Animal Spirits Podcast - This is a Good Thing (EP.352)

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

On episode 352 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: thoughts on Italy, consumers wall of cash, inflation at the grocery store, real estate agent commissions in trouble, the best airplane movie of all time, thoughts on Dune 2, and much more! Thanks to YCharts and Fabric for sponsoring this episode. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free YCharts trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only): https://ycharts.com/ Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/spirits 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

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Thousands of new parents use fabric to protect their family. Applying minutes, meetfabric.com slash spirits. It's meetfabric.com slash spirits. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Insurance Company, not available in certain states. Price is subject to underwriting and health questions. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about Mark. life and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and

do not reflect the opinion of 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 in Bed. I woke up this morning to two videos from Ben doing an international speaker. Ben's in Milan, Italy, and there's 5,000 people in the audience. It looks like, you really do look like a presidential candidate. Ben's name is on a gigantic screen, like an IMAX-sized screen.

You walk out to the audience. You've got your sharp-looking suit. You give away. I mean, you really look, you look like a million bucks. So how's the experience been? The pageantry of the conference is, I think, the most impressive thing that they really know how to do it up in Italy. So it was 5,000 people, by far the biggest number of people ever spoken to.

But wait, let's just remind people that you're actually, you're in Italy right now. I'm in Italy. Yes, I'm in Milan right now. The speech was in turn, Italy just north of here, followed the Elps all the way up. And the pageantry, they had music. So they had a band playing. and then the band stage literally turned around

and then a giant scream candle it was like three iMac screens there's lights everywhere they really take this stuff to like the production value was unlike anything I've ever seen and I also had to have my speech translated into Italian

so I've got earpieces in and someone's speaking over me and so it was quite an experience but Italian people are so nice I did the speech for the same bank nine years ago and a lot of people were still there that was there for the original speech

I think it was right when I joined Riddle's wealth. And so I got to see some old friendly faces. So it was a really cool experience. I told John before we started, I want to say bonjourno to people. It's like one of the coolest greetings there is, and I can't do it. You know, it's like your spring break friends in Mexico when they say, gracios to someone, and it just doesn't sound right. I can't bring myself to say, but it's a really cool greeting.

And I felt like I was left on the outside. So I have some pretty, I have some Italy thoughts here. I started, I dotted a little of a few notes. Wait, wait. Is this, is this comedy? Do I need to be prepared to laugh or not necessarily? When I ask, Chuck, it's more finance-related stuff. Stuff related to kind of the stuff that we've, so I'm in Milan right now, and it's easily

one of the coolest cities ever been to. Like, I sent you a picture of this crazy gothic old church duomo that has probably been there since the 1500s or something, but it's also these outdoor restaurants and shops, and it's gorgeous. But I talked to some young people who said it's basically impossible for young people to live there anymore because the rent's too high and inflation is too. high, and so they're having to move like an hour away to be out of, so it's kind of like the U.S. where young people can't afford the big cities anymore. I thought that was interesting.

We have some data on that later in the show, a little teaser right there. You know how I always talk about how gas prices are one of the most important consumer prices just because the numbers are so big? So I had to drive from Milan to turn, which is an hour and a half. And the thing I noticed on the way was the gas prices on the signs are much smaller here. And I wonder if that's why they're not, is up in arms, because their gas prices. are probably double what ours are. So they're by the leader, and it's seven. Double the price, half, but half the size.

But it's like $8 a gallon for gas here. But the prices are smaller, so maybe it doesn't matter as much. Here's something else. I'm blown away by the fashion from the men here. Like, I feel like I could fit in in Italy based on the fact. Everyone here is fashionable. And when I was younger, this shows, well, like, from young people all the way up to like the grandpas are in like just nice fitting jeans and like cool sunglasses and a sweater

with a shirt under it and everyone looks like they're you know there's some people to go I couldn't go full euro there's some people are way too euro but I'm uh I love how fashionable everyone is here and it shows how middle aged I am that I'm appreciating the men's fashion whereas when I was younger I would have said oh all the women in Italy are so beautiful but no it's it's the men's fashion that I'm appreciating now let's see okay here here's the big thing that stood out to me in Italy. I haven't been to Europe in nine years, I suppose. There's not one truck here anywhere. Like an SUV or like a truck truck? Like an F-150 or a big Dodge Ram. Every car is compact. So there's some small, sportier SUVs, but every car here is so tiny in the whole country that I've seen.

Here's another thing I get behind. Wine at lunch every day. I never have wine during the day. They drink wine with every. They have wine with lunch. You know, they have an espresso. then they have a glass of wine, then they have a cigarette after lunch, right? I can get behind wine at lunch. Also, they looked at me, look, I was an alien because I said I don't drink coffee.

That was like, I smacked them in the face, basically, because I'm not a coffee guy. Okay, one more, and then I'm going to get into the fine side of this thing. So in my hotel last night, it's pretty toasty in my hotel room, and I try to turn the thermosound and then nothing,

trying to turn the air conditioning on, and I walked down to the front desk, and I said, I think my thermostat's broken, and they're like, oh, really? what's wrong? I said, it's pretty hot in my room. I'm trying to turn it down. They're like, no, we don't use air conditioning unless it's the summer. Open your windows. I just love it how the American thinks, I just want to hit a button to solve my problem when they're like, no, use nature. Did it help? It helped. I opened the big door-sized windows, and they opened

and it felt good. All right, so here's what I've learned about finance-wise from Italy. I was, like I said, I talked to the same bank nine years ago. And at the time, they were talking to me they were trying to change the thought process of investing from everyone in the past had invested in real estate and government bonds. That was all they needed because all the real estate was passed down from generation to generation. And they were saying the government bond yields were too low and they're trying to get people off that track and get them on the more goals-based financial planning, long-term investing that we do in the U.S. That's now kind of commonplace here. Well, nine years later, it seems like it's very commonplace

there too. All they talked about was S&P 500. You did it. You did it. It seems like it. So I put this chart in here from Goldman. You've probably seen this one for U.S. ownership or ownership of U.S. equity markets since 1945. So the one that it goes from individuals owning 95% of the market to now like households owning 40%. And we've talked about ETFs and passive investors and hedge funds. But look at the foreign investors one. So that's gone from, I don't know, two or three percent to close to 20 percent now.

what if we've, you know, haven't made as big of a deal about foreign investors coming in here to buy U.S. stocks? And if that concept continues to grow and evolve into other countries, and if the U.S. is 60% of the stock market and they see this, that's like another buyer, right? We got an email from somebody in the U.K. talking about, oh, let me just read the email. I think you're right. Monetary premium is definitely a thing, and it goes further than what you've said. It's a reason why the U.S. market should trade on a higher valuation than anywhere else. That's because the U.S. is the only market where local investors can reasonably justify a 100% home bias. And it's probably the market where you have the greatest weight of money going to the market. Compare this to the U.K. where I am.

