Animal Spirits Podcast - What is Wealth? (EP.375)

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

On episode 375 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: Jerome Powell's speech at Jackson Hole, Nvidia millionaires, financial voices you can safely ignore, housing affordability, what it takes to be considered wealthy, every generation thinks they have it bad, Michael's college transcript, and much more! This episode is sponsored by YCharts. 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 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 Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com 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

On today's animal spirits, Ben and I talk about what Americans think it takes to be wealthy and what I think it takes to be wealthy, not the same thing. All right. We're talking 10 facts about the consumer. The U.S. consumer just dominates the world. Every generation, every single one thinks that they had it worse than the previous one. I give my score update for the legacy game for Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole. D plus?

Not bad. Speaking of, we cover, I went back to college. and got my transcript. Talk about how I did as a freshman at Indiana University. Not great. Then we talk about how many million-dollar homes they are and much more. Stick around. Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at Y-Chart. September is almost here, as all parents know, because they talk about how fast summer just went. But that means one thing. Future Proop Festival is around the corner. Y-charts will be there. I think they've been at every one of these so far, and they're actually taking over a speaking session that digs in their latest client

communication survey. I'm told that there will be a booth with ice cream. Really? Which in the 75 degree weather will be very welcome. It's probably going to be more than that even. Very nice. Okay. So white charts will have not only the speaking session,

they'll have a booth set up if you want to go check them out. Ben, what can white charts do for you? Well, charts for one. That's easy. Scenario analysis, portfolio analysis, economic research. Yes. My favorite thing in the last couple of years is just having my own, what do you call it? What's the setup call? Dashboard. It's a dashboard. You've got your target date funds. Fix income, equity. Demographics. Housing. All that stuff. Yes. Ice cream stand, booth at Future Proof. There's going to be thousands of people there. Everyone go check out Y charts. Link in the show notes to download the latest results with their full survey findings. Michael and I sign off on this survey, even though we're anti-survey usually. get your 20% off your initial subscription when you sign up and mention Animal Spirits.

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 Redholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment. decisions. Clients of Ritholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.

Did you... I feel like you're not a press conference guy, a Fed Press conference guy, a Fed Presser guy. Neither am I. No, I don't think you learn a whole lot from that. So unlike you, I don't cast shade, say something that doesn't sound like something you would like, but I like. I don't do that here. I'm not a Fed Presser guy myself.

I just feel like we're on the same page there. You mean, like I said that you didn't watch the Olympics, that kind of thing? Yes, that. Okay. I mean, I see the tweets. I get the TLDRs, but for this one, I read the transcript. Okay. I guess I would prefer to read the transcript more than.

So it was, I said it was Powell's legacy game. How do you think he did? He put up 20 and 10? I thought it was pretty good. On Friday, I was traveling, so I could. I couldn't watch the press or even if I wanted to. Friday morning, I was in LaGuardia Airport at 6 a.m. Absolutely packed.

I was expecting to walk right through, which I did because of the digital ID thing, I more or less did walk right through it. But it was slammed. Okay, wait. So I was at LaGuardia, too, because I flew out and I saw you last week. So the choices are, it's overwhelming because you got the digital ID now, the clear, TSA pre-check. And TSA plus clear.

Yes. So I asked the guy, I'm like, which one should I do? And he's like, I don't just pick one, man. Well, no, it's great. LaGuardia has, it shows like wait time. They've got like a digital tower and it shows you the wait time. So easy, easy. Yeah.

The longest wait was the TSA precheck. Everyone has figured that out. But the funny thing is, that's LaGuardia, huge airport, obviously. And my little regional airport in Grand Rapids, no one has TSA precheck ever. The line for the regular line. You don't need it. Well, no, it's just nice because you can skip the line. But yeah, you really don't need it.

I was in a little regional airport. Actually, well, it was, I was in, I was in, so I flew from LaGuardia to Boston, but I was in one of those, like, little terminals. There's an airline called Cape Air, which has these little putter jumpers going to making local stops in the New England area. I've never been on one of those tiny airplanes with five seats before. You ever been one of those? Oh, yeah. It's a weird feeling. Where did you, where did you do, one?

We went from Grand Rapids to Minneapolis. This is a long time ago. but feels shaking and this is actually smooth than I expected so there was five passengers in the pilot flew from Boston

across the water to the tip of Cape Cod Provincetown I thought it was awesome very cool to see the runway as you pull in there's windows everywhere

I loved it okay did you have to wear like the things on your ears because it was so loud no but the pilot of course did he was wearing

I guess bows are the official headphones of pilots. Oh. And he was, he had a, he was doing a lot of writing. He had like a notepad. I wonder, what was he writing down? I don't know. I mean, no iPad?

Bald guy, C3, likes bad movies. The pilot was bald. Okay. Fellow bald. Anyway, back to Jackson Hole. So this is how he started, started the presser. Four and a half years after COVID-19's arrival,

the worst of the pandemic-related economic distortions are fading. inflation has declined significantly. The labor market is no longer overheated and conditions are now less tight than those that prevailed before the pandemic. Supply constraints have normalized and the balance of the risks to our two mandates has changed. Our objective has been to restore price stability while maintaining a strong labor market, avoiding the sharp increases in unemployment that characterized earlier disinflationary episodes when inflation expectations were less well anchored. While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress toward that outcome.

I've given the Fed some crap over the last year or so, but I do not envy the position that Powell is in. He's obviously a very powerful guy, but think about the Fed back in the day. They used to not have to do press conferences. They really didn't have to telegraph any of the things that they were doing, any of the thoughts, and I think he has to be so cognizant of anything he says, any word he uses, any sort forecast or estimate or it's he the way that he communicates actually i think is very effective because he's he has a very difficult job so for the first time he did he did signal pretty much

that they're ready to go he said my confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back towards two percent that's good the upside risks to inflation have diminished that's also good and the downside risks to employment have increased so a lot of focus on the labor market and the softening there and they're watching that one quote that I did take umbrage with was this. Our restrictive monetary policy helped restore balance between aggregate demand and aggregate supply and demand, easing inflationary pressures and ensuring that inflation expectations remained well anchored.

Actually, I don't know if that's true. You could make the argument that raising rates didn't slow the economy down at all. It nuked the housing market. And as the economy normalized, it could have normalized with rates at 3%. Who's to say? The biggest argument... But him patting himself from the back like that,

come on. Come on. A little bit. He should think, he should say, our restrictive monetary policy and Jensen Wang's data centers have...

Yeah, there's a little luck involved there. That'd be nice to say, like our restrictive monetary policy and boy, and the fact that you motherfuckers won't stop spending money keeping the economy buoyant,

credit to you all. Yeah, the biggest argument against the Fed is if you look at every other inflation rate around the world, it's all the same exact path. And there was different fiscal, different monetary policies in all those countries, and they still followed the same path. So how much of it is the supply chain getting fixed and blah, blah, but I think we've realized, though, that that monetary policy does matter eventually because it started to matter a little this year. It just took a lot longer than I think that they would have anticipated. So the other thing is people keep saying, I feel like the smart pushback

against the Fed, because the Fed is obviously cutting rates. By the way, hold on, sorry, just to rewind like three weeks ago when we had the Yen Mugetton and we said, oh, man, is Powell going to be eating Crow at Jackson Hole? And I said, well, what if the stock market was back to hold on in the highs and he just drops the mic? And it appears like that's the case. Which is funny because not many people would have guessed that at a time. That stocks are right back at all that high is almost.

Well, I didn't see. I mean, who saw a V-shaped recovery? It's been, haven't had one of those in a while, actually, years. right? When you get straight up, straight down? Not bad. I mean, straight down, straight up. So the smart contrarian thing to push back is, well, if they cut rates, then inflation could reignite again. But don't we have evidence, and not that this is...

