Animal Spirits Podcast - What Will Perform Best in 2024? (EP.340)

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

On episode 340 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: Christmas arguments, green shoots in prices, 1940s vs. 1970s inflation, why we're not worried about index funds, how to save & invest in middle age, why Bitcoin is the most extreme asset, celebrating no recession in 2023, why the U.S. economy is more resilient, some Christmas movie recommendations, and much more! Thanks to YCharts for sponsoring this episode! Check out the YCharts webinar with Michael and Ben at: https://get.ycharts.com/resources/blog/michael-batnick-ben-carlsons-year-end-strategy-session-recap/?utm_source=Animal+Spirits Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, 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/ Investing in securities involves risk and there is no guarantee of principal. Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fund/Portfolio carefully before investing. For copies of our prospectus or summary prospectus, which contain this and other information, visit us online at www.alliancebernstein.com or contact your AB representative. Please read the prospectus and/or summary prospectus carefully before investing. Buffered ETF Risk: There can be no guarantee that the Fund will be successful in its strategy to buffer against Underlying ETF price declines. A Buffered ETF must be held for the entire buffer period in order to realize the full benefit of the upside/downside caps.BUFC is distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC. Foreside is not affiliated with AB. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at Y charts. A couple weeks ago, Ben and I did a 2023 recap with a webinar with Ruchet, right? The best charts of 2023, correct? The best charts of 2023. I did. I'm in the midst of wrapping up my 2023 prediction recap. I went five wins, five losses, a one tie, which I feel pretty good about, considering that I'm literally guessing.

It's not bad. and in preparing for the recap and using data, white charts the whole time. A lot of Y charts last night as I was working through this post. So I use it for everything, fundamental data. Every day I'm on it. I mean, everything. Economic data.

If you are a new customer, want to kick the ties of Y charts and save 20%. Tom Animal Spirits sent you and you got 20% off. Yeah. And we also, we have a link in the show notes too. They did a blog recap of our webinar. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick 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 Riddholt's 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 Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, am I looking puffy to you? I feel like this is the first time I'm looking at the camera, and I notice I'm waking. Are you eating a lot for the holidays?

I've been truly, my behavior is deplorable in terms of what I'm putting in my body. I feel like it's catching up to me. Okay, I think it's most people in the holidays. No more puffy than usual. Okay, I'll take it. How was your Christmas? We are recording the day after Christmas.

The show must go on at Animal Spirits. Christmas was great. It was fun. It kept up in gifts. It was 50 degrees here. We were playing outside with all them. I was never, one of my parent principles was no, what do you call it,

battery powered or electric powered cars for the kids? You know the jeeps and stuff that kids can drive around in, the Barbie cars, whatever? I was always a no. Never doing that. If you were going to be outside and moving, you're going to be using your legs. That's just me.

I'm not judging other parents, but that's just me. But my son really wanted this roll car thing that had a battery. Roll car thing? Roll play? I don't know. What it's called. Anyway, it's electric and you battery powered. Wait, why did you just say roll car play? What does that mean?

It's called, I can't remember the name. It's called the roll something. Okay. We got him one, and he was on it all day yesterday out of our hair, so now I'm not a fan. Sunglasses on, cruising? Went against my principles. You know, those things, those things were for rich kids growing up. I don't know how much they cost.

That's what I thought, yes. But now everyone has them. We got one a couple of years ago for Kobe. I'm pretty sure it was like 150 bucks. Massively deflationary. And it wasn't the cost for me. It was more the principle of the matter, but I caved. And I'm glad I did.

But I saw a tweet that you did. You're still cooking. And you had a tweet that brought me back when Twitter used to be fun, just a couple of people making jokes, having a good time. I try to keep a light still. Not cynical. Not trying to embarrass one another. Just having fun.

So you tweeted a picture of Matt Damon, the scene of the bar in Goodwill Hunting, and if you're not familiar with that scene, shame on you. And the tweet is this, of course, that's your contention. It's your first Christmas on Twitter. First, you're going to start an argument about whether or not die hard is this Christmas movie. Then you're going to be poking holes in the home alone plot. Next, you're going to be regurgitating theory.

on Mr. McAllister's job. Really just chef's kiss, credit you. Did you chuckle as you typed that? I was pretty proud of myself for that. But I was, because we have the same arguments every year, but there's always people who come in and think that it's original to have a diehard argument or Home Alone. You know, we move so far down the rabbit hole.

People are now looking at like the basket of goods for Home Alone as opposed to the original arguments. So, yes, we've had all these arguments before, is what I'm saying. A basket? Oh, my gosh. Every year we find, we find, we find, ways to go deeper and deeper down the hole. I saw a comparison of the things Kevin bought at the store and the grocery store, what were they worth, how much did they cost then versus what they cost now,

like using CPI basket, which is, I don't know, these are the things we argue about these days. We were watching Home Alone, too. I went into the plaza only recently for the first time. My kids asked me if I've ever been there before, and I don't know where it is. It's right, it's right by the park on Fifth Avenue by the Giant Apples. store. I think it's like 59th. So not that far from our offices.

No, no, no. No, it's a 15, 20 minute walk. Tops. It's a time capsule of a ridiculous era. Like, I feel like it sort of made sense in the 90s, but I walked into the bar and it just felt like, what is this place? Just very, I thought it was odd. Architecture-wise, that kind of thing? Just old?

Just old and odd, so. Isn't it weird how 90s as a theme or whatever, it does feel a little, stale now? Well, it is. It's a long time ago. What's up, Cobs? That's where you're working? Get out. Yeah, he just asked, where are you working? Where are you working? Close the door, please. So, we are in the Catskills, in the family cabin, that, excuse me, my wife, Robin, you know about it. Kobe sucks. Get out of here. My wife's trying to sneak a peek in here.

So my stepdad bought this place in 1998, maybe. So I've been coming up here my whole life. It's a hunting cabin. My stepdad's a hunter. And it is, it's not glamorous. Let's just put it that way. I think when you say hunting cabin,

that paints a picture for me usually. You don't want to, it's exactly what you don't want to be walking around your barefoot, you know? Okay. And you're not a hunter, though. I'm not a hunter. I did go hunting when I was younger.

Didn't enjoy it? I'm going to have a lover, you know? And the family put you off in the corner to record this podcast. I did shoot a turkey one time. Didn't feel great about it. I don't know. We have deer that come up in our backyard. We have a wooded area behind our house, and we see deer all the time.

