Animal Spirits Podcast - When Your Friends Are Richer Than You (EP.377)

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

On episode 377 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: a bad week for the stock market, why foreign stocks are so cheap, the state of America's wallet, the coming HELOC boom, the finances of Only Fans, how to become a millionaire, next week's live Animal Spirits from Future Proof, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Jensen Investment Management. Learn more about the Jensen Quality Growth ETF at: https://www.jenseninvestment.com/etf/ Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I have an idea today. I want to solve Europe's economic problems with air conditioning. I hate it. All right. We speak about dating apps and the explosive growth of a company called OnlyFans, which you might have heard up. You might not know what it does.

I didn't know. It's UK-based. I don't believe that. We talk about our brainstorming session for live animal spirits next week at FutureProof. And what we're going to be doing there that's going to be a little different than usual annual spirits? You ever been in a conversation on a lot of people? either side where you're talking to a friend and they're clearly either have more or less money than you and it gets really awkward and really heated. Yeah, we get into that. Yep. And then Michael

goes through Neons Ravelry with A24 because every week Michael brings up a movie to me that I've literally never heard of before. And he asked me, am I going to see this other movie that I've never heard of before? And we get into the Ravelry here. Stay tuned. Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Jensen Investment Management. A couple weeks ago, we had Kevin Walcush from Jensen Investment management on our talk your book segment talking about the Jensen quality growth ETF, JGRW. We always have a great time talking to them. Long-term capital appreciation, looking for less risk over full market cycles.

They're looking for durability, okay? Not this fly-by-night, flash in the pan type of stuff. They're looking at sustainable quality, high ROE, things of that nature. Yeah, actively managed ETF. Concentrated. Concentrated portfolio, yep, 25 to 30 names. check out Jenseninvestment.com slash ETF to learn more.

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion

of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Bridholz wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. I was driving home from the Pearl Jam concert last week. And I was listening to us, you and I, Animal Spirits, podcast. It's been a while. I used to listen to every single episode, and I probably stopped, I don't know, two years ago.

We haven't spoken about this, you and I. Do you still listen? I guess occasionally, just as if there's something that I want to write about, maybe from the show, I'll listen back. But yeah, I think we listened a lot more beginning because we wanted to make sure we were doing okay. We're self-criticking. Well, we're just not that good anymore.

Just not that entertaining. No, quite to the contrary. I think the reason why I stopped is because there's just not enough hours in the day. Like, there's a million other podcasts I want to listen to. I know what we say. We do it. We're living it. Yeah, we're living it.

But I had some constructive criticism for me. You were great, but I... Your wardrobe, for one? What's that? Your wardrobe? Is that the constructive criticism? You look like a defensive coordinator right now. You have the big headphones on.

You have the Bill Belichick sweatshirt with the sleeves that are short. honestly, put a pencil in the back of your ear and you're a defensive coordinator. You look like you're the special teams. You're like the defensive line coach and the Giants. Are you a man in Cascair or do you watch the regular? I just watch the regular. I don't need the extra stuff.

You don't need the extra stuff. What does that mean? I'm a regular announcer kind of guy. Well, Bill Belichick, coach Belichick, hopefully a future coach of the Giants was on with them for the first half and it was great. So I can't wear Giants gear because we're a fucking embarrassment for ever and ever.

I can't take it anymore, Ben. For the 10th time in 11 seasons before week three, our season is over, I can't take it. I want everyone gone. I can't believe that I'm, like, the one sitting in the prime spot here with a professional sports team. I can't take it. And my one future bet, Caleb Williams, over 3,500 yards. Not looking so great.

Who laughed at you on that one? That's week one, but 93 yards. Not great, Bob. Daniel Jones is Kathy Wood? Is that a fair? No, he was never that hot. Come on. He got a huge contract.

He won one playoff game. He got a quarterback contract, which is just terrible, just terrible. All right, anyhow, where was I? What's your constructive criticism of yourself? So maybe this is what, maybe this is like part of the charm of the show is that you and I are just having a conversation, right? It's just you and I. That was the whole idea behind the show in the first place. And it works.

It turns out we were out to something, but there are a lot of listeners outside of finance. there are a lot of new listeners, and I don't want to over explain, right? I want the audience to feel like they're just sitting in a bar with us, listening to us talk, but I don't explain anything. Like, I think specifically, I don't explain who anyone is. I just throw out these random names. I was listening, like, Paul Graham said this. Who the fuck is Paul Graham to the average person?

You know what I mean? Like Albert Wenger said this, who? Now, these are people that we know that a lot of our listeners in the finance world know. But I think I take for granted sometimes that people haven't been with us from day one. Not everybody works in this industry. So I think I need to do a better job of perhaps explaining who people are. Now, I don't want to change the tenor of the show. I don't want to over explain.

But just, hey, this person, he's a reporter. This person's a manager. Whatever, whatever, whatever. So that was that. That's a fair critique. And we, so we're doing a live animal spirits from Futureproof next week, which I'm just, I get a little more excited every day. You know, it's like building up to Christmas.

I can't wait. there's going to be so many people there. We've been there a few times now. We're like, we know what we're to expect. I can't wait. I still haven't heard from you about what we're doing for our Rocky moment this year, if we're going to have one. Oh, was that great?

You, you, so I had this idea last year. Was it last year or two years ago? That was two years ago. Okay. So I had this idea that Ben and I were going to run on the beach like Rocky and Apollo. And I was like, come on, let's do it.

And you're like, wait, are you being serious? I thought you were kidding. Right. And you were dead serious. Well, we did it. I wasn't letting it go. I was like, no, no, we have to do this. Duncan made it very cinematic, and it.

We nailed it. So one last thing on the point of, like, the fact that we have new listeners, not everybody's heard our story. I got an email. Michael hinted again at his faltering start to his career. Many of us had had similar experiences and setbacks. If Michael is willing, I would like to know how and when things turn for him. He is obviously intelligent, thank you very much, and successful in his career today.

When did he turn around? Clearly, he was able to commit to his pursuits and enact some discipline with his academic. Tell us about it. And I'm thinking, what? I've told this story a hundred times. But again, this person hasn't been listening. It's something I take for granted. Not everybody's been listening forever.

So what Ben and I are going to do at Future Proof is we're going to do it. Do something a little bit different for the audience. We're going to tell our origin story. Everything. We're exposed it all. You and I started got to meet each other, how I met up with Ritholtz, all that stuff. I think it'll be fun. So it might be redundant for some, but for others it'll be new and I'll try and we'll try and have some fun with it.

I feel like I haven't shared as much as my origin story as you have, though, so I feel like I have got a lot to say. The court is yours. Is that a phrase? The court is yours. Balls in your court. How's that? The court is yours?

Okay. I don't know. No. All right. So last week I started off the show saying, is this as good as it gets because we had all these great returns. The S&P was up 19%. NASDAQ was up 17.

Bitcoin was up 40. And then last week happened and it goes from S&P from 19 to 15. NASAC went from 17% year today. It gained a 10. This is as of last Friday. So I did Friday to Friday. So one week. Bitcoin went from a 40%.

percent gain to a 30 percent gain. So all these things fell, except for gold, actually. The floor is yours. There, yeah, there you go. That's the phrase I was looking for. And in fact, later in the show, we've got a great butchering phrase story. Stick around. That's called a teaser.

Ben back to you. Okay. So anyway, we had one bad week where you just chop it off, right? 25% of the gains or so for the year are gone if we're looking on that. That happens. Credit to us. That was a great short-term paper trade for us. Yeah.

You said this is going to get. I said, yeah. All right. This is interesting to me. Chart Kid, Matt, put this up on one of our Slack channels. It's all the different sector returns year to date. Best performing sector, I never would have got this, is utilities, up 20% per year to date. Second best is financials.

