Animal Spirits Podcast - You Can't Quantify Happiness (EP.335)

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

On episode 335 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: the blowout year for the Nasdaq 100, how experience shapes investment decisions, transitory inflation arguments, where prices have risen the most, who got the biggest wage gains, why housing prices refuse to crash, where to find affordable houses, why you can't trust sentiment surveys, and much more! Thanks to YCharts for sponsoring this episode! Register for Michael and Ben's year-end wrap up at: https://ycharts.zoom.us/webinar/register/1316977225613/WN_ZwvEURfASPK06-zAxVKEWA Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at YCharts. Mark your calendars. Michael, put it in the right time zone. December 6th, we will hosting YCharts final webinar over the year, 2023, a deep dive. What's the date? What's the date? December 6th. So we're going to be looking at the best charts of the year, the biggest market trends, and you'll get access to all the tools that Y charts uses to help investors and financial advisors like leverage anything they want to optimize, decision-making, client communication, all that stuff. If you're interested in joining us in the Whitecharts team, click the link in the show notes, save your spot.

Don't forget 20% off your initial subscription if you start your first free trial at Y charts. Also, someone asked me the other day, hey, can I follow your charts on Y charts? Mine are proprietary. I'm sorry, mine are very proprietary. It is kind of proprietary, but it's not a bad idea. Although, you know, that is a good question because everybody is a different layout. Like, I bet you yours looks nothing like mine. Yes, they could.

And I'm not showing you you. I'm not showing you mind. I'm going to be happy my layout. Maybe we'll do that. So anyway, go to Wightcharts. Tell me an Allspirits sent you 20% off that initial subscription. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Redhol'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. Is this not the best holiday week of the year? Is that consensus or is it not? I don't know. I feel like you do a best week of the year like once every three months though. I do. Yeah, you've been a big, like this is the best time of, you did this one for like September. Like this is the best time of the year because of football. Well, listen, with the way that Jerome Powell is one of the economy, things are

great. The next month or so, I mean, it's one long holiday celebration, right? So you're a Thanksgiving guy? Thanksgiving's okay. Uh, I'm a Thanksgiving guy. I'm not sure who isn't. Listen, I have, I have, I don't, I've, someone said, how can we not talk about the Lions more, Ben, and rubbing it in Michael's face. Uh, I don't want to jinx it, but this is the first time the lions have been good going into Thanksgiving and since I can remember. So I'm going to enjoy it. I retired from betting after I had that horrible beat where the Niners missed a 41-yard field goal against the Browns. I don't know what the week that was. Let's say it's week six.

I've been on the sidelines in cash. Actually, I had no cash. My count got drained to zero. Sitting on the sidelines came out of retirement this week. What's so funny? Duncan just slapped us saying that Ben saying being thankful is overrated is an all-time take. It's not what I was saying. I'm just saying there's other holidays that I like better.

So I came out of retirement this weekend and I had one, I placed one bet. I teased the Cowboys. I teased the lions. Can we just fast forward to the end of this story? Betting is hard, just like day trading is hard. No, wait, I'm getting old. I can't remember who the last team I teased was. But anyway, I thought I was shit out of luck.

I said, you got to be kidding me. I'm such an idiot. I came out of retirement from betting and the first bet that I do is on the Lions. What am I thinking? Have I not? They're the worst franchise of all time. Guess what?

Actually, they covered my tease. Thank you to Mr. Stafford. Not, oh my God, Mr. Goff. They are the worst franchise of all the time. People should have been betting on the NASDAQ 100 this year. I was looking at it before we got on here. We're recording Tuesday morning. So as of the close on Monday, the NASDAQ 100 is now

up 47.4% for the year, including dividends. What's the dividend yielded than that? One percent, maybe. No one really cares. So I've been thinking about this. I looked at this. I talked with Duncan about this last week. I asked the compound, but it seems like a manufactured worry, but one of the biggest worries for the stock market this year is that these magnificent seven stocks are too big. They're up too much. If they roll over, we're all screwed. So this is as of last week, so it's a little different now, but the average return for these stocks is 105%. Now, that's lifted by Nvidia being up like 250% or whatever it is, but even the median's like 80% gain. Right. So, and then the, the average return for the rest of the stocks, people say the other 493, but it's really what,

496 or something because there's multiple share classes? You keep saying that. It's true. There's multiple shareclass. No, it's not true. It's not true. If you do a sort of the number stocks, it's not true. Goog and Google, G-O-O-G and G-O-O-GL are the same stock. There are different share classes. It's the same stock. There's 500, there's 500 companies and the S&P 500. Okay, but there's 500. Let's not get cute here. So the average return for the rest of the stocks. What was that?

What was that? What? The average return for the rest of the stocks is 4%. So there is like this huge divergence between the biggest stocks and everything else. Here's the thing, though. Everyone's like, well, what happens? People want to look at in a vacuum. Like what happens if these stocks roll over with the assumption that the rest of the stocks will do the same?

But that's not how it works. So last year, the average return for the magnificent seven stocks was negative 46%. The S&P was down 18. So if you do a, I'm rounding here, if you do a minus 50 and an up 100, guess where you are? You're at zero. So like the worries about these stocks being up so much this year, it's because they were down so much last year. Isn't it as simple as that? That's an interesting take.

I didn't realize. So the Mag 7 were down on average 46% last year and the market was down 18. Yeah. How about that? Right? How about that? I'm just saying this kind of, this kind of, thing just doesn't, it never worries me when the biggest best companies in the world are doing

really well. I don't see why that has to be a risk. It's a manufactured risk. Like, there's enough other stuff to worry about. I think it's more just, when I think about that, I don't, yeah, I don't know that it's necessarily a market, like a systemic risk, like Apple's too big to fail or anything like that. But I just think from the prism of like a portfolio manager and a stock selector. You know what I mean? Like if you're if you're an individual stock picker, it's really tough. And comparing yourself to the benchmark when those seven stocks are doing all the lifting, I think that's the focus of the gripe, at least to me, and to me that's legit, right? Like if you're if you're compared to the S. P5500, well, this year in the last decade really, really suck.

