Animal Spirits Podcast - Winners and Losers From the Stock Market Rally (EP.412)

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

On episode 412 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠ discuss the China trade deal, retail was right, Wall Street was wrong, price vs. sentiment, markets saved us from a recession, record stock buybacks, 4-to-1 leverage and private equity in your 401k, Michael's real estate deals and more! This episode is sponsored by STF Management. Visit: https://stfm.com/ to learn more. 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 Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by STF management. They have two different funds, Tug, TUG, and Tug N, which is sister fund, which just reached three-year track record in May. Tug-in, yeah, you're always trying to find it with these ETFs. So it's a combination of option overlay strategy, so you get the income from the options, which we've talked about on the show before. But also their tactical growth and income fund, that's the Tug N, also employs a tactical approach, which uses rules-based trend fall. rules. So goes from stocks to bonds when the rules turn negative, when the market trend turns negative. Not bad. So Tugend provides the same core exposure investors already own while supporting a monthly distribution from options overlay. So you get income and tactical. PID

consecutive monthly distributions of roughly 1% per month. Currently has a 13.1% trailing yield as of 43025. Do all of your own research due diligence, obviously. Learn more at STFM.com. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.

Ben, I live in the Northeast, and I've got four seasons. It's, the weather's not great for about, depending on the year, seven months out of the year. It's called it like October to March-ish. Five months, seven months, depending. You're in the same boat, maybe even worse than I am. Oh, yeah. We get four good months a year. Ooh, that's it?

Okay. No, I don't know. No, some people like the fun. It's really just, there's three bad months. The worst months are January through March. Because I can handle December because of Christmas. But once we get to January, February, March, then I'm over it. So I love the seasons.

Like, there's something about the cadence of, oh, we're here in the year. I think having shitty weather makes me appreciate the great weather that much more. Or, is that a lie that we tell ourselves to make us feel better about living, with horrific weather. I don't think so. Is that a lie? Are we lying to us? I appreciate the summer way, way more because we don't, and we make sure we pack it all in

in the summer and we don't take it for granted. All right. Well, anyway, why are we talking about the weather? Because it's the best time in the year, at least as far as I'm concerned. We've got the entire summer ahead of us. The skies are blue. And we're coming to Chicago to enjoy the sun in the Midwest. The first week of June.

This is going to be a lot of us. A lot of us at Riddell 12th management are coming. we are opening an office at the Salt Shed on Goose Island, which is spectacular. I cannot wait to see it. It's been a long time, long time coming. So we started in 2018 with just four employees there, Brian, Jonathan, Anna, and Colleen. And now there's 11, maybe 12 or 13 on the way. There's a lot of room for aggressive expansion, as Heath Ledger said in the Dark Night.

And we're super excited. So if you're an advisor or a prospective client and you want to talk to us, find out what it's like to be at Riddholtzwealth management, email us at info at Riddholtzwealth.com, put Chicago in the headline, and we're excited to see you there. So when I joined Ritholds Welfth, I was the seventh employee, I believe. So we now have more people in Chicago than we had in the whole firm when I joined. Wild. Aggressive growth.

Where was the S&P when you joined? Do you remember? I mean, you could check. This is 2015, so. Oh, my God. Was it, was it, was it 1900? That's, I'm making that up. Where was it?

I can look it up right now because it was 10 years ago. So, I mean, we're talking in the 2000, like 2000 probably, maybe a little less than that. Wait, did your 10-year anniversary with us pass? And we missed it? No, it's in September. Okay. I got it marked on my calendar. Actually, it's right when we're in Future Proof, so that's a good timing.

All right. So what did we learn about the, do we, what do we call the, what happened with the tariff deals in the last couple weeks? backtrack, caving, I don't know, the Wall Street Journal had a story where they said, like, listen, the market made everyone realize this was just not a good idea. And I think I actually give Trump credit for backing off because a lot of the stories and quotes made it sound like he was going to dig his heels in and say, no, I'm going to do this. I don't care what anyone says.

And so I don't give him credit for putting out bad policies in the first place. I do give him credit for backtracking. Yeah, I think there was... There was a lot of debate. Rewind, I don't know, six weeks ago. There was a lot of debate, and I said on the show, whatever happens, it wasn't obvious at the time to anyone. It wasn't obvious what he was going to do.

And with the benefit of hindsight, it would have appeared to be obvious. But there was very much in the open question of he's not going to relent. There was a lot of people, a lot of people who genuinely thought, LOL that he didn't care about the market. His own cabinet members were saying this. His own people spokesman for the White House were literally saying. So, yeah, all right, I don't know if he changed his mind or whatever, but thank God. I honestly think this, the big CEOs got to him.

I think Jamie Diamond and the Walmart CEO and the retailers. I think those people who are constantly, Tim Cook, I think all of them coming in and saying, listen, this is going to be a catastrophe. If you keep these tariffs as high, it's not good. So Joe Wisenthal said the two big losers today, this is yesterday. This is right after the deal was in. announce. People hoping for a Trump-led economic catastrophe, which I believe that there was a decent contingent. And this is pro-Trump and anti-Trump people. I think certain people wanted to see the system burn, which obviously is something I never want. I did not want, I do not want to see

a recession or anything bad happen. Then he says, members of the big chess party who thought the tariff announcement was some brilliant strategic plan that would reshape the global economy in a way that was beneficial for the U.S. Because we kind of got the muddle through a situation where, yes, there's still tariffs. They're higher than they were before. It's not nearly as bad as it looked on Liberation Day, and it's not going to reshape the global order. It's going to cause, I don't know, it's going to cause slower growth and a little higher prices, but it's not going to be the awful left-tail situation some people might have thought. Not to put too much emphasis on one day, but it was a big day, fucker.

The S&P was up 3% on Monday. 3% days are not that common. No, they're not. And I would have, I don't think anybody would have been surprised to have seen us sell the news type of event given that we had a V-shaped recovery. The SP is flat on the air. Holy shit. Yeah, it's less than 5% from the highs.

Can we say definitively retail investors were right again and the Wall Street was wrong? Retail was right. Walter Bloomberg, if he's a real person, I guess we'll never know, tweeted on April 4th, retail investors bought $4.7 billion in stocks on Thursday, largest level over the past decade. And I remember writing blog post, well, I remember way back to, I don't know, four weeks ago, retail's not going to capitulate. Like, if you're looking for the flush or the gigantic volume crash, like, that's not what they do. And I guess it could have gone differently.

But anybody that's been dunking on retail or waiting for capitulation, change the plate. You got to change your mental model. Did I just say mental model? I did. You got to change it. The rules of yesteryear, it's out. Retail doesn't do what you think it's going to do. So retail won again.

Yeah. So I did this tweet yesterday. that said the S&P at the start of the year was 5881, yesterday it was 5811, the 10 years started at 4.6% and now it's 4.5%. Nothing ever happens, I guess. Was that officially the most... You know which part of retail wasn't right? And maybe we just thought this in the trash can forever. The American Association of Individual Investors... They got all bared up? Dead wrong. Okay, how about this? The younger version of retail has been right, the older version, because that's mostly baby boomers, right?

