Animal Spirits Podcast - Wall Street Strikes Back (EP. 424)

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

On episode 424 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss: how AI bailed out the stock market and economy, a history of capex bubbles, the Carvana comeback, investors are trading everything, the labor market debate, vibes vs. data, $1 billion job offers, where home prices are falling, Michael buys a new house, condos are crashing, FAFO parenting and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Vanguard. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only). Sign up at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits Learn more about Vanguard at: https://vgi.vg/3GbOsYM. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by White Charts. It's that time of the year where we talk about how fast the summer went. I can't believe it. You can't believe it. Let's move on. If you want to communicate with your clients about all of the crazy things that have happened in the first half of the year, Y charts has you covered in their mid-year reset, which is their 2025 halftime report deck.

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Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky, and let's be real. Lots of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day, but not Vanguard. At Vanguard, institutional quality isn't a tagline. It's a commitment to your clients. We're talking top-grade products across the board of over 80 bond funds actively managed

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Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spurts with Michael. and Ben, it is the first week of August. This is usually the time of the year when everything slows down. It seems to not be happening at all this year for our business at Red Hotel Health Management, which is a reflection of the economy and the stock market.

Obviously, the stock market itself has been interesting to say the least over the last week. We're still manufacturing. I know manufacturing is down, but not with our merchandise. Ben and I are rocking new shirts, the Grand Rapids Hedge, limited edition. Literally, we only printed a limited quality. It's a hotest shirt in West Michigan. And I want to give a shout to Weston,

who suggested this idea. So I took it. I typed it into chat, GBT. I said, make me a shirt with a title wave that says Grand Rapids Hedge. I think I said to him or maybe Nicole can't remember. And they said, instead of a tidal weave, because, you know, the Rapids.

And I said, eh, Bush looks better. And that was it. Took two seconds. So if you are listening early and you go to I don't shop.com, you won't see it because it goes up at 9 a.m. Eastern, Wednesday morning, I don't shop.com. Grand Rapids Hed T-shirt. So we're getting our flooring done in our house, and everything's just a big mess. Like all the flooring's ripped up and they're putting stuff in, and it's a big pain.

But every morning, I kind of have a meeting with the guy who was running the, show. He kind of states, hey, today we're going to do this. We're going to do that. And so are you actually, are you actually like, do you know what he's talking about? Or is this like the oil stick in the car and you just got in your head? I'm just curious. Like, when are you going to have the, when are I going to see some more progress? But because we're leaving the house at 8 a.m. to get out of their way. And kids are running around. And I walked to meet him this morning. He's like, what's up with the shirt? What does that? What does that mean? That's take too long. How did you explain it?

I was like, that's, uh, never mind. It's just a thing. Don't worry about it. Yeah. So we're a month out from Future Proof now. I feel like we haven't really pushed it as much. Maybe we don't even have to anymore because it's taken on a life of its own. But we're getting very, very close. And I think it's worth mentioning that because it's gotten so big,

like there's actually a cap this year, right? And the people who can come because we don't want people to stay like an hour away. So there's, what is it, 5,000 people that are coming that can come. and we are I don't think we can announce the musical act yet I don't think it's public yet but next week

and I will just say this we've had some bangers last year we had third eye blind and was that did X ambassadors open for them or was that the year before I can't remember

no that was a year before okay well anyhow I'm telling you this is going to be the best concert in the history of future proof no maybe that was last year

I can't but yeah It's going to be awesome. I cannot wait. I cannot wait. Yes. And we're doing Animal Spirits Live right this year, like in the afternoon, one of the last sessions of the day, right into cocktail hour, our own cocktail hour, I think. Okay. It's going to be excellent.

Yes. And I've already gotten a ton of messages from people saying, hey, this is like. Sounds like two or three. Yeah. Well, you know, listen, I'm not a, I'm not a big, like, LinkedIn message guy. Like once a month, I'll go look at all my messages on LinkedIn. And I just saw like five or six and, hey, I'm coming to Future Proof for the first time this year. All right, that is a relative ton.

Right? That's a lot. Yeah. So sign up FutureproofHQ.com. All right. I feel like for the past 18 to 24 months, people have been kind of skirting around the idea that AI essentially, in the AI spend, essentially saved the stock market and saved the economy from a potentially worse outcome from the inflation and all the. this stuff. And it was like a, it was a handoff. Like, the reason the soft landing happened is because of AI spent. But it feels like this is the week where everyone finally put numbers to that.

Like, we've seen some charts, but it just seemed to collectively, everyone kind of went, oh my gosh. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. So. But wait, I just want to give credit to Josh. He was early to that. Yeah. Josh was the one who was saying, like, Chad GPT saved. Because that was 2022. And I'm pretty sure like in mid to early, 23, when that was still sort of like a joke, at least it was said a bit tongue in cheek. 100% right. It's unbelievable. Yes.

And the market sniffed it out, right? So this is from Luke Cowat at Sherwood News. This is showing Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Med, and Oracle. And this is like each step is just a little higher in terms of spend. And then... Wait, you didn't describe. I don't think you describe what it's showing. It's showing the 12-month forward estimated cap-ax for these five companies.

I think the reason why this all came together this week, the way that it did in terms of the narrative, is because we had earnings from these companies, right? And then the juxtaposition of that and their commitment to spending with software economic data, really, as the dude said, tied the whole room together. So the Financial Times did Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Magistock, is that it? They said they spent a combined $150 billion in 2023, $250 billion in 2024, and it's forecasted to be $320 billion.

in this year. It's just unbelievable. This is another crazy one. So spending by the Mag 7, this is in terms of R&D and CapEx, it was up 40% in 2024. For the other 493 stocks, CAPX increased by less than 4%. So they're like they're spending gobs and gobs of money. I wonder. I wonder if the, well, not I wonder. It remains to be seen if the all of the KAPX that the hyperscalis for spending is going to translate into productivity gains for the other full 93, right? That's the question. Yeah, that would be the great thing, right? If you're one of these other companies who didn't have to do the spend, but you still got the efficiency gains. So this from RenMack, I think, is sneaky, like, wonky chart of the year. Not just

chart of the year, it's only for wonks. But they say, so far this year, AI Kappax, which we define as information processing equipment plus software has added more to GDP growth than consumer spending. And when you consider the fact that consumer spending makes up roughly 70% of the economy, this is an insane chart. Absolutely insane. Like, history book kind of level chart here. Yeah. It shouldn't be this way. Some more context on this. Callie has another chart similarly showing the inflation-adjusted change by GDP component of AI and tech investments, which you just mentioned, versus consumer spending. And the change so far, AI is up $152 billion, I think this is year over year, versus consumer

spending is up $77 billion. Now, it doesn't mean that AI spending is more. It just means that the change is greater. Or the increase, right? Which is still wild. It's still insane. Cali wrote last quarter consumer spending totaled $16.4 trillion. So let me set this up.