So utilities and financials are up performing tech this year, which I never would have guessed in a million years. Energy is the worst sector because it feels like energy is the worst sector every year. In 2023, you know, I'm getting sick and tired of this happening to me, Ben. in the fall of 23, I think on what are your thoughts I pitched utilities, XLU.

I was thinking that. You bought utilities, right? I was going to ask that. I showed a chart of like, I think it was rolling two-year returns

and this thing tends to be pretty mean reverting, at least at least in history. And it turns out in actuality. And so, yeah,

I bought it. Did I make money off it? Not really. Do you sell right away? No, I think I might have made like 10%.

I can't remember. But by golly, I bought it around 55 or so. I don't know if I'd nailed the bottom exactly, but, and now it's at 77. So I'm going to identify trades. It's the execution part. That's the hard part. So the utilities, this is a total example of the market being forward-looking, right? Rates haven't really come down that much yet, but they're going to come down.

I guess the bond market has. I think there's more to the story than just a rate story. I think there's actually some fundamental stuff as well, supporting this. What, like, you cranked up your air condition a little more this summer, so utility is doing well? What do you keep your house at? Me? Air conditioning-wise. Take a guess.

I'm a 73 guy myself, maybe 72 sometimes. Wow. Okay. So we're not on the same way of flunk there. What about at night? I keep it pretty constant. Okay. Yeah, I could roll with 72, 73 during the day.

But at night, do I even have to tell you where I am? 70. 69. You get cold at night, huh? I like getting into a cold bed and going, ooh, okay. That's way too cold for me. I couldn't handle it.

Okay. Well, uh, all right. That's why I'm not sharing up a hotel room with you in Future Proof. All right. You and I have shared many hotels. Yeah, we have. That's true. It always looks like a bomb has gone off and just out of the room.

Your hotel bed looks like your dishwasher does. You send another picture. I think you're getting worse at your dishwasher with the pictures you keep sending. I think you're doing it on purpose. So I am also... Will you try once for me to like just put them in nicely? No, it's not going to happen.

I also am responsible for grocery shopping. I think I spoke about this a few weeks ago, right? I think the prices are coming down. By the way, this happened to be twice in the grocery store. I got it. I have a shopping cart, right? I'm pushing it around. You come in, got the fruit, the blueberries, blackberries, et cetera.

And I walked over to get some bananas and I turned on my carts gone. I'm like, what in the world? Like, am I losing my fucking mind? Like, it was right there. And so I see, I see a lady, like, that's my cart. Was it an empty cart? No, no, no.

It had a watermelon. That's how I knew it was mine because of watermelons, how many carts have watermelons? I said, I think, that's my question. Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. So, no harm, not foul. But then last week, it happened again. I lost my cart, and this time it was gone. It was just, it disappeared.

I checked the entire store. More of the story, I'm never leaving, I'm never leaving my cart ever again. I guess so. So here's a grocery store question for you that I ran into last week. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Let me just finish this real quick. Okay.

So when I came home, I put the food in the fridge. Robin comes home a few hours later. She goes, no. What? What? You can imagine what my refrigerator looks like. Oh, so you just throw it in there. There's no ram or reason.

I tend to put, I put the fruits where it goes, but everything else looks like my dishmash. My wife has like plastic little dividers that she puts everything in. Like, it has to be perfect. I know, we have that too. I just disregard. I blow right through it. You don't use it. Okay.

So I'm in the grocery store last week. I'm in-in-out grocery store. Our big grocery store shopping, my wife either does it at Costco or we get it delivered because it's just easier. And so I'm at the grocery store. I do a quick in-out one,

and there's an old lady with a cart who puts it right in front of what I need to get, and she's like kind of doing one of these and she's scanning forever. So I'm staying behind her. I'm waiting. How long do you wait for until you say, excuse me, I just need to get in here?

Or do you just wait till they're gone? And it happened twice in the same store, and it's old ladies both at times. Do you just let them go? Wait, I think I'm at the beginning. What are you waiting for? Their cart is in the way, and then they're standing right where you need to get something. Hey, I need to get that yogurt.

She's right in the way. Just standing there like, you know. Four seconds. Okay. You just reach around there. By the way, not to beg, I think dollar adjusted, I am a quicker shopper than you. If you divide the time spent by the dollar spent to get some sort of yield there, I am lightning in a grocery store.

Do you remember that show? Supermarket, what was it called? We had to run around and get stuff for a certain dollar amount? I'll spend $180 and I'll be in and out in 11 minutes. Okay. I'm pretty fast, too. I don't know. It sounds like a challenge to me.

All right, friend of the show, Mike Sicardi, all country world XUS trades at 13 times earning, showing that foreign stocks are very cheap. Is this why foreign stocks are cheap? Tors and Slok, percentage of homes with air conditioning. This blew my face off, to quote you. Japan and the United States has 90% of people with air conditioning. In Europe, it's 10%, Mexico at 16, Brazil at 16, China's 60, India's 5%.

These are shockingly low numbers to me. And I remember from being in Europe that air conditioning wasn't really a thing. I probably didn't compute as much to me when I went there in college for a long time because I didn't think about it. I grew up in a house with no air conditioning. My parents did not have air conditioning. We lived in northern Michigan. It didn't really matter.

The top level of the house is always super hot in the summer. the bottom level was way cooler. I put a fan like six inches from my face. My parents, I think, finally 10 years ago got air conditioning, finally. I'm saying this tongue-in-cheek, but I'm almost, air-conditioning makes life easier. Most certainly. If Europe went from 10% air-conditioning to 60%,

how much were their GDP increase? I'm not even kidding. All right, well, here's the kind of point. Look at India all the way on the right. Only 5% of homes have an air conditioning, have air conditioning. That's the hottest stock market in the world. how much hotter would it be if they got air conditioning?

All right, here's a crazy stat. Did you see this going around? Mario Draghi did this report on the European Union's competitiveness. Patrick Collison, the Stripe guy, summarized it. Did you see this at all? By the way, credit to you. See? You explained.

Patrick Collison. Who's Patrick Halston? Boom, the Stripe guy. Oh, okay. Yes, that's true. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Ben, who's Mario Drag. You just muted your mic.

Stop touching your mic. There's no reason to touch your mic on the show. We've been through this. There's no reason to touch it. It's a nervous habit. So Mario Draghi is the former Jerome Powell of Europe. And someone asked him, hey, why is the European Union so far behind competitively from the U.S.? Here's some stats that are just crazy.

On a per capita basis, real disposable income has grown almost twice as much in the U.S. as the EU since 2000. There is no European Union company with market capitalization over 100 billion euros that have been set up from scratch in the last 50 years, while all six of the U.S. companies with a valuation above $1 trillion have been created in this period, saying that innovation is a huge, huge problem. I remember reading the world as, what was the Brooks book? The World is Flat.

I never read that. Okay. I read it right when I got out of college. It's one of those things where you read a book, like an adult book out of college, and you go, ah, I'm so smart. Yes. I'm the Winnie the Pooh guy walking around. Who's this, John Brooks?

No, Friedman. Sorry, Thomas Friedman. I feel like he looks like a Brooks, Thomas Friedman. And so that was the whole Berlin Wall falling, open things up, globalization. Why hasn't globalization helped Europe? I know the regulation and the rules and the culture. And I don't understand this, honestly. I don't get why.

But it seems like a turnaround kind of story in the making that. I think it's just culture compounding. The best talent comes here to start businesses. I guess it must be it. It is shocking, though, when you think about it this way, how far they've fallen behind. I mean, his stats from 2000, but it's really since the great financial crisis. All right. Well, if you give OnlyFans five to ten more years, it'll be there.

