Animal Spirits Podcast - Will Higher Rates Kill the Stock Market? (EP. 484)

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

On episode 484, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss: the stock market has an excuse to sell off, valuations are falling across the board, the cause of the next correction, 5% bond yields, the worst bond market of all-time, incomes are rising, the wealth effect is real, AI personal assistants, the Consumer Inertia basket of stocks, 7% mortgage rates, the fall of the creative class, the 100 best TV shows this century and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Janus Henderson Investors. Visit https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits to get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription, new customers only. Visit https://www.janushenderson.com/ for more information. 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

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Always working in perfect harmony to find the right investment opportunities, Janice Henderson investors, investing in a brighter future together. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, I have a question for you. Go ahead. The market has an excuse to sell off if it wants it. Will it take it? Well, that's a good question.

First of all, strap it and standby. This is a 43-page dock, which is on the longer side. So we're going to go a buck 15, I say. I feel like 40s are a new median. Let me run through the real quick. Just I'm not comparing this to these places, but I'm just showing this. What pricked the Japan bubble? Central Bank raised rates.

Okay. Dot com bubble. The Fed was raising rates. 1929, the Fed Titan. GFC, the Fed raised rates into it. Okay? Everyone knows what the biggest risk is right now. And the market is not always right, but I think the market is expecting,

pricing in now, the Fed to raise rates to like four and a half or five percent. If the market wanted to, it could use this to sell off. Will it do it? No. Too easy? My experience is that the market usually doesn't give you this long to get out. It kind of reminds me a little bit of April, where we're staring at the straight being closed, and the stock market is coming down just a little bit every day.

There's no 1%, 2% falls. were like, I thought this was the black swan. Why aren't stocks falling? So it feels like that a little bit to me. I think that the way that I'm describing the current market environment is there's a lot of doubt, a lot of doubt, but basically zero fear. Let me make the case. In the doubt column, this chart is from 22V research via daily chartbook.

AI evaluations. Last week, I said if there's a poster child for the AI trade, it's NVIDI at 16 times earnings, borrowed earnings. Well, they zoomed out and they have an AI a basket, a curated universe of 81 AI CapEx exposed companies spanning 12 market segments trades in an average EV to EBITDA, just think of it as like price earnings of 15 times,

which is 1.14 times their pre-2020s historical average. So there's no premium in the AI trade anymore, okay? So a lot of doubt. Earnings versus valuations from duality research, only one sector, consumer staples has seen multiple expansion this year. This is nuts. This chart is nuts. Okay. It's not just tech.

It's everything. The VIX is at 16. We have a chart. We didn't explain this again. Duality looked at all of the sectors. Okay. How many are there? 12 or 13?

I think they keep adding some. Okay, 11. And every single one of them, but consumer stables has seen a multiple contraction this year. Many, it's double digits. consumer discretionary double digits, consumer services, communication services, which is tech, double digits, materials double digits, the S&P has a whole double digits and technology and energy, both double digits. And consumer staples is up a smidge.

It's up less than 1%. So it's not just like, oh, wow, yeah, tech names. It's everything. Yeah. So multiple compression everywhere. Doubt. Here's the no fear side of it. The VIX is at 16, despite the sell, which we'll get to in a second.

from J.C. Well, sell-off. It's a sell-off. From JC. Consumer staples and utilities are two of the most defensive areas of the stock market. We would all agree? Yes. When investors get scared, they often hide in these groups.

Nobody's hiding there right now. So he has two charts of, two ratio charts of consumer staples divided by the S&P to show how one is doing versus the other, and utilities versus the S&P. And they're both at new multi-year-old. There is a lot of doubt, but there is no fear. Let's talk about the sell-off. We are in a very weird market dynamic where a lot of stocks are going down, and yet the index is near an all-time high.

Jason Gepford shows that the S&P has been holding within 1% of a new high, and yet more than 70% of stocks in the index are at least 10% below their highs. the only other time that's happened of the last 30 years is right before the dot-com bubble burst. However, done, done, done. However, critically, don't punt in the bears, please. Critically, duality research shows that the key distinction of the 52-week low list is that a lot of the deterioration is happening in utilities and staples and real estate.

obviously not just defensive sectors, but sectors that are exposed to higher interest rates in a bad way. 21 of the 28 names on that new low list came from utility staples and real estate. So it is a market that is full of doubt and also has very little fear. Do you think that's a good way to explain it? Yes. Well, it's funny because the S&P, we're recording this a little later than usual, Tuesday afternoon-ish, lunchtime.

the S&P is down 1.4%. Even like small caps actually sound off a little bit. Small caps are on 8%. What's equal? Equalates over five, I think. Okay. Even the NASDAQ is not even down 2% yet.

So you're right. Like it's totally a reversal of... Well, hold on, Ben. If you are a stock picker, and believe it or not, there are people that own individual stocks, there's a lot of them that are getting their headbeats in. Well, so I wrote this after we talked last week

about Adam Parker's piece, which I read, which was really good, that you talked about. So I decided to look at this using Y charts data. So they have these comp tables. And I looked at year to date. The S&P is up 13% still, year to date. 35% of stocks are outperforming the index.

But 40% of stocks, four out of every 10 stocks, is down this year in the S&P. So you're right. So more stocks are down this year and a double digit up here than are outperforming the index. And there's like 20 stocks that are up 100% or more. So this is a very concentrated market now. So it's funny. It's still, it's the memory names, even if they're off their highs. But we've gone through a whole cycle this year already.

We went through a cycle where all the other stuff was working in the Mag 7 and the big names weren't. And now it's come back and they're working again. It keeps going back and forth. I guess the one thing, I said, rising rates are a very good reason for the stock market to sell off. The only way that that doesn't. No, not rising, not rising, straight up. Yes, going vertical. So, yeah, the tenure went from like 4% to 5.2 in a hurry.

So the way that this doesn't become some sort of equity route, or at least correction from that, is, well, hey, dummy, they're rising because we believe in the AI trade. We believe that AI is going to continue to spend. Hyperskillers are going to continue to spend. That's going to continue to help earnings. That's why the stock market's not selling off. It's because we think economic growth is going to be strong. I was going to get into this later. They have the Atlanta Fed GDP now has third quarter GDP coming in at 5%.