Yes, we have auto enrollments at the workplace pensions since 2012. So a huge chunk of the workplace. Workforce pays in about 8% of salary every month. Our exposure to U.K. equity is about 5%. slightly higher than the market weight of 4%. And this is quite typical. No one holds a majority in UK stocks. So even Florida, to your point,

are owning the S&P 500. I think that used to be the thing is there'd be a huge home country bias in these other countries. And what if they're going away from that to be a more diversified global market cap, they have that ability? Isn't that bullish for U.S. stocks?

Well, that's, it has been, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that that was something that we maybe did make as big of a deal out of it. But I kind of thought, Oh, that actually makes sense. So anyway, big fan of Italy.

That's not like going out on a limb. No, are you dipping bread and wine? Are you not quite there yet? No, I haven't gotten there. I can get around the old wine for lunch thing. That's a good trend. Yeah, great place. All right, there was an article in the journal.

Sorry, Stockballs. The Wall of Cash isn't all headed your way. Don't love that title, but whatever. Um, Peter Crane says the wall of cash idea has been trotted out since we were at a trillion dollars in money market funds back in the late 90s. The fact is that cash mostly just competes with cash. That's a great way to put it. That's it.

Cash competes with cash. So this has been your whole thesis the whole time, right? That money markets aren't, money's not going to come out of there and go into the stock market and risk assets. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is very simple to me. Okay. How much of the $6 trillion

came out of bond funds and stock markets and went into a money market fund? I'm going to guess, I don't know, 10% of it. Whatever, less than 10% of it. All of the money, the other 90% came from people that are saying, hey, wait a minute, getting five basis points in my checking account?

How about, or my savings account, how about I just move it over here into a high yield money market fund and that's it? These are two completely different buckets. It's cash and cash versus investments. If I had to guess if anything came out of either one of those other asset classes, it was mostly bonds to say,

why would I earn 3% in bonds when I could earn 5% in money markets? It's definitely not stocks. There's no way. Now, I will say for me personally, I have way more in cash than I've ever had. Will that eventually find its way into the stock market? yeah probably are you turning into a market timer on accident because of this yeah like do you so if this was two years ago and it was one percent money markets with that of money found

his way in the stock market quicker if it was too oh yeah yeah i mean also like i am not the i mean i have so my entire life is levered to the s p 500 not just the amount of not just every two weeks me buying uh but the business that we were business and yeah i i agree with that, and I've heard a lot of advisors say that, people in the wealth management space, and I still just throw all my money in the stock market. I'm okay. You're better off. I should have. But I also, but I also, I guess with this pile of cash, so I think this is, this is typical of, I think, I'm most investors, like, I don't care about the stock market. This is my cash. You know what I mean? Like, I genuinely, all I care about is at 5%. Or, and if it goes down to 4 and a quarter,

great, I'll take that too. It is, it is easier to let it. So if the market goes up, if the stock market goes up 30% in the next 12 months. Am I going to be like, fuck, I could have gotten 30%. No, I have all the rest of my monies of the stock market. I've also let my savings drift higher. I was running it, if we're saying red line is low, green line is high. I was running it to the red line before rates rose, and now I'm letting it get closer to the green probably.

But this surprised me. So the checkable deposits, this is from Fred, they basically show how much money is in checking accounts. And there was that huge spike up during the pandemic. And it's rolled over a little bit, but not much. There's still a ton. Look at that. There's still, and then I looked, I was playing around on the Fred's site

because you type in something on there to search. And it gives you like Google. I just want to make sure I understand what I'm looking at. This is just money in checking accounts, checking accounts. And guess what? That pullback or whatever we're calling it, that slight retracement. So it went from a trillion. Is this trillion?

Yeah. It went from a trillion to four and a half trillion back down to four trillion. Is that half a trillion dollars money that's going into money market funds? I would think so. But this, this, so again, you, you, you've searched something on Fred and it gives you all the other things that are close to it. And one of them was you could look at... I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt. Hold on.

How is there still so much money in checking accounts only zero? I don't know. What are people waiting for? Listen, PSA, if you still have money, substantial. money sitting in your bank account earning zero, what are you waiting for? That's why it's kind of shocking to me that hasn't rolled over more, but they also break it out by different income levels. And so they have one broken out by the wealth percentiles. They have broken up by the bottom 50 percent. Look at the bottom 50 percent. They're sitting

on way more cash, too, or checking account money too. So it's not like this is all money just in the top 1 percent or whatever, the top 10 percent. Everyone has more money in their checking account. And this gets the back to our point from last week about just people have more money now for everything. It's crazy, right? So, so check out. Hold on. Just one more question. So what's, what's keeping this so high? So obviously, we know where the money, we know where the money came from. But aren't people spending it down? Is there, is a savings rate still? I don't know if I thought the savings rate was coming down. I don't know if this is still the excess savings piece or what, but I, I'm searching for, I'm grasping for an explanation. I don't have one. Maybe there,

Maybe there's some weird thing where I'm not reading this right, like what's in the checkable deposits, but it's, it doesn't make sense to me that this is still so high. I guess the, I'm sure a lot of, a big reason why a lot of people have maybe excess savings in their checking account is because that's where their bills are paid. Right. Which I get, obviously. But. And bills are higher now. Enough to pay your bills and, you know, shouldn't be that much more. So getting back to the, everyone has more money kind of thing.

the Fed releases their quarterly data on updated net worth, assets, liabilities. They go into a bunch of different things and looked at this on a decade-by-decade basis. So 90s, 2000s, 2010s in the start of the 2020s, and looked at the growth by age in net worth of Americans. And we're already so far ahead of even like the 90s right now for the change in net worth for Americans. And now, to be fair, a lot of that change in the 90s came towards the end of the decade. But this is like a crazy high increase for four years into the decade already. And look who's leading the charge. Look who's leading the charge.

Those under 40. Yeah. Man, the 2010s, what a decade that was. Yeah, that ones. But a lot of people would make the case that, okay, we've pulled forward housing. We've probably pulled forward some stock market. This can't last. But if you want to know why things have continued to be,

okay, this is part of the reason. People are just wealthier. I think that's the simplest explanation. All right. Good one from Sam Rowe today. And he plotted P ratio, P multiples, and interest rates. Wait, is it interest rates? Yes.

Oh, no, no. Sorry, this is basically showing. Why is this chart so blurry? It is a little blurry. What does that say? Oh, sorry. Honestly. This is Fed Fut futures.