Yes. And that's true, not only for stock pickers, but for anyone who holds a diversified portfolio. If you old assets in small caps or value stocks or international stocks, then you've, yeah, the S&P 500 has been the only game in town, or the NASDAQ 100 even more so. This surprised the Banoodles out of me. I made a chart, the NASDAQ 100 year-over-year change. What do you think the average year-over-year changes since 1995? Explain me how, so you did like a rolling? Just rolling, rolling one-year returns.

So taking the losses in the game, I don't know, like 18%. Yeah, 17. Was it really? The reason why I made this chart is because I was looking at the impact. No, I don't get any love for that guess. That's a pretty good guess. I said, yeah, good, good guess. My mouth is very dry.

You know why? I think this is why. I took muscle relaxers. Okay. Did it work? Did it work? I don't feel relaxed. I called you yesterday.

and you were you were sitting in your like lounge chair not moving and you said my back seized up on me from playing basketball and what was my first reaction? Oh, it didn't cease up. It got it did get, I mangled my back. And what did I say was going to happen when you started playing basketball again? Listen, I'm, I'm just happy it's not an ACL. True. There's a 30% chance you're going to blow out your you're going to pop.

Your Achilles is going to pop. You heard it here first. There's like a greater chance. of you blowing out your Achilles than a recession in the first six months of 2024. But these guys that I play with, they're all super old. I mean, not all of them,

but a lot of them are super old. They've been playing for a long time. So I don't buy those odds. I don't buy it. Okay. I'm just, it's going to happen. So I was making this chart and I was overlaying the change in the 10 year,

like the year-over-year, 10-year change, and the year-over-year change of the NASIC 100. I have to do some more digging. I started doing this this morning. have time to really dive in. I will report back next week. But there's a massive spread between the NASDAQ 100 returns when interest rates, specifically the 10 year, are up year over year and down year over year. Kind of like the inflation being up or down. Same thing.

Yeah, but it's the opposite. Okay. So the average return for the NASDAQ 100 when rates are down year over year is 11%. Okay. The average return for the NASDAQ 100 when rates are up, year for year, is 26%. I would not have guessed that. That's wild. My first guess is that there's some, like, mega outliers from the dot-com era that's, like, pulling this higher. But I will look into this and report back.

That's the thing, though, that the stock market is not getting enough credit for being up this year in a year when the Fed is raising rates. Like, we came out of a bare market. Everyone said, like, you need a Fed put for stocks to go up and you need 0% rates. I think there was obviously people who latched up. to that environment of low rates and stuff and thinking it's never going to leave. Yeah, but there's also people who assume

that like that's the only reason stocks are growing up is because the Fed had the stock markets back. Like, that hasn't been the case and the stock market is doing wonderfully this year. The Fed has been raising in the stock market going up in the face of the Fed. The index is doing wonderfully. Can I also say one more thing?

Sometimes when you do analysis like this, like the truth gets lost because what I was doing was looking, like I was, I just suspected that higher rates meant lower stock returns, but just because there's nothing in the data does not necessarily negate the fact that the reason why tech stocks got killed last year was because rates went from zero to 500 basis points. Would you agree? Yes.

But there's also, there are no ironclad relationships in the stock market where like if this, if A happens, B will happen next. Like, go throughout history and you can always find an exception to the rule. Yeah. So, all right. Steve Leesman tweeted, Fed Fund Fut futures currently shows. showing no probability of any more rate hikes. First time that's happened in a long time.

The market is now training with a 65% probability of a cut in May. Makes sense. We did it. Did we do it? We got through this thing? Kind of. I am starting to notice more earnings calls are starting to like talk about the consumer slowing and the macro still being difficult.

Yeah, I don't know what the statute of limitations are on if like when we get a recession like who you can blame for it in all these things. But yes, we're in a weird transition phase, is how I'll put it. Because I honestly don't know, I do, we talked about before, if rates fall in the Fed cuts, that's going to be a boon for like the housing market. But I don't, I don't know if it's going to help much else. Maybe the automotive industry, I don't know. We talk about like, oh, we survived, like we got through it.

First of all, the stock market, the NASDAQ 100 out of 35% drawdown. We're still like in a in like a top five streak without all-time highs. Third worst year ever for the 60-40 portfolio by my calculation. Yeah. So I mean, yes, we stocks are approaching all-time highs and, you know, that's obviously feels good. But let's not, let's not act like there wasn't a really painful period.

Let's not, but let's not pretend that 2022 didn't suck for everyone. This is what I keep saying is the there's, like how quickly people forget. People who are like worried about like who keep predicting. a crash on the end of the financial system and the dollar is dead or whatever, like, they want this system-wide ending crash, but like, we just went through a really bad bear market. Like, historically, people are going to look back at this and go, that was a nasty bare market when you consider stocks and bonds, both got crushed. Yeah.

And when you look, when you look like beyond the indexes, a lot of stocks got absolutely smoked. Yes, there were stocks down 70, 80, 90%. And are nowhere near all time highs. And never will be, probably. here's a good transition for me. I wonder if this period will cause people to have a lower allocation to risk assets. So the economist had this great chart, this great piece about asset allocation. And they used data from Vanguard. And they looked at the equity allocation by the tenure of the account. Like when the account was opened, what is your allocation to equities? And then the results show that this is a great chart. The results show that investors who open accounts during a boom retained significant. higher equity allocations even decades later. The median investor started out in 1999 as the dot-com bubble swells still held 86% of their stocks, their portfolio in stocks in 2022. For those who began in 2004, when the memories of the bubble bursting were still fresh, the equivalent figure was

72%. So you can see, like, people started investing in the early 80s when the death of equities were here and rates were higher. They hold a smaller percentage in equities. Now, they're older, but look at this. It does. It peaks in the 90s. So if you live through that five-year period at the end of the 90s when it was a bull market into a supercharged bubble. That's actually a good, so I wonder if like the people who started investing in 2020, that'll actually be a good thing for them because they lived through a boom and they'll keep a higher percentage in equities. It's a really interesting way to think about behavior. And it's funny because most people assume like, well, you take your risk profile and your time horizon and you input it into the spreadsheet

and this is what portfolio you should have and this is the allocation. But for most people, it's like, no, my experience is this. So this is how I'm going to invest. Which is not optimal. But that's, that's humans, I guess. Really good chart. So you and I both have all of our retirement money in stocks. I mean, as we should, obviously, we're relatively young people. I don't know. I'm getting older.