That has not always been right. We've shown before that it's been wrong in the past. But if rates are accelerating because it's like, oh my gosh, this thing has legs. It's an economic boom. That's why the stock market won't sell off. That would be the reason. Whatever happens, we always say this, but it's true. Whatever way it goes, if the market falls 10%, we go, oh, of course, the rates rolls like crazy.

If the market keeps going up, you go, of course, AI is spending like crazy. It'll be very obvious with hindsight. I tend to think you're probably more right than my theory. There's no rules in the stock market, but I do think it's a pretty good shorthand that the market, when it falls, it generally falls fast. It's unusual that everybody is like, stock market's going to fall. We have time to get out. Stock market's going to fall. We have time to get out.

Speaking of rules, this is me having fun. So anyway, I could be dead wrong, but I put in my timely hat on, I would not be surprised if we get past this, this bout of selling underneath the market, underneath the indexes. and you get a rip until the year end. I can be very wrong, obviously, we'll see. So the stock market not having rules, because if you learned finance one-on-one, like when I took finance classes in college, a higher interest rate should mean lower present value for financial assets,

especially long-duration risk assets. The higher the interest rate, the lower the present value, right? That should be obvious. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Since Treasury yields bottomed in March of 2020, and they bottomed before the stock market did. I think the Treasury rate bottomed like March 9th or something,

below 50 basis points. Since that date, the S&P 500 is up 19% annualized, since rates went from 0.5% to 5.2%. This is why there's no rules. This is why there's no rules. You're right. So I did this tweet and it kind of went a little crazy, but it's weird to think about the state that we're in. Mortgage rates have shot way up past 7% again, right? 7.3% I think we got. But the unemployment rate is still at 4%. Bond yields are above 5%. Cash yields are going back to 4%. Oil is around $100 a barrel, depending on the day you look at it. Gas prices are crazy high, $5 a gallon. Inflation is like 3.5%.

All-time highs in the stock market, all-time lows in consumer sentiment. We're lower now than we were in the 1980s, COVID, the great financial crisis. I know. But here's the thing. The things that don't matter right now, people would start freaking out about them more if the stock market were to fall. Totally. Great thing. It's like people won't freak out about that stuff, at least market people like us, because the stock market is doing well.

Right. That is true. Price rules everything around me. Yes. All right. All right, I want to get on my soapbox one more time talking about like how careful you have to be as a market consumer.

As somebody who listens to a lot of different opinions, you have to be careful. Exhibit A. Tech funds, tech fund flows are going to. straight up. This is from Callum Thomas. We're looking at the rolling 12-month net ETF flows of tech stocks, and it's off the charts. We've never seen anything like this. Simultaneously, we have... This is very surprising to me. Which part? That it's dwarfed the other periods from this cycle by so much. Yeah, not even close. It's like triple the size.

The numbers are bigger, but still, even if you normalize it as a percent, it's crazy high. We also have near record retail buying from Robin Hood. Sherwood has this chart showing the Robinhood traders net 21-day single-stock purchases as a percentage of the max, meaning the most that they've ever done. They're anchoring to that. So these two charts, everyone in the pool. Everyone in the pool, right? Everyone's, okay.

Antenna up. Everyone's bullish. Oh, yeah? Okay. Goldman. They have a positioning indicator. It fell for the sixth week in seven moving further into negative territory, the most negative since June 2025.

What do we make of this, Ben? Well, this is, sentiment indicators are completely broken. You can't, you trust the flows, not the sentiment indicators. You can't ask people what they want to do or what they feel. You have to, what are they actually doing? So the flows matter way more. I agree, but I do wonder if the sentiment indicator is quantitative. I'm guessing it's got to be mostly quantitative.

This is not. The point is, just because of the point is, just because of it's not. The point is, just be careful with surveys, obviously. It's really hard to say everyone is this or that because the robin and a trader behaves very differently than the Goldman institutional investor than the Schwab S-Tax investor. These are categorically different types of people. So it's really hard to say everyone is this or consensus is that. Sometimes it's easier than others, but right now it's difficult. So I was going to put this in the doc, but I didn't want to.

But the Atlantic had this piece where they said that there was. is a sex recession in America. Okay, I'm going to bring this back to sentiment. And they show that the only people who are still having the same amount of sex, this is married couples, are religious couples. So it's like religious attendees, how much sex do you have? Where do they get this data? Is this, is this, is something like on the I watch? How do they get this data? This was my question. Who in their right mind is answering a survey like this? What is your religion? Are you having sex with your spouse? No one is, no one in the right mind is answering these questions. How can you think? These are weirdos. It should say,

Weirdos are not having sex or whatever. Like, correct. Who is answering this? Who's answering these? There's no way you can... The average age is what? 68? I just don't know who is answering questions like this.

You're right. All right, let's talk bonds a little bit. Let me start with this. Hey, guys, I listen every week and I love the show. We got 12 or 13 different emails like this probably. Show us where the market is. You said last week you bought bonds. Can you elaborate on that?

Did you purchase actual bonds or ETF? What types of bonds? all fair questions. And again, a bunch of people asked us this. Michael and I are totally contraindicators. And here's the thing that I will say on this bond purchase. Wait, what do you know? Contra indicators?

Because everyone else is getting in the pool for taking on risk, and we're going the other way. I think a lot of people are turning bullish on bonds. I don't know, man. Maybe. So here's what I did. I did this in my brokerage account, and I've never done it in my brokerage account. My 401K is to 100% all stocks. I did this in an ETI.

You can buy individual bonds, but it's a pain in the butt. If you're not like someone who knows how this stuff, you can go to Treasury Direct and buy treasuries right from the U.S. government. But it's an old, antiquated website. And I don't know why you would try to buy your own bonds when you can just buy an ETF. That makes it easy. It's low cost. Most of them are very liquid.

It's just, it's simple. And the thing is, we are obviously early here. You and I are not going to like, we bought bonds. So that's the top of rates. there's definitely another top. Right? I don't look at it. Probably another top.

I never look at, and this is how we think about this with our clients, too. I do not look at this from a, I'm trying to time an interest rate market. I think rates are going to fall this much by this date. And like, I don't even care if rates say where they are. Same. Right? It's a risk for worth thing. I like the yield.

Yes, I like the yield. That's the thing. Speaking of yield. Wait, can I say what I did? Yes. What did you do? Because I'm glad that you said that. I also am not touching my 401K.