And I just think, like, I can't imagine going off into the wood somewhere. Obviously, the reason you do it is because you're getting away and getting outside and stuff, I suppose. but the deer come right up to our backyard. It seems too easy for me almost. You should tackle it. Yeah. All right. Wait.

Before we get into the proper show, this is an odd week, the last week of the year. It's basically a week-long holiday. It's a week where really nobody works, but people, you know, it's an unofficial holiday. I honestly don't know why. Someone asked me, like, what's the market going to do the rest of the week, the last week of the year? I don't know why the market's even open. Do you think the market should just close between Christmas and New Year's every year?

What's the point? Yeah, I don't know. It does, I mean, people shut down heading into Christmas. You know, this sounds idiotic, and it is. It didn't even occur to me. Like, I haven't spent much time thinking about what I'm going to be doing this week. And so on Saturday, I was like, wait, holy shit, what are we doing all week? My wife's like, yeah, what do you mean?

What are we doing? I told you this. What are we doing? I said, let's go to Florida. She's like, we can't go to Florida. What are you talking about? We were just going to go to Florida. But anyway, I checked, I was like, yeah, let's just go to Florida.

I looked at prices for airfare. It wasn't that bad. I mean, the weather stinks, but the weather wasn't that bad. I mean, the prices weren't that bad. Are we back? I track the prices for spring break because we have a family of five to fly. It's not cheap. And last year, the prices were going up and up and up and up.

And we had to pay a lot of money for our spring break tickets. And I've been looking. And they're just going down, down and down. And I'm still waiting because I keep seeing plane tickets fall faster and faster, even for spring break, which is a peak time, and usually one of the worst times to get tickets. When's your spring break? Mine's April. First week of April. Okay.

I think this stuff of things that people pay, like especially gas prices and airfare and I don't know if restaurant food is ever going to fall, but stuff like that that people, that's tangible to them and makes, you know, like, oh, I think that's going to be the green shoots for us. people getting the vibes back. Wait, one last thing. One last thing. How come spring break isn't universal? Like, why is it regional? How come your spring break doesn't align with my spring break? Because if everyone had it the same week, the whole world would shut down.

Fair, but here's a counterpoint. It's like college is a little earlier, high school is a little later. It's staggered. I get that. But do you all in the Midwest have off for Presidents' Week in February? We now, yeah, it's like a midwinter break Okay So they get like Friday and Monday

But that's turned into a mini spring break now We're going on a trip for that one too Mid-fall break, mid-winter break So many breaks Our kids had three half days last week For That's absurd, come on Isn't it?

It's like so they can check a day To say that they did it I gotta be honest It's only been how long we've been recording for Nine minutes? My arm is getting tired For those of you who are listening. I'm using my arm as a mic stand. You're going to have to power through.

On to the show. All right. Inflation is over, at least for now. Core PCE, which is what the Fed pays attention to. It's PCE less food and energy, which really makes people mad, but this is taking out the more volatile components. Annual rate of 1.87 of the past six months, according to Renaissance macro, that's... Wow. It's Fed Target. It's here. Now, the only other way You can say we can't declare victory yet is you've seen this chart. A bunch of people sent us to this one. And I've seen this going around for a couple weeks or months now. This is from Apollo.

They show CPI in the U.S. now on a different scale versus the 1970s. And it shows slow, slow, slow, huge up, ramp, then back down. Wasn't this the Latter-Summer's chart crime? Yeah, so, yeah, and you can see the axes are way off. There's some form fitting here. But the idea is, well, I don't know. And I think the thing people forget is the reason that it fell back then is because the 1973, 74 recession slash market crash caused inflation to fall.

And that was a nasty recession and the stock market crashed 50%. I just... It's a great point that people who are floating this chart on conveniently leave out. So Mike Consol posted this and he said there was two stories for how to get disinflation. A reopening supply side story like the 1940s and 1920s. or the 1970s and early 1980s, and he's showing, he has this chart that shows unemployment on one side and the change in year-over-your-headline PCE growth on the other side. And 2023 is falling in the 1950 to late 1950s, early 1950s, late-1940s camp of this is more

like the World War II thing. Obviously, this is the other reason that this stuff is so hard to predict because we literally have two examples of inflation over the past, you know, know, 70 years. This one and the last one? Yeah, it's like there's two, the sample size is a little small, but his point was like, yeah, maybe the post-World War II stuff made more sense if you're going to do these kind of analogies than the 1970s, and that makes sense to me too.

It was a wartime spending kind of deal, and supply chains got screwed up, and that makes way more sense to me than, oh, it's going to re-accelerate like the 70s. This feels like getting too cute, but could there be a scenario where, you know, disinflation lights the match for more inflation. What if prices start coming down, people start feeling better, stocks start going up, home prices start going up, and people just start, there's a spending boom. Would that cause inflation?

But didn't we already have the spending boom? And didn't, like, the supply chain stuff is better now? I don't know. Are eventually people going to be tapped out enough? Or is it just people go into a bunch of debt and they don't want to stop? I don't know. I'm just trying to think of what could cause another inflationary. I don't know. Goldman seems to think the same thing.

They put out a report that was circulating. Could inflation fall below 2%? And they basically said, yeah, it could. It certainly seems that way. Here's another thing for my green shoots I'm talking about. Car dealership guy tweeted the best 0% APR car deals right now. There's all these different ones. What's a Subaru Soterra?

That's an electric one. Ford Edge, Nissan Titan, Hyundai, Santa Fe, all these Ford Explorer, Ford Expedition, all these Nissans are giving deals with 0% financing, which seems, I don't know how they do that in today's interest rate world, but it's happening. I think I might be trending. I think a suburban or whatever those big trucks are might be in my future. You're going to get one?

Yesterday, when we were driving up here, we put the third row up. We put Kobe and my dog in the third row. Logan's in the second row. my cooler's in the second one with like the seats down and I couldn't there was absolutely no more room for anything in the car to the point where we have a giant like there's a shopping bag in between Robin and I'm just like elbowing the shopping like get out of here it was there was no more room too much stuff for our kids these days that's the thing do you think our parents would have ever packed a cooler when we were younger for anything absolutely not all right that's fine if you want to get one but I will judge you that's on I'm saying. No, I don't want to get one. I'm going to judge myself. I don't want to get one. Okay. Okay. I, yeah, I don't, I, I just don't know how much longer we could fight it. It's a lot of stuff with kids. All right. So someone, someone sent us, there's a reason for that.