The question now is like, can we have a softening economy, a weakening consumer? without a commensurate softening in the stock market because the hyperscalers are powering so much of this. And maybe. Well, I don't know. We'll find that. But Callie said last quarter... Which is kind of what we did have a little bit in 2022. The economy softened a little bit. They started spending. Well, the stock market got killed in 2022. Wow. Oh, okay. Right. Last quarter, consumer spending totaled 16.4 trillion. While AI's contribution to GDP calculated as business investment and information processing equipment and software was about $1.4 trillion, all right?

So $16.4 trillion consumer spending, $1.4 trillion in terms of AI's contribution. So consumer spending dwarfs it. Yes, but that's still an insane number. It is. AI investment is still peanuts compared to the sheer power of our financial decisions, even if it has technically grown more in dollar terms this year. So Callie is, it sounds like Callie is skeptical that we can... She's doing the denominator blindness thing.

She's saying, like, put a denominator on this. Yeah. But also, like, I know we're going to talk about this later. The question is, all right, so consumer spending and the economy is slowing down a little bit, for sure. But is it rolling over? Is it going to contract? And we'll say. That's the hard part.

Oh, this is a wild chart. This is from Joey Politano. Data Center versus office construction. So, U.S. office construction spending. When the charts come together like that, that's just, that's all you do. Versus, versus, uh, data center construction spending. And they are almost touching tips, which is remarkable when you can't- The chat GBT launch there.

Yeah. Do you have anyone in your life who can't say chat GPT, who always says chat GBT or chat GTP? Oh, yeah. Anyone in your life that does that? Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay. Um, I got a lot of that.

Oh, so Paul Kodroski did this piece on AI spending, and he has this great chart that shows infrastructure CAPX as a percentage of GD. by era. And he shows the railroads in the 1800s, which was like 6%. That's one of the history's unknown bubbles. I wrote about it in my Don't Fall for a Book, that the railroads are this massive, massive, and it was one of those bubbles that really helped people because it got, they laid so much rail down that it helped people go from city to city and move and all this stuff. So then he shows telecom that bubbles, and then data centers. And data centers are getting up to like 1.2% of GDP.

So, listen, my problem with this is I don't want to be one of those experts on an earlier version of the world where you go, listen, every single other time this has happened, it's led to a bubble and then a washout. You know, even if the investments pay off, as they did in the dot-com bubble. I know. We all have the talking points. Yeah, it could turn out that they overspend by a few hundred billion here or there, and then that leads to a washout. Then what? So that would be the historical playbook of, listen, expectations get too high. they spend way too much. Someone starts pulling back spending and going, wait a minute, we spent

way too much. Even if this AI stuff works, what if we just overspent by like $400 billion and didn't need to spend that much? Then there's a washout. And then they still, maybe the Mag 7 still has AI supremacy. That would be the historical playbook for how this plays out. And even the, it doesn't have to be a dot-com washout. It could be a, listen, some of these stocks fall 30, 40, 50% again. That would be the historical playbook. Is that too easy? at this, because I feel like a lot of people think, no, no, no, no, it's a simple baton handoff, the AI spend happens, you get the ROI, these companies keep going off to the races. What's more likely?

Lay that out one more time? So the two options are, overspending expectations too high, you get some sort of washout, even if AI is... Not even that level. I can't imagine that, I don't think you can say we're going to have an 85% washout. That's ridiculous. These companies actually make money. Yeah.

they didn't make money back then. But so that's the expectation's too high. You get a washout in tech stocks. Option two is, no, they spend all this money. AI magically works, ROI, boom. I think that we perfectly throw the needle. That seems unlikely. All right, let me offer up a Graham Rapids, Hedgeson, wearing the shirt.

Okay. At some point in time, I guarantee expectations will get ahead of ourselves. I don't know when that's going to be. Are we there? Are we past there? Maybe. Invidia, for example, which, by the way, I sold two tranches and I will be out this week. I don't want to be greedy. I'm up 80% of whatever it is. Invidia is... See, you're doing the ground on protection. I'm holding on for a bubble. Yeah. This is... We've, like, we've, like, switched roles here. Usually I'd be the one selling. Um, Nvidia is... Todd's on us a chart. And he says, just about a 1% difference separates invidia from the entire... health care, and industrial sectors.

I mean, come on. Can it go to $5 trillion? Can it go to $5 trillion? Can it go to $6? Can it go to $10? I don't see why it couldn't. So the most likely candidates... But it's almost bigger than every industrial and every health care. I'm sorry.

I, you know, all right, that's just me. The most likely candidates for expectations have gone too high in spending is it's just Facebook or NVIDIA saying, like, listen, we're pulling back a little bit. Those are the two most likely candidates, correct? That would cause the market really... Well, and video will pull back. roll over. It's going to be Facebook or Meta or Microsoft through Google. Yeah, I guess

Microsoft. But listen, I have no like you and everybody else listening, who knows where we are? Yes, but that's a historical playbook. And my line of thinking is, it's almost too easy to follow the historical playbook, isn't it? Yeah, I get that. Listen, if you really is following

that to a T. Well, I also think we're very focused here on the stock market. I know you and I have been using Chet GPT more and more in our daily lives and some of the tools that are coming into our industry, I think because we're so focused on the stock market, I think maybe we're losing side of the fact that it really is magic. Matter of fact, Robin was telling me about something that she used yesterday and she couldn't

believe it. And we were talking like, yeah, it really is magic. And every single executive at all of these companies are saying that this is the biggest revolution of our lifetimes, the biggest technological revolution, far bigger than the internet. And I think that we maybe speak too much about the market and not enough about like the way that these things are going to change the world. In terms of changing the world, but how do they make money though? Like, how are they going to make money on this? Well, Chachibit just disclosed their revenue, I think. They're raising $40 billion at $300 billion

valuation. And the growth numbers are insane. So the other thing is there are no counterfactuals, But Josh mentioned the point that, like, 2022, this thing really turned the ship and stopped us and helped this off landing. But the trade policy stuff, the trade war that happened earlier this year, if take away the AI capax, if that doesn't happen, that downturn is probably worse and we're probably not back to all-time highs. Yeah, but then you start doing the takeaway, takeaway, takeaway, takeaway, takeaway, take away, takeaway. Yeah, but this is a one variable thing that you can say, like, this thing really saved us probably from the trade war because AI kind of trumped Trump. You would think. You would think. There's a lot, there's not a whole, not to say that, you know, the economy is like unraveling. I think that would be a stretch. But housing is frozen. The economy is not really growing. Yes, that's a big piece of it. Like, how could you have a recession in housing for three years

and the economy is still fine? Yeah. Right? So here's a question that people have been positing lately. Did I use that word correctly? I think so. That sounded really smart. If, let's say interest rates fall in a meaningful way, go from like 7% mortgage.

I know they're falling already, but go to like 5%. Is that actually bad for the stock market of rates fall? Because finally, a lot of this money that's been locked up goes into down payments and goes into housing and it, and it doesn't go into the stock market anymore. So could falling rates be bad for the stock market? No. No. Okay.