You have a bad back. Oh, it hurts when I laugh. Do you think, if you have to guess, Future Ben, at what point does Future Ben say, maybe I don't need 100% of my portfolio in stocks? or is future Ben so well off that his 401K is no longer for his benefit, but it's for his kids benefit. And therefore, says, you know what, why, why, why not have all my equity in stocks? Why not have all my, my 401K in stocks?

It's for my kids anyway. My plans will surely change, I'm sure. Me at 65 or whatever is going to be different than me at 42. But here's my thinking of how I will, my, here's how the Ben retirement glide path will work. I've thought about this obviously a lot. I'll start raising more cash. Oh, a lot. You've thought about this a lot.

I'm a planner. My thinking is I will be raising and saving more cash as I approach retirement. And I will have, I don't know, three or four years worth of cash, of expenses in cash as a barbell. And that will be my, and then the rest will stick in the stock market. I think that's, if I had to guess now, that's how I will do it. So barbell, heavy cash on the stars. It'll just be more cash or short-term bonds, that sort of thing. Know what I did this week?

I, uh, I quantified my net worth. Okay. For the first time, how did you feel? Not first time. How did I feel? Uh, the same. True. Did you, did you include real estate in this?

Does that count? I included real estate and I also included my stock in our company, which, you know. Pull a number out of the hat, kind of, but yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Did you make you feel any better? No, you know why? Because I'm still paying $3.20 for this freaking coffee.

Okay. I don't buy coffee. That's why I beat inflation. Well, so this coffee, which I remember when it was like $1.80, it's now $3.20, will never be less than $3.20. Ever. That's how it works. And you, sir, are on the wrong side of history.

No, so here's the thing. There's a lot of people who gave me crap about being on Team Transitory. and a lot of people said, congratulations, Ben, team transitory one. I don't think anyone can be on team transitory anymore because the Fed raised rates. And the other thing that people forget. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Explain that one.

Well, like, the Fed raising rates, there's no counterfactuals of like if the Fed didn't raise rates, what would have actually happened? So a lot of people said, no, the inflation had to fall without the help of the Fed. But there's also, the thing people forget now conveniently is the war took inflation to another level. Inflation was already high. I think it was 7.8% heading into March 2022 before the war started.

And then it got over nine. So I think that last 1% or so was all from food and energy prices from the war. People conveniently forget that that really messed up with the inflation calculation. So there's no – the only point I was making is if you look at that chart 20 years from now, you're going to say it was transitory. So I'm not an either team. But a lot of people also came my DMs and said, Michael's moving the goalpost.

No one ever said Price said to go back to 2019 levels. Oh, all contrary. And first of all, who gives a shit what people are going to say in 20 years? People care about how they feel today. That's true. But history is constantly being rewritten. That's all I'm saying. Well, that is definitely true.

Okay. So there's this argument that transitory never meant prices would come back down. Well, actually, Dave and the Discord shared this with us. This is the first use of transitory from Jerome Powell in August 2021. Man, my freaking, I feel like I had a cotton ball. Excuse me. Okay. The spike in inflation is so far largely the product of a relatively narrow group of goods

and services that have been directly affected by the pandemic and the reopening of the economy. Durable goods alone contributed about one percentage point to the latest 12-month measures of headline and core inflation, energy prices which rebounded with a strong recovery, added another 0.8 percentage points to headline inflation. And from long experience, we expect the inflation effects of these increases to be transitory. In addition, some prices, for example, for hotel rooms and airplane tickets declined sharply during the recession and have now moved back up close to pre-pandemic levels. The 12-month window we use in computing inflation now captures the rebound in prices, but not the initial decline, temporarily elevating reported

inflation. These effects, which are adding a few tents to measure inflation, should wash out over time. So you could read that as not the pace of inflation being transitory, but actually prices being transitory. No? No. That doesn't say that at all. We expect the inflation effects of these increases to be transitory. I think you're reading into this. Listen, we expect the inflation effects of these increases to be transitory. Yeah, but I mean for things like used cars, like used car prices got above new car prices. I put it this in here, there's a chart that shows that use car prices. Then how about this? And this is, then this is, uh, purposefully misleading at best. It's all semantics. What else is he kind of, I mean, what the

economics besides semantics? Yes, it's the semantic. This is arguing for the sake of argument, because this is what we do. We had, no, not us, him. Yeah. But this is, this is all semantics. So, uh, Larry Summers changed his tune. Well, how about this, Ben, if Jerome Powell had said, I'm not suggested he should have or could have. But if Jerome Powell said, listen, prices are going to go up for probably, I don't know, at least the next few months, possibly the next few quarters, maybe even a few years, but then eventually the prices will stop going up. They're never going to come back down, but eventually they're stopped going up.

What do you think, how do you think that would have been received? Well, true, this is the point that everyone has a different definition of transitory. My whole thing about it was there's a lot of weird supply chain stuff that will eventually get figured out and that will smooth things out. That was my transitory definition. But again, life doesn't exist in a vacuum. This is fun to argue about, but like, there's no one right on this issue. So, Larry Summers says that transitory factors had been one element in a faster slowdown in the U.S. inflation than he anticipated.

Blah, blah, blah. This is him in March 2022. Again, right when the war hit. The Fed's current policy trajectory is likely to lead to stagflation with average unemployment and inflation, both averaging over 5% over the next few years, and ultimately to a major recession. Now, this isn't like me dunking on Larry Summers because enough people have done. on this, but I'm just pointing out how dire things felt, even like 18 months ago, compared to where we're at now.

It did. That things seemed so much worse than they could have been. So I have three scenarios here. Okay? And I want you to tell me, like, what you think is the most probable. Okay? So a lot of macro people have come in a high girl with high inflation, like higher for longer. Wait, hold on.

Set the stage. Set the stage. Set the stage. Three scenarios for what? For the economy. Going forward? Yes. In like the next call it, like 12, 18 months.

So a lot of people are saying, like, higher for longer is here. This is the macro people. High growth, high inflation, high Fed rates, right? That seems to be where most of the macro people have come down. Then there's a lot of, I'd say like investors think, like, low growth, low inflation, like the Fed's going to have to cut again because of recession. Zero percent rates are going to be here again, right? That's like the 2010s again.