That's true. Okay, we got an email from an Nvidia rider that I want to share because he made some excellent points. A few weeks ago, we spoke about some of the people that had bought Nvidia back in the day and stuck with it. And I was a bit harsh, but I stand by my harshness. You were not giving anyone credit for holding NVIDIA. Correct. But this person made a great point that I thought was worth highlighting. He said the second stock we purchased was Netflix in September 2007.

We purchased NVIDIA in September 2009. The stock purchases and mutual fund purchases were always with money that we didn't have any particular need for. Check. Although the initial ups and downs were trying, it became easier as we purchased more and just kind of became numb to the volatility. I hadn't considered that. lives. We would only invest a set amount in anyone's stock to help mitigate those picks that didn't do well. After about five years of purchasing stocks, I started to sell one or two every year with the worst returns. Check credit to this person. Taking their losses. That's pretty

good. Not the best sell criteria, but it's fairly simple. In fact, I'd say that's a damn good sell criteria. You let your winners run and you kick out the losers. Our returns for Nvidia and Netflix are currently about 270x. Wow. Other picks have done well about three. Okay, But given time, I'm hoping that some of those will get to 100X. Of course, the other person is lost value. But it's not that worse. I'm given the gains. So credit to this person, if you have a strategy, and this is the part where I do give

credit, if you have a strategy for taking flyers on 30 names, whatever, and like an index does, you let the winners grow and you kick out the losers, can you find the next NVIDIA? Perhaps. So this person had a process, and I'm sure others in the story did have. have a process. So credit to all involved. All right. Really good piece. Credit to you for giving credit to this person. Thank you. Really good piece in the Wall Street Journal, the state of America's wallets. Really good charts in here. So they look at all these things adjusted for inflation since 2019. So weekly pay up 23% from 2019. Not bad. Median checking

and savings account balance, which went from 2,500 to over 5,500. from 2019 to 2021, is up to 14% still. So people are still holding more cash. Not that much. Average credit card balance is still 62, 18. Wait, is this all adjusted for inflation? Just kidding. I was all sitting.

I know you said it was adjusted for inflation. Some of them are, some of them are. But wait, Ben, speaking of adjusted for inflation, Antonelli sent us that Twitter exchange about something about the number of people that airplane has gone up and up and up and up and up. And somebody replied, probably non-ironically. is this adjusted for inflation. And the press responded,

how do you trust people on an airplane for inflation? This is the, I think I'm being smart by saying this. If I say it enough, it'll make me sound smart, and then you get caught. But did you adjust for inflation? You know, the dumbest market example of that is, is this total return? Oh, shit, I didn't think about that.

No, I'm sure. I didn't include dividends. Genius. Of course we did. Average credit card balance at the end of 2019 was $5,800. It's now $6,200. So that's not that. much higher.

Remember we've asked this before. How many people who own a credit or who had credit card and have that average balance, how many of them actually rolled over the next month? And they say slowly more than half of credit card users carry a balance from month to month. So in that average, is people who paid off every month.

This sounds pretty bad. As an average of 60, I know you said this, $6,200 per person? To me, that doesn't sound like that bad. No. But the problem is, that number is just going to keep rolling.

higher. But it's not, though. It's not that much higher from what it was in 2018. That is a fair point. It's only up 6.6%. So way less than inflation in that time. Okay. Here's one that I want to talk about. So car payment is up 28% from 2019 to $737. How much? I want to see that adjusted for size. I know car prices are up, but I want to see these size adjustment of car payments over time. I almost can't believe it. How are how is this? That's so much money. Plus maintenance and repairs and insurance are up way more, too, like way above inflation. So I still don't know how some people afford. I drove by a house today.

It was like a modest looking house. Nice house. Modest. They had one of the Porsche Macauze or whatever, a land rover and some other really nice looking car. And I'm thinking, how do you afford all these cars? I don't get it for some people. I got an envelope in the mail the other day.

And it said tax lien. and it was the same house number, but a different block, right, as mine. So, delivered to the wrong address. So I dropped it off at this person's home. Nice home. Range Rover from the driveway. Tax lien in the mail. On the house or the car?

Probably like house. The tax lien is like on the house? I don't know what, I mean, I didn't open that. That's illegal. But, you know, people, people overextend themselves. You could have held it up to the sunlight. just checked, just for... But $737 for an average card payment sounds nuts.

I mean, I think... Buy a Toyota camera or a Honda Accord people. My first... The Jeep Cherokee that I had before the Wrangler, is it possible that I was paying $450 a month? Am I misremembering that? Ask your car broker. I'm sure he has all your history somewhere.

But just $740 sounds nuts. To me, that sounds like, and I know it's not, that sounds like the payment on a luxury vehicle. Yes. And I know it's not, I know it's like every payment now. I know it's like closer to $1,000, but it's, it's just bonkers. All right. From Walter Bloomberg, BlackRock's Jeffrey Rosenberg warns a 50 basis point rate cut could signal economic worry, not reassurance. I don't. And that's getting too cute.

It is. That's like 4D chess kind of like if they want to go 50, you go 50. The market is going to worry about if data gets worse. The market's not going to worry about the Fed signaling about data. I don't get that at all. I'm with you on that. I mean, a lot of people are saying the Fed could go 50. I still think human nature says they go 25. I don't know. The Fed's always late.

I didn't realize this. Someone sent this to me, so I had to look it up. The Fed's first rate hike was March 22. Do you know what inflation was? And we talked about this ad nauseum at the time. I just forgot. Yeah. Because we, it's too much.

I can't source so much date up here. What was inflation when the Fed first raised rates in 2022? What was the inflation rate when they raised rates? 8%. 8.5%. Look at this graph I did. Three months later, inflation top-ticked after the Fed just started raising rates. So if you want to really give the Fed credit for bringing inflation down, I think inflation

was coming down anyway. It was going to come down anyway. Would this have happened if they didn't raise rates? We'll never know. I mean, you could say that raising rates froze the housing market. And if there was still a lot of housing activity and people spending money in houses and all that sort of stuff, it probably would have contributed. But yeah, we'll never know.

I knew that they were late. I didn't remember it was 8.5% late. That, again, just, I totally forgot about it. All right. We haven't spoken about crypto in a while. It's been sort of boring to down. Are you surprised that the growth of the ETFs and all the money that went in there? You had this initial surge in price, and Bitcoin is kind of just slowly but surely given back the gains since then.

The answer to that question is, yes, I am surprised. Given the flows, I'm surprised. because the polls are way higher than I thought they'd be. And at this point, like, it's fair to ask, like, what's the catalyst? I don't know. I don't know. But. Right, the ETF was supposed to be the catalyst.

The ETF was a resounding success, but not everybody thinks so. Jim Bianco tweeted something about advisors aren't there. It's only small purchases. And Matt Hogan, I thought, had an interesting over-the-top response. Okay, per his table, Ibit, which is the I-share's Bitcoin ETF, has attracted $1.45 billion in net flows from investment advisors. He calls this small because it's a fraction of the $46 billion that has flowed into Bitcoin ETFs in total. But if you excluded all the other flows and you just looked at the $1.45 billion in Ibit from investment advisors, that would be the second fastest growing ETF launched this year. and the only one that beats that is KLMT and ESG ETF that was seeded by a single investor

with $2 billion. So it's been the single largest advisor adopted ETF year-to-date. Actually, Matt says faster than any other ETF in history, it is accurate to say that investment managers represent a small fraction of buyers and Bitcoin ETFs, but it is not accurate to say that investment managers purchase of Bitcoin ETFs are small. So just because retail has put more money to, do this in advisors does not mean that advisors aren't putting money. Yeah. So, ETF was a resounding success, but the price action has been dog shit to be polite.