My wife wants a second dog. Yeah, where's that going? Is that to make the pain of your first dog easier, the transition? Yes. Yes. It's too, it's too painful to even discuss. I can't, but what is, what is a better way to do it? Do it before the dog dies or after? I don't know. I'm distraught even thinking about it. But I said to her, where's it going on your lap? That is true. Traveling with dogs is tough. Do you remember how hard it is to train a dog? It's like having a kid again. Well, I was at the vet. Last time I was at the vet, I saw a puppy and it brought back all those memories of, oh my God, it's a baby. You have to take it for shots and this and that, and I'm not ready for that. It's too much. It is a lot. Okay, so someone actually sent us

Last week I said, why is the equal weight S&P 500, ticker RSP? It should be EQL. Someone sent us a explanation to this? I worked at Invesco when they bought Guggenheim's ETF lineup, which is where RSP came from. It stands for Ridex, S&P. Okay. All right, so.

I think that was before you had to get too cute with your ETF names. Yeah. They didn't think that far ahead. They didn't think it was going to get this big. Yeah. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive? by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus,

IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. Ben, you know, it's kind of wild. We've spent so much time talking about tech stocks, rightfully so. over the last three years, the NASDAQ and the S&P, I would clap and do the identical thing

from my cousin of anybody can't clap because I'm holding this mic stand. But yeah, identical. That was a Marissa Tomei? Yeah. No, no, no, it wasn't Marissa Tome. It was the jerk coach for Mighty Ducks. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

I got you. So both up 35% roughly in the last, what did you say, three years? Three years. Okay. Not bad. Oh, just kind of, just kind of a little bit surprising. You would think that tech stocks have torched the S&P, not necessarily the case.

Another surprising fact about tech stocks and the S&P, Amazon over the last five years, barely beat the S&P 500. Isn't that wild? Five years is not a short period of time. And Amazon, the wonderful, the gigantic, the disruptor. And Amazon, remember how badly they outperform during the sort of the pandemic? Because everyone thought, okay, everyone's buying everything on Amazon. You said how badly they outperformed, how much they outperformed?

Yeah, I guess, yes. Yeah, I misworded that one. Okay. Yeah. Bad meaning good. You know, I was talking about this. I'm so a little foggy from Christmas, I think. I was talking about this on the compound funds with Josh.

We were talking with Dan Nathan, and he brought up, like, index funds and how they're impacting the markets. And it's hard to argue that index funds and the flows are having zero impact on the market. right, there's just so much money, how could they not be? But this notion, I don't know to the extent, I don't know what impact they're having, but this notion that like they're propping the market up or distorting prices or this or that, like, do we forget that Amazon fell 56%? Do we forget? Did people stop investing in index funds in 2022?

No. Apple had two separate 30% crashes in the last three or four years. Facebook, the fifth biggest stock at the time fell 70%. Invidia was down 70% last year. All the biggest names in the index. So I don't want to hear that argument anymore. If you want to give me a propping up argument, it's the fact that everyone, out of every paycheck,

you know, 60% of the people are putting money into a 401k and a target date fund and they're rebalancing and they're constantly putting money in. That would be the thing. That has to be impacting the market. And that's not, I don't even think that, that you can't say that's propping up the market. I would say that is propping up valuations.

Valuations should be higher in a world where people are just continuously buying stocks. that argument makes more sense to me than valuations also should be higher in a world of relatively economic stability. We have a chart later in the show, but all right, we're getting up track. This is pretty impressive. There was a story the other week in Bloomberg about ETF, U.S. market share, and there's two titans here.

There's King Kong and Godzilla, and I don't know which one is which. Who do you root for in that scenario? Because my son watched King Kong versus Godzilla. All right, this is black and white. This is black and white. This is black and white. Go ahead. Yeah, it's King Kong, right?

It's King Kong, of course, yeah. Who roots for a lizard? Tell you what? Tell you what? If your kid roots for the lizard, you've got problems. You will have problems. That's true. I am a little worried that my son just really roots for people to, like, get their heads

chopped off and killed in movies now. He's like, go to the part where he'd start killing people. So I might have a serial killer on my hands. I don't know. But that part worries me a little. The Godzilla movies are awful. We threw on Godzilla King of King of Monsters.

It was Godzilla versus Mothra and the three-headed dragon. Yeah, we watched that one too. Not great. I didn't realize this was like a series. It's the same people from movie to movie. streaming. I keep, the, the streaming stuff is coming faster and faster where it goes from theater to streaming. I was going to rent the holdovers the other day, the new Paul Yamadi one, the Alexander Payne movie, and it's coming on Peacock in like three days. I'm just going to wait. You know, I've got a bone to pick with Peacock. Okay. Every month, I get an email

that your PayPal has authorized a payment to Peacock. Now, it's $4.99, so it's not too big of a deal. I can't get into Peacock. I can't log in. I can't reset my password. It's on my TV because I think it's, I think Robin has somebody else's account, but it's nonsense. You sound like my parents right now. I literally,

it's every time I set trying to reset my password, it says unable to process this request. Do it online, not on your TV. I did it online. All right. You sound like a boomer right now. You sound like a boomer. You're saying online.

www. Peacock backslash. So back to the Titan thing, Black Rock versus Vanguard. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's the King Kong versus Godzilla. Yeah, so anyway, so Black Rock was just completely dominant at the turn of the GFC. It had 50% market share.

And Vanguard, I don't want Vanguard launched their first ETF, but Vanguard was, was way miles behind. And those lines have converged and Vanguard's going to pass Black Rock. Now, I think the story is fairly straightforward because they're commodity products, right? Their low-cost index-based ETFs probably have the same price for most of them or, you know, four basis point through most points. What really is the difference? None.

Right. It's branding. Advisors are using Vanguard over BlackRock, all us equal, for... Vanguard still has a huge DIY market share, too. That's true. But I would suspect that the flow is... primarily predominantly are coming from advisors. That's more money.

So, I just thought that was interesting. Okay. Duncan said I have to mention the fact that there's construction going on behind me. I can't hear it. Okay, not too bad. Duncan's got hawk ears. The hawks have the best. What has the best ears?