I don't think nobody's really saying that. You're in your bag of making things up. People are saying things like that. Nobody's saying that. Okay, Torson Slocke's emailed this weekend. Said exactly that. It literally said that word for word. Okay.

He's a pretty respected economist. But I think the pushback against that is, don't we have ample evidence that lowering rates does not increase inflation? We had 15 years of it of lowering rates that did not increase inflation at all. I know this is not that environment. What did he say would be the trigger? Lowering rates would cause this to then cause prices to go back up. It was open-ended.

There is no trigger. I guess housing market would potentially be the trigger. The thing about the housing market that I'm concerned about is the Fed obviously doesn't control long rates. And it would be very nice if the Fed lowering rates on the short term would somehow, there would cause a decrease in the spread between the 10-year and 30-year rates. But what if the bond market move is already done, the long end? And rates don't fall that much more. And we don't see a meaningful drop in mortgage rates that people want to see after the Fed cuts rates.

Well, that would be awful. If you're waiting for the Fed, I mean, again, my hope is that the spread compresses and that helps mortgage rates a lot because the spread is way too high. But that would be the real gut punch for a lot of people is the Fed lowers rates, but mortgage rates don't fall that much more. Yeah. That would be some cruel irony. All right. From the compound YouTube channel, which are the following do you think will perform the best over the next decade? Duncan listed the NASDAQ 100, S&P 500.

Happy birthday, Duncan, by the way. Yeah, happy birthday to a producer extraordinaire. Russell 2000, Bitcoin or gold. And number one, by a decent amount, was the NASDAQ 100. Almost 40% of the vote. This is over 1,000 people from the compound. Second is the S&P. Gold comes in last.

Russell 2000 at the bottom, and Bitcoin is actually 22%. This kind of makes sense based on performance. If we're doing recancy bias kind of thing, right? You know, if I had to rank these five, I would put 20% in each. Can't lose. That's true. So this reminded me the Gallup poll.

Galap started doing this in 2011, and they look at real estate, gold, stocks, savings accounts, bonds, and crypto. Crypto's a new addition. Crypto's way lower for this. It's kind of funny because I'm sure that Gallup does talk to more old people than young people. Our audience probably skews younger. But real estate is still by far the biggest one for that.

The stock market is next. This is wild. Like, gold has remained very high the entire time. But real estate's been number one, more or less since fears of the GFC faded in 2013. Which is kind of funny because the housing market bottomed in 2012. You'd think there would be some scars from that. But no, people still butt into real estate. And the people who butt in back then and said that were pretty smart, actually.

Why do you think the majority of respondents think that real estate is a better long-term investment? than the stock market? Probably because more people own houses than stocks in this kind of survey. That'd be my guess. People are just more familiar with it. I don't know. I don't have a great answer. Jeremy Schwartz, yeah, I just, I don't know.

Jeremy Schwartz had a great thread deconstructing the total return attributions across various geographies, the S&P, MSCI, Europe, the UK, Japan. So what is this, five-year returns? Five-year returns. And then on the bottom is 10-year returns. But he shows, he breaks it down into multiple expansion, margin expansion, sales growth, currency, and dividend returns.

Okay. And the S&P did 15% a year over the last five years, transcing everything else. Europe did 8% of the year over the last five years, probably higher than most people would guess. Yeah. And the biggest takeaway here, for me anyway, is multiple expansion in the United States was of the 15%.

6.3% of it was multiple expansion, which is on par with sales growth. So we had the double whammy of nearly 7% sales growth. You had multiple expansion. and nobody else enjoyed multiple expansion. Not Europe, not the UK. Actually, that's not true. Japan did. But the weakening yen really hurt U.S.-based investors.

I look at the 10-year returns. And my biggest takeaway here is that the strong dollar hurt international stocks a lot. So we're talking 2 to 3 percent per year for these stocks from the dollar going up. So that's the catalyst or tailwind for international stocks doing well, is the dollar we And maybe that happens from the Fed cutting rates. Maybe that helps a little bit. Well, the dollar has been under pressure. Across all five geographies, over the last five and ten years, we had margin expansion,

which pretty impressive. Yeah, that's not bad. So businesses doing more with the same. So anyway, sort of a noisy chart to explain, but if you're interested... But to your point, the fundamentals have actually been okay internationally, not as good, but okay, but they don't, they didn't get the benefit of the margin expansion. Yeah, not bad. So what is that, three and a half percent in developed markets?

Or is that three or two and a half percent? I can't say four and a half percent in Japan. So, yeah, there's been, there's been growth. Yeah, sorry, the multiple expansion they didn't get. But yeah, you're right. Just not quite as good as the United States. All right. Did you look at this piece in the Wall Street Journal about NVIDIA winners?

So they, they said, NVIDIA is up 2,000 percent since 2019. These Wall Street Journal readers invested early. They look at eight people who actually. invested in NVIDIA pre-2019 and how their experience was. And actually, one of our listeners DMed me on Twitter and said, hey, I'm one of these people. They didn't tell me which one, but they said, I'm, I'm, they interviewed me for this. You know, I, did they, did they, I, I saw the how they had that I did I actually read the article. Did they ask people like how they found Nvidia 20 years ago? Yes. So here's, this is the one that stands out the most. And there's this

orthodontist. Jim Woods from Kentucky. He said in 1999, he learned about NVIDIA from an article in the Wall Street Journal months after the company went public. So he said he looks for companies that are small and he thinks it's going to grow. So he's a 70-year-old orthodontist now. And they say he put in $65,000 buying 250 shares at the time. That's a lot of money back in 1999. It's probably like 250 grand today. So, yeah. So his $65,000 in 99. he's worth $15 million today. And he said he's hung on the whole time, never sold any shares. He said he might trim a little bit now and put it in two-month treasuries.

I really, I really, really don't understand how somebody can ride a winner like this, sitting through multiple 50% drawdowns and not being an insider at the company, just being a person that bought it at the IPO. Yeah, because most of the people here, they talk about they bought in like 2018 or something, way more recently. This guy bought way back then. And they talked to this 50-year-old professor who said, I think he turned two grand into like a million bucks or something.

And he said he's going to retire early, partly because he feels so much better because of this NVIDIA position. So, yeah, this is, you and I talk about. I love these stories. I think they're great. But they're also dangerous because, no offense, I don't give these people credit. It's not like they had any insight. They got lucky.

Period. They got lucky. My uncle was... No credit. I give these people some credit. Why? Sitting through a 60, 70% drawdown and riding it back up, that... But why do they get credit for this one and not the hundreds of thousands of other

companies where they sat through 70% drawdowns and they just never came back? Well, what if their portfolios are like VC funds where they tried this with seven other stocks in and they didn't work? That's different. All right, fair enough. If your style of investing is buying at the IPO and never selling, fine. Fair enough. But for somebody that just like randomly, I've told the story, my uncle bought Seljean near the IPO. And that stock changed my life. My mother was a secretary making, I don't know, $35,000 a year. And her brother bought her that stock. And so we, my family is a beneficiary

of this. I think she turned whatever, 15 grand or whatever, into like almost a million dollars. But how many stocks is my uncle bought over the years trying to find the nextel gene? You can't. It's not like he knew. It was a tip from a friend and he just happened to never sell. Yes. I agree with that. It's this is, but this is why people play this game because they-

Oh, I know. Yeah. It's seductive. I totally understand. But none of this is repeatable. It's complete luck. No. Yes.

To your point about Powell not admitting he was lucky as Fed Chair, I'm, I'm sure a lot of these people would admit, yeah, I got lucky because how much, how much of the gains have come in the last three or four years. Right. And they counterpoint to me, it doesn't matter if it's luck. The money's still good. Yes. Right?