So, you know, I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. I guess maybe the next wave is just do the flows trickle and stop, or do the flows keep going? And that's what keeps it going. It is, I don't know, it is still surprising to be that we've never had any of these things stick with crypto. I know you could say, yeah, stable coins. NFTs didn't stick None of the use cases of stuff Stable coins is the biggest success story in terms of use cases

Yeah, but if you would have told people I don't know when crypto first started And all the dreams they had We're going to tokenize everything If you would have told them stable coins Like guess what you created a crypto money market Yeah, come on It's surprising

But stable coins still could be the thing that carries crypto forward, I don't know Yeah But I'm just surprised All right, really cool housing data from this flowing data blog, which taught us that had no return sent to me. So they look at all the different census data, and they break it out by years, and they show the percentage of people, the households, going from 20 to 90, that rent or buy, right?

And when you're young, 85, 90% of people rent at 20, very few people own, and then it slowly shifts, and at 33 is the age where you have the tipping point of people buying more than rent. And it obviously goes up from there. Anyway, just a cool visual. He also shows owning with a mortgager loan or owning free and clear. So the people don't start to pay off their mortgages until like their late 50s, really. Which again, makes sense. I'm coming around to the idea that I might never pay my house off.

Just like leave it for the kids. I don't know. I don't see the point of it. Wait, never pay your house off and let that. What do you mean? Just... Keep taking money out of it. What's the point of loving the money sit there?

Yeah, this is a surprising, like, lightning rod issue. People have very strong feelings about paying off a house. Yes. Not exactly sure where those feelings are coming from, but it's one of those topics. It's one of those topics. Listen, there's no right answer. There's personal finance. There isn't.

It's personal. There's some things that are, like, mathematically cut and dry, but then like, but then there's, like, the personal side of it. I feel like this is really and truly, Like, listen, whatever you want to do. Some people love the feeling of not having a mortgage. I get it. Other people that, like Ben, that think that they can do better elsewhere, I get that too.

Yeah. But I will, the one thing I will palm the table on is if you pay off a sub 3% mortgage, I think you're an idiot. Yeah. Coming from me, that's pretty strong. I just think it's a dumb move. It truly. And I don't say that very often in personal finance.

It truly doesn't make sense. Yeah. Yes. So I just, because I'm preparing for lower home equity line of home equity rates, I just told my bank, increase my home equity line of credit. I want more. Just to have it. Because rates are falling. I don't know. Do I, so we've been in our house now seven years. By year 8, 9, 10, do I think my wife is going to want to do something to the house? Hey, we need new flooring. Hey, we need a new kitchen, whatever it is. She's going to want something. I know. And so I'm increasing it now because I want to take advantage of rates when they get lower.

Bigger mudroom. Maybe another mudroom. Ah, that's true. Big mud. All right. Speaking of home equity lines of credit, Connor Sand wrote a piece about this, Ben, you've been talking about this. He said we've started to see a slow but consistent rise in such loans on bank balance sheets. By the way, Conner Sen, columnist for Bloomberg, with 2025 looking like a year of growth for a product that fell out of favor after the subprime mortgage crisis, there's a good reason why home equity loans faded into a relevance. Underwriting standards tied in significantly following the financial crisis after being way too loose. It took years for home values to go up enough for homeowners to even have enough equity to borrow against.

Households generally spent much of the 2010s paying down debt rather than taking on new debt, and mortgage rates continue to hit new loads throughout the decade, making a full mortgage refinance more compelling than home equity loans, which are pricier. And this part, I'm bolding. For people of a certain age, there's also a negative stigma attached to home equity loans. In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, a stereotype that gained little sympathy was the homeowner who borrowed against their house to buy a boat or a car only to wind up losing their job in house.

That was a big part. Remember that? So he shows this great chart showing that he-like balances at banks shrank throughout the 2010s corroborating what we just spoke about. And even in the early 2020, it's as low mortgage rates incentivized full refinancings. But now, they're back. So how about this? The great financial crisis caused a generation of people to,

rein in their debt and repair their balance sheets? What if the next recession causes people to go the other way and borrow like crazy? That would be something. It wouldn't shock me. He also says tens of millions of American homeowners find themselves somewhat trapped in their current houses tied down by the rock bottom mortgage rates that they locked in during the pandemic. Many of these properties have seen considerable appreciation to us. So there's a chart here, Ben, that shows the owner's equity is at least at levels level of last seen since the 1960s showing households are property rich and it's owner's equity in real estate as a percentage of household real estate. So look at the bubble. The GFC is just

all of the equity is being pulled out of the house as we know. And now we're well on the other side of that. So I think, I don't think this is like going out on a limb. In the next recession, what are the odds that homeowners significantly lean on their home equity? I would, would say, like, minus 1.15? I feel like it's, like, you know, pretty much even money. Especially as rates are falling, they're going to look at it and say, oh, man, I can borrow at 5% for this. Sure. Yeah. Let's do it. I don't, I don't need this equity. So right now, rates are, I think, 8 to 9%, but yeah, coming down. Coming down. Lastly, he closes with this. And I think this is just, this is like, this is the whole thing. There's the whole

Kit and Caboodle, so to speak. A good will of thumb is to never bet against the American and consumer, especially when lower rates are giving homeowners a new piggy bank to raid. It's like the Chiefs in Patrick Bahams. I bet on them moving the Super Bowl every year. Am I going to be wrong sometimes? Yeah, occasionally. But most years, I'm going to be right. Yeah, I keep betting against them.

I'm shorty Amazon. Always a contrarian. All right. Home insurance. We've spoken a lot about this. Kyla Scanlan had a really good post. It's just a mess. There's a chart showing where properties are most are most at risk.

And then there's another chart showing where homeowners pay the most relative to home values. And this shouldn't be a thing where some states pay a tiny fraction what the house is worth. Other states have to have different regulatory structures in place and have to carry the burden. So she says that part of the problem is that some state agencies regulate rate increases, meaning that many people pay much less than they should to insure their homes. According to an example from Bloomberg, a California home that had a premium of $2,000 in 2010 was paying $4820 by 2022.

That's an increase of 7% a year because California heavily regulates insurance price increases. But this massively underprices the risk. It should be closer to $8,000 in premiums. And this leads to disastrous results. She says two out of three American homes are underinsured. and it's just a big problem. Of course, part of this is all of the weather that we're seeing across the country.

So I don't know what happens here. I just, I don't know if I don't know about the issues. Especially in certain areas. I don't get it. It's bad. The silver lining of this terribleness, and I hate to use the, I hate to like sounds so crass,

but just pointing out that these insurance companies are on fire. There is an ETF that's an I-Share's E-TF. it's up, an I shares, ETF, ticker's IAK, it's up 28% on the year versus the S&P's up 16. You look at some of the stock, progressive insurance looks like Nvidia. It's up 60% on the year. So they are, they are benefiting. That's when the pitchforks come out, though, when people are paying a ton of money in insurance, and there's natural disasters and you see these stocks do well, and you see

the CEOs make money, that's when the politicians get involved eventually. Yeah, it's not great. Modest proposal tweeted. about Uber, from venture-backed startup to IPO, to issuing 30-year bonds at 5.35% to buy back tons of stock. Truly the American dream. And this is why we are who we are as an economy and as a market versus the rest of the world. That is not a, so the 30-year government bond is 4% right now? It's not a huge spread. That's amazing. That is amazing. Uber 30-year bonds at 5.35%.