African hunting dogs. Those dogs have great ears. I know that because I was at the Bronx. I was at the Bronx Zoo over the weekend. And I was taken by the size of their ears. And you're staying at a hunting cat. happened. That too. There was flooding in my building, and I'm literally the only office that didn't get put out,

and everyone else has been out of their office for two or three months, and they're fixing all the offices around. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Remember we had this whole thing on the show about how much water could fit into a bathtub because there was flooding in your office? Was it like two years ago? That was a different flooding. But same office, right? Yes, same complex. Okay. Two floods in two years, yes. And I unscathed.

All right, another interesting thing about, like, the index fund, who sets prices where we know it's active managers. Here we go. Great chart, not a good chart, a great chart from Bank of America. It's showing the active share ratio of core managers versus the S&P 500. And the line goes up, the line goes down. And when it's going up, active managers are deviating from their benchmark. You know, they're really going for it. And when the chart is going down, they're getting closer to the benchmark.

and they're more closely in line to the benchmark than they have been in the last decade. And I don't know, I don't really blame them. It's interesting, it looks to be like they hug the benchmark more when there's a bare market. Is that fair or not? Because 09 was the highest benchmark hugging. That's like, listen, if we're all going on a before,

we're all going to go down, let's go down together. I don't know. No? I don't know that you could make that blanket statement. But it is interesting that they're owning the index. Of course. Closite indexers. That's always been a thing.

That's why the own index funds thing never bothered me because people were essentially owning index funds before through a mutual fund with higher fees and worse tax advantages. Yeah. Great chart from Gina Martin Adams from Bloomberg. She said earnings breadth, which is a percent of S&P 500 with earnings growth, hit a cycle low in 2023, but broke. back above 60% with the third quarter earnings season, creating a cycle breadth bottom that

likely enables equity market recovery. I think this is a feather in the cap for the S&P 493. You lost me. Is this saying that there's a lot of companies that are improving their earnings? Yes. Okay, that works. That's exactly right. Okay. That's a good thing. All right. From the inbox. Good one here. Michael and Ben are so optimistic. It makes me nervous. I feel like I'm always optimistic, but fair point. This past month has been so good, it can't be real. Market goes up and gas goes down every day. The VIX is at 12. Life in investing is not this easy. Help us explore the potential downsides to see consumer credit risk after the holiday bill is coming due. My wife and I are 43 and entering our peak earning years is it selfish

to want the market to chill the F out so we can buy in. We are at a point where we can really accumulate shares, but everything is going up faster than our paychecks arrive. How do you talk to clients that feel they are putting significant money into play in a market that seems very expensive. All fair points, I think here, there's no dooming. That's true. If you're entering your peak earning yields, we've been saying this forever. You want the market to go down. But I don't think that investing has been easy. It feels easy the last three months, but we just went through one of the worst years ever in 2022. It was a third worst year ever for a 6040 portfolio. The worst year ever for the bond market. It was like the seventh worst year ever for the stock

market, my least favorite saying in investing is the easy money has been made. It was hard making money these past couple of years. Really hard. And think about 2023 coming into the year, 100% consensus that we were going to have a recession. And then we had the regional bank crisis blow up. And then we had the usual stuff with the debt ceiling nonsense. And even through October, the Equalweight index was down 5% of the year. The SPP was only up 7%. And so, yeah, the last 60 days have been an incredible run. This feels like projection, though. No offense to the emailer.

Are we that optimistic? Or is this person underinvested and he's projecting on us? We've been celebrating a little bit how we made it through things, but I think that's just like a more of a relief than anything. Listen, if you're worried markets are expensive, I've been saying for a long time, buy value stocks, buy small caps, by international stocks, by high quality, by dividend, whatever, all that stuff is way, way cheaper than tech stocks. If you're thinking the NASDAQ 100 is expensive, sure, I'll agree with you.

But everything else is not expensive by any means. Ben, you know what this person needs? The rest of the market. You know what this person needs? They need to read an old post of yours. Do you know which one they need to read? The Bob one. The Bob one.

Ben wrote a post about Bob, the world's worst market timer. And all Bob did was top-tick stocks throughout his entire career. he put money in when the market was at an all-time high before major drops. And how did Bob end up, Ben? Way better than expected. Still my most popular blog posts. As it should be. It's the power of long-term focus, not getting distracted by the noise.

Potential downsides always exist. That's why stocks go up. We don't even need to go through them because I feel like everyone knows them. But this person is right to think that I should want stocks to go nowhere for a while so I can buy it lower prices. Absolutely. But I hope you were buying for the last 18 months when stocks were down, though. I hope you kept buying.

Yeah, selfishly. As somebody who's investing every two weeks, you want the market to go nowhere, right? Like, just let me accumulate as much as possible. That's the right mindset. But then you can't have that mindset and then also be scared when the market falls. Like, it's either a gift or it's not. And I view it as a gift every time it happens. Yeah.

I don't think coming back from a bare market that was really nasty, I don't think that should make you. Obviously, the downsides we know. There could be recession. There could be... Yeah, what about the upsides? What about the rest of the upside? That's the thing.

No one ever says, here's what could go right. Yeah. This one surprised me. We put this in the compound. We had 4,000 votes almost. What do you think will perform best in 2024? Now it's one year. We did Bitcoin, gold, the NASDAQ, S&P, or Treasuries.

Bitcoin won with more than one third of the vote. The S&P was next, then the NASDAQ, then treasuries and gold. So 34% of people said Bitcoin. would be the best performer. Hmm. This surprised me, especially from our audience, which isn't like a bunch of crypto crazies. I think... Yeah, I would, Duncan, can you, next time we, next, this show, next show, whatever,

can you put a vote in the same thing as this? Do you own Bitcoin? What percent of our audience do you think owns Bitcoin? Is it around a third? I would say 40%. So that's crazy high. The thing is, I do think crypto is on like any asset class there is in terms of, you know, of the fomo is way, way worse when things are going up, and the dread is 10 times worse when it's

going down. I think the fomo is so palpable because we've seen parabolic moves in the past. You know your stocks aren't going to double in a year. And there's nothing that's tying Bitcoin to fundamental so that it can't, like, why? There's nothing stopping Bitcoin from going to 100,000, $150,000. And so just that thought in people's minds, it does weird things to your brain. Yes. There's more chasing involved

and more dunking involved in crypto than any other asset class. Yeah, fast money just wrecks our emotional stability, like financially. Yes. All right, hey, another email. Hey, guys, I absolutely love the show. Really appreciate all the content you put out.