Uh-huh. So I think it's the younger retail crowd now. They've, I'm the captain now, right? Yeah. That's them. So was this officially the most unnecessary bare market of all time? Pass to me, right? Necessary?

I'm not going to do the line. Like, why did we do this? This is my question. Why did we go through all this? I guess just to debate the fact that this is bad policy and now we know? Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't think anybody would argue that this was well-conceived or, you know. He wanted to try to touch a stove. He touched it. And he said, all right. Okay. Okay. That's hot. Getting back to Wall Street being big losers, our friend Michael Antonelli tweeted out. This is from May 2nd in Bairns.

Stock market bowls have gone into hiding why our money pros are the most bearish in nearly 30 years. Oh, boy. Yeah, we just talked about this last week, didn't we? It's, um, but was it all sentiment, though? That's the thing. Was sentiment bearish, but positioning wasn't? That's, that's my thinking because the money flow, I don't know, institutions were selling, I guess. Dude, there's so many different money flow data points that you could look at from CTs to global fund managers to retail, to hedge funds to this, to that.

You're right. It's hard to know, market went up. Guess what people bought? I saw this headline from, this is from CNBC last week, and I kind of caught the piece on CNBC as it was happening. So Paul Tudor Jones says the stock market will hit new lows, even if Trump cuts China tariffs to 50%. And I feel like every time we've had a correction and it bounces back,

the hedge fund managers come out and say, we're going to retest the lows or Jeff Gunlock. Look at these headlines. They say it every single time. And one of these times are going to be right, but they say this every single correction. Because nobody looks like an idiot for a same. we're going to retest the lows.

Nobody gets in trouble for that. Yeah, but that's what they all, the headlines are always the same. We're going to retest the lows. You just wait and it never happens. The risks are asymmetric. If I'm in the headline, I'm not saying that was the low.

Yeah, we might retest him. All right, if you're wrong, who cares? If we get a mild recession, will we still? Because, again, the, a bad recession has been taken off the table, it would seem. That, I think, is we can all agree on.

If we get a minor hiccup and slowdown, do we account this, that as the, we already, we already priced that in. And we're moving on. All right. Listen, here's another winner. It's changing by the day, of course. Investor psychology for the win.

And we hammered this at the time, as I always do. I love these data points from Ryan Dietrich and sentiment trader that shows what happens when you've got an extreme move in the market, because that's not sentiment, that's not positioning, that's not this opinion or that opinion. It's what are, what is the market actually doing? And we called this out at the time. And we actually had an email. It'll be really nice if you could like go back and look at all of these data points

that you cite on a go forward basis. Well, we can't do that. But, but Ryan did do this. Ryan tweeted for on April 9th, what happens one month, three months, six months, 12 months later. And it had a perfect track record. When you've got that amount of buying power, especially coming off like a washout, that is really, really powerful stuff.

Don't fight the price, right? And the price is less emotional than the sentiment. That's right. Here's a wild data point. Fat Taltale Capital tweeted this via City. You've only needed to own the S&P for 60 minutes in the last month to capture the full 17% of the recovery. So that's because you got the initial 10% bump in the one day and then the other one we're just overnight immediately.

Wild. So we've gone from like if you miss the best 10 days to if you miss the best 10 minutes. So I had chart can make for our platform for advisors exhibit A, we're doing a chart of the week. And he had a great idea.

You know, there's a chart, like what happens to even miss the 25 best days and 25 worst days. And like, advisors love that and I understand why they love it. But it's kind of bullshit because like nobody's actually missing the 25 best days. It's a good thought exercise. It proves a point that we're trying to convey

time in the market is better than timing the market, et cetera, et cetera. However, Boy, advisors love that phrase. Oh, they love it. Oh, they love it. Yeah. Time in the market is better. Time ing the market. Yes, you have to enunciate. Inge. Anyhow. So what if you sold at the lows of this year when we were down 19% on April 8th, and you just said, I'm out. This is too much. We're going to go way lower. And guess what?

Somebody did that, right? Obviously. Oh, yeah. Sure. So let's say that you sold on April 8th. And then the next day, we had the 90 day pause, right? That was the 10% up day. And let's just say that by some miracle, you said, whoo, that was a huge mistake.

I'm going to get all the way back in. And let's just assume that, I don't know. know, four people did that on the planet Earth, right, that had like the mental flexibility to go out on April 8th, whoops, I made a mistake and got back in just the next day, okay? So had you just done that? And had you only missed that one day, look what your returns are. You would be flat if you held or you would be down 9% if you only missed that one day. And of course, if you sold and never got back to it, and you're down 19% from the highs.

it's it really is unbelievable how much of an impact missing just one good day is not to mention the psychological impact of that of going oh no so when we every week for ask the compound we get all these emails in from people asking us questions and we take them from the animal spirits inbox we take them from the count we have all these different inboxes we put them all together and sean sends me an update of these questions and after a week after liberation day we got the questions and it was the big, I sent some of them to you and Josh, and I said, oh my gosh, this is the worst sentiment I've ever seen. And we read them all. And it kind of felt like I was being a financial therapist. And I said at the time, like, listen, I understand the bearishness. But a lot of

people said, listen, I knew this was going to happen. This is why I sold when he became president, because I knew it was going. Yeah, what do you say now? And not to be a dick. I said, all right, okay, fine. And that's, I'm not trying to rub it in, but this is, what do you do? And this is not to say, like, the market is not over. The market keeps going. Like, there's never a winner and a loser. Yeah, it never ends. It keeps going. The market could stay volatile, it could go down, it could go up. Who knows? But the impact of yourself right now is how do you feel and what do you do and how paralyzed do you become if you made, if you pulled that trigger and said, I'm out, I'm pulling the rip cord, I'm going to cash. Now what? That's why we always say, like, have the feelings, whatever feelings you want, don't always act on them, especially if it comes to taking extremes in the market and making a huge move one way or the other.

like if you were down 10% and you said, I'm going to go leveraged long all in. I don't think that's a good decision either because the market continued to fall, right? Like that, I think the extremes in both directions, you be careful. I mentioned before, this is from New York Times. The tariffs are still here. And they did this chart that shows what the tariffs were from February 1st on. It went from 10% to 20% to 54% to 104% to 14%, now back down to 30%. And China's kind of took a same.

their retaliatory tariffs took a similar path. These are still much higher than they were before, right? And I think a lot of people probably assume there's room to come down further. I don't know why 90 days is always the deal here. But I think a lot of all, a lot of people also think that the headline numbers are not going to be the final numbers because there's going to be car vats all over the place. Yes, right. So 30% looks like the baseline. But okay, Apple and then chips and semiconductors and maybe it's lower than that.