I'm 41 years old. I don't care really where the market goes over the near term. Now, if you told me for sure with 100% certainty that the market would get would fall for 30%, well, then of course I would sell all my stocks and put everything into bonds. But I'm not buying bonds. I still like stocks. Now, if stocks go up, if stocks rip 15% into your end and they go up another 25% in 2027, might I consider owning some bonds?

Yeah. If I think we're really in a bubble, will I own some bonds? Sure. Okay, fine. Not that. In my brokerage account, like you, Ben, I am down to one and a half stocks. I still have a pretty full position in IMAX, and I own another stock. Doesn't even matter which stock. But I sold all of the ones that were... What are you embarrassed to mention it? What's that? You embarrassed to mention it? That doesn't matter. Well, it's just, it's a small position. It's a stock. No, I own Clear. Ticker is you. It's a very small position, so it's not worth mentioning. Clear is in like the airport thing? The airport. The airport thing.

Okay. So I got rid of, I cleaned up net. I bailed on Netflix. I don't care if it's the bottom. I'm down 20% of Netflix. I got it to Spotify. Like all the other stocks I took a chance on that I had like small losses in except for Netflix, which was a 20% loss. Gone, whack them off.

I am very happy owning my 5% yields. So I've got a mixture of short intermediate and I did take a swing this morning on long, which I will probably get run over on. It's fine. But yeah, this is not a stock. Okay. So that's a directional bet. You're going a long duration.

So I bought, I bought, I did buy TLT 30 minutes before this podcast started. It certainly feels like it blow off top in yields, but who knows? But just to be clear, for people listening, again, there's not a bond market call to say that rates have topped or anything because they haven't. They just haven't. Like, they're clearly going up. The trend is higher. Don't fight the trend. I guess I am.

In our investing life cycle, we've never experienced 5% bond yields before. I got to do it. I got to do it. It's attractive. Okay. So we talked, this week we talked to Bill Egan from JP Morgan. He's going to be on to talk your book in a few weeks. And he was like, you know, I'm getting 4% on T bills. Why wouldn't I just stay there? Like, that's an option for a lot of people too still. And if the Fed keeps hiking rates, those three-month T-bills don't have interest rate risk. And they'll do just fine, too. And you got to. So the thing is there yields a bound.

If somebody told you yields abound. If somebody told you in 2020 that you can get 4% in cash, the response would be like, all right, why would I really do much else? Right. The thing is bonds give you the kicker if and when inflation and growth stall. If they stall out, bonds are going to have a kicker. And let me show you. I had Sean and Matt were working on me with some Bloomberg Ag stuff this week. So the ad goes back to 1976. It was originally a little history lesson here.

Originally the Lehman Brothers Ag, they created it in the early 80s, then they backdated it to the 70s so they can have a benchmark. No one ever had a bond benchmark before. Investment grade. Since 1976, this is one of the worst five-year returns ever. It's negative. it's never been negative before until this part of this cycle. The ruling 10-year nominal return.

So that was like negative.3% for five-year annualized return. For 10 years, it's 1.4%. If you add inflation on top of it, this is the worst 10-year real return ever for the ag right now since the inception back in 1976. And the reason was even though inflation was higher and rates were rising even more rapidly in the 80s, yields were a lot higher.

So this was literally the perfect storm for a bad bond market. low starting yields, rapidly rising rates, high inflation. You couldn't ask for a worse bond market than we just lived through. Correct. And on the other side of that is higher yields. That's our bond take. All right. I said last week, there is no such thing as a K.

Jim Bianco slid in my DMs and he said, Ben, this is the K. He sent me a chart. We talked about Sentin earlier. By the way, Jim Bianco turned bullish on bonds. Bonds, I saw that. Yeah. So he said, this is the K. it's the stock market versus sentiment.

Stock market goes up, sentiment goes down. Because I said there's no, there's no chart that actually looks like the letter K. He said, no, it's a stock market versus sentiment. This is very bizarre. You can see in the past, stock market crashes, sentiment crashes. Stock market goes up, sentiment goes up until... We know. The service are parking.

Yeah, COVID did it. Here's the strange thing about the K. All right. K2 Institute, look at this. This is pretty surprising. They looked at household, the growth in income on an inflation-adjusted basis since the 1990s, the lowest fifth, so they did the lowest fifth, median, second fifth, and middle-fifth. They're looking at poor and middle-class households. The lowest fifth has seen by far the greatest gains in income since 1990.

Very surprising. Okay. They also looked at, let's see, hang on. Oh, growth and wealth, too. It's actually been pretty strong. Like, throughout most of the 90s, income gains actually weren't that great for most lower and middle income households.

They've, like, rocketed higher in the past 10 to 20 years. Wall Street Journal has this piece. Inflation-adjusted median household income. Look at this. From 2000 to 2015, inflation-adjusted income went nowhere. Remember how mad people were about this?

Look at how much it's shot up in recent years. This is also an underreported part of the economy. And I'm definitely not saying that the lower fifth is like killing it at all because they're obviously not. But on a relative basis. No, no, no. That's not where I'm going.

My point is they're still spending all their money. And now they have more money to spend. Right. Listen to this. One more from Cato Institute. Since 1967, the share of households with incomes of 150,000 or greater, that's inflation adjusted, okay, has more than quintupled. This is the craziest thing that,

Look at this chart here. The percentage of people with $150,000 or more inflation adjusted, in 1967, was 5% of households. Today it's almost 30%. Wow. I don't think we celebrate enough how much wealth that we've created

and how much better incomes are than they were in the past. One more. Blake Millard, friend of the show. He's on a panel with me last year of Future Proof, talking about content. Surging equity wealth pushed household assets above 10 times of liabilities

in Q2 of 2026. This is from Bank of America. This is an insane chart. Household assets to liabilities is now 10 times. That's pretty crazy, right? We spend a lot of time talking about the liabilities and not enough talking about the assets. To that point, J.P. Morgan had a similar report this week, titled, More U.S. households are supporting spending by drawing on investment wealth.

So the flywheel of stock market gains flowing into the real economy, which we've been discussing, is spinning fast. Okay, I have a question about this. I have a question about this report. Give the data, then I'll ask my question. Okay. You know I didn't make this report, right? Yes.

