Animal Spirits Podcast - Things Are Getting Stupid Again (EP.350)

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

On episode 350 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: why the markets continue moving higher, why buy & hold is the best (and worst) strategy, how 401(k)s impact the stock market, billionaires can't complain about inflation, consumers keep consuming, the richest generation in history, crypto just won't die, why we keep seeing so many booms & busts, the best new show of 2024 and much more. Thanks to YCharts for sponsoring this episode. Check out their new Attribution Analysis tool and get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free YCharts trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only) at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits-referral Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Y-Charts. We've been using this platform for years, and it's always thrilling when they say, got something new. This time, they've got this really slick attribution analysis for people that are managing portfolios. So you could very easily see where returns are coming from, where returns are detracting from performance, and much more.

So actually, we got a question in our inbox. this morning saying, how can, asking, how can you tell if you are lucky because the market or a sector is going up or if you're a good stock picker? And that's exactly what return attribution can do for you, right? It can kind of separate those out to see where the sources of returns are. If you're interested in learning more, and if you're a new customer and you want to get 20% off, tell them Animal Spirits sent you. And have a great day. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading,

writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, I was having some, I don't know if nostalgia are just looking back, thinking, I think I've been in the industry for 20 years now. This is 2024. I entered in 2005. And I think the young kids today have such a leg up on what we had back in the day where, I think it was similar for you and me where we had no experience in the markets. So we just, we learned through books, like we read a lot. And then we started trying stuff. But today, there's podcast.

cast. Did you really try stuff or Target Day Fund's really trying stuff? Well, that's, but, but I mean, when you're first coming into the industry and you have no practical experience because you haven't invested, you have to learn from the experiences of others somehow, right, until you can get your own experiences. So for me, that was all these books. And I worship at the altar of Buffett and Bogle. And it was the whole thing of buy and hold and long-term investing just made sense to me. I knew that I wasn't going to be a good stock picker. I knew that day trading was not in my emotional or psychological makeup. And the whole long-term take the good with the bad, but the good outweighs the bad in the end, that made sense to me.

But I had no real-world experience to test that theory, right? All I'd done is read the books, and I've read about the booms and the busts and the historical returns and all that stuff. And so living through the 2008 crisis when I was really just first starting to, invest and be part of the industry was really eye-opening for me of like, well, bad stuff, it can get really, really, really, really bad. But then everything after that has been kind of proven right to, okay, you stay the course and you don't get off that course and you'll be fine. So I posted a tweet yesterday of all the returns since the 2010s and the 2020s. And I did them by year and then I annualized. So 2010s was annualized 13.4% for the S&P. Amazing. By the way,

that's not average. That's annualized. So the average, I mean, the average return is even higher than that. Should be, yeah. So the annualized, this is with dividends. For the 2020s so far, if we take 2004, which is up more than 8% already, we're talking 13.6% annualized, which is just insane. Because, again, you and I have mentioned this. We started talking about expect lower returns back in 2015. 2015, probably. Some people were doing it earlier than that. So being this proponent of buy and hold and stay the course, it's like you see your ideas come to fruition and it's great, but you also know it kind of makes me nervous. That's exactly how I feel about Bitcoin.

You just bind, you hold it. But you know that this can't, this simply can't last. Right. Right? And it can last longer than you think. Like the 80s and 90s were higher returns than this, and it went even longer than this, right? That was a 19 or 20-year period.

And so this could keep going on if we get an AI boom. But eventually, when you say it, when you say it, what you're referring to 13% a year are compounded. Yeah, like higher than average returns. It's not going to, it's not going to continue indefinitely. It could continue for longer than we think. Yes, but it just can't last forever. It's, it can't. And that's the, the hard part about all this.

Why can't it? Because eventually, things would get too big and you can't continue to compound at a rate that high. the economy is not growing commensurately with it or it's just there's there's limits to these kind of things right so i mean if you if you wanted to do like a new paradigm that 1990s thing that dows 36000 i guess you could go that route but you just know historically higher than average returns are eventually followed by lower than average returns you don't know when it's going to happen and that that's the hard part about having a buy-and-hold ethos is you know the eventually it's going to be you're going to eat shit for a long period of time

eventually. Now, the counter to that would be, well, listen, you did eat shit for the whole decade of the 2000s. It was a lost decade from 2000-2009. That's way in the rearview mirror. It doesn't count anymore. And I do think one of the reasons that this period has been so great is because that period was so terrible. And one of the reasons that period is so terrible is because the 90s and 80s were so great. And so it's this persistent cycle of fear and greed. And I guess I'm just saying that it's great when you have that your investment principles, like the market rewarded them. But now you know, it really can't last forever. So I guess the only other explanation is just diversification. That's the only answer. Yeah. Because while the S&P 500 has

had a sick run, a lot of other markets have not, right? Yes. Even like the small cap stocks have not done nearly as well, U.S. small cap stocks, obviously international developed stocks, even though the all-time highs finally, have done nearly as well, emerging markets. I mean, there's opportunity outside of the United States. Yes, and that's why even though you felt like an idiot holding those other opportunities, eventually they're going to matter,

even if you don't know when or why. But the run that the S&P's been on, it's just been, it's unbelievable. I guess don't take it for granted. Enjoy it. Yes, that's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah. one of the reasons for these abnormal returns is the abnormal performance of the stocks,

the businesses, the size, the margins, the relentless bid, which Josh wrote about in 2014. And I wrote, I read an interesting piece last night that made me think from a substack, no conflict, no interest. And the post was about how micro strategy is a leveraged Bitcoin. vehicle, but there was something in there that I hadn't seen before, and it made me go, hmm. So he wrote, when you contribute money to your 401k every month, what are you really doing? Are you saving or are you investing? I would contend most people are saving. They have no interest in risking what they already earned, but if they don't, they are certain to lose it to inflation

and debasement. If people are saving their wealth in the S&P 500 instead of money, that means the equity market has attained a monetary premium. And, I think there is more than a little bit of truth in there. Like, we've traded out a higher than average multiple for the last 25 years. And there's no doubt that the tens of billions of dollars or whatever it is going in every month is impacting the market. It's hard to know exactly how, but you see it every day, right? So I thought the idea that the S&P 500 has a monetary premium, pretty clever. That makes sense.

That's one of the things that in the past, they just didn't have that almost like backstop. It doesn't mean stocks can't fall. But the Great Depression right through the 70s, there wasn't this. Well, how about this? So we've seen, I mean, obviously we've had multiple crashes and bare markets over the last 15 years. So it's not to say that the relentless bid keeps the market higher forever and that pullbacks can't happen because, of course, we're all human beings. But maybe absent market events, it's having a larger impact. like in com times than we thought.

Bespoke tweeted a, the S&B hasn't had a 2% pullback. And I don't know, 90 days away, it's a ridiculous number. It's up 17 of the last 18 weeks. And I'm honestly struggling to come up with a reason why the market is so strong right now. And it's definitely not just the Mac 7. Apple's trading like dog shit. Google's trading like crap. The rally is broadening out.