Oh, this is a good one. I was listening to today's show and want to fully endorse what you said about investor engagement following the mean stock craze. So last week, for those who missed the show, we were talking about, like, how more people own stocks than ever. And Ben and I were wondering, hey, maybe the Robinon thing, the crazy stuff was actually good because it got people in the market and it got people to understand that the casino style

of investing is not the right way. And so, anyway. Yeah. Whatever drew them in, it made, they stuck around. So I want to fully endorse what you said about investor engagement following the meme stock crazy. I finished medical school in the spring of 2020 and started my residency and got caught up in the Reddit Robin and Whirlwind. I made like $10 on a couple of option calls and lost a couple hundred on crypto and bad stock picks. Then in the spring of 2021, someone mysteriously sent me a copy of the

psychology of money. Shout to Morgan. I absolutely loved the book and not long after I got hooked on your podcast since then, I've gotten big on the Boglehead philosophy and other responsible investing practices. Needless to say, I learn my lesson quickly and all things considered relatively painlessly. TLDR, I'm glad I made these mistakes early in my career. And I'm glad I made these mistakes early in my career, and with relatively little money, it sent me up for a much better future. How about that? Paying the market tuition, right? Yeah, not everyone becomes a crazy gambler because they make a few option bets. That's pretty good. How about that? So another listener email, this guy wrote a post about leveraged ETFs. I think we were talking about like the, there's a four times one coming

out. Yes, QQQQQQ. Oh, the quad Qs. Oh, no, no, sorry. It's X, X, X, X. Okay. Duncan wants the the quad queue. So these are, we've spoken like just a billion times, even with direction, Ed has said like as emphatically as he can that these are trading vehicles. But somehow, there's still always new investors that have to learn the lesson the hard way. So this person did, wrote a post and he said, he showed the performance over a four month period. And these are real world examples. So there was an index that gained 2% over a four month period. The 2x ETF lost 6%. The 2x inverse ETF lost 25%.

Example number two, where the index gained 8%. The 3x ETF lost 53% and the 3x inverse ETF lost 90%. Whoa. The volatility just crushing you. The volatility crushes you. It is not linear. If something's up

30% over a year, you're not going to be up 60% into 2x or 90% in a 3x. It just doesn't work that way. People that are emailing us, well, I have the risk tolerance. It's not what you think it is. These products are not meant to be bought and held. They're just not. Right.

Even if the returns can be good in certain years, there are periods where you could get crushed in these things. Like, if you really want to use leverage, just use longer dated options. These are not the vehicles for that. That's fair. All right. Last year, a recession or this year really was consensus. So this chart was going around. This is from Financial Times.

it was published last year, and they pulled these people in 2022. 85% of economists predicted a recession in 2023. It really was about as consensus as you could get. This other chart from Charter looked for Google searches for U.S. recession. Now look at 2008, huge spike, 2020, huge spike. 2022 was bigger than both of those, not even close. So it really, really was. Yeah, so getting back to our point about, like, this year, if we do sound optimistic, fine, okay, guilty.

We've been through a lot. We should celebrate. It doesn't mean you spike the football and you ignore risk and you go all in. But we've been through shit. Like, it's okay to celebrate a little bit. Yeah. So my favorite stat, since 2010, the U.S. economy has been a recession 1% of the time. Since 2010, we've been in a recession for two months.

and how many of those months how much of that 99% of the time were people predicting a recession most of it probably remember double-dip recessions after the financial crisis were a thing then in 2011 we had the European crisis

that like the euro was going under and the European Union is done 2018 people thought we might be going into recession because there was a bare market I think it's it's like it's rational irrational irrationality to be always worried about a bare market

because they're so so damaging and devastating, not even just psychologically. Like, if you get a 55% bare market, that means that years of gains are wiped out. Right. So even though people... I think the 2008 crisis brought us back to the 90s or something, yeah. Yeah, dude. So it's how we're wired to be looking out for things like this, because they really are.

They're not just like, oh, no big deal 20%. Yeah, 20% nobody deal. The big ones are a big deal. So you mentioned the recession piece that we, this one was flying around too. The U.S. has gone through 34 recession since 1957. This is a great chart. What are the pink lines? What are the lines?

Four, too. Pink lines are recession. Blue lines are expansion. And you can see pre-Great Depression, more or less. From the Great Depression before, the 1930s and before, there was recessions all the time. And now they are way fewer and far between. It just doesn't happen. I think the number I looked at it, I don't know.

one every three years or something in the past. And now it just doesn't happen very often. I think there's a few reasons. One of them is just that the U.S. economy, we used to be an emerging market, more or less. We were on the gold standard, which is way less flexible than our current system. I know people say, oh, printing money, yeah, sure, of course the U.S. didn't go into recession. We printed trillions of dollars. Guess what? That's worth it to me. I'm happy to take that trade off. We didn't go into recession. I don't care. We printed trillions of dollars to make it happen. That's a good thing. but our grandkids.

Yeah, guess what? They're going to print a lot of money, too. But I thought economic stability was supposed to lead to instability. That is true. The other thing is the creation of the Fed helped a lot here. So it's a lot of different things. But, again, I think that I take this as good news. Ben, you said, I don't know if you slack this or whatever.

You said, I swear the comments section is getting nice or lately, vibes you back. I can't, go ahead. Are the comments nice, really? I sent you a few. There was someone in one of the comments said, this is Michael's best show ever. Michael was on it today or something. Watch, you're going to get killed in the comments this week.

No, but I said a lot of people in the comments are good. I said the vibes are back. People are being nice and the comments session is. What if it's seasonal? People are feeling, you know, it's Christmas time. It could be. But, yeah, I still read the YouTube comments. I don't, you don't do it.

You know why? I'm perfectly thrilled to be in a place in my life where we have a comment section. Speaking of Christmas, I was, I heard the word like Secret Santa or whatever. I don't know why it brought me back to 2011, 2011. So last week, this all tied to like my comment last week about how I felt rich five years ago, just not having to worry about money. like really truly worried to the point that my eye was twitching to me that I was equating like comfortable and rich as the same thing to me and how I'm grateful to have a comment

section in 2011 I was at a secret Santa party here was my with my coworkers I don't if I ever told this story but I probably told this to you I was a temp at Citibank my aunt got me a job there which I was thrilled to have because I was unemployed you know what I was doing, you know the, like, employee training videos of, like, just how to behave in the workplace, whatever? Sexual harassment. Just all of that sort of stuff. I was watching those videos and making sure, I had, like, a checklist to make sure that

the videos actually contain the information that the company wanted them to have. And I was at a secret Santa party with, like, the people in that group. Kind of seems like AI takes that job over now, right? Totally. But it was just, it was just, what am I, what am I, what am I actually doing? How is this my life? And now I've got people in the comment section watching our YouTube show. So it's all great.