But again, I think what this does is just the small businesses are kind of going to be the ones that get screwed. So this is probably why the stock market has been willing to look past all this. And the stock market assumed this would happen or I don't know how all knowing and all seeing it is. But the Wall Street Journal has- Pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, another winner is the stock market. Not always right. But always more right than we are as individuals two weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago, what show were we on? Two weeks ago, maybe with Neil Dutta, I was like, tell me how, tell me how this.

makes sense. How this stock market rally makes sense. And I've been bullish, but tell me how this makes sense. It doesn't make sense to me. You're telling me that earnings won't be impacted. You're telling me that confidence isn't being impacted, that multiples shouldn't be lower than they were than where they were before this happened. And again, it's not over, but the market called bullshit on the market was right. And it does still seem to be like there will be, it is more muted than people would have thought a month ago when the Liberation Day stuff came out, because that was, again, the catastrophic, this is going to be a huge impact. But now it's like growth is going to be a little slower than it would have been otherwise, and earnings will probably

be a little lower. Isn't that still fair to say? I think so. Yeah. So the Wall Street Journal had this piece in about a guy who builds Tiki Torches in North Carolina and how he's already down to five employees from 12. And they had one order that went from $5,600 to $8,700. And these people are already trying, like, they said they're paralyzed, and, like, what do I do? So, do they get immediate relief now? These people, is it still unknown? Because, I don't know, so Ryan Peterson says, our ocean freight bookings from Trinity U.S. increased 35% the first day since the trade deal. A big backlog is looming. Soon the ships will be sold out. So we went from worrying about empty shelves and is to now, all right, everyone back in the pool and

hurry up and get it back over here. And so I guess that Christmas is saying. I thought this was a good take to the shipping point from Spencer Hikimian. Sorry if I'm not pronouncing his last name right. He said shipping rates are about to explode. The second that the pause on Chinese tariffs has announced, every single company is going to rush to have their inventory sent out of China. There isn't enough access to capacity to handle all this shipping at once. Here comes the second part of the completely unnecessary and unavoidable disaster

to the supply chain that we will experience. So to the point of, was this an unnecessary bare market? Well, it certainly wasn't unnecessary gut punch to the shipping. Right. Yeah. But I mean, don't you think as far as the big corporations go, they pulled forward a lot of stuff. And now, yes, they're going to rush in it if things, I don't know, it seems to me like things

will probably be, the worst case scenario was this lasting another three to six months. And that is a really bad scenario. The fact that we kind of nipped it in the butt after a month, they're probably, I'm sure there will be disruptions in certain places, not nearly as bad as it would have been if he kept the tariff so high. I guess the people that are in favor of the way that this was handled would say that if Trump didn't go so hard in the paint that the threats would not have been taken seriously and he had to do this in order for their for for deals to have been made now okay maybe let's see

what the deals are we don't know yet right like let's see what the ultimate outcome of this is right it doesn't seem like a lot of concessions have been made and it seems like we were negotiating with ourselves in a lot of ways but who knows um i saw this from meb favor last week and it just it seems like corporations didn't really seem to be planning on these tariffs being high just because of their plan. So he said, companies listed on the Blue Chip S&P 500 said last week, they expect to repurchase $192 billion of their own stock over the coming months, the highest figure in weekly data going back to 1995. It's also the biggest three-month tally on record of stock buybacks, $518 billion. So that doesn't sound to me like corporations were planning for some

terrible event to happen and pulling back. They were continuing to charge. And maybe these plans had been announcing us, but corporations did not seem to care in all of this thing. All right, so corporations. They were the ones who seem to assume they're going to be fine. They're obviously buying their own stock. Dave Nadeg did some analysis looking at the top 10 ETFs by flow. And probably not surprisingly, VLO, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF brought in nearly $15 billion. Vanguard total stock market brought in nearly $4 billion.

So, yeah, they bought the dip in size. This was a gift to retail investors who were able to keep calm. It's interesting, though, that the short-term bond funds are on here, too. So it was not only stocks, but it was T-bills. That was number two, which makes sense, too. Why not? But also the Vanguard short-term bond fund. So I guess it's, so those were the people that sold, though, probably, right?

That moved to T-bills. So there was people buying and also people sell. Yeah. Which is what makes the market. Is this the first time that we could say it's possible the market stopped a recession from occurring? And it's still possible we get a minor slowdown and it's technically a recession. I don't know. But the Kelshi odds went from 75% last week we talked about to 41% now.

The odds of a recession. Yes. Do you think that the market potentially stopped a recession from happening? by reacting as it did to these announcements. Because again, I think if this stuff would have gone on dragged out for another three months or so, then a recession was almost all but guaranteed. The fact that we stopped it after a month, I think there's, even if, again, growth is slower for a few months,

it seems like we should be able to have the muddle through a scenario. Bucco Capital had a good tweet. Rest in peace, main street over Wall Street, lasted like six days. That was fun. This surprised me from Jason Furman. I never would have believed it. I think you sent me this chart. So he looked at wage growth in the last quarter century

compared to the quarter century before. So this is 2000 to 2024 and 1976 to 2000. And he looked at the real hourly wage growth by percentile. So top decile all the way to bottom desicile. And the period this century knocks it out of the park and totally destroyed that other period. Would anyone have ever guessed this in a million years? No.

I wouldn't have. I would have assumed, oh, in the 80s and 90s, wages grew way higher. And I looked at this. The inflation rate was almost 5% in the first 25 years. And it's been about 3% in the ensuing 25%. So I was about to say people don't like to hear this, that things are pretty good. But I don't like that line. People don't like to hear this because who doesn't like to hear that?

I mean, some dipsets on the internet don't like to hear that. Yeah, people on social media. Right? People on social media hate good news, but other than that. Yeah. Yeah, no, that surprising stat. All right. A bunch of people sent us this chart or this story and wanted to hear our take on it.

You got a lot of emails on this too, I assume, right? DMs and emails. Okay, this 30-year-old startup is bringing leverage to 401K savers. Basic Capital has a new product. Here's their pitch. They will offer savers on 401Ks and IRAs, $4 in leverage for every $1 saved. at current rates, the cost of that extra money will be about 6.25%. The thinking goes, they will find private credit investments that yield more like 9%,

meaning they will throw off enough cash to cover the borrowing costs and then some. Mix in some traditional stock market exposure and assuming those private credit yields persist, and that equities gain in line with historical averages, a startup said savers can expect low double-digit returns. So four-to-one leverage, thoughts. All right, so you're paying 6 and a quarter percent, and you're getting 9 percent. Smells like free money. The rub is obviously the barren rates seem – like, this is the kind of thing that if rates were still at 3 percent, you'd go, this makes a lot of sense.

And I think the traditional economic theory would state, listen, if you're a young person in your 20s or 30s and you have three or four decades to save, you should be using leverage. Like, that's economic theory is why wouldn't you take advantage of human capital, your biggest asset, time compounding. Yes, this makes sense. That obviously doesn't always mesh well with reality. But we've heard enough people who say, listen, I've heard everything you guys have said on leverage ETS. I don't care. I'm investing in these things. So there's people who probably would be willing to pony up and do this.