So they showed how Fed futures were kind of tracking P multiples, and I guess the stock market. And the question is, if rate cuts have been taken out the table, why shouldn't valuations come down a little bit? If rates are going to stay higher and inflation is going to stay a little higher, shouldn't multiples come in? That's like the whole thing. Well, they would have. If it wasn't for AI, they absolutely would have. But so people keep saying inflation is sticky, right? Well, inflation is sticky highs, but couldn't you also just say,

economic growth is sticky? Isn't there a difference between saying like inflation remains high? In the 70s, inflation was sticky. Now, if inflation is saying a little higher, it's because growth is good. And I think the stock market is not worried about it for good reason because the economy is remaining strong. That's a good thing. Do we really want the economy to weaken so we can cut, just so we can cut rates? Yeah. No, you make a good point. For people that are talking about inflation being sticky, you can't not talk about the economic resilience, resilient part of this. Yeah, that's why. Because the economy is strong.

It's not talking about assets without liabilities. Come on. Yeah, it's like denominator blindness. All right. Goldman sentiment or indicator just went nuts. That's a tweet from Mike McCarty. Well, there's that. Can you do a breakdown of me for how this thing works?

What's in here? It says, no, it's proprietary. Stock positioning across retail institution and foreign investors versus the past 12 months. So people are coming into the stock market then Somebody got upset with me For suggesting Or I guess repeatedly suggesting that we were due for a pullback

I think I was misunderstood with what I'm trying to say I thought we were I thought we were saying that a pullback would just be healthy Yeah, yeah, that's it's saying it's gonna happen We were saying like it would be good for the market actually If we got a little pullback Yeah, I don't I don't like seeing things I own go straight up So all I'm talking about is like a little I mean, what would be ideal is just a correction through time, right?

We just go sideways. That would be good. Also, that is a really smart TV soundbite right there. What's that? If you say a correction through time, like, you sound pretty smart. Thank you. Don't you think? Yeah.

Anyway, yeah, that would be perfectly normal. That's all. It's all I'm saying. Take it easy. That's the thing. We always get correct. Like, I would rather have a little correction now than a big correction later. I don't know if that actually

The tradeoff works like that But that's what I appreciate Did you see somebody had a chart Showing how Rallies that are led by the momentum factor To this extent are more fragile Have you seen that? Mm-mm

Can't remember who made this Anyway Whatever Market doesn't care what we want I'll tell you that Are you saying the stock market Is a snowflake right now? all right i last i think last week i talked about why is arc not keeping track with the nazdac

100 is it all invidia jeff patack at morning star did this attribution for us he ran it against arc versus the cues and he said that they owned less tech than the nasdaq and had bad selection with it more health care so basically they went on and invidia underway was a big factor So that was part of it. But it was more that they went away from tech and went to more, I guess, biotech, that sort of things. Oh, wow. Significantly overweight healthcare. Wow. Yeah. So anyway, that makes sense.

He also tweeted, ARC shareholder base has been remarkably resilient to all things considered. Assets that poured in largely stayed put. However, starting it's a sustained redemption activity for the first time. I think there's a lot of factors out here. I think, generally speaking, people didn't go all in an arc.

Obviously, there are people that were significantly overweight. I think most people... It was a 5% position or something, right? Yeah, most people treated it exactly as... That's exactly right. But I think people are still holding it as a call option, being like, I can't get out of it now. When you think there's some of that?

Like, I've got to wait at this point. I'm, you know, I got to see what happens. I also wonder if the rest of the market being so resilient has like uh like if the market was dumping would they puk this up first you know what i mean although i guess counterpoint the market did dump in 2022 and they didn't dump yeah it's a lot of dumps big dump guy over there all right last you know i haven't been to the dump in a while uh yeah i don't know what that experience is like i don't understand you don't have boxes that just pile up that you like i just or just garbage you got to just get out of the house

can i tell a secret between you and me please at my office we have a huge huge, yeah, we have a huge garbage thing that you can take your garbage out to. And I fill up the back of my car probably once a week and throw boxes in there. I throw so much stuff away in there. I make use of that. Okay. So that's my dump. Okay. That's the dump. All right. Last week I said inflation was done, quote unquote. And here's what I mean. Where's the quote on quotes? You don't. Well, because inflation is always going. I meant high inflation is done. And you said, I don't quite agree with that. Well, no, no, I think, I think we need to go to the, we need to go to the team. Okay. I didn't say that, I didn't say, I didn't say, I didn't say that 7% inflation is done. No, no. But you seem to think that the Fed can just do one of these. And I'm, I said what, I disagreed.

The data disagreed. Okay. So here's Jeremy Schwartz back me up here. He says, if you put real time inflate, because shelter is such a big part of inflation, if you put, Oh, real time. Well, if you put the real, because the shelter inflation lags. It's the biggest piece of inflation. He's saying that actual inflation right now would be below 1%.

And he thinks the Fed gets that now, and that they're finally going. And that's the kind of thing that's going to take time. It's slowly but surely going to stare, step down. And if you did like X shelter, inflation is really low. Now, let me just say, before I say what I'm about to say, I don't want to be an inflation guy. I don't want this to be a Michael thinks that inflation has come back for his bed, does it? Because I don't want inflation to come back.

There are going to be those guys. Inflation could be back at 2% and there's going to be guys saying, no, it's actually, those guys are going to exist. You know who they are. But look at this next chart. So you've got copper.

I'm showing copper, crude in the 10 year. They're all breaking out. So the market doesn't seem to think that inflation is over. And if you look at agricultural commodities, same thing. I would say if there's a risk to inflation,

it's commodity prices turning back up. That would be the risk. I agree. No, no, they are turning back up. They did turn back up. A little bit. No, dude, that's back up. Fifty two-week calories.

It's back up. Okay, these go back to 2021. Okay. Yeah, I guess gas prices have been rising. If I wanted to be smart, like a TV, if it's TV soundbite guy, like you with the... What would you say? What would you say? Seasonality.

This is seasonality kicking in. It always happens. It always happens like this. I don't know if that's true, but I'm guessing. Okay. So, the last. two weeks, I have been called both a communist and an out-of-touch elitist. So I think that means I'm doing something right or something really wrong. And I think the point is, all of these

takes that we have on things like inflation and economic growth and net worth and all of that, they have to be very nuanced takes, because if you take a stand, someone's going to be angry with you. So I think we got called a communist because we said that young people deserve 3% mortgage rates or something. The point is any of these stories that we're talking about, and I'm going to talk about grocery store inflation now that I talk about, last week. If you have people saying, great take, I totally agree with you. Or people saying, no, you're an idiot.

That means it's obviously not black and white and there's gray. And that's my whole point here. So I did a take on grocery store inflation. I sussed out the numbers a little bit. You're Homer Simpson. This is Ben's backing away from the takes. Oh, no, no. I'm just trying to provide more nuance.