The number of stocks out of 52 week high. Bespoke tweeted this also this morning. Hit a 52 week high. So things are just levitating. How about this? People went into the fetal position for 12 to 18 months. They're assuming a recession is coming. And then the recession doesn't come.

And it's like, oh, okay, game back on. I know, but it's just, it's 17 of 18 weeks or something like that. That hasn't happened 50 years for this sort of streak for the S&P. And honestly, what's driving it? I'm really, I'm really not sure. The answers of simply the economy remains strong, isn't enough for you? I don't know. This is one of those times where, yes, there are pockets of bubbles and stuff.

We're going to talk about that today. And things are getting weird. You had a good post on this yesterday about FOMO. But if you want to make it a fundamental proposition that the economy remains strong, inflation fell. But fundamentals aren't, I don't think fundamentals are driving the market right now. Because things are pretty quiet. I'm saying economic fundamentals are making people feel good enough to invest money and buy stocks. Yeah, but their wages are up.

I get it. But that doesn't explain why the S&P is up 17 in the last 18 weeks. That does seem like quite a bit. I mean, like, can we just, I don't know, can we go sideways for like a week? I agree. I think we're just in a period now where we're living in like just mini booms and mini busts. Like, who would have guessed that we'd be backed at some of this stuff already

that we just experienced in 2021? If you think about it, the Great Depression happened. And then for... That wiped out a generation. 35 years, people stopped speculating. They stopped investing. No one wanted anything to do. the stock market.

But now, if you think about the dot-com crash happened in the early 2000s, and then we immediately rolled over into a real estate bubble. And then the real estate bubble turned into like this debt cycle thing that blew up. And then the 2010s were pretty timid, even though the stock market went up. But then we go pandemic, boom, to a little bus. And now back to, it's just, we had a speculative bubble in 2021. And it's the beginning of 2020. We're doing it again in the same, in the same shit.

I think everything is just sped up faster and faster, and this is the culture. Now, what was the dopamine culture thing we talked about last week? Back to the point of this, you were saying about, is putting your money in your 401K, saving, saving, is the right way to do it for a lot of people for retirement. But if you have money outside of that 401K, people look at that as investing. And maybe now it's more like speculating as opposed to investing. I think that people that save money in their 401K, They don't necessarily think of themselves as investors.

I think they think that they're saving for retirement. Yes. Right? So I hadn't really thought about it that way. So it's like it's bifurcated now where it's a barbell of saving in the boring stuff and target date funds and index funds and then speculating your face off in the other stuff. That seems to be the barbell. I'm not a great example of that. So, I mean, I've spoke about what I do a bunch, but I've got my money in my 401K.

I've got money every two weeks buying stocks. I've got money going into our platform every month, buying stocks. And then I've got a large slug of cash, which I'm very happy to earn 5% on. And I've got a large slug of crypto. Like just completely opposite ends of the risk metric. Yeah, that's the barbed out, right? And what if there's just, this is not an example. This is not a reason for why stocks are doing what they're doing.

But is there just so much money out there? I think that's part of it. And again, wages have never. been this high before, and everyone has a job that wants a job. And I know people hate inflation, but those wages continuing to rise, that, what are people going to, and if you're a young person, we talked about this, and you can't buy a house because it's too expensive, and you have higher wages than you thought you're going to have, maybe you're having some fun with that money and doing something with it. It's an odd, it's an odd environment. So, I want to talk about how

the ZERP narrative was completely overdone, and Joe Wisenclan wrote about this. He wrote it better than I could have. At the time of this writing, he wrote this yesterday morning on Monday morning. Bitcoin is up another 6% in the last 24 hours, 27% of the last week. Shibu Inu is up 180% of the last week. Dog with hat. That's a new one, I guess. Sure, dog with hat. Yeah, absolutely. Whose icon is a dog with a hat. That makes sense. Is up over 400% of the last week. Both Robin Hooded Coinbase are near the top of the Apple App Store rankings again. Call option volume at or near its highest levels. He's saying, I think we need to go back and

and rethink everything about this ZERP phenomenon a few years ago, so many aspects of speculative excess were chalked up to low rates. You know, here we are, and this is all happening with rates over 5%. Seriously, it's time for some revisionism. I was saying this at the time because we went through the dot-com bubble with 6% interest rates. You can't say that ZERP had no impact, but I don't think it had as big of an impact as some people think. I disagree.

I think that you can say that people can have and will speculate when interest. rates are not zero. Right? That's a fact. We're seeing that today. We've seen that in history. That's a fact. However, a lot of weird shit happened because of zero interest rates. Just think about all of the Silicon Valley funded companies or all the venture-backed companies where the VCs were happy to continue to invest and subsidize the consumer and lose money. Like, that was all the ZERP phenomenon. It just was. Okay. So that's a very good example. But I think, when it comes to markets, speculation, it often takes another catalyst or trigger to cause that, even if the ZERP helps sit along and provides an accelerant.

Because like the real estate stuff. So maybe the ZERP impacts the economy and capital allocation more than it does speculation. Yes, I think that's fair. Yes. Where money goes and being pushed on the risk curve. But I don't like this idea that the narrative was overdone because I don't think it was. Okay. I just think the whole thing of like the only reason tech stock grew up is because race.

were so low. That was the kind of narrative that I wanted to push back on. Yeah, okay, fair. Well, listen, it's not black or white. There's obviously a lot of gray in there. Fidelity did release a report about, I forget what it was called, where people are saving something about retirement. They do an annual update of their 401K plans because they have trillions of dollars in them. All right. So the average account balance in 401Ks is $118,000. the total savings rates. It's interesting. They call it savings rate, as they should,

but they don't call it the total investing rate. That's true. It's 4.1K is a saving, it's both a saving and investing vehicle. So it's gone up since Q4, 2018. It was 13%. 13.7, 13.9, 13.9. Is that average higher than you would have thought?

Yes. That's a pretty healthy rate. That's a lot. The average balance for GenX workers who have been in their 401K plan for 15 years straight, topped half a million dollars. I remember having a conversation with one of my...

My brother was squarely in the Gen X phenomenon. He had a birthday this week. I think he turned 45. And it was 2010. And one of his colleagues said, I started my 401K in 1999. It's 2010. I have less money now than I've been putting in.

Thinking like, that was the lost decade we talked about. But that's the reason that Gen X has half a million dollars average now because they kept putting money in in that crappy decade. Yeah, in hindsight, that was a blessing for them. Didn't feel like it at the time. Did it feel like it at the time. As of Q4, 63% of workers had all of their retirement savings in a target date fund among Gen Z workers, the percentage increased to 84%.