But I have a take on it. Okay. 8% of people withdrew money from investments on net over February to April, 2026. That's up from 4% over the same period of 2019 and just 2.4% in 2015. High-income individuals are much more likely to use investments to support spending. The share from the top income segment rose from 6.6% from February to April, 2015, to 20%. That's unbelievable. So the stock market is just a big-ass piggy bank for people that have been invested for a while. One more thing, and then you could ask. They also showed

the cash withdrawn from investment accounts as a share of spending. And of course, for the top 10 percent. It is so far up until the right. It used to be like less than four percent in 2015. And now it is, I don't know, over 10 percent. So I read this report too. This is Oh, you want to go vacation? Yeah. Sell some stocks. This is showing the wealth effect. Isn't this also just baby boomers retiring and spending more from their investment accounts? I don't know if it's just that. But isn't that a big part of it? Of course, it's part of the story. Okay. I thought, all right, I think stats like this are going to be skewed by baby boomers in the years ahead. Both of them can be true. Do you doubt the direction of this chart is absolutely

telling the story? Think about how many baby boomers are, like, think about where baby boomers were in 2010 in terms of how they prepared they were for retirement and going, my house got killed, my stock portfolio got killed. I'm never going to be able to retire. And now they're looking at, oh my gosh, everything I own is up. I'm doing way better than I possibly could have imagined. That was a dumb take, baby boomers cashing out of their 401 was going to crash the stock market. Yeah. I've never made that way. Oh, yeah, because that's how it works.

People, when baby boomers turned, turned, turned whatever the ages, what is the age of withdrawal for former K is? It's 69 or 65? 69.5. 59 and a half? 59 and a half. Right. Yeah. Say, I'm not a CFP.

Anyway, that they were going to just like go to cash simultaneously. dumbest should ever. All right. We have a heading for inflation here. We haven't used it in a while, so I put something in here just because this is inflation-based. John Arnold tweeted this. As of August 2026, the national median rent sits at 1390, almost exactly where it would have been of rent growth since 2020, had remained on the slow and steady trajectory that had been on pre-pandemic. 2% annualized since 2017. So you had this huge, enormous spike in 2021 rents. And ever since 2022, rent growth has completely fallen off. And it's back on the pre-pendemic. trend. I'm not sure how many people would believe you if you showed them this. Fine. Yeah. Interesting.

It's good news, correct? You don't think rent growth slowing is good news for people, especially young people who are boxed out of the housing market? It's good news. Come on. I know there's nothing, there's nothing people on social media hate more today than good economic news. Eddie Lofindin says that all the time. Well, yeah, I just... You know that's true. I know, I know that's true. I'm just saying inflation was so horrible that it's just difficult to celebrate this. But this is literally the biggest outlay for 90% of households is housing. Yeah. And for people who are renting, the fact that rent goes flowed.

No, yes. For people that are renting, of course, of course. Of course. It is good news. All right. Let's talk about it. So you said you've been, I liked your take that you don't want to hear what people are doing with their like agents or AI or like fantasy football. Stop telling me what you're doing. I don't care.

Right? I am violating my own rules. I'm sure you are. But you're using some of this stuff. I talked about playing around with Muse last week. So, Torson Slocke has a, he said, Muse and similar agentic AI assistance could soon sweep household cash

automatically into accounts paying 3.3 to 5% instead of 0.1% on the national average on checking accounts. If every household used AI agents to optimize the return on their cash... This is very stupid. Yes, banks could lose a large share of cheap deposits that you're relying on to make loans,

which would be a problem. And if I had hair, I wouldn't be bald. First of all, they can't do this. The banks will shut them off if you just keep pinging their bank account. Yes, that's what we don't know. Like, listen, I am, I've said from the start, the only thing I want from AI is Scarlett Johansson from her as my assistant. And it sounds like we're really getting close to that or we're already there. We have it.

That's all I want. I want the assistant. I think it's got to get back. I'm not going to be a, I'm never a first user for these things. So I'm probably going to wait until Apple does it to use it. I've been toying around with Muse a little bit. Okay. But I'm going to wait until Apple gives me a really good one and probably use them,

just because I feel it'll be easier. I want to, before we get into the agents, and I've been using this shit out of instinct over the last week, and it's absolutely fucking incredible. So I'm going to violate what I said last week about not sharing. Sorry, don't care. It's unbelievable, and I want the audience to know about it. I want to say this before we return to the agent stuff.

I don't know if this is controversial or not. I don't give a shit about AI slop. How about that? I don't care. Here's my take. I understand why people do care about it. I really do. I think it's coming from a good place.

I think that there's worry that we're losing our humanity. But can I tell you something? I just don't care. I don't get caught up in what other people are doing. If you want to write me an AI crafted email, I'll just delete it. Or maybe I'll read it. I'm just not that bothered by it. I feel like AI slop has become like the term de jour on the internet.

I don't care. I guess I'm like you where I'm not, and I'm sure most people are coming around to that or will come around to that. I'm like you. I just, for me, it's a filter to ignore someone. If you were to blog plus using AI and I can tell immediately that I'm just not going to read it. Right. So that it's just a filter for me. Yeah, you're right.

I guess people are making, people are making. the leap that like there will be nothing left other than AI produced shit and I just reject that. It's just nonsense. I do too. And also, there aren't very, there aren't that many good writers out there. So if people are using AI to write better than they could by themselves, I don't know. Why wouldn't you? If you're not a very good, if you don't like writing or you're not very good at it.

So anyway, I'm bullish on the agent thing. All right. I think it's going to be, but I think, but I love the fact that we're getting to the point where we're trying to figure out what the next, what it's going to. lead to. And I, like, listen, it's not that hard for people to take money they have now and move it. It's not hard to do. Like, just having an agent is not going to make you much better. I love the fact that people are trying to think through what this having an agent will do. Here's my, here's the thing I don't, I think that's totally unanswerable right now.

How many people are actually going to use these to the fullest extent? Because, like, I know people who are all, like, optimized to the hilt, love these things. How many people actually need a personal assistant for their life? How many people are, like how many people have CEO level, whatever, or C-suite level lives that are so busy that they need this? That's a question I don't know the answer to. I think it's the wrong question. Okay. Who says everybody has to use it for it to matter?

Well, if it's going to lead to a bank run, then everyone has, that's what I'm saying. To have like societal. Nonsense. Okay. I think everybody's going to use these things. But I do think the people who do use them, they are going to get, but I think after a while you're going to go, how many, like, restaurant reservations do I really make? How many travel reservations do I really make? Everybody's going to use these things.