There's also like a middle ground where I don't know if anyone's here, moderate growth and moderate inflation. Is anyone predicting that? I feel like it's only the extremes. It's one ender or the other. I feel like no one's saying like, what if we had like moderate, like, it's a little higher. It's like 3%. And growth is, you know, a little higher than once in 2010.

I feel like no one's in that lane. So I'm planning my flag in that lane as like a higher probability event coming forward than like the other two. Is that fair? That's a great. That's a hedge. That's not a lane. How is that not a lane? Because I'm not, I'm not buying the higher for longer thing.

I don't think the structural inflation stuff is here. I feel like people popped on that one way too quickly. And I'm also saying, unless we have a great financial crisis again, we're not getting zero percent rates again. So I'm taking the highest probability lane. That's what I'm saying. So you're on the fence. It's not on the fence.

Moderate growth and you're going to stay there. Okay. I'm just saying, like, people want to hear, like, there's a 100% chance for having a recession or there's 100% chance for having a soft landing. Sure, of course. The thing people need to hear is, like, we could have a soft landing, but you can't rule out of recession when rates are where they are.

That's where I am. I think the higher for longer thing, though, like, that died really quickly. I don't think people are in that camp anymore. I feel like there's still a lot of macro people who believe that. That lane now has a bunch of orange cones on it. You can't drive in that lane anymore. That's fair. Okay.

You gotta switch lanes. So one of the other things that people have said is, listen, the only reason things are still going well is because we have this huge deficit. Right? The government is spending money. You don't see it. that's like, that was the Fed put this time. Colin Roche says the current environment doesn't look all that much different

than we experienced in the 80s in 2010s when the budget deficit was consistently 4 to 6% of GDP. He has this chart that shows deficit as a percentage of GDP. And it was way, way worse in World War II than it ever got in the pandemic. And he's also saying that, like, in the 40s, that happened for, it was over 15% for five years, which was obviously to fund the war efforts.

But he's saying, like, this has already improved so much from the pandemic that we're kind of in a, it's a little higher than average, but it's still normalish. It's not like the government is running this huge, huge deficit to finance everything. So you can't really say like the government is, is holding, propping everything up here, which is, I think, a case that a lot of people have been making. Yeah, that is a case. I saw some, I saw a dumer talking about that the other day, that it's all, not only is all government spending, but a lot of the government reports are untruthful.

Well, of course, don't, if the market doesn't agree with you, don't trust the data. Those go hand in the glove. Workday knows there are two kinds of people in business, backward thinkers and forward thinkers. And when you're a forward thinker, you need an AI platform that thinks like you do. Built to evolve with your organization, Workday reimagines how you manage your people, money, and agents for long-term success. bringing all your most valuable resources onto one powerful platform so you can add value even faster.

Workday, moving business forever forward. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too.

Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam, eye exams provided by independent optometrists. Remember this for a take? Hyperinflation is going to change everything. It's happening. That was from Jack Dorsey on October 2000, in October 2021. Close. Do you think that when you have a large following, and you say something like that

that there should be any sort of repercussions and I can't even imagine what they would be and I know that's not the world that we live in you could say whatever you want which I guess is pretty great for the most part but I don't know shit like this pisses me off

it pissed me off at the time and it makes me matter now. I just think rich and powerful people never have anyone tell them know anymore and they kind of just say and do what they want don't you think that the social media era has made you realize that like people who are rich, powerful,

and even if they're geniuses, they can also still be really, really dumb. And I don't know if that's like a good thing or a bad thing, but it just makes you realize that like, oh, that's right. There's like literally no one out there that's perfect. Well, of course, of course.

But I think in the past, though, there were people, if you read books and stuff about the heroes that we had, these people were put on a pedestal because no one ever saw all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes or heard about it, and you didn't have to, and you can kind of mythologize these people.

There was no TMZ. Yes. And maybe that wasn't realistic either, but anyway. That's an interesting question to ask. Like, what's a better world to live in? One where you put people on pedestals in many cases there, I'm sure a lot of people back in the day that we thought were like gods were just absolute monsters.

Don't ever meet your heroes. But there was like, we like romanticized it. Okay. So you wrote a blog post complaining about, about your vet bill, which I think, I swear the vet stuff, that has to be one of the highest long-term inflation things there is. Every time you get a bill there, it's never like, you never look at the bill from the vet and go, oh man, whew, that was a relief. You never have that feeling. I honestly, I'm still shook. I couldn't believe it. So, my dog is. You know what else I think about

dogs? This is a Ben conspiracy. I'm not a big conspiracy theory guy. The heartworm medication. I think it's bunk. I don't think it ever does anything. because... I think it's all bunk. We took a blood test and I wasn't going to say no and look like an asshole. I got to call it.

Blood test looks clean. And I actually, I said to the doctor, my dog's 12 and she's in... She's my angel. She's sleeping right next to me on the floor. I said to her to the doctor, like, okay, she's 12.

Like, she's a boxer. She's kind of getting a little bit up there at age. Like, what would be the response to whatever we could possibly find? Exactly. like am I really going to like you know what she's going like a different dot and he's like well it could be it could be any number of response I'm like I know but like I'm going to pay all this money for the blood work and then I'm going to pay more money to like for what uh anyway funny story

I guess uh Logan was with me at the vet and he was he was he had like a book on his lap and it was uh and he was like I'm using air quotes reading it because Logan is four he can't read but he's just like talking over the book and flipping the pages and he goes daddy you read And the book is called Dogs Go to Heaven. And so... That is the one thing that my vet did extremely well. Like, the way that they handled putting our dog down was, like, one of the... The way that they handled it was just, like, perfect.

And I was really happy with how that they did that. So maybe it's worth the money in the end. By page three, I had literal tears coming down my cheeks. And I was wearing sunglasses, which made me feel a little bit less embarrassed. But I had, like, literal tears. and I said, look, and I can't read it. And he's like, why not? And I said, I just can't.

Go play. It's tough. Anyway, $570 for pretty routine stuff. So you made this chart for CPI changes. This looks like a Nick Majuli created chart because there's no way you made a chart. But this is the entirety of why people are pissed off. But I love the fact that, well, I've got some other theories on why people are pissed off too. I'm going to say it for later.

I love that you put salad dressing on here. That's my favorite one. I don't know why. Because you have all these huge items and then you have salad dressing on there. So I'm glad we got to the bottom of salad dressing. Dude, everything is so much more expensive than it was. This just goes back to January 2020. So you squeezed a decade's worth of price increases into like a two-year period.