I mean, yes, we've heard from listeners. That's a galaxy brain take. There are people that are putting their, what would be their house down payment into the stock market and maybe at the margins that's propping up some of these stocks. But the idea that rates are going to fall and all the money is going to come out of the stock market to buy real estate. Come on. right it's a little too cute it is sometimes those cute things are are the ones they get to though

all right um carvana is absolutely insane so we talked to open door a couple weeks ago carvana was down 98.99% at the lows and it was a meme stock and the funny thing is it's still not back to the levels of the meme stock that it was at in 2021 early 2022 i thought it meant no it no it made an all-time high did it come back okay yeah maybe might chart total. So it's up 9,000, 10,000 percent or something from the lows. Do you think that this kind of price action, when people see this, is actually a bad thing for investors to see? Because they did, like, okay, just bottom fish. It's simple. Like, this is, this is an outlier, obviously. Yeah. The answer to that, is this bad for investors? It depends. It depends on the

investor. True. I just think seeing this kind of, this seems like a once in a lifetime kind of move to me. I think you're right in the sense that everybody who is in the market knows about Carvana and it will encourage people to look for the next Carvana. If that's what you're asking, I think that's fair. Have you looked at the Peloton chart lately?

Peloton is... Peloton balance pretty good, right? I mean, it's a stock that's still 96% off. off the highs. I don't know how you get it. I don't know how credit to Eric Jackson for holding on, at least I think he did. I don't know how you have the stomach to make a 9,000% return. Can you imagine? If I buy a stock at a dollar and it goes to two, I am doing backflips. Right? It goes to three. I'm buying a yacht. Speaking of backflips, my son has the ability to do a backflip on our trampoline.

That's impressive. That takes balls. It is because I don't have the, you need to something thing in the back of your head that like the switch doesn't go off and it just shuts off and let's because like my brain the danger switch right like I can handle my neck so my yeah I've joke that my son is going to be the kid in high school where they say hey George go do this and he'll be okay run through a fence yeah yeah he'll be that guy but we we our favorite thing we put on our back of our pontoon this year is a diving board I think I sent you some videos it's awesome it's total game changer it's a diving board on a boat and he tried to do a backflip I've been goading him into it all summer going

dude, you can do a backflip on the trampoline. You have to try to do it on the boat, on the diving board. I guess this isn't a very good story. But maybe I'll send Duncan the video to show. But he gets halfway around, and you can see his face like, oh, no, I'm not going to make it. And it's like the oh, no song. His body just kind of stopped in midair and just wham. And he's like, see, that's why I don't do it.

All right, I can try it. All right, so on Friday, It was the big, this is from Bautunus, the biggest SPY volume day since April's tariff tantrum. $86 billion is a good size freak out, double any other ETF or stock. Why was this? I think this was, this was the combination of data slowing and maybe Trump firing the BLS, head of the BLS, and also a combination of just profit taking. I don't know, we've gone straight up and any excuse to freak out investors will take. And that was like a, what, a 1% down day or whatever?

I think it was ended one and a half. I do think that I'm a little surprised that we haven't had more flash crashes. That just because of the way the market structure is these days. But isn't there, isn't it less, not less? I feel like in 2010, I don't know, I'm making this up. It was a lot of algos and not that said there's not a lot of high frequency training today. there is, obviously, but do the retail investors in their participation make flash crashes less like now of their 25% of volume?

I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I just think, like, there have to be air pockets. That's just my line of thinking. Why? Because? Because of the, because of how fast things move. I mean, I guess we kind of did have a couple flash crashes when the market fell 5%

back-to-back days. It was orderly. Yeah. I don't know. That's it. It's orderly. Don't worry. Our colleague and the writer of abnormal returns, Tadus Ascanta, and I have been talking. And we've been going back and forth in this for years blogging about it.

I think he was the first one to write up. He's always been on the corner of there's never been a better time to be an individual investor in terms of the access you have to strategies, the low fees, the ease of access, zero dollar trading commissions, all the great stuff that we have. Do you think anybody would describe the, any average investor would describe the market that way? It doesn't feel like it, right? Maybe just because the nation's discourse. Yeah, but if you just think about how easy it is to invest versus how it was in the past, when in the, like, 80s and 90s, you'd have to literally go down to a brick-and-mortar building and write a checkout. And then a few days later, they'd buy a mutual fund for you and charge you a 6% sales load or whatever.

Now you fund your Robin Hood account, you're trading five minutes later. So I think we've got a case of Wall Street striking back. It's not necessarily just Wall Street, but it's also people's behavior. So this is from Barron's. during the second quarter, CME reported more than 90,000 retail traders, a 56% increase trading futures for the first time, fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. And they say this is an incredible feat for any business, but especially for an established exchange. Major borses tend to rely, boress, great word, right? Don't use that very often.

Major boreses tend to rely on market volatility and well-established customers for growth. So they're saying, listen, retail traders don't typically trade futures. The fact that they are is kind of insane and like this is unheard of that this is happening. Actually, let's do a plug. We're doing a talk about it to see. I mean, very excited to talk to them. Yes.

As a shareholder, but also I'm curious about what's going on here. And I want to hear about this. All right, so here's a cool chart from Twitter that I found. Robin Hood generated $265 million in options revenue this quarter. That's a quarterly record for the online broker's platform. The Wall Street Journal had a piece on what, and it says in this frothy market, it's boom times for brokers like Robin Hood. They show trading revenue at Robin Hood,

served 65% in the second quarter from a year earlier. But you know what's funny? You said it's Wall Street back? Like, Robin and it's like, or got started as like the anti-Wall Street. I guess when I'm saying Wall Street back, and I want to throw in things like private equity and private credit, interval funds and all this stuff, just I feel like we hit a low point of passive investing and low fees and now it's back to like insane activity. And this is just good for Wall Street being back in terms of the middle, being the middleman.

How about this, and taking a cut? Everyone's, everything's back. If you're not back. you're in trouble. I saw a Bouttuna's tweeted last week that Arc just had a record inflow in a single day. Like, if you're not back now,

you might never be back. It is kind of crazy that they survived like an 80% washout. ARKKK, right? Yeah. And people kept, I know people finally took some money out, but more or less people kept putting money in.

And they're fine. I think they're having a good year this year. They're up, yeah, they're up 30% this year. So that that's snapping. I just think the Wall Street comeback thing is just, like, as a middleman, Wall Street finally is like, oh, we're back. We're making money again on this stuff, where for years and years,

it was lower fees and lower, yeah. You're right. You're right. Here's another example of everyone being back. Balchunis, Balchunis is so back. He's on fire this episode. He tweeted two different Yield Max ETFs in the top 10 in one day flows. Never saw that before.

That's crazy. So, ULTY. what is that is that let's see is that what I think it is? Ultra option income Okay I don't even know what that is It's not what I thought it was

All right And MSTY I think that's the month Is that the micro strategy Anyway Those were in the top 10 Yeah Yield Max micro strategy

Option income Okay Those are in the top 10 in daily flows It goes VOO This was a day last week Or two weeks ago VOO

XLF ULTY VTI is on the list and MSTY. So it's funny. ULTI is one of these ones where there's, I'm sure they're selling these really short-dated options, whatever, says the dividend yields 112%.