I am beyond grateful that people are watching our show. But that being said, and people could dunk, it's fine. But I don't need to say it, right? I don't want to see people being mean. So my summary of you saying I feel richer than ever last week is the Nick Murray comment. My favorite quote from Nick Murray is, if you're still worried you aren't wealthy. And he says that's true for any amount of money you have.

So regardless of how what your net worth is, your portfolio, if you aren't worried that much about money, you're wealthy. And I love that take. Yeah, that's how I feel. I think anybody would objectively have seen my bank account or my assets to be like, dude, you're not, you're not rich. Because we know people with multiple, multiple millions of dollars who are worried all the time. And I don't think you can look at that as a rich life.

I'm pretty positive. If you care about money that much, Yeah, I'm pretty positive that if you never struggle to make money, you feel a lot differently about it. So I can't imagine having millions of dollars and not feeling financially secure for myself personally. I understand how people get there, but not for me. I'm built different.

All right. Joe Wisenthal had tweeted chart about how Square now has a payroll index growth tracker. And this was the big worry coming into 2023, a legitimate worry that we really, we couldn't know until we found out, was average hourly earnings, the wage, the wage spiral, right? Which always seems funny to me that people were worried wages were going to grow too fast. I get the economic reasoning behind that worry, but it's always funny to be like, geez, we can't have people making more money. That's going to be awful.

Yeah, but you understand. Yes. Anyway, I mean, it's hard to like say this is the war. out of all the components, but this is a big one. And average hourly earnings, the growth is going the right direction, which is down. In anecdotally, you don't hear as many of the crazy stories about the fast food places with huge signs saying, we need $25 workers, whatever. That stuff seems to have abated.

Yeah. Why does Square have economic data now? Everyone does? Do they do payroll stuff? Well, yeah, well, I mean, it's payments, so I don't know. So, all right, moving on. Crypto. Matt Hogan tweeted,

these new S&P stable coin reports are pretty good, to be honest. Crypto won't love the down rating of Tether and Die. But if you read through the actual reports and view it from a U.S.-based institutional perspective, the analysis is reasonable. Here's the point. Regardless, it's great to see mainstream research increasing. Another sign we're entering the mainstream error of crypto. The mainstreaming of crypto continues.

So, I was thinking about how people often say Bitcoin doesn't do anything, which is, I guess, which is fair. Like, I use Venmo, what do I need, I don't need Bitcoin for, what I don't use a, what's the use case, show me the use case. You know what it does? It works. And maybe that's enough. Like, it does exactly what it said it was going to do.

The network never goes down. As far as I know, payments work. It works. Right. You could do it to transfer a bunch of stuff, but people just don't do that because they don't want to. But it works. That's what it does.

It works. Maybe that's all it does. Maybe that's enough. I'm not throwing shade of Matt here. Two things that I've never typed in my life, TBH and IMO. I just, I can't do it. I feel like, you know the Leo meme where he's kind of sipping on, whatever, and he's looking all high and mighty?

I feel that's the, that's about the Leo from James. where he's kind of all dressed up fancy and he's yeah that's how i would feel if i tweeted or if i wrote tbh or i'mo kind of like i don't know it's just personal preference i just can't do it i hear you're saying i find i find neither for them to be and you're too sensitive i am i still don't use emojis i i just how do you live i don't know i can't do it occasionally like a thumbs up or something i can't do it i just don't do emojis i think i was it just it missed me. So you, but, but you're comfortable saying, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Yeah, I'll use. Sure. All right. Real estate? Yep. Let's talk about it. Activity is coming back. Redfin has seen double-digit annual increase in the, in homeowners

contacting real estate agents for selling their homes this week. New sale listings up 9% from a year ago. The biggest annual increase since July 2021. The uptick is partly due to falling rates with homeowners feeling less locked in by rates in the 3 to 4% range. It's happening. Activity certainly bottomed in the real estate market, I think. I'm not saying it's going to come screaming higher.

It could, but I think the housing recession is over. Oh, no, it will come screaming higher. Activity is going to explode. If interest rates stabilized in the 6% range or whatever, activity is going to explode. Someone sent, Joe Cassandra sent me this tweet. I wrote something about housing last week. He said, I brought a primary house two weeks ago for a family of six

during the worst time to buy a house. Our mortgage payment tripled, ouch, and the rate is above 8% L.O.L. Also sent out 4,000 letters to find a house, ended up being a waste of time, ask me anything. Guy literally top-tick mortgage markets, mortgage rates. I asked him when he's going to refinance. At this point, do you wait to 5%? Refining is a pain in the ass. It is. I mean, obviously worth it, but it should be easier. Especially, actually, I refinanced probably a year or two after I bought my house. and I couldn't believe all the hoops that I had to jump through.

I'm like, you just saw all of this. Why are you asking me for my wife's work information in 20? We didn't complain a lot about it. Yeah. My whole thing is, if I got my original mortgage with you, you already got that information, right? I should be able to just prove that a lot of it hasn't changed. I think I was refinanced twice during the pandemic. I think I did twice within a 12-month period.

Ben somebody sent us this kind of wild. There's free land of the Midwest. Do you know, do you, have you heard about this? No, explain. Now, this is rural, they're not even towns. I mean, the population for these places. So I just screenshot it like the rural, the towns in Kansas where you can get free land. Population, 1,680, 900, 1,300, 1,900, 1900, 700. I think this is actually the plot from foreign. away with Tom Cruise and Cole Kidman. Remember where you just put a flag down? That's a great movie.

I don't know why. What year was that? I'm positive. I'm positive. I saw that in the theater. I remember the boxing scene. Was that in the beginning? That's toward the end.

He's a bare-knuckle boxer, yes. What year was that? What was my dad thinking? Why did I see that movie? Early to mid-90s? Dude, I was seven years old. Why did I go to that movie? Our kids are seven.

Can you imagine taking your kid to see far and away? Yeah, that's true. People don't worry about that stuff as much back then. What the hell? A young man, here's the description. A young man leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with their father and they dream of owning land at the big giveaway in Oklahoma.