I have to say that my comment about free money, I think obviously that was. sarcasm. I was joking. Please don't take that literally, especially when the 9% on the other side of the six and a quarter is, and God knows what sort of private credit instruments. But yeah, Ben, you're 100% right. If you could borrow money at 3% and invest in the market over long periods of time, I can get on board with that, but that's not this. And so, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't done enough research, but certainly the, this caught the internet's attention and then some. I would love to talk to these guys and learn more about it,

but the thing that worries me the most is the four to one leverage. I'm guessing the reason they did that is because that gives you enough juice to get these high returns. I want to learn more about like the margin and the collateral and all that sort of stuff and what happens if this goes wrong

and I want to learn more about the downside. Yes. What happens if the private credit yields compress and, okay, but it's... What happens if the 9% ends up being 4% or work? Yes. I have questions. Yes. All right. New York Magazine had this story about how everyone is using AI to cheat in college.

Did you read this one? Uh-uh. Okay. A lot of internet people talking about this. So they interviewed all these college kids and they said, I just jumped the prompt from my class into chat GPT and handed whatever it spat out. This person said they wrote, you know, they interviewed all these college kids anonymously. And they said, AI wrote 80% of every essay turned in. He said at the end, I'd put my own finishing touches on it, put my 20% of humanity, my voice, and that's it. They asked, I was a girl.

She said she rarely sit in class when she didn't see other students' laptop open to chat GPT. Toward the end of the semester, she began to think she might be too dependent on the website. She already considered herself addicted to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit. And she said, I spend so much time on TikTok hours and hours until my eyes started hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my homework. With chat, GBT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12. So she's saying, chat GPT help me do homework faster so I could rot my eyes.

out on TikTok. Nice. So I really don't blame these kids for doing this. Like, I don't get mad about this. Do you think that there was, and this is going to sound like I'm poo-poo in college, but was there ever really an essay that you wrote that you thought, like, that really helped me become better at my job someday? No.

Well, me? No, I don't know if I wrote a single essay in college. Did you cheat in college? Dude, I didn't even show up for the tests. That's true. I didn't, I mean, it would have been harder to cheat for us back in the day. The only time I, I did a homework assignment once where a friend said, hey, can I look at your homework assignment to make sure I did it right?

And he copied my whole assignment. And so we got called into the professor's office. And he said, guys, have anything to tell me? And I'm thinking, what are we talking about here? And my friend knew immediately. And he goes, obviously one of you copied off the other one, because your answers are exactly the same. What a darn ass.

Yeah, a friend really screwed me on that one. but I think if you have the ability to do a paper on chat GPT and you do it and your professor gives you a decent grade, that's on the professor, not the student. I think it's that the colleges have to keep up and give different types of tests. And also, I guess the student is harming themselves in some way. Like using a chat GPT created something in your own work life is probably not going to go. It can help you in certain aspects, but most of the stuff, the work people are going to see right through it. So I've spent zero time thinking about this, so I don't want to really comment.

But I think the one thing I would say is if you cheat at everything, if you just take shortcuts, you're just going to cheat yourself. You're not going to develop the skills and the whatever. Now, I mean, a counterpoint is like, wow, that was very inspirational. No, the counterpoint is like, well, 12 hours on an essay, how is that like a good use of anyone's time? Yes, that's the thing. You have to be creative. But I think the whole, my whole thinking on AI is just that anyone who has a little bit of creativity, that's what's going to shine. Because if this stuff is all just going to be regurgitated, I can't say the word, and easy to do, like, that stuff is going to be meaningless.

I told you, I got a demo from a fintech firm a couple weeks ago. And they showed me how they're pulling stuff from the internet to create custom blog posts for financial advisors. And they sent me a couple of them. and they were so bland and useless, I thought, well, this is not helpful to anyone. It's helpful to summarize if you don't understand the topic. But if you're actually trying to educate someone and show them and get their attention, like no one's ever going to read this.

So I think people who are creative, those are the ones that are still going to stand out. But if you're just doing bullet points on everything, yeah, you're right. You're cheating yourself. That sounded like a parent to a kid talk. right that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's a you better save that one for your children someday yes I'm very responsible um all right speaking of my I've been talking about the quarter app um a lot because they've built a LLM processor into the app and we're investors in court I've said that before uh just full disclosure there um but it is just so so

freaking cool so I asked the chat, what did I say? So, wait, the important thing is is that the only thing that it's pulling from is not the whole web, it's just company earnings reports and presentations. Right. And then it's like

directing you to it. I asked, did they mention anything about Bitcoin in the call? And this is for Schwab. And it gave me like the answers or the quotes and then it like directed me right to it. And this is just such a small example of

what's to come with AI. And it's, it's exciting. Put a pin in this one because I got, I, I use it, I use it more. So I'm going to talk about it for some other thing. But yeah, go ahead. So last week, there was an announcement that Coinbase, which, which, uh, is entering the S&P 500, kind of amazing. That's kind of a big deal, isn't it?

It is a big deal. Coinbase has agreed to acquire Deribit, the world's biggest trading platform for Bitcoin and ether options for roughly $2.9 billion dollars this morning. There was news that Robin Hood is acquiring, I think, a similar company in Canada for $250 million. So Bitcoin and ETH have gone absolutely nuclear over the last. It goes up like 65% in a month. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So I was looking at the chart of Bitcoin and Coinbase.

And Ben, take a look at this. This is three years. Bitcoin and Coinbase were tracking each other pretty damn closely. and it's been a nasty decoupling. Like, when did this happen? I guess in December, early January, massive underperformance from Coinbase. I'm not exactly sure what's going on.

Kind of sort of, huh, that's interesting. That is surprising. So you'd have been, because you would have thought Coinbase would be like a leveraged way to play Bitcoin, but Bitcoin has been a way better option. I would have thought, all right. So I was, I'm scratching my head, like,

why is the price going up? So wait, hang on. Since it went public and when did Coinbase go public? I'm guessing 2021. I guess that's right, because it went public right at like a peak. So Coinbase since it went public is down 4.8% in total,

which is probably surprising to some people. It was basically gone nowhere, but it had a huge drawdown. It had like an 85% drawdown or something. Wow. All right. So why are the coins mooning? Chris Berniske is a real person in Twitter, in crypto Twitter.

And he tweeted, who has the best data-driven explanation for ETH's recent massive move? Narratives are a dime a dozen. I can make them that too. I can make them too. Show me the data. And I was like, oh, awesome. This is, you know, I'll find something in here. There's nothing.

You should have seen the responses. It was one joke after another. I'm like, you know, a serious person should have serious, maybe some serious responses in the replies? Nothing. Nothing. Nobody knows. Sometimes, sometimes nobody knows anything. Yeah, people just make sure up. Oh, because whatever, I don't know, you can make something up. So can I.