Of course they are, but I don't know if they're going to have the societal impact that... God damn it, let me finish. All right. When I say everybody, because I've been using it all week. You have not. So let me just talk about this. Oh, all week. Whoa.

Well, since future proofs, since I downloaded it. Okay. And I cannot go backwards. So you are a late adopter, admittedly. You just discovered Apple Pay. I don't think that 100% of the society is going to use this. Obviously, when I say everybody, I don't mean literally everybody. But Ben,

it is fucking incredible. It is absolutely incredible. Don't think of it as like, oh, does everybody need an assistant? No, not everybody needs an assistant. It just does so many things for you. So as an example, and I'm not saying that this is the end-all-be-all. I'm just sharing with the audience who's like, wait, what are you guys talking about? So instinct is a company that is similar to Muse, which you may have heard about from meta.

Instinct is what's interesting about instinct. And Patrick just had on the founder on his podcast. The kid is 23 years old, which is totally mind-blowing. They're growing 10% a day. They just raised a billion dollars at a $10 billion valuation. Okay. So what is it? And if Apple comes out with Siri assistant, that company is nuked overnight.

I don't know. Maybe, perhaps. Okay. Keep going. It is a text messaging platform where you text it to do anything. And when I say anything, Robin will send me like, oh, can you get this basketball for Kobe? Can you go to this?

Can you do that? So now, Robin and I have our instincts sync to each other, where they're talking to each other, they're putting stuff on our calendar, they're buying, they're scheduling, they're returning. So as a tangible example, I said, can you help me with my Disney subscription? I think right now I pay for Disney, Hulu, and ESPN plus bundle with commercials. I just want Hulu and Disney, no commercials. What am I paying now?

What would be the new price? Can you execute this for me? All right, so it said, on it. I'll pull what you're paying now, price out, blah, blah, blah, found it. And I don't need to read every text message. The point is it does things for you. It doesn't just tell you what's happening and then makes you do it. It does everything for you.

So there's going to be a lot of concern about safety, how secure these things. I'm simply not ready to give my information up to these things yet. No way. That's fine. I'm not there. Okay. Noah said the founder said. And I probably goes, hi, idiot.

I can hack into all your stuff anyway. I don't need you to give it to me. I said after, after three weeks, 40% of users are sharing a personal credit card. So I've shared everything. Maybe I'm an asshole. I don't care. It is doing all of my everything. Move money here.

Oh, my account got overdrawn. Oh, fuck what happened. I had to move money from this account to this account. It repaid it for me. It is just doing everything. It's crafting emails. It's unbelievable. I'm totally not there yet for moving a cut.

I do not want an agent that can go row. to move from one account to another. No way I'm trusting that. Maybe I'm like just naive here, but I'm not doing that. No way. Totally fine. I'm not, you can do whatever you want. My point is that this thing is going to be adopted in a big way.

And that is why. I agree. I'm very bullish on these things. It's, it really is the first thing that I've felt in this AI thing that is like, I can't shut up about. Like, Robert is getting very sick of me talking about it. there's a Goldman Sachs consumer inertia basket. Things like Planet Fitness.

So these stocks are getting mauled for good reason. By the way, I just cut the cord. I had instinct finally, and I could have done this, but I'm paying for every streaming subscription platform, including MGM Plus. Why am I paying $175 a month for cable? Did you watch the new John Ham show yet on MGM Plus? No.

Save it for a couple more weeks. I'll talk about recommendations. I never use it. I never, ever, ever use it. So that's the point that it's going to go through all of my subscriptions and cancel the ones I haven't used in the last 12 months or whatever it is. So that's why these Planet Fitness, New York Times, and all these places sold off.

I don't know what the unintended consequence are going to be of these businesses just blocking all these agents. I don't know if they will want to, or does it just mean, okay, fine, we're going to double our prices. So I lost, so this is annoying. I can't find my credit cards. Can't find my wallet. See, you do need a personal assistant.

I don't know where it is. So I'm in Texas, and I've traveled with my passport. And so it suggested that I get a card that goes into your wallet where it's like find my, right? It's like a chip card. So it bought that from me. Okay, fine. I asked it to monitor my credit cards to make sure that there's no unusual activity. And it said something along the lines of, I can only check your account once a day.

Because if I do, it'll feel like it's being hacked by a bot and we'll get shut off. It's very aware. Anyway, to me, this is like, holy shit, the future is here. And I am incredibly bullish on this category. And I don't know if instincts could be the winner or Muse or Apple, whatever. And I understand the concerns, the privacy concerns. I totally get it. How do they make money?

That's what I don't get. How do they make money? They could charge $5 a month. I don't know. Yeah, all right. Name their price. I'll pay it. All right.

Side of the Times. You're going to get it hacked. I can't wait. Sorry. That's not very nice. Side of the, side of the times of this 23-year-old kid starting this company. Andrews and Horowitz is spending $35 million to back to your academy with other Bay Area tech giants on board. Basically, if you're an 18-year-old future genius and you want to skip college, they're incubating this type of thing.

I don't hate it. Me either. Love it. All right, we don't need to spend time on this. It's just LOL. Founder of Calshy, we just submitted a regulatory filing to introduce margin on a subset of long data prediction markets. Perfect. Just what we need.

Just what we need. It would not apply to sports, culture, and a few other categories. He said capital efficiency has been the biggest bottleneck for institutions. And margin is the single most requested feature. Whatever, dude. Okay. Yeah. All right.

What would those long data predictions be? And I wonder what long dated means to them. Like how long is wrong? Two weeks out. Right. Okay. So last week, mortgage rates went to, like I said, 7.3%. I put a Simpsons meme in here that.

It's already dead. Brutal. At what point do people just say, you know what? Screw it. Let's overpay. I feel like... That happened. That was 25 and 26.

Now it's... That's over. I don't think people can afford to over. pay anymore. We've been overpaying. incomes are up. I don't think people who've been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting will just say fine, I'll overpay and I'll pay too much in the

monthly and I'll hope to refinance later. I don't think it's a fine. I think at a certain point, like there's just math. So we've looked at all those charts that show, that show, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to look for the bottom. I'm trying to look for the positive for housing. So like we show all those charts that show like the stock market bottoms way before earnings.

It bottoms way before recessions. Like the stock market always bottoms before the bad news. is gone. I respect the glass half-fault take, Ben. There's no positive news here. Is housing going to bottom before the market, like, activity is, I don't know. All right. There's no, the glasses, the glass is 100% empty.