Yeah, great movie for a seven-year-old. All right, I guess. So small town is trying to get people to come to them? Is that the idea? But, okay, lots ranging from 12,000 to 36,000 square feet. feet. Here are the requirements. You have to build a home within four and a half years. This sounds like a, this sounds kind of appealing for a certain person. Do you think it's hard to get water and electrical and all that stuff to these places, though?

Is that the rub? Or they just, they just want people to come? I'm sure there's lots of rubs to being in a startup town. But I don't know. Okay. So if you, if you're worried about the cost of housing, this is sure. All right. Good one from the wall. Wall Street Journal that was flying around this past week, the rise of forever renters. This one was a little surprising to me. The number of renters with personal income in 2022 compared with one, three, and five years earlier, more than a million is by far the fastest growing cohort. Okay? They still make up a small percentage of the overall market, but you see people's renters

less than $50,000 is falling. More than $200K for income or more than a million is rising. The number of renters of rental households with incomes of more than a million reached record high of 4,453 in 2022, that is four times as many as in 2017. The number of renters earning $200,000 a year is up fourfold since 2010. I wonder how many of these are in California, New York. That's got to be like people in San Francisco. But the point was, some people have just decided they want the flexibility and it's actually cheaper in a lot of cases, especially in big markets to rent a place rather

than buy it in a spot. A lot of them they were showing these high-end apartment complexes how much you would cost to buy versus rent, and you still get all the amenities. It's pretty good. It also says new subdivisions full of single-family homes for rent, all but non-existent a decade ago, are springing up from coast to coast. More rentals are advertising themselves as kid and pet-friendly permitting renters to make extensive modifications to their spaces. This is interesting. It's kind of a surprising trend. I do wonder if interest rates fall to the number of rents. like these seems like this this this seems like people that that are wanted to be in a house

but are but a lot of them said that they they don't they just decided buying's not for them and you're right maybe it is the affordability thing yeah buying's not for them but it's right 8% I totally get it that's fair so they also had in this in this story home ownership rates around the world so u.s is 64% Brazil is over 70% India is 87% and china is 89% that those numbers I would not have expected. That's crazy high, right? Yes. I know people always worry about the Chinese real estate and housing market and stuff,

and they must incentivize people to own land, but that's surprising how small the U.S. is comparatively. And it's relatively steady there, too. All right, so, bird, bird scooters. I don't know if they're disappearing or if it's like a restructure by they declare bankruptcy. Okay. We had some good time on those scooters.

Great time on those scooters. They raised $916 million. Wow. And they may be out of business? Yeah. I mean, it's not surprising, I suppose. The economics of that, I mean, we spoke about this last year or two years ago. The economics of those, that business does not work.

Do you think they also underestimated the amount of people that would just crap on those scooters and just destroy them and push them over and throw them in such? Yeah. I'm guessing they lost so many scooters from drunk people. leaving the bars. People threw them in rivers. People let them let them on fire. Really? I guess I can see that. A lot of maintenance. Oh. Survey of the week. This is, this is pretty, it's pretty bleak. They asked, they asked 12th graders. They asked 12th graders. This is not a new survey. Satisfaction with, quote, the way you get along with your parents and then with your life as a whole these days. It goes back to 1976.

and satisfied with your parents is going up and up and up and satisfied with life as a whole is going down and down and down. Now, let's start with the first line. I don't know. My first reaction to this is an... There's just a knee-jerk reaction.

I don't know that you should be satisfied with your parents. Like, growing up, I don't know that I... I obviously loved and respect to my parents, but if I was in 11th grade I don't know if I would have said like, yeah, my parents are my best friends I feel like that's like a lot of parenting these days and I don't know if that's good.

My parents were my parents. They weren't my best friends. I can see this both ways as well. You're right. There's a lot of millennial parents who, what's the line from Amy Polar and Mean Girls? I'm a cool mom. I'm not like other moms

where they try to be the best friends. Is it good to have cool parents? I don't know. I don't know that's black or white. that you could, like, paint with a broad brush, but I just don't know. Or the fact that parents just spend way more time with their children these days than they, there was a stat. In one of the books I read, I summarized it. It's like the American Dream is not dead.

And the stat was something like, stay-at-home mothers in the 1960s spent less time with their kids than working mothers do today. I see this both ways. As parents are way, way, way more involved in their kids' lives today, and that's a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. It really depends. Anyway, satisfied with life as a whole. This chart is just crashing and it's really a shame. And, you know, I think a lot of this is really... I think a lot of this is social media.

Derek Thompson had a piece on this. And this is not everyone, obviously. But have we... We've glamorized the idea of depression a little bit these days. Which sounds like a weird thing to say. But it's almost like a crutch for some people. Hmm. I don't know.

Somebody emailed us last... this week, like commenting on the person who has millions of dollars but doesn't feel rich because they see big houses. Right. And the quote there is, comparison is a thief of joy. Right. And I think that that's what social media did to young people. And young people just, it's hard for grownups to see other people and not be envious.

17-year-olds just cannot. It's not good. It's really, really not good. I agree. I couldn't imagine going through high school. with, I've always said, I'm so glad that we didn't have camera phones or social media when I went through college. And I feel like it has to change the way that you behave in a lot of ways because you're

under a microscope. Yeah. If there was pictures available or videos of me at parties in college or something, I would totally change my behavior. Maybe you'd be in a good way in some ways, but I'm just so glad I didn't have to live under that microscope all the time. All right, here is, this is a bit fringe, but I don't think it's, I thought this is interesting enough to share. Talk about like sentiment scores seem out of whack in the U.S. versus the rest of the

world. Everyone's trying to pin the disconnect between the economy as great, but survey scores are on the toilet on social media or some other cause. Sure, those are plausible, but what if it is this? Tipping. Go on. He says, tipping culture has gotten out of control. The increase in the price you pay isn't captured in CPI because the tip doesn't count in the price reported. And if you don't tip, you are ashamed so you either pay more than you expect it or you feel like an asshole if you're not adding 20 percent. Given that tipping culture isn't as prevalent global, could that explain the U.S. versus the world disconnect? Okay, the answer is definitely no.

There's no way that tipping is the source of the disconnect. I give this person, I have respect for this person for coming up with this hot take, though. Great take. All credit to the take, because I do think that there's, the fact that CPI does not capture tipping. Interesting. Very interesting. Good little nugget. The thing is, it's people think you'll be shamed if you don't tip, but you can just say no or press no.