But then if you look at the performance of the thing, the price chart obviously goes down because you're just relying on the income. I don't think this is like the dumb money that people think it is. I think that there is obviously, obviously an element of people that's- I think this is dumb money. Sorry, man.

This is dumb money. Now, hold on. Hold on. Let me just make a case. Obviously. 100% yield. Of course this is dumb money. Obviously, there is an element of people that don't understand what's happening here and think

that this is like alchemy. A hundred percent yield. Oh, my God. Yeah. But, fine. Let me say this. I would bet that the percentage of people who understand exactly what they're getting is higher than you would think.

That's all I'm saying. Dumb money outweighs the smart money in these funds, though. Of course. I'm just saying there's more people, I would suspect there's more people who know what's going on. Yes, just go into these things with your eyes white open. Yeah, no, but the retail crowd is much smarter than it used to be. Oh, that I agree with.

Yes. The people who want, yeah, there are people who do understand this and maybe like jump in and out of these things depending on when the payouts happen. And yeah, that's, that's fair. I've been saying for years that the retail money is not dumb money anymore. They are now the smart money. All right, so let's talk about the economy. Arnie Tedeski, the 253,000 two-month downward revision to payroll employment is the largest

since at least 1979. So, you know, legitimately not great. Cali has a chart showing the three-month average of non-farm payrolls, not quite negative, but falling sharply. I mean, I don't know how else to describe it. The economy is slowing. So every time this has happened, and it feels like it happens once every six months call it for the past three, four, five years, people freak out. Okay, this is it. And then it

doesn't happen. When you said people freak out, you'd be like people on Twitter or what do you mean exactly? Yeah, the macro macro people. Just like, okay, this is it. Everyone, Matthew Klein didn't seem to be worried about it. He said the job market is still strong. The U.S. economy, here's his take. The U.S. economy slowed in the first half of 2025, but not enough to raise the unemployment rate, hit wage growth or make a dent in the worsening inflation picture. This is not a crisis, even if the situation is marginally worse, that at the end of 2024. So I keep, I've been saying for a while now, like, what if the, all the slowdown we keep

seeing is just normalization. Yeah, wait, hang on. Who's saying crisis? No one's saying crisis, but I think every time that we see a slowing, people kind of just get nervous and go, like, what if this is actually it finally? What if this is it? And never seems to kind of come. Obviously, one of those times is going to happen.

He's saying the change in net immigration has been massive and could explain most, if not all of the observed slowdown in aggregate real growth rates and payroll unemployment. Oh, okay. But that's a real thing, right? Yeah. And he's saying, like, the employment to population ratio for 25 to 54, which is prime age workers, has essentially been the same since

2023. Now, he's saying, listen, the administration's response to these numbers is a crisis, however. Firing the head of the BLS and saying, I don't trust the numbers. It is kind of funny how all this information we have in the, like, in the past,

no one ever would have thought to even think about this because no one was smart enough to even really explain to these that the few wonky people, how this stuff actually works. Right? People kind of just take it at face value and be kind of naive. Yeah, now everyone's an economist. Yeah. So now that we have more information, more information actually makes people less trusting. And it's funny, people are more trusting of vibes now than they are of data, even though there's more data than it's ever been before. So, Tramath, for example, tweeted, non-farm payrolls are total garbage.

So I asked Grock, which, okay, anyway, Andrew Cohen responded, I worked at BLS for years and can tell you that revisions are completely legitimate. Many field reported stats simply come in late after the close of the month. Would you prefer that they just ignore the newer stats that come in? In fact, as a senior BLS economist, I myself led to a study to detect any systematic direction of post-publishing inflation revisions. So to see if there was like any shenanigans or nonsense, it was a perfect bell curve, a normal distribution centered around the mean of zero percent revisions. So some on the high end, some on the low end, but all in all, it's a wash. Economists take their responsibility seriously. There is no political bias, just the facts as well as they can be calculated. So he

responded to himself, a quote, tweet himself, and said, wow, these comments are blowing up. This is Andrew Cohen. What you all don't understand is the number of economists and Analysts involved in producing BLS statistics and revisions, in order to collude or fudge the data, literally hundreds of people would need to be in on the conspiracy. But amazingly, there has never been one leak. Take off your tinfoil of hats and look at reality. I'm glad that he spoke up and said something, but think about, I guess I look at the revisions as like they're trying to get the numbers right.

And I just think about how complicated a 30 plus trillion dollar economy is. To think that you could have these real-time statistics of employment for 300 plus million people or whatever, it's not realistic. Yeah. Anyway, needless to say, firing the head of the BLS for revisions is, in my opinion, very dangerous. Yeah, of course it is. But I just think, like, people saying, like, this is kind of banter republic stuff. Like, I don't think there's so much data now in other ways for people to... understand what's going on. You can't you can't lie to the economy eventually. All right. So

there's a story in the Wall Street Journal and I keep wondering like is this weakness actually real this time or is it just vibes again? And they have this story said American consumers are getting thrifty again. And they interview all these people about what they're doing. And they talk about how CEOs of Chipotle, Kroger and Procter and Gamble are telling investors that their customers are more strapped or appear to feel that way. There's a lot more consumer anxiety. Says Dirk Vandiput, chief executive of Mondalas. So they make Oreo cookies and ritz crackers and sounds like all the junk food my kids eat. Or consumer preference is changing and people don't want that shit anymore.

That's possible. But it reminded me this story from 2022. Remember this one? Wall Street says a recession is coming. Consumers say it is already here. Shoppers are getting squeezed and the money is disappearing fast. It feels like a boy or cried wolf moment. And I wonder if you're better off when trying to think through the economy, if you're better

off being late than being early. Like, everyone wants to be early. Yeah. And calling it ahead of time. There's no glory in being late. Yeah. But I wonder if being late is the better option. I don't know, man.

I think a lot of these articles, like, you can find any number of people all over the country who are always experiencing what looks like a recession to them. Yeah. There are always industries and people struggling. And they are in the business of getting subscribers and getting people to click. And I'm not, you know, trying to paint all this with the broad brush. media's all fake and all that sort of stuff. But I think, yeah, I think a lot of this stuff, you got to take with the grain of salt. All right. Hey, you said it right that time. Thank you.

We don't do a lot of victor laps here, but I'm going to take a victory lap that I predict this. Yeah. Muhammad L. Arian, per the financial times, chart below. U.S. wage growth for the lowest paid has now slumped below that for the highest paid. Why didn't it need a considerable inequities, inequalities in total pay and wealth? Hashtag inequality. He still uses the hashtags. Hashtag economy. Hashtag wages. I've said before, I love Muhammad. He is the Magic Johnson of Finance Twitter. Yes, that's a good call.