Here's a question I was thinking about the other day. So I got a 3% mortgage and I can't remember when I refinanced, 20-20 or 2021. If I do back the envelope math on that, I'm guessing it would be worth maybe 60 cents on the dollar. Who lost money in that transaction? In that bond. Who is the loser of that bond? Whoever's holding it? Someone lost a lot of money on a lot of bonds like that.

Right? Well, opportunity costs, sure. Well, no, just the bond. If you're holding that, I haven't, I have not repaid my loan. That loan is still in a basket of bonds somewhere. Someone got bent over on my 3% mortgage. It's not me. How about this?

Can't lose money if you don't sell. So people always get really mad when you see proposals like this. This senator, I don't know where he's from. He proposed that there is a five to one federal match for first time homebuyers saving for a down payment, up to 50 grand. Great, I love it. Do it. Who gets mad? What fucking asshole gets mad about this?

Well, I have a 12% more. Yeah, shut up, asshole. So you save 10 grand. The government saves 50 for you. You have $60,000 for down payment now. So people say, why are we always trying to subsidize demand? I guess I would agree. It would be a lot better if we somehow subsidized supply.

Oh, I know, because demand is f***ed. But it doesn't, it doesn't, but it also doesn't feel like we're ever going to do anything about supply. So short of that, I think, yeah, I'm actually okay with this. I would rather them give all first time home, all new first time home buyers a 3% mortgage than this. But you're right, I don't, a lot of people are going to hate this. I don't hate it. Right? I don't know.

Let's see. So redemptions are still happening in private markets. We haven't talked about private credit. You had the Hamilton Lane guy on to talk about private markets. I thought it was great. No commentary on their investments or anything like that. But I found them to be engaging, reasonable, was nodding along with a lot of the critiques that we've offered over the years. I like them.

It's so interesting that the outflows continue because the bad news has not. And you know damn well that the media is dying for a big default. dying. Yeah, we haven't had, but this was two stories. Chris and, Chris and Sean, I see highlighted these. Apollo capital private credit fund, 15% of people look to exit. Morgan Stanley had one that was 11%. And the Apollo one's a pretty big fund, like 26 billion in assets. And it said the last quarter, it was 17% or so. So like these are, people are still asking. Like, no, no, no, I'm not going to hold on and wait. I, so people get every quarter, more people keep coming back asking for their money. Well, the equity of these companies looks terrible. Like,

Looking at Carlisle was at $70 last September. That's a year ago. It's now 40. Blackstone has, I mean, all of them, doesn't matter. The basket is GPZ, if you're curious. I don't know why you would be, but these names are getting destroyed. Blue Owl obviously never came back at all. Oh, man, they're testing new lows again.

Yeah. It's grim. Listen, I will say, like, even though we opened the show like with a pretty emphatic, like, no, the market is not going to fall apart. caveat that with like rates because if the 10 year that's what my point was rates that's what I said if the 10 year is is 5.6% next week I don't see how the market doesn't crap I agree rates have come up so that's what I was saying the rates are the thing that's the excuse of the market to sell off will it

take it I don't know oh I have to uh I have to uh I have to apologize to United for throwing them onto the bus last week. I flew, I flew American. American has a terrible movie selection. Okay. I don't know why they don't just, I know some of them have adopted like Paramount Plus or like, they should just all have the streaming services on there and just give them for free. Great point. You know what's very rude when people get up in an airplane and they use the back of your seat to lift them up? That annoys me. Every single time. Then they get back in.

He pulls you back. I hate that. Yes. So I was very close to saying it something. It only happened once, but it was so aggressive, Ben. Like, it was such, it wasn't, like, it was just like, like, and like, how do you not know that you're doing that to the person in front of you? It's so bizarre. I always scared the people who do it behind me.

So I, I, she walked right past me and I didn't have time to turn. It was just, it was just unbelievable. And then when she sat back down, it wasn't as bad. but I saw it at the event that I'm at. He didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. All right, let's do some, let's talk about show business.

Joey Polatano has a really great substack on the fall of the creative class. So he says, America's lost one of the 200,000 creative jobs in the last four years. 50K and last year alone, one of the worst stretches for media employment in modern U.S. history. He said it's only similar to 2001 and 2008. So this is movies, newspapers, magazines, books, radio, TV, all this stuff, right? And then he kind of breaks it down by the jobs.

And a lot of it is graphic design and streaming and radio and newspaper, all this stuff. Like, he had some really good charts and I don't know if you've read this piece. So music has a percentage of U.S. consumer spending as like, it's all ticket sales now. People don't buy albums. They spend a little bit of money on streaming, but it's mostly live events. which is probably a good thing for people's well-being, right? But this one is interesting. And I've said movies are dead.

This is, he shows video as a percentage of consumer spending. And it's basically buying movies, streaming, cable, or movie theater tickets. And movie theater tickets as a percentage of consumer spending dropped off hugely in COVID and so has not come back. But it's been falling for decades. Yeah. Obviously. But all of these, the spending on this type of entertainment has fallen off of a cliff. you can see.

That's not coming back. I mean... No. I... So my worry here, though, is how much you said you're not, you don't care about AI Slap?

This is where you're going to start to care about it, is if, like, the quality of movies and stuff goes down. Because I watched that Aaron Eckert movie you talked about

with Ben Kingsley. And that was... That felt like an AI movie to me. It was the worst... Did George watch it? Of course. He loved it. It was an air... airplane crashed in the ocean and it was sharks.

Kobe said to me the thing he was, Daddy, we never finished Deepwater. I said, I think we're good. I mean, it was some of the worst, like, CGI I've ever seen in my life. And that worries me that we're going to get more of that. I know we did this last week, but now that you saw it, isn't it just, what's the word, bizarre, unfortunate, sad, that Ben Kingsley has been reduced to this? It was very bizarre. He was, he had like a, he was only in the movie for four minutes.

Yeah, it was, he died a very heroic death, though. Didn't he? So, I'm in Austin, and I had a work dinner last night, and I asked, Instinct, are there any theaters near me playing Resident Evil? I've been very much looking forward to this movie. So there was a theater here called Crown Violet. It's fantastic. Really cool little theater.

There's a bar there, which I enjoyed. I did enjoy a beverage at theater, although I did have to use the bathroom, which was unfortunate. God, that movie rips. That was so much fun. Holy shit. How many of them have there been? I'd never seen me.