You don't have to do it. You feel obliged, but you feel obliged, but you. You don't have to. I mean, but when somebody spins around the computer at you and you just say no tip, you feel a little, you feel the sweat glands percolating. I have found myself tipping more since the pandemic because I feel like service workers got a raw deal. And so I felt as somebody who spent almost a decade in the service industry living on tips, I tip well, not to brag.

Good on you. Oh, so speaking of the Why Aren't Millionaire's Happy thing I have a solution For all the people who have a lot of money and aren't happy The Family Man Watch the Family Man with Nicholas Cage and Taye Leone

That'll solve all your problems I never saw it If you Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa What? You've never seen The Family Man? I never saw it Okay, I rewatch it almost every year

I remember you mentioned going to the theater I remember going to see this in the theater On Christmas Day in 2000 or whenever it came out. You've literally never seen this movie before? I've never seen that movie. It's even a New York slash New Jersey movie. That's disappointing.

Go see it. I mean, the moral of the story is if you marry Tea Leone, you'll be happy, and it doesn't matter how much money you have, but the premise is amazing. Nicholas Cage is a wealthy financier in New York, and he gets to go back and see the life he could have had if he would have just married his college sweetheart and not left her. Don Cheedle's in it.

amazing movie one of the best Christmas movies of this century easily and Nicholas Cage is cooking okay here's another movie

from the early 2000s Ben Affleck James Gandalfini Catherine O'Hara and Christina Applegate surviving Christmas you heard of it

never heard of it James Gandalfini in a Christmas movie this could have been a classic and it I rewatched it for the first time

in I don't know 15 years it's terrible just bad I mean, it felt like a CBS sitcom with like, it needed a laugh track. I don't know how it's so bad with that lineup of people. How do you feel about a wonderful life? It's my mom's favorite Christmas movie.

She used to always make me watch it. That being said. Yeah, it never really did it for me. It's, listen, it's almost 100 years old. It's tough. It's a tough watch. I had a girlfriend in high school who made me go see a theatrical version with her parents, first time I met her parents

of a wonderful life. That's way too much. That was tough. Congratulations on the Lions. And congratulations to me. I won a lot of money on them. I had to sweat it out, but we did it. We did it. First time in almost 30 years.

They won their division. So season ticket holders in 2024 will see an average increase of 30% and as much as 85% for certain forward-filled seats. All right, that's what happens. I'm okay with that as long as you give us a discount when the team stinks. Yeah, that's never going to happen.

That's what it should be, though. Oh, Ben, did your daughter win that game that you yelled at the rest of the stand defeated? Of course. My coaching. Yes. I went to see a movie this week. I saw the Iron Claw. Oh, how was it?

The 824 production of the Von Erick family. I remember Texas Tornado vaguely. I think it was like the early 90s. I think he did some stuff with Ultimate Warrior. See, I'd never heard of him, but I saw the preview and it looked really good. So it's not so much a wrestling movie as it as a family drama.

Like, the wrestling was sort of in the background. It's not like Rocky where like there's like a buildup to the fights, you know what I mean? Now, I think that the audience is going to like it a lot more in general than I did. Now, I'm not sure if it's because I saw it on Friday night at 945,

which is past my bedtime. And I also took an edible, which was not advised because it's not really, it's not like a fun movie it's in fact the opposite of fun it's depressing but it's also just a lot of dialogue so I just I just

I thought it would have been that was a Long Island hedge right there I feel like you just say you didn't like the movie I didn't love no it happened this it was it was definitely a good movie that I didn't love and I wonder if I wonder if it would have been better served

in as a six episode show because there's just a lot of plots and subplots and relationships that they didn't get to go deep on because it was a two-hour movie. So I felt like I needed more. But, yeah. All right, Ben.

Did you watch past lives or not? I did not watch past lives. I want to. I asked you for it. I'm going to. I've got one more Christmas one that I re-watch almost every year now. And it's bizarre because I don't know why.

The Family Stone. You've seen this movie? No. It's almost a hate watch. The cast is amazing. I remember the first time I watched it. I absolutely hated it because the plot is so insane, but it's Craig T. Nelson and Dan Keaton and Luke Wilson and Rachel McAdams and Claire

Danes. And it's a, it's a Sarah Jessica Parker. It's an amazing cast. And I just like the coming home for Christmas vibe of the movie. And once you get over the plot holes, which are immense, I actually, it's, and a lot of the characters are unlikable. For some reason, I love rewatching it. I don't know why. It's a hate, hate rewatch. I want you to watch. I want you to watch Saltburn and tell me what you think. Okay. You got it. You watch The Family Man.

We'll call it you. Watch the Family Man. Okay, we'll watch a Family Man. Is Salt Burn on a streaming platform? Is what? Salt Burn is on Amazon Prime. Okay. It's, uh...

I have no idea what it's about. Okay. Better off. Just go in with a blank slate. All right. This is our last show of 20203. Much better year for most of us than 2020. Ben, we started the show

in November 2017. Wow, November 2017. Pretty remarkable when we started this thing. I remember the New Yorker had a cartoon like literally two weeks before he launched it. And it was two people sitting down at a restaurant table and one of them said to the other,

I'm thinking of stopping a podcast. Right. Because that was all the rage I'm starting a podcast. And we were nervous. We were nervous doing this. We felt like imposers, imposters, posers. I just mixed two words. But here we are. Six years later, almost six years later. And Duncan tells us that we're now in some weeks a top five investing podcast on Apple.

So for people, for new listeners, thank you. But especially for the originals that have been with us from the beginning, just cannot say enough, cannot express enough gratitude. even people in the comment section that are not nice. I appreciate you as well. We love our audience. Everyone is great. The people who come in contact with,

I got running through with a gym the other day by some guy listening to our show in the gym. Also, I got to ask you about this. It was a very awkward encounter. What's the etiquette of taking out AirPods when you're having a conversation with someone? Do you ever take them out or not?

I just feel like the polite thing to do is just to take one out. Okay. You know why? Because one stops the music. True. I don't have the etiquette for these things. But yes, thank you to all the listeners.

We really appreciate it. We love hearing from people. We have a great audience. Personal emails. Personal responses. And next show, I think, Michael's 2024 predictions. All right. We'll see you then.

Adel Spirits at the Compoundewood News.com. You know, I'm going to