Animal Spirits Podcast - Trump Coin (EP.396)

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

On episode 396 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: a memecoin from the President, what's next for the crypto industry, the golden age of financial fraud, recessions are becoming less prevalent, how much income it takes to be rich, the Sonos app crash, Wall Street thinks houses are overpriced, youth sports for Millennial parents, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Nasdaq. To learn more about the Nasdaq-100® Ecosystem, visit: https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/global-indexes/nasdaq-100 Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Subscribe to The Unlock newsletter: https://www.advisorunlock.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's show is brought to you by NASDAQ. Ben, Todd Sown made an incredible chart showing the declining percentage of the SMP 500 of the consumer staple sector. The consumer staple sector. So Costco, Walmart, Pepsi, like maybe some of those are discretionary, but like things that you can't live without, right? The staples are smaller. The whole sector than Microsoft.

than Nvidia, then Apple. Individually? Oh, I didn't know that. The NASDAQ 100 swallowed the consumer staple sector, I mean a long time ago, but now just individual components are bigger than the entire staple sector. So, NASDAQ tells us that the NASDAQ 100 started in 1985,

eight of the 10, biggest companies in the world are in it. It's like on the heels of the S&P in terms of name recognition now as terms of a benchmark. I feel like this is all happening, right? It's getting there. It's very impressive. How about this? Have you told me 10 years ago?

It would have been like, come on. Right? It would have been unthinkable. But yeah, you're right. The gap is definitely closing. Yeah. So the largest QZTF is the Invesco one. It's $300 billion or more now.

How much is it's by? Probably double that, I think, but still. So yeah, it's very impressive. So if you want to learn more about the NADSXX100 ecosystem, check the link in the show notes and visit Nazec. to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and

watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of 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. It was almost a catastrophic rugpole in Michael's Fandul account over the weekend. And it's not about my money. It's about you, Ben. And I feel for you. That was one swift kick in the pants. How are you feeling? I tweeted out after the game that I've always kind of wondered what it must be like to be to be a perma bear and just

lose all the time. But I know because I'm a Lions fan. I know what it's like to be a perma bear now. I felt your pain. That was that was tough. So I've never seen, because the college sports are very big in the Midwest. So in Michigan, but we have Michigan fans and Michigan State fans and Ohio State fans and Notre Dame fans. So let me ask you, like, how big of a lion's fan are you? Well, the thing is, like, are you like, were you like okay in the next day or? Oh, no, I was depressed all weekend. I was extremely depressed. My daughter kept telling me, like, stop telling me how depressed you are. And I'm sorry, I got to stop talking about it. But I've always been a bigger college fan than pro fan, but I've really gotten into, I've followed the lines forever,

but it's not like I ever had my heart really into it because they were, they were like the laughing stock of the NFL for years and years and years. And now, to make matters worse, not to pour salt in the one, but yet Ohio State win last night, which probably was whatever. No, I'm okay with that because Michigan beat them. So Michigan is a de facto back-to-back champion. So I'm okay with that one. But you're losing your offensive and defensive coordinator. Like, this should have been the year. Yeah, no, it's, there's no positive

spin on it. It was, but I, so I mentioned, like, all the different college fans in the state of Michigan. But for the Lions, every Saturday and Sunday, I've never seen more Lions gear. Like, everyone was into it. It was like the whole state kind of shut down. And so I, yes, unfortunately for the Lions

fans, it's, it's painful. But I was expecting it, so we move on. I wasn't. considering the wagers in my account. But I was bailed out by the Bank of Buffalo. Shout out to Benny Markets. Yeah, tough loss, tough loss. Okay, one quick plug.

I think we said this before, but I'll say it one more time. Me and the team are coming to Naples. Josh and I are doing a live teacalf with Brian Belski, which is sold out, unfortunately. But we're going to be there the week of February 17th. So we're coming in the 19th, Wednesday, we're out of there on the 21st or Friday. But we are meeting with clients and prospective clients and advisors that want to talk and learn about what it's like to be an advisor here at Riddholt's wealth management.

So if you want to learn more about meeting us, info at Ritholtzwealth.com. And we tried to get a Baton-Karlson family trip together for this, but I'd already had something else planned. It was the last minute. I blame you for asking me too late. But we tried. Okay. One of these years.

All right. So I was on the train. Where was I Saturday night? Oh, was it Saturday? Friday. Friday. I was on the Nickyam. I was on the train.

And I'm on the train and I see a trump of this Trump coin. I'm like, what, what? And I didn't really think a ton of it. And then I thought, wait, should I buy this with the nonsense that's going around? And I'll just continue to listen to my podcast and not buy it. So I'm guessing most, I'm guessing our audience under 40, let's say, has heard of the official Trump meme coin. But maybe our audience, let's say over 50 is completely oblivious as to what happened over the weekend. Possibly. Yes. And I want to preface all this by saying, you and I, I think, for being labeled tradfi guys by the crypto community, which always seems like a put down when they call you tradfi, like, you know, it's the hither than now meme looking down.

I'm part Chad. But I think we've been very fair to crypto over the years. And in fact, we've gotten a lot of people in the traditional finance space who always say, like, guys, stop talking about crypto. You know, this thing is a joke. Don't talk about it. And I think we've been very fair. So I just want to preface any comments we make today with the fact that we have been very

fair to the industry. We've had a lot of podcasts on it. Six weeks ago, our podcast was titled, like, the Bitcoiners won. Right? Like, we've given praise to crypto. But I think one of the cool things about the industry, the outset was how much hope there was to, like, change the world and build cool stuff. And it seems like every bull market that we've lived through for crypto, it's been like,

hey, listen, we're going to smart contract this, we're going to tokenize that, we're going to make this more efficient, we're going to make that more efficient, we're going to do this. And I kind of feel like this bull market, they're not even pretending anymore. Okay. They're not even like pretending that we're going to build something cool. It's just, it seems to me, at least in terms of the attention. Yeah, but, but, but, but. It's all gambling and meme coins and pump and dumps, and it's kind of depressing.

