeps pushing and then backs off, right? You didn't need to keep spraying the market over and over. Just had to spray it once, and it already did that.

Fair? Yeah. All right. So Luke Kawa looked at what the dip buying looks like. And he shows that the riskiest stocks are the ones that came back in favor immediately. So it's high volatility stocks, crazy high beta stocks, and then profitability and dividend stocks are lagging. This is since the bottom on April 8th. It's also interesting.

I looked at where things are from the bottom. And international stocks are outperforming on the bounce, which I wouldn't have thought. So the EFA is up 18% from the lows. S&P is up 14, and the NASDAQ is up 17. I would have expected international stocks to lag here. And obviously, part of this is the dollar still, I suppose. But this is surprising, no? Yeah.

International stocks were outperforming going into it. Yeah, they were outperforming going into this Liberation Day stuff, and they have about outperforming coming out of it, too. That's a shocker to me. Ben, you mentioned this last week, but you tweeted about it, and I think it's just, I want to spend another second on this. You said we've never had an actual recession in the social media era. It's going to be very weird if and when it happens, people freaking out, people saying it's fake, people who enjoy the calamity of it, people take an advantage of other through fear tactics that will be nuts.

You're spot on. It's going to be really, it's going to be a lot of things. I tweeted this out. I didn't realize there's still a whole contingent of people, and it's all political that think 2020 was a recession still, which is insane to me. That because they thought the GDP fell two quarters, which it was actually revised and only fell one quarter. So people, there's some people who are on the corner of, hey, there was a recession in 2022. Again, these were, maybe, okay, maybe an earnings recession, maybe, but wait, how could there

be a recession with 4.1%? What did an unemployment peak at, 4. The unemployment rate literally fell in 22 from 4% to 3.5% or something. So, yeah. Yeah, that's not a recession. But there, this is not just people being out of practice. It's, it's, we've never, again, 2020, there was so much other stuff going on, and it was over so fast.

If I just, even a mild recession is going to be very weird to think about, because I feel like if, again, if we have like a one and a half percent GDP decline recession or whatever, and it happens to be in the unemployment rate goes to six, it's going to be very mild. But I feel like the way people react to it is going to be very interesting. I think there's just going to be an extreme range of how people handle it. Yeah. So, all right. I'm guessing you had chart could create this historical 19% drawdowns we spoke about this last week.

I pulled to Brent Hatley and pulled the citizens arrest. That's Howard reference for you, Ben, who? who don't know what I'm talking about, and listeners. So, five, 90% drawdowns. Okay. And I was looking at your Menchies. And it is tricky because you have to draw the line somewhere on what a bear market is. But it's not just the depth of the decline.

The duration matters too. But then it's like, all right, well, was 2020 not a bare market because it lasted 23 days? That's absurd. So how do we think about adjusting for time and depth? There's got to be some sort of work that could be done here. It's funny. A lot of people in my mention said, who cares? And I said, I do because it's kind of fun to argue about.

Yeah. This is what we do. Yes, I agree. Shorter term, what's the X-NVIDIA stuff here? All right, this is wild. Since the bottom in October 2022, Japan and Europe have outperformed the S&P if you strip out in Vivida. So this isn't just Mag 7.

This is just Invidia. Huh. Just Invidia. That's from the Guide to the Markets. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. Let's talk about like what the hell is this bounce all about and do we buy it or not? Hand up.

I don't buy it. I'm not calling bullshit all the way, but let me ask you this, Ben. Well, the audience says this. Duncan pulled the audience. We are in a bare market rally or a new bull market. Two-thirds of the audience says bear market rally. Let me ask you a two-part question. Number one, was that the low?

I need a decision tree. Yes or no. Yes or no. Was that the low? Do we go into recession? Was that the low? Give me a time horizon. I need...

For the rest of the year? Yes. That was the law. I think so. Okay. Does the market close higher or lower from where we are today? By the end of the year? Yeah.

Lower. That's my feeling, and I'm probably wrong. Yeah, I think I agree with both of those, which means that we've got to be wrong. All right, so Heisenberg tweeted, this is what Wall Street banks are saying. Goldman Sachs, markets might not have bottomed. Wells Fargo. Could we test the lows? Morgan Stanley, retesting the low end of 5,000 ranges feasible.