That's like that we're shell-shocked. Maybe I'm just like the most unemotional person ever. This doesn't, it doesn't make me mad. Okay, salads with grilled chicken are literally 20. I can't get over it. Help me understand. For some reason, I was looking at an old blog post of mine from like June 2020 in the conclusion and it was asking like how would people react to inflation?

So kind of press it on my part, right? I was just asking the question, not predicting. And at the end I said, if we get inflation, that's the best case scenario. I think people forget you can't do, again, you can't do counterfactuals. I think people forget how bad things could have been from the pandemic. And you can't make, you can't go in people's brains. and make them realize, like, here's what would have happened had the government not shot the bazooka. Things would be worse. And I don't think people can, can realize that in the brain.

Maybe that's the reason that this inflation doesn't anger me so bad, because I know that things could have been way, way worse. It could always be worse. It could always be worse. It doesn't make anybody feel better, ever, under any circumstances. It makes me feel better. That's all I'm saying. That's the, that's the, that's the reason, like, the high prices don't make me mad because I know that things could have been way worse. You don't think that high prices are the source of all of the disconnect. I want to say all. A lot of them. Not all. No, because there's times in history where inflation has been this high or worse and people weren't this upset or angry. False. People were living in the 70s. People were living in the 70s. Look at all the approval

ratings of all the presidents. Inflation was, inflation was higher in the 1980s than it has been for this decade. For the entirety of the decade. The average inflation rate in the 80s was like, 6%. Yeah, but it was coming down. It was coming down a lot, different. All right. So Walmart CEO, CFO, one of them, in the U.S., we may be managing through a period of deflation a month to come. So I'm guessing they are looking at things for consumer like food. And I don't know what the context was around. There's a bunch of people shared this quote. There are, that's the thing. When I said we don't get a lot of deflation, that's like in the overall price basket because that the biggest piece is shelter. But there are places where

What do you got to do? It's not a good sign when you winced when you have to sit down. Honestly, the middle age is... You're going to have one of those... You know those big rolling foam things that you, like, do stretches on? Yeah, I have one.

You're going to have to get one of those. I have one. Of course you do. Middle-aged Michael. All right. Here's a... What's that? Icey hot?

Oh. Is that the... shack stuff. Here is a very surprising figure. And if this gets to your anger thing, I don't know. So this is from a new research report. It shows real hourly wages by education relative to January 2020. And it shows high school, some college, and then college or plus. And usually the income levels are the more education you have, the higher your average wages, right? And then lower your education. Look at this. Some college in high school saw a way greater increase on real wages than people with a college degree.

And actually, the group that's falling behind is people with college degrees. Is this not a shocking chart to you? Falling behind is like a bit of a stretch. On a relative basis to their... No. Their real wages aren't increasing as much as the other two co-co-co-os.

But I'm saying this is kind of a shocking chart again for, because you... Wait, I just butcher that word. Did I say cohorts? Cohorts. Co-horts. You just sounded like a Harry Potter word. But, again, you assume the people with only a high school education, that's typically a lower average income group.

So, again, they've had the highest income increases. Again, no one could have predicted this kind of thing. True, but. But does this also... So is this why... They're also the group that's most being impacted by higher prices. You see it in all the data. But is this, though, why, like, so many more educated, like, middle...

upper middle class people are angry because they've actually fallen a little behind other other groups a little bit in this run-up. So it's like the low-income group is mad because prices are higher and is impacting their budget more. And then the higher-income group is outside of like the top 10% or top 20%, they're getting squeezed because their wages haven't kept up. That's why, that's one of the reasons that more people are upset. All right, this is from Morgan Stanley. This number kind of shocked me. So it's the percentage of household debt locked in at a fixed rate. And it was 75, 76% in the mid-2000s. It's now at almost 90% as of 2022. I guess I wouldn't have known what the, obviously, the reason for this is because

mortgages make up 70% or whatever. But that's just a very high number. Torsten Slok at Apollo, do you have his daily email? Do you get that? I finally signed up a couple weeks ago, because I always see his charts, and he has a daily email where he sends from Apollo just a chart of the day kind of thing with a little paragraph on each. So this is residential investment as a share of GDP. And you can see it crashed following the great financial crisis because it messed up the housing market. And it went a little higher and then crashed right back down again. It kind of feels like high mortgage rates are just going to make the housing market even worse in the future as far as supply goes. You know, from a building standpoint? I really

feel that if we get a pullback in mortgage rates, housing prices are going to go up another 10 percent? Maybe it can't work like this, but my thinking is there's just going to be way more activity than like housing prices streaming higher. Could be. I can be wrong. Do you think we have to have both at the same time? No. No. All right. But, but, but housing pricing, I'm sorry, housing activity will skyrocket. You're right. I don't know where, I don't know what, I don't know what's happened with prices. I'd feel more confident in that decision. So this is from Bloomberg. This one was going on last week. My tweet was, the share of Americans who are mortgage-free is an all-time high, which actually the headline is a bit misleading. It's at an all-time high in like modern

times, but back in the day before like the Great Depression, you more or less had to pay for, like, you had to put like 50% down or something. So the, so people would buy their mortgages off way quicker back in the day, but that's like pre-modern times. So the share of U.S. homes that are mortgage-free jumped five percentage points from 2012 to 2022 to a record I have just 40%. More than half of these owners have reached retirement age. You can see this thing skyrocket. It also shows the change in the number of mortgage-free homes by age group, 65 to 74, added 2.8 million. Look at all those people, like 1.1 million, 35 to 44. What are these young people doing? Leverage is good for you. I don't care about the psychic

psychology behind paying off your debt. I don't see why anyone in their 30s or 40 should pay off their house. You know what? I meant to bring this up, but I'm glad you mentioned that. So I prepay my mortgage and I have since I bought the house. Every month, I pay a little bit more because I want to pay it off in 14 years instead of 30 years. But the other day, I was like, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I said, what am I doing? I reached that realization of my first house. I was paying double on the mortgage. And I thought, Why am I, what's the point of this? Why am I doing this?

The money just sits there. Like literally, especially if I could get more from the bank that I'm paying the bank, I could get 5% on cash or I could prepay my mortgage, which is like two and whatever it is, two and three quarters. Why the hell would I do that? I have a 3% mortgage. It's equal to the inflation rate right now plus it's tax advantage. Why would I ever pay that off early?