Yeah, no, I hate it. I hate it, and this is not, they would label this cope. Listen, I love that there's people that got rich off this coin that like... Yeah, I don't care about that. Like, I love that there's people that experience life-changing money. What I hate is everything else. The fact that an incoming president did this right before the inauguration, what I hate is the fact that for every person that made life-changing money, there's people that are going

to lose life-changing money. And this is, you say, like, we've been very fair to the crypto industry. I don't even think this is a crypto industry thing. because most real legitimate people in crypto are not happy with this they're not celebrating this this is this is a shit stain on the industry and I don't think anybody's excited about it

but I feel like the industry has celebrated the meme coins and stuff and I feel like that's where they have made a mistake is saying that like and I've heard I've seen legitimate people trying to say like listen meme coins are the thing that get people into the into crypto and it's the gambling and it gets people on those are fringe dumbasses I but the fact that

meme coins have been allowed to be the thing for this cycle, at least it feels like that to me has been the mistake of crypto. And then once the rules are taken away and then all hell breaks loose, then this is what happens. All right. So I think we pulled some tweets to sort of go through the story to explain what the hell just happened over the weekend. In my opinion, this, I mean, this makes GameStop look like a joke, right? This makes Fartcoin lecoint. This is the, this is the craziest thing I think I've ever seen in financial markets. Like the incoming president did this right before the inauguration. So here we go.

Yeah, but the doge coin and fart coin were the predecessors to this. Yeah. You don't, they had to walk before. Yes. Trump coin could run or whatever, right? Yeah. So Jim Chanos said, I'm afraid the golden age of fraud may not do justice to the next four years.

This is good to get a lot crazier. I'm not saying that like this might be the peak craziness, but like throw everything at the window of how dumb you think this can get or how big the numbers can get because it's just going to get crazier. Well, because the rules have been thrown out, so I think the really, the way that I would like to put this in historical precedent is the 1920s was the first time they really rolled out financial products in like the roaring 20s because things were so happy and crazy and all this innovation and people got absolutely wrecked by these things. And I think, and after that, you had to have the creation of the SEC and all these

banking regulations. And unfortunately, I think that's what it's going to take is taking all the rules off the table for crypto because I saw a lot of crypto people even saying like, oh, wait, so crime is legal now. And they weren't kidding. Yeah. So I do think that like, yeah, there's going to be life-changing amounts of money be made, but there's going to be so many people that get taken advantage up and lose a lot of money as well. Well, hang on. To that point, I think that everybody knows what's going on. So, listen, I feel bad when people get rugged and wrecked, but I think at least, at least everybody knows that this is pure gambling. You know what I mean? Like, it's a little bit different. I'm not saying it's better, but everybody knows that it's pure gambling. There's no

illusion that there's any fundamentals coming or anything else. It's pure gambling. So if you do get wrecked, really, that's your fault. Well, for sure. If you lose money in the space, yes, that's, you take personal responsibility. It's, it's, it's, Too bad that there are grifters and charlatans that are going to be taking advantage. But yes, apparently I guess it's fair game now. Okay. This is from ViDamo on Twitter. Actually insane that a career grifter managed to surprise a whole industry of grifters

who are expecting him to grift with unprecedented levels of grifting. Well said. I have nothing to add. Sharelift Capital. I fully understand why China banned crypto. this is collapse of society type stuff. So to reiterate or to iterate, because I don't think we said this earlier,

I don't know what percent of the float that Trump owned, is it 80 percent? It's some ungodly number. So normally with a meme coin, the developers will own, I don't know, 20 percent of it. Right? With this, Trump owns almost all of it. So the supply is very, very, very small.

So, yeah, this is, I think if there's, I'm like really grabbing for like, not going to dark places. I think this is a much bigger online story. I don't think that most of the population understands, thank God, what's going on, because it's so fucking dark. I don't think my parents would get this. Right. Like, it's so, it's so dark. No offense, mom and dad. Somebody else tweeted, Gary, come back. You were right. In reference to Gary Gunster. I was listening to Joe and Tracy this morning with Austin Campbell, I believe is his name, who is a serious person in the crypto industry,

like stable coins, professor, banking, like the whole backer, like a real person. And he made a great point. Gary Gensler caused so much damage because he created the crypto army. Had he just let these damn ETFs come into existence, he would not have galvanized an entire group of people against him

that Trump then galvanized to help win the election and, you know, contribute to all the crazy things that's going on. Whatever he was trying to hold, back on? Like, what, what did it accomplish? It boomeranged. It had the opposite intended effect. Yeah, it did, whatever they were fighting against, it had no positive benefits. No, he didn't, no, he didn't do anything. Helpful. Okay, here's another one from Chairman Burb, Bernanke. Look, you have to admit, it's at least a little funny that the guys who spent the

last four years screaming about how corrupt Nancy Pelosi was for buying cues and NVIDIA are just straight up doing crime in the Salana meme coin trenches. Yeah. It would be nice if like at least part of the ownership came with like, hey, if you buy this coin, we're going to send you some Trump sneakers and Bibles, right? But they're not even pretending like this is anything other than a transfer of wealth. And then Noah Smith wrote a post on this and he was basically saying, listen, if somebody wants to bribe Trump, like how would you stop it?

If somebody's just buying Trump coin, how could you prove that there's that there's any, you know, it's like what? I think the coin's going to go up. I'm not allowed to buy something. I think it's going to go up. Yes. I think that's the scary part is that this, and the fact that he's putting people in positions of powerful regulations that are going to look the other way if anything did happen. So it doesn't matter. One thing we didn't mention is that from the time of launch until a peak, it was up.

I saw a stat like more than the S&P. 500 over the last 45 years or some crazy number. It was up like 50,000 percent. It went from 0.00 whatever up to a $70 billion market cap like overnight. And it's down by half, but still, just wild stuff. I think Howard had a pretty sober thought on where we've come and where we're going. Howard said, re-latest Trump and crew grift being bad for crypto. I've been telling people the following. People still went west when they heard their friends were killed by Indians. Now, whatever, I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but I think it's pretty good in the sense that, like, crypto is still going, like digital, stablecoins, tokenization, like,

all of that is still coming. And this clown's side show is not going to stop it. It's not going to, it's just, so I think that was a good way to think about it. Yesterday. Right. They still, the, the ETF was a big deal. If Bitcoin is able to supplant gold as the digital gold, that's obviously a huge deal. The stable coin thing is a big deal by allowing people in other countries to get access to the dollar in a stable way. Like that stuff crypto has made inroads. I just, the fact that this stuff just sucks out, all the oxygen out of the room. And we know that there's smart people in the crypto industry. We've talked to them. We've met with them. We know some of them. But it seems like they're being pushed to the side

very slowly but surely. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think. I think the loud voices. I think, again, I saw a few real crypto people cheering this on. Oh, yeah. No, I saw a lot of them saying, like, I can't believe this is happening. This is not what we signed up for. This completely delegitimizes a lot of the work they're doing. So, yeah, it's, it's nasty stuff. All right. And Ben, perhaps the coup de grace, there was a pastor from Detroit yesterday at the inauguration that did some speaking. And he launched. a meme coin or there was a meme coin launched and it was given to him. I don't know, but he did a video encouraging people to buy, what is this, Lorenzo, a Lorenzo coin. I just, come on.