JP Morgan sees S&P 500 falling to 4,000, a worst-case scenario. Bank of America sell the rebound in U.S. stocks. So the contrarian play here is to go against everything because the barons had their big money poll. Their money managers are more bearish today than they've been in nearly 30 years. So they go back to 1997 and they find 32% of respondents are barris on the aleck of stocks for the next 12 months. And they say that's higher than it's ever been, even in 2008, which shows how sentiment readings are just so off the charts now. So yes, if you're looking for contrarian magazine indicators, bearish sentiment polls, all that stuff. Fade Wall Street. The contrarian play is, no, this is actually going to have

legs. And here's another one from Subitrade. Forty-eight and a half percent of consumers is from the conference board. Now expect stocks to fall over the next 12 months. That's the most pessimism since October 2011. So nobody is really buying it. Who knows? It just seems hard to believe that that was... Except retail investors, maybe? Like the Robin Hood? I don't know. Is the Robin Hood crowd, does that count as, is that a contingent now? Oh, yeah. Okay. Not only is it a contingent, but I haven't listened to Robin Hood's Robin Hood earnings call yet, which I'm going to get to, but I listen to the CME, which is a stock that I bought after being tired of staring at it, go up every single day. And they were asked on the earnings call about retail. It's a huge

part of their story. And Robin Hood specifically, huge part of their story. So this is institutions and Wall Street versus retail. That's where we're at with this round. There's different parts. There's different parts. There's different sorts of, but within retail, there's all sorts of different cohorts. All right. Here's a good one.

Another one from Super Trade. So the S.P. 500 was up seven straight days while under the 200 day moving average. Now, I don't know if the numbers change you have to be up nine straight days, whatever. Point is, if you go out, oh, this is so short term, my bad. He's like a one day, two days, two weeks, one month later. All right. Disregard. I apologize. I those might not further in time. Results are next, but it's only a month. Who cares?

So this is from J.P. Morgan said retail traders on net bought $40 billion in April surpassing last month and setting a new record for largest monthly inflow ever. Wow. Good for them. Bobo's not so stupid. So remember the Peter Lynch quote, spending, like spend at least as much time researching a stock as he would a refrigerator. Like he said most people spend more time researching a refrigerator to buy than they do a stock. This is from the Wall Street Journal, Mark Holbert. So, median investor, according to these professors at New York University, the median investor spends just six minutes of research before buying a stock. And the bulk of that already short research time is devoted to pursuing a price chart of the stock's recent performance and often just a current day's trading session. So they said that they looked at this data by studying clickstream data, which is like browser history of these, I don't know how they got all this stuff.

but several hundred investors, and they looked at the websites they visited and what they looked at and how long, and it was six minutes. And they said they looked at over 60,000 hours of internet use. So I guess that's a lot. Do you think that's in any way accurate? Because I feel like for a lot of people, it probably is. Oh, yeah. I buy that. You see the opinion of someone online or on financial television, and you kind of buy into it and do a little quick perusal just to make yourself feel better and buy. Right? I buy that. Yeah.

I totally do. All right. Remember three weeks ago, yields were spiking, dollars were dumping, stocks were dumping. It was pretty scary cocktail, not a great taste. It was a malort cocktail, if you will. Turns out people started one-on-bonds. Bank of America global research is showing that we just had the biggest four-week inflow to the treasuries since 2023.

So rates got up to whatever 4.5% and people said, all right, that sounds pretty good to me. I'll buy it. That makes sense. I think Matt Klein kind of nailed it. We talked about this a couple weeks ago and he said, what if a lot of this initial movement right now is just off sides positioning and people are getting right-sized? All right, let's talk tariffs.

So Taurus and SLOC, I don't know where the survey comes from, but they were asked what are firms going to do in response to higher tariffs? And the number one response, both from manufacturing and services companies, was they're going to pass a cost increase through to customers. The lowest response was relocating production or services to the U.S. So about what you expect, right? It's not going to happen. It's just going to make prices go up.

Yeah. And there's going to be a lot of big firms that get carveouts and a lot of little firms that probably don't. I think that's kind of where I think it's falling. All right. I do think it'll be interesting to see how this period is viewed to the lens of history. Maybe some people don't care, but I do think people are going to look at this and go, I've been saying for a while now that people are going to think about the economy in like

2023, 2024, and be nostalgic for it very quickly if all this stuff keeps happening. But this is interesting from the economists. They talk about the golden age, and they say of all the golden ages, the greatest is here now, of all the progress of the past 10,000 years in raising human living standards, half of it has occurred since 1990, which is just kind of mind-boggling to think about it, but it actually kind of makes sense when you think about what's happening in the internet and stuff. And they're saying, like, the trade war, you know, is possibly taking some of that back. I don't know how much, obviously, that it seems like a little bit of a stretch.

But I just think in some ways, people don't realize how good we have it. And when you don't have a lot of problems, sometimes you just make them up on your own. Yeah. Duncan pulled the audience, Ben. He asked, will the stock market be higher or lower than it is. today? Without looking, what do you think the respondents was? Wait, by the end of the year? Over 1,000 votes. So pretty healthy.