But I was very much looking forward to seeing some data. And I don't know. They're going up because they're going up. Now, like, I'm sure there's reasons and whatever, but like an actual, what was the catalyst for the 65? percent move in the last week or whatever it was for Eath. And it turns out your guess is as good as anybody else is. Nobody knows. More buyers and sellers. There we go. You nailed it, Ben. All right, let's talk about real estate. So Bespoke tweeted a chart, the active listings by region. And the Midwest, the West and the Northeast are all tracking each other pretty closely,

mostly down until the right, a little bit of a pickup. But the South, holy Ghazoli, the South is skyrocketing. So I went to friends. and I looked at... This is my Florida take, right? Housing inventory in Florida. So Florida is at... I don't know if there's an all-time high, but for the last 10 years,

Florida is at a high. It is skyrocketing. If you compare that, for example... So it's one of the few places that's higher than pre-pendemic. Yes. And if you compare that to New York, for example,

New York is down to the right because there's a freaking housing recession, right? There's no turnover. And so... The story in Florida is... What? Just the over, the over, the over, there's a lot of people that came there. Yeah. People moved too much.

A ton of people moved there. The prices went up a ton. And now demand was saturated, I guess. And people are trying to sell and it's much harder to do because there's not as many people coming. Like all the people who were going to go to Florida, for the most part, a lot of them already came. They pulled, I think they pulled forward demand. That's kind of my take. But yeah, it's crazy to see that the supply, that's actually a place where supply is. So we should start seeing more price drops. there. So I list in my house in Long Beach on April 1st. And I would have thought that it would have sold like in two seconds. Now, the house is a little bit interesting in the sense that there's

not a driveway. It's like a bungalow. And it's two blocks from the beach. And it's, it's renovated. It's a very desirable location. But there's, it's called a walk. So there's like there's a slab of concrete that goes through the block. And there's houses on both sides of it. So it's a bit of a pain in the ass. It's not like, you know, for a conventional family, it's a little bit tricky. So where do you park? Is there an alley or something? On the street.

You park in the street. Okay. So I got an offer last week, which I mentioned on the show. So somebody emailed us with a subject title, Michael's real estate green thumb. He said, Michael, when you talk about your real estate adventure, sell your place in Brooklyn without an agent, buying your house on Long Island, moments before price house is exploded or the stupid luck of buying this rental in Long Beach. You always talk about it as mindless good fortune, but clearly it's a trend. At what point does it become real estate business savvy? maybe you have a green thumb or one enough for real estate.

It's a curse to be great at something you hate doing, but you have a knack for real estate investing. Maybe you should go into real estate consulting. And I said to the person, oh, yeah, just wait until this podcast. So earlier in the week, I haven't had a lot of offers. I had one crappy offer and one offer that was accepted. And it turns out that like the tiles were sagging in the bathroom, which is, I don't know,

I guess not too unusual, but it turns out that they were worried about damage to the foundation and the buyers were getting skittish and maybe we had open permits from Sandy that weren't closed out and I said, all right, okay, okay. You know what? I said at least it'll be good content for the show. At least it'll be good content for the show. So did they back out? So they got, they did another survey or inspection or whatever. And I think we're okay. I do have to go to the town and close out permits and all this sort of nonsense. But anyway, I thought it was hilarious that this guy's saying that I'm good at real estate. It's like, dude, literally dumb luck. And not only am I not good, this might be terrible.

This might be catastrophic. This is the total case of the easy money has already been made. And you have to be a really good investor and understand locations and rental dynamics and all this stuff to make money going forward from here. Right. Like, yeah, you and I. So I have a friend who's like, dude, why are you dumping your your mortgage is? is a 2.9% like, why are you selling? And I'm like, because I pulled forward 20 years of returns. And I don't want the headache. And this is a fucking headache.

If there are foundational issues, like, and, like, what if, like, there's roof issues? Like, I don't know. I don't want this nonsense in my life. I don't need it. And you said, I'm moving on. If you go six months without a person who's renting, yeah. All right. New York Times had a stir.

Oh, wait, one more on the rental thing. So Noah Kagan talked about this. And you gave a good thing. Like, yeah, I pulled forward all these years. He said he bought a property in 2017 to Airbnb, he bought it for $315, put 63 down. He sold it for $3.77. But he said he also, not only appreciation, he paid the mortgage down, but he paid taxes. He paid a bunch of ownership costs.

So his total profit, he said, was only $11,000. After he actually accounted for all the costs of having. So he basically said, you know, he would have been better putting it in the S&P. So a lot of it is just, I guess, location and the location. look, and you just never know on these things. There's another side of it. It's a lot harder than it sounds. Yeah. All right, New York Times, they looked at where young people actually are becoming homeowners. And the overall housing, homeownership rate in the U.S. is 62%. The highest one for people under 35 is in Minnesota, and that's 51%. Michigan's right around 49% as well. The lowest

ones are Hawaii, New York, and California. That's not a surprise. I guess Hawaii is the worst. and they said, what's the deal? And it's basically just price to income. That's the thing. West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Minnesota, they all have very good income to average sales price ratios. But the prices are, average price in Minnesota is like $300,000. Right?

And in Kentucky, it's $2.25 or something. So there are still places. Do you see this at the Pope's childhood home in Chicago? So someone found the Pope's childhood home is for something. sale. It's $199,000. I think it's in the south side of Chicago. Three bed, three bath, 1,200 square feet. Look at this thing. Unbelievable. Yeah, houses were affordable in the 60s. Yeah, okay. No offense. This is the 1960s house. And it's still affordable today. It's just how many young people would be willing to buy it. And some people will, but most people probably won't.

All right. I have some housing renovation anecdotes. Go ahead. I feel like I'm seeing housing renovations everywhere. I'm seeing, you don't only see the big dumpsters in the garage or the driveway. Yeah, yeah. And you see a big addition going on. Or I feel like I'm seeing, and maybe it's just the time of year and people decide to do these projects in the spring in Michigan and not have to do them in the winter. But I feel like people have finally said, enough's enough.

I have my 3% mortgage. I don't care if the HELOC rate is 7. I'm doing something because I'm going to end up being in this house for 10 more years or whatever it is. So I'm seeing, I'm seeing renovations everywhere. I think people have finally said, I'm not going to move. I'm going to fix my house up.

I don't care. I don't have any data to back this up. It's all anecdotes. Okay. That works, I guess. That's going to be you with your rental house. So you mentioned the quarter stuff. I use this because I talked to Michael Sidgmore last week and asked the compound,

and he talked about how all the private equity calls these days for KKR and Apollo are talking about putting private equity into target date funds. And so I looked this up and I typed it in private equity. equity managers mentioning target date funds. And it pulled up, as you mentioned, it pulled up the actual presentation and the co-CEOO at Apollo and Mark Rowan, or Mark Rowan from Apollo, and Scott Nuttall from KKR, all talking about how, like, listen, there is a huge opportunity. There's $15 trillion in 401Ks. We want to put these into target date funds. And I just, I can't help but think that retail is the bagholder here. I'm not saying that the results are going to be completely awful. But Bloomberg had this story saying institutions are selling. Harvard is selling.