I mean, the hope is that fine, every Charlton and Grifter does one of these meme coins and there's so much supply that eventually people just stop caring and it stops mattering and enough people lose money that they go, okay, I'm not going to gamble on this stuff and inspect that anymore. Because you mentioned like the returns going from zero to 70 billion or of course that's astronomical. What was it? A dozen people who did it who got in at the very beginning and I mean, that's, hold on.

There was how many wallets were there? Was there a million or a hundred thousand? There was a lot of people, dude. That bought it. A lot of people bought this. Yeah, but I don't know. It's just did you see, I saw this meme going around from the big short where Steve Corella, Steve Eisenman says, I don't get it. Why are they confessing? And the guy says

they're not confessing. That's the stage we're in. And again, I saw a lot of level-headed people be like, okay, what is like the game theory here of if there really are no regulations, no rules and very shady gray stuff, gray area stuff is available? What does that mean? And I don't, some people say that this could end up being bearish for crypto. Other people say, no, numbers to the moon. And I don't think that you could possibly have a take bullish or bearish from here on what that means. I think I think crypto is like a freight train and this is just like a rock that gets in the way. I do think though this kind of stuff, enough of it could end up being a very big black eye. It already is. This is horrendous. Yeah. If he opens up the

curtain and it shows like, okay, this stuff means nothing to me. Maybe it means nothing to people care about this. That's a bad precedent to set. Like none of this means anything. It's all made up. If people start thinking that and that takes hold, that is not a good narrative to have. Because part of the reason crypto has gotten so big is because the narrative has been positive. It's innovation and we're digital money and all this stuff. If that narrative starts shifting, that's a bad thing for crypto. Right? Because we know there are no cash flows. There are no behind it. I don't think that's going to happen, but I would take nothing, you know, I would take nothing off the table at anything as possible. All right. Sort of related, but for our advisors out there,

Mark Meredith tweeted Politicians are clearly above the law While somewhere there is a financial advisor Getting fined for texting a client And not archiving it properly Amen And that's not just for our industry You can you know

Every industry could say something similar About dumb regulations that you know Are onerous Right Yes I think if we wanted to launch An Animal Spirits meme coin Our compliance officer would have a problem with that Probably

In a similar vein, there's now over 100,000 CFPs. And I don't know, Ben, we've been getting a lot of emails in our inbox from younger people going down the CFA route. And we've said it before, and I will probably say it in future episodes, if you are looking to get into the wealth management industry, the CFA is the wrong designation. Definitely. Okay. It is the right designation if you are trying to be a true analyst at a bank or something like that. portfolio manager, security analysts, research analysts, that sort of thing. Yeah.

So am I saying that you can't thrive in this industry with the CFA? No, that's not what I'm saying. But if you're a young person, you're like, hey, which one should I take? The CFP is 10 times more valuable, okay? And it's reflected in the numbers of people that are taking the CFP versus CFA. There's going to be so much need for financial advice in the years ahead. That, to me, is the biggest bull market of the next 20 or 30 years, is taking care of all the trillions of retirement assets for baby boomers. Yeah.

Okay. So I want to just put a bow on this. Kyla Scanlan said, traditional limits like physical constraints, geographic boundaries, or institutional checks stop mattering because digital attention moves instantly and globally, while narrative overpowers physical reality. Once this feedback loop starts, it's self-reinforcing. Attention creates wealth, wealth enables power, power shapes perceived reality, and reality drives more attention. So this is the world that we live in. You probably hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it, it's not going away. So I'm not, you know, I'm not, you know, I don't know, I'm trying here, deal with it, I guess. That's what I'm trying to do. My, the biggest thing for me that I think is the detraction in society is the fact that there's this idea, it's, I think for a lot of people, especially young people, that everything that happens online is just not real life. And you have, you get this like nihilism about the internet, like, well, nothing people say and do matters. And the fact that that's bleeding into real life and you get this financial nihilism. And well, nothing matters because it's okay, it started digitally, then it gets into real life.

That is the part that scares me that if you have this nihilism view of the world, that nothing matters, L.O.L, it's okay. Everything is a meme. Everything is joke. That when internet bleeds into real life, that's, I think, where problems begin. Could you imagine being 19? When I was 19, I was a complete and total blob of a person. I was not a grown-up. I was the opposite. I can't imagine myself at that age seeing somebody that I know, another jackass, make life-changing money. There's no way in the world that I wouldn't stop everything I was doing and focus my attention

on creating overnight wealth. And you could only imagine the path that leads you down, even if you happen to hit it, right? It's just so toxic and unhealthy for these young people, usually young men. It's awful. That's why I color myself lucky for not having lived through the internet or social media at a young age. So I do feel for young people that have to live through this. There are so many more opportunities you can get because of this. But imagine seeing your friend, imagine seeing somebody you knew, make a million dollars.

Wouldn't you just stop everything that you were pursuing? Right. Everything. Why? I'm not going to class. I could be on the computer. I'd be making millions of dollars trading meme coins. Right.

Doing nothing. Yes. Motivation goes out the window. I agree. It's really bad. But it's, and it's not going to get better. Right? What makes it get, I don't know.

I guess just to try and make myself not go to a dark place, every generation has something like this? I don't know. I don't know, man. I'm trying. It's not good. Oh, that's true. The thing is, young people these days are going to have to experience some sort of

comeuppance. The millennials are less risk, or are more risk-averse because we live through the great financial crisis. the younger Gen Z cohort hasn't had any of them. Yeah, the other pandemic, but guess what? That was the opposite of a comeuppance in terms of finances. But I don't even know that any sort of like a Trump coin wipe out of whatever would stop them. No, I mean, I'm talking financial crisis.