I bet pretty close, like 60% say lower. That's what I would have thought. 65% say higher. Oh, okay. That makes sense. That makes sense with history, though, I guess. All right. Optimistic audience.

We were down in 2022. We're up in 23 and 24. So you'd have to say 2025 and changing my answer is going to be higher because on average three out every four years, we're up. Final answer. We're up. End of the year. All right. So I want to talk about the Doge stuff a little bit. So Michael Semblis did a piece on eye on the market about it. Final answer. You just change your mind just like that just because you just went with the audience. That was it. I thought all the probably, I'm going probability based. I'm not going feelings or trade wars or anything. I'm probability based. We're only down

to what, 5% on the year now, 6%. Change my answer. I didn't, I didn't do it. I didn't stamp it before. Very open-minded. Double stamps or triple stamp. All right. So Michael Sembless did this thing on the Doge cutting of government spending. And he's been kind of all over this from the beginning. And he was one who said initially, listen, unless you cut defense spending or Social Security or Medicare, it's not going to move the needle. Here's why I think the Doge thing was actually good in some ways. So this is on Palai Market. They have this thing. How much spending will Doge cut in 2025? And it's an 80 or 90% chance that it'll be less than $50 billion. So a very, very small amount. They were promising $2 trillion in cuts or whatever. Obviously, they look. looked at the books. Here's why I think Doge is actually a good thing and maybe a bad thing depending on you look at it. I, I'm shocked that they didn't find more waste to get rid of. So maybe that's actually a good thing that there wasn't like this big, huge thing that they could point to and go, can you believe what we're spending money on here? And obviously, they cut some things that made people mad and they cut some things that maybe should have been

cut. But that's a good point. The fact that they couldn't, they almost did an audit, I guess, and realized, like, actually, we know what we have to do to cut it. It's just will people allow it? Or will, you know, government officials jump on that grenade or whatever it is? But the fact that they didn't find anything that was like, what have we been doing here? I think that's actually a good sign that, okay, maybe the resources haven't been, and we know those big, huge things. How do we fix them or how do we get people to want to fix them? Yeah. Good observation, Ben. All right. Thank you, Michael. Building me up today. Kalshi had the recession odds this year up to 75% chance last week. And this is, I think,

on the day the GDP report came out is negative. And I think it's down a little since then. Okay. I think it was down to 60s or something. I feel like for the betting odds, that's 75%. That's high. That's too high. Three out of every four.

I feel like percentage is just people's mind. Like when you see it's going to, you know, there's a 60% chance of rain here. If you see 60% you think it's definitely going to rain. 75% to me. I spent too much time as a Gabana boy. If it's not 80%, you're not faking me out. I think 60% chance.

So this is this year. I think 60% chance is a pretty good way to go. I think that's a pretty good line in the sand for where we are right now. Wait, how would you say there's a 60% chance of a recession and the markets can be higher by the end of the year? Because I think there's going to be some very confusing results when it comes to the stock market of the economy.

I think they're going to be totally, I think sometimes we're going to get economic data and the stock market's going to fall. Sometimes it's going to rise because they're going to think Fed cuts. And I think we had a 20, correction like that. And I think there's just going to be some very confusing and weird behavior in the stock market. Is that fair? Is that too cute? That's recency bias. If the market was lower, you would not be saying this. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Because, again,

it could be the fact that the market's saying, show me an actual economic slowdown. The data hasn't shown it yet. I'm not going to go down more until you show it to me. That could be it. it's worth mentioning the Enber like results is not just two quarters in a row of falling GDP girl. It's personal income. That was never a thing.

I feel like I wrote about this seven years ago. It was never the definition. And Jason's wide wrote about it. I think in the literal, maybe I don't know if it was the 90s. I feel like he did. It was never two consecutive quarters.

It was like a, I forget what the languages. Was it a general decline in overall business activity? They look at employment and income and personal expenditures and retail sales and industrial production,

all these different six categories or something. Plus, if you look at, if that is the definition, two quarters in a row, then we didn't have a recession in 2020 because it didn't go down for two quarters in a row, it went down for one quarter.

All right, and I continue to believe, so this is another one from the guide of the markets. JP Morgan shows total assets versus total liabilities, and total assets is like $190 trillion. Total liabilities is $20 trillion. This is the margin of safety for people.