Yeah. But I don't give credit to lottery winners. I don't give credit to people like this, but credit to them nevertheless. I think it's wonderful that they did that. Yes. If these people are saying, just follow my investment process and you can pick the next Nvidia, then they're full of crap. But if they say, listen, I did win a lottery ticket.

And I'm, but I'm still cashing it in, more power to them. Absolutely. No, it's a wonderful outcome as long as it doesn't lead people to try and find the next Nvidia, which of course it does. That's the whole, that's the reason why we play this game. But we talked about how Nvidia is the most successful company over any 20-year period from that Besson Binder study. So this stock is, you're not, this is the opposite of the big short kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. This dovetails nicely with the story in Nvidia, I'm sorry, in Bloomberg, talking about how, difficult it is to work there, as it should be. It's the biggest company of the world. It should be a laxadaisical culture. Remember a couple of weeks ago we were speaking about like 30% of Nvidia employees worth $5 million for some crazy numbers? Right. So here's what it's like to work in Vividy. This is a great lead from the story. It's a summer day in Santa Clara, California, and an assortment of luxury cars, Porsches, corvettes, Lamborghinis, take up parking spots

previously occupied by Humpler models. Some have new paint jobs in the lime green from NVIDIA's corporate logo, and they are stuck where their owners want to be at the office. So they say that the work hours are just as grueling and high stress, current and former employees said, leaving little time for the jet setting, home buying and leisure. Many can now afford. The culture problem is brewing, said that 10 people who ask not to be identified now. Later in the article, it said that most of his employees approve of his leadership style, because on Glassdoor's approval rating is 97%.

It's higher than Alphabet, Apple, meta, so way higher than Amazon. But nevertheless, one former employee said he was expected to work seven days a week, often until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. He described the environment as a pressure cooker, known in several company meetings. He characterizes yelling fights, but said the pay package made it hard to leave. Yeah, okay. Again, if you're getting paid all this money, it shouldn't be. This is not surprising at all. What's the level of money you'd have to make to work in that environment? Because for me, I don't know if there is an amount where it makes sense.

Well, it depends. What's the alternative? If the alternative is making $50,000, then I think everybody would take this all day. If the alternative is making a nice living, a nice modest living, but you're satisfied with your work-life balance, then I don't know, a lot of people would choose to not live this sort of life. So I remember when I was coming out of college and I had just heard investment banking, you could make a ton of money.

And I'm like, ah, that sounds good. And until I learned from my boss at my internship that, yeah, I was in investment banking for four years. And the first year of the job, I had two days off. And I never had a weekend of myself. And I was thinking, you just lost your 20s, man. Why? That's not worth any money in the world to me.

But some people don't mind that. The investment banking thing is a hamster wheel that you can never get off. if given the option to work at a company like in a video and you knew that you were going to get filthy rich like call it $10 million plus and your life would suck for a dozen years I think like 99% of the people A dozen years, that's way too long.

Are you kidding me? I was thinking you were going to say like... But if you could put in 10 years and then be financially set for the rest of your life, every single person, maybe not you, Ben. Every single person says, yeah, I'll kill myself for 10 years if there's a light at the end of the tunnel,

and then I can do whatever I want with the rest of my life? Come on. 10 years is a long time. And also, what if your stock options by then are down? I'm saying if you knew. Okay, all right. That's what I'm looking for. Okay.

This is a faceblower right here. Chief financial officer, Colette Cress, who joined the company 11 years ago, owned stock worth about $758 million. Would you take that 11 years, $750 million? I would. her Intel counterpart, Dave Zinsner, who has a larger pay package, but has a shorter 10-year, owns stock worth just $3 million.

Suck it, Dave Zinser. At AMD, their nearest rival, the CFO who joined in 2023, owned stock worth $6 million, $6.5 million, excuse me. Oh, my gosh. I mean, so this is, can you imagine being a new employee coming in? And I don't care how big your pay packages, if they stole you're from Google or meta or wherever, AMD. and you see all these people

who got in early I don't know how you could then try to kill yourself knowing that sorry that boat is passed how much how much of the water cooler talk

so to speak in NVIDIA offices is about the stock oh I'm sure a ton of all of it right all of it so let me give a shameless plug for Riddells wealth management if you are an employee

who has a large concentrated position in your company stock and you're not exactly sure what to do with it, how to manage it, how to tax efficiently get out of it, how to options vest and all that sort of stuff, tax, et cetera, reach out to us. We get to cover it. This is what we do. We've got a good solution for that.

And we get questions from people like that all the time saying, I'm an employee at Amazon and 90% of my net worth is in the company, but I'm worried about capital gains taxes, but what if it falls? And funny, someone emailed us a couple weeks ago saying, to your point, the employees do talk about it all the time because Amazon is kind of treaded water for a few years. and they're like, this is a big topic of conversation. Yeah. All right.

I want to talk about financial voices that I think you can safely ignore. I was at a soccer event for my daughter a couple weeks ago, and the dads were talking, and they found that I worked in finance. And one of the dads said, like, okay, you work in wealth management. Like, don't sell yourself, but tell me. Oh, yeah, name every doubt component. Yeah. Oh, that'd be tough.

but he said he asked me who are the financial firms that you would totally stay away from who are the people of the firms that you would just get away from these like get out of here and it took me a minute Duncan bleep this out I'm just kidding no but it's funny and the guy said what do you think about insurance and I said well I guess that could be one of them with people who think that your only solution to every financial problem life is insurance and he said well I used to work in finance I said what did you said I sold insurance so he somebody who formerly worked at a place where insurance was sold, I could say you could safely stay away from people that do a financial planning at insurance companies.

Not to say that everyone, but it rounds up to 100%. You could stay away. But this got me thinking that people always talk about the firehose of information we get these days and the opinions and analysis and newsletters and social media and all this stuff, podcasts. So Howard Linson always says, like, there is no such thing as information overlord, only filter failure. So I saw this zero hedge graph going around. A bunch of people sent it to us. Michael Antonella, I think, tweeted it out.

It says, adjusted for the collapse in the Dow, the S&P's unchanged in 50 years, and it's the S&P 500 in gold terms. And, I mean, there's a million problems with this graph. Yeah, whatever. And whatever. If you think this is actual analysis, hit yourself in the head with a hammer, please. So I thought about like these kinds of things, And obviously, Zero Hedge is the antithesis of my way of thinking. So I think Zero Hedge and Michael Lewis have probably lost more people money since the 2010s than anyone. Like, do you know when Zero Hitch was started? Oh, yeah.

I think the Big Short has lost a lot of people. Probably hedge funds, too. Like actual institutions. I think people read the Big Short and thought, like, I'm going to do this. And I think it's lost people a lot of money. I'm saying this tongue-in-cheek, kind of. Do you know when Zero Hedge was started? 2009?

January of 2009. one of the biggest bull markets in history. And this, they have millions and millions of readers. Anyway. By the way, yeah, it doesn't matter what the market's done. There's a, there's a gigantic audience for this sort of information. And so I feel like at this point, like, you can't be hurt by, by Zero Hedge anymore. Like, yes, he has his readers.

It's a very self-selecting audience. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think anybody, like, I don't think the average civility is like, oh, my God, I was going to invest for the long term and then I saw this chart from Zero Hedge and I took all my money out. You know what I mean?

Like, I don't think that happens anymore. No, no, yeah. I do remember my one of the guys I used to work with in like 2010 is like, you've got to check this new blog out that I found and he sent me a few articles. And I looked at the comments and I was like, oops, I'm out.

Sorry. Nope. These are not my people. That's probably the last Zero Hedge article I've ever looked at. All right. So I thought of some things that like my personal filters. If I see someone doing this, you're out to me.