But I said people are going to be nostalgic for the 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023 economy at some point that everyone hated at a time. There's going to be nostalgia for that period of high wage growth and the ease of switching jobs and finding better employment and higher wages. He's saying, listen, it used to be that the lowest wage quartile was getting the highest growth. growth in wages. Now they're the lowest. This is a bad thing. People like you were saying, no, the other thing was a bad thing when wages are too, growth is too high. But I'm just saying there's, it's going to be. Wait, what are you saying you were right about it? I said people are going to be nostalgic for that high wage growth period, even though everyone hated it because inflation was high. But where's the proof that you were right? He's saying,

listen, because at that time, the lowest wage cohort had the highest wage growth. And now they have the lowest wage growth. Because guess what happens? We're back to normal. Higher wage, higher growth, higher wage growth for people who make more money. And he's saying, oh, this is bad. It's inequality. I think, all right, I guess we'll rehash this debate. I think that soaring wage growth, which directly drives inflation, is bad for the nation

because people adjust to their payways immediately, but they don't adjust to how expensive everything is. And then people get pissed off. I think we have conclusive evidence that what I'm saying is true. Yes, because, yeah, wages are, I did that, prices are, no, you did that. Exactly. Yes, but I'm just saying people are going to look back at that period of high wage growth and, like, you could make more money just by switching jobs and going to go, oh, my gosh, that was glorious.

But no, at the time, people hated it. Okay. So, a billion-dollar job offer. I miss this article. This is a real thing? Mark Zuckerberg offered to acquire thinking machines lab and recruit its employees, including Andrew Tulloch. Zuckerberg offered him a package potentially worth one point.

$1.5 billion, but the guy declined. Can I say one thing about this? In terms of, like, looking back on this as a, holy shit, that was the craziest thing ever moment. Wait a second. I remember when Mark Zuckerberg declined a billion dollar offer from Yahoo. And I remember when Instagram sold for a billion dollars, there was 11 people at the company, and we all thought it was the craziest thing.

And I remember when WhatsApp got sold for $23 billion, and it seemed like the craziest thing. why is this any different? So this guy's, this, Facebook is offering to buy this guy's company for a billion and a half dollars and he said no, so? No, he's just an employee there.

He doesn't even know in the company. Someone else owns the company. This is just, I think that's the difference because it's wages. It takes money to make money, am I right? Yeah. Honestly, though, they're the,

they're the canary in the coal mine eventually. They have to be with how much money they're spending. I don't know. I think Zuckerberg, I feel like that guys are in the business. benefit of the doubt, no? Like, he knows a lot more about his business and what they're trying to do than we do. A couple of Schmo is wearing these dumb t-shirts.

But it really is insane that he tried to pivot his company in three, four years ago to the freaking metaverse. Remember that? The picture of him in the metaverse, they should just change their name again to like Facebook AI or something, like Facebook F-A-I book. You know, I don't know. Credit to him, though. He pivoted off.

Yeah, and he pivoted again. Credit to him. Remember when people were buying real estate in the Metaverse? That was an actual thing. That actually happened. This decade, people were buying real estate in the fucking Metaverse. Do you still have that parcel? Yeah, right on the lake.

You just effed. You never effing. Because it was so stupid. There's just, there's been a lot of dumb stuff that's happened. All right. This is from Census Bureau, Census Bureau business trends, if you could believe that, I don't. Which shows the percent of establishments using artificial intelligence and production And it's only, it's not even 10% yet.

Like, to say that we're early as an understatement, it has not even begun. I think there are a lot of civilians who just don't interact with it much at all yet. I would say, I would say nine out of ten people don't. Right. Maybe more? Yes. And it's going to be, it is funny because when people finally do interact with it more, it's going to be just keep getting better.

So they haven't gone through all the phases where it didn't work very good. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about crypto for a second. So, Asnus tweeted, he said, for anyone who thinks today's markets are normal, or just normal, I remind you that the market cap of Farcoyne is still $1.4 million, $1.4 billion. And then he quote tweet himself, it's at $950 million. The error is coming out of the FARCoin bubble for now.

See, this is the point that I was making about market caps. This is not a market cap. There is not a billion dollar market cap in Fartcoin. I understand, like, supply, price, blah, blah, blah. It's not a billion dollars. It's just not. We are, we are butchering market cap. we are saying, all right, stocks, crypto, shares, coins, price, times.

It's not a market cap. It's just not. So one big whale. I'm not saying it's not dumb. Like that, I'm not, but, all right. So one big investor in FartCoyne goes to sell and the whole thing collapses, right? Now, not knowing anything about the supply and distribution of FarkCoyne, if there were one big whale in FarkCoin. And I don't know if there is or if there isn't, but yes, if there were one.

And FarkCoin, any coin, who tried to sell $70 million. I'm pretty sure that they would find out very quickly. The market cap is not the market cap. All right. This was interesting from Will Clemente. Micro Strategy bought, he quote tweeted this. Micro Strategy bought 21,000 Bitcoin at a price of 117,000. Wow.

So he quote tweeted and said, Saylor bought $2 billion and Bitcoin barely moved. Galaxy sold $8 billion for a whale and Bitcoin barely moved. That feeling when you realize Bitcoin is a real liquid macro. asset now. Right. There's not, these big moves don't move to needle anymore is what you're saying. He said that he did some work with somebody else, Ox, Ben Harvey recently, and found that the Bitcoin Treasury companies are about half a percent of daily price impact on average, maxing out around 10 percent on days of heavy saleer buying. The market is just much bigger now.

It is funny to think that a lot of the volatility of the past, whether it was on purpose or not, was probably being just pushed around. Remember, it felt like people could manipulate the price in the past, and that is not a thing anymore. That's where you had air pockets. Balchunas tweeted U.S. crypto ETFs took in. This is insane. $12.8 billion in July.

The best month ever, $600 million a day about double average. As a group, that's more than any single ETF did, including the mighty VLO. Most all around... I mean, that's unbelievable. $600 million a day.

It's not stopping, huh? All right. I would love to see a breakdown. I know you can't do this because you don't know where it comes from. How much of it is new money versus how much of it is coming from the exchanges and stuff

and it doesn't really matter. I would love to see... I think a lot of it is new money. I'm saying, all right, this is real. Speaking of that, this seems very important. JPMorgan Chase, and Jamie Diamond have been pretty vocally anti-Bitcoin, JPMorgan, Chase, and Coinbase launched strategic partnership to make crypto buying easier than ever.

So, this is what the report says. The initial phase of the partnership includes new features for mutual customers, including direct bank-to-wallet connection. Through JP Morgan's secure API, Chase customers will be able to seamlessly link their bank accounts to their Coinbase wallets. That seems very significant. transfer of Chase ultimate reward points. Chase customers will be able to transfer their reward points to their Coinbase account

at a one-to-one redemption. That seems very significant. This marks the first time a major credit card rewards program will be used to fund a crypto wallet. And then lastly, beginning this fall, the ability to use Chase credit cards on Coinbase. For the first time, customers will have the ability to fund their Coinbase accounts using Chase credit cards, which seems significant. You might say dangerous or crazy, but whatever, it's happening.

this is a big deal. This is a very, very big deal. I thought you could use credit cards on Coinbase before. Debit cards. You couldn't? Oh, that's right. Okay. But with all the money going to ETFs,

I just can't see how much trading on Coinbase still matters as much anymore for retail. I think it's still very big, 24-7. But also, why use cash to buy crypto when you could use credit? Am I right? Worry about it next month. That's a next month guy's problem. The reward points thing makes sense to me. I'm a big believer in just using all.