And even if assets get hit, if we got into recession and assets fall, whatever, 15 or 20 percent, there's still a huge, huge margin of safety for most consumers. And that is why you think, like, I don't know what the financial crisis level would have to be. If the tariffs were just so high, it caused some sort of panic, I just, I don't see it being terrible. CNBC says it's still inequality of consumers. So they're saying that low-income earners, and this is all your credit card calls you've been listening to lately. I feel like you've been on the credit card corner a lot. So they're saying low income earners are cutting back according to all the credit card lenders. So they're looking at like lows and

T.J. Max. And then American Express and J.P. Morgan, that those spenders, which are higher income are continuing to spend and increase in their spending. So here's the quote. We keep saying what's going to get people to stop spending money? And it's like, oh, a recessional job loss. Job loss. No, but what causes rich people to stop spending? That's different. Nothing. Well, that's not sure. I don't, I don't, I me that. Is it going to have to be, like, is it going to have to be seeing their friends get, like, what, I don't know what it, what is going to make rich people stop spending money and going on vacations and buying expensive stuff?

I don't know what it is. Job loss. And seeing, yeah, and seeing friends lose, I, I don't know. All right. Great email here. Do you want to read this or me? You read it. You're a better reader than me.

I landed in the States yesterday after a one week trip to Europe while taking one's family, two to those two children to Europe doesn't quite reach the not-de-break standard. Yes, it does. Both of you have preached that money is not only to be saved and invest, but also spent as a natural saver like Ben, this is difficult for me. I have not looked at the total damage, but we flew business class and stayed in a luxury hotel. There it is, not to brag. This is a tremendous amount of money that wasn't required, but made the trip above and beyond

what it otherwise would be. I'm still comprehending the numbers, but I'm quite certain in 30 years. I won't care and will remember the trip fondly. Yeah, great, great stuff. You know, it's so interesting where the money feelings come from. Is it nature? Is it nurturer? I'm a spender.

And I didn't grow up. I think part of it is personality based in how you grew up, right? But I didn't grow up poor, but I didn't grow up going on to, there was no plain vacations for us. We didn't go to, I didn't go to the Caribbean until I was an adult. But I am just not, maybe I'm just not risk averse. Maybe I'm risk seeking. I don't know.

I don't know what it is, but I'm a spender. But it's good to hear this from people that saying, like, we're not telling people to go blow all your money and just be crazy. But if you're spending on experiences like this and he was saying, like, our kids are getting older, we're not going to do this very much longer. And yet, it's painful to, you know, pay off that credit card bill, whatever it is. But you're never going to forget that trip. It's a shame.

And I'm, context, I know, this is a first, this is a champagne shame, okay? But for people that have money that can't spend it, it's like, what are you doing? Yes. Right. Enjoy it. That's what it's for. It's, it's a, it's a. It's a tool to enjoy life.

We're going to die. Enjoy it. Yes. I think we are, yes. You're a spender. I'm a saver. I've become more of a spender because of, you know, life events. And this is one of the things I just, I'm, I feel very strongly about.

Enjoy some of your money. Yeah. So I got somebody asking me to send them an autograph book. And I keep putting it off because I apologize. I'm procrastinating. with too many things in my life. And I couldn't. Is there an Uber for mail?

I always do this too where I'm sending books to people. There should be an Uber for mail. Like, hey, we'll pick it up for you to send it off to you. Because going to the post office is such a pain in the butt. Well, I did go to post office once, actually, matter of fact. And there was a line I left. So, there's a Gemini tool now in your inbox. That's for big time.

Can't wait in line, huh? I cannot wait in line. I said, find me addresses. Because I know that they gave me their address. So boom, two seconds. found me the address. All I said was, like, find me an address in my inbox. Oh, that's pretty cool. So I can't remember what I was typing in on chat GPT the other day, but I, I think I put

maybe a doc we were looking at and like, hey, come up with some questions here. But it also said, would you like me to take this outline that I was prepared for you and turn it into a PowerPoint presentation? And I said, yeah, sure, let's take a look at it. And it was very rudimentary in that it wasn't very formatted very well or anything. But then I took one of my PowerPoints today. I'm a very simple PowerPoint person. I don't make it all pretty and stuff.

I keep it very clean. But I said, hey, take my PowerPoint and make it look better for me or offer some tips. And it didn't do a very good job of it yet. But someday, it's going to be like that. And that's going to be amazing. Like, hey, take this PowerPoint presentation I did that's very simple and basic and make it look way better. And someday is coming. Yes.