Like every generation goes through a financial crisis that changes their view of risk or their perception of risk. And Gen Z hasn't had to live through one of those. It could be 20 years until we have one. but eventually that's the kind of thing that alters your perception of risk. I hope we're making a bigger deal of this than it actually is, but I do think it's a big deal.

That's true. Yes. I agree. Okay. All right, I had Matt make me some charts because one of my favorite economic statistics of the last few years is just the fact that we've been in a recession

for two months of the past 15 plus years. I think it's been 15 and a half years since the 2009 one ended. And so I had Chart Kid Matt do this for me. The National Bureau of Economic Research has this data going back to the 1800s, but I took it back to the 1900s, and I look at the percentage of time spent in a recession. Maybe this is a good point to my last follow-up on Gen Z. In the early 20th century, something like 40% of the time, we were just in a recession. So like the economy was expanding 60%

of the time, 40% of the time we were in a recession. That has fallen. In the 2010s was the first decade where we didn't have a recession. But this is obviously fallen a lot over the years. as the economy has matured, I think we could say, I don't want to say like the U.S. was an emerging market back in the early 20th century, but it was obviously not as mature and dynamic as it is today. And then you look at the time spent in bare markets by decades. And it's kind of similar where it was much higher in the past. I don't know what happened in the 1910s where 50% of the time was in a bare market.

But as far as I can tell, the 2010s were the first decade ever where we didn't have a recession or a bare market. That's never happened in the history of modern finance. We had 19.9. Yes, it was 19.8, I think, in 2018. And I think we called it a bare market at the time. So, okay. Point taken. Point taken.

That definitely was a bad market, by the way. I will die on that help. That was and felt like a bare market. At the time, we called it a bare market. It was a bare market. Yeah, so we rounded up. But my point is that, yeah, the pandemic, obviously, was this crazy period of time that was nuts.

But in terms of history, we've had it pretty darn easy these past, this past decade and a half in terms of economic and market outcomes. Counterpoint, the noise has made it 50,000 times worse. Fair. I don't think people in the 1980s really thought about the stock market much at all, relative to how much we think about it today. Or the economy.

Right. It was an afterthought. Yes, the amount that we talk about the economy is never been higher. I totally agree. So, yeah. So I think the declines and the recessions have been, have more than been offset by the noise. That's true. Yes. And if we, if we had a recession 40% of the time for a decade, it was 20% of the 2000s because we had two recessions in that first decade of the century. But I don't think society could go on. We would all just lay in the fetal position and not do anything with our lives. Can't go on. Must go on. Do you remember that episode of Curb? Not really. Okay.

All right. What's going on here? You're the money market guy. This is from Bar Chart, Bank of America via Bar Chart. Money Market funds just sell their weekly inflow of $143 billion, the largest since April 2020. What is going on here? You don't remember the Beloved Ant episode? I don't think so. Larry put in the newspaper, they misspelled Beloved Ante Beloved, and I can't say what the word is. Oh, okay. Yes, I do. Good one. So what's going on here? Why is there so much money? We're having all this speculation, all this crazy. and it's stock marks going nuts. I don't know, man. This is a head scratcher.

I don't have a good answer. Because rates are falling. Is it just because yields are rising on bonds? So people are going, no way, I'm sitting out of bonds for a while. Is that potentially it? I don't know. There are just some things that don't have answers. So last week saw the largest spike in bearish sentiment

from the American Association of Individual Investors. So did people get scared? But it's just so much money. It doesn't add up. No, yeah. And this is, this to me means more than people getting all bearish on a survey. This is actual dollars. Yeah, I don't have a good answer. Okay, so I have a bunch of weird relationships on email with people who have read the blog or followed our podcast over the years.

Okay, define what do you mean by weird? So I have, and there's one guy on my blog who I will occasionally hand up, I have a type power to air. A pen pal? No, I haven't, and there's this one guy who, the only time he ever emails me is saying, hey, I think he used the wrong word here or you misspelled this or you, and all he does is give me advice on my typos. Do you engage? And I was just

say, thank you. And I think one time I wrote him back, like, hey, man, I really appreciate you give me this because I can read it ten times and not see the typo, but you read it once and you see it. And he's very kind about it. He's not a jerk. And he's probably emailed me a hundred times over the years. Anyway, there's another one where this guy tried to, like, he's a

foreign investor from France. And he emailed me saying that, like, I bet that if I just invest in the MSCI All-World Index, I'll beat whatever portfolio you could put together or something. And I'm like, oh, yeah, whatever, sure. And so every year he sends me an update on this bet that I never really made, but it's kind of funny. You're holding your feet to the fire. Gotcha, asshole. So every year I get this email in January, and he said this year in the MSCI all world, I was up 29 percent. And I said, no, no, no, no. I said, that's, no, you're not.

Oh, he's using his currency? Yeah. So I said the MSCII all world was up 17 percent or something last year. And he said, I'm in France. So I never, I never, I don't know why this didn't come to me. The strong dollar is so good for foreign investors. This is why all the foreign money is pouring in here. A strong dollar, so he was up almost, he was up more than the S&P because the dollar was so strong.

For a foreign investor, because the strength of the dollar is bad for U.S. investors investing internationally, right? That's, that's been a headwind. And we've said that that's actually a potential catalyst for international all-performing is the dollar finally rolls over. But he's saying, no, no, no, no, the strong dollar has been great for us. It supercharged my returns because of the currency. I don't really think about that.

Foreign investors have got to be loving this. Yeah, there's always another side to the coin. There we go. All right. Another one I had Chart Kid make for me. So don't quit your day job is this website that pulls together all the net worth and income data. And I've used it a lot over the years. It's like different percentiles of net worth by age.

and by demographic and generation, all these things. And he has one that looks at the median top 10% and top 5% of income going back to like the 1960s. And I plotted this out. And this does not look like it's inflation adjusted. This is not inflation adjusted. This is, but he, if you look at my blog post, I did inflation adjusted in there too,

or he does at least. But this is crazy to me. We went from $100,000 being the top 10% in 2014 to $150K in 2024. Top 5% went from, from $132,000 to $200,000. And it's not like this is like a shrinking pool of people. It's still the top 10% and top 5%.

That just shows how these goalposts are constantly moving and that, yes, these prices went much higher, but in a lot of cases for people, the incomes won't even higher than that. Right? Top 10% is up 50% income-wise. Well, after the meme coins, it could be even higher. I guess so. Obviously, yeah.