I wish I could pay it off. I wish I could go to a 50 year loan right now at the same rate. I don't, I don't get it. So if you have, if you, I get why people do it. The thing I've always heard from people is like, no one who's paid off their mortgage early has ever felt bad about it. True. In the back of their mind, though, come on. That's the opportunity cost there as a finance brain guy, I just, I don't care.

I don't even care about the psychology behind it, even though I understand it. Most people don't think in terms of opportunity cost. And for most people that are not financed people, and even finance people, and even finance, people, there is a huge relief to paying off your mortgage, rightly or wrongly. It just is. So I have no plans to paying off my mortgage. No way. I, if rates go back down again, I'll borrow more. If rates go back down to where they were, not that maybe we'll never see it again in our lifetime. But if rates go back down to, I don't know, 4% or something, I'll borrow more money. Same. When I bought the house, I thought to myself, holy cow, I'm going to have a paid off mortgage by the

time of 50. That is super appealing. And it was at the time. But now, I have changed my tune. Makes no sense. All right, almost two-thirds of all mortgage-free homes are paid off over a period of more than 21 years. So people, a lot of it is people just living in their homes for a long time. This is interesting. Of the 4.1 million new homes built in the U.S. from the start of the pandemic through 2022, 29% were in Florida and Texas. Both states, the share of fully paid-up homes tops 43%. It's kind of, I guess it's just easier to build. homes there. Okay, this was a chart from, I think Lance Lambert posted this. He's got his new Rezi Club real estate newsletter on Substack. Is it substack or just his own, whatever it is? He

always posts good charts. So he shows the national payment to income ratio. And you can see, it kind of shows like above the red line, housing prices are on affordable, expensive, below the green line, housing prices are cheap. We were below the green line for pretty much the entirety of the 2010s right up till 2021, 2021, when rates went up. How many people were pounding the table on buying a home in the 2010s? This is the, right? Like, this is the thing with people only worry about it when the affordability is bad, but when the affordability is good, people rarely pound the table and be like,

hey, get out there and buy a house now. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work the other way around, right? Yeah, that's interesting. Hey, I have a question. So getting back to the chart, the share of mortgage-free homes in the U.S. Remember, like, all the talk about a retirement crisis? Right, these people are set.

The median 401K balance for people ages 50, 60, 65 is only whatever it is. How many of those people own a home? How many of those people are going to be collecting $40,000 a year in Social Security? Or whatever the number is. A lot of boomers are, a lot more boomers are going to be fine in retirement than we previously anticipated. I mean, there was a lot of time spent worrying about the retirement crisis. Like, is that, is that not a thing?

Was it overblown? I'm sure some people are obviously struggling, as is always the case. Yes, I think it's probably overblown. But yeah, if you looked at those like median retirement balance numbers, they were always awful. But that's why for most of the middle class, the home is their financial asset. And it's a form of forced savings. Right. So I was going to say that. Like we speak about like us not being so excited to pay off our mortgage. Like obviously we're blessed that we're going to have assets outside of our home. But for a lot of people, people, you're right, it's forced savings, and it is their single largest asset for all, is it for most people?

So that's the hope for people, too, is that, like, in the 2030s, the boomers are either going to have to sell their homes or they're going to want to downsize or they're going to pass them along when they die off or whatever. Like, that's the hope for more housing supply in the years ahead. I don't know. I think there's probably going to be a lot of, like, reverse mortgages and home equity lines of credit. And I don't think it's going to be, like, this tsunami or wave of, of, of, you know,

of housing hitting the markets. I think it's going to be more of a drip. And for all of young people, if young people are worried about housing affordability, if someday they inherit a house from their parents, are they really going to be quick to sell it right away? Are they just going to keep it? I don't know.

Okay. Okay, so prices are falling in certain places. Again, this is Lance Lambert. He posted from the peak. Austin home prices down 18%. San Francisco down 11%. Seattle down 9%. So there are certain areas where, but if you compare to like since March 2020, a lot of these places still up 30, 40, 50% housing prices.

So I don't know how much of reprieve that is for people, but I guess it's it's something that places that got completely out of whack with reality, the prices are coming in a little bit. Or do you think it's just like a marginal, the price are being set on the margin and it's like. I mean, I also don't like just, yeah, if prices are up 40% and then they're at a 10% drawdown, you think anybody feels better about that? All right. So I have a local one that I'm checking. You had your house forever that in your neighborhood you were checking. So on my, I have a nice, they put a nice new running path in for me. So I go for a run three or four times a week. And there was this house that had a huge lot. And the lot was so big on either side that I think they must have sold the lots and they built two new houses on either side of this really old house from like the 50s. And one of them got finished in like late 2021. I looked on Zillow. They sold it for 575. They just relisted it for whatever reason. This is a picture of the extra house in here. It's a, it's a, It's a, what do you call it, a modern farmhouse? This is not a modern farmhouse. Okay, modern farmhouse-ish. So, again, 575 in late 2021, a little less than two years later, they're listing it for $6.99.

This does not look like a very big house. It's, it might be bigger than it appears. It's, it's, it's like really nice finishes and stuff. It's a nice house, but I don't know, 20% higher price in two years seems a tad excessive to me. Are they going to get that, do you think? I'll check back with you. This was interesting, too. Do you follow Zillow Gone Wild on Twitter?

They post, like, random houses that are for sale that are kind of weird or odd. But this one, this is in Rochester, New York, which is where? It's got to be up on a northern. Rochester is way up north. Okay. So it looks like a pretty nice little house, like a little bungalow. And inside, it looks like it's totally been redone. And they say they went way overboard of the gray because the floor is gray.

The walls are gray. Like, the whole house is just gray, gray, gray, which is a millennial thing. The gray tone is nice. $154,000. It's a pretty nice house for $150,000, right? I didn't think those houses really existed anymore. I guess if you go to certain places, you can still find affordable housing.

Is that not anything really cheap to you for a house that looks that nice? Yeah, I don't know what sort of neighborhood and Rochester's way up north. Okay. Well, I guess that's the point, though. If you want to live in a nice, desirable area, you're going to have to pay up.