That is coming. All right. Let's talk about crypto a little bit. So we had this discussion two or three weeks ago. you were asking the question, is Bitcoin decoupling from risk assets, or is it leading us out? And I think you were the first one to say, like, what if Bitcoin is leading us out? Because it was just a few days where it decouple from the NASDAQ. And if look at this, this is the last three months of Bitcoin. This is Ibit versus the Q's. And you can see it, yeah,

Bitcoin didn't really decouple from risk assets. Bitcoin was, can you say canary in the coal mine? Because that's the opposite, because that's like bad stuff coming. What's a good analogy for clearing a coal mine. But Bitcoin was the first one to start railing, so it didn't really decouple from risk assets. It just led the charge. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting. All right. So I was in Marco for spring break a few weeks ago. And I'm a middle-aged guy. So you put stuff into Zillow, right? Let's check out the neighborhood. Check out of the houses around here. And once you put a new place into Zillow, they start sending you off emails all the time. Hey, look at this house. And look at these emails I pulled all from like yesterday, $300,000 price cut in Marco Iown, $25,000 price

cut, $55,000 price cut. I'm seeing these all the time now. Is there a real housing slowdown in Florida? In Florida. Well, on the west coast of Florida. So not in the East Coast? No, I don't know. I'm not a Floridian real estate expert, but the West Coast has been getting bombed with hurricanes. I'm sure that's part of it and the insurance is part of it. There's probably a lot of demand pull forward, too. So if you look at, I just pulled up case. Shiller Miami. This is since the start of the pandemic. Case Schiller Miami Housing Index is up 81% and the National Housing Price Index is up 54%. So maybe some of this was just pulled forward. But I'm sure you're right. Part of it is just the insurance stuff, the hurricane worries.

Maybe a lot of baby boomers pulled forward their purchases then. And so I just think if you are, you're in a way better negotiating power as a buyer than you've had in, I don't know, 10 years maybe. of a long time since you've had this kind of power. Buffett was asked a question about real estate versus stocks, and I love this answer so much. Just bear with me. It's two and a half minutes, but it's worth listening to it. Well, in respect to real estate,

it's so much harder than stocks in terms of negotiation of deals, time spent, the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership, usually when when we're going to get some troubles, you find out you're dealing with more than equity. older. But there have been times when large amounts of real estate have changed hands of bargain prices, but usually stocks were cheaper, but there were a lot easier to do. So Charlie did more real estate. Just Charlie enjoyed real estate transactions, and he actually did a fair number of them in the last five years of his life. But he was, you know, he was

playing a game that was an interesting game too. But I think if he had asked him to make a choice when he was 21 and he had either be the stocks exclusively the rest of his life or real estate the rest of his life he would have chosen stocks in the second. There's just so much more opportunity, at least in the United States, there's so much more opportunity that presents itself in the security market than it does in real estate and in real estate. I'm You're dealing with a, usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns, maybe a large property they've had a long time. Maybe they've borrowed too much of money against them.

Maybe the population trends are against them. But to them, it's an enormous decision. When you walk down to the Newark Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business totally anonymous and you can do it in five minutes. And the trades are complete when they're complete. In real estate, when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender. You know, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase. I mean, then people start negotiating more things and more things.

And it's a whole different game and a different type of person to some extent enjoys the game. We did a few real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 9. But the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent and probably better in securities. There was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every sentence is important to the person and in stocks. If somebody needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire or something, and they call us,

so the price is right. It's done in five seconds. And it closes all the time at 95 years old. Think about the mental state of most people at that age. So I haven't spoken about this on the podcast because I didn't want the, yeah, scrutiny, whatever. I bought a rental property in 2020. And for me, at the time, the decision was my entire life is in the stock market. My entire livelihood, my earnings, my career, my liquid investments.

So I decided I was going to buy a piece of real estate to diversify. And I got very stupid lucky with the timing. So I bought a house in Long Beach in 2020. And obviously, real estate has gotten bonkers. And I got super duper lucky. I had one tenant. And you had a 3% mortgage, right? 2.875, not to brag.

She was wonderful, never missed a payment. And this year, I said, I assume, I haven't heard. I assume we're good for next year. And she goes, no, actually, I'm moving out. And I said, okay. And so I made the decision. I spoke to Rob, but I said, let's sell it. I just, the reason why, a couple of reasons.

Number one, I pulled forward 20 years of returns. like the purchase price versus a sale price. So I would have taken me 20 years in a normal market to get this sort of return. Number two, more importantly, every single time I got a text message from her, my, you know what went into my throat. And thank God there was never anything major. Didn't you have to replace something in AC unit or something? Didn't you have to do something?

Yeah, there was leaks and ACU. Yeah, all sorts of things. And I did wonderfully well. I listed the house in April. I should be in contract now. But even still, there's three months without any tenant. So that's three months where I have to carry the mortgage, which is not great. So I ended up doing like, I think 25% compounded for five years on the transaction.

About how quickly the transactions take place in the stock market versus real estate. And he's right. You sign a contract. And then it's like, hey, our inspector found this. Let's knock a little bit off the price. And let's the back and forth. That's why most real estate investors end up just being buying hold and don't want to do transaction because it's a pain in the ass.