You saved your reward points, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's funny you mentioned this. I was talking by friend that at the Beecham at the weekend. He has 700,000 chase points and another couple hundred thousand delta points. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? What is this? The inflation is being, it's like he's hiding his money under the mattress.

The inflation is eating away at that every day. I think it's an OCD thing. He just can't bring himself. He's still paying for vacations with Fiat. I'm like, what are you doing? Why? Because, yeah, those points are worth way less over time. Yeah, these aged like a rotten diaper.

Spend it. Yeah. Use it. Just get it back in cash. So let's talk real estate. Somebody has a chart showing the percent of U.S. cities with falling home prices. It is about half. Yeah, about half.

Lance Lamber tweeted. That's a meaningful number. Yeah. Lance Lamber tweeted the estimated number of U.S. home buyers and sellers actively in the housing market. And not surprisingly, especially during the post-pandemic period, buyers outnumbered sellers by almost two to one. and now there are allegedly more sellers and buyers.

I was curious how they measure this. And we don't need to read it, but we'll look to this in the show notes if you want from Redfin. Yeah, they have their own. But here's the thing. Are these sellers, and they've been waiting, they've been on the sidelines because they've had the 3% mortgages. Are they willing to lower their prices a lot, though?

That's the question. Like, if they still have the 3%, are they just, are they testing the waters or are they actually going to be willing to lower the, because I would love this, If I was in the market, I would love to just throw lowball offers all over the place and see what hit. Because I wonder if a lot of them are going to be like, no, I'm not lowering my price. I'm ready to share my housing story in a second. But before we do that, he also shows that he breaks it down by zip code.

Because obviously, real estate is a very local phenomenon. He shows active housing inventory for sale compared to pre-pendemic levels. And he shows... This is what we showed before. It's all the west and the south and the southeast. Is that what we were shown before? This is just the number of housing units for sale pre-pendemic versus now. So there's more houses for sale in Texas and Florida.

All right. So it's shown way less inventory in the northeast and the Midwest and more inventory in areas that people flock to like Texas and Florida, right? Yeah. That's what this is showing? So if you were a baby boomer, we'll get to the condo thing in a minute. Condos on the streets. now is the time, like if you haven't bought a condo in Florida,

now is the time to do it if you're retiring. Because people are unloading these and can't sell them. Oh, really? Well, so this is from the Wall Street Journal. They say the condo market is floundering. Four charts that explain the downturn, and I put a few of them in here. What's the story here? A lot of it is like these assessments they're getting in the insurance.

So look at this price change year-over-year. Condos are falling way faster than single-family homes. Single-family homes are still seeing growth. condos are now falling in price. And they say that just the premium for condos is falling fast because they're getting all these assessments and people flock to them to. So if you want to buy a condo, now is the time they do it. Like people can't sell condos, especially in Florida. The market is just totally dried up. And so people are, they said that's the place where people are offering concessions when you buy because they have these assessments and these insurance

from the new, because all the condo buildings had to get up the code and offer these special assessments and they're charging people a ton of money to live there still. All right. So you spoke about low-ball offers and are people lowing their prices. So this is from Redfin, via daily chartbook. Although the median sale price hit a record high during the four weeks ending July 20th, it's up just 1.6% year-over-year compared to 5% to 6%. So new home price, I'm sorry, not new home prices.

Home prices are still hitting all-time highs, but the rate of price increase is slowed down dramatically. So I sold my house And it is wild how the story of me selling my house Is the story of how life works with everything In terms of just like all of these things that had to happen For this to happen, the butterfly effect, if you will So I bought a house in Long Beach

It's a decent movie by the way I enjoyed it. Thumper Remember that character? I bought my house at 2020 I had a single tenant in Long Beach Sold it in 2025 It's not planning on selling it I thought she was going to stay there.

She told me, like, a month before her contract was to be renewed, that she was leaving. And I'm like, oh, my God, I got to find somebody. Yeah. Let me just sell it. Done with this. Had she left or had she not left abruptly, obviously, well, not obviously. I wouldn't have had, it would have been much more difficult to have the cash to buy the house and I'm buying. So there was that, kicking it off.

Then being on the beach with my friend at the time that I was where the Zillow notification popped up. And he said, like, he like gave me permission to buy the. house. I was not even, it was not even a thought of my mind that we were going to leave, right? I was thinking about like, oh, I can't leave. Like, A, I love my house, B, mortgage rates, blah, blah, blah. And so if I was anywhere else in the world, I would not have been moving. So anyway, on the story of selling my house, we have a great house. It is a... So you're saying, sorry, it was serendipitous, the way things worked out for you to buy a new house. Yes. Like everything in life, right? Like every...

A lot of things, yeah. And so I was pretty curious to find out what it would be, the price and everything like that. But my house is a colonial, and in my town, that is a rare rarity. Most houses are either high ranches or splanches, which I'm not quite sure with the differences, but whatever, or a split level. I don't know if those are all the same thing. Splanchers, that's a new one to me. Okay. Yeah, I don't know.

For some reason, it just doesn't click on my brand. I'm not sure. Wait, how many days did it take from when you listed to when you sold? It was less than a week, right? Yeah. So we had an open house and Robin, for some reason, we have like seven ring cameras in my house. So I felt like I was like the NSA, like spying on these people. I was following that from room to room. I was like, shh, listening. These are the buyers. So we had, we had six people

show up to the open house. We got two offers and now is it. Now, part of it is time of the year, right? I think like the buying season is more in the spring. Part of it is the price of the house. but most of it is interest rates. We spoke to a lot of people in the community, friends of ours that would have loved to buy our house because it's one of the bigger houses. It's got like the open concept, I guess, is what they call it. But most people can't afford to get out of their mortgage, obviously.

Did you guys highlight the mudroom right away? Beautiful colonial. Brand new mudroom. Yeah. So anyway, but only, but only, two offers. And that was it. Now, slightly over-asked, but that was it. Two offers and nobody even saw the house after that. I think we had one showing. That was it. So, no buyers. So low supply of house, but low supply of buyers, too. Now, I guess, on the flip side, like, all you need is one buyer.

Right. It doesn't matter how many offers you get. You just need one buyer. But I was, I was very surprised, maybe I shouldn't be in hindsight, but I was very surprised at the limited number of interest. And again, it's not rocket science. It's just interest rates. It makes sense. So anyway. It's one of those things too, like, you think you know what your house is worth, but the market is going to determine it for you. Yeah, I got very lucky because there was another house. I was recommended to list it $100,000 less than I actually listed for. But I saw a house pop up on the market about the same time that we were going to sell hours that was listed for $100,000 or $200,000 more than mine. And I think my house is nicer. So I said, thank you, sir,

because they gave me the cover to raise the price. Anyway, so now we've got to pack and move and everything like that. But you know what? I'm excited to purge. We have so much junk. Feels good. We have so much garbage. We haven't gotten...

So our kitchen is still full of like stuff that we got from our wedding. That you never use anymore? Or just like, I'm ready for new plates, I think. I'll just buy new glasses on Amazon. I don't care. Just throw everything out. Yeah. I agree.

