Animal Spirits Podcast - When Genius Failed, Again (EP. 476)

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

On episode 476, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: a crazy month in the stock market, Situational Awareness, leverage always gets you, the semiconductor crash, 60/40 will never die, the behavior gap lives, One Wish Willow for the economy, a theory about the Fed, the economy is still booming, apathy for Bitcoin, the biggest movie weekend ever and much more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts. To get your copy of Top 10 Visuals, and receive 20% off your first YCharts Professional subscription through Animal Spirits. Visit https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits (Offer valid for new customers only.) Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Us On Social Media: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's animal spirits is brought to you by Y charts. When the markets feel uncomfortable, clients start asking the same question. Is now the right time to invest? Or should I wait? The most impactful answer advisors can give is clear data on the importance of long-term investing. Don't start this process from scratch. Wide Charts has you covered. Their top 10 visuals deck offers ready-to-use charts and make these exact client conversations easier.

The deck visualizes strategies like the power of staying invested and the impact of withdrawal rates in retirement. Everything is fully customizable, ease it brand with your firm's logo, and constantly updated as markets change. So you're never sharing something outdated. Click the link in the show notes to connect with the Y charts team, get your copy of top-pin visuals, and receive 20% off your first Y-charts professional subscription to Animal Spirits. Offer valid for new customers owner. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. This is going to be a long episode. We've got 40 pages in the dock, which is on the high side. I feel like last show was a month and a half ago. A lot has happened. A lot has happened. A lot has happened in the markets, outside the markets.

Spider-Man, holy shit. We'll get to that later in the show. A lot of ends and outs. A lot of what-have-hies. All right. Let's start with the stock market. July was a wild month. Would you say, then, that July was the most fun, fascinating, interesting market month that we've had in, I don't know, pick a time, a couple of years. I mean, it's been a minute. It's been, this is a good one. I'm having fun. We've had some exciting markets this decade.

This decade has just been fantastic for stock market entertainment value. The last two, like, notable months were not that much fun. It was March when the war started. Definitely not fun. Oh, then April of Liberation Day probably. Prior to that was April 2025. Also, definitely not fun. Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. The stock market, it just is more entertaining than it was in the past. And I don't think you could convince me otherwise because the speed at which stuff happens now and the amount of sheer money moving around. And we're also in a technological innovation boom. And, yeah, there's a lot going on. And so here's what we got in last week. But we got, go ahead. The S&B 500 for the month was, what, down 10 basis points or something?

It's like if you looked at it and you lived in a cave, you'd go, eh, boring month. Fair? No, not fair, because nobody does that. So completely not fair. All right, so in the last week alone, we had. There are some people who are just DIY investing and send it and forget it and they're not paying attention. Nobody who's listening to this podcast is not paying attention. That's true.

I'm just saying those people do exist. Sure, fine. Okay. They're not as entertained as us, but they're probably happier. I'm very happy. I'm having a great time. It's been seven weeks since the Knicks won the finals. I'm still riding high. I'm having a great time, Ben.

Okay, so in the last week alone, we had... Do you have a whole closet full of Nick's gear now? Because that's literally all you wear. You know what's funny? This morning. So I've got... This is my favorite Nick shirt in New York or nowhere. Can't see it.

Well, I'll lift it up. Not that anybody cares, but like, this is a good one. There's a real good one. I said to Rob this morning, hey, where's my Nick's shirt? And she literally said, are you joking? Which Nickshare? What are you talking about?

Right. It's my new one. All right. Anyway, so we got Apple reported earnings, Amazon reported a blowout numbers, Microsoft reported blowout numbers, Facebook fell and then recovered. And we got a semiconductor blowup led by the story of the week and maybe the story of the year, a hedge fund called unironically named situational awareness. I can't believe that's the name. I seriously cannot believe that's the name of the hedge fund.

It's too perfect. Michael Lewis couldn't have written this any better. This kid, just he looks like central casting of a guy who would blow up a hedge fund. Just he's young. It's the AI boom. Like, this is seriously, Michael Lewis couldn't have written this any better. So the story is as such. There is a kid named Leopold Ashenbrenner. Leopold grew up in Europe. And he's a Wonder kid. Is it Wonderkind? Yes. Okay. He's a wonder. Hey, I and D. Okay. That's a bizarre word. Is that, is that like for young geniuses or what is it? I suppose. He is a young genius. Yes. And he's 24, 25 years old, super young.

Graduated, got into Columbia when he was 15, valedictorian, like an IQ of a billion. And unfortunately for him and his investors, he never read a book that needs to be required reading for anybody managing other people's money when genius failed. When Genius failed is the story of long-term capital management. And actually, it's funny how this lines up. We have a chart later in the show. By the way, Ben, I listened to our podcast last week. And I apologize to some of the listeners. This is a very visual heavy show at times more so than others. And I think I take for granted the fact that everybody is watching along with us.

They're not. But now we are releasing the video on Spotify. at 4 a.m. When the podcast goes up. So if you are listening, but we are referencing a chart that you think would be interesting, open your phone, take it out,

and you can look along with us. Look at YouTube. Hey, I just want to give a few things about him personally, I think that are worth mentioning. Wait, can I finish my thought? Yes. I know I interrupt myself.

But the point that I was making about long-term capital management and the visual was bespoke has a chart showing, they said it's crazy how the situational awareness blow up is right in love. with a long-term capital management blowup on the Netscape chat GPT timeline.

So they've been charting this for the past couple of months, and it's wild. I shouldn't say it's wild because these lines are- You can make lines fit, but- Yeah, they're both going up to the right. But it is interesting that this has happened. So, okay, Ben, back to you, go say a few things. But the whole thing about when genius failed, the other good one is the smartest guys in the room about Enron.

And the reason that people like this will always get money from people, If you're an intelligent person, if you're super smart, people will throw stuff at you. People will give you money. This guy will totally get a second chance. He probably shouldn't at this age. People should probably go, all right, we're going to give this kid some time. He's 24 years older or 25. He had no professional investing experience when he launched his AI-focused firm situational

learners less than two years ago with a few hundred million dollars. He already manages more money than Bill Ackman or Dan Loeb. Okay? he got fired from OpenAI for letting go of sensitive information. That's the either here nor there. That's whatever. But just, I don't know, the fact that he got fired from Open AI, but he's ridiculously smart. He's a high IQ. And if you have someone with a high IQ who is a little quirky, he obviously looks very quirky,

some of the videos make him look very quirky, people are going to give him money. He wrote a manifesto that helped him raise the money, and that's where he came up with the situational awareness stuff. He's got all these huge investors, the Collison brothers, and people that, at Meta and Sam Altman, and he's married to the chief of staff at Anthropic. And the story just, it kind of, this is a truth as stranger than fiction kind of deal. This is my favorite part. Wait, why is the truth is stranger than friction?

Because you couldn't, this is central, you could not come up with a better character than this if you wanted to make it up. This guy is just a, this guy is a perfect character for a young person in the AI boom who blew up a hedge fund, right? The pictures of everything. It's just, it's perfect. He was getting married. In Northern California, the day as fun blew up.

And this is my favorite part. There would be a pre-wedding colloquium to discuss ideas in panels and breakout sessions. They were going to have a breakout session. I don't believe that. Okay, I kind of do. I don't know. Hold on.

This is in the Wall Street Journal. So what? So what? Okay. So what? There was breakout sessions at this kid's wedding. Give me a fucking break. All right.

It's all believable to me. That part's believe. I mean, I suppose that anything is possible. But what happened here is totally believable that his fund grew so big, so massively, because he made all these great AI bets. He laid out this 10-year vision for AI. And he said, this is what's going to happen. A lot of people said, oh, my gosh, this guy is, he's like, I think Tim Ferrissers called him

the AI Nostradamus, right? Which was obviously the kiss of death right there. Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. He fucking nailed it. Like, so. I just said, he laid it out and he followed it and boom, nailed it. Guess what happened? He put too much leverage on.

So there's a difference between getting the macro thesis right and being a good portfolio manager. This guy is obviously not a good portfolio manager. Correct. That's the problem. This is why I think why someone like this is way more well suited for venture capital, where you can't get margin called in a venture capital investment. The reason he's up so much still, and we'll talk about the numbers, is because he put

money in an anthropic early. And that's powered the gains of his fund. So all he had to have was that one good investment in Anthropic and all the other blowups that he did because he five-time leverage didn't matter. But the leverage is the thing. As always, this always gets people. It's always leverage. Which is why I mentioned when genius failed, should have been required reading.

It's not about how smart you are. You can't blow up a fund. And the only way that you blow up a fund is with leverage. You and I laugh at the, 2x ETFs. Allegedly this kid was running at four times leverage.