You're dead to me. right? I don't follow your financial advice. So here we go. Pricing stocks in anything else. Gold, yen, Bitcoin. I think I saw someone do like earnings pricing in gold or a couple weeks ago, like anything like that, pricing the stock market and something else. Sorry, you're out to me. Price return only no dividends, right? If you can't do a long-term chart in dividends and you're comparing price returns, I'm ignoring whatever you're saying. Yep. Everything viewed through a political lens, that's obvious, right? I still don't understand. I do understand, but I don't. Why we have Democratic and Republican economists.

Like, shouldn't you just be an economist? Like, and look at policies through, like, this is good or bad, not this is good because it's democratic or bad, whatever. The person who follows everything that a billionaire say or do, like, Buffett, well, Buffett holds $270 billion in T-bills, so what do you think that means? Or the Buffett indicator, or Sorrelspite's puts, or the person who, like, they do everything because billionaires say are to do so. Perma bearers, obviously.

I think conspiracy theorists are. are a set of their own, especially like the Fed, anti-fed people. I don't think I've ever agreed with an anti-fed person about something. Anyone who uses the word Fiat, you're out. Like, if you use the word Fiat a lot, I think you're probably someone I can safely ignore. And guys who are bow ties. Are there probably people who are bow ties who give good financial advice? Yes.

Tom Cain. Yeah, probably people in the South. But I'm saying 95% of people who are bow ties. are probably giving bad information. Yeah, that's absolutely fair. All right, and one more. People who are way too hung up on the past. So, like, this one thing that shaped them

is the only thing that they care about. So for some people, it's in 1970s inflation. When I was at Lehman. 1987 crash, 1929 crash, 2008 crisis. Any time where you bring everything back to a specific moment because you remember that or you were studied about it. Those are my people to ignore. Yes.

Any additions? Any additions. Probably, but I think you covered it. That was good. That was good. That's all I got. People with hair. Can't trust them.

That's true. That'd be an interesting study. What's the over-under performance with people who are bald and people have hair? I don't know. All right. Ryan Dietrich tweeted, U.S. durable goods new orders. Skyrocketed in the most recent report.

It is volatile lately, but durable goods up nearly 10% simply isn't something you see in a recession or an economy headed for one. So this is like refilling the inventory? Is that the deal with this? I don't know the breakdown of this, but, you know, these are like big-ticket items. Refrigerators, washing machines. I'm going to help out with this. We're getting a new dishwasher soon. Why? Yours went belly up? Yeah, I mean, we use it so much. I remember we looked at, when we were looking at houses when we first had our twins, and we saw a house that had a laundry room upstairs

and a laundry room downstairs. And I thought... That's a luxury. I thought, no, I thought, what a waste. Why would you... What would be the point of this? And now that we have three kids and the amount of laundry we do,

I think, God, that was an amazing idea. I wish I had two laundry rooms. Yeah. We would use it. We do at least one load of laundry every single day. Are you the laundry person in your house? No, my wife took it. Okay.

Are you the dish person? Dishes, yes. I do the dishes. I do the dishes. That's what I'm ready for you. I always joke, the key to a healthy, a clean house is a clean sink. I agree with that. If your dishes pile up, it's over.

It's game over. Yes. Yes, I agree. I was in college. I lived with seven other dudes in a house. And the dishes would just pile up and pile up until, and I tell people, you know, guys, dishes. And then I'd end up doing them because I couldn't stand it. Gloves are no gloves.

No, no gloves. gloves. Growing up, we always had the yellow rubber gloves. And I hated the feeling of like getting the water inside. Are those extinct? You don't see those anymore. That's true. All right. Another indicator of the economy, although I guess indicator is a strong word. Just interesting fodder. Speaking of bullshit indicators, did you see yesterday people were citing sausage demand. There was a respond from the Dallas Fed survey saying that they're seeing a modest upcrease uptick in sausage ordering, which shows that people are downshifting because sausage is cheaper.

Up crease should be a word, right? Up crease. No, we talked about this as Tal Smith on The Compot and Friends last week. I think there's just too much economic data now. Yeah, yeah. Come on. If we're looking at sausages to make policies, we're in big trouble. All right.

So we're talking about watches here, luxury watches. This is another faceblower. Around $50 billion of brand new luxury watches are sold each year. $50 billion? Jeez. It's a lot of coin. $25 billion trade hands used. That's their words, not mine.

So $25 billion on the secondary market. So $75 billion worth of watch sales a year. It's crazy. But the point of this article was showing you how the watch craze driven by all the money and the speculative friends you have 20. 2021. It's been down quarter over quarter for 10 quarters in a row. I would love to know what the margins are. If someone has this, what the margins are for luxury watches. Oh, I'm sure they're, I was talking to McMurtry about this at dinner

the other night. We were speculated. They're, they're incredibly high. Okay. So someone else, someone told us if we want to really find a diamond in the rough here. I mentioned I'm like a fossil watch guy. From the highs in 2011 fossil group, which is a publicly traded sock, is down 99%. Yeah, because the Apple Watch. Yeah. 99% draw it out. That's not good. All right. The White House had a good report on the share of grocery items with cooler inflation or price declines. So it's showing price decline year over year. which is disinflation, and then less inflation than just a year ago. And both these are heading in the right direction.

Prices are coming down. Do you think that grocery prices are the new gas prices in a lot of ways from this whole inflation outbreak? I'm putting a new chart in here, too. They were. Pissed a lot of people off, myself included. Like, higher grocery, it just wasn't fun. It's like, because in your head, you have a bucket, you have like a mental dollar amount that you're spending every week. All right, I go to the grocery store, spend $175.

Oh, now I go to the grocery store and I spend $230 for the exact same. I do believe, though, that people are not being honest about how much they used to spend on groceries. I think people have some false memories of this, how much they used to spend on groceries. Are you saying that this inflation was in people's minds? No, no, no. I'm saying it's not nearly as bad as people think. The stuff that people post online saying, I pay double what I used to pay for groceries is just, it's not logical. people exaggerate of course so look at look at the other chart from that same article hours of work needed to purchase a week's worth of groceries was going down for the entire end of the decade for the 2010s spiked in 2022 2023 and is now falling again and now is actually below average from the 2015 to 2019 period so this is adjusting for wages grocery prices yeah all right good it's going the right direction last on the we mentioned this on teacal

But we spoke about, there was a lot of hemming and hoeing about price gouging. And I think, so Axios had an article. And I think most people would agree that price gouging is a bad thing. What we mean by price gouging, not rising prices, but like taking advantage of an exogenous event. There's a hurricane. Yeah, water bottles are $13. Exactly. Who thinks that's a good idea?

I think everybody, every reason person would say, yeah, price gouging should be illegal. I think the thing that people are, the people hear or are concerned about a slippery slope is, well, who's to say what's gouging? And then the next step is price controls. So I understand the logic, but the actual thing that they're trying to do is control for price gouging. Somebody emailed us, they were disappointed that we didn't talk about the idea floating out there about taxing unrealized gains, which Listen, I don't follow politics, so, but my understanding is that she, like, tacitly endorsed this. It wasn't, like, something that she's putting out there. We'll find more details on this.

But, and listen, for the record, I think taxing unrealized gains is a, is a horrifically stupid idea. No, yeah, but the idea being floated out there was if you have over $100 million, and you had people with, like, $3,000 in the Robin Hood account being like, this is absurd. Right. But, but nevertheless. But that's the kind of thing that would never have. happen in a million years. It's dead on arrival, so we don't need to worry about that. But, yeah, the idea is ludicrous. I don't want to tax anybody's unrealized gains. It's a horrifically nonsensical idea that makes no sense. But also, Joe Wisenthal had a great tweet on this.