But I actually think I didn't really back away from the take. So if you look at U.S. CPI, the regular one, overall CPI versus wages. Wages have grown faster than CPI since 2020 by a little bit, barely, like 1% more in total. But food at home and food away from home, which is just eating out and then grocery store has been running much higher. So it's like 26, 27% versus 20% for the overall CPI. So people do have a gripe about the grocery store thing. And that's one of those prices like gas that you see all the time.

So it makes sense. This shocked me, though. I looked at it in the 2010. So 2010 to 2019. Look at this CPI food at home. That's grocery store prices versus average hourly earnings. Earnings grew 27% in the 2010s, and grocery store prices grew less than 9%.

And everyone has asked, I posted this chart, and all these people on Twitter are going, what explains this? And all I could think of was lower commodity prices. But my whole point is, this is more about the news than anything. We don't celebrate when stuff like this happens. We only talk about it when it's the other thing. I think you're sort of right.

You're definitely right on that last point. But it's not about the news, dude. It's about people who go to the grocery store every single week. And the numbers don't, I mean, that's what it's about. That's it. Yeah, exactly. It's totally psychological. Because you see those numbers all the time.

Yeah. You're right. Yes. And I get why it makes people so angry. And you get the viral video. Also, a lot of people did point out, the guy in the viral video last year was said, spent $123 on two meals, I don't know what he was buying, because that's ridiculous. And if you say, I can't buy two meals for less than $60, then you have to, I'm sorry,

you have to change your habits. If it's, if it's really killing your budget that bad, stop buying filet mignon or whatever you're buying. Wait, I would talk about a family of four, a meal for $60 at the grocery store? That seems reasonable, no? I don't know. I'm just saying, I bake tacos. I do like taco, like, in like a crock pot.

How much is turkey? I use turkey. Ten bucks? What's a bayon it cost, Michael? $10? I don't know. Turkey is $10. Peppers are another six.

I'm completely making this up. The... You're making everything up. You have no idea. All right. Tally this up. The taco powder can't be more than $3. Rotel tomatoes.

What else do I use? Roel tomatoes are good. An onion? some sour cream and some cheese, that can't be more than $35. Go to Taco Bell at that point. Eat tacos every night. There you go.

Okay, so one of the thing people said about inflation is a lot of people have been chiming in saying, okay, even if inflation isn't as bad as some people think, the quality is way worse now. And that's the thing that irks me. And I thought about this. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff you could point to. But all the big things, TVs, computers, phones, houses, clothes, cars, shoes.

Aren't they all better quality now than they were in the past? Who's saying quality is getting worse? Oh, a few people commented on that. I don't know if that was like that. I think that's... I don't think that argument holds up. A few people. It sounds like one person.

Okay. Well, your Audi for sure is lower quality. And I just want to... A lot of people said, because I said I don't want to say Porsche. And a lot of people said, no, Ben, you're not only saying Porsche wrong. You're saying Audi wrong. It's actually Audi. Yeah, it's Audi.

I'm, maybe it's a Midwest thing. I used to own an Audi and literally the people, the dealership called it Audi. They did not call it Audi. Interesting. You know what I noticed early in the show. I wasn't going to call you out because it's, you know, it sort of slows down the show and it's rude. You said grandpa? Yes. Is that I say, so I say grandpa.

Is that a Midwestern New York thing? I don't know. I feel like that's splitting hairs. That's splitting peas here. well those are not that sounds not that you say grandpa you said grandpa I say grandpa okay I think you're the only say as I'm saying

it shows it's slow show us but don't call you out but it's definitely not oddie okay that was one of you that was like no that was like your closet what did you dresser that take like how do you say grandpa that was like your dresser take

who has dresses anymore and everyone raises their hand no one says grandpa I think it's just you wait I have I have a quality I have a gripe I own a lot of white sneakers.

They get dirty really fast, don't they? Perhaps three. They get dirty really fast. So I fell for it again because I'm a sucker. I saw an Instagram shoe cleaner. And what a crock of shit all these Instagram ads are. Like, especially the cleaners. I got taken this past week.

Tell me about yours and offline mine. All right. So I saw like a, I'm going to say the word vibrator. I don't know what else to say. It was a, it was a, it was a, It was like a toothbrush vibrator. That's what it looked like. It was a circle and it vibrated and it gave you foam.

So I sprayed the shoe, trying to get the stuff out, wiped it down. Look nothing like a commercial. My sneakers are still dirty. That's why they keep making white shoes. They look so good when you get them new. And then they go bad. You have to throw them away and get new ones. That's why they keep doing it.

I wear them into the ground. What did you get? That was crappy quality. Oh, it was my kids. Have you heard of this dribble up? thing. It's like a app on your iPad and you get a basketball or a soccer ball and it gives you

drills and it counts how many dribbles you do. There's like a chip in the ball. But my kid do it inside and it's so loud. So this thing on Instagram said... Oh, I saw that. A quiet basketball? Yes, a quiet basketball. And it looked awesome. And we got them and it's like this foam piece of crap you get like a

Davein Busters or something. My kids love playing with them but you have to hit it so hard to get it to come on. It doesn't dribble at all. So don't get it for that one I did. I got three of them, one for each of my kids. While we're on, kids, last night, I showed the boys the sandlot, which is a movie that I probably haven't seen in 30 years. And definitely holds up. Kobe loved the scene where Squintz kisses the lifeguard.

Yes. What was her name? Something peppercorn or peppercorn or? Yeah, I wasn't really paying that close attention. I don't know. I showed my kids that a couple years ago. It does still hold up. All right. Here's a surprising one from Axios. monthly U.S. grocery and dining out spending, look at how much higher dining out spending is than groceries we're spending now. It was kind of tracking along the same lines for much of the 2010s, and now eating out is so much higher. Do you remember when people during the pandemic were saying, like, 50% of all restaurants are going to go out of business? Yeah, did they?

Restaurants are just booming. How many restaurants did you see go out of business in your town? Not many, right? Well, I wonder, I wonder, I want, what is causing this? Is it grocery store's food is so expensive? You might as well just go out. So, here, for example. But don't you think it's way more expensive to eat out that it is to, the food going out is so much more expensive.

Well, let me ask you this. Do you cook steaks at home? Not really. Okay. Well, I do. And recently, I had been getting steak from the local grocery store. And it's not great quality. And the steak is, I don't know, 18 bucks, give or take, right, for a steak for one.