So $4.5, yeah. $4 of exposure for every dollar that he had. And this unwind brought the market down with it. A lot of people said there's no way that this guy's fund was big enough to bring down the market.

I totally believe people were getting ahead of this. There was someone sure to store. It might not just just be him, but he was part of blowing the names up to the upside. And of course, he wasn't it because the half a trillion dollars of notional exposure in the double-evered ETFs, like he was part of the story, not the entire story. Yeah.

But his fund marked the bottom for now, right? These stocks all bottomed up hugely after Citadel came in and short it up. There was a story about when genius failed, when John Meriwether, the really smart guy from Salman Brothers who ran it. And it's funny, this is the problem with being too smart, though, is that you get it's so overconfident in your abilities that you think, oh, of course I can lever this thing up five times or long-term capital management

was way more than that. Wasn't it 10 or 20 times? What was the number of long-term? I can't even remember. It was way higher because they were doing fixed-income arbitrage. Right. But someone said to Meriwether, the guy who ran that fund, he said, my fund is down 50%, but that's okay. We still have a few billion dollars. And the guy said, no, no, no, no, you don't realize.

You're down 50%. There's sharks in the water now. You're toast. You're done. And that was the first time he got scared. And that's the thing with intelligence. is that you can get so overconfident. That's why the people who are the smartest ones in the world to me have a relatively high IQ,

but also have actual situational awareness or like self-awareness. And they have common sense. And obviously this kid, maybe he'll figure out someday. He didn't have that yet. Like it's beyond ironic. This is like Alanis Morissette territory of the fact that his fund was named situation awareness. I can't believe it.

I just can't believe it. It's too perfect. So a lot of people dancing on the grave, I mean, that's just what happens in this world, not just in the world of finance, but because he was getting a lot of accolades too. So when that happens, on the other side of it, of course he's going to get stomped on. So I think he was up at his peak, like 2,700 percent since inception. I mean, absolutely eye-watering numbers, like the type of numbers that you don't see. So what ended up happening is Mark Rubinstein has a great slide.

He shows that the assets were up five X and three months and got in 30 days. So fund assets, March 2020. That's a great chart right there. March, 2006, it was $9.3 billion. June, 2006, $20 plus billion. July, 2006, $45 billion. This kid was on a heater, the likes of which we have really seen before. Then on July 24th, he sends out an investor letter,

framing the sell-off as a buying opportunity. And then by July 30th, just a couple of trading days later, they sold the entire public levered book to Citadel at a 10% discount. Now, there's people saying that all of the gains in the fund came from Anthropic and that all the public stocks went to zero.

He was actually underwater. My understanding of the situation is that's not true. In the letter, he said that they still have... Now, he was... He was long all of the AI names and short like the adobes of the world. So it blew up both. It blew up both ways. The alligator jaws slammed shut.

This is why leverage is so detrimental because a lot of those stocks are still up a ton from when he bought him. Sandisk is still up over 1,000% in the last year. If he would have not used leverage to just held these funds, oh, shoot, we're in a 30% drawdown, but we can survive. The thing is, when you see the numbers go from $9 billion to $20 to $45 in three months, you feel invincible. You feel like nothing can stop you.

I'm sure my favorite anecdote from your money in your brain by Jason Swagg, and I used it in my book Risk and Ward. I called it, what happens when you get gains like this is you get cocaine brain. And Jason Zweig said

they did these studies on your brain that show that there is no difference between the brain activity of someone who's high on cocaine or morphine and someone who's making money on their investments. It's the same, and that with him, that's why he took more leverage

because he needed a bigger hit each time to keep it going. That's why you have to use leverage when you get that size. if you want to keep growing at that same rate, which obviously there was no risk management whatsoever. Mark Rubenstein also astutely said, the perfect number of blowups for a hedge fund manager is one.

And I think what he means is that everybody needs to get punched in the face really badly one time. Now, if you have two or three blowups, you know, come on, no more chances. But everybody gets one mulligan. and this is a bad one, but the fund is still up 80%. At least that's what the letter said. It's funny, yeah, John Arnold said that too.

He said, my philosophy when I used to hire traders is that the optimal number of past blowups is one. Okay. So it's kind of like, you're right, this is your, this is your Mulligan. It's funny, my kids and I in the driveway, we always do free-through contests, like best out of five, best out of ten.

And I always tell my kids they get one mulligan. And they'll miss one. I go, all right, I get one more. I start on a make, though. So he can't have that, right? No starting on a make anymore. Here's a great line from Rob Copeland, who wrote the book on, what did he write the book on? He wrote the Ray Dalio book.

Okay. Was it called The Fund? I can't remember the name of it. I think so. So Rob wrote in the New York Times, the story of situational awareness is in some way an old Wall Street lesson, learned by every generation and then forgotten by the next. It's true. There's this idea that you can learn about history by reading books and studying the past and learning from mistakes of others. And that's great. I'm sure like 2% of the population can do this.

Most people just need to pay their tuition to the market gods by themselves. Everyone needs to find out whether they can be a stock picker like Warren Buffett. Everyone has that itching them. Can I do it? And then you figure out you can't and then you move out. Like everyone has to try this stuff. I'm going to time the market. I can do it.

Everyone has to do this stuff themselves once. And obviously it's the same with big hedge fund managers. I wonder how much of a lockup there is because some of this is in private money. I haven't read much about that because you said the numbers. So the month today... I'm guessing that what's remaining is 95% anthrapic and whatever private investment he has. Because it says the month to date performance was down almost 70%, but the year-to-date performance is still up 80%.

I think Anthropic is up 400% this year. So I'm guessing that's a lot of it. Like the fact that this, for most people, the fact that this kid got them into and Anthropic was probably worth the investment in the fund. Don't you think in many ways? Like, hey, investing in this fund got us access to Anthropic. That's good enough. The investors in this fund, like, this is a velvet rope type of hedge fund.

You had to be somebody to get in or know somebody to get in. This is not like retail money that's going to demand their money back. Like, I'm sure if anything, I'm not sure. I would suspect that if his investors were going to demand their money back or give him more, they would probably give more. Yeah, he's going to get a second chance. This is what we do in America. We give people like this a second chance because they're smart.

Well, hold on, but the first chance is not over. Like the fund didn't wind down. He's still alive. I know, but this is the kind of thing that you would think investors would go, all right, give my money back. But they can't because there's a lot of private investments, right? That's why, again, this guy should be a VC investor. He should not be a public market investor.

I'm willing to say that he's not going to be a successful public market investor. If that's his risk management. Well, yeah, nobody is. What do you mean nobody is? There are very few, very, very few name brands in public stocks. They all blow up, every one of them. Dude, I wrote this post in 2015, I think. Like, who's the, who, I did this silly post where I wrote, I did like a clip art of every

famous financier, every famous investor by the year that they were born. and I put it on a chart of the Dow. Oh, that's right, to show when the legendary ones were. Yeah, that's right. There hasn't been any since really, right? And I showed it by their birth year. And the most recent one was like Einhorn and Cliffassness. And they were born in the 60s.

But Einhorn got his comeuppance too by betting against the tech stocks for years. But this is my point. Like there are no, there are very, very few. Every one that we crown eventually, that's why Buffett is so impressive. And the thing is, he did use leverage. He used it leveraging the most intelligent way possible, though. And how come no one has learned from him? None of these people have learned from him.

None of them. It's kind of amazing. Well, Einhorn's tried to start an insurance company. I think Ackman did it too. Anyway, the market is like an ocean and eventually washes everybody away. My joke a couple weeks ago was that, you know, when the tide recedes, that's when you found who's in swimming nude. There's a lot of nude beaches in South Korea.

How's that? The thing is, the market these days, because it moves so fast, everyone feels like a genius or an idiot, and it can happen in like a week. So I tweeted this out. Have you ever been to a naked beach? In Europe, I think I did. Yeah. I mean, it was just a lot of chicks with armpit hair, though.

A lot of bush. Yeah. Now, we did a, when I was in Vienna, we went to a water park, and chicks are going topless down the water slides. It's just normal in Europe. That's a thing. So I wrote this on July 29th. Six out of the seven, Mag 7 are in sizable drawdowns right now.

So six out of the seven, we're down 15% or more. And Microsoft, it's down 30%. These things are getting killed. Two days later, and this Apple was at all-time highs. Two days later, Apple was down almost 15%. Microsoft was up almost 20%. Meadow was down 10%. Amazon was up 20%.

And they've moved more since then. I think Microsoft is 30% off the lows or something. The moves that happen in these stocks now that can make you feel like you pound your chest and be like, I'm the smartest investor in the world. And then you feel like an absolute dumbass a week later. That's what this market does now.

That's what's the semiconductor stocks. People felt, again, invincible. And then they crashed in an instant. And then in one day, after Leopold's fund got, I guess we're still splitting hairs on whether that's a bailout or not. Hellout. No. Got bailed out by Citadel.

No, no, no, no. A bailout is like. Margin call. I think you can, I think it's borderline bailout. After that happened. Sandisco's up 25%. We had these stocks up in one day, 15, 20, 25%. It's really amazing.

It was not a bailout. I'm sorry. That's like a governmental term. That's like taxpayer term. Okay. If Citadel didn't step in, what would have happened? What do you mean? They would have got marching called.

Okay. And that would have cascaded things even more probably, right? I think Citadel stepping in was the thing that really stopped the flow, though. Yeah. I just think a bailout is a special sort of term. I don't know. I think it's kind of a bailout. What's the thing from Warren Pellout?

here. The Leopold liquidation pushed semiconductor single stock volatility to 75%. This is only the third time has reached this level. The other two instances were March 2020 and April 2025. We're in a new world of moves in volatility. We just are. So Toddson has this chart, this table that shows the year, the gain of the S&P 500, and the top 10 or the top 25 contributions to the year-to-date gain, right? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And six of the last eight years, I'm sorry, six of the eight years at the top of the list

where the top ten stocks contributed the biggest to the overall index has happened since 2020. Wow. We are in a new world, obviously. Historical data points have been rendered, not completely useless, but mostly useless. So the type of data points that I love that I've said a million times on the show are behavioral-based. Okay. So, for example, I love stuff like this. Jason Geppert tweeted, the NASCAR 100 lurched, right word, from a three-month low to the best gain in three months during an uptrend.

So to me, that sort of data point is human psychology. And I don't care if that happens in 2020. or 1949. Like that is human behavior and human behavior is immutable. You agree with that? Yeah. All right.

Human nature is the one constant. So, so Jason says the April 2000 signal sucked after three months, but otherwise, otherwise three months later, it's pretty damn good. Positive 86% of the time.

Again, the data point is very clear. You're in an uptrend. Stocks are at a three-month low, and then they have their best gain in their best gain in three months. So that's like, uh-oh, so that's, you're in a bull market. You get a shakeout, right? Because there's bad news.

Uh-oh, what's going on is a bull market over? And then rip. Best gain in three months, everybody back in the boat. And everybody gets back in the boat because the fears were proven to be nothing more than fears. So we are recording this pre-market. And on a pre-market basis, after everything that's going on, two wars, gas price spike.

inflation is sticky, long bond yields are rising, hedge fund blowups, software crash, semi-crash, new Fed chair that everyone apparently hates, we're going to get to that later, and we're back at all-time highs. And when I poo-poo stuff like rising bond yields and government debt crises, maybe I put too much faith in the stock market sometimes. But this is why I don't worry because the stock market's not worried. And maybe that's naive of me. But when I poo-poo all these risks and people say, oh, you're blind, just wait. This is why. The stock market doesn't care

because corporations are still making money. I made this joke on Twitter. I was walking around the other night, and every bar and restaurant, as far as I could see, my wife and I went to Chicago. And on a Tuesday night, we walk around the river,

we went to dinner, and every restaurant is full of people. On a Tuesday night, we do the river walk afterwards for a nice little stroll after dinner down to the lake. Every bar is packed with people. And I wanted to just grab some by the shoulders

and shake him and go, don't you know the 30 years at 5.3%? What are you doing, you idiot? Right? The 30 years are 5.3% and you're drinking an IPA. A hazy IPA. Yeah, you're drinking a $19 cocktail. Ben, Josh and I went out to, we're at a dinner the other night.

And somebody was asking us or talking to us about the semiconductor blob or whatever. And I was like, listen, what do I know? I still think it's like very, very early in the story. And I think the shortage of computer and all that sort of stuff is a real thing. And he said to me, he's like, yeah, but you're always bullish or something like that. He's like, I don't know if he said always. He's like, yeah, but you're bullish. And I was like, it sort of stopped me in my tracks a little bit like, huh, is that how this

person and other think of me as a market commentator? And I feel like I call balls and strikes. The market starts to go lower because it's responding to things that are like bad. And yes, my views will change alongside the market. But the market is so clearly telling you that this is a bull market. To your point, I think we said this last week. Like, we lost the Mac 7. We lost the semiconductors.

And the equate is an all-time high in ripping. Like, what do you bearish about? Right. When the Mag 7 lost, people got, oh, well, it's just semiconductors holding up the market now. Then semiconductors crashed. The market's still up. It's like, okay, what's your next X thing?

But that's always been the case, though, that the bearish argument just sounds smarter. And the bull's, like, you're just a naive idiot. Yeah, we sound stupid. Right. And a year 18 of a bull market. Just wait. respect risk more than most. I'm terrified when the market falls. Right? So, like, I don't view

myself as, uh, and I keep saying this is going to end badly. It just is. Everything's and Tom Cruise, cocktail. Everything ends badly or it wouldn't end. It is at some point, but enjoy the ride while it's here. Um, okay, Goldman Sachs had a good. Are you, are you in on the new Tom Cruise movie, Digger? Oh, I don't know. I'm, uh, cautiously pessimistic. I saw the preview. I have faith on my guy, T.C., but I don't know, man. I don't know. It's a big swing.

It's a big swing. We'll see. I give him credit for trying something besides a 12th Mission Impossible movie. Goldman Sachs had this good piece. I pulled a few good charts. They have really good charts. So they say tech equity

weight is now above tech bubble levels, which some people will look at, go, oh my gosh, but like, duh, this should be way higher. Technology should be a huge part of the market. of course. It should be way high. Yeah, this doesn't scare me at all.

These companies are way better than... All right, we were talking about this the other day. Offline, I think. 60-40 portfolio. Bonds have just stunk this decade. I think you talked about this last week. Like bonds, for the last five years, returns have been...

You got nothing. Golden says they have a rolling three-year 60-40 portfolio and says, balanced portfolios have delivered strong returns in recent years. This is diversification and action. Bonds have stunk. stocks have done well. 60-40 portfolio is up 12, 13, 14% per year in the last three years. It's done really well. That's diversification. That's why anyone who ever says 60-40's dead is trying to say

diversification is dead, and it's not going to die. This is interesting. Ten-year rolling real returns. Inflation adjusted. And this is 60-40 portfolio and then the world portfolio. I think that's like everything. They include like private markets and like the global, they try to build a global portfolio. This, it looks high, but if you look back at, I don't know, it's not super above meeting or mean historically. Just eyeballing it? No, it looks.

Yeah, right? There's been plenty of other times when this has been way higher. This is not something that jumps out at you. Correct. If you showed this chart to somebody blindly, like, not even a market person who just said, like, just comment on this chart, is there anything that jumps out at you? They would say, no. Yeah.

It's on the uptrend. That's it. All right. Let's talk more about investor behavior stuff. So great chart from Bloomberg shows the Goldman Sachs basket of retail favorite stocks. And this was the worst monthly performance since 2020. How about that? So what's in there? I don't know for sure because it's proprietary, but I'm guessing Palantir is in there.

And I'm guessing a lot of the Mac 7 names are in there. Micron, Sandisk. Yeah. The funny thing is, this used to be Goldman Sachs basket of favorite hedge fund stocks. And now it's retail. Remember, that's what they used to show. And I'm guessing, my guess would be if you took the basket of retail stocks and the basket of hedge fund stocks, they're exactly the same. I think you're probably right.

I think you're probably right. All right. So Gungin from the Wall Street Journal tweeted this. So she tweeted this on Wednesday. So this happened last Tuesday. So retail sold a net, $243 million of single stocks yesterday, meeting last Tuesday, the largest one-day outflow since the COVID crash. Holy shit.

So that was the mini capitulation because the next day, the market bounced, right? I think so. So I think that was like the, okay, interesting. Listen to Apple's earnest call. It's Tim Cook's last one, so I want to listen. They never say anything interesting. They didn't say anything interesting this time either, but I don't want to. to listen. And they were talking about the strength of the iPhone 17 because of their AI capabilities.

And I got to tell you, AI can't do shit for Apple. You can't do anything. It's still, when I talk to text, I know there's been a common gripe of mine, but if I say Nix, it writes next. And I have to say, like, no, Nix. And it literally cannot get it right. I was in a, I was in upstate New York over the weekend. We took Logan to Rookie Day, which is, he's going to sleepway camp next year, so we spent a day there. So we dropped him off, and I went to Hyde Park, which I've always wanted to visit. Hyde Park is famously the home of FDR, and there is a Vanderbilt mansion down the road. So we had nothing but time, plenty of time. So we took a drive there. Lovely, by the way, great time. Very historic of you. Well, you know, I'm a big history guy. And I think

bunch of pictures and I wanted to send it to my dad. And I should be able to say to Apple, hey, Siri, send all of the pictures from Hyde Park to my dad. And it can't even do, I mean, it can't do it. It's, isn't that basic shit? It's hard to believe. I had to change my, my wife, I had to go from Courtney to wife in my phone because I would say call Courtney. And it would always call Corey or it would do some other name. And I'd say call Courtney. And it wouldn't work. So I had to change it to wife. So it just says wife in my phone now because that's what it gets. It's no better than the automated services that you're like, you know, when Larry David is yelling at the incurb.

It really is hard to bleed. And guess what? The stock market doesn't care. No, you're right. We care. All right, let's talk about South Korea. The Kaspi Index at one point was up, I don't know. I think it had doubled for the year.

And then in five weeks, I mean, it's a semiconductor trade. but in five weeks, the entire market, which is, I think, the sixth biggest stock market in the world, collapse 40% and it's still today up almost 50% on the year. So, again, a 40% drop in five weeks, and it's still up 50% on the year. Unbelievable. It really is. Again, one of the biggest stock markets in the world. But so that story is interesting.

So they got liquidated. Yes. I think the number was 3.5% of the entire population of South Korea got a margin call. Can that be? It's pretty high number. That's what I read. All right. So they have a great chart showing the one day changed and then they show individual

investors net buy value for Caspi Index. And then they show foreign investors. So individual investors got liquidated and foreign investors bought the shit out of the dip. It is, by the way, it's Tuesday morning, 938. And the S. S.P 500 has gaped higher, meaning it opened higher to a new all-time high. Ding, ding, ding. Meaning the highest the stock market has ever been.

and the history of mankind. Isn't these people getting margin called and Leo getting margin called? This is the thing as a stock market investor. You just have, survival is the key. Just never get yourself in the position where you're a forseller. That's like, it sounds so simple

and people just can't help themselves. Ben, one of the things that I've been saying over the last couple of years is one of the things that people use to dismiss the bull market or cast doubt is all of the degenerate behavior. Oh, look at people buying stocks and leverage and they're buying quantum computing and whatever the next hot thing is. And they use that as a way to dismiss the validity of everything else that's happening in the

market. And I understand that impulse, right? It makes sense. Like, oh, there's so much speculation. This is going to end badly and it's going to end soon. I get it. And what I've said to that is, listen, we live in a world of 24. of hype, everything happens with hyper speed, with the message boards and people able to colonize

on stocks way quicker than have in the past, do not let that behavior distract you, because that is never going away. That sort of degenerate behavior is with us literally forever, unless there is another Great Depression. People will continue to speculate. It's only accelerating. Robin had said that in the call. It's only accelerating the speculation.

Okay. So I really love to see the fact that in this bull market, a lot of that behavior is getting punished, not just in the double levered semiconductor trade, but all of the meme stocks, all of the, we have our degenerate Dow stocks, which is basically a basket of meme stocks. And they got cut in a half. So while the legitimate bull market is reaching new all-time highs, the degenerate bull market is in shape. The degenerate bull market is in shape. shambles. Yeah. How could you not love to see that? Yeah, this is not like the meme stock stuff with GameStop back in the day. That was AMC and GameStop. That was so stupid, right?

This is different now. People have kind of learned. The retail crowd. It's different. All right, this is interesting. Jeff Attack, a friend from Morningstar. Behavior Gap is alive and well. So the DRAM ETF, DRAM.

DRAM. Right? So he's saying, since inception in April, it had 26 billion in net assets by the end of July. This is before the fall. I think the DRAM fell 30% or something, maybe 30 or 40%. He asked, how did it get so big so fast?

He said it gathered 26 billion in net inflows over that span, which is kind of crazy. But here's the thing. Over that time, it had massive returns. So it has 26 billion in assets. 26 billion came in, but the fund earned 102% return over that time. So what does that mean?

What does it mean? Average investor lost money in the fund. Investors lost $1.6 billion in DRAM because they came in so late and then it crashed. Is there something though, I understand how I understand how like the math works. Because on average, it's a calculation that makes sense. But is there like something weird in that calculation that like makes it true but also not exactly? true, but misleading. What this tells you is that investors did not

take part in those huge gains. They came in later. No, it tells you the average dollar didn't do well. It doesn't tell you like the actual median investors' experience. It tells you the average dollar. Right, but it just tells you that if you look on the chart, most of the money flowed in as it

peaked. But for example, and I don't think this is the case. I'm just using this. If an advisor put this in their model portfolio, Now, I know it's 26 billion. It's a huge number. So that's not the case. But, like, I think that some of these, sometimes these data can be factually accurate,

but not telling the entire story. Like, I don't think the average investor in Dram lost money. Could be wrong. On a dollar basis, of course, because so much money came in, that's the point. The money flows in. Same thing happened with, with ARC. All the money flowed in after the performance had already been good. And then it crashed.

Right. We'll see. More true than not true. Maybe I'm netpicking. A little bit. All right. You mentioned Todd Sohn earlier. this is a crazy chart.

Cumulative daily ETF equity flows. He puts us out by year going back to 2017. And each year, it shows the equity flows throughout the year. And obviously it goes up until the end total flows. And each year it goes up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Each year is higher than the next. 2026 is in another stratosphere. Look at this chart.

This is insane. It's 50% higher than it was last year, which was a record? I'm going to, so we have Todd on TCAF next week. I'm going to talk about this because what can be responsible for this gap? Like obviously, DRAM is in here? I'm thinking, is part of it? Is it, it's probably SMH too? It's got to be all AI shit.

I'm guessing it's, that's a huge number, though, that money just keeps flowing into these ETS. And part of it again, we've talked is like retirees rolling over the 401Ks, right? Maybe going from mutual ones, ETSs. I don't know if that's a big. part of it. Not, no, because the damn burst. This is like, this is a massive, right? Yeah.

It's wild. Okay. I, uh, we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago, and I guess it's, I guess it's happening. So, CNBC reports, Trump Media and Technology Group's new paid data service launched on August 1st, providing faster access to truth social posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts on the platform. Truth API, the new application program interface is designed to get firms a direct, license, real-time feed of the platform's most market-moving truths, interim CEO Kevin McGuert said

and released announcing launch. Is that legal? I can't believe that they're not even trying to put some sort of positive spin on this and go, hey, whatever we earn on this, we're going to give it away to people in need or something. I don't know. By the way, Trump family is the largest shareholder in Trump media, the public company that operates, truth social, obviously. But imagine companies we're doing this. Imagine Apple's like, hey, truth Apple, or whatever they're going to call it, where we're just going to release our earnings a little bit, you know, maybe like five minutes early. You read about these politicians historically, and they seem like heroes, Lincoln, Washington,

FDR, Teddy Roosevelt. And I just feel like we're just never getting those type of superhero politicians again, because they wouldn't, if they came up today, they wouldn't want to be the president. And also, you kind of need to be a dick in the social media world to rise to the top. like I don't care I don't care what party you belong to like if you're going to

galvanize the masses you have to just say the stupidest shit that appeals to the dumbest people and unfortunately that is South Park called us in 2004 and they had this whole episode

about how they were voting for a school mascot and Kyle didn't want to vote because the two options were a douche and a turd sandwich and I feel like that's just that's where we are South Park again

they were right all the rest of our life we're going to be voting between a douche and a turn sandwich. All right. I have a theory about the Fed that I've talked about for a while. Joel Wisenthal tweeted. Bank of America says the market's reaction to Kevin Warsh resembles an emerging market facing a credibility shock.

They talked about how the current, when he talked, I mean, all the macro people I follow hated his press conference and seemed to think that he said he's not going to talk as much, he's not communicate as much. He's getting rid of forward guidance. All these people said, this is crazy. And so Bank of America said he got a steeper curve. Equities went down in a weaker dollar. And that's like what you'd see from EM banks.

Now, the macro people, probably not great. The macro people are up in arms about this. They, the people I follow are not big fans of Warsh. They don't like his press conferences. They don't like the way he flip-flops on issues. They think he's too political. I have a theory, and I think it's going to put the test, that the Fed really only matters like 5% of the time.

And it matters when they are the lender of a last resort and when we are in a crisis. That's the only time the Fed really matters. The other time, I think it's basically astrology for middle-aged men that talk about the Fed's forecasts. I think the Fed really, honestly, besides in a crisis, doesn't do much. Their forecasts are always wrong. They never help out when there's an actual bubble.

They always are way too late to the party. Like, they want to come in and rescue after the fact. That's the only thing that the Fed is good for. Am I wrong? I don't think so. This may be a test where he's going to say, like, we're not going to do this stuff anywhere, and the macro people are up in arms.

They hate it. Yeah, I still, the Fed is astrology for finance bros. I think that's what the Fed is. Like, their forecasts are never right. So what, well, it's a, it's a expectation function and blah, blah, blah, blah. They're never right. Who cares? Well, I don't think anybody's, I don't know that that's true.

What, they talk, they set guidance, and set interest rates. I mean, it doesn't. It matters, they matter. I just think 25 basis points here or there doesn't matter. in the grand scheme of things, it's when we need them to really act. That's the only time the Fed matters.

That's my... All right. And when we need them to act, it matters, almost more than anything. All right. So I have a little new segment here. I rewatched Obsession, which I think you did too.

I saw from recommendations. And as I was rewatching again, I thought, what if you did one wish willow for the economy? I love this. Okay? So I did one wish willow for the economy. And so you break it,

and you go, I wish we had 3% mortgage rates. again. And the economy would go, great. Here's a massive recession. Enjoy. Two, I wish income inequality would improve. Break it. Fine. Here's a pandemic. Here's 9% inflation. Everyone hates it. Stocks fall 80%. You're welcome. Yes. Three, I wish home prices would fall. I want lower home prices. Break it. Okay, fine. Here's a global financial crisis. Good luck buying a home. The banks won't lend to you anymore. Housing prices are down, though. There. I love this concept. How did I do? I love it.

I also rewatch, rewatchable. I have rewatched rewatchables. I rewatch obsession. Thanks to the rewatchables. Uh, what a fucking great movie. Holy shit. So I rewatched with Robin. And at the end the movie, she goes, that was so stupid. And I immediately responded, you're an idiot. I mean, how do you not like that movie? So now, she listened to the watchables with me. We listened on the way up. And she got more into it as the, there was so many Eastericks in that movie. So many things that I... It was fun to watch it again the second time because the first time you're just going,

what is going to happen here? Oh my gosh. It's very similar to rewatching six cents because the first time you are so immersed in what's happening and the second time you see it through a new lens. What a movie. Wow. It really is. Yes.

It was just as good than the second time for me too. So I talked about the mortgage rate thing. It's back to almost 7%. 6.8% last week for the 30-year mortgage. How does anybody buy a house? How does anybody get to buy a house? It first hit 6% in 2020, the fall of 2022 when inflation did. And everyone, including us, thought like, okay, this is short-lived.

Like, rates will go back down. Just wait a little bit. It'll be like a year or two. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, quote. We did not say that. Are you sure? I'm positive. Not about the rates I per se.

I don't remember what we said about rates. But when people said, should I wait to buy a house because I think price is going down? Oh, okay. We definitely did not do it. You're right. We said you do not time the Hasey market based on rates. Don't try to. So credit loss in 2022, you're right.

We said, like, do not wait. Because imagine people were going to buy house in 2022. Now, in fairness, a lot of people were just priced out, which obviously is horrendous. It's four years later. It's crazy. Again, people have been, and I'm sure there were people who bought, who did adjustable rate mortgages and said, fine, I'll do the adjust rate mortgage. It'll be a lower monthly payment. And then I'll refinance when rates fall.

Yeah, well, it's almost five years. By the way, I think this is why I don't really love when you poo-poo interest rates. Because, yeah, the stock market might not be bothered by it. Okay. So this is why, though. So this is good segue to my next one. This is the treasure yield curve. If you showed this treasure yield curve, the current one,

so this is from Exhibit A, and it shows it now versus 12 months ago, and you can see really the changes in the belly of the curve. Boy, that's a really fun thing to say, right? If you're in finance and you say the belly of the curve, that's... I'd say, like, Ben, for our non-vergin listeners, what is the belly of the curve?

The belly of the curve is like the middle. So the two to 10, two to seven years, like it's the middle of the curve. And when that's, you say that's the belly. moving, like, oh, the belly of the curve looks really attractive right now. And if you showed this yield curve to a finance student in Econ 101, and you say, this is the yield curve, what do you think they go? This looks normal. This is the way it should look. This is the way a real curve should look. And so I agree, I poo-poo rising rates for the economy because I don't think it's

going to lead to a government debt crisis. I really don't. I think people worry about that are wrong. You know what you're right. It does impact mortgage rates. That's where the bigger reason is. And I wrote a whole blog post about this saying that, yes, the mortgage rates, that's the thing that matters more than like deficits and government debt crises and all this stuff. It's a mortgage rates. You know which belly is, is not looking attractive? Mine. I look terrible. I wore one of my Tommy John shirts the other day, like the, the, what is it called? Slim fit one? I can't remember what it's called. It's like the tight one. And Robin said, she just gave me a look. I'm like, a look of disgust. Yeah, she's like, what do you wear? It's like bunching up, your belly. What?

Time to call your personal finance or personal trainer again. Come on. I'm out of control. Do it. I'm out of control, Ben. All right. This is, this is a dystopic scene. I went to get lunch the other day.

So I'm in the city once a day, once a week. I'm in the city on Thursday. And that's my very busy day. I don't have time to grab a big meal. So what do I do? I grab a smoothie. That part of the story is completely irrelevant. But there's a place called Pura,

Vita, Miami. And it's right across the park. And you walk in, I think I've said this before, and it's like Abercrombie and Fitch for lunch. It just smacks you in the face with a fragrance. It's like, it's bizarre. Oh, I went to this place. Last time I was in New York got a salad or something. Oh, yeah? Okay. All right. Anyway, it's wildly popular. So I pre-order my smoothie. I go and I pick it up. And there's 25 dudes with bike helmets on waiting to deliver people a $28 salad. And it was just, imagine an alien landing on Earth. Or even like us seven years ago were shown this picture and described what was happening. You'd be like, you'd be very confused.

Did you watch the Good Fortune movie with Seth Rogan and Keanu Reeves? I have not. Is that on Apple? I don't know what's not. Anyway, go on. There's a whole thing about this. He's about this thing, all the door-dast drivers waiting in line for someone. it's, yes, I won't spell it up for you, but it's the whole part of the movie. I know.

It was a pretty dark scene. All right. On the other side of that, the Wall Street Journal, they interviewed these people who just have to have multiple engines on their boats. And this is probably more in New York than it is in Michigan. But they interviewed this guy who wanted this big boat in Miami, and he wanted four boats, four motors on his boat. Okay? And these high horsepower outboards range from 200 to 600 horsepower and cost anywhere from 20,000. power and costs anywhere from 20,000 to 70,000 per motor. And they said they've helped

the boating industry navigate the choppy economy better than others, making price and discretionary goods such as RVs. And the whole point was, why do you need this much power on your boat? And it was like, listen, I have to get to the fishing hole as fast as possible, as fast as humanly possible. And my thing as a voter is the fishing boats on the lake, those are like the F-250s on the highway. They just drive with reckless abandon. They dart across to lake as fast as seemingly possible because they want to get to those fish fishing holes for other people.

It's hilarious to me that you need that much power for a fishing boat. People have money. They're going to buy it. Yeah. Ben, we've been talking about GLP-1s and the impact that they're having in the stock market.

This is wild. So this is at the cover store in Barrens. Morgan Stanley raised its 2035 GLP-1 sales prediction from $150 billion to $190 billion, from diabetes and obesity alone. That would mean 30% penetration by then amongst obese Americans up from 6% last year. I'm shocked that only 6% of obese Americans are taking this drug.

That's very surprising to me. I wonder what the percentage of the population is obese. 30 to 40%? Sure, sounds right. So there's a massive market for this. I do wonder if there are a lot of older doctors who aren't. quite on board yet with this stuff. We kind of go, no, this is voodoo stuff.

We're not doing this. And it's going to take a group of, we have to push a lot of the baby boomer doctors out of the way, no offense to them, and get a new younger crop to get these and like really start writing those scripts. People have very strong feelings about other people taking weight loss drugs. And you shouldn't. This should not be a stigma at all. People should not be ashamed of doing this.

All right, Ben. I'm coming clean. I want to take it. Do it. I don't care. Try it. You already have, you know, irritable bowel syndrome. It's not going to make it any worse. Hey, that's between us. Okay. I mean, I've heard of people trying to like microdotes this stuff or take it so they can lose some way. Yeah, I want a micro, I want a microdose. I go for it. I don't care. It's going to make you healthier. Jumps, give it. If it gives you a jump start, go. But obviously, the thing people say is, well, if you want it to really work, you have to take it, like, You can't stop. You have to keep taking it or you have to change your leg stuff. Say, my problem is I am a child. I have no willpower.

This stuff changes your willpower. This is my one wish Willa. All right. Give it a try. I wish to not be a disgusting mess. All right. This is a tweet from Sam Altman. Cool use case of chat, CBT work I heard last night. Connect your family calendars and explain your kids' interests. Every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid's

soccer game that afternoon, one kid's upcoming birthday, some news, et cetera. So Bucco Capital quote tweeted that and said, over the next few years, you are going to have to fight with everything you've got to retain your humanity. They will try to convince you to give up, connecting with each other, to give up truly being alive. It will be the most important fight of your whole life. Now, I love that he said that earnestly, he's not joking. I mean, obviously Sam's tweet is so absurd.

So, so absurd. These people are, these people are not people. And I don't want to like, I'm not saying like all of San Francisco because not everybody's like that. Not all the tech people are so lost in the sauce. But what the fuck are you talking about? No. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not turning my child's calendar into a podcast.

Well, this is why I don't really believe any of their dire predictions because they don't understand human. This is like a robot pretending to be a human in a lot of ways. They don't, they, these are again, intelligent people with no sort of It's funny because I was thinking about this the other day about the AI world that we're going to be stepping into. So we had a swing set in our backyard for like 10 years now. And it was just the kids don't use it anymore. And it's kind of falling apart.

And the wood is getting moldy. And I wanted to take it down. Yeah. We're going to do some work for our backyard. I wanted to take it down. And my neighbor, when he had his take it down a few years ago, called a company. They came in like a half hour. Cut it down, took it out, hauled it away.

And we had nothing to do last Saturday because the kids got back from camp. And I said, George, get some gloves on and grab a hammer. we're going back there, we're going to take it down ourselves. So we took all these tools. I took a chainsaw and a hammer, and we hammered this thing, and George and I took the whole swing set down ourselves. And we broke stuff,

and he had the best time of his life, hitting stuff. I love that. And I thought, like, do people who work with their hands and do physical activity, are they going to be the happiest people in our new tech overlord world? Like Peter Gibbons in office space, did he have it figured out where he was more happy

being in a construction worker at the end than he was working in front of a desk? And I do wonder that. The people who retain that physicality and that use their hands more, those are going to be the happiest people in the AI world. Don't you think? We all just got to get out there and chop some wood.

It was so much fun. My son, I felt like he's going to probably hammer my toe or something, and we made it out with unscated, thankfully, using chainsaws and hammers. But, hey, I got it done. It's done. You have a chainsaw? It's a very little chainsaw. You don't have a chainsaw.

I have a chainsaw, but it's, I mean, it's like this big. So on the other end of the spectrum, I have this personality, like, defect where I will just let shit linger unresolved forever, like that Alexa thing that's been plugged in making that sound since I moved in 11 months ago, whatever. Yeah, see, I have the OCD thing where if I have something to do, it annoys my wife a lot because I have to, I have the blinders and I have to get it done. Well, I'd rather be you to me because I have the opposite of OCD, whatever that is. So these posters behind me have been literally in bubble wrap since the end of last September when I moved into this house. And Trevor, one of our multi-talented financial advisors, Trevor's a photographer. He's a man of many talents.

He, and he came over last week and he said, what do you got? You got some housework for me? I said, do I have a whole punch list for you? So he did a great job hanging these pictures. there's five inches in between. He really set me up. While he was doing this, I went outside. We were going to go on the water when he was done.

I had some people over. I tried to inflate. Robin got a paddle board. And it's an inflatable padder, paddor, paddough. Geez, I can't say that word. Paddle board. An inflatable padder paddle board. I should have that whole part out of whatever.

So I have an electric pump. And bet I shit you not. It was just a chef's kiss. I couldn't figure out how to get the air into the paddleboard. Like the screw on it, you had to like push it in at a certain angle. So I come inside, I'm like, Trevor, I swear to God, dude, can you help me get some air into this balloon? I have one of those, too. It works pretty good once you get it out.

It kind of locks on there. Not to brag, I figured out eventually, but it was giving me a little bit of problems. Okay. This is why you outsource. I do. I really do. Can't believe you let another man and hang pictures in your office? No, no, no, Robin wouldn't.

I do it. I can hang a picture. Oh, she wouldn't let you. She wouldn't let me. All right, this is interesting. So, Vlad from Robin Hood during their earnings, said more than 100,000 customers have opened the gentic trading accounts. So I think, to me, this is like the sports betting ETF.

The whole point of trading is it's fun. Right. Like, am I beating the market in my trading account? No. Like, you know, you get some, let's sometimes you have some good months, some bad months, whatever. Yeah, but don't you think that these traders

who do this and implement rules, they're going to do so much better? I mean, there's not going to be a lot of alpha here, obviously, but they're going to do so much better than they would of using their discretion. You're absolutely right. I'm not questioning the results. I'm questioning, like,

the entertainment value. The sustainability of this. Like, are people going to be like, are people going to be like, I use an agentic thought to trade. But there's going to be so much tinkering and back and forth with the AI. Let's try this. Let's add this.

Let's change this rule. 100,000 people, that's a lot. All right. Let's talk crypto really fast. So duality research had a really interesting post where he shared that since Bitcoin peaked last October, cumulative ETF outflows have reached $10.4 billion at their maximum. But 9.3 billion of that, or nearly 90% of the entire drawdown in the ETF flows, occurred during

that final two-month stretch alone. So he has this great chart that showed the peak, the decline with the outflows over a 30-day period. And we really did see capitulation over the, like the, I guess, the May to July decline. And in fact, Thursday-day flows finally turned positive again. So I thought that was interesting. But I also thought what was interesting was the fact that the price has not made. moved with the software bounce. So we spoke to somebody from Grayscale recently and why is Bitcoin not keeping up in the risk on rally? And my explanation was it's software and it's being treated

as such. It's being punished like a software stock. But software bounced and Bitcoin did it. Yeah, that's not what you want the correlation to break down. So if you look at just the Bitcoin and Ethereum off the highs from the ETFs, Ethereum's down more than 62%. Bitcoin is still on 50%. And they just haven't. Then they've just kind of been dead money down there. It feels dead, huh? It always does. Every time it feels deader than usual.

I bought a little bit yesterday. Just taking a little stamp. Okay. What, there's negativity and private credit now again? Just complete, complete washout. Apathy. All right. That's a thing.

This is interesting. You talked before about spiking the football on people and like kicking where they're down or whatever. Like that's just something we do. And then we build them back up. There is no like, there's the apathy thing with Bitcoin. There's no people like dunking on Bitcoin right now.

Ah, see, I told, like there was a lot of that in the past. Like I told you, I mean, you're right. It's half of that. It's not even that even. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. You're right. All right.

So there hasn't been any negative news in private credit in a while, except for the story that I missed. This is kind of nuts. Let me read this lead. the Wall Street Journal. The problems from Mark Walter's sprawling sports and finance empire began with an internal whistleblower complaint. The complaint questioned how Walter's asset management firm Guggenheim Investments booked

revenue from dealings with insurance companies and had drawn interest from federal prosecutors by last year, people familiar with the matter said. Within months, the investigation evolved to focus on investments in private credit, a lending business that has boomed on Wall Street in the past decade and a half and which supplied the financial firepower for the financial firepower for. for Walter's 2012 acquisition of the Los Angeles Dodgers alongside partners. The U.S. Attorney's Office of Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission are now examining how around $16 billion in loans extended to companies tied to Walter

or his conglomerate, TWG Global, wound up on the books of insurance companies he owns after passing through a third entity. The authorities are trying to determine whether the activity constituted fraud, Doesn't it seem like if the Sopranos were out today, they'd somehow get into racketeering and money laundering through private credit funds? 100%. Right? It seems like it's so esoteric and hard to understand. It seems like a place where if you wanted to commit fraud, you probably could.

That's obviously no knowledge of the fraud in his case. Speaking of that, the actor who played Big Pussy Died. Yes. Did you ever watch the show yet? I'm like stuck on the fourth season. Okay. That was probably one of the fastest. has ever done in my wife is a sopranos.

At some point, I'm going to do it again as well. One other story that I missed that I thought was kind of interesting. So Blue Owl, this is from the FT. Blue Owl launched this technology focus fund in 2022. After consulting with UBS about creating a vehicle that would be suited to the blanks clients, at least 60% of the money the fundraise came from UBS clients, most of whom were based in Asia. That's an interesting wrinkle to the story.

Huh. Isn't that wild? Why is that? Now, this wasn't their flagship. I think it was like a couple of billion dollars. But that's something you don't think about when you're investing is who are the other LPs? Well, institutions, that's a lot of what they look into, where they should be. Anyway, Blue Owl reported earnings this week and not terrible.

Stock market doesn't care. Stock still out like 60%. All right, let's move on to, so the year-over-year iPhone revenue change. So the iPhone had been sort of dead as the wrong word. It just had it been consistently growing at all for like years and years and years. So for the last three quarters,

the revenue growth grew 23, 22, and 22%. Most best June quarter ever. I don't know. I have the iPhone 17. Doesn't do shit. What are you talking about? You have a supercomputer in your pocket. You complaining about it?

I'm not complaining about it. I love my phone. What does it do better than the 16? Oh. The battery doesn't die? I don't know. I have no idea. I'm sure there's a threat on Twitter

someone that tells you all the... I was about to scream like Mad Dog Russo. Like, fix Siri. Just freaking... What I have? Make it better. For God's sakes. I'm going to get Claude on here someday

that's going to just use Claude to do it and not Siri? Um... All right. People are still traveling. July 26, I'm sorry, July 23rd, was the busiest day for commercial air travel ever. I know everyone wants to, that's crazy. I know everyone wants to say like everything, the economy's fake and it's all K-shaped and it's only rich people, but.

It's not. The planes are full. The restaurants, when I was walking on Chicago talking about that, all the restaurants and bars were full of young people. And I keep being told how miserable young people are because of social media and they can't buy a home. That's not what I saw. I saw a bunch of young people who probably have entry-level jobs, smiling and drinking

and laughing at the bars, and the planes are full, and the theme parks are full, and the bars and restaurants are full. If you still think, like, the economy is just all fake, then you're not paying attention to what's going on around you. You're too into social media. It's so, it's so nuts how social media is like a warped fourth dimension. Yes. People don't believe their, their eyes anymore. They just believe what they see on social media. It's really, okay, I, I obviously, I was about the wrongest I've ever been about movies, and you were right. I still can't believe the Michael Jackson movie is so big, though. That, I don't know.

The child stuff didn't keep people away. The biggest pop star in the history of the world. Yeah, but, I mean, didn't end very great. Okay, so here's the thing. I had my faith in movies restored through obsession and the Odyssey. So I wouldn't saw The Odyssey. I'll save that for recommendations. But I think my faith in humanity has been taken away now

that Spider-Man is the biggest movie ever. Because what are we doing here? The 11th Spider-Man movie is going to be the biggest movie ever. I thought we were done with the superhero stuff. This, to me, I don't like it. I love Spider-Man, and I have no problem with this. I watched the last one that had all three Spider-Man. Like, do we need another Spider-Man?

Come on. Oh, he had his memory. Everyone had their memory wiped, and we're going to do this. And it's a, there's three Spider-Man. I don't know why you're taking this posture. What do we mean, do we need another Spider-Man? It's the biggest movie ever. What are you talking about?

Let's make real movies. This is not a real movie. Dude, CGI. Bullshit. It's by all accounts, it's an awesome movie that everybody loves. People reject bad superhero movies.

I thought we were done. That's all. What's that? I thought we were done with a superhero movie. That's all. I'm sick of them. So don't fucking watch it. Okay, I'm just saying,

it just pains me a little bit that Spider-Man is going to be the biggest movie of all time. It shouldn't be. The 11th Spider-Man. It's not the 11th Spider-Man. It is. Look it up. It's literally the 11th Spider-Man. The Tobin-McGuire ones and the Andrew Garfield ones are different.

Do you realize how many there have been? It's really the 11th. I'm looking it up. Where it stands? You're mad that people love Spider-Man? Okay, if you include the Spider-Verse movies, have been 12. Have you seen Spider-Man? Have you seen it? No, I'm sure I'll watch this into my son. I watch all of them when they come on Disney or whatever. But the last one was kind of cute because they brought Toby McGuire back, and Andrew Garfield. I actually didn't like the last one.

I didn't enjoy that. That was too much. I actually think the Andrew Garfield ones are my favorite. I can't believe Spider-Man wasn't over after number three when Toby McGuire was dancing down the sidewalk. I literally laughed in the theater. That was so cringe.

Pretty bad. When he's twirling the cane or something. Okay. So do you want to do your victory lap-up movies because it was the biggest day ever or something? I can't talk about it because I was right. No, I'm giving you credit. I said, I was wrong.

You were right. biggest. All right, Eric Davis. Brand new day has secured the biggest opening weekend ever at the domestic box office with $360 million. I think it's done over a billion dollars already globally. And all the while, the Odyssey is still rocking ass. So I think it was one of the biggest weekends ever for the box office. So I think it's wonderful.

Ben, did you see Rick Moranis was at the Spaceballs There was a spaceball something at Is it Comic Con? I don't know what that was. It's like the first movie he's done in forever. That guy was awesome. I can't wait.

I haven't seen him since Little Giants. Where has he been? He retired from acting. All right, so there is, we're going to overdo it with the nostalgia stuff. The same way that we over did it with superheroes and the same way that we're going to overdo it with video game movies.

All right, McCauley Culkin, and I'm here for this part. Macaulay Culkin is allegedly, I think Bellany was talking about this or somebody. I can't remember. If McCauley Coulkin makes a new home alone, it's going to do $2 billion. That could be the biggest movie of all time. So he's the dad, obviously? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Are you in for that or are you mad? It's the fifth home alone, Ben. I mean, it's not going to know, it's been like eight of them. It's not going to be any good, but I'll watch it. Oh, it'll be great. You think so? Yeah, I do.

Catherine O'Hara is not around anymore. I don't know. So is the dad. The both of parents are dead now. Classic that guy. All right. Michael B. Jordan is doing the Thomas Crown Affair reboot. Okay, I love the Thomas Crown Affair, but you can't say like that's an untouchable movie by any means because it's already been redone once.

Definitely not untouchable. I like, I like Heist movies. I'll be around for that. But leaning more into the nostalgia. So Clue of the sequel series with Alicia Silverstone is ordered. at Paramount Plus. Okay, come on. No one wants that.

I mean, I don't want this. But there is, there is truly a bold market and nostalgia. I still can't believe that she ends up with her stepbrother in the movie. I still am not over that to this day. Paul Rudd is her stepbrother and she ends up dating at the end. That's like a very elevated porn movie, if you think about it. Very weird. So Chart Kid Matt wrote a blog post that there's a bull market nostalgia.

And he looked at Google Trends for things like live events and Vine. and Boombox and 1990s, and they're all up into the right. People are yearning for yesteryear. The funny thing is I've been watching a lot of the 90s movies with my daughter as we go through our rom-coms. A lot of the stuff from the 90s aged pretty well, actually. Like a lot of the fashion choices they made

would still be okay to it. There's not any that you go, oh my God, what were people thinking back then? It's really not that bad. And not like the 70s and 80s, we go, oh, holy cow, that hair or that, you know, it's not as bad as you think. Well, that was the cocaine-fueled.

True. Mania. Well, let me have to say, I know you're a big rom-com guy, and I've learned to love rom-coms in my later years. But I was thinking about the rewatchables did Hitch. And I never saw Hitch. You know why? I know it was a huge movie.

I remember when it came out. I love Hitch. Is Hitch the movie where Will Smith gets, like, his face blown up by a big? Yeah. Okay. It came out in 2005. I was 20 years old. I'm not watching a rom-com by myself with my boys when I'm 20 years old.

Yeah, that's true. You know, I did watch a lot of them with my mom, I feel like. I've always just been a sucker for rom-coms. Like, I love Hitch. I guess that's probably right when I started dating my wife, too. So we probably saw it at the theater. I've always loved rom-coms for whatever reason. They don't make good ones anymore.

You got to watch the classics. I thought the one with Sidney Sweeney and Glenn Powell was right. Yeah, Glenn Powell should be doing a lot more of those. All right. Ben, so I was talking to Chris last week after my illness. And Chris said, word for word, you're never like that. You're never a sick person. I can probably think of three or four times you've been sick that I know you.

Quite the juxtaposition between you accusing me of being a sickly person, like a young Teddy Roosevelt. Because Chris just doesn't pay attention, apparently. You're sick all the time. I'm sick regular. Okay. When you get sick, though, you get really, really sick. Well, I get very dramatic. Yeah.

You're like, I was in bed for 36 hours straight. It didn't move a pinky. That is true. That is true. So speaking of things that happened last week, we, I had to catch a train early in the morning. And this happens, I know this is not unique to us. I think this is very typical. Every single time we leave the house, it's an emergency.

And it's not my fault. It's always Robbins. Like, every single time we leave, she has got like four bags, water bottles, can't find the key. Is that true in your household as well? Of course. Okay, right. I think that's pretty standard. So I wanted to play her the clip of the Cologne thing from last week.

I thought she would think that was cute. She did not think it was cute. So we were already on, we were already on high alert. You know, we were just young at each other for getting me to the train. Like, I got to be there. It's 804. Yeah, it happens. So during the unwind, I'm trying to play her.

play this clip for her, and she was listening, and she was, God, shut up. Like, get to the point. Stop talking. And I got to admit, I got to admit, she had a point. It was a lot of talking. Okay. We did get a lot of clone recommendations for your son, though. And I just picked out a few because these ones have had in the past. So someone said, there was an actual Michael Jordan clone in the 90s. And I remember this completely. My first girlfriend gave it to me for Christmas. And I had it. And I was a little bit. And I got it had to be terrible. Polo was another one, the blue polo.

I definitely had that when I was in high school or college. I feel like there was multiple polo. There was the blue polo with like the American flag sideways. The blue one with the silver top I had. I don't know if you and I were talking about somebody. I have cologne bottles from 2004. They last forever. Yeah, they do.

Anything else on the cologne? Someone said to start them out with an ex body spray. but I think Polo is not a bad way to start. All right, two short stories. I was sitting on my porch the day, and the door to our porch, I kept opening, it was squeaking. Every time I'm like, God, this is so annoying.

So I went and got the WD40 and I just sprayed it, and it goes away, like magic. And I feel like, I don't know when WD40 was invented. 100 years ago, maybe. Like, in the past, people just had to deal with stuff that annoyed them. Now we have stuff that can, like, just fix. Like, WD40 is a miracle that it works.

Such a good point. Spray a little bit, like, One other thing. In my office, it's a shared office complex, I'm in an office by myself. And there's always people that come in here to solicit or like, hey, do you know where the person across the hall is? Like, no, I, by myself, I don't know them. So the guy comes in yesterday, and I'm like, yes. And he goes, do you have any paper shredding needs? I'm from West Michigan shredding company. And I'm like, eh, he goes, let me guess. You're all digital now, huh? I said, yeah. He goes, do you have a business card I can take? I said, no, I don't really,

not a business. He goes, okay. And walked out. I'm like, man, there's a guy who's used to get in turned down. I mean, that is a company that is just, right? I'm sure there's people who still need stuff shredded. Like, I had a friend growing up who his dad was a private investigator, and he would make us take all his boxes to, like, the industrial shredder. We'd have to sit there and watch so all the papers were shredded to make sure they were. Wait, hang on, pause. What a crazy job. Yeah, right? I think he said he mostly followed around like divorced couples to see if there's a, you know, are they having an affair for the divorce person? I think it was a lot of that. I feel like I feel like private investigators should be a more movie trope.

The only one I can think of is Pat Healy. Yeah, you're right. But yeah, he was just a very normal guy, but I think it wasn't as exciting as you'd think from the books and movies. All right, recommendations. I'll go first because I saw The Odyssey, and it's funny, I saw The Odyssey and walked out, and the kind of movie you walk out and you go,

holy shit. One of those, you know? I thought that a lot of people talked about the Cyclops scene. I thought the Trojan horse scene was like an all-time movie scene. the music and the, we were in like the dobly atmosphere. So like it was like pounding our seats. Like that whole scene I thought was just an all-timer. He was in the horse with them.

That's how he shot that. Christopher Nolan. So I want to read. So I'm still a physical magazine guy for GQ. And, uh, you know, you really are gentlemen Cordley's core audience. Oh, totally. I'm a GQ guy. Like you're fit.

You like to look good. you run, you're like clothing, you like fashion and movies. They had a big profile about the movie and how to make it. Because that's kind of, I was at a store in Chicago shopping for a shirt. And the guys at the counter were talking about the Odyssey. I said, I saw it last night. Did you hear how they did the Cyclops scene? Did you hear how they did this scene?

Like, people love talk about that stuff with the movie. So it's a very social movie. So anyway, in this story, they talk about Christopher Nolan, how he inspires both devotion and a certain kind of masochism. And they talk about how Matt Damon was watching Nolan's team do something spectacular. build some platform off the side of a mountain really quickly that you could put a techno crane on. And he said the assistant director saw Damon, like, marveling at this. And he told Damon, what's interesting is that every single person here could work on an easier

movie for more money, but they don't. And that's the kind of thing you aspire to in life. Sure, there's a lot of rich people, but you're doing something that everyone wants to be at to doing that's like really cool. And that's like, there's never been a director like Nolan before, who does what he does. mind-blown, just so well done. I don't know why I've been standing on ceremony, not refusing to see Tenet.

Makes no sense. Give it a try. Your expectations are probably so low. Solo. I really, I think it was what I forget what turned me off when it came out. Like, people couldn't hear what was going on or. It wasn't good, but. The story made no sense.

But then I listened to who's on this pod. I think Sean Amanda and Chris Ryan on the big picture talking about the top Nolan movies. And they had Tenant pretty high. It's the only one I've never seen. Yeah, I just didn't do it for me. A couple more. I didn't really like shrinking season one that much.

I thought it was just okay, and I thought, why is Harrison Ford doing this show? But I watched season two and three, a bunch of people, and I absolutely loved it. It's a show I got better the further it went along. And seeing Harrison Ford at age 84, still occasionally tapping into, like, his unbelievable acting, like he'll bring it out every once in a while.

He's kind of funny. And there's scenes with Harrison Ford of Michael J. Fox in season three. I was like, oh, my God, I grew up with these two people. I grew up watching them all, Michael J. Fox says, the whole scene is Harrison Ford is developing Parkinson's. Michael J. Fox on it. And it's Harrison Ford dealing with the fact that he's an old person who doesn't have much time left, probably. It's really well done. I finished the Men Who Who Would Be King by Nicole Laporte, which is a book you recommended about Dreamworks.

Awesome, right? Great Hollywood stories. I love the fact that they thought saving private Ryan wasn't going to work. There was some amazing gladiator stories about Russell Crow trying to give a foot race to people and he lost and he blamed it on the sand. Yeah, he was a big time psycho. And they were going to do a streaming service in the dot-com bubble, like before Netflix. And it didn't work out. Anyway, yeah. Wait, was that the one about DreamWorks or was that about... Yeah, DreamWorks.

It's all about Spielberg and David Geffen and... Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. That was your recommendation. Good call. Very good. All right, after Shitting on Masters of the Universe last week, I watched it three times. I watched it once in fall.

Logan wanted to watch it. I get it. Great kids movie. Right. It's a kid's movie. And there were some stuff for the adults, a few one-liners that the kids missed. But it was whatever. They like poked fun of the old he-man and what's with a name and what are you wearing and all that.

It was pretty good, I thought. Logan loved it. He wants to be He-Man for Halloween. Okay. All right. How's the Dragon? You know, I'm such an idiot. Somebody emailed us.

By the way, the actress that plays Renair is incredible. Yeah, she's pretty good. You're right. I actually think that I'm going to zag on you. I think the show's tailed off a little of the season. It has. But it's still really good and really well done. But I think I'm just more attuned to the story of the Seven Nights one or whatever that they came out early this year.

I'm too confused all the time. They just keep bringing new characters. I'm too confused. I like you still have no idea what's going on. And I don't know how this happened. I feel like the biggest idiot in the world. Somebody emailed us, hey, turn the captions on. I watch everything with subtitles.

I don't know why for some reason, like my HBO is not, I don't have the subtitles turned on. So I feel like a schmohawk. I missed the entire season just because my subtitles off. A little late to turn it down. What else? What else? What else? That's it.

All time highs again. The stock market really is just so impressive when you think about everything that's been thrown at it. It's hard to believe. I really wish 10 years ago I knew that this would happen. What would you have done differently? I mean, I just would have owned the Cues. Okay. And I just would have aggressively bought everything all the time.

Of course. That's why the markets are hard. But even with hindsight, it wasn't easy. No, it really wasn't. None of this has been easy. And it won't be easy going forward either. Drawdowns are coming. Sometime in the next 30 years we'll have a recession again.

I just know it. It's found to happen. Bold. Email us, animal spirits at the compound news.com. Personal emails, personal responses. Thank you to the production team. As always, we went very long today because we had a lot to talk about. See you next time.

Thank you.