What do you say? He said, so hedge fund managers, when they get their performance fees, those are only given on realized gains, right? Not unrealized gains? See, and if the hedge fund managers were complaining about it kind of thing. Not bad. Right? Okay, this is, this is interesting. Daily Chartbook from Bank of America. Restaurant spending decelerated sharply in July falling 3.9% year over year. That's kind of surprise. First time in a while, huh?

So this is the travel thing falling as well. I wonder how much if this is also people trading down a little in terms of, it seems like people are still spending money. They're just not spending so freely anymore. And they're being a little more subjective, of what they're spending money on. Duncan send us. It costs between $2,500 and $4,000 to make a Rolex.

Wow. That's actually more expensive than I would have thought. So the markup is 10x in some cases, depending on the model? I don't know the difference between the new and used ones, but. All right. Torses-Slock chart of the week, record low number of layoffs. He said, cutting interest rates too aggressively runs the risk of triggering another run-up in inflation.

that's what I was saying. People are saying this. You always think that I'm using these boogeymen and straw men. Listen, the one time that you brought receipts, I'm not, I'm not apologizing. Keep asking. So he says that there's a record low number of layoffs. So people are looking at this and saying, well, this doesn't make any sense. I thought the labor market was cooling. So it is, so companies aren't hiring as much anymore, but they're not firing either. So the worry is, okay, the not hiring eventually translates into firing. The optimistic take would be, hopefully if the Fed starts cutting rates and the economy stops, you know, irons things out a little bit, the big increase in layoffs won't come.

Right? Yeah, there's not hiring will not shift in the way. There's a lot of noise and complexity in the data in the labor market right now. And it's just, it's complicated. We don't know what's going to happen. Nick Colis at Datatrek had this really cool chart. He does a really good job of putting his own little notes on these charts, from these Fred charts.

But he looked at the multiple job holders as a percentage of employed workers. And I don't know what the right number is for this. But, you know, I feel like maybe this is more of a movie, TV show thing. Like, you always hear people talk about, like, my parents worked multiple jobs to put me through college or whatever, right?

You hear these stories, like the bootstrap thing. The peak of this in the last 30 years or so is like 6.5% in 1996. Currently, it's 5.3%. And that's exactly the level it was at in 20%. 19. So it dropped, then it came back up. Is 5% higher or lower than you would think for people working multiple jobs? Because for me, I would have assumed it would have been higher than that. Oh, really? I don't know. Just for certain people who will have a trouble making ends meet,

I would have assumed multiple jobs. I would have thought the number would be 10, 15%. Maybe I'm completely out of time. I don't know. 5% sounds high to me. I guess in my mind, I'm thinking like, how could you work two jobs? But you can't work two full-time jobs. I guess there's a lot of, like, part-time working here? Yeah, right. It's just multiple job holders. It's not saying it has to be full-time. Higher than I would have thought. Okay, lower than I would have thought.

All right. From the National Association of Realtors, they, I think this is interesting just to kind of check on this. We've talked about this before, but 24% of homes sold above list price. So they look at the last 12 months, down front, and they look at this on a monthly basis. It's ruling 12 months. It was 35% a year ago. First time home buyers represented 29% of buyers unchanged from last month, slowly down from July 2023. So it's still almost one-third of people are new home buyers. So I know people think no one can afford a home. It's still happening.

27% of buyers had all cash sales. This is the number that I just still don't understand. I would love to see the breakdown of how this actually works. Like how much is people that really have that much cash to spend and how much is some sort of bridge loan or whatever, help from someone else? I don't get it. All right, from the Wall Street Journal, share of million-dollar home. Did you look at this one yet or not?

Mm-mm. Okay. Your guess, what percentage of houses in the United States are worth a million dollars or more? I saw the number, sorry. Okay. Almost 9%. More than double the 4% recorded before the pandemic. So close to 1 in 10 houses is worth a million dollars or more.

They have this chart here that shows it's going up into the right. 81% of houses in San Francisco are worth a million dollars or more. Hmm. In Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City, Missouri. Not Kansas City, Kansas. Fewer than 1% of homes were seven figures in June, according to Redfin. So come to the Rust Belt in Midwest if you want to find more affordable homes. I don't know how a city like San Francisco, do people just never sell their homes now there?

And no one else comes in to buy unless you're Uber wealthy? It is a good question. Yeah, I mean, the batteries to entry are. Thick. Okay. So there is this idea today that housing is unaffordable. But technically, housing is very affordable if you own a home. Mm-hmm.

Go on. Mike Socardi has household mortgage. This is from Ed Yardinney. Household mortgage debt as a percentage of household real estate value is near an all-time low. So this is basically your debt-to-asset ratio, debt-to-equity ratio for housing. So this is the hard part, obviously. Gen Z and young millennials get screwed, obviously.

We've talked about this. But if you already own a home, it is getting more, it's getting cheaper by the year that you own it. In terms of, well, when you're just for the price, when you're just for the price. The price and the interest rate. Yeah. People who own a home already or did before mid-2020. Come on, you're pouring salt on the wound of people on the outside. But I think this is one of the reasons.

why people talk about, like, how can we fix housing? Most people are already feeling comfortable and probably don't care enough, is what I'm saying. All right, I was driving down the highway where I was going, and I saw a credit union sign, and it said, buy now, refilator. And I'm kind of surprised that they even are willing to print that. I'm sure that I feel like a lot of realtors have said that to people over the last couple of years, but I don't know. I feel like that's kind of promising a lot to people.

Again, I hope mortgage rates fall to make it more affordable for people. I'd be worried if they don't. Yeah. I mean, they're going to. I don't know how much, but they're already coming down. It would be nice if the Fed, maybe that's what Powell just needs to say.

Listen, if spreads on mortgage-backed securities don't compress and get closer to the tenure, we're going to come in and buy. Maybe all he needs to do is say something because I just want to see that spread come in. Right? Yeah. All right, Ben. What does it take to be wealthy? What would you say? Wealth is very relative.

We're talking income or assets? Assets. Net worth. Okay. I think I've changed my mind on this over the years. There's this whole idea that, listen, the amount of money you make has no bearing on your wealth because all that matters is what you keep, right? The wealth is what you don't see kind of thing. and I'm starting to come around to the idea that people who make a high income, regardless of how much wealth they spend, feel wealthier than people who have a lower income but save a lot.

So somebody who makes $500,000 a year but only has half a million dollars in savings feels a lot richer than somebody who makes $150,000 a year and has a million and a half savings. Yes, because that person who has 500 grand and is spending a lot, they're living with wealthy. Yes. They're living a life, the life like that. Some people, some personal finance people would vehemently disagree with that. And obviously at some point you need to put, but I think the people who have a higher income and can spend and live now like they're wealthy, with the assumption that they're still putting some stuff away, I think they feel wealthier, whether that is right or wrong. Yeah, I agree with that. And this is very subjective because Morgan has written things

like wealth is like what you don't see or something to that effect. But not in every situation. It depends. Anyway, like when when, yeah, when I think, when I think rich and wealth might seem synonymous, but in my mind, I think rich is income and wealth is asset level. That probably makes sense. I get that. It's kind of what I'm saying. yeah yeah so anyway um wealth to me as a wealth is like wealth is not the top one well maybe it is i don't wealth is like it's like it's like it's that's like a big word in my mind so when i think like wealthy my number is higher than this but they say uh what was what was what did the average americans say two and a half million dollars to be considered wealthy and so for me i think that's

very well off if you have two and a half million dollars you're good right like you're you're you're doing well in life. But is that wealthy? Because how many how many people in the United States have $2.5 million? That's probably top five, top seven percent. All right. So if you're top five, top seven percent and just percentage wise, that's not wealth. To me, the wealth is like the top like one percent or the top half a percent. Like that's what. Come on. That's way, you're moving a goalposts. What do you mean? That's my goalposts. So, but you have to be the top one percent to be considered wealthy? Don't you think the top 25 percent? is considered wealthy to most Americans?