So you're not a skeptic. You're a cynic on this. I don't think it's going to be like, oh, it's a private equity, it's a bubble and it's going to burst. But listen to this. Matt Levine wrote about this. So this is Matt Levine via Financial Times. The Financial Times says big private equity investors are taking advantage of a flood of capital from wealthy individuals to cash out their buyout fund holdings at higher prices despite the industry's year-long downturn. Some of the largest evergreen funds, and they're saying these evergreen funds, they put all the money in. And instead of waiting for a capital call when there's a deal to be made, they have to put that money to work right away. So these interval funds and evergreen funds have bought large swaths of private equity funds from institutional investors who are seeking liquidity after a dearth of distributions.

That extra demand has helped prop up prices for stakes in private equity funds in the secondary market, even as institutional investors have cooled investing in new fund because buyout firms have had trouble exiting their investments. One advisor said there's a lot of money flowing into these evergreen vehicles, and they're under pressure to employ it quickly. So I just think that the returns in these funds are going to be far lower than people assume. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they have to put the money to work right away. But they are also the bagholders for the institutions. Don't you think? In some cases.

I think it's going to be a lot of cases. They have to put that money to work right away if it's an evergreen interval fund. it's not like you wait because the institutions they have a capital call when the deal is ready to be made and they don't know when the deals are going to happen

and they invest the money when the deal happens these funds they have to put the money to work it's like an ETF for mutual fund yeah I'd be happy if someone wanted to pull holes in this but I feel like retail is going to be the bag holder

yeah I'm for the record I'm not taking the other side I'm just I'd be happy if someone could point me to say Ben no you're wrong this is it's going to be fine and maybe if so much so much money is pouring in to the RAA channel and the wealth manager channel and they do get

target date funds, maybe there's going to be so much pouring in that it's not going to matter that much for a while. I just think the results are going to be, it's going to be lower than people have in their assumption. It depends. What are we talking about? Infrastructure, private credit, real estate, private equity, secondaries, like buyouts. What are we talking about? All of it. If trillions of dollars is flowing in, all of it's going to have lower returns, you would think, right? Yeah. Or it's going to have,

or they're going to be forced to use higher leverage to make those returns. But I'm saying my, my, the idea that retail is going to be the bag holder for institutions. I think,

yes, in some cases, no doubt. There's no doubt about that. And I think that there are, so not to get bogged out on that comment, because there are a host of issues with private investments

in 401Ks, but I think it's inevitable. I mean, it is, it is coming. That's the thing. You might not like it, but it's,

it's coming regardless. Yeah. All right. We've talked about Jonathan Clemens before. About a year ago, he received the news that he had life-threatening cancer. He doesn't have a long time to live. I think they gave him a year. And he decided to start a program.

And Jason Zwegg wrote about this, and Mike Piper wrote about this at the Oblivious Investor. And he's going to try to help young people, age 18 to 24, start their own Roth IRA. And they have to go through, like, a personal finance class to do it. And they're going to help assistance opening a RLF IRA and a $1,000 grant to fund the account, which I think is just a fantastic, and I guess the Bogle Center is helping. We'll put a link in the show notes, but there's a way that you can give money. So I gave some money to this. I'm not asking anyone else to do it if they want, but I think it's an awesome, awesome legacy that he's putting through.

Yeah, that's what I was going to use. What a wonderful legacy for Jonathan Clements, who has done a lot for tens of thousands of individual investors over the years. And I love that Jason has helped me spread the good word here. So I also will be making a contribution. And he has a new book out called The Best of Jonathan Clements, Timeless Wisdom. And it's all this old Wall Street Journal articles that I grew up reading. And so William Bernstein and Jason's why, I'll put this off the ground. I actually did a blurb for the book, which I was happy to do. But check that out too, especially for personal finance people out there. So, Ben, I traveled yesterday. I'm at Futureproof

Colorado. And I'll see you later in the week, actually, on the West Coast. San Diego, which means what's translated roughly to Wales vagina, of course. It was, all right, so the real ID, I was a bit nervous because, of course, my passport is also expired. I don't have a real ID to overnight a birth certificate. So the good news is that if you have a passport that is, at least in New York, I don't want to speak for the rest of the country, I don't know what it is. Wait a minute. Am I going to be stuck in California? Anyhow. If your passport is not more than a year old, TSA will let you through.

Clear would not let me through. And I only mentioned that to say that the line for Clear was by far, by far, by far, by far, the shortest I've seen in years. Clear wouldn't let you through, huh? Interesting. No. You'd think the scan of the eyes would be better than would be more would trump the ID. Yeah. But we already know that. I think Clear is a scam.

I'm, of the opinion, clears a scam. It always takes way longer than TSA precheck. It never works for me. This time it would have worked phenomenally because there was like three people in front of me. I only mentioned that just as an anecdote for travel because we know travels, travel soft. Actually, this surprise the shit out of me. I was listening to the Disney call. And they're talking about the theme park.

All right. Hugh Johnson, the CFO said, bookings right now for Walt Disney World for the third quarter are up 4%. And that's with about what we would say is like 80% in. And then for the fourth quarter, bookings are up 7%. That really surprised me. That is still rising?

Bookings are up 7% quarter in the fourth quarter? Yeah, I would have thought Disney would be falling off by now. Right? Then I saw, remember a few weeks ago, I made the grand proclamation that caps is my favorite show ever. I think I have to walk that one back. But I will say that, Without a doubt,

Cops is in my top 10 for most hours viewed of any show of all time might be top five. Because it was on forever. I watched so many episodes of that show. So you were watching Cops when you should be watching, you shouldn't watch in Seinfeld. True. Anyway, there's a new show on Max,

All Access PD, in Grand Rapids. It's basically Cops in Grand Rapids on Max. Oh, really? Okay. I hadn't heard of this. You should check it out. All right, this is a wow. NBA and NBC announced.

This is Peacock. Michael Jordan will be a special contributor to the NBA and NBC. And I saw a table from Sportico. Top 10 highest pit athletes of all time. Jordan's earned $4.1 billion. Inflation adjusted. They've got to be paying him a fortune to get him out of bed for this. Yeah, because that's all from Nike, obviously.

Right. Can I share a secret? He's not going to be any good at it. I don't know. I don't know. We'll say. Remember how bad he was on SNL? I don't remember that. Can't be good at everything. There's a new movie coming out. Godzilla Kong Supernova. You excited for that one, Ben?

2027. My son will eat that one up. He's seen every Godzilla King Kong movie. All right. I appreciate a good take. So I don't want to do a take down here, but the Atlantic had a story saying, is this the worst era ever for pop culture? And I appreciate the take. So he says, according to a U-Gov poll,

Americans rate that 2020s is the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports. Not TV. They also... So I got to pushback here. So they said, in music, new releases account for a little more

than a quarter of the albums consumed in the U.S. Every year, a greater and greater percentage of the album streamed online is cataloged music, meaning it is at least 18 months old. Now, here's my pushback on this. Imagine going back to someone in the 1990s and telling them,

you can get any song you want to play for $14.99 a month. You can play it across any device you want. We didn't have access to old music like this in the past. The reason we listened to new music is because it was the only thing on the radio or TRL on MTV. If I had access to old music in the past that I didn't have to spend $15 on a CD for, I would have listened to it. So, I mean, you could make the case, music was better, because music was better in the 90s, let's be honest.