It's turn over. Yeah. Exciting. All right. That's a story. You're going to be in your house by when? Before school? Probably not.

Probably after Futureproof. So. Yeah, that's a future you think to worry about. Yeah, I don't worry about it now. How are you going to pack up all those books over there? Those are not coming with me. Get rid of all your books. I'm saying goodbye to the books.

Bring them to the library? You know, they don't take donations. Really? Yeah, I ask. I have to, I mean, I will donate them somewhere. but I'll keep, I don't know, I'll keep something. All right, real quick, there was another one of these. I thought it was from last year.

Someone sent me this and it says, millennials are richer now, so I can't they stop worrying. I'm like, wait, we already read this before, but it just came out. This person says, you only have to watch the big short ones and go, oh my God,

it just makes you jumpy. And then they also said this 45-year-old lawyer in Boulder, Colorado is a homeowner with ample retirement savings, but worries his wealth could suddenly disappear. He keeps an emergency fund that could cover his expenses for years. They're saying there's still millennials who are scarred by the great financial.

All right. Well, how about this? Pretend you're a reporter. Ask me a question. I'm a millennial. Okay. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great.

I just bought a house that financially makes no sense compared to the mortgage that I have today. But you only live once. I want to be on the water. I'm optimistic about my future ability to pay for this house. And so, yeah, I feel very blessed. Thank you. In early 2020, 45, the average net worth of millennials and old, older members of Gen Z was 31% higher than baby boomers and 20% higher than Gen X was at

similar ages. So yeah, you're doing fine. You're ahead of the game. Thank you. I thought this was good. Maybe this is, we've been talking a lot about the definition of wealth. And some people are saying, sorry, sorry, there will never be an article where it's like, hey, millennials are actually okay. Right. People are feeling good. Who the fuck wants to read that? That's true. Yeah, it worked out. Sorry, sorry about all those articles. It actually worked out. Yeah, that's social media. Um, this is interesting. So someone says, hey, hello, Ben, I think it's the DM. Holy crap, I realized something while I was listening to one of your podcast this morning. It was said the middle class has the most of the wealth tied up in housing.

It popped into my head that my 401k IRA, Roth IRA is now worth more than my house. I guess this makes me upper middle class. By the way, I live in Oklahoma City. Love your work. That's a pretty good definition. Is your, is your portfolio of that, is your portfolio of investment bigger than worth more than your house? That's a pretty good definition of wealth, right? I would still, there's still some geographical stuff in there. But if we have to ascribe some sort of line in the sand. I think that's pretty good. All right. Real quick plug, since people said we don't do enough self-promotion, at the unlock last week, just type in the unlock at YouTube. I talked about the 4% rule of Bill Bangan,

who came up with the rule on his own. I think it was actually 4.15% in this original paper, but the 4% rule, this is a topic that has come up more and more because all the baby boomers retiring need to figure out how to spend their assets. Very good. Go give it a listen. All right, let's talk streaming stuff. there's still something off on Netflix shows. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's because

they're algorithm-based or it's almost like feels like it could be AI, but we tried to watch this untamed show with Eric Banna where like someone falls off of a mountain and they try to figure out

who it is. And it just, if it's like they get good actors. And like they had a Julianne more Kevin Bacon show really this year my wife watched and I tried to watch it with her and it just,

it just, it feels like a computer made it up and their algorithm made it up. You're right and it is and it does because, I've heard many people say this. They genuinely write scripts and make TV such that you can be looking at your phone and still get 90% of it.

That's the thing. We turned it down and both my wife and our phones and I'm like, why are we watching this if neither of us are watching it? Right. Let's turn it off. But that's how they make it. So you're right, it does feel hollow.

And I feel like when's, okay, here's a good metric. When's the last time you saw a show on Netflix that you said, I can't wait for season two? that's true. It's funny. Even Squid Game, which I really liked when season two came out, I said, eh, don't need, I never watched it. Okay. So, every show. Right, there hasn't been a show. I'm sure. I'm sure there's an exception. But for example, Fubar is a, is the poster child of this. So I very much enjoyed season one to the extent that you could very much enjoy this completely trashy garbage action show. I don't even know what. I don't know what that is.

It's Arnold, okay? That's all you need. I thought that was a movie. I didn't realize it was a show. All right. So, uh, what on Netflix tweeted, as predicted, food bar has been canceled left after two seasons. And my thinking is like, why did they make season two?

Now, they know their business better than I do, but I didn't watch these. I had no interest in season two. Uh, viewership fell 76% from seasons one to two. And they will learn. And I bet you there will be way less shows, way less seasons two on Netflix. But the problem is, once. you have a relatively successful season one, like obviously you want to do with season two because it's, you know, deeper, cheeser, cheaper, convenient, maybe less risk. But you're right,

they do feel hollow because they are. Yeah, that makes sense. But I just, I can't do it. All right. The Wall Street Journal had this piece about, uh, good by gentle parenting. Hello, F around and find out. And it says, parents are difting a software approach to child ring that has dominated the culture and taking a harder line. It's funny to read this because it's just talking about how we were parenting and we were growing up. Wait, is this true? Are we turning on the Wall Street Journal? No, no, I know it.

But it's talking about this woman who said, like, her son was spraying her with a water gun at the campfire. And she was like, stop. And he wouldn't stop. So she threw him in the pond or something. Oh, I like that. Yes. And it says it's this idea that parents can ask and warn, but if a child breaks the rules, mom and dad aren't standing the way of repercussions.

It is funny because this is just, this is how parenting is supposed to work. I agree. Like, you're not supposed to let your child run all over you. Yeah. But it probably does happen more often than you think. Like, the nice parenting. Oh, it's okay. Do you see that when a kid does something like you're at the pool or whatever

and a kid does something and the parents are right there and don't do anything? Yeah, it drives me nuts. I am very much a, no, if your kid does something, you fix it. Yeah, if my kid's doing something, I run over. Hey, stop that. Like, son was, they're playing the beanbag toss game at the ice cream place the other night. And they're throwing the beanbag pellet things at each other. And I'm like, stop.

Someone's going to get hurt. And he's shucking them. And I'm like, stop. We were at Point Lookout, which is a, there's a restaurant on the water. And there was a kid on the beach throwing sand, not just at the kids, but there's like a dock that goes over the beach. And he was throwing sand at people who were eating. And this one guy turned around and goes, he's like literally, shoulder shrugged him on. He's like looking for the parents.

Like, how is this happening? How are you like your five-year-old just chuck sand everywhere? Yeah. I like this idea. Like, do something. There's a lot of people who just don't do it. It's kind of funny. They have to have a story about it.

All right, I got one quick Midwest nice story. My wife's going to hate me for telling it, but I got to tell. So we order food from a counter at our boat club. And the kids love it because they can go. They have our name on account, and they just go and they order and they can get ice cream or whatever. And we tell them to always order. And like a month ago, the kids ordered, and it was kind of busy, but not too. But usually the food takes 15 minutes.