I'm saying this is my opinion. Okay, that's your hurdle. Yeah, I'm not saying what other people would say. I'm saying, like, when I think the word wealth, to me that's like a high... You're just like pushing against that goalpost. That's a high number. Okay.

All right. When you look at the percentage of the number of people who actually have $2.5 million, it's a very small number. Smaller than you think. The income thing, too. So, uh, Kyla Scanlan tweeted this this week.

I don't know where this came. According to the Census Bureau, come when we talk about how much you need to make to feel wealthy in certain areas. 16% of households have incomes of at least $200,000 in New York City area. In San Francisco area, 26% do.

$200,000 or more. And people make it $200,000 in San Francisco probably don't feel wealthy at all. That's the point. But it's a small share of people who even make that amount in these expensive areas. So, right, we said 81% of houses in San Francisco are worth a million dollars or more.

Only 26% of people make $200,000 a year or more. Yeah, it's semantics. I mean, but I don't know. When I think wealth, I think like a big number. But it is the goalpost. They're always a moving. For sure. My personal goalpost don't move.

That's a different subject altogether. Oh, yes, they do. You think that you would have thought one percent, top 1% back in the day when you were selling insurance or being a valet. All right, all right, take it back on. Wait, also, how many jobs have been fired from over the years? Because I feel like every time you bring up an old job, you talk about how you got fired from it. You got fired from being a valet. You got fired from

being a waiter at the camp. Any other times you gotten fired? I've never been fired before. Have I? I don't think so. I got fired from being a waiter. We all got fired. And I did get fired for being a valet Parker. That was nonsense. I left early. There was literally nobody there. Whatever.

You weren't like stealing change from the cup holder? or something? No. Okay. Okay. So anyway, but within this survey, boomers were the highest responded. They said $2.8 million needed to be wealthy.

Okay. Not surprising. So we spoke about last week about every generation lamenting that their parents had it better than they did. So somebody sent us a magazine from a Time magazine. Well, I'm liking these Baby Boomer magazine covers from the 80s.

1986, the baby boomers turned 40. Here's a quote from the article. Still single, he is a freelance writer and editor living in a rented apartment in Santa Monica, California. He has an enviable view of the ocean, but what he really wants, he says, is to settle down and have a family. He feels funny about turning 40 this year. Middle age sounds a bit strange because many of us haven't attained the goals that our parents attained at that age. I mean, how can you be an adult when you don't own a house? Wow. He probably could have bought a house in Santa Monica for like $100,000 on the ocean and it's worth $10 million today.

There's another quote, many bravely refuse to admit it, yet the fact is that many baby boomers do not live as well as their parents and may never. And Ben, the hilarious thing about this article is that it wasn't even true. So it's true that people will always complain that they had it worse than their parents did. But when I say it wasn't even true, here's what I mean. So buried in the article, they showed some of the survey results. And they said, of the 30 to 40-year-olds, 63% said that in general they are better off economically than their parents,

while only 28% said they are worse off. So only 28% of respondents said they were worse off their parents. The entire premise of the article is that boobers have it worse than their parents. It's the same shit. We just love to complain. Yeah. Even back then, people loved to complain. And even back then, surveys were nonsense.

We said last week that millennials are doing better than baby boomers were at the same age, yet millennials still say we have it way harder than they did. Come on. And listen, lest anyone email us and say, oh, Michael is out of touch. $2.8 million is a shitload of money. But that doesn't mean it's wealth, in my opinion. It's a lot of money. It's rich.

You're good. You have no financial worries. But wealth, like, you know the Chris Rock line? Shack's rich. The guy who signs Shaq's check is wealthy. That's the framework through which I'm thinking about the word wealth.

Oprah is rich. But if Bill Gates woke up tomorrow and had as much money as Oprah, he'd jump out of a window. Yeah, well, Oprah's wealthy too. But yes. So that's all I'm saying. Heather Long tweeted a fantastic chart.

As a man of the people, I think $2.8 million is plenty of money. So do I. I'd be very happy if I had $2.8 million. For the first time, there are five generations in the U.S. workforce. So we're talking Gen Z, millennials, the Xers, the boomers, and there's even silent generation people that are still working. But here's a great quote from the article.

Again, exactly what we just said about boomers and now millennials. They show the age pay gap has risen in recent decades. So the percent difference in pay between workers over 55 and workers under 35. And there's a quote. In this article, it says, as younger workers wait for the higher earnings that come from career advancement, many fear they might never be able to afford homes or children, said every generation ever. Yep. Although I do think Gen Z is going to have one of the biggest hurdles to make in terms of buying up.

But guess what? They're probably going to have to wait for incomes to rise, and they'll buy homes later. I think that's probably what's going to have to have them for most people. Every generation has their shit. Yep. You want to talk about playing catch-up? Yes. So the Wall Street Journal had this piece.

This guy wrote a piece about how he's 37 years old and has not saved enough for retirement. He's worried about it. And they went through all the reasons why. And they gave all these data on average retirement savings. You see, look, average retirement savings for people 65 to 74 is like 600 grand. So not quite your $2.8 million. And the amount of people who feel that their retirement savings on track never goes over 50% by any age group. It's lowest for the people that are youngest.

But even at 60 plus, it's like less than 50%. So I wrote about this, and I got an email. And I said, the biggest one that I can see in middle age with kids is I understand how people with kids put them first. Like the whole thing is always personal finance. People say, like, put your oxygen mask on first, save for yourself, don't worry about your kids. But all the people in these articles are saying, listen, I want to give my kids everything.

And so I put my retirement savings off for my kids. Someone was saying they took out a home equity line of credit to pay for kids college, and they fell way behind in their retirement savings because of kids. And that, to me, resonates. I totally understand that. And this person emailed me and said, I can testify to the article. It's true based on my experience.

We built 90% of our retirement in a 13-year span beginning when our last kid of four was completing college. Four kids dominated our budget. So when we sold our house in Tennessee and paid off a home equity loan that we used to pay for colleges and a wedding, we had enough money to buy dinner that night. They're saying, like, they had no money set aside, basically.

So she said they moved to Ohio, bought a modest house and began to save every penny they could to make up for lost time. They did every taxable. They did 401Ks, IRAs, dividend stocks. They used all the catch-up provisions. And then they've been retired for eight years now, travel often and spend time with the four grandkids and nine or four kids and grant nine grandkids. Life is good and it's possible indeed to play catchment of a wonderful retirement.

So my whole point was like it's not complete, you can still salvage it. You just have to, all the money you were funneling to kids, now you funneled to retirement. So it was interesting to hear someone who say, that's exactly what we did. A friend of the show, Andrew sent us, there was in Bank of America, 10 facts about the consumer that every investor should know. Some good stuff in here. The top 10% of U.S. households are responsible for 21.5% of total U.S. consumption. So the top 10 are responsible for more consumption than the bottom 30% of households.

That makes sense. U.S. household net worth reached a record, $160.8 trillion. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of 2.8 millionaires in there. It's a lot of 2.8 millionaires. All right, and here's the big one. With just 4.3% of the world population,

the U.S. accounts for 32% of worldwide personal consumption underscoring the importance of U.S. consumers at home and abroad. This is nuts. 4% of the population, 32% of spending. And we buy everything. We buy everything. You know what I bought on Amazon yesterday? I bought it yesterday.