30 years is a long time from now. Also, isn't Uber the kind of the anti-founder mode company? Oh, yeah. The founder was the one who kind of, he got them there, but he got them in trouble and they needed an adult in the room to take them to this next level. Yeah.

You could argue both sides because Travis got them to where they were. All right. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal. here's the tweet. Talking about Big Lots. The tweet is this. U.S. discount retail chain

Big Lots filed for bankruptcy. The latest retail casualty as consumers reign in spending. And we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago about these false narratives, these nonsense, alternative narratives.

Have you ever been to a big lot before? I don't think they have one around here. I made the joke in Slack yesterday that looks like the store from Napoleon Dynamite. What store? The Big Lot, you know, It's like an old 1980s-looking store.

It's got computer screens and I put the picture on Slack. Not the nicest store in the world is my point. It's like, maybe that would be part of it. Is it discount Home Depot? No, discount discount target or something like that. Oh, got it, got it. Okay. The furniture and home decor discount retailer has largely posted consecutive

quarterly losses since 2022, leading to numerous store closures. They operated more than 1,300 stores in the U.S. as of May. Whatever. That's a lot. Okay, so chapter 11. So restructuring, they're not going away. Big Lotz agreed to sell its business to private equity firm. Shocker for about $760 million. The managing director at Nexus, who's purchasing this said the firm is confident that Big Lott's greatest days are ahead. Yeah, sure, sure they are. Here's a quote from them. The company has been adversely affected by recent macroeconomic factors, such as high inflation and interest rates that are beyond its control. Okay, that's true. The prevailing economic trends have been. been particularly challenging to big lots as its core customers curb their discretionary

spending on the home and seasonal product categories that represent a significant portion of these companies revenue. Okay. Or maybe, and hear me out, maybe management didn't execute and it's a big lots issue and not a macroeconomic issue. So I'm looking at the market cap, which has been going down forever, basically. I don't get the idea behind why a discounted retailer wouldn't do better when inflation is higher. They should be doing better. Exactly. Revenue's been going down. Free cash flow has been negative for quite a while, but I'm glad that the article pointed out, beyond macroeconomic conditions, credit to the Washington Journal, Biglots also operates in a highly competitive space and a struggle to differentiate itself

from other discounters that offer home goods or specialize in the categories such as Wayfair, Walmart, T.JX, and home goods. And then somebody quotes, an analyst said, Big Lots is not always good value for money. Many of the items, that sells are not high-end that are not drastically expensive, but equivalents can often be found much cheaper at other stores, including Walmart. So Walmart is eating their lunch. So the company is not executing it. It has nothing to do with the consumer or Mac or this.

Maybe it does, but come on. So again, the tweet, again, it's out of this necessarily gaslight, it's just, it's just, it's just not right. US disc, the consumer casual, as consumers, raided spending, they're not writing it spending. I mean, it's just, it's just, so anyway, last week we spoke about the dollar. dollar stores, right? And how, like, maybe they're just structurally fucked. And maybe that's just what it is. So there's this guy that I follow has a great, great substack on the consumer.

His name is Rob Wilson. And he showed that he shows Dollar General's trailing fourth quarter EBIT margin. And it's crashing. He said the bottom line revision was massively lower. And it doesn't take a seasoned equity research analyst to discern that the company's business model is absolutely structurally challenged. Because I said this last week, and he's saying that on the call, they said that they're still confident in the model.

They've got some things to work through. Rob Wilson says, dollar stores enjoyed a nice run over the course of the past two decades. The subsector carved out a nice niche and took market share from the big buck discounters at grocery stores at EBIT margins that were more than two times higher. The higher level of profitability encouraged dollar stores to over expand and their margins have precipitously declined. The bottom line is that Dollar General Groot store counts 79%. and at square footage, 84%, it's only managerial malpractice to the highest degree.

So, again, when we're talking about these companies that serve the low-and-consumer, yeah, I'm not pooh-pooing. I'm not saying the low-end consumers on fire. Of course, they're not. But it's a structural issue with the businesses. It says much more about the business model that it does about the consumers that they serve. And it makes sense that Walmart would be more efficient and better scale than these companies. Someone said they wanted to talk about why I see Dowell General's in rural areas.

Someone emailed us and said, I did a case study on them and wanted to say the reason was because they have one of the lowest footprints in their stores and can thrive in very small towns of only X thousands of people in population, which is specifically areas that Walmart will not go into. So that was why they're going into rural areas because there weren't Walmarts there. And here's the mic drop back. And now you can get Walmart delivered to you, so you maybe don't need to use those anymore. Correct. Here's the mic drop. There's a company called Casey's General Store. I don't know it, but presumably it serves the same consumers.

Connor said, tweeted this, the CEO of this company, Casey's General Store, said, with respect to the consumer, just as a reminder, about three quarters of our guests make over $50,000 a year in income. And so we consider those to not be low income. So about a quarter of our guest base is in lower income. The lower income consumers are modestly changing their purchasing habits, modestly. I wouldn't say that they're coming in less frequently than they had before, but they're open.

They're opting to not buy as many units. So there's a little bit of pressure there. But if you look at the chart of Casey's General Store, it looks amazing. Stocks on top high. So again, it's easy to blame macro or whatever. Yeah. Just own it. Yes.

All right. Survey of the week. I want to know if people are dumb or surveys are dumb. This is from polling USA. And a bunch of people tweeted this out. There's a federal law limiting how much companies can raise the price of food and groceries. And the support for that went up 15%. There's also a federal law.

establishing price controls on food or groceries, and the favorability of that went down 10%. These are literally the same things worded differently, and the support for one is rising, the support for the other one is falling. This is the whole thing. This is the whole thing. No, it's just, no, we're sheep and we're very easily influenced. We're like Plato. This is the whole thing with the surveys, especially if they're paid for.

I can get people to answer whatever you want. Depends how you word the survey. Does Michael look good in his new balance cutoff shirt? No. I find some people say yes. But also yes. All right. A really good piece from Kyla Scanlan on dating apps and how they contribute to the demographic crisis.

And I've said this before, but I'm so glad to not have to grow up in this era of dating apps. It just sounds awful to me. And some people say what makes life easier. But her whole thing was saying it's making a lot of people just pull back from dating altogether. Because there's a certain amount of people that will get matched. and women get hit up on these things all the time but maybe only a certain amount of men will get hit up and they just keep recycling through these

and using it as hookup apps and so some people just, a lot of men just totally pull back from dating altogether because I guess these dating apps don't do a very good job. Well, but because their business model, they're not trying to get you to find your match necessarily and then leave, right? They want you to stay.

Yes, and she says that like people are, the number of romantic relationships is falling among Gen Z. It's way smaller than it was among Baby Boomer is in Gen X. She puts the stock prices of Bumble and Match Group in here. I looked at them. Going back for the last three years or something, these stocks are down 80 and 90% apiece. Which is crazy because you see one of those charts that says how people meet,

and the number is just online for almost everyone now. And she's saying that maybe these dating apps have actually made the whole dating thing worse. And it's contributing. And I don't know. I get back to my point of the... Older, millennial, younger, Gen X is the only sane generation, because we're the only ones who had a chance right now. Baby Boomers never stood a chance with Facebook and 24-7 News.

They just didn't see a chance. I'm casting a wide net here. Gen Z grew up with this stuff. They really didn't have a chance. You know, the same thing would have happened to us if we would have grown up in this generation. We're the only ones who were normal enough to be able to interact with technology, but also remember life before it totally controlled our lives.

Yes. Right? So, I mean, but she also said that like the rise of running clubs and things like that because people are trying to like actually meet people and not be controlled by the algorithms. This is why college is still, people always say like, AI is going to be your professor in the future and people won't go to college and we need to do just homeschooling. This is what college is for. You can meet people there.