It's mac and cheese and chicken nuggets and sandwiches, right? It's pretty easy. But we waited like 45 minutes. for the food. And the kids are like, dude, what's going on? Where's our food? So I go up and ask, and hey, do you don't have our order? And they got our order wrong and they mess it up. And my wife is like, you can't do that. You can't, you're going to make, you're going to, we're going to be the jerks that ask. And I'm like, no, no, you have to ask, right? Wow. That is, your wife is very nice. So she's very Midwest nice. And so it happened again this week. And all these people who

ordered after us are getting their food. And I'm certain, and I'm getting hungry. And I'm like, can I just go check please? And you know, we don't want to be those people again that do it twice. And so we wait and wait and finally she goes in checks. And they had lost our order. How long are we talking? Like legitimately? 45 minutes. Come on. Yes. You waited 45 minutes for chicken nuggets before you got up? Yes. And I'm, and my wife is like, no. I'm sorry, 15 minutes. She's like, you can't be the one person who does this and we get a reputation. And I said, why can't you just ask him? I say, hey, just checking on the status for order. And she got mad at me. Like, she got mad at me ahead of time even telling me because she knew that I was right.

Like, you don't know if he's such a jerk about it, you know? I'm just saying we should have checked. Sometimes you can be too nice because you don't want to become a Karen or whatever. That's what her worry was. I get it. You know, you get mad at people that take their time in line. I don't know if I think I forgot to mention this to you. Maybe I did.

People at the movie theater. Did I do this last week? Okay. I'm sorry. If you are in line and there's a line and you go up, you can't be looking at the, board, figure out what you want. You either want popcorn or you want something else. Yeah, you should have your order right here. I mean, come on. You should have been looking the

whole time. You want popcorn. You want nachos. Get your fattess out of the way and move it. So the same thing is true at fast food or something. You can't get up to the counter and ask a question. Like, you have to know what you're getting ordered. All right, let's do some recommendations. I feel, I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing every new movie I see, but I've just seen a lot of really stinkers lately. And I, I feel like a lot of the TV and movie podcasts don't want to be critical of TV and movie, of actors and movies anymore because they have them on their show to promote it and stuff. So they can't say, they can't be truthful. An animal spirits were truthful. And I saw two really weird movies and I didn't like them. Okay. I watched friendship with Paul

Rudd and Tim Robinson. I like Tim Robinson. His show is good. He's from Detroit. Right? I got to represent. It was way too weird. I was really excited about this one. Like I give this a 4.2. I turned it off halfway through. Okay. I tried it twice. So I'm thankful that you did. because I saw your score, and I, and I've been, I've been made to watch this movie. So, you lowered the bar for me. Um, I enjoyed this movie. This is definitely not a you movie. You don't, you don't like weird movies.

It was, it felt like he was in a different movie than everyone else in the movie. That was the point. It was, it was, it was, like, listen, I, I, I, I chuckled at a few of his lines. Like, some of his lines were funny. It just, it was so weird. It wasn't, it was just way too weird for me. I didn't get it at all. Okay.

No, but listen. This is the type of movie. that you either enjoy it or you hate it. I don't think anybody would see friendship. It would be like, you know, it's okay. It's polarizing because it's very strange. I'm sure there were people who really liked it. I just thought it was terrible.

I did like it. I think honestly, you lowering the bar so much helped. So thank you. And there was still a few lines of his that he said that I chuckled about, but I'm like, it felt like he was in a different movie than everyone else in the movie. Yeah. I also, I enjoyed the aspect of like middle-aged dudes meeting each other and the awkwardness of like. Yeah, that, the beginning was...

New guy, group of friends. Yeah. And I want to see where it went, but fair enough. All right, 28 years later, I have to take on bridge with this. This was a good movie. What did you not... I mean, why did you watch it? I like, I enjoyed the first one.

I liked the second one. I really liked the first one. Well... Listen, I know Danny Boyle... I saw this in the theater, so I had a different experience than you did. I know that Danny Boyle does bizarre movies, but it felt like it was five movies in one, and that what the hell were the ending?

The ending was a little bit odd. The ending I didn't love too much. It just, the movie was way... Like, I thought the stuff at the beginning with the dad and the sun was good. And then I just thought it just, it went off the rails and it was just kind of like a, huh? I just thought it was weird.

I gave it a 4.9. Sorry. I loved the first one. All right, stick to coming of age movies. Get off my lawn. These are not for you. All right. I rewatched the original Happy Go More

because I wanted to see... It's been so long. I've always just caught the clips. I wanted to see, like, I didn't like the sequel at all. I thought it was an awful movie. and there was a great video online of someone like everyone you know

who's trying to say it's not that bad and talking about oh the cameos and the friend is like well yeah was it a good movie but yeah they had a cam and Sandler's the best but was it a good movie but in just he's always just nice to everyone and was it a good anyway

so I watched the original and I still just died everything the entire movie it just it still worked so well and it just made me mad again that they even made a sequel but I get why they did it

finally I have to explain 1980s movies of my daughter because we watched a karate kid this week we're still in our sports kick and she's like

she liked it but she's like why what's with like the cringy music in the montages and there was just parts of 80s movies that you just have to get

over the cringe and she's like why was this some of this stuff so cringy and I was like that's just that's the 80s

they didn't know any better no one knew any better I mean the 80s is such a long time ago for a child It's like talking to us about the 60s when we were kids. It's a foreign land.

But she still liked it enough where she wants to watch the second and the third one. So did you see any movies this week? I see nothing in here for you. I watched Friendship. I'm surprised. So you liked it. I did. I enjoyed it.

Listen, it is a very particular cup of tea. So I'm not like flabbergasted that you didn't like it. I understand the exact way. It's like people who like to drink Sambuca or something. Oh, come on. like that. No, I don't know. I'm saying some people like it, most people don't.

So, Robert is getting very fed up with my godfather obsession. Okay. Because I rewatched the first one of that last night. She walked in and I was watching Godfather, too. She goes, oh, no, no, no, no. And she turned it right off. You have to do back to back. That's what I do.

Well, I have to finish Godfather two. And then I have to watch the offer because I finished the Godfather audio book. And then that will conclude. And I listened to the rewatchables, obviously. I liked the offer. The offer was too long, but I liked it. That'll conclude my godfather experience. All right.

But I am pretty dry. No TV shows, which do you know what? It's enough for ready. I could use a break. Yeah. It's a good break. All right. Grandpets hedge t-shirts at Idon shop.com.

Check out the unlock. Do you have another live show this week? I do. I'm talking to Wes. So West Gray launched. Thank you, Ben. We have a channel for advice on YouTube. West Gray launched their 351 exchange ETF to rousing.

success, $450 million launch. Unbelievable. Tax alpha is so hot right now. Yeah, it really is. Speaking of which, we talked to Alex Morris for Talk Your Book. But I don't know, this is not Tax Alpha. This is like a diversification arbitrage, I would say.

Okay, tax arbitrage. Tax avoidance. Email us, Animal Spirits at the CompotNews.com. Thanks everyone for listening. Appreciate it, as always. Love your emails. Talk to next time. You know,