It came yesterday. A chicken shredder. Do you know what a chicken shredder is? Shreds a piece of chicken somehow? I don't... Yes. So I saw a video on Instagram. I told you I've become a food influence,

heavily influenced by the influencers. You put a chicken breast in a crackpot and you shred it with two forks. Yeah. With this thing, it's like a grinder. and you do this three times, and boom, your trink's all shredded. But it for whatever,

15 bucks on Amazon. We buy everything. There's nothing we don't have. It's a kind of thing that just, it messes with your drawers. And every time you try to open your drawer, it gets stuck, like, and you pull your drawer open and get stuck.

Yes. You're like, oh, God, I can't, like, ugh. And then you use it maybe once every three years. Yes. I used it yesterday. Probably won't use it again, but I did use it yesterday. So Tom Barkin was on Adlaz.

He's like the Fed Chair of Richmond or something. he was on Adlaught. And he was talking about how in the pandemic, savings rates in the U.S. and around the globe shot up to like 16, 17%. And he said the same thing happened in the U.S., same thing happened in Germany. But he said, of course, after things subsided, savings rates went way back down in the U.S., back down to 3% or something. But he said in Germany, it stayed at 17%. So I think, I don't know what it is about consumption in this country, but it is a cultural phenomenon that doesn't exist in other countries. It's just, it's somehow ingrained in us that we love to spend money.

Oh, I need that. Oh, I need that. Yes. And it's easier than ever to get stuff if you need it. Okay. Mike Socardi tweeted this chart

about streaming. Check this out. Bank of America says there are some tentative signs of a pullback in total streaming spending in 2020. So they show

discretionary spending, spending on entertainment, which is still going up, and streaming, which seemed to have peaked a few months ago. They also show that there was a slowdown in the growth of households

with one and more streaming payments per month. from 8% down to less than 3%. So people are, you know, as the economy reopens and, well, reopened and people move on with their lives, they're just, they're just not subscribing to every streamer anymore. I still am. All right, this has me quite excited.

Have you given up on any streaming networks? I've not given up on any of them. No, I still have them all. I don't pay for MGM. I think that's the one. All right. Oh, yeah, that's, I was, you mentioned that Challenger's movie. You said, watch the movie Challenger's,

and I put it up in my little app that shows where the movies are streaming. And it was on an NGM Plus. I'm like, God, look at this one too? Who is NGM Plus? Okay. I'm going to wait. MGM. Was it MGM Plus?

I think so. I think they have 94 subscribers. All right. R.A. Mirov at MySports Update tweeted. YouTube TV will now also offer fantasy view, allowing Yahoo and NFL.com, to link their fantasy teams to their YouTube TV accounts, which will provide key plays and multi-view options

personalized to each viewer's fantasy football roster. Have we ever had it this good? The kids don't know how good we have it, Ben. The four-box thing that YouTube TV does is just... And now... And now you could customize your quad box. So you could be able to watch whatever games you want. I mean, this is just a wonderful development.

Another interesting development. Someone, I said this a couple weeks ago and someone said, no, no, no, no. Back in the 90s, we had picture and picture. I never once got picture and picture to work correctly. It never worked. That's right. That's right.

It never worked. A new NFL world from Adam Schefter, NFL owners will vote today on a proposal that will allow teams to sell up to a total of 10% of each team to elicit permitted private equity firm. So how quickly does Blackstone and the others jump on? Like immediately? Private equity is a bubble, right? Hop on.

I guess it makes sense for some of these owners would want some liquidity occasionally. Private equity is just a piece of everything. After speaking with Michael Sitchmore last week, I bought two starter positions in private equity stocks. I bought Blackstone and Blue Owl. He made a pretty compelling case

for the fact that those, buying the stocks might be a better investment than buying the private equity funds. Yeah. Jared Dillon is on the side of this. He thinks that private equity is in a bubble and it's going to collapse

and I think he owns he's short blackstone via, I don't know if he has puts or whatever, but he might be right. It might be a bubble that horrifically bursts. I think that we are

in the early innings of the Wulf Management Channel just shoveling money. They already have trillions of dollars on the sideline. Guess what that translates into? Billions of dollars

in management fees. Exactly. I wouldn't bet against the private equity industry. Yeah. I'm not saying that their investments are going to turn out wonderfully, they probably won't. That's neither here nor there.

You know, you know, it's going to be guaranteed? The fees. The people working at the private equity company will make off better than their investors. How is that? Way better. We'll say. Perhaps. I was watching Hard Knocks and I saw Mercedes Lewis is still going.

He's on the Bears. What in the world? He's the second oldest player in the league besides for Aaron Rogers. He's 40 years old. Pretty sure there's never been a skill position player. That's 40. This is going to be a theme in the years ahead, especially. We've already seen this a lot, but older people not wanting to relinquish their positions

or positions of power. People are going to be staying and doing jobs and stuff longer and longer and longer. That's where we're heading. All right. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal talking about the best uncrowded national parks, and number one is Isle Royale, or Royal. I don't know how you pronounce it, National Park in Michigan. You familiar?

My brother went there last week for a camping trip. Really? You have to take a ferry to get there. It's like this huge island. There's moose on the island, I guess. Wolves, but it's very remote, but it's supposed to be beautiful. You don't strike me as an outdoorsman. No offense.

No, like camping? No, that's not me. I love it. You are a camper. Oh, yeah, big outdoorsman. Love it. Now, I haven't been camping in more than 10 years, but I do enjoy it. You look at the idea of it.

I love it. Not actually doing it. Hey, I do fish and stuff with the kids. I kind of do outdoor stuff. But I went to, we did Yellowstone. Actually, we did this a long time ago, the year after the Giants won the Super Bowl, greatest week of my life. I want to do these.

I'm an advocate for the national parks. My wife and I talk a lot about wanting to take the kids out west and do a bunch of those. I think it would be fun. Ben, this surprised me. There's a proposed deal between seven and I holdings, which is a Japanese company that owns 7-Eleven and a Canadian company that owns a bunch of convenience stores.

I would have thought that the top 10 convenience stores accounted for a much larger percentage of the overall market. It's only 10, 21%. I can't believe that 7-Eleven is owned by a Japanese company. How is that not an American brand? Blew my face.

We stopped on the way home. So we drove home from Boston, and we stopped at a rest-up. But rest-ups are weird places. yeah right what percentage of restop bathroom smell good 4% just awful smells right okay i talked last week about how culturally when i was in europe no one liked small talk they didn't like head nods that sort of thing this guy on twitter to this whole thread about what he learned traveling from europe to america and it was some really good stuff in there like some really and he talked a lot about

consumption and the stuff we buy. But he said, how are you, is thrown around way too casually in the U.S. As a German, I'm not used to exchanging pleasantries with strangers such as cashiers like that. It feels kind of fake to ask a question that no one really wants an honest answer to, but I guess it's part of American social norm. So he's on board of this. It really is the thing. Yeah. Maybe I would do way better in Europe. I certainly would. I don't exchange pleasantries. You kidding me? Okay. What's this? Apologies to Michael. Because someone called you a troglody and that's the kind of word that sounds way worse

than what it really is. I have to Google it. So... Like, a troglodyte sounds like does this person eat feces or something? It sounds like a really bad word. You knew what that word meant? Yeah, I had to look it up to.

That's a caveman. So maybe I proved this guy's point. So he said... A person was simple taste, right? I used to think of Michael was... I used to think Michael was a troglodyte. A nice trogladite, but uninformed about so many things.

expressions, geography, I'm good with geography, general knowledge, like what an intertube for a boat is used for and more. I realize, though, that not everybody has vast curiosity or was exposed to the world growing up. Geez. Well, that's true. I wasn't really exposed to the world growing up. We kept it northeast. I was not an airplane guy.

Yeah, no travels abroad for me. No Europe, no Caribbean. He's good at what he does. is a very pleasant guy and has a good sense of humor. Thank you. He's every man. Damn right I am. Just a great person you'd grab a beer with.