So they have like a chart of... Wow, way to go, Gen Z. 401K plan design trends. I love the... If you have a retirement research piece, you have... have a person with a huge smile on their face next to it. Right? You just have to have that. So auto enrollment at the end of 2018 was 33%. That's up to 39%. Default to Target Date funds was 90%. That's up to 94%. People are saving their asses off. And the thing is, people want to

blame Target Date funds for pushing up the stock market and stuff. The thing about Target Day funds, they're well diversified. They own U.S. stocks, international stocks, something. sometimes reets, sometimes commodities, or in some cases, international bonds. So these are widely diversified holdings that people are being put into. Look at this chart from Vanguard via the Walshute Journal. Average retirement plan contribution allocation to target date funds. In 2011, it was 25%. It's almost at 65%. It's gone straight up. Wow. This is not plateauing. It's going to continue going higher. Market leader Vanguard, with $1.3 trillion in target retirement funds under management as of January,

it says three quarters of large plans that administers automatically enrolls employees, with 99% of them defaulting to a balanced investment strategy, and 98% choosing a target date fund. So yeah, this number is going to continue to go higher. And that's one of the, probably one of the greatest innovations for individual investors in their retirement plan history. This is a great thing. People get automatically rebalanced in a diversified set of funds.

back in the day, people would look at the options. Now, I'll buy whatever was up the most over the last three years, or I'm going to put it in a stable value fund. Now they're automatically invested, and it happens without even thinking. It's kind of amazing. This is having an impact, certainly on individual stocks, and on the market, as we discussed,

even though it's hard to pinpoint exactly what impacts it's having other than lifting stocks higher. Here's my question about this, though. So if index funds, and target date funds are having an impact on stocks, why aren't small caps being pushed up more? Because you'd think those would be the ones that would be easier to manipulate and push higher. I'm not saying that index, I mean, obviously I'm not in the camp that index funds are like wildly distorting markets or I'm not in like the broken market theory. So that's a good

question. But look at super microcomputer, for example. Look what happened when the algos and the traders were front running the S&P 500 inclusion. And look what happened on the day yesterday. when they finally got added to the SP500. I mean, this is... That's kind of crazy that... So that stock went from, what, Russell 2000 to the S&P? It went from a market cap of... I'm like, it's as big as FedEx right now.

So let's see. It's like going from high school to the NBA because it missed midcaps altogether. All right. This company had a market cap of... $6 billion a year ago, and it's at $60 billion today. And it went parabolic.

because of AI and chips and all that sort of shit. But the most recent blow-off top-like move was index fund inclusion. How about this? There's just no more slow burns anymore of it's going to take the market or investors to figure out this is the next thing. It just happens instantaneously now, where if there's a new innovation or something going on, people aren't going to wait around to toe in the water to see what happens. it just go.

Markets are happening so much faster these days, and it seems to only be speeding up. Ben, last week you spoke, and I pushed back on this idea that rich people were like, I don't have used the phrase gas lighting or... I did. I said, I don't know if I'm using that term correctly,

but it sounded right. And I pushed back saying, I just think this is like a real online phenomenon. And maybe we were sort of both proven right because a day later, we had this horrendous, horrendous tweet in Kyle Bass. Tell the audience for those who are unaware

of what we're talking about. what happened? So Kyle Bass is a hedge fund manager and I had an interaction with him in the past and I'm not going to say tell the story but he is the stereotypical hedge fund manager you'd think you'd bad bad hedge fund manager in like a movie or TV show. That's all I'm going to say. So he wrote this tweet and he's I think he's a billionaire. I think he became a billionaire from shorting subprime and I'm pretty sure his fund hasn't done anything since. I think he's still living off of that. I could be wrong. He said terrible inflation milestone reached my first $85 breakfast for one at an NYC hotel.

After signing this bill, I've decided never again in all caps. Hashtag Biden, hashtag inflation. Then he also tagged Janet E. Allen and Federal Reserve. And luckily, the internet was all over this one. He's got community noted, and people said, so he got charged $14 for an orange juice and $26 for a waffle. And I don't even know what heritage bacon is. Is that where, like, the pig gets a massage every night before,

and it's, I don't know, it's fed, grass-fed beef for something? something. So his bill was $85 for this small breakfast. And everyone immediately noted, like, okay, first of all, you're a billionaire, so you can't complain. I think that that's just a rule. You cannot complain about inflation or how much you spend ever if you were a billionaire. Ever. It's just a terrible, terrible look. So that's the gaslighting side of things. And a lot of people also noted he's staying at a five-star hotel in New York, which would have been ridiculously expensive regardless of the inflation rate. I bet you this meal pre-pandemic was probably still $65. Yeah, easily. It was a lot of money. So this is the kind of thing that I am talking about.

And I'm guessing the only thing this guy cares about is, can I get my taxes lowered? That's what he's complaining about. And that's the kind of stuff I was talking about. So yes, I was, you're right, it's an online thing, but this is the kind of stuff that I was mentioning. I saw another one. Somebody tweeted, this is a receipt from Burger King in 1986, three whoppers, two fries, at two large vanilla ice creams for $8.39. Never forget what they took from us. And Jeremy Horpidal did some good actually... My favorite MythBuster.

Love it. He said the average hourly wage in 1986 was $7.87, meaning it took slightly more than one hour of labor to buy this meal. The average hourly wage today is $29.66, and you could buy the same meal for $27.19. And my local Burger King, less than one hour of labor. It's good that we have people fact-checking nonsense on the internet. Well, Nick Majuli did a post on this at dollars in day to day about becoming a millionaire. And if you would have just saved $300 a month from age 22 to 65, you'd be a millionaire.

And he went back and showed like, sure, you could go back to the 1980s and say that. But what was the average wage back then? And he said the average wage in like 1989 was like $23,000. So saving that $300 a month on $23,000 median income was a lot harder to do. And that, yes. So all these things. deserve some contacts. For people that are

tweeting like, does anybody want to go backwards? Would anybody choose to go backwards? They did used to have the crowns at Burger King, though. Remember that? That's true. And they had ballpits in McDonald's. And they had ballpits in McDonald's. But anybody wants to go backwards.

No. The funny thing is, I was watching, what movie was? Oh, Wanderlust was on HBO the other day? That's the Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston, one where they go to like a hippie commune. They buy a, they buy a, it was. it was like a 2010 or 2011 movie, and it was funny to see because the recession stuff was

still right there, like the great resett. It was like they bought a condo, it fell in value, they were forced to sell because they lost their jobs, and then they went on a hippie commune with Justin Thoreau. It's an okay movie. But I've seen people tweeting about like, it was so much easier to go out in 2010 because things were cheaper. The funny thing is, because of the way this cycle works, someone's going to be, in 10 years, someone's going to look back and say, remember how great things were in 2023 and 2024? That's what's going to, because people just, they, they're either younger or they forget and they become nostalgic for periods of time that they don't really think about. So that's going to happen.

Yeah. These are the kind of thing that's happened. All right. From Talsmith at New York Times, auto insurance. Motor vehicle insurance rose 1.4% on a monthly basis since January alone, has risen 20.6% over the past year. The largest jump since 1976, saying that this is like one of the bigger pieces of inflation right now. Have you, with your insurance broker, have you upped any of these lately? It's absurd.