And the transactions are expensive. So listen, I don't want to spike the football because God knows what they're going to find in the inspection. But the thing that I've learned after doing this is you either, you either like really do it, not not not not to be a professional as a career, but you either really do it seriously. And you're like, all right, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to buy five of these things, whatever. I'm going to get a group of money together and do this and we're going to have a management team.

Yeah, hire a property manager. Right. Yeah. Because otherwise you get an image, not a Matt, you got a, I've got a text message on vacation. Right. Hey, this, this. I'm like, I don't, what do I know? I can't fix anything.

So it's not to say that stocks are good, real estate is bad. I don't want to give that impression, but. It's a different ballgame. It's a totally different ball game. Yeah. All right. Look at this tri-up, and I pulled this out. I saw somebody tweeting about Estee Lauder.

The company's in like an 80% drawdown. And wouldn't you know it? What a coincidence, not. The stock has filed the earnings per share almost to the T. Because to Buffett's point, that's what we're doing here. That's what we're doing. And the reason why I am and remain optimistic

and hopefully forever will be, I hope, is because we are maniacs. The citizens of this country are maniacs. We are greedy. We move the goalposts. We are never satisfied. And while that can be psychologically sad, perhaps, and damaging for individuals,

for all of us, it's great. Because we all want to make more money. And ultimately, that shows up in earnings per share, turns up in profits. So who's the winner if Estee Lauder is a loser? Because I've been looking at this lately because my daughters are now into like the skincare game. I don't know if they found this on YouTube influencers or what my daughters are all about buying.

They love going to Sephora. So anytime they get a birthday or something now, it's, hey, I want a gift card to Sephora so I can go buy lotions and sprays and whatever skincare stuff. And it's crazy to see my daughters at this. This is just what the girls are doing now. And I had to look to who owns Sephora. I think it's Lviam H. Yeah, LVMH owns them.

And they're getting killed, too, by the way. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, oh, that's in a pretty good downturn, too. Huh. Okay. So, there's 100% tariffs on foreign movies. If I was a better writer, I would have nailed this joke already, but I said to you,

there's a coming to America joke in here somewhere. Yes. I got, I got, yeah, the guys in the barbershop wouldn't like it. So this is from Bloomberg, and they say Trump's post, he posted about this on truth social, followed meetings that he had over the weekend with John Voight and his manager. Barclay says if this is deployed on a wide scale, it may end up harming the very industry is supposed to help, especially given that the U.S. exports three times the amount of content that it imports.

And then the Wall Street House came out today, and I'm sure, hopefully Tom Cruise put the call in. I think he could save us from these. The White House says no decisions have been made. We're exploring all options. Who gets a carve-out here? Guy Ritchie movies gets a car out. I hope the parasite guy gets a carve-out. Oh, wait, Deney?

Any sort of British company? Actually, you know, most of the best directors are, I don't know about most, but the two that come to mind, Deney and Christopher Nolan, foreign directors. What are we doing here? I mean... I thought tariffs were about national security. What the fuck is this nonsense? You're going to mess with my IMAX?

And I saw Netflix and Disney are down the day, and I don't know. Cardiff Garcia posted this from... It says, the industry generated a positive balance of trade in every major market of the world. $22.6 billion in exports. It's a $15 billion trades slither plus. Just stop with the nonsense. Could we stop with the clown show already?

Good grief. How about this? This is good news. Amazon MGM is test driving a new romantic thriller with speed duo, Kiana Reeves, and Sandra Bullock. I'm in. Wow. Okay.

But it's not a speed reboot. It's just another. Yeah. Speed 2 was just a travesty. I can't believe they made it without him. You know what? Credit to me, I never saw that movie. It's on a cruise ship

I rewatched the original speed lately It still holds up I watched it a couple months ago It's a perfect movie Yes, no fat All right, from the economist You and I have talked about this before Sobriety is taking over the world

The amount of alcohol The amount of alcohol consumed globally Is probably in decline For the first time in history Across rich countries Many members of Gen Z Born after the late 1990s Are shunning alcohol entirely

30% of Americans in our 20s Do not drink in the previous year And I know that there are problems the alcohol, health-related problems, domestic violence, alcoholism. There are a lot of bad things that come with it. I think the fact that people are drinking less is a net negative for a society because the whole socializing thing of, I think it helps get people offline and it puts people in a better mood. It relaxes them. They actually... Oh, but you need alcohol to have fun? Yeah, I do. So they said a 2012 study found that alcohol

increases social bonding, and they found that people who frequent a pub feel more engaged in their community, they have higher life satisfaction. And this says it is not a stretch to say that alcohol has played a big evolutionary role in fostering human connection. I think one of the reasons young people are unhappier is because they're not connecting with each other as much anymore. Alcohol is a way to do it. You know that alcohol helped me find my wife in college. If I was not drunk when I met my wife, I probably wouldn't have gone up to her. So I had this move. We had some friends were watching cops. Remember the show cops? I don't know if it's still on even. And can I just say, I know this is your story, not mine, but cops is my favorite show of all time. Back to you.