So yesterday, I went to, like, there's a local butcher. Really good quality, like really good quality. I got a New York strip, and it was $29. And I thought to myself, and it was noticeably better than the stuff that I get in the store. And I thought to myself, I'm a, I don't, why would I? spend $29 for steak that I'm going to cook at home. You could spend, I don't know, how much does a state cost in New York City? You know, whatever, depending on 45 bucks. Like, it could be more, it could be. And you know, they're going to cook it better for you. And you know, it's going to be,

like, you know, it's going to be amazing, perfectly cooked. Right. So does, does that partly explain people's habits? I think people just loved, they hated getting it taken away from them that they couldn't go out to restaurants and then brought back and people realized. But, dude, but look out, but look how far, look how far back the pandemic was. It's been going up ever since. It's so much higher than it was. But isn't that also because restaurant wages have risen so much more, so prices had to go even high?

I don't know. It's hard to explain. Look, it's still going up. It's like not slowing down. Now, is this a combination of people going out more and food getting more expensive? I feel like this is the show. The theme of this show is numbers we can't explain. Can we get a damn economy?

it's a lot of numbers that just don't seem to to make sense i think that's my biggest surprise about inflation is that how many people and i know we're going to get emails saying no you're wrong i do this but how many people complain about inflation but then don't change their habits that's kind of maybe it's like well so what yeah i you can complain about price you change your habit why should i i think that's but that's the part is the people who say like the inflation is killing my family, my family's budget in this, but then don't change their habits. It's like, no, I deserve to buy this. I've always bought this. And that's, that's a surprising thing to me is that there hasn't been more trading down than there has. Yeah. All right, here's a good thing.

This is a good inflationary news. Deflation, in fact, in car rentals. Nationally, the cost to rent a car rental prices are averaging this from the journal. $38 bucks a day. That's down 8% from last year or $3. Look at this chart that we made. So the car and truck rental CPI index is how much off its peak? Let's say. Blu, bloop, bloop. 20% off its peak.

Remember that one month in 2021 where this thing was up, car and truck rental CPI was up over 100%. Now it's falling, big time. This is one of the few places where prices are actually coming down, like meaningful. In fact, I'm taking the family to California and staying there for our work trip. And we just rented a car. Not that bad. Not nothing, but not that bad.

I guess I did when for an SUV. It's not that bad. I think mine was lower this year than it was last year for the SUV. For our spring break trip. That's good. So this should mean used car prices should continue to fall as well. Because the reason that used car prices went crazy is because the car rental agencies got rid of them and they had to buy them back and all that, right?

I remember a lot of cars were being delivered with, like, the semiconductors weren't in there? Yes. That's all better, right? I think so. All right, Ben, you threw a chart in here from John Arnold showing the months in recession for the U.S. economy based on different 30-year periods. What's your takeaway? So it starts in the 1800s, because that's when the National Bureau of Economic Research

started keeping track of this stuff, or they backdated it somehow. And it goes from 180 months to 150 months to 90 months to 60 months to 36 months to 36 months in the latest, which is 1990 to 2023. So every successive, like 30-year period, you spend less time in a recession. And my takeaway is there's a lot of Fed haters these days, but you have to, this is partly because of the Fed, is it not? I mean, part of it is also the U.S. economy is becoming more mature, but the guardrail of these plates have helped. How much, let's a pie chart, how much of this is the Fed responsible for?

A third? A third, a third, a third. Oh, really? Oh, I don't know about that. A third the Fed, a third the economy becoming more mature, and then a third just the size and dynamism of the U.S. economy. that. All right, let me ask you this. How much of this, do you think corporate America deserves more or less credit than the Fed? That's a good point. So that would be the that's all in the dynamism bucket. So the fact that corporate CEOs now just know how to better

allocate the resources and play to the trend of what's played to the environment and all that sort of thing. Yeah. Put their head between their legs when they're expecting a recession. Sort of the Fed has something to do with this. I just, I don't know. Good progress, though. I'll take it. Yeah, no doubt. You know what we haven't spoken about in a while?

We've got two topics in here. Labor market and layoffs, they have not been getting much attention from us. All right, let's keep them in there. What's to say? Labor market needs to be strong. Yeah, nothing to talk about it. Labor market strong and no liaoffs. Keep them in there.

It's going to matter eventually. All right. Hey guys. First time emailer, long-time listener, was listening to when I heard you guys talk about the Coinbase scamming, the story sounded exactly what just happened to me. I got a call from some guy pretending to be from Coinbase security who was calling because they had detected potentially fraudulent activity. I asked for proof fees from Coinbase. The guy was even somehow able to send me an email from Help at Coinbase.com. I punched in some info while a guy was on the line. Conversation continued until my spidey-sense tangle that I decided to lock into my account. In this intervening five minutes, I was drained of 10,000. K. Lesson to your, scammers are constant. And if you get a call from Coinbase or anyone, hang up and call the list of customer service number online to verify the issue actually exists. Yeah. Anytime, I think I spoke with this last week. I was getting a call from American Express.

And I just called back. Anytime you get a call, these people are really sophisticated. Anytime you get a phone call, just hang up and go online and find the customer service number and call them. Just think about how hard it is to get a hold of a customer service person. when you call them, how often you can put on hold or they have to call you back in 20 minutes because you're placed in line.

So how easy do you think it's going to be for them to actually call you? That's never going to happen. No, it happens. It does happen. I get called for fraudulent activity. I mean, that's not a good thing, is it? That my account's being used fraudulently? No.

Okay. Hodel 15 capital, U.S. Bitcoin ETF started trading 10 weeks ago. Despite the large GBT ad flows, the ETF bought 220,000 Bitcoin on a net basis with seven consecutive net positive weeks. Balchunis is a chart from Todd Sone. Nice look at 2024 year-to-date EDF flows by category.

I think I've been slacking on the flows. We haven't spoken much about flows lately. But this is a good one. So I was talking to some European fund managers at lunch today. And they were asking me about the Bitcoin ETFs because they have, they've had the ETFs in Europe for a while now. I don't know, a year or two. They beat us by quite a bit, right?

And they were discussing how they have a decent amount of assets, but it never really moved the needle that much. And they were just saying how they were surprised at how much it has moved the needle in the U.S. So what do you think accounts for that? Which part? Why are we so much more interested in crypto than our European counterparts? Yeah. And my only answer was, well, it's black rock and fidelity are two of the biggest ones. Yeah, it's a huge part of it.

That was the best answer I could come up with. And how about marketing? Like, it works. Yeah. And I think there's something, too, the fact that people in the U.S. are more, a little more speculative. Is that fair? Yeah, for sure.

So anyway, 2022 category ETF flows. Spot Bitcoin, XGBTC, $23.6 billion. Intermediate duration bonds, $16 billion. I guess that's people coming out of short and old short, I would guess. Tech 15. et cetera, et cetera, on the opposite side, commodities, that's interesting, just, you know, given the performance that we just spoke about recently, and gold. Wow.