I got my renewal recently, and I set them, hey, I don't even drive. Like, I don't, I don't, my car is. Yeah, but you do drive with a death rattle, so. That's true. But I have like 6,000 miles on my car maybe, and I think I've had it for close to two years or a year and a half. That's right. You drive, the train station is, what, a mile away for you? I don't even drive to the train station.

I walk. because the babysitter needs it for after school. So anyway, so I said, hey, this seems like a lot of money and I'm paying insurance. I don't, I don't drive. He's like that, no. When I re-upped mine last year, it tripled. And I've been with the same, I was with Progressive for like, since I've had my own car.

So it's been, I don't know, 20 some years. And I do my home with them. And so it's all bundled together and you get a discount or whatever. And it tripled. And I'm like, I call them like, well, what happened? happened here? And they're like, I don't know. Cars are more expensive. Like, we can't really explain it. I got a little bit of cheaper deal somewhere else, but... I wonder if you get a minivan. Do rates go down if like that? All right, this person's

clearly driving this under the speed limit. We're going to take it easy on them. I mean, it has to just be that cars are more expensive, but the jump doesn't seem commensurate with a car value. You might not know this about me. How do you, what sort of, what do you think I drive in terms of speed on the highway? Am I, am I, do I do the speed limit? Am I closer to 75 miles an hour. What do you think? I would have said you're like seven miles over. Wrong. I'm not a fast driver. You're a slow guy. Really? I'm like 65. I think I'm a thing sort of average. When it's when what's the speed limit? I don't know, 60. I usually, I'm usually below, although maybe this has to do with my Jeep.

Maybe if I was in a faster vehicle or more comfy ride, I would go faster. Well, that's right. You can't, maybe you can't go above it because you're like the opposite of speed, like in speed, you can't go below 55 or the bus will blow up. You're the opposite. If you go above 55, your Jeep will blow up. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think I'm like a 62 or so. Okay. See, I'm, I push it. I go like, so if in Michigan, the highways are 70, 75 in some areas, actually, too. I'll go, give me a nine on there. I'll go 79 and a 70. I do that you can learn a lot about people, by the way that they drive. Like, you've, you've heard the George Carlin on, right? Everyone who drives faster than you is a main.

me act and I've ever been in a car with somebody who who where it's your first time in the car with them and they're just a really aggressive get out of the way asshole like where they're like that my whole contention has always been easily 75% of the people on road are bad drivers yeah I agree with that and that might be low you know I'm a very very selfless driver I'll give you an example let people in I'll give you no I'll give you an example so driving down my road onto the main road called Merrick Road. If somebody is either going straight over Merrick Road or they're making a left, most people don't move over enough so that if somebody wants to make a right, they could just go around them. Not me. I pull over to make sure that if there's

somebody behind me, they could sneak by. Not to brag, I'm a very, very conscientious driver. All right, but you want to get the wave. I get mad if people don't get the wave. I'm happy to let someone in. That drives me nuts. Yeah. Yeah. My other real real big pet peeve is people who on the highway pass you get in front of you then slow down like they don't know how to use their cruise control i think there should be a horn specifically for saying why aren't you using your cruise control it just shouts it those are the worst you pass then they pass right because you have your cruise on and they don't easily they're not the not wave is the worst person in the world uh and a distant second i don't like when you're going to you're pulling

up to a red light and somebody speeds in front of you and just literally cuts you yes that's bad on, really? Where are you going? I agree. All right. You asked why things continue to be so well in the stock market. Maybe it's because people with the most money who have the most stocks are still flush. This is from Torson Sloc, who is becoming an irregular on analyst spirits for the past six months or so because the charts are so good. The highest income quintile, so the top 25% by income, consume almost 40% of spending. So the consumer spending is 40% is done by the top 25%. The top, sorry, the top 20%, the top 40% makes up close to more than 60%. So the people with the most income spend the most money, but it's not commensurate with

their level. It's way more. I still don't think that there's a direct link between this chart and the stock market today. Okay. So you're at a loss for words for why the stock market continues to be so strong. Is it 17 of 18 weeks? That's the number I keep using. I don't know if I'm making that up, but it's something like that.

You said it so confidently, I agree to you, but I don't look at, like, weekly returns. So why is that dynamic persisting? That's my question. That's not an economic thing. That's a market thing. I think the trends are shorter, but more potent. Right? Like, this is why I think the...

Remember potent potables? Oh, yeah. Is that little feral? I'm surprised that we haven't had more flash crashes. Why? Because of the way that the mini booms and busts and we have these citadels of the world controlling the liquidity, I'm really shocked that we haven't had more of these rug pulls where we have an air pocket. I mean, think about how many huge down days that were in the pandemic in that March 2020 period,

where we lost 8, 9, 10% or whatever. I think that's just, I think the market's just... But there's been no news to knock us off this trend. That's what I'm saying. It's going to trend. The trend, instead of being really slow stair-step, it just happens a little quicker now, and we just pull everything forward. The losses and the gains. All right. I pulled this one from the transcript. Just wanted to talk about the consumer again, remaining strong. They did this whole thing where they pulled consumer quotes from recent earnings calls. They did MasterCard, Wells Fargo, and American Express. This is MasterCard President. Consumer remains resilient, and consumer spending remains robust. I would venture to guess robust is, used on 30% of all quarterly calls. We'll have to check on quarter for this, but it's got to be a lot of them. Let's see. Here's the next one. I feel this, we say the same thing over and over again the last number of quarters, but the consumer continues to be very resilient through a time

when I think we all would have thought there would have been more weakness at this point than American Express. Consumers are doing what they do best, which is consume, and more importantly, all the credit numbers of balance sheet side of the consumers is very strong. I went down this list from the transcript, and every single one of the earnings calls was like this. It was like, we would have thought consumers would do a week right now. They just continue to spend and they're not stopping. We love to spend money. I just can't imagine ever betting against the U.S. consumer.

Was there a monster change in consumption post-pandemic? Just like people's habits about spending money? Yes, I think there's going to be a line in the sand there. It was the opposite of the Great Depression. We had these frugal misers in the Great Depression, like, depression babies or whatever. So now we have consumption babies from the pandemic or something. or everyone just decided, like, screw it, I'm going to live my life and spend. I think we do, people are only talking about the inflationary side of prices being up.

No one is talking about the fact that wages are way higher, too. I don't think anyone thinks that way that, oh, wait a minute, wages went up too with the prices, so people are spending more. I don't think people are making that linkage. All right, I know you hate demographics, so you can stop listening for a while if you want, but I think this is important. I don't hate demographics. I just don't think it's... Go ahead. This is New York Times. In 2022, America had 4.75 million 32-year-olds and 4.7-4 million 31-year-olds. The largest two ages by population. So look at the largest ages by population. I knew I kept running into 31-year-olds. They're everywhere. Like locusts. It's basically all in your... It was kind of an interesting way to look. I mean, this is like niching down in the demographic thing.