Did you see Barbarian? Yes. That the Justin Long one? Yeah, so Barbarian and Weapons was by this director, Zach Greger. Anyway, Zach Greger did the Resident Evil movie, and it was so much fun. And there was a ton of people around me, young people having a good time, awesome movie. But the industry is in disarray, obviously, and it's not coming back. Jeffrey Katzenberg was talking with Bellany and Lucas Shaw on the town about this.

We haven't really even started to see like AI integration into the arts. Now, that is an area, of course, where AI slot becomes very concerning. Right. Yeah, you're right. That stuff is still coming. All right, what does this say about The Sign of the Times that Anthony Jusselnock, which I didn't even know that he had this, has a book club podcast

that is wildly popular with its audience. They just got integrated with the ringer. I love it. I think it's a great idea. Are you a family of book? I went through his list of books, and I started picking us. I mean, you're a perfect mark.

You're a fiction guy. I still love reading fiction. I know a lot of people don't. It's fiction. I still read every single night before I go to bed. I'm reading fiction. I listen to nonfiction. I want to read fiction still.

I love, like, when I go on airplanes, instead of watching movies now, I'll just read for the whole flight. It's like my one time I have, like, peace and quiet and no one around me, and I just read, like, the whole time. I love reading. All right, well, it's funny you mention that, Ben, because this was the first time on my flight out here. There was an early flight, which was so stupid. I took the 7 o'clock flight, and I landed here at 10 o'clock. I'm like, why did I do that? No reason to be up at 4.30 in the morning.

Anyhow, I listened to, and I discovered, I learned something about myself, Ben. I haven't really thought about this. My favorite genre is not a genre. I love memoirs. So I just finished Keith McNally, who is a restaurateur, which is such a stupid word. Why is there no N in there? It should be restaurateur. There's no end, really?

I didn't know that. There's no end. It's a restaurateur. Nonsense. Anyway, he owns Balthasar, Miranda, and Manetta Tavern, and a bunch of... And this guy is so brutally honest. Of course, it's got to be like an honest memoir, right? Like if LeBron James did a memoir, sorry, LeBron, no interest.

But I love when people open up about like the shit. And sometimes it's weird when they like really share some of the personal stuff with their kids and stuff. And you kind of go, what do their friends and family think about this? Yeah, it's like, did they give permission for this? Anyway, great book. And I'm also, so I finished that. And on the flight, I listened to R. Emanuel's book, which is awesome. And the narrator matters a ton.

Bob Odenkirk is reading Ari Emanuel's book, which is, I guess they're longtime friends. Odencirc is awesome. And then lastly, I'm very much looking forward to the Sylvester Stallone book. I watched his interview. He talked about how he had like eating disorders and... Yeah, that went on this weekend.

All right, good news. The 80s and 90s are back. So back. We're getting a Blair Witch reboot, which is Blumen Wong. I'm very excited about that. Gremlin's, I could take it to leave it. Gizmo is very cute,

But did you see this? Gizma's coming back? No. I watched those movies. I feel like I am now, my head, I'm on 1.5 times speed now that I've got the clock ticking for room service.

But there's, so I'm going fast. There is Q4, Q4, Q4, the fall and winter are going to be freaking awesome for the movie theater. At least for me. These are the movies that I'm very much looking forward to.

Got Zilla minus Zero. Got amazing reviews. The first one was one of my favorite movies the last five years. Clayface, I know it's not for you. Other Mommy. Whale Fall I play Rocky

As whale fall The Whale eats the guy My son's talking about that Since he saw the preview George's George's You're gonna take George to the theater for that one Don't deprive him

Dune 3 You can see everything Which is the Elizabeth Holmes movie Prime Time Can't wait to see that Verity which is My wife and I might see that And then artificial

I want to talk really quickly about Avengers Doom's Day I took Kobe and Logan to see Encore And it was so cute Logan was so excited. So we finished Infinity War. He was very upset that Spider-Man wasn't going to be an end game.

And I said, yeah, just watch. And the theater was packed. I think it did $20-something million. It had a good weekend at the box office. And people were clapping. And I saw Kobe clapping. And I was like, you know, I felt that he was like part of society. He's like reading the cues and clapping along.

I fucking hated it. I hate when people clap. of the theater. I love that my son did it. I love that he had a great time. I hated endgame. And I hated it when I saw it. It felt like such pandering to the audience. It felt like that stupid Star Wars movie. I can remember what the last one was. I just, I just hate everything about it. And yet, I'm very, very excited for Domsday. It is funny. When my kids do stuff like social things that I don't like, like my daughter will text me, THX. And I'll say, don't know. We're not saving time on thanks. You can write out thanks. Okay? We're not doing the THX. We don't do that in this family. Those things. But you see you got this Robert Pattinson thing in here? I just have to say my... So it's bizarre. Pattinson and Hathaway are both like...

They each have like three or four monster movies in 2026. And I asked like, is Ann Hathaway like broke or something? Like what's going on here? It was just like a... After the end of Oak Street, I thought she... Yeah, she was in... But it's funny because my daughter and I finished the Twilight series. I kind of...

I'm not on a computer while she's watching it. And the last... I don't know, they did five of them or four of them. And the last three or four of them are just awful. Even my daughter's like, man, This got really bad, huh? I'm like, yeah, oh, great, you see it too. Okay, just making sure.

I can't believe that there was, that he, I'm like, can you, this guy turn out to be a huge actor now? Who would have thought? So this year, Odyssey prime time in the drama? Unbelievable. That's a pretty good year. I can't see him and not think about the beggars meme now. Every time I see him.

What's that from? From Odyssey. Get all these beggars out of here. Remember seeing that one? Okay. I can't wait to see primetime, the Chris Hanson one. All right. Maybe.

So, the New York Times did this best 100 shows of the 21st century. And the weird thing is that everyone was complaining they didn't include Sopranos because it started in 1999. Whatever. I have a few minor thoughts. I'm only thinking of the top 10 here or so. Okay? So I have some very minor thoughts. I think for me...

Wait, so read the top 10 for people that didn't see it. Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, Succession, Flea Bag, Game of Thrones, Veep, 30 Rock, Curiby Enthusiasm in Atlanta. So here's where I would take some umbrage. Um, I think breaking bad is like, if you say breaking bad in the way, you know one is ever going to argue with you. Um, I think succession is probably my number one. It's the only one of those shows that I right away went back in a while.