Really? Well, it's certainly got one of the best intro songs ever. So anyway, a police officer pulled a guy over. The guy was obviously drunk driving. And the police officer sticks his hand in the window and he goes, breathe in my hand, and he goes like this. The cop smells it. And he goes, okay, sir, you're wasted. Please get out of the car. And so me and my, every time we would go out, my friends, me and my friends would do that to each other. We'd say, breathe in my hand, please, you're wasted. And that's the move I did on my wife. She was standing there at our house party And I said, breathe in my hand, please, ma'am. And I smelled it and I said, You're not wasted enough. Go get some more drinks. Great line.

That's how I had my wife. This is from the Derek Thompson thing. He said, every drink of alcohol takes five minutes off your life, but also every one minute of exercise adds five minutes to your life. And that's why I diversify. Think about it. It's called balance people. Remember the part in, you never watched Seinfeld,

but him and Elaine had this argument trying to figure out what percentage of the population is good, looking. And Elaine says, I don't know, 25% and Jerry said, no way. If you've ever been to the DMV, he says probably 4 to 6%. And then Elaine says, okay, 95% of the population is unattractive. How are they getting together? And Jerry says, alcohol. Anyway, that's a good line. Speaking of alcohol, remember in Landman, I think one of my favorite bits from Landman was Billy Bob saying that he used to be an alcoholic so he stopped drinking, but he drinks like 10 Mick Ultras every night. And the bartender says, you drink Mc Ultras.

He said, give me 10 bourbons versus 10 McAultras and see which which one of the version of me you like better. I had never been a Mick Alter drinker, but I usually drink heavier beers during the winter. And watching that show, I started drinking Mikolo Ultra lately. I wanted, like, lighter beers for the summer. And I got to say,

people judge me all you want. It's a very refreshing beer. I've never had one. You know, we should obviously say, listen, there's some people that are terrible alcoholics. Oh, yes. Horrific drugs. I know people, yes, I'm just saying on a net positive, net society level for young people, it can really mess your life.

But I think if it inhibits your socialism, socializing other people, then it's a bad thing. I truly believe that. You're preaching to the choir. You don't need to convince me. All right. Recommendations. Why don't you go first? Okay.

Somebody emailed us about your friends and neighbors, which has taken a turn for the sideways. I mean, I'm still into it because, you know, it's a good husband and wife show. Robin enjoys watching it with me. But it's not, the last two episodes have been really not terrific, which is fine. I'm still enjoying it. But somebody emailed us, so spot on. I just love the money aspect of it. Yeah, it's fun.

Somebody said, doesn't this show seem like an example of a Hollywood taking a feature-length movie script and stretching it out into a streaming series? It's got a great hook, but holy hell does it turn into a mess by midseason. 20 years ago, this would have been a two-hour, $30 million budget, drama comedy star in Harrison Ford and Nick Cage, something like Matchickman. And he goes on, but yes, 100% right. I agree that a lot of shows these days should be movies. So, Ben, did you watch BlackBag or did I put this in here? I did.

Okay, so BlackBag was on Peacock. You watched it, too? Yeah. Okay, so I had heard good things. It's funny. I watched this with my wife, and I was going to say, you shouldn't watch this movie. So I'm going to give my review that I want to hear yours, because I was going to say you shouldn't. So it's Michael Fastbender, who's played a spy a lot lately.

It's a Steven Soderberg movie. It's a Steven Soderberg movie. His movies, you can always tell it to Steven Soderberg movie. I thought my wife was like kind of unsure and kind of came around at the end. I really liked this movie. I thought it was great. Like the whole guessing who is the double agent, who is the, and the fact that a lot of the spies were paired off together, like Mr. Mrs. Smith style. It wasn't like the greatest spy movie ever.

I enjoyed it. You. Now tell me why you think I didn't like it. It was a little slow. You couldn't really tell what was going on most of the movie. It was kind of hard to follow. for a spy thriller it was a little slow and a lot of more dialogue than action.

I'm really glad to who you said that because I was thinking it occurred to me but maybe it's not just me. You know what? You know when they asked the fake interview question tell me one of your weaknesses? I'm terrible at following movies, I think. I had no idea what was going on,

but I enjoyed it. But also maybe it wasn't just me because it was pretty confusing in the first 30 minutes. I was like, the hell is going on. Am I supposed to be following with this? Yeah, they don't hold your hand. It was very confusing.