But it's just saying the majority of the age groups are now in their like mid to late 30s and And you have to think about the consumption patterns of those people. What happens when you settled on and buy a house or get a new apartment or move to the suburbs? You spend a lot more money. And this is going to take a while to play out still, too. From the Guardian, those born between 1981 and 2000 are in line for a seismic windfall over the next 20 years. According to Knight Frank, they did this study saying $70 trillion of assets is going to move hands between the generations in the U.S. alone. I still think this is overstated

because I think the boomers are going to spend a lot of it down, especially at the retiring early and living longer. But basically just saying the market keeps going up to 13% a year. Wow. True. And here's one more demographic. I don't think this is overstated. I think there will be massive ramifications

with respect to the wealth transfer. I don't have any strong predictions in terms of what that's going to look like. But I think it's going to happen a lot. It's going to be a lot. slower than people think. Here's an obvious one. More preference for digital assets. Right?

The average 60-year-old is going to have, I don't know, zero percent of the portfolio in Bitcoin, right? Rounds down to zero. Yeah. The average 35-year-old will invest differently. They just will. I also think this, we always talk about how all these financial advisors are hanging on for way too long.

They promised they'd send their book of business down to the younger person, but they didn't. That's going to be the change. When all the boomers start retiring and passing down their money or they die off, then a lot of those older advisors, too, are going to lose business because young people will find their own advisors. I can think of that, too. All right. Another one from St. Louis Fed. Those born in the 90s, younger millennials and older Gen Zers had an even sharper swing and wealth deviation from expectations between 2019 to 2020.

We've talked about this, how young people are doing better than they thought. But the St. Louis Fed looked at, what if they were on trend from before? how it would have looked, and they're saying that this group's wealth served 44% from 44% below expectations in 2019 to 39% above expectations in 2022 and 83% swing, basically saying that like this change in wealth in this three-year period was unlike anything we've ever seen and we'll ever see again probably. And the biggest one is homeownership and then franchise, that's part of it too, but they're saying that we've never seen a swing like this go from such below expectations to above expectations to such a short period of time.

that they're way above the levels of wealth, we would expect of them to be based on historical trends and based on where people were in the past at their age. People are flush. Yeah, they are. There's just, we have a chart later in the show about the value of real estate. There's just so much money.

And we're not going to get to crash in asset prices for no reason, right? Like, it's not just good at all of a sudden there has to be, and I'm not saying that that there won't, I'm not saying that we can't have a pullback or whatever. It's not going to happen for no reason. That's the thing. Absent an event, the trend will continue. Right. What's the catalyst going? There can be corrections. There can be bare markets we had in 2022. But if you want like a system-wide crash, there has to be a something there. You're right. That is going to

cause people to panic sell these assets that are up in value so much. All right, Ben, one month, this is from Fast Company, one month after taking its open AI powered virtual assistant global The Swedish buy now pay later company has released new data touting its ability to handle customer communications, make shoppers happier, and even drive better financial results. This is Klarna. The app-based AI chatbot already handles two-thirds of all customer service chats. Klarna boasted in its announcement on Tuesday that the AI assistant is doing the equivalent to work of 700 full-time agents.

You know, I need an AI assistant. Ben, listen to this. I don't know if I told you this. I got an alert on Friday. It's time to check in for your flight. I'm like, wait, where am I going? Did I forget that I've traveled? I booked my Denver flight, which I'm, the actual date is March 24th.

I booked it for March 3rd. Okay. Not even close. Not even close. So what did you do? What did I do? I switched my flight. Okay.

On Thursday, Josh Matt and I had a meeting, scheduled a meeting for Friday at 3 o'clock. So the next day at 3 o'clock. I sent out a calendar invite and then the next morning at like 11 Josh sends out a calendar invite and like what my invite's no good like are you saying at a better invite than I am his invite trumped your invite

well turns out it did because on Saturday on Saturday Matt declined the calendar invite and I realized when I got the email notification that the event that I sent was from March 29th the actual meeting was for like March 2nd. So I need an AI assistant. I am a complete disaster.

So here's what I wanted to see if AI can fix. We went on to eat the other day. And we go to the front and they say it's a 20 to 30 minute wait. Okay, fine. We'll go walk around the mall, which talk about consumers being flushed. This is on a Saturday. My kids wanted to go to cheesecake factory. We go to cheesecake factory, which, you know, I'm not a big, I hate going to the mall.

but that's like my kid's favorite restaurant and there's an hour and a half weight at Cheesecake Factory like 4.30 on a Saturday and so we go to On the Border. This is the stuff kids like these days. There's a 20 to 30 minute wait. Wait, there was a wait at 4.30? Yeah, at 4.30? Hour and a half.

But we, so they tell us 20 to 30 minutes and on the border. See, I only eat at fine dining establishments, as you can tell. Whatever, the kids don't care. And so we go walk around the mall and five minutes later, your table's ready. I feel like the people at the hostess stand never know they, it can be plus or minus a half hour. They never actually know how long it's going to take for your table

to be ready. I feel like they just make up the numbers. An hour. Yeah. So where does AI fit in? Couldn't it better estimate people's eating times based on what they order, how long it's going to take in the kitchen? Yeah. I want a more precise figure from AI. When I, so when I was, when I called Delta to rebook my flight, I'm yelling at the phone like Larry David. By the way. That was another good one this week. Richard? Larry David yelling is some of the funniest stuff on television.

I don't know if it's because he passed for us in peace, Richard Lewis, but he really looked like death in the most recent episode. Did you notice that? Yeah, my wife and I both mentioned it. I was watching some old clips of his too. He was... He looked really, really frail. Yeah.

Anyway, so I'm yelling at Delta. the customer service AI has to, like Clark is talking about, that's going to change things. My, speaking of, there's not really AI, but just in terms of like, yes, prices are higher. We're talking a lot of inflation. There's so much consumption. But then there's like the push and pull of the technology deflationary wave. My dad is taking, my dad's retired. My dad is taking piano lessons.

The whole package cost him $35. Like an online lesson? Yeah. So someone gets on Zoom with him? I don't think it's, I think it's like pre-recorded. Okay. $35? Wow.

Something like that. Isn't that wild? Yeah. That seems really cheap. All right, Ben, are you ready for my Vision Pro review? Let's hear it. I've seen pictures of it. This might surprise you.

I'm going to start with the bad and then I'll go to the good. Okay. Wait, can you put it on while you're giving your review? I can't and I'll tell you why in a second. There's not much going on there. in terms of what you can do. The only apps that exist for me were Safari,

Disney Plus, and Max. Right, because there's not a lot, a lot of the places are still, like Netflix doesn't know if they want to get in there, all that. Right, like, there's no Slack. So in terms of, like, being able to do work on it,

I couldn't connect it to my laptop. Like, it's just, it's also very clunky. So everything sinks to your eyeballs and you've got to, like, pinch things and you've got to sink your finger to your eye. And it's just, it takes a bit, a little bit of getting used to. I guess maybe it's sort of like how when we first got the iPhone, it was like hard to type, right? People were like complaining about like the, so we'll get there.