I watched every season at least twice. I think, I think it's the perfect show where it has no fluff, five seasons, shorter seasons. I think it just perfected everything that came before them. Like I've only ever rewatched the finale of Breaking Bad. I wouldn't, I don't think I'd really go through and want to rewerewere watch Breaking Bad this series. I don't know if I...

Maybe the end last season. But Breaking Bad is my favorite show. Friday Night Lights and Six Feet Under are way too low. Those should be in the top ten. And I think my one hot take is I loved the wire. I think it's closer to 10 than it is to one. That's my only like take where I diverge from the TV people. I think people automatically pencil on the wire.

And if you want the last season where they did the fake serial killer, it just wasn't good. And that's why it fell flat on the end. Six feet under had by far the greatest TV finale of all time. And it's not even close. That's where I land. All right, notable snubs.

Walking Dead. Dark. Silicon Valley. Fargo. Dark is a very good show. Season one of Dark is one of my favorite seasons ever. Entourage. I mean, whatever. Yellowstone, Grace Anatomy,

Boardwalk Empire, Sons Manorkely. World War Dog Camp players not in the top 100 I really like that show too That's a very high quality show Okay But this is the kind of list you put together Just to get the people talking And that's what it did

Who doesn't love a good list Yeah I just thought this was kind of Kind of funny I've been talking about like watching Friday and 13th movies So I told Claude I've watched the first Friday, two Friday the 13th movies And I'm on the third

They're unwatchable So it said yeah Like they suck That's the consensus. And then at the end it said, just bailed. Nobody's handing up medals for finishing all 12. But I said, yeah, thank you. There's 12 of them?

I was done after. So I told you, I've seen some of the more recent ones. But the original ones, like, I think of Jason as like this big Hulkking Michael Myers-type creature, monster that is like impenetrable. But in the first two, it was just like a, like he was like getting beat up almost. It was very bizarre. I'll rent this movie. Absolutely dog shit. Okay.

You mentioned this one. You said last week it's taken forever to finish shows. I finished some shows. I finished the agency. How good was season two? That's one of the best, like the last two episodes of that season. Like, could FastBender have been a, could he have been a poor man's Jason Bourne? Hell yeah.

I don't know what it is about CIA shows and movies. Like, I'm watching a ton. I'm watching Slow Horses again, just started the agency. I'm watching The Patriot on Amazon. Like, I love these CIA shows. And the last two episodes of season two were just cooking. I was like, it went to another level for me. And is Fastbender an actual, I don't know if it's sociopath or psychics?

I always get those too confused. Because he's, when he plays like an agent like this, he played a robot in the Prometheus movie. He played, he's been in a couple CIA. And he was weird in the Fincher. Yeah, he was a killer. Yeah, he was a serial killer. He was a hired killer. He is such, he's so good.

Do you still read GQ? Of course. Was he profiled? I feel like he should have. I remember. Oh, Brad Pitt was recently profiled by, by Zach Barron. Did you read that one? Hey, it's back on the wagon.

He's drinking again. You couldn't give it up. Okay, American hostage in MGM Plus is based on a true story of a guy. It's about mortgage fraud. A guy takes a hostage because he was getting screwed on his morgan. John Han, it's based on a true story. John Hamm plays a radio interviewer who the guy, who the hostage taker is communicating with. Hamm's the best.

Wait, should I start on the plane? Why do you tell me to wait? I'm saying don't cancel MGM Plus. That's what I was telling you to wait for, because this show is good. It's called American hostage. No, no, no, no. I cut the cord. I'm not canceling MGM Plus.

Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I don't cancel the streamers. They stay. He's had some misses on movies. He doesn't miss on TV. He did Fargo.

He's, he, maybe morning show. But when he does TV, he's very, very good. Also, youth on HBO. Brand new show that came out. Sharon Hogan is the one who was in our show catastrophe that we liked. Love that show. I love her. She was in sisters.

That was pretty good. Wait, I thought it was Hogan. Oh, Hogan or Hogan? I don't know. I thought it was Hogan. It's just a short 30-minute show on HBO about a mom who is divorced and her son is going away to college and she's trying to find herself. And I think she's hilarious and I think she's great. I love her stuff. Finally, I listened to The Everwhere Millionaire. We talked about it a few weeks ago. This is like the finance book of the year. It's so good. It's so well researched. And it's one of those books that it's good for the data nerds. It's good for people who want to be in Because some of the people who started businesses, you go, oh, man, that's so inspiring. But it's also kind of maddening how people who are very rich get the biggest tax breaks. So it's got something for everyone. Very, very good book. I will order it.

It's called Everywhere Millionaire. Yes. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is about the Portillo's. It talks about all these people who got rich starting businesses than just figured it out. Yeah, we spoke about an article. Great stories. I really enjoyed this.

Very good book. All right. We would like rates to stop going up, not for our bonds, but for the stock market. I don't know much more it could take. I agree with you that I don't know what the line in the sand is. If rates keep going up at the pace they've been going up, the stock market has to fall off. There's no line in the sand. I mean, just at some point, people will start fucking dumping stocks.

Yes. But it's another one of those things where if you would have told people, listen, the 10 years going from 4% to 5.3% this year in the first nine months of the year. What's the stock market doing? You'd say the stock market is down 15%, not up 15%. Yeah. Strange times, as always. All right. Looks like we're not going hour 15.

I'm getting kicked out. Animal Spirits at thecompanne News.com. Personal emails, personal response. Ben, another. Why don't you text message instinct, hey, buy me 15 more minutes for my hotel room. It's too late for that. Listen, you are, you poo-poo the future, Ben, at your own peril. You will be disrupted, sir.

I told you. I've been bullish on personal AI assistance from the start. I just don't know. You don't sound bullish. No, from the very beginning, I said, I want the Scarlet Johansen and her. That's who I want for my, that's all I want from AI. A personal assistant.

It's here, dude. It's fucking here. I know. What do you mean? You don't want it. It's here. But I'm not ready to hand over my life yet. That's the thing.

You don't want it. You want what you can't have. You want what you can't give. You're not going to, you're not doing. It's here. I will. I'm just going to wait. That's all.

I'm very bullish. I'm just going to wait. All right. Animal spirits at the compound news.com. Personal emails, personal responses. Thanks to all the production team, as always. See you next time.