So sort of interestingly, match came public. Was it a SPAC in 2020? I'm guessing it was. I don't know. So the stock's been getting destroyed, but the revenue, the revenue is not bad. Not bad. And free cash flow also not bad. So it looks like the business is doing okay, even though the stock is getting crushed.

A corollary to this, Matthew Ball wrote a post on OnlyFans, which I've never been on OnlyFans, although I'll admit, I went last night just to just as, I piqued my interest. It's a, but I didn't get past, you have to put in a credit card that I did not. It's a UK company. for those of you who are like, what the hell is OnlyFans? I believe it's a social site where you can follow creators and it's mostly pornographic. I think not all, but mostly. And I think you can interact with them.

There's different tiers of... And we said foreign companies aren't innovative. Hello. So, okay. In 2024, OnlyFans generated $6.3 billion in gross revenues up from just $300 million five years earlier. That's a massive number. So they said OnlyFans is based around subscription.

they, Matthew Ball, over 60% of consumer spending is now via transactions. That's pretty interesting. So subscription revenues are up only 9% to 2021, whereas transactional spending is up 70%. And no offense. Does that mean like you pay someone and they'll do something? I don't know, get out worse. Yeah, you pay for, I don't know, to message with them, to whatever, whatever you pay for. You pay for attention.

And you could imagine the type of people that are on the site, right? Probably people that are lonely or not happy. Right. I'm going to back off of dating sites and I'm going to use this because I can actually get what I want if I pay for it. Loneliness is highly monetizable. Again, transactional spending is up 70%. That's wild. I would love to see an economist do a free economics on OnlyFans versus the prostitution market.

Like, is that falling off because of OnlyFans? Oh, good question. But there's no transparency. You have no data on the prostitution market, right? It's all just estimated. So OnlyFans revenue. I know a couple pimps who could get us some good data. They did not see that one coming.

Only fan revenues are now believed to be twice out of pornography giant ALO, which owns PornHub, Brazzers, Red Tube, U-Porn, and X-tube. I don't know any of these. And the platform counts over 300 million registered users. That's wild. So they've done $20 billion in revenue of the last five years. He was saying $15 billion of it had gotten paid out to creators. Yes.

So he said OnlyFans is slowly consuming the entire porn industry in 20. 2023, OnlyFans creators received a stunning $5.3 billion in payouts. As a point of comparison, total NBA salaries during the 2023 season was $4.9 billion. This is some wild shit. Yeah, these numbers are insane. So there's over 4 million creator accounts. I'm sure it's parallel, like everything else. 305 million fan accounts.

I'm going to write a personal finance book called, instead of like the latte factor, it's going to be the OnlyFans factor. If you took the money you are spending on OnlyFans and invested in the stock market, you'd be a millionaire. My dad texted me on Sunday. What's with the email? I said, what email? So he called me. I didn't pick up because I had another family over. Then he sent me a picture of my house.

And it said, dear Michael and Robin, we know that you've been watching. disgusting porn. How did they know that? So it's a scam. If you don't send Bitcoin to blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't try and call the police, blah, blah, blah. And my dad's, you know, he's a boomer. He's freaking out.

These scams are running rampant. So I called him and I said, dad, it's a scam. And he goes, how do you know? He said, I know. I've gotten this before. Although the first time I got this email. The guy's from Nigeria, though. He sounds.

The first up and up. I don't know if I shared this on the podcast. Maybe I did it. I first got this email two years ago. I woke up. whatever, six in the morning, saw this email, freaked out, ran to the computer, told Robert, our life's over. And I was like, wait a minute.

This is, all right, this is a scam. AI is going to take so much money from people. Josh, I'm talking about this on what are your thoughts on? I think the FBI said $6 billion in crypto-related scams last night. I keep getting these emails, these junk emails. I'm sure you do. I'm sure our listeners do. Hi, how are you?

Guess who this is? Right. And it's just, yeah, but we take for granted that we know these are scam. But if you're listening, any time there's a crypto-related anything or anybody, Josh Brown, inviting you to a stock trading group, it's always a fucking scam. I still get people saying, hey, are you on Instagram trading options? Options creating courses? I'm like, no, that's not me.

I know. It's, we could laugh at it because it sounds so ridiculous, but it's horrible. Like, the fact that people you know or think it's you, it's awful. PSA, it's always a scam. All right, good one from Michael Piper, who writes the oblivious investor blog, which he's been writing it longer than I have, my blog, and I've been reading it ever since.

Very good. Very, like, level-headed person and personal finance. He wanted to write this thing about how we've gotten too far into the entrepreneur thing. Like, you have to start a business if you want to make money and be rich, right? And he's saying the majority of the people that I deal with, because he's a consultant for taxes and financial planning,

he said the majority of the people that I work with have have a good job, they buy mutual funds, and they repeat it. That's all they do. So he said as a thought experiment, he wanted to see what would happen if you maxed out your 401K and IRA every year for the last 30 years and invested it in an 80-20 portfolio. With a caveat that that's hard for some people to do. So if you made that maximum contribution in your 401k every year from 94 to 2023,

the last 30 years, in the 80-20 portfolio, you'd have $1.8 million at the beginning of 2024. Same thing with an IRA, maxed out, obviously, max there is smaller, you'd have 470 grand-ish. So we're talking max both of those out, and if 30 years you're talking $2.3 million. And he's saying, listen, I work with people. That's what they did. They max out their retirement accounts, and they saved over time.

Yeah. It works. It does. And I do think there's this thing that, like, nine to five job is bad, and you have to start your own thing, and you have to – but for most people, this is how you build wealth. Yes. All right, this is a very good email from someone I wanted to read. Hi, guys, thanks for mentioning the headline on stress and parenting.

I believe parenting is very stressful-related and correlated with money and child resources. Personal anecdote, my wife and I do much better than our six-to-eight parent couple or friends. It sounds like it could be like some sort of Jason Baby movie. We have a full-time nanny and sometimes hire additional babysitter on the weeks where she and I need to work longer. We have vacation to a total of six to seven weeks this year and sometimes bring our nanny. These people are doing very well, obviously. That's, you know, not many people have that luxury. Recently, we had another very close couple over for dinner.

My wife and I were surprised at their reaction when I jokingly gave the husband a hard time and how he never hangs out with me. He and his wife quickly snapped back about how we don't have the same life and my wife and I don't understand the combination of work and child care pressure they face. The reaction made it seem like they had evaluated this before.

My wife and I seemed to experience significantly less stressed than our friends because our financial ability to create as much child care as we need. Yeah. Yeah. So their friends hate them. Yeah. At least if you mention that to someone, you've been thinking about it for a long time and it's been eating at you.

Yeah, yeah. This is a really, this is life. And it's difficult to be a big fish in a small pond for this reason. Right? Like on the one hand, if you have money but you don't want to be around other people with money because you think like you don't want to raise your kids that way, they're snotty, whatever. I totally understand that. the other side of it is if you have money and you're in a place where you're doing significantly better than a lot of the people that you spend time with, they get sick of your bullshit, right?

We know you're doing well. Don't talk about it. Like, right? So. Yeah. It's a tough place. This is life. The thing that it stands out to me here, though, is that like people always say money can't

buy happiness, but money can buy comfort. And comfort can buy a lack of stress. Right? I think that's the idea. Yeah. Money can help with your stress a lot. I think what people say money can't buy happiness, I think what they mean is that they are rich assholes, right?