All right, it's big and heavy. Okay. So after like an hour or so, maybe not even, it hurts my nose. Like the bridge of my nose was sore. the next day. I really, I really felt it. So the travel case is also big. Like, there's a handle for the travel case. So you can't just, like, put it in your backpack, unless you have an oversized backpack. Okay. Um, it's, you're, you're right about this part. This is not going to surprise you. It really is incredibly isolating. Incredibly isolating. Having it on when

there's people around you is definitely not cool. Like, if you're, wife's around if your kids are around. It's also really loud. Like the sound quality is great. So Robin got mad at me because I'm in my office on my chair watching something and she's like screaming. She's like, you didn't hear me? I'm like, no, I didn't hear you. Wait, what do you so it comes with, do you have AirPods in or what do you have? No, so there's, there's speaker somehow in there. The sound quality is is stupendous. It's really good for what it is. And it's stupid expensive. It's like $4,000. Okay. All right. So that's the bad. Here's the good. It really is magic. And it's hard to describe in words, but it works really well. The screens and all

that stuff. It's magic. There's something called an immersive experience that you could watch on Apple TV. So one example is you could be in the studio with Alicia Keys. And I almost like got a because I was so, like, moved by, like, the magic of this thing. I was like, this is fucking insane. I felt like a four-year-old walking into Disney. The movies. Holy shit. Holy shit.

How do you watch them through Apple TV? Through Apple TV or Disney Plus. So in terms of, like, the immersive experience at Disney, you could choose the setting in the background. You could be on top of the Stark Tower. And you look around and there's, like, a giant Iron Man suit behind you. And it's all around you. It's like having this sphere on your face.

And then if you want to watch a movie, which you can watch movies in 3D2, if you press play, Manhattan turns tonight. So the lights go down. There's also a cinema feature where if you hit the cinema button, you're at the movies. It's a giant screen theater.

You could sit in the balcony. You could sit in the front road, the middle, the back. So they just have to figure out a way to do this without having a goggles on your face. Yeah. So I watched... Then I'll do it.

I watched Napoleon. on my face and it was it was like just a surreal experience so this is definitely the future for sure but it has to get smaller it has to get lighter

and I'm sure it will and it has to get cheaper and it will so there's oh also they show you a clip of being at Fenway on first base and being at the soccer stadium what I was said about being at concerts and movies and sports

that's going to be that's going to happen Right. You're going to be watching a baseball game, like, through the view of the umpire or something. It was unbelievable. Unfucking believable. All right. So, there's an 85% chance, maybe 90, that I'm going to buy one in the future. But I returned mine. Okay. They took it back. They took it back. You just thought you wouldn't use it enough yet, probably.

There's two reasons why I returned it. Number one, like I said, it just, it's not comfortable. Like, it just, it did hurt my face a little bit. And number two, I used. it. This was an very good opportunity to teach Kobe a lesson. By the way, so Kobe picked up on it in two seconds. He just turned seven years old. He picked up on it in two seconds. How to use it? He was calling it an eye mask. And I'm like, this kid's brilliant. Because I thought he knew about like the iPhone, the iPod. He was calling it an I mask because it's a mask that goes over your eyes. Okay.

So he said to Robin, I don't know if I told this story a couple of weeks ago, but when we were in Fort Lauderdale, We went into the elevator and a guy was like, hey, Mike, I'm a big fan. And it was a proud dad moment for me. But when we left, Kobe said, are you famous? Because he sees me on TV on YouTube. Like when he goes to the YouTube, he sees my face. So he thinks I'm on TV. He saw a fan interact with me.

And he said to Robin, is daddy rich and famous? Because he bought the eye mask. Oh, interesting. And I'm like, all right, that's it. It's going back. I can't listen. It's a great lesson. And I can't have Kobe thinking that I'm rich and famous, which is not true.

But I, so I returned it and I explained to him that it was too much money and we have to spend, we can't spend money on everything. It's not unlimited. We have to save the money for other things. He was mildly disappointed, but I think he got the lesson. So I was very proud of myself. I like it as a lesson. So get their hopes up and crush their dreams. Exactly.

So if he didn't say that, I don't know if I would have kept it. I was 50-50. But as soon as Robin told me that, that's it. It's going back. Dunkin put out a poll on the compound YouTube and only 26% thought you would return it for a refund. So the majority was wrong. But they were wrong for the right reasons.

Like if Kobe didn't say that, I probably would have kept it. Right. So like you see in some of the futuristic movies like her, it's like a hologram you hit and the screen takes up your whole room. That's what, if they can make, take what they do. Yeah. I'm watching, I'm on my chair back there and the screen is the size of my room. Right.

It's insane. I'm sure they'll be able to do that stuff eventually without having to wear a dog. But once you put it on your face, you're like, oh, that's it. There's no going on that. You sent me a video of Chris using it, and you just look so weird doing it

because his mouth was open and you're doing it. But yes, okay. Look at that, Bitcoin, all-time highs. Okay, so let's get into crypto. People last week said I didn't take a big enough L. I said like four times. I took the L on crypto. First of all,

I wasn't trying to give you the L. No, I was, I'll admit it. I said I was underwhelmed by the crypto. Your reaction was, your reaction was understandably defensive. I wasn't even talking about your prediction. Yeah, okay. So anyway, I keep saying, why isn't this impacting Coinbase more? Brian Armstrong, we are dealing with large surge of traffic,

apologies for an issue. The team is working on remedies. Look at Coinbase and Micro Strategy. They were both down 90% of the lows. Micro Strategy is all the way back to all-time highs and it just rocketed higher. Coinbase is still 30-some percent below all-time high. eyes. But that's, you know, they do the charts with this level of gain requires this,

or this level of loss requires this level of gain. Those are huge gains to come off of those kind of lows and be even near all-time highs or back at is kind of insane. I mean, the thing we- Before we talk about the flows, can I just, I just want to share with the audience a conversation that we had in terms of like, where do we trim some, right? This is a conversation you and I have been having. Like, we have to take some off the table eventually. So I've been bullish on Bitcoin for the reason. It's incredibly simple. For me, it's just been a demand supply imbalance. I still can't believe that you missed that one. You were going to put on the perfect trade two weeks ago. Well, I did buy it at $38,000, but I only

put $5,000. Okay. But you were willing to make a big buy at like $42,000. $42,000. Sorry, didn't need to rub in, didn't mean to rub it in. That's things a little bit. But anyhow, so I, I did. have conviction that it was going a lot higher, but it's happened very quickly. And so it's become a much bigger piece of my liquid net worth than it probably should be, frankly. And we talked about this. The last boom, we said, I think we said 75,000. We'll think about selling. We probably wouldn't have. We would have said, okay, let's go to 100. Yeah. But we talked about, like, in such a volatile asset that's going to crash a lot, the rebalancing piece is probably not a bad strategy. You just have to figure out what your bands are. For me, personally,