I mean, gold on an all-time high and money's pouring out. Huh. That's surprising. Can you imagine if you were a gold bug and didn't pivot to Bitcoin? Yeah, I could, no, I could definitely imagine that. What I can't imagine is being a gold person and, well, are they taking profits? I don't know. Again, theme of the show, I don't know. All right.

Dave Notting. Credit us for admitting it. Yeah, the shit's hard. A lot of stuff we don't know. Dave Notting had a post, Bitcoin end games and the new hyperagents. If the hodlers are right, they're also the new elite. We've spoken before about, at least my general disdain for the Bitcoin mindset, feels like a short America type of mentality.

and obviously there's a lot of just to say grifters and scam artists in the spaces. Hopefully this time does feel a little different that maybe the ETF is more of the adult in the room and there is more positivity surrounding it. I hope so. And listen, obviously I'm paid with a broad brush. Like there's obviously respectable people that have good intentions in the space amongst all of the other shit. But so anyway, the point that Dave was making is that if Bitcoin works, like in terms of creating another financial system. You know, forget about just an asset class,

but really like a system. Like, what are the actual, what are like the real implications of that? And they're not pretty. Somebody tweeted, one of the biggest people in this space, one of the biggest evangelists tweeted, at least 24% of your wealth

has been invisibly seized by the government since January 2020. And this type of shit makes my blood boil. I can't say that this is like disingenuous at best. And it's just fucking toxic grossness and a lot worse than that. And if these people, if Bitcoin really does go to a million, these are people are going to be sitting on enormous sums of wealth and are going to have serious influence.

And that part of it is horrifying. Like truly, truly horrifying. Do you think they're going to have, Do you think anyone listens to these people anymore, though? Besides the people who have always? Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

And guess what? What if this dude has $30 billion to throw around? You know, the ironic thing is that people who say that the true inflation is sucked away your money or the true inflation rate is like 15%. That's like some of the crypto people. They don't ever say Bitcoin's not at an all-time high until you account for 70% inflation wherever it's been, according to them. Right? I feel like they need to use shadow stats for their inflationary high. not new inflationary highs.

So, yeah, this is the gross part. And Dave brings up a good point. Like, you know, if they're right, then the world is going to look a little bit different. Okay. So get ready for a world of worse macro takes. I mean, that and worse. That and worse. It's bad.

I mean, obviously not showing anything other than this than the inflation rate, like not showing wages or assets. And, you know, it's a person who is educated that knows better, too. That's the worst part. They know better. They know what they're doing. Like, and this is this illusion, delusion, nonsense that it's going to flatten the financial system and bring fairness and equality. Give me a fucking break, dude. Seriously.

Yes. We know that that's not happening. So are there benefits? Yeah, I'm sure. But this ain't it. Anyway. Okay. Real estate. There was big news this week.

Yes. So the NARs, they ponied up, whatever, with the lawsuit. So they're paying a bunch of money. And the whole deal with someone sued who had to pay the, what are they, the sellers commission? They were the sellers. So are commissions really going to fall from this? So here's some stuff from the New York Times. A professor of real estate said, this will blow up the market and force them. a new business model, economists estimate commissions could reduce by 30% driving down home prices across the board. I don't know about the home price thing. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Starting in July, most home sellers will not have to make an upfront offer for how much they'll pay the buyer's agent. That means home sellers won't cover the cost of the buyer's agents.

Buyers could have to pay themselves out of pocket. Companies are experimenting with different structures. Some are talking about a flat fee. So they profiled this guy in Los Angeles who represents buyers for a flat fee of like $9,700. That's for buyers. For sellers, he charges almost 16,000. Do you think that this is really going to have meaningful change to the industry? A lot of people are saying it. A lot of people are saying that it will. It's more of I'll believe it when I see it kind of thing. But the problem a lot of people are saying is that like, some people could be out of pocket for stuff they wouldn't have been in a pocket before, but they couldn't drive the cost down. Do you think this will actually increase the turnover?

If prices are cheaper, well, houses turn over more? I don't think so Once we get away from the 3% handcuffs or whatever Isn't that possible If you don't have to pay as much friction

No Nobody's ever said I want to sell my house But I don't want to pay the agent And therefore I'm not going To sell this Yeah, good point

But do you think That we're going to see Some fee wars here Where this It does get easier though There's Listen, this is going to bring in competition There's going to be agents

I'm like listen I'll do it for 2% Yeah So Americans pay $100 billion In real estate commissions annually Yeah, I think you're right though

That people don't Imagine if all that money Went into Bitcoin where it should be But you're right People don't ever look at it and go I was going to sell my house But I got to pay 6% No one does that

So I think That's what I'm saying I've never been I sold my house I sold my apartment in Brooklyn You know why? Because I remember when I bought it You know what the agent did

She met us at the apartment Open the lock And said here's your 700 square feet And I looked around And I said Cool So when I went, when I was ready to sell it, he said, I'm not paying somebody 3% for that. What are you out of your mind?

So how did you list it? I don't know. On street easy, on Zillow, whatever. Okay. And I'm not, listen, for that situation, you don't need an agent. Right? There's definitely cities, places, wherever, where it would be impossible, a nightmare to sell your house without a professional. That apartment was not one of those places.

And I didn't feel like paying it. So one of the stocks that I've been most. wrong about, and the stocks that I still pick is Zillow. I've been wrong about it for a while because it got crushed the first time that this came out, and I said, this is bullish for Zillow. Isn't it? How come they won't be just the marketplace for everyone that puts buyers and sellers together? But they fell 15% when this story hit. Redfin fell as well. I know that they get paid by realtors for this to be listed on their sites and stuff, but I don't know why this isn't bullish for Zillow. That they can be the one that puts people together.

Listen, based on your lack of understanding of Zillow's business model, and I would say mine too, and the fact that the stock fell 15% of the day, let's just say that the market is probably right. Probably. I would have assumed Zillow is going to be the one to step in and take the missing pieces here. I don't know. Or you don't be funny if in six weeks from now Zillow recaptures all those losses

that I could say, hey, Ben, great call. You were right. Gaps get filled, right. Yeah, maybe it was just everyone's selling real estate stocks. So guess what happens? Wait, wait, wait, that brings up a good question. Because this wasn't a gap. This happened to itch a day.

So there was no gap. If this happened after hours, you damn right, the gap would get filled. Why, what's the difference? There was no gap. There's no gap on the chart. Oh, it has to be after hours. Gaps are, gaps are overnight. Okay.

So if we have 24-7 trading someday, gaps are gone completely. You're thinking, eh? I'm thinking. All right. That would blow a hole in my trading strategy. Yes, it would. All right. Guess what happens when you build more houses and apartments?