If you want to live somewhere else and you want affordable housing, you're probably not going to have a, that's the trade-off. I was in a store the other day with Logan, and he was scrolling on my phone on Amazon. And he saw like a toy set that he wanted. And you know what it had on the QR code or on the app or whatever? It had like, you could take a picture of the room or scan the room,

and you could see where the toy would fit into the room. big it is. Oh, that's kind of cool. How cool is that? I don't know if that's new, but I've never seen it before. Okay. I've seen stuff, there was like a sunglasses one where you could put a picture of yourself, upload it, and it would put the sunglasses on you to see what they look like. That's just kind of cool. All right. So on the quarter app, I searched for the term recession. Okay. And on the app, you could like just hidden a term, so I'm doing it have recession, and you could search through all transcripts to see how many, you know, like company mentions and stuff like that. And in Q3 and Q4, 28% of companies were using

the word recession in their earnings call. This is from 2022. Yeah, isn't that kind of wild? Basically, one out of three. This is crashed. Crashed. In Q3, it's down to 10%. I mean, it was something everyone was talking about. It was the most predicted recession ever, and it never happened. All right. So here's my thing about... But wait, like, hold on. This morning I spoke about...

This morning. I just spoke about companies like... I'm just starting to notice more and more caution. Which, remember in 2022, when we were talking about, like, all the retailers and how they said everything was, and a lot of it was just... Inventory mismatches. Yeah, a lot of it was just that. So Walmart, by the way, like, totally took care.

of that and cleaned that up. So it was a bit of a red herring. Best by this morning, this from the transcript, best by this morning, here's the CEO. In the more recent macro environment, consumer demand has been even more uneven and difficult to predict. Based on the sales trends in Q3 and so far in November, we believe it is prudent to lower our annual revenue outlook. I guess you could say this has been like the most volatile consumer period this last three years in a long, long time. And you can also say it's just very mixed. So Dix, for example, here's Dick's CEO. Our Q3 comps were driven by increases in both transactions and average ticket. As a result of our strong Q3 performance, we are raising our full year outlook. So it really-

We've been keeping dicks in business single-handedly with all our sports that we do in our household. It's a mixed bag. It is not one economy. No, no way. So here's another, so I totally agree with you on, like, the biggest reason if we're ranking for people being mad is prices. But I also think there's a lot more going on to it. So look at that. this. Share of people who say the economy is good by Democrats and Republicans, personally, 71% of Democrats say the economy is good. Fifty-seven percent say it's good for them personally of Republicans. Nationally, 58% of those same Democrats said it's good. Five percent of Republicans said it's good. Okay? There's a lot of politics involved here, too. The whole 14% of American

voters believe they're better off financially now that Joe Biden took office, that one from the FTA that was going around. How different would that poll look if you would have said, how are you personally doing better financially than you were in 2021 or 2022 when he took over. What did the poll say? 14% of voters believe they're better off financially. But this other one say... Wait, wait, wait. But how is that different than what you just said?

I'm saying if you would have take the Joe Biden name out of it or Democrat or Republican, just say you personally since this year. And that's what the other poll does. And it's showing a lot of people saying they're doing just fine. Derek Thompson had the guy from New York Times on who does the political polls. And he was asking him, like, how much different are polling? Because do you ever answer your phone if you don't know the number? Ever?

No, of course not. And so the guy from your time said, listen, that's much harder because young people these days, they literally never do. It's only old people, and it's usually people who answer surveys. And he said the number now is 1% of people who are asked to do a survey ever even answer the phone. So, like, I just don't know how representative these surveys about sentiment are anymore. When you're asking a narrower and narrower group of people who like to answer surveys, look at the cartoon I put in here. We've seen this before, sampling bias.

Yes, I love responding to surveys, 99.8%. No, I toss them in the bin, 0.2%. Right. So it's like the survey part is the hard thing. So we did the one of our own. This is not representative of the United States, so it's interesting. So how do you feel, this is in the compound, almost 5,000 votes. How do you feel about your current financial situation now?

6% said horrible. 12% said not good. 33% said okay. No, no, I said just okay. Just okay, sorry, that just. 33% said good and 15% said never better. This is obviously not, our audience skews people who are doing better financially, probably. This is not representative, but that's the thing.

It's, I think you could have 10 different surveys give you 10 different answers right now about the economy. Yeah, I think the sentiment piece is just so far out of whack, and I think that politically and social media-wise has kind of broken down those barriers where it's much harder to trust any sentiment figures these days. True. Right? Yeah, that's right. Okay. A good one from the Wall Street Journal about happiness. We've talked about this before in a survey. Most people said it would take a pretty significant pay bump to deliver contentment. Respondents had a median salary of $65,000 a year, said a median of $95,000 would make them happy and less stressed. the highest earners with a median of $250,000 income set a median response of 350%.

They show this chart, which is just the, what do you call it, the coup de grace? So they show your salary bracket than what you'd need. And for everyone, it's just a little higher. For the lowest salary, it's higher. So for everyone, the needle is just a little further away. The carrot is a little further away. And again, there's two ways to look at this. One is, this is kind of sad that people never realize that no matter how much money you make

there's never going to be enough. It's never going to make you happy. On the other hand, this is what pushes us to make things better and get up in the morning. And this is why the economy continues to grow. Because people are literally never happy with their current situation. It's like a tragedy at the micro level and an incredible thing for the macro. It's like the opposite of that Stalin quote, right? What is it?

One death is a tragedy and millions of deaths are a statistic. It's the opposite of that. Yeah. Here's the thing. Maybe it's the same. These surveys about what money does to your happy. you can't quantify happiness in a survey or in a study. It's impossible. True. You cannot measure somebody's happiness. And when you ask them matters more like if you would have asked about your happiness right after you got your vet bill, that's a totally different

situation than asking you after you had a great day with your boys at the park or so. Like it's when you ask someone also matters like how happy they're feeling. Yeah, your happiness is variable. Like if you're happy, if you're a relatively happy person, you're not going to be happy all the time. There's going to be times when you're going to be very upset or very annoyed or whatever. It's not an even keel. Also, how about this? Like, just not being truthful. Right? I remember in high school, they used to give us these surveys to, like, what teens are doing in the state of Michigan or whatever. And it would ask, like, how often do you drink? And I'm like, I'm not going to, someone's probably watching this. I'm not going to, I'm not going to be truthful

on this. Not that I drink in high school. Wink, wink, wink. But I think that's the thing. Like, you, I lied. People lie. That's, that's all I'm saying about the sentiment stuff that people like have never been more displeased with the economy or inflation or I don't know I just think I don't I don't really trust a lot of it I think that the directionally that's right but I don't think it's like the worst ever or whatever you know that those kind of things make me okay here's one other personal finance thing I was thinking about uh there's the old personal finance stroke that like material possessions are not going to fill your soul they're not going to make it happy buying stuff makes me happy this is one thing I've changed my mind about over the

years what type of stuff give me an example okay Okay, so we had a good clean-out session in our house. We had a, we haven't, it was supposed to be an office space in our house, but it got turned into a playroom for the kids, all their toys. And they would get toys and toys and toys, and we just, we're filling this stuff. We have bins and bins of toys. And my kids don't really like to play with toys that much. They like to play, like, board games.