And this is definitely not financial advice. With Bitcoin specifically, I think most investors in terms of thinking about regret minimization, you'd rather sell early, right? Like if you leave some on the table, big deal. But if you give 30% back, you're going to feel like an asshole. For me, with this, it's the opposite. I'm okay holding on too long. I don't want to sell early because I think with this asset is.

so insane and the moves are so dumb. I didn't sit through a 77% crash in Bitcoin and an 80% crash in Ether just to sell back when it got to an all-time high. So that's how I'm personally, I personally will have, I keep saying personally, I will have more regret if I sell early than late. So that's how I'm thinking about it. Everybody has to do obviously what's right for them. My thinking has always been with Bitcoin is that it's a call option and I'm buying and holding it forever, forever in quotes. But basically, that was my strategy is I'm just never going to sell. And it has been very painful at times. But I think just knowing that has made me okay with dealing with the volatility of it. But I'm starting to think, as you are,

like, I should think about rebalancing at some point when it really runs up. And I'm trying to figure out a level for that. And I think it's getting close. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, so just back to the flows. So Balchuna's tweeted yesterday. Fidelity is strong with plus $400 million today. It's biggest one-day haul. Bitwise had third best day. Anything I bit brings is just padding the number. Throw in the rally, and the 10 will likely hit $50 billion in AUM tomorrow.

More than halfway to $1.2 months in. Now... That's kind of crazy. The gold is... I think 27 of that is GBTC. But even netting that out, even netting that out, these things have taken in over $20 billion. That money is still in a Bitcoin product.

Yeah, that's, so when we actually talk your book on Monday, well, is it the following Monday? Yeah. One of these Mondays with Fidelity Digital Assets about it. Anyway, what I would implore listeners who are thinking about buying it or feel formal because they're a stupid shit happening. Like, we're back. Yeah, we're not 2021 levels yet, but it's, there's stuff. Well, but there's not a ton of coverage. I was looking yesterday, if this was 2020 and 2021, it would have been in the front page of every financial publication.

It does feel like retail is not like back all in again or something. I think because the memories of the last crash are still very, very fresh. CNBC had one little box up there. New York Times had nothing. Washington Journal had one little thing. Like, it's not plastered everywhere. Right. So a crypto punk sold for $16 million.

They're just the meme coins there are up 300% in a week. Like, FOMO is natural. I wrote an article about this yesterday. Just be careful. If you want to speculate and have to. fun, just a thousand bucks, whatever your number is. Like, just don't, don't go nuts, please. This made me laugh. Corey had an interaction with Cliff. Corey tweeted, this monk or monkey, I think it's, I don't know what this is, just sold for $567,000. This penguin just sold for

$531,000. This punk just sold for $16 million. Crypto animal spirits are back. Cliff said, Corey, where do you see these transactions? I'm blissfully ignorant of how to monitor the monk stuff. And Corey said, there's a deep cost to your sanity and psychological health that comes along with monitoring these sorts of things. Are you sure you really want to look deep into that abyss? To which Cliff replied, you're right. Please don't tell me, even if I ask again, you're a true friend. Sometimes you stare at the FD and sometimes it stares back at you.

That made me laugh. I mean, it is, this is like the funny money stuff too, where the prices of the coins go back up. So this stuff starts attacking at high values and it doesn't feel real. The interesting part about Bitcoin specifically is that the higher it goes, the more valid its story becomes of an alternative store of value and alternative to the current system. Now, it's not a story that I necessarily subscribe to, but you're going to hear the drumbeat grow louder and louder and louder if this thing really, really, really takes off because it's still very much a fringe asset, very much. It just won't die. If the SBF thing didn't kill crypto,

I don't know what would. Now, listen, you don't have to love it, but if you're still calling this thing tulip. I mean. Right. For how many times it's died and people have thrown dirt on the grave? Clearly enough people ascribe value to it. Yes, regardless of how silly you think it is. All right, we go to crypto? Yeah, we're good. All right, a couple weeks ago, I said it's really hard to find a bearish signal in housing. It's hard to be really bearish on prices. Prices could fall a couple percent again, but be really bare. It's hard for me to see that. But I think it's really hard to be bullish, too. So the Redfin had their homebuyer payments that they always update. It's 40% higher than it was two years ago, three years ago. It's hard for me to think

2021 is three years ago because that's what old people say. So I looked, so today the median home value they have is almost 400K at, you know, close to 7%. That's a $2,700 payment. If rates went to 6%, we're talking 2,400, 5% is more like 2,100. So I think you'd have to go, I think rates would have to get back to like 5% to really cause, you know, a ton, a ton of movement. But last year I looked, Case Schiller rose up 5.6%. Inflation was up 3.4%. That seems low considering how much housing has moved. That's a big, if you're up 2% more than the inflation rate every year, that's a lot for housing. Historically, it was still a pretty good year. So you think if rates come down, housing prices don't call out that much? You just think activity comes back?

That's my, I think rates would have to go down quite a bit for there to be like another boom. I don't, I think even if rates come down to six or five percent, I think there's going to be more activity, but it's hard for me to see this a boom in housing prices again. Yeah, I think I disagree. Okay. So you think prices could go again? Like 5, 10 percent? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Survey of the week. A recent report from Edelman Financial Engines surveyed more than 2,000 people regarding their attitudes about their wealth. around the quarter said they feel less satisfied with the amount of money they have because of social media and a third say they have spent more than they could afford to keep up with the Joneses.

I totally buy this. Yes. I think it might even be understated. Yeah, I thought that was low. I think this stuff is getting, the keep up with the Jones stuff, it's getting worse. Nobody goes on social media and feels good about their situation. That's true.

Right? Yes. I mean, unless you read the replies on Twitter, then you feel okay about yourself. like, oh, I'm not as crazy as that, that idiot. And to that point, Austin Reef shared a snippet that I'm curious to hear your take on. The title is, I think it looks like, where is this? On Reddit, I'm not sure.

I have a secret to share, that's the title. After the first two to three million, a paid off home and a good car, there is no difference in quality of life between you and Jeff Bezos. Both of you have limited amounts of time on earth. You have twice, if not more than Jeff, so you are richer than him. A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger, whether a billionaire eats it or you do. Money is nothing but a piece of paper on a number on your app. Real life is outdoors.

Become financially independent. That's usually $2 to $3 million. Have good food. Enjoy the relations. Work out and enjoy sex. Sleep well. Call your parents. That's all there is to life.

Greed has no end. Repeat after me. Time is the currency of life. Money is not. Sooner you figure this out, happy you'll be. Agree or disagree. I agree 60% of this. The other 40%.

here's, I think, the biggest thing billionaires have over everyone else, private flights. That's the game change. If a private jet, you know how much easier your life is. Yeah. I have a flight coming up this month. I have two layovers. You think Jeff Bezos is having two layovers? Yeah.