But I don't think it's just the fact that we have less new releases out, and people are listening. People are listening to old music because you already know it's good. Like, I used to buy CDs for one song. There'd be a good single. You'd buy the whole CD, and you'd go, this whole CD sucks. But I bought it for one song. Plus, I mean, we have the biggest, one of the biggest musicians in history right now, Taylor Swift. So I will say movies are way, way worse.

And so he made the point that all the movies are sequels. And I agree with that. Movies are worse. But TV shows are so much better. Think about it. We have movie stars in new TV shows all the time. They drop and no one's ever even heard of these shows. All of a sudden, Netflix, I'm going to talk about this to my reviews.

Had a show with Tina Faye and Steve Carell and Will Forte. Nicole Kidman's in TV shows all the time. You could argue TV has never been better. Never been better. Remember in the past it was a huge leap for someone to go from TV to movies? In the 1990s, no movie star in their right mind would ever do a TV show. No. That was like the end of the line for you.

You can follow your favorite sports teams. unlike any time ever before. You don't have to wait for SportsCenter to watch highlights. My wife used to buy us weekly to watch like, hey, look, this celebrity is buying a coffee. Now celebrities literally post their own stuff on social media. You can follow every intricate detail of their life. Podcasts have celebrities on them.

Celebrities have their own podcast. So I'd say pop culture has actually never been better in many ways. Yeah, it's a good take. That's my take. Remember the Gateway 2000? We spoke about it the other day. Wasn't a cow of the mask off of that? Everyone had a gateway computer.

In the late 90s, early 2000, everyone had a gateway computer. And yeah, singles were a thing, right? Like you would literally buy a single song on a CD. Yeah, it might have like three songs on it or something for like $5.99. Yeah. Things are not so bad. Somebody said that we should that the opposite of Canary and the coal mine is Canary and the gold mine.

Don't hate it. Pretty clever. That's not bad. I like it. Yep. Somebody, you know, does. Isn't Uber mail just DHL slash FedEx? Someone should invent an Uber mail.

They just pick up and drop off your mail. This is how you know Ben is a man of the people. You know, I didn't know that DHL and FedEx will come to your house either. Is that a thing? That's awesome. I just, I want, I hate going to the post office to do so. I want someone to put in the envelope for me, put the sticker on, everything. That's what I want.

Apparently that's DHL. All right. Awesome. All right. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had a run in with a goose. The geese were coming after me, and I said, I wouldn't mind stepping on one of their neck. These things are jerks. They poop everywhere. They're mean. This is from my office complex. Dear tenants, we are aware that the geese on the property become a persistent issue. It comes to the point where we can no longer realistic to keep up with the mess and disruption they caused. To address the problem, we've contracted a professional company that will implement a method known

with goose hazing that will involve the use of trained herding dogs that will be brought on the site, unleashed to chase off the geese and discourage them from returning. This is a humane and effective method, Duncan. The dogs and our handlers will be on site at random time 20 times per month through mid-December. Do not interact with the dogs. So, these dogs are going to scare the geese away, which I've never heard of goose hazing, but I would have thought it would have been meaner than it actually sounds. Okay.

All right, what do you got for recommendations? All right, I've got a bunch of stuff. Ben, are you, where are you with the studio? I'm probably six episodes in, and I think it's a very hit or myth show for me. Some of the episodes, I'm like, eh, and some of them I think are great. Like the one, I told you, where he goes to a gala with a doctor girlfriend, and he's debating how the entertainment industry is just as important as being a doctor. And I thought that episode was great.

I thought they totally nailed it. Some of the other episodes, I can take it or leave it, but it's, so it's a hit or miss show for me. enjoying it. All right. So I, I love the show, even if I don't love every episode. I like that it's contained, but I agree with you. Some episodes are better than others. But like, I just, you're right. Every episode stands on its own. You don't have to watch the other episodes to know what's going on. So at the end of the most recent episode, they do an award show. And at the end of the show, there's no spoilers. At the end of the show, Seth Rogen gets in the car. And I just love,

and there's like just Hollywood trumpet music playing and I just love being I love being in Hollywood with him I really I'm really enjoying it and matter of fact the most recent episode at the award show they got Ted Sarandos to be in the cast

like he had a pretty sizable role in the show and I thought like huh every episode has one or two really good cameos but the guy who but the guy who was Netflix

Is on Apple? Is on a show on Apple? That's interesting. Yeah, but he's kind of a celebrity himself. Couldn't you see him leaving Netflix someday and running one of these other studios? Sarandos was courtside last night, sitting next to David Zazlov at Madison Square Garden.

How mad were you that you had to miss the game and not be there for that last night? It's the best game in the garden. I'm trying to think of the last best game in the garden. Because were you there on Saturday when they got smoked? Yeah, that was not fun. Okay. So are you allowing, now that the Knicks have won, and they would have won it regardless of Tatum got hurt, but Tatum's hurt, I don't know if he's coming back. Are you allowing yourself to think about? You don't know if he's coming back. We know he's not coming back. We know he's not coming to a Knicks' killer's. We're allowed to say it. Okay. Are you allowing yourself to envision going to the finals now? Are you not even? I am. Okay. No, I am. I am. Like, I'm, you're like, you could be thinking like I could be going to a Knicks game in the finals. Yeah. So I am a very emotional Knicks fan.

Yeah. You tell me your way. My wife made you take a walk after last week's game. My texts are insane. I'm not like, don't worry, guys, we got this. Like, that's not where I stand. I thought this next team underperformed all season. In fact, not I thought. This next team underperformed all season.

Our defense was alarmingly bad. I did not think that Mitchell Robinson coming back was going to change the defense as much as it had. But there was just something missing. There was something not clicking about this team all season, including throughout the playoffs. we were down 20 points in the first three games against the Celtics. Pistons gave you guys a good game every game.

Yeah. So the Celtics are obviously the better team. Like, I'm not an idiot. Right. So, yeah, so going into the series, I thought we were 8 to 1 and I was not, I'm like, that's not attractive. I'm not doing that. I'm not betting that.

Josh bet that credit to him. So, yeah, I thought we were going to get smoked. Even after, like, I thought we were to get killed in game three. I'm sorry, game four. So now that we are up three games to one, the series is over, whether or not we win it in five or six, whatever, the series is over. Obviously, I feel bad for Jason Tatum, et cetera.

I've got to say that, but I really do. But yeah, no, I'm there. I think that we can beat the Pacers, for sure. It's wild. Pacers' Nix would have been like a, even before these series, would have been like a 30 to one probably, right? 20 to one?

Yeah, yeah. Who'd have thunk it? I'm very happy. I'm very, very happy. Yeah. It's been a long time. It's been a long time. My daughter's been staying up and be watching NBA playoffs.