There are people that are rich that are unhappy because that, to me, is 100% accurate. There are plenty of people that have money that are miserable pricks. But to your point, Ben, if you have money and you could afford to do these sort of things, all else equal, you're going to be a hell of a lot happier than somebody who can't. That's just a fact. Totally agree. All right, we could skip. Oh, no, we can't.

I was about to say we could skip this one, but holy fucking shit. I'm glad I didn't blow passes. So there was a tweet from Peter Kafka. He said another brutal quarter for pay TV down 1.6 million subs. That's a 6.9% drop, not nice. Moffin Nathan said, and their media analyst, they said it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no longer any floor. And here I was ready to say, yeah, we don't need to cover this.

We're going sort of long. But I saw a little piece of text at the bottom of this. Ben, go ahead. I'm going to sound like a hypocrite here. I've been saying it for years. I'm never going to get rid of cable. I think I'm ready to cut the cord. Here's the thing. We have AT&T. And for the last two weeks, you turn on ESPN and it says, sorry, we're in a dispute direct TV and AT&T or to dispute with ESPN. You don't want to get this channel. We're ready in college football season pro. I go to turn the money net football game last night. Luckily, I have YouTube TV because our place that our lakehouse place, I use YouTube TV, there. So I'm using YouTube TV. So I'm thinking, what's the point of it anymore if you're going to

have these disputes all the time? And I think YouTube TV is close enough to cable, but I think I'm ready to just go full YouTube TV. I'm sick of the cable companies pulling this crap. I love it. That's why I might be cutting the court. Listen, this is not a hypocrite. What did Charlie Munger say? He loves changing his mind. That's true. Right? He loves killing his best idea. One of your best ideas was I'm never cutting the court. What is YouTube TV? What would you miss? What would you not get? I don't think I'd miss any. My wife is the one who was worried about it for years because of Bravo, but she can get that on Peacock now.

So it doesn't matter. So I think I'm going. Why the hell am I paying for it? Because that's what my wife cares about, too. Yeah. And I thought about, like, I get the sports chance. You get the quad box for sports. I end up using YouTube TV more than I use my cable.

So it's pointless to me. What about TLC? My wife does like that channel. Oh, I don't know. But so much of my. consumption, now with streamer, and it makes it more of a pain in the butt, but YouTube TV, they keep adding features. They're going to make it more and more like regular cable anyway.

I think I'm going to go full YouTube TV. Okay. I like that. Please report back. All right. All right. Interesting tweet from Justin Wolfer's, a terrific slash terrifying example for teaching externalities.

And the chart is deaths per 10,000, two vehicle crashes. And there's one where it's your own car. and that line is going down and there's a red line where it's the other car and that line is going all the way up, like all the way up, vertical, exponential growth. He says folks choose heavier cars because they're less likely to die in a crash

but that choice makes it much more likely that you'll kill the other guy. Right. You kind of has had this big piece on how these bigger trucks and SUVs and stuff are making car crashes more deadly. But you know what's it? I was talking about this with somebody. Maybe, maybe here.

When I think about buying a vehicle, I would say safety is, safety is nowhere, Mike. I don't even, it doesn't even. No. I've never thought, hey, is this car safe? How does this do in crashes? Trunk space. Yeah, you don't think about that at all. Yeah.

Probably should, but. Maybe we should, yeah. All right, it appears nature is healing. Miami Beach. Andrewsson Harwitz is leaving. They exit of the space in May. Andreson Horowitz is one of the most prominent venture. capital firms.

In 2022, they signed a five-year lease for 8,300 square feet. That's a lot, no? Pretty big. The departure underscores the potential weakness of Miami's staying power. Venture capital money flowing in Miami has flagged since 2022. They brought in $400 million in the second quarter compared with $5.5 billion in 2022. Kind of wild, right? By contrast, San Francisco in the second quarter pulled in $18.7 billion.

I think we've learned that tech. people cannot just create their own city. Remember the Zappos guy was trying to create a city of his own in Nevada somewhere? Yes. I think it's just, it's very hard to do.

Yeah. How to keep a car clean? Go ahead, Ben. Oh, someone emailed us, a mom emailed us and said, I just finished and listened to your latest pod, I'm all able to work in a completely squeaky clean car on the inside,

even with two boys that are five and six, not to brag. Here's how I do it. No food allowed. I have a hard, no food rule in my car. The boys are only allowed to have water. Here's an implement. They have a sports game,

They get a snack after the game. They have to eat it before they get in the car. So she says, I'm a mean, strict, rigid mom, right? But hey, I always have a clean car. Hope this tip helps, although it probably won't. I love this. Idea as a rule. My kids would riot.

Well, it's too late. Yes, it's too late. It's too late. It's a great idea. Robin put like a little garbage thing in the back of the, what's the thing where you put up, the center console? Is that? Oh, yeah.

She put a little garbage behind it so the kids could throw it in the garbage. I don't know if it's going to work or not. But, yeah. Yeah. They have these little garbage bags where you can, like, tape it on something. Yeah. Like, yeah. But it's just impossible.

Ben, just on the topic of us being consumers and just buying and spending and eating and drinking, Americans are eating more dairy and drinking less milk. So milk is on the client. I'm not a milk guy, are you? Do you drink milk? That seems kind of weird. I'm not seven years old. Yeah, it's gross.

Cheese snacks are now worth $75 billion a year worldwide. People love their cheese. Wow. I feel like sometimes these billion-dollar numbers are just, it's hard to... Yeah, with 75, it sounds like a lot of money. I don't know. Like the $6 billion in OnlyFans and the $6 billion in crypto scams, and it's hard to put it into context.

Early on the show, I said, the court is yours when I meant the floor is yours. That's something that I am prone to do. And apparently, I'm not alone. So we got an email that says this. This is a great story. So I was a newspaper reporter and editor for 10 years, five with the New York Times, before becoming an F.A. in 2014, in college, I was a campus crime reporter. Every time someone got a public intoxication charge, the cop had to put down that the person

was, quote, a threat to themselves and others. One night, me and my newspaper friend were shortless at a set of grocery store at 10, buying beer. Of course, they called the cops. At the door, the cop was waiting for us, and I said, officer, we are not a danger to ourselves or anyone else. He gave me a weird look and said to just get to where we were going. So a week or so later, my friend is stumbling drunk back from a party, a VHS copy of Rocky 4 in his hand. He bought a, okay. The cops see him and pull up.

They ask him where he's going. He says, quote, lesson officers, I'm a danger to myself and others. They immediately arrested him. So just that one word. That's a great story. Pretty good. Pretty good. All right.

I recommend. Oh, story time. I got one little quick story time here. So we've had a really good, I'm a parent corner here, we've had a really good run in the last year and a half of my kids with sports, winning trophies and stuff. Like my son got placed on this, like, amazing little league team, not by his own, like, skill or anything. And they won their tournament, and he got a trophy for winning the Little League championship. And my daughters have won soccer tournaments from recent months.

And my oldest daughter plays on a basketball team. She plays on all these different leagues and tournaments. and she had gone two years without losing a single basketball game. So they were on just a fantastic run in basketball, partly because my coaching is so good, if I'm being honest. I coach some of it. I mean, so she played in a tournament this weekend, and the competition was really good, and she lost.

And they lost the game. It was a very close game, and they lost at the very end. And her team, it was all upset, and after the game, but they played really hard, so I couldn't be mad. And after the game, she, you know, got a few tears in her eyes, and she's 10. And she's like, why aren't you more mad that we lost the game? Didn't you see what happened? We lost the game.