Prices go down? Good thing. So the Wall Street Journal had a story about Austin. It's funny because they kind of, they poo-pood this and said it as a bad thing. I look at it so it says America's once hottest housing market. Austin is running in reverse. And they're saying so many people came to Austin that they built so many more homes and so many apartments that rents in Austin around 7% in the last year more than any other city according

to apartment list.com. There's a glut of luxury apartments. Landlords are offering like weeks of free rent. They're offering concessions. And they're saying not as many people are coming to Austin anymore, but they built too much. So home prices have fallen more than anywhere else in Austin, which they were, to be fair, they were up a lot too. But this is a good thing. So they're saying that in Texas is way easier to buy a home that's far fewer regulations. Or to build a home, far fewer regulations. I think this is a good thing, right? You know, we need an animal spread's t-shirt. This is a good thing. It's a great phrase. Yeah, you use it a lot. Yeah. Yes, this is a good thing. This is, like, if you want to solve this stuff, and someone asked me a couple weeks ago,

okay, smart guy, how would you actually fix a housing crisis? Because the Fed can't do it. We've already talked about that. The Fed, if they lower rates and housing prices take off, people are going to blame, or if they lower mortgage rates, housing prices take off. People are going to blame the Fed. Fed can't control housing supply. I think the only thing that would honestly help, because people said, well, you have to go to local level and restrictions, and that, I don't know how you fix that mess. The government would have to, like they did in the 50s, literally say they're going to back the loans by home builders. They're saying any home loan that you put out there, we're going to guarantee it. That's what they did in 50s, and they built a ton of homes.

I think that's the only thing I would really get supplied to where it needs to be. Something like that, like a blanket guarantee. We're not going to let you home builders go bust. If you overbuild, just start building. We'll back them. Up to the first four million houses or something like that. That's my solution. So you are a communist. Yes, it's come full circle. Okay. So earlier the show, and really for a long time, we've been asking the question, why aren't people changing their behavior? If they're annoyed with prices, you don't like the prices? Don't pay the prices. Do something about it. Well, guess what? Young people are responding. probably because they have no choice but to change their behavior when it comes to where they live.

So the St. Louis Fed put out a piece, and it's called, by the generations, location patterns of different cohorts. Here we go. Members, so they're looking at different, where do people live in their 20s based on different generations? Members of the silent generation were the most likely to live in urban areas early in their lives. Baby boomers, Gen X, and millennials all had similar patterns. Each subsequent generation became increasingly less likely to live in large central metros and more likely to live in medium and small metros, like Austin, I guess, for example.

Gen Z in particular, has started off living in less urbanized areas compared with their predecessors. Only 39% live in large central metros and 11% live in small metros. Location patterns early in life most likely reflect choices based on career prospects or affordability. If large cities become relatively less, became relatively more expensive across the years. Young people early in their careers may be less likely to live there. So silent generation,

we're looking at like large cities. It was 58% of people between the ages of 20 to 29 live there. 50% of baby boomers, 45% for Gen X, 44% for millennials, and a big drop, only 39% of millennials,

I'm sorry, Gen Zeres live in a large city. So they have no choice but to respond to the hand that they've been dealt, which is not a great hand. Yeah, which is too bad for young people because that's the time you want to live in a big city. You share an apartment with four roommates or something.

You live in the cheap and there's all this stuff to do. That's the person who should be willing to slum it for a little bit in a studio apartment or whatever, a three-bedroom with all their friends. So that is actually too bad, but obviously it's becoming prohibitively it's cost ineffective to live in those cities. So if we're ranking research done by regional feds, I think St. Louis has got to be close at the top. They put off some good research. We've been using them a lot lately. I do like the Missouri one, both the Kansas City and the Missouri. Good on.

All right. The Wall Street Journal had a piece on young people being disillusioned with life. They're more depressed, all this stuff that we've been talking about. So they have this chart that goes back to the 70s talking about it's hard to have hope for the world, and you wonder if there is a purpose to life given the world situation. And this has increased. You could say if you look at this, The access is truncated a little bit.

So it's not a huge, huge increase, but it's an increase. So my question to you is this. If we want our children who are going to be growing up in the information age and social media and stuff, how do we avoid this fate for them of being more depressed because they're online all the time? Is it possible to avoid that fate? No, yeah. Of course. You don't pay for internet.

Done. Problem solved. Well, I haven't given this much thought. Here's my knee-jerk response. Lots of kisses. Shower your kids with love and inspiration and give them confidence. And I don't know. I kiss my boys all the time.

And I plan on continuing to give them kisses forever. All right. I do also wonder how much of this is COVID in that part of it. Not the answer you were looking for. I don't know. No. What do you do? Here's my answer.

sports, extracurriculars, pushing them to hang out with their friends more, be outside as much as possible. I think that's the kind of stuff where get them away from a screen as much as possible. That's why I think sports are so much more important now because it not only is exercise and teamwork and camaraderie and all this stuff and hard work and discipline, but it just gets you out away from the screen. And that's why I think sports is so important. No doubt.

So do you think we're ever going to get a younger generation that comes up and says, what, no, we're not doing this social media stuff anymore. We're past it. Is there going to be, like, a younger generation that comes up and says, we're nostalgic for the way things used to be. We're not, we're not going to fall in mind just because everyone else did. Is that, is that wish of thinking? I would love to see that, right? Probably, right? I don't know. These companies are so good at addicting the youths. They really are. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. All right, survey of the week. Two-thirds of U.S. adults prefer watching movies on streaming rather than theaters according to a new poll. This is from disgusting film. Yeah, no shit.

I would say, I would say it's like nine-tenths. Who goes to the theater, except for me? No, everybody likes streaming. Yes, it's just, it's, it's way easier. It really is. And the fact that you could break it up into, Dune is like three hours. My wife and I are having a hard time figuring out

when we're going to go see it, the new Dune. Yeah. It's hard to find a time. All right, I've got, I've got a trillion-dollar idea for Apple. You ever hang up, you ever press end on your call like a half a second after the other person presses end and you accidentally dial somebody all the time I do that all the time right

and then you have to you have to scramble to the message to tell them that it was just a butt dial before they can call you back which by the way for those people who are you calling you back Chris Venn dude if I call you and I hang up half a second later you don't have to text me wasn't a pocket dial because guess what if it wasn't a pocket dial

I'll call you back I have a friend who... Now, now, now if you say, well, Michael, what if this person texts you an hour later? No, no, no, no. Chris texts you immediately. He knows it's a pocket dial. Yes, you know it's a button.