Uh-uh. So I completely agree with you agreeing with 60% of this. I think that there is definitely wisdom in the fact that, yes, a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger. Most of the time, forget about Jeff Bezos. But, like, most of the time people are just living their life, right? Whether you have $2 million or $50 million, you're most of the time doing the same thing. And I understand. Yeah, if you have $7 million versus $10 million, is your life really better at $10?

And I love the premise of this that, like, let's focus. Like, money is just, for the most part, it's just numbers in a bank account. And most of the time you live in your life. So I love the premise. And I think people lose sight of this. However, there is a big difference between $2 million in Jeff Bezos. Yes. If you're a billionaire, there's probably stuff that makes your life easier that we don't even know about. There's other stuff that makes it way, way harder, the pressure and the...

I guess the part that I agree with, which he didn't say, I won, I believe this with every fiber of my being that billionaires aren't any happier than somebody with $2 million. That I agree. And I think a lot of them are more miserable. Yeah, I mean, at that point, the money owns you. Like, you can't have that much money without it just being a massive burden. So... Yeah, I thought it was interesting. All right, before we get into the recommendations, I want to talk about being the middle-aged guy at the gym.

Middle-aged guy, so I've got the young Gen Ziers here, and I've got the old people. So the old people, I walked in last week, and there was an old guy who literally went to the urinal and pulled his pants down to his ankles, like a four-year-old. And they walk around with their stuff hanging out, towel over the shoulder, don't care. You know, you get to 70-something, and you just don't care.

and then they stand right next to you, I don't know. But then the young guys, they literally stand in the mirror of the bathroom and, like, pose, like, tricept, you know, like. That is weird. Right? In front of other, like, I can sneak a peek. They're like, yeah, my shoulders are pretty good lately, but, like, they're posing. And it's not like happens occasionally. It happens all the time.

So maybe this is self-serving, and, but I think the middle age, call it late 30s to early, 40s is the only same generation left. That's a good thing. How's that? Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no offense to our boomer listeners. Not to shame everybody who's not 30 or 40, but... Yes. The Gen Zers, they got totally ruined by growing up with the internet and social media.

No offense to the boomers, but they had no chance against Facebook. Let's be honest. In the forward slash forward, RE forward emails. Like, they had no chance. They didn't grow up with this stuff. We, no life before, we were young enough to, like, handle the technology, but we've seen both sides, and I'm saying people in middle age right now are the only sane generation, but we are going to be insane someday because there's other stuff that's come along that's going to make us insane. But right now, this is the only sane generation. Yeah, that's a good take. Okay. Recommendations. I told you Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I think, is the best new show of the year so far. I finished it. The thing I liked about it is,

it was a, speaking of the generation stuff, it was a millennial take on spies. Like, they overthought everything. They talked too much. They probably could have been a little. a little more spy stuff. It got a little weird for a couple episodes because I think that's what Donald Glover does. But I thought they landed the plane and I really liked it. And I'd like to see a season two with two with a new John and Jane Smith, new spies. I can't believe how good it is. I watched a really good, right? Yeah, the quality is way higher. Every episode has like one or two really good guest stars. Cameos? Yeah, her cameos, yeah. Great cameos. I watched it. I took a, uh, I took a car into the city. And I left me.

my AirPods in the backseat again. I just need, I just need, uh, I just need, uh, I just need like an AirPods subscription. It's unbelievable. You need to just go back to Wired. Uh, yeah, Mr. Ms. Smith, go called by you. Do you think truth serum is real? Google gave me a conflicting answer. So, so there's, there's a truth serum episode and then it comes back towards the end, because all these people like, can you picture people in L.A.? They microdose mushrooms and they microdose little weed gummies? Can you picture them be like, hey, what are you doing this weekend. Oh, we're going to Joshua Tree to microdose truth serum and tell each other how much all the stuff we hate about each other. Oh, interesting. Wait, I don't know. I don't know if I

assume truth serum is real. Wouldn't that be fun? Like, we're going to lock ourselves in a room and I'll take truth serum and talk shit about each other for an hour. Listen, this might be embarrassing. I don't know. Is truth serum real? I kind of assumed it was. I looked on Google and like one of them said, yes, it's definitely real. And the other one said, no, no, there's no way it's real. So, I don't know. Uh, show gun. Alcohol is kind of like truth serum. That's true. Yeah, there you go. Uh, show gun, two episodes in. I'm all in. Very good. It felt like it could have been an HBO, Apple show.

It's on Hulu. It's good. I can see it getting even better. So it's Succession slash Game of Thrones. More Game of Thrones. It's not success. It's Game of Thrones in Japan and the whatever year it takes place. 1500s, 1400s, yeah.

I also watched a rewatch on Hulu. I'd seen it once when it first came out, watched it again. Enough said. It's Gandalfini's last movie. It's him and Julia Louise Dreyfus. Never heard of it. It's a rom-com. It was Gandalfini's last movie.

Wait, is he the, is he in the rom? Yeah, it's kind of this cute, like they're both divorced, single divorcees, and he plays like kind of a teddy bear kind of guy, and it's not what you'd think of him at all, but it's, it's like a cute rom-com. Okay, interesting. I thought, I liked it. It was even better on the rewatch, I thought. So, as I mentioned, I watched Napoleon on my Vision Pro, rest in peace.

I had a good time watching it, even though the movie wasn't very good. Did you watch it? I did not watch yet. I wanted to watch it when it first came out, but I've heard not great things. So I don't know if I'm going to. It's not good, but that doesn't mean that it's not a mildly entertaining fun watch. I mean, there's parts of it that are great. There's parts of it that are excellent.

But it felt very hollow. And I think because it was like a four-hour cut that was trimmed down, so it just felt very empty. I don't really know what happened. I'm not sure, like, how Napoleon did what he did. And it wasn't great. Okay. That's good.

Ridley Scott's 86 years old. He tried. Really? I didn't realize he was that old. Yeah. Okay. He tried. About the time.

Summing up this show, you and I are probably thinking it's time for a healthy correction, which means it probably won't happen. I've been thinking that. It's enough already. Like, yeah. We shouldn't just be levitating higher for seemingly little reason at all. Nvidia gained $124 billion in market cap yesterday. I'll repeat, $124 billion.

It was like $200 billion in market cap at the bottom in 2021, or 2022, fall of 2022. So I think we all just need a little punch in the face, just a little. Not a knockout punch, but just a reminder of what this is. We've got some good ones lately. I love it when people share with us there. Don't ask a question. They share with us like their early retirement strategy. Some dude the other day said, my wife lives in Europe.

Instead of spending a couple million dollars on a house here, we're going to buy like three apartments in Europe. And I love that strategy. Anyway, keep them coming. What's our email again? Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. We'll see you next time.