And she has to, usually it's her bedtime and that there will be a game on at the end in the fourth quarter. But can I just stay up? And I let her stay up. And it's been an amazing second round. I don't mind the bandwagon fans. I love it. But I never stopped in the lost decade in the Tracy McGrady, Penny Hardaway, Michael Dolea, Othello, Hathela Harrington. I could go, I can name 150 players that were absolute dog shit.

I never stopped. I can tell based on your wardrobe You have more Nixgear than any person alive So to be on the other side of the mountain I mean I'm going to cry if we go to the finals I'm going to cry if go to the Eastern concert finals Yeah it's very special for me So I'm enjoying the shit out of it

All right what else we got for recommendations I listened to two episodes of the Blocks podcast With Neil Brennan that I've mentioned in the past That were both phenomenal In different ways Neal deserve to give us some some tips or something, because we keep sending people to his podcast. It's so good.

I listen to Johnny Knoxville and Jim Norton. And Jim Norton is an absolute filthy maniac. And I mean that in the best way possible. He's a stand-to-comedian and he's something else. All right. Credit to The Last of Us. Did you bail Ben? Are you still watching?

I'm still watching. Give me your take and I'll give you mine. Okay. So I'm not a die-hard. Like, I very much enjoy the show, but I'm not like on Reddit. When I finish the show, I'm not thinking about what's going to happen next week. I enjoy it. And after Joel died, I was like, wow, they really did that.

Actually, hold on. Let's rewind. Actually, you know what? No, we don't need to rewind. It's episode 40. Sorry. We're keeping going. So after they killed off one of the main characters in episode two, I was like, all right, let's

see how they do it. And I have faith in the writers, and the faith, I think, was rightly placed because I thought episode three and four did not skip a beat at all. Okay. I have a totally different take. I think it's one of the dumbest TV decisions that's ever been made. Well, they're following the video game.

Great. Piss off the video game, people. He was one of the only reasons I liked the show. I'm still going to watch. I think it's okay. I do not think that the young girl, she was a sidekick. She's not a main star.

I know they're going to bring other people in. They brought Jeffrey Rush in and Catherine O'Hara. I think it's... Or why not wait to kill him to the end of the season? I think he was the best part of the show. Who cares what has? happened in the video game. Did you like it since three and four?

I think it's one of the stupidest TV decisions I've ever seen. And I'm still going to watch it, but it totally makes the show not as good for me. All right, well, let's say. That's a premature take. There's six more episodes. All right. The first two back, it's like, they're okay, but it's not the same. That's where I'm at.

All right, two more. I was listening to Nicholas Cage on the big picture with Sean Fantasy. He has a new movie called The Serfer, which I have not seen. scene, and he said, he told Sean Fantasy that he almost, oh, Sean Fantasy said, which one of your movies do you think is underappreciated? And he said matchstick men, which is one of, which is, I think my favorite Nick Cage movie ever. Maybe I would have to think about that.

Phenomenal movie. Absolutely, that rocked my world when I saw it. Come on, man, Nick Cage was in the Rock. Conair. The Rock, Conair, and Snake Eyes and Face Off. That was a run. Anyway, but he took that role instead of Tim Robbins in Mystic River. That would have been weird.

Oh, yeah. That wouldn't have worked. Him trying to do a Boston accent? No. I don't think so. Anyway, finally, on the airplane, I had a lot of work to do in the airplane, not to brag. So I watched in the background, a perfect airplane movie. Two hours and 15 minutes.

Not great action. You could look up whatever. You're not really missing much. Den of These Pantera with, uh, Okay, I just watched the first one recently, so should I watch it? Okay. On an airplane. Like, it's not, you know, it's not like, I wouldn't say fired up on a front of night.

I do like to do that. So I have a long flight to San Diego late as week. So I do like to put on a movie in the background, even if I'm doing answering emails. Yeah, this is, this is like, this is perfect for that. So I'm, we talked about how TV is better than movies now. And so I think a lot of the shows, you said your friends and neighbors could have been a movie. I still like it. I think the one where they went to Princeton recently, I thought that was a great,

episode of TV. Did you watch that where they took their daughter to Princeton? I think John Hamm and Amanda Pete have great chemistry. I think your dope thief show could have been a movie too. I thought that one kind of went off the rails a little bit. Oh, did you watch it? I'm still watching. I'm not done yet, but I feel like at the middle of it, it kind of lagged. Like that could have been a movie. Here's one, four seasons on Netflix. It just showed up. It's Steve Correll, Tina Fey, and Will Forte. And it's three married couples who go on like four vacations together. Every two episodes is them going on another vacation. I'm only three episodes in.

And it's just, it's a half-hour show. It feels like a movie. And Steve Corel is great. Tina Faye. I'm a huge Will Forte fan. I feel like The Last Man on Earth, which was on Fox, is one of the most underrated TV shows of the last 10 years. It was hilarious.

And I'm in the four seasons. You know, it's so funny. So we're watching it too. Although watching it, that's a stretch. Was that, is the house in upstate New York? It looks like an upstate New York house. I haven't, I don't think I've got there. I think I watched the first episode of a half.

And we were watching it. That's what it is. They're at the house on the lake. Okay. I was like falling asleep. But we were saying to which I was like, who is this show for? It's like, it's just, I don't understand. It's for me.

It's for my dad, I think? And no, it's for Ben, apparently. Oh, my wife and I love this show. It's like the fact that the husband gets mad at the wife for playing video games. on her iPad all the time. I don't know. Maybe it's just a lot of quirky things that we notice that are realistic to us,

but I love it. I think it's great. Okay, maybe I'll... Just, it's just a... It's a good... It's very light, right? It's a very light, it's not too deep. I don't know.

Sometimes I don't want deep shows. I want just light and happy and fun. Yeah, no. So for me, it's a perfect sleeping show. And I guess it's a bench show. That's who it's for. You know, I have a feeling that you don't pay attention to a lot of shows because I mentioned

Johnny Knoxville being on the studio the day, and you said, when was he on the studio? And then literally the whole first two episodes of the four seasons are at a house on the lake, and you're like, oh, I must not got there yet. Are you been watching these shows? I think I was following it through the four seasons. But wait, hold on, hand up.

I admitted last week, I am a very bad watcher. Apparently, you're probably just, you're a phone guy. I always get mad at my wife for not paying attention to a show when she's on her phone because she misses stuff, then she asked me what happens. And I said, get off your phone and pay attention. This is a no phone show.

This is why airplanes movies get a 30% premium for me Because it's the only time where I'm like locked in I love it And that's why I go to the movie theater It's a hack against my attention span All right Any closers here? Are we good? Is the volatility completely gone for the year? I don't think I'd be willing to say that quite yet

Markets up again today Is the tariff-related volatility gone? Okay, that's a good question. That's a fair question And I would say maybe. Okay. Personal emails, personal responses, animal spirits at the compound news.com. Thanks to our production team, as always.

Remember, we got video on Spotify, video on YouTube at the compound. What else? I don't know. That's it. See you next week. Thank you.