He likes horror movies on the Knicks and Eli. Put a thesaurus in front of him and he'll think it's a book about a dinosaur. But put a chart in front of him and suddenly he's a virtuoso. Apologies, Michael. This is not meant to be backhanded, although I guess it could be read that way. Oh, you think? That was like. Oh, you think it could be read that way?

He thinks this is a dinosaur. Oh, man. So he's not exactly wrong. So I thought this, like, reminded me to think about my, my educational experience, and I was always a bad student. I think I had undiagnosed ADHD or what my mother referred to as Spilkis. I just couldn't sit still, was never motivated by grades. And I think that I had, like, I was, like, arrogant about how smart I was.

Not that I had, like, such a high IQ. I never thought that. But, like, I just, I thought I'd be okay in life. And then I, yeah, school was for everybody else. I didn't need to pay attention. I feel like New Yorkers have this sense of street. street smarts that is, right? It's a street smart thing. I had a high EQ and my IQ was like, you know, maybe a slightly above average. But I had like this weird arrogance that everything would

turn out okay. And it turned out like it did eventually, but only because I got very lucky. It did not turn out okay. Like I spoke many times about my early career struggles and it was, it was not okay. But not to brag, I did do well enough on my SATs because I didn't do well in high school. I didn't, you know, do homework or anything like that. But on my SATs, I got a 680 in math and a 640 in English. pretty decent split. So I was an early in mid to, or direct in mid, or whatever it's called, to the Kelly School of Business in Indiana, which at the time was like top 15. So not so bad. But what was so bad was I never had the skills or the preparation, like the practice in high school

to transition to the pros. And so I treated college like I treated high school and it didn't work well. So I pulled up my transcript and I took five classes, basic accounting skills. see. Oh, I'm looking at these grades. The computer and business, I dropped that. What's a W? Withdrawal. Intro to argumentative writing, I got a D plus, not bad. American history.

I love history. I got a C. And then introduction to philosophy, I got a D. So my GPA in my first semester, what is that? Where is that? 1.49. You know what? In my head, I thought that I got a 0.9 and then like a lower than that.

Not so bad. So 1.49, not good, but not not catastrophic. And then the wheels really fell off. Although, let's be honest, 1.49 is pretty bad. In the second semester, I got a C plus, a D, a C minus, an F. Intro to microeconomics, I got an F. I just did a, I was such a jackass and I'm not proud of this. I don't know what I was thinking.

I didn't even take the test, I don't think. And then I calculus, I withdrew. So I got a 1.175 in my second semester. a blended of whatever, not good. And that was go back home. Good enough to get kicked out. Yeah. So.

I'm not even angry. I'm, that's impressive. I thought I did pretty bad my first semester. You make me feel pretty good. Yeah, I did not have the life skills, you know. I was a baby. Some people don't. All right, story time.

Last week, first day back at school for the kids, I dropped my twins off or two different schools not because my daughter's at middle school, so I dropped the twins off their elementary school. In driving through the neighborhood, you see all the people waiting for the buses, right? All at the bus stop. First day, everyone's there. What stood out to me was the number of dads

at the bus stop with their kids. That's great. Like mostly dads. And I feel like in the past, you never would have seen that. And I think there's two things going on here. One is millennial parents are more helicoptery than the past, right? Parents are just more involved in everything.

But two, I think the remote work thing is done wonders for parents being more involved with their kids. The fact that you have the ability to work from wherever for a lot of people means you have more time to do stuff like that with your kids. I think in certain cases, dads benefited more than moms, at least in my case, my wife is an educator.

And educators are predominantly, I don't know what the splits are, but there's more women teaching than men. And so my wife doesn't have flexibility. Obviously, she has to be at school. Right. Now, I have flexibility to be at home, and I drop my kids at the bus,

And it's the greatest thing ever. Prior to the pandemic, I don't know what we would have done. We would have had to get some before a nanny. I don't know how some people do it with because school starts for us like 845 and it's out at 3.45. If you have a 9 to 5 job, it's really tough. I mean, they have after school or before school care or whatever, but buses and it's hard. Raising kids is tough. It is.

The timing of it just doesn't make sense all the time. Yeah, especially for two working parents. Recommendations. I got one streamer, the tourists. It's on Netflix. I think the first season is on HBO. Now it's somehow gone to Netflix. And it's the story about this guy.

The first season is set in Australia. It's a born identity thing. He wakes up. He has no idea who he is. And he has the amnesia, but he's a bad guy. And it's a really good twist and turns. And the second season goes to Ireland to where he's from. And then it's like, here's some of the bad stuff you left in your wake.

And now you have to try to remember why these people are out to get you. I really like it. It's not a show a lot of people talk about. Six episodes. Six episodes. It's a very good show. Watch Furiosa on HBO Max. Thoughts? Fureosa is a movie about supply chains. And the benefits of free trade. Think about it. They have to make this huge war machine to go to guzzaline town to give lettuce for gas.

And they're fighting off people. It's like it's hard that supply chains are hard in that movie. It's a whole movie about supply chains. What did you think about the film? It's good. You're right. My wife and I both said, I love Mad Max Furrow Road. I thought it was awesome. But my wife and I both go, what was it about again? And neither of us could remember.

Like, I had the wives and Tom Hardy. But that's the beauty. The plot is incidental to the movie. It doesn't matter. So I went back and started watching Fury Road again. And you're right. It's a very similar plot. I'm like, oh, they took a lot from it.

I actually thought Chris Hemsworth is very entertaining in a new one. He's really good. He's very good. But my review of Furiosa, it's 70% as good as Mad Max. And it's the same thing. and it's 45 minutes. You're right. You're right.

It's the same thing, but not as good. And I actually thought, like, the chase scenes in Mad Max are so much better. The ones in Furiosa look faker. The ones in Mad Max look actually kind of real. Yeah. So that's what I can. But it's a movie about supply chains. So, Ben, last week we spoke about the box office being top heavy.

I had, I had Sean and Chart Kid Matt go back further. And it's kind of crazy. Before the pandemic, the top 10 took like 27 to 35% of the box office. it was pretty, it was pretty, uh, it's surprising how, yeah, it doesn't range is pretty narrow. And then it just, you know, people change our habits. And now we go to see blockbusters pretty much only.

Wow. And so it's funny in this, so I wrote a blog post about it and I said that the Judd Apatow days, they're over. And they're not coming back. Yeah. And then last night I watched a movie that was of the Judd Apatow ilk called Incoming on Netflix. But I like it. 90 minutes. I loved it. 90 minutes, high school I'm putting it on my list. High school comedy.

Bobby Cannavelli was the teacher that party with the kids and he was hilarious. I like him. I like him. I had a great time. I really did. Okay. Endorse.

Fun movie. Are you caught up on industry? I'm through two and a half episodes. I got to say, I don't like it as much as you do. Okay. I just... It's funny you mention that.

I'm not going to review it every episode, but the third episode, it's like it's turning not quite as good as it used to be. I really like the first season. I think it's been a severe drop-off since then. Yeah. Fair.

Lastly, and sorry, Duncan, for going along on your birthday. Actually, this is two episodes in a row. Last week was our longest episode ever. I think we surpass that this week. Two chatty Kathy's here. I saw on Max last night that there's a City of God series. There's a show, TV show? Follow-up.

The movie is amazing. Easily, one of the best. You see that movie one time, and it sticks with you, forever. Yeah. Right? Like 100% approval rating. So I,

am I checking out? All right. Thank you for sticking with us. Thank you for the emails. Even the person who called me a troglodyte. I appreciate that it was meant in the way it was received. So no hard feelings, although a bit bad candy, it's okay.

Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Okay