So here's my fix. If you hit the call button within three seconds of your previous call ending, I'm okay with Apple saying, do you really want to make this call? Yeah, it's like Google. When you send an email, you can say, undo that email really quick

because you have like 10 seconds to do it or whatever. It should be like that. It should say, are you sure? If it's within three seconds, certainly one second of a previous phone call, it should say, are you sure? Thank you. I'm not sure. I don't want to do that call. I like that idea.

Thank you. Tim Cook on the phone. All right, recommendations. I've realized, and I know I've mentioned this movie before, but I had a lot of time to kill. I had like an eight-hour flight here, so I watched a lot of movies. And I realize I have a favorite airplane movie of all time. And maybe it's just because it's a flying movie, but up in the air with Clooney is my- That's great.

It's so good. And it's even better to watch an airplane. But here's the thing. This movie came out in 2009, I believe. So dated. It's, well, it's a time capsule of the great financial crisis, though, because it's literally a movie about firing people. And they also talk about how housing prices are so low and crashing in the movie.

So I just think it's interesting to think about movies that are made of the current period versus the great financial crisis. Because right now, the only movies people are making is, like, dumb money that's about speculation. Like, you wouldn't, you can't really make a movie about in, right now or something. That would actually make sense. It has to be about speculation and people going crazy. How about this idea that somebody would get on an airplane to go up around the country firing somebody instead of just doing it on Zoom? Yes. Well, that's the whole idea of the show

of switching from firing people in person to going on Zoom. What show? The movie, I mean. Sorry, that's the idea of the movie. Do you remember the plot? Oh, I don't, I guess I don't remember that well. Is that what happens at the end? The plot is Anna Kendrick comes in as a young person and She wants to fire people over Zoom, including he's the old guy. Anyway, I have a confession to make. As a World War II buff, hand up, I loved Band of Brothers. I loved the Pacific. I can't get into Masters of the Air.

Yeah, I've heard other people say something similar. I think it's because it takes place all in the planes and it feels like a video game and all the guys have the masks on so you can't really tell who's who. And also because awesome. That doesn't sound great to me. So I looked awesome and it's pretty good, but I can't really get into it. it. And also, Austin Butler still sounds like Elvis on the show, and I can't get over his accent. He still talks like Elvis, even though he doesn't look at him anymore. Also, I want to give you

credit on the gentleman. We're two episodes in, and it's great. Total Guy Ritchie. Love it. So I finished it. I benched it. I actually, I had a lot of time this weekend, which was wonderful. No plans Friday. No plans Saturday. That is my type of weekend. So I finished the gentleman, but I'm kind of sad. I feel like I sped through it too quickly. It was so good. Like, one of the more enjoyable shows I've seen in a while. It was so, so good. Is it set up for another season? Oh, yeah, of course.

Okay. Just making sure. I don't know if it was a one-season deal. It's phenomenal. I don't know if you got to this part. This is definitely not a spoiler, but just in terms of a character that appears, Mr. French from The Departed.

Have you seen him yet? No. Okay. Excellent show. Based on your recommendation, as well as friend of the show, Phil Huber, I watched Wonderlust. And I don't know how I missed that.

I don't even remember it coming out. And I looked, it was from 2012. So maybe that was during my dark days. But I watched it. And it's exactly what I hoped it would be. I mean, it was, it wasn't a great movie, but it was our type of time capsule type movie, right? It's a decent Paul Rudd one. Yeah.

Yeah, Paul Rudd is so funny. But them trying to sell their house at the beginning and they can't, right? Or they lose money on it. Yeah. There's a few very. very laugh-out lad, Paul Rudd scenes. He is definitely one of the comedic geniuses of our day. You're always happy with what you get from him.

You're never, like, disappointed in a Paul Rudd movie. Yeah, it's exactly, exactly what I was hoping for it to be. Okay. So, Dune 2, this take is not hot, but I can't believe, so I saw it in IMAX. By the way, I, Josh and I were, we saw it in the big, like the Lincoln Center IMAX, and apparently there was, it was a Ghostbusters, premieres. that night. So when I was walking to work that day at the New York City Public Library, I saw people in Ghostbusters costumes. I was like, oh, that's weird. I really think much of it.

But then when we got to the theater, it was a premiere. So the car was outside, the Mobile or whatever. And there was a bunch of people in Ghostbuster costumes. I had no idea that there was like turkeys. Do you think there are plants, though? Like they planted them there? No, no, no, no. These were certified weirdos. Did you know that that was the thing? I did not. Speaking of Paul Rudd, I think that was, he was pretty good in the last Ghostbusters, too. Is he seeing the new one? The new one looks very good.

So I haven't seen Ghostbusters in 30 years. Does it hold up? I showed my kids. My son is into the Staypuff marshmallow guy. It actually does hold up. I think just because Bill Murray is so good. Obviously, the special effects don't hold up, but it's... You know what?

It's high time I show that at Kobe. Okay, so anyway, so Dune Tune 2 was... I have to really think about this, but certainly a top 10 movie experience. experience I've ever had in my life. I didn't like, I don't, I didn't love the first one. I liked it, but I was, it was too much work, right? I didn't understand what was going on. I liked the first one. Okay. No, I liked it too. I just, I didn't love it. Yeah. I can't believe how good this movie was. Like, I, Deney is just such a God. I cannot believe.

I walked out of the theater and was just like. Because of the plot or like the visuals or what or everything? Not the plot, just everything. Everything. It was such a fucking masterpiece. piece. Because to me, it's kind of like Game of Thrones where I don't really know what's going at all times, but I don't care either, that I'm not like in and all the little side, you know, this person is actually... This, this had a lot more clarity than the first one for me. Awesome Butler was great in it, by the way.

You have to see it in the theater. Wait, does he have the Elvis accent still? You will remember this, you will remember this for the rest of your life. Like that, it was, and it's probably not going to win best picture, but it's only margin it should. Like, I can't imagine there being a better movie this year. Okay. I'm I'm it was it was incredible incredible don't get my hopes too high but I uh I will well no I can't so I said somebody I can't there's no bar that I could set it to that you

would be disappointed okay good than I like it's just that good okay see the first one we we watched the first one a couple weeks ago my wife is looking up she's like oh this emperor is actually this person and that person's they they're related and I'm like I don't care I just like it I don't know I still don't know I still don't know the different tribes and whatever and guess what I don't care so if we if we if we discuss discovered the spice thing, how much does the stock market go up the next day? So I was wondering, like, how, how, I bet their stock market is great because of the spice. Hmm? Yeah, I can't even tell you who they are. It's at the, whatever. I'm going to try and put it. I mean,

wealth inequality seems bad, but I think the spice market is keeping up the stock market as well in Arcades, wherever this country, the world's called. You said it. All right, animal spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you for listening. Have a great rest of your week. We'll see on Wednesday. Boniorno.