They like to play outside. They like to do sports. They've never really, we're into toys. Even my youngest daughter, who's like the little princess of the group, she doesn't even like to play with dolls that much. So we said, like, pick a few toys out. We're throwing the rest away or giving them away to people who need them. We don't need them anymore.

We cleaned this whole toy room out. And the trade-off for my kids was they wanted to turn it into a movie room. So we're turning our little office space into a movie room, like a couch in there and a TV. So we took the TV from downstairs and hung it up in there. And I got to get a new TV. And I went with a big one. I asked for a line across the middle. They said they don't have those anymore.

Only New York. But I got like a 75-inch TV. And that TV makes me very happy. I know material stuff is not like watching a football game I watched the Chiefs Eagles game last night with my daughter on the TV this huge TV with great picture it made me very happy

I bet the Eagles last night I'm back good job so anyway I will say hold on but a TV is not a material possession material has utility but there's materials buying stuff now that there's certain stuff that I figure out that I like makes me more happy buying a nice pair of shoes or clothes

like that actually makes me happy I know like that's against personal finance religion, but it's true. You know what I like. You know it gives me satisfaction buying a $200 button up and then losing it before you wear it. T-shirts on Instagram. That's why I keep it simple. All right. Somebody sent this to us, quote, vests look good.

Number one, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I wouldn't be caught dead in one. I can live with Midwest Ben being a best vest guy. But Michael, I thought New York dudes were too cool for something so unfunctional and goofy looking. wrong. I feel like the New York vests are like a puffy vest, though. Well, we're going to get to that. Number two, if you think vests are only cosmetic, I believe you're missing the usefulness. Vests work to keep your core insulated, leaving your arms free from the bulky sleeves of insulated jackets when you are engaged in

activities where you need a full range of motion. Vest keep your arms free while still providing wealth. I'm sorry, warmth. Jesus. But this part is interesting. Vests are useful and milder temperatures. You produce enough heat that your jacket is too warm, but it is still too cold to wear only a base layer. A vest can solve both problems and take place of the light or midway jackets. So where I reside in cold coastal weather, nearly everyone has multiple vests of varying weight and fabric, wearing them year round. Yeah, because they like the way they look, not because they're functional. I'm sorry, the functionality. A lot of people sent me the thing about like the vest keeping your arms free. I don't do manual labor. Are you kidding me? Sorry, I wear a vest because

they look good. How many people actually like have a vest to do work outside? But like I'm a sweater. Two percent of the people. So sometimes if I'm wearing a coat, I'll sweat. If I was wearing a vest, maybe I wouldn't sweat as much. Yeah, lightweight coat. That's what a lightweight I'm sorry. I like vest. I have like four of them, but they're not functional. My arms are always cold when I wear a vest. It's true. Or my core is hot. There's never a happy medium there. It's true. Uh, uh, what's this one? Um, hey guys, love the show during Wednesday's episode, Michael said, Ben, oh, by being born in 1981 is a millennial. That is wrong and it's a pet peeve of mine. I wish it didn't bother me, but it does. I'm going to preface this email with, I agree with

this person. I was born in 1980, graduated high school in 1998. My wife, 81, graduated in 81 and high school in 99. When the term millennial was first introduced, it was clearly referring to people younger than us. It referred to kids growing up at the turn of the millennium with access to new technology and graduating in the new millennium. Neither my wife nor I had email until college nor cell phones. Our upbringing was more similar to someone born in the 1970s than one born in 1985, playing outside all day, media with neighborhood kids, parents having 70s where you were, having all your friends' phone numbers memorized, I had that. In recent years, a goal post of moves, perhaps due to silly clickbait headlines, I think of the earliest it starts

since 1983, can we make that official? I think this person's right. What's the difference between 83 and 81. They had the same exact upbringing. But my point, the thing is, the boomer generation was 1946 to 1964, I think. No, no, no. That's the same thing. No, no, no. This is how they define generations. The millennial generation is way too wide, because when does a millennial generation go with that? You hear me, boomers 46 to 64. That's just as wide. Millennials is 1981 to 1996. I'm sorry, like it's, someone born in 64 is. Yeah. I mean, this is just what, what people, of course, there's different types of There's just like there are different types of boomers.

Somebody born in 96, at that point there was already internet. But that's the thing. If you're at the front or the tail end, you're going to be a tweener. So yeah, I'm like a tweener between Gen X and Millennial. But yeah, I probably lean more Gen X in terms of like pop culture and stuff. But this is just how we define. It's a wide range. That's how it works.

Yeah. Okay. For recommendations, I don't have good recommendations, really. I just have a few finance brain takes on movies I watched. Okay. So my son George loves tsunamis for some reason. I don't know how he got onto tsunamis. He loves talking about tsunamis and thinking about them.

And for some reason, we mentioned, like, hey, there's this movie with a huge tsunami at the end. So we found deep impact. I think it was on Paramount Plus or something. This is why I have every streaming channel because I know I can always find a movie. And so we watched the last 10 minutes. Of course, you know, Or Talionni is sitting with a dad on the beach and they get swallowed up by the tsunami. He just loved watching the big tsunami. But then, like, we watched last time and I'm like,

you know what? I kind of want to watch this again from the beginning. It's not nearly as good as Armageddon, obviously. I don't remember Deep Impact. Was that they built tunnels or something? And they got, they picked random people by Lodier's coming to Earth. But it's, it's a poor man's Armageddon. No, but am I getting, am I confusing