And if you do look at the inflation-adjusted dollars of these, it's not just inflation. The money has gone further over time. Like the inflation-adjusted 1994 level for the top 10% is like right around 100 grand. And so it's actually 150 now. Think about the composition of individual incomes and the people in that top cohort today versus 30 years ago. That's the thing. It changes, right?

It's not the same exact people. The ability for you to make more money today is dramatically higher than it was a couple of decades ago. Right. People don't stay in that media. Some people do, obviously, but you usually don't stay in the same income cohort your whole career. Because there really used to be doctors, lawyers. Oh, yeah. There's many other ways to become rich these days. Bankers, like, there's just so many other avenues these days. I think I've mentioned this before. I remember, I feel like the 90s, being a doctor was like, that was the thing. It was very prestigious.

Right? I mean, obviously, if you go to a dinner party or some sort of cocktail function at a doctor there, people still will, like, pepper the doctor with question. There still is. There's still, oh, yeah, oh, what kind? Oh, really? And then, like, yeah, there's some prestige. But it's not like it was in the past, right?

Remember an eyes wide shut, Tom Cruise was a doctor, which is kind of hilarious to think of Tom Cruise as a doctor. But that was, like, the prestigious big job back now. Where do you stand in that movie as a TC guy? It's not watchable It's like watch it one time and that's it I really enjoyed it I only saw it one time, but I quite liked it

I've seen it a couple times and I I tried but not one of my favorite TC movies just a little too out there for me All right a lot of people were sharing this last week The MBAs in the job market from the Wall Street Journal The share of job seeking MBA graduates about Without a job three months after graduation So for Harvard and MIT and Stanford, Duke, Michigan, Chicago

this is all risen from it was 15% or so in the 20 in 2020 it got as low as like 5% or 10% from these now it's going back up and it's like 20% is the average and this is three months after graduation a lot of people were saying oh this is a bad sign for the job market the people who are idiots obviously what are they thinking this has nothing to do with the job market I think there's more of reflection on people not wanting to hire these people this is more this is more of a reflection of the current environment I think and I don't mean the job market And that's my thinking was, I don't think this, I don't take this as like a terribly bad sign. And I don't know, if 80% of your classmates get a job within three months of graduation,

that sounds pretty high to me. I would also like to see this chart zoomed out a little bit or a lot of it. And they also say that at Columbia, MBAs who land jobs tend to get sizable play with median-based salaries starting of $175,000. So to your point, maybe, yeah, maybe companies are just cutting back on hiring those types of roles. It's still, I don't know, 80% of the people in these MBA programs are getting a job with in three months, that still seems pretty decent to me. I don't think that's a terrible sign of things. Yeah, neither do I.

Okay. All right, so Matthew Klein, what a piece for the overshoot, where he spoke about a potential inflation boogeyman that nobody's talking about, and it's China. Like, what if China, what if there's a recovery in China? So he shows a chart the pandemic has forced down Chinese consumer spending relative to prior trends, especially for services such as education, recreation, and health care. So this chart is showing Chinese per capita consumption expenditures, basically they're spending. And one of the lines is housing, clothing, food, alcohol, and tobacco.

So things that are more or less sticky. And that's been trending a little bit lower. But then he compares it with all the other items. And it looks like, I mean, it crashed. So discretionary items have just, you're right, down 20%. So the Chinese consumer is in bad shape. So he says it is entirely possible that the Chinese economy will remain in its current funk and continue to be a net source of supply for the rest of the world,

suppressing both demand for physical goods and inflation in the U.S. But if Chinese policymakers arrest the downturn, much less find a way to get consumer spending and bad business investment back on track, the Fed and other central banks might find themselves having to deal with a new inflationary impulse from abroad. definitely not in anybody's parlay. That is interesting. It also is interesting that the U.S. is literally like the only country

that took off and spent way more money probably in the pandemic. People cut back in Europe. They cut back in China. We don't stop. We don't stop. Ben, I was at the dairy barn yesterday. Do you have dairy barns in your town?

No, explain me. All right, so you probably do, but maybe dairy barn is just the name of the one of my town. It's a little food stand on the corner, at least it's on the corner of one of my roads, and it's like a drive-thru. And it's like a mini 7-Eleven drive-thru.

Okay. No, we don't have. Do you have those? No, okay. What do you get there? Just groceries? Yeah, like not like, like they have, uh, catch, they have condiments, eggs, milk, juice, cookies, like.

Got you. Stuff that you forgot. Yeah. That's exactly right. Stuff that you forgot. So I forgot to get eggs. So I went to the dairy barn, got eggs, and a stick of butter. And he said, $15.

And I said, how much? And he said, 15. I'm like, whoa. How many eggs are we talking here? A dozen. He said, he said, eggs cost me $7. I sell them for eight. I'm like, they cost you 70.

He goes, I've never, this has never happened before. Never paid, you know, it's usually never above five. But he said, and I'm only taking eight because how much can I charge you guys for a dozen eggs? Wild, right? he definitely fudged those numbers a little bit. Let's be honest. No, no, no, no, no. You've maybe you've been sleeping on the eggs numbers. Eggs are rocketing again. I still think on a per meal basis, eggs are a good deal. If you count two eggs as a meal and you're paying $7 for them, $8, that's a pretty good. No, it is. But eggs should not cost $8 and two eggs is not a meal. Come on.

It's funny, though, how eggs became the thing. Obviously, the price of eggs are very volatile. We've seen this happen. They spike and then they go back down. I think the current one is the bird flu is having a big impact, so it'll pass. But it's just funny how eggs have become the one thing people have lashed onto. Like, why wasn't it milk or something else like that? Well, because everyone, not everyone, eggs are consumed by a lot of people. But I think the reason people pay so much attention to it is because the price is volatile. Are you a milk drinker?

No, I'm not seven. Yeah, okay. There's people that drink milk. Yeah. Yeah, there's seven-year-olds. It's weird. My son, he drinks milk. Yeah.