All right, but then even like, I don't even know that I know what's going on what's going on in the Mission Impossible movies. Are you supposed to? No, a lot of times you don't know. But they have action there to help, right? All right, so it's not just me.

Because I found myself, oftentimes with movies like this, I don't think I know what's going on. No, this was a hard one to follow. Did you like it or not? No, I did like it. Okay. I enjoyed it. It was hard to know what was going on. I think that's why my wife didn't like either.

She's like, what's going on? And I had to, like, kind of pause it. Like, actually this and that person and it was on Pierce Broson still kind of got it. I liked it, too. But, yeah, what would you get to me? That's like a 7-2? Oh, yeah, I was going to say like a seven probably, but yeah. So my kids maybe take them to the Minecraft movie this weekend.

My twins, they're seven, they'll be eight next week. And this movie was, did you take your kids to see this yet? They saw it twice, both without me. Okay. This movie was just off the rails. But, I mean, it's not one of those really, I thought Jason Mamo is actually kind of funny. And Jack Black has obviously got very good kid energy. I just love the recency bias because we got out of the movie.

I totally fell asleep for like 20 minutes. Those big recliners with heated seats, you know, like, see you later. My son is elbowing me about stuff and I'm, what? But I just love the recency bias in kids because my daughter, we got out and she goes, that was the best movie we've ever seen. Favorite movie of all time. Yes, she, all began. She was saying it's the best movie we've ever seen.

It was great, and it was just ridiculous. How about this? You talked about miniseries that or TV shows that should be movies. How about like a movie that you know is bad? It's like a 5.7. But it has two or three good scenes in it that make you laugh. I have one that I watched again. So it's called I give it a year.

So it's with Rose Byrne and it's got a vet guy in it. It's got the Simon Baker guy. You love these shitty comedies. I do. It's a dumb. It's Anna Ferris is in it and it's like this couple gets married on a whim and then they decide like they're wrong for each other. So they actually both find other people that they're more meant to be with.

But there's two really funny scenes where they go to a work party and the husband gets drunk and the wife is too embarrassed by him. And then there's a thing where, you know, I go, I won't spoil it. Anyway, there's two really good scenes in this movie. And I think the one scene you would find, it's a little vulgar for people who are not into vulgarity, but I think you would find it very funny. I believe you. Okay. So. Now I told you, I've been assuing trailers as much as possible.

You can't not watch when you go to the movies, but like I like to rock dog movies these days. Like I saw one with Dave Franco I just saw a tweet I'm in I'm not going to see the trailer But I'm going to go watch that movie The new Spike Lee Denzel movie looks amazing Not going to watch a trailer I'm just going to go see it

You posted it I avoided it I'm going to go see the movie So on the flight over from New York to Boston It's only a 30 minute flight But American Airlines Always sucks Which is why I don't fly them very often Do they ever have screens in their planes?

No No Didn't think so I've never been on an American flight Where they've had a screen on a plane And the internet never works And so the internet wasn't working this time. So they had a wonderful movie selection.

So credit to them. Problem is, movies weren't working. What was working was the trailers. So I watched like 50, I watched the Dude 2 trailer. God, what a movie that was. I watched like 15 trailers. You could probably kill half hour just watching trailers. I did.

It wasn't bad. That makes sense. All right. Let's give a shout out to our production team here. I want to give a shout out to my wife. Okay. For letting you go to the next game. Yeah, she's a great wife.

Robin is in my defense. I've been a Nick fan my entire life. And we've been bad for so long. Did she know that you broke the light the other night? I think I told her. And as much fun as I'm having for finally being competitive, it makes me really sad that I, like I had 20 years of just pure misery.

And I never stopped watching or going to the games. Think about me, man. I've been a lion's fan my whole life. That's true. That's torture. All right. Let's give a shout out to our production team. We've got how many people on the video audio side now?

Four people, right? Yep. Duncan John, Travis, Daniel, Travis. So we're getting videos up on Spotify now where you can watch the video as you listen to the podcast and pick and choose. The videos are up on YouTube much faster now. They're up on Wednesday mornings. Not too far. On Song Heroes.

Not too long after the actual podcast. So we're humming along here. Cracking. Yes. When I gave my speech last. week in Columbus, I had a few people ask me, like, well, how do you do all the editing and audio and video? And I said, we don't do anything. Michael and I just have the software and the mics, and everyone else behind the scenes does it for us. And it's great, because they know what

they're doing and their pros. Absolutely. How about to our compound media team? I feel like I had something to say to you that I was saving for the show, but I guess I didn't. Maybe I did. Maybe I'll remember next week. All right. Good luck with the game tonight. South X-N-5 But maybe we sneak one in tonight Sounds about right Animal spirits Yeah

At the compound news All right See you next time