And I was like, I was like actually not, I didn't want them to lose, obviously. But I was like, as a parent, I was like, they need to lose at some point. It's a good lesson. And so I'm like, I'm not, I would say I wanted you to win, but I think sometimes you need to realize it's a learning moment. I don't know if I was being too harsh at the time, but then, of course, they learn. And the next day they come back and they plow through the competition and played way better the next day. So it's weird. I've gotten to the point where I'm actually okay with losing in sports as a parent.

Yeah, Lucy was part of winning. Yes, it is. Anyway, it was, she just, why aren't you, why aren't you more mad about this? And I'm like, well, hey, listen, this kind of thing happens. All right, recommendations. Okay, so the Hollywood Reporter had an article behind Neon's banner year and rivalry with A24. So A24 gets all the love. And I'm not, I like, I was supposed to say I'm not sure why.

I'm sure why they put out great stuff. But Neon is another independent studio that also. puts out great stuff. They were behind long legs, for instance. They did Parasite. Remember Parasite? Parasite won an Oscar? I think you could make the case that Parasite is one of the best movies of the past 15 years. Okay, so that's Neon. Yeah, Parasite was great. So neon, I'm sorry, longlegs did $74 million making it the most successful horror indie pick in a decade, and neck and neck with alien Romulus ahead of Manmex for Erosa.

So I saw Long Legs and was quite disappointed. Long Legs is the, is, Nicholas Cage was in it. And I said to my friends, how did this happen? Like, how did the hype machine get such momentum for a movie that was fine? I liked Long Legs enough. But it was like any other genre, horror movie on Shudder. Like, it was good. But the hype was ridiculous, scariest movie.

And yeah, come on. scary at all. So I finally got to the bottom of it in the story of how they got to the, how they had how they did the hype, which I didn't include in here. Whoops, my bad. But basically, they put out billboards around Los Angeles where it was like phone numbers and, and like just very like sort of mysterious billboards. So it was a viral marketing campaign. Vile marketing. But this part made me laugh because I could totally picture Nicholas Cage speaking this way. So Nick Cage was really happy with where the campaign was heading. This is Parks, who is the director.

He asked me, this is Nick Cage. So am I to believe that you're going to hold back my magnificent grotesqueness until much deeper in the campaign in which you'll reveal me in all of my glory? I took pause because I was like, this is the moment in which this campaign kind of lives or dies. And I said, well, actually, Nick, I don't want to show you at all. And he rocked back in his chair and he put his finger up to his mouth and started thinking, can't you totally picture Nicholas Kage doing this?

And I said to him, you're the boogeyman and you live in the shadows. He took a beat and he nodded his head and said, yeah, I like that. I'm picturing him and gone in 60 seconds where he goes. Yes. Let's go. Yes. Yes. Yes, exactly.

So Neon has a movie coming out. I think it's in October that is highly anticipated. I can't wait for it. The movie is called Enora. Have you seen the trailer for that? It's like a Russian oligarch goes to a strip club and marries a stripper. And it looks absolutely wild. Okay.

Wild, wild. All right, Ben, are you a Beatleger's guy? You and I, oh, yeah. I re-watched the original recently and it still holds up. It does hold up, but I have no interest in seeing the new. I'm a huge Michael Keaton fan. He was on Smart List a couple weeks ago, and I think that's why I re-watched it. And I love Michael Keaton.

Even though the first, I wouldn't say, like, I loved the movie, but it's such a unique movie that I, yes, I really liked it. Wait, you saw the new Beetle Juice? No, the old, I'm saying the original. Oh. Are you excited for the new one? I'm going to see it. For sure. So Scott Mendelson, who has a, who writes for Puck, said, Beetlejuice, it's third, the third best opening of the year behind Inside Out 2 in Deadpool and Wolverine,

as well as Warner Bros. biggest launched since Barbie in 2023. So I think it did $145 million over the weekend. They're just gigantic numbers. I have no interest. I'll see it when it comes out, maybe. Yeah, I'll see it on streaming, but. But, oh, speaking of Michael Keenan, Josh recommended Knox, goes away, which I watched over the weekend

on Max. I watched that, too, before. What do you think? It was good. Cool idea. It's a good movie. Too long. All right, so, Beetlejuice is coming back. This is the playbook. We keep talking about this. They're making movies for our generation, right? So there's the Goonies. They're

making a sequel. Are you serious? I did not know this. That's one of my all-time favorite 80s movies there is. Okay, unless it was just a rumor, I'm pretty sure they're making... I can see it. I'm not happy about it, but I can see it. The Sandman was on with Eli and Paden last night. He's making a happy Gimler, too. Which I am, I'm very nervous that that's going to be horrific.

No offense. I've always talked about this. There's very few classic comedies that have a good sequel. It just, it doesn't happen. It's very rare. Yeah. All right. Speaking of, I guess, not sequels, but prequels.

I watched Quiet Place Day 1. It's streaming on Paramount Plus, I believe. Not in the same league as the other Quiet Place movies, which I loved. It was still entertaining. Totally good. I've got two things about this. So the whole premise of the movie is she's trying to get like in and out of the aliens to get a slice of pizza in New York. And my thought process is if this ever happened like you and Chris and Josh and Barry, like you guys would die immediately because you would argue over which place to get the pizza from. And you'd never make it out of the building. I know where I'm going. I think Chris is coming with me. I'm going to Prince Street pizza for a pepperoni slice.

Okay. I don't know where Josh is going. I think Barry would just start spitting in circles because he wouldn't know where. to go. You guys would argue the whole way about which kind of slice you should get or which place you should go. Actually, we should go to this place. So you guys would die. Here's the other thing.

In three Quiet Place movies, I've never gotten one motivation from the aliens. I want like a manifesto from the aliens. Like, what are they doing here? Yeah, what's a problem? Yeah. What are you so mad about all? Because they can't see anything. Is that what they're so mad about?

So I agree with you. Quiet Place Day 1 was by far the weeks of the three, but still good. The scene where they're in the sewer and the alien is like in the theater, that's slayed. All right, Slow Horses is back for season four on Apple. I think this is the best show of the 2020s that no one ever talks about. Gary Oldman is fantastic. This show is awesome.

And they had a story in the Wall Street Journal about the author of the books and how no one was reading these books for years. He got published, and then his publisher dropped him. And then it took seven to ten years for these books to finally take off. And then they turned it into this TV series on Apple. And he sold like four million copies of his books.

And he says, he knew his 60s, he had a job. He would write on the side. He said he would write like 350 words a night. And that was this thing. Every day, you're at 350 words. So the main lesson I've taken away from this is that if you're only going to be successful in one half of your career, make it the second half. If it's the first half, that's a tragedy. The second half is a happy ending.

I totally agree. Love that. Love that. It's well said. Anyway, slow horses, catch up. Is that six episodes? Six episodes apiece. You watch the first episode and you're kind of like, eh, but the seasons just hum.

I do love British TV. Gary Oldman is so good. It's one of the best spy shows. I think that's ever been made. It is so good. Maybe I'll watch it on the flight. Speaking of British TV, I think you bottom-ticked industry.

The episode after you bailed was one of the wildest episodes of TV. All right, I couldn't handle the ESG stuff. It just, none of the finance stuff seemed anywhere remotely close to reality to me. I just had... Your finance snob. If you could just look past that,

the next episode was one of the better TV episodes I've seen in a long time. All right. But appears I'm the only one who shares the sentiment. I don't know anybody else except for Tom Morgan that watches industry. Pretty sure this last season.

First season was good. So it was a second. All right. We'll see you next week. A few thousand of our friends at Future Proof. Future Proof. Hope everybody enjoyed their summer. I said this last week.

I can't say it again. Summer's over. It's official. September 21st, right? It's fall. All right, everybody. Thank you very much for listening. We'll see you next time.

You know, But, uh, Uh, Uh, Thank you.