Okay, good news of the week. I fill this one in this week. This is from the Wall Street Journal. I've often wondered how are self-driving cars going to work on the snow. I don't, like, it's really snowy and cold here. You can't see the lines on the road. How are those sensors going to work? Goodyear says it is rolling out new tech that uses information about the type and make of the tires,

plus weather information pulled off of vehicle cameras to predict exactly how long it would take to break in certain conditions. They also said, using the front and rear cameras and third-party weather information to determine road conditions, they can take into account the model and age of the tire to create an accurate prediction for how soon a car should start breaking at any given moment. They also said they could create even more accurate prediction

if the tires in question were embedded with Goodyear sensors to gauge road friction. How much our tire is going to cost in the future? I just had to get one... They're already expensive. I just had to get one... I drove over a nail

and I had to get a tire repaired and it was like, I don't know, $350 for one tire. And they didn't even put it on for me. Bell tire, thanks a lot. Goodyear? The worst. What's that from?

I don't know. Naked gun. Okay. Somehow our movie references are never on the same. Yeah. But... We're two ships passing in the night. I still think that the sensors and stuff are not...

Like my wife's car, her cruise control will only work if, like, the weather is perfect. If the weather's not perfect, all her sensors, like, lock up and she can't put cruise control on, which is very annoying. But sometimes the weather looks worse than it is, and the roads are fine. I just think that we're going to get a situation at some point. You see this in the South now with... whenever it snows, we have people who live in Charlotte and Nashville and stuff that work for us, and they talk about how if it snows like an inch, the whole city shuts down. Like, people are going to be reliant on like these Waymo self-driving cars in the future.

And there's going to be bad weather and all the whole fleet is going to shut down. Okay. So people that live in areas of snow sort of scoff like, oh, you got an inch of snow in the city shuts down. However, yesterday. But yeah, I don't scoff. I get it. because they don't have the infrastructure. Exactly.

So yesterday, for whatever reason, my town didn't put salt on my main roads, and it was a sheet of ice. And, like, the side streets get into the main road were a sheet of ice. And so I was slipping all over the place. Like, I saw one car almost, like, do a 360. And it wasn't a big snowstorm,

but the roads weren't salted, which is bizarre. But in these southern cities, they probably don't have trucks with... They don't have the snow plows. They don't have the dirt or the salt. Yeah, they don't have those giant. in piles of salt to salt the road. So, yeah, the city shut down when you can't drive.

Yes. As a northern guy who lives in the north, I'm not going to make fun of the seldom people for being whims when it snows. But it's not that being whips. I'm kidding. I know. No, trust me, the first time it snows here every year, people will tense up and they drive so slow and then you have to get used to it. All right. I did not realize this. Do you have Sonos in your house at all? Sonos speakers? Mm-mm. So I have a Sonos. You don't really hear about Solos so much these days. It was very hot. So listen to this, I didn't realize this is from the Wall Street Journal. Sonos, the company that makes premium audio equipment, rolled out a redesigned app last year,

though, supposed to improve the user experience and accelerate the company's pace of innovation, until one of the most disastrous software updates in recent history of consumer technology. Now, I have Sonos. I have one of the little speakers. I got it, I don't know, five years ago, and then I have one of the little portable ones. So I don't have a huge Sonos system in my house, right? I put it on in the background on a reading or something. But I did notice six months ago, all of a sudden, my app was very glitchy.

It was slow. It would reset on its own. It would not connect. And I felt like, I must be my internet or something or maybe the piece, the Sonos one that I have was five years old so it doesn't work as well anymore.

And I didn't think anything of it. But apparently the app was so bad that they said like the, for whatever reason, the software wasn't keeping up with the technology and they had to update the app. And they said people couldn't use basic features. They couldn't access their audio system.

And they just, the CEO went out. $500 million market app has gone. Look at the graph here. From when the new app, was released and how the company just crashed. Yeah, not nice. Look at the product, look at it over. I think it's down 70% from the highs,

and it looked like a meme stock in some ways, but I didn't realize this. So I feel like an idiot for never checking a Reddit board or something to understand why my selling this app wasn't working. But how do you, how does that even possible? This is literally your whole company. Right. And you fumble this badly?

I can't even imagine. That's odd. Okay. It was a good product. too. But yeah, it feels like a chore when I'm using it now because it doesn't, it takes forever to work. It's a pain in the butt. It still is. So I'm looking at, I'm looking at an Apple stock chart. It's weird. It went straight up and now straight down. I think you just need, I think you just need to short it and get it over with. No, no, no. Well, no, come on, but never.

One of the great American companies. But I feel like you, but you've been on Apple's corner for a long time, be smirching the company. I think it's time for you. No, no, no, no, no. Well, yeah, a little bit, but more besmirching the stock price. Well, yes. Speaking of, and besmirching in the sense that I don't... What are you looking at with the chart? I don't understand why I was up 30% last year. Nothing happened.

So it's down, it's in a 15% drawdown right now. But it's like straight down, which is kind of interesting. But the reason why I even bring up Apple is because, speaking of like software updates, people on the internet have been all over this, but I found it yesterday for the first time. The photo app update, what in the world? It used to be so easy to find pictures. It was month, day, month, year, whatever.

Yeah. And I looked at yesterday. I wanted to show my friends, I was like, what? Where am I? What? This is a blanket statement, but it does seem like that that is one of the things that is lacking with a lot of tech companies is just, where's the common sense? Where's the ingenuity, Ben?

By the way, somebody. They're smart. They innovate. The common sense is often lacking. Somebody sent us an email recommending or maybe just shining light on the fact that your knockoff AirPods, Ben, they're garbage. They're garbage. Oh, why?

Look at this chart under random. It's called, there's a Reddit engineering porn. Okay. And it shows inside fake AirPods. And it shows Apple AirPods and two counterfeits, scrutinized with X-ray vision. I have no idea what we're looking at, but look at it, Ben.

Look at it. But the thing is that they last longer than my AirPods. The quality is probably worse, but they still last longer. Yeah. Okay. getting back to our income thing. So Lance Lambert interviewed a mortgage broker

from Washington, D.C. in Fast Company. And this was interesting because they're talking about how do people, like how they change their threshold for monthly payments. And this guy's saying, my average first-time home buyer now says $3,500 is comfortable compared to $2,500 to $2,500 previously.

And he's saying like before housing prices rose and rates went up. So this is four or five years ago probably. But wait, hold on, hold on. Do you think that's a function of, I think it's more of a function of how much houses cost versus how much people are making? Like, you just move the goalposts because that's, all right, that's what they cost now.

Listen, so those looking for a family house now say $6,500 to $7,500, previous to $4,500. I'm also seeing more people comfortable with $8,000 to $10,000 mortgage payments than ever. Honestly, in the first 20 years of my career, I don't believe I ever had a mortgage payment offered over $10,000. Now I have a few of those each quarter. That's wild. That's so much money. And so you see these numbers and you go, how is this possible?

And obviously it is because prices are, but you go, well, who can afford this? And he says, keep in mind, in my region, incomes have exploded higher. I can't seem to meet anyone who makes less than 130K per year. Those who used to be considered high income, 250 to 300, now make 450. It's just a different world now. That's the only explanation, right? People are making more money to afford these. Yeah.

Otherwise, how does the economy keep chugging along? Do you think there's anybody who thinks, like, when we go back to normal, is coming? There's a lot of people who think that. And it's never, there's never happening. No. No. There's no normal. This is it.

There's a new normal. Shout to Mohammed. Interesting one from the Wall Street Journal on investors versus homeowners. So they say Wall Street thinks U.S. home prices are overpriced. Housing could be overvalued anywhere from 10 to 35% based on how investors are acting. So they say shares of single family landlords, invitation homes are trading at 35% and 20% discounts to their net asset values, according to analytics firm, Green Street. So you kind of win this one before, right? I dabbled these back in the day.

Oh, man, good thing I got out. These stocks look like trash. So it's, like, the gap of their NAV, like what they own versus what it's worth in the market is widening. It says it's widened by 10 percentage points in the last year. So there's a big discount. They're saying if you use that to value home prices,

home prices are where we're valid. So they're saying... Hold on, but that's a stretch. So these are the rent-to-own companies. Yes. Right? Instead of buying a house, you just rent it from whoever the institutional landlord is.

And they're saying, like, the cap rate is now 4%, which is way too low when you're borrowing five or six or seven percent to, so it doesn't make sense. All right, so are you a buyer? Are you a buyer? No, no, but this is the reason why there's a difference between being an investor in homes and being an owner in homes, right? Like, you don't have to worry about cap rates

when you buy a house for yourself. Right. Right? Where the investors really do have to do. So I don't think this has anything about the valuation of home prices in the United States. It just says it's not a very good time to be an investor. in residential homes.

I love it. You're spot on. Buying versus investing. Yeah, spot on. Walter Bloomberg, real person? We'll never know. Tweeted, in December, Redfin said, If he's not a real person, then he is the biggest person at risk of AI

replacing his job. Right? Home prices posted their biggest gain in nearly a year, jumping 6.3% to a median of 400,000. $28,000. Wouldn't it be funny if lower mortgage rates actually cause housing prices to fall, too, for some reason?

Like, it seems like the higher rates are only making housing prices stubbornly higher. I don't think that's impossible. It's probably too cute for that. It is. I just don't know what stops this train for housing prices. It seems like high rates are good for housing prices because no one wants to move. Low rates should be good for housing prices because it should spur demand. I don't see what the...

There's no negative catalyst. It doesn't feel like it. All right. from Eric Finnegan. This kind of ties into our original talk about Gen Z. Gen Z is the most money-centric generation we've ever seen. So they talk about how they ask 12th graders, how important is money and wealth do you? And 36% say extremely important, where for probably 25 years, it was 25, 26% and lower. So you had this whole generation of, I guess, younger people coming up that money was kind of important. Now it's all of a sudden taken off. And money is extremely.

important to people. And this makes, this actually makes sense to me with the internet and social media and that sort of thing. Yeah. Making it mean more to people. I kind of get it. Why this is happening. To your point,

no looking back. No looking back. All right, Ben, let's speak up. Actually, let's look back. Let's look back. The way back machine. There we go. So Ben, remind people, because I think we only do this one. We should do more often. Yeah, we had a listener of the show who created a

randomized chart from any of our past podcasts. And I clicked it this morning. And this one, I believe from New York Times, popped up. And it was the cumulative monthly job change was we gained 22 million jobs from October 2010 to

February 2020, right before the pandemic. And then we lost 22 million jobs in the blink of an eye between March and April. What a chart. I think if you ran the historical simulation of that pandemic happening at any point in time, historically, I think we are in like the top 99th percentile of outcomes of how good it actually went versus how badly it could have gone in so many different ways. I would say for the economy, yes. I would say the lockdowns in hindsight were not so great.

No, but I'm just saying that the whole, how everything worked out. For the economy, yeah. For everything. It could have gone so much worse. It could have been, it could have turned out to be like the Spanish flu, and it targeted 30-year-olds or something that died. But, you know, I'm just saying that I think it went as well as it possibly could have, considering the circumstances. All right, a lot of dollars to donuts feed that. A lot of dollars to do that.

Craig on Blue Sky says, Donuts used to be around 10 or 15 cents in the 40s, 50s and 60s. so it's like saying 10 to 1. Makes perfect sense. That's all we needed to hear. You know what? I might incorporate that into my language from now on. Dollars to do. Yes.

That's whenever you bet, right? I'm doing Michael's dollars to donuts parlay. I do feel like, I do feel like, eh, I'm not going to say how I feel. But I do feel like this is the bills year. I hope so. That's a torture fan base. I'm ready for them.

We're all done with Kansas City. Everyone outside of Kansas City, no offense. We're all done with it. It's enough. Yes, I agree. A lot of more people like my game show idea than you did. You pooh-pooed it right away. A lot of people, a lot of people have comments.

Listen, I am a market guy, okay? If the market tells you're wrong, hand up I was wrong, I guess, because a lot of people were, like, in support of your idea. And someone said, the game show you mentioned about people being chased through a city does exist. In the UK, it's called hunted. Drop someone off with cash and told we evade capture for 30 days. They do celebrity versions, which are funny as they go in luxury yachts. Okay, so I guess it does exist.

All right, a couple story things. So my kids all are in basketball now. My twins do basketball at the YMCA. So it's like a first and second grade team. My daughter is in one team. My son's on another. So we're there a lot. And so this past Saturday went there. And I don't think that sports venues and sports infrastructure was prepared for millennial parents and the amount of millennial kids that would be born because there are not enough courts. There's not enough fields. There's not enough parking. There's not enough stands. We go to the YMCA and there's grandparents there and there's cousins or there's brothers and sisters running around and there's not enough place to sit and there's just people surrounding the courts and it's just mayhem and my wife and I are just like this is awful great observation I thought the same thing this week I'm literally because the infrastructure's from the 60s yes they didn't build enough parking spot like in the past not as many people came to watch these young kids play sports like we'd be lucky in the past to get one of our parents to show maybe right now everyone goes the

parents go. There's not enough parking spots. There's not enough courts. So we end up paying more money for like we sometimes for my daughter's basketball tournaments. We pay like $20 a person to go because how does that work? Good question. I don't get it. Literally who what is what do you mean you pay when you get there or something? How does it work? So so they have a tournament at this field house or something. And there's 20 games going on and each person to get in cost $20. It's unbelievable. Just like just to watch? Yes. Isn't that? sane? She's 10 years old. And we're paying like $90 a weekend to...

Hey, don't complain it. It's going to be $30 next year. Probably. Okay. Recommendations? I got so. Fairly light week from it. Go ahead. What do you got? I got a lot. A real pain. This is the Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg movie.

Okay. I saw a little bit of... This is you and all over it. Okay. Totally a Ben movie. And at first, when I watched it, I was going to say, Michael, don't watch this. I think you have to watch this movie. I'm saying no more. I'll watch it tonight. Okay.

This is one of the better movies. Why do you say that? All right. Well, it's about two cousins. So first of all, Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed this. It's like one of the most, it's one of the realest movies I felt in a while.

Like the conversations and it's not over the top at all. But it's about two cousins. Their grandma dies. She's from Poland. She was a Jew living in Poland who then immigrated to the United States from Poland. And they go after she died, she left the money in her will saying, I want you to visit where I was from.

Love it. And it's 90 minutes, which is a huge premium for me. Kieran Culkin plays essentially a more sensitive version of Roman Roy, but he was fantastic in this movie. And it was just, I don't know, the whole thing, it was just a very well-done movie. It's like really good piano music throughout. It was just like a very beautiful movie.

I really, really enjoyed it. You ever see The Squid and the Whale? Yes. One of my favorites. Very good. Jesse Eisenberg is great. And he's very, in this movie, he's good, too. Um, the funny part to me was, at first, he's, he's driving to the airport and he's, he's talking to, or he's talking about his son how he loves skyscrapers. And he knows all the floors of the skyscrapers. And this just must be a thing with boys, because that's all my son is doing now. All day every day, all he ever wants to talk about, since we brought him to the Hancock and I went to the Empire State Building, all he wants to talk about is skyscrapers. The Burj Khalifa is his favorite thing in the world. That's all he, he wants to go to Dubai for spring break. So he can go see the Burj Khalifa.

That's hilarious. Yes. All right. Did you watch Severance yet? Yes. I'm in a holding pattern. I'm going to wait until a few episodes get backlogged. I would rather.

I wish it was a bingeable show. I told my wife, God, I wish I could just binge this show. We watched the finale again. I forgot how good it was because it's been a while since it's been out. By the way, a real pain is on Hulu.

Oh, fantastic. Yeah, so you only have to rent it. Speaking of finale, the finale of Landman, they landed the plane and I'm excited for season two. Jacked up. Okay, good. We're halfway through. I will pick up.

Conclave. is on Peacock. You heard of this one? I have to finish it. Okay. I love Ray Fines. One of the best. My wife and I commented on this.

He is one of the most believable actors of his generation. Right? Like, you believe... Every role he plays, like, you believe him as this Cardinal. Right? Yes, I guess it's one of those. It's a film. It's probably too long, but it's just extremely well done.

Yeah, good stuff. Finally, American Prime Evil on Netflix. Have you heard of this film? Oh, I forgot. Yeah, actually, I watched the first episode last night. Super violent. Super violent, very gritty. I'm in.

Pete Berg did it. He's the guy who did Friday Night Lights, and he has Taylor Kish in it, who was Tim Riggins. Which character is that? Taylor Kish? Yeah, the guy with a long hair. Hmm. He, who should have been a bigger movie star for some reason and just wasn't.

I think it's because... Oh, you know why? It was John Carter. Yeah. Ruin to Square. My son loves that movie. But, yeah, has a field of Rebinent to it. But when you watch a show like this, because I guess it's kind of historical fiction,

because it is about the Mormons coming and Brigham Young. But do you get the sense that, like, man, we know we've talked about this in the past, but how awful would it have been to live during that time? I just think about how bad everyone smelled. Yes, everything is so dirty and smelling and, like, oh, this guy says something I don't like, dead. I'm going to kill him. Right?

No, like, there's no, like, squaring up, like, in a fight video on the internet now. It's just like, no, I'm going to shoot you in the head. That's it. I don't agree with you but the fact that people still because this is the Howard Linsen point earlier about people were getting killed in the past but they still went west anyway

that they still had this hope to go west despite the conditions being so awful in taking God knows how many weeks to ride a horse and carriage through the rough train to get there. Yeah, there's no stopping progress even though at times like there's some dark stuff out there.

Yes. This is a wild one, Ben. really, really, really and truly. A wild what? Weekend with the Trump coin stuff. And then Melania coin. Oh, we didn't even talk about Melania coin. The thing is you said this is the craziest thing you've ever seen.

But I don't know. For some reason, this stuff doesn't, it doesn't like, there's no shock value anymore. Like, I guess I'm not surprised by this stuff at all. They launched Melania coin on Sunday to nuke Trump coin. Boy, that's got to be a weird, like, bedtime conversation. Like, let's check the market caps to see which, like, between husband and wife. Which one of their mean coins is worth more these things? days. But don't you think that every influencer on the internet is going to want their own

meme coin now just for like cachet and... Yeah. All right, Ben. Stay warm, I guess. I hear it's cold out there. It was negative eight wind chill. The thing is, getting back to being wimps like an American primeval, like I hit the automatic starter on my car and I get in a car and my heated steering wheel is on and my seat has got a heater on it too. And I don't drive a luxury vehicle. I drive a Ford Explorer. And we are so much more spoiled than people were in the past. So it's much easier to handle than it was.

If you're an advisor, check out the Unlock. AdvisorUnlock.com. We'll have more of that coming in the weeks and months ahead. Anything else to plug? Nope. Naples. Et cetera. All right. Animal Spirits at thecompannews.

Thank you for listening. Stay sober. Have fun. But not too much fun. We'll see you next time. It's going to get crazier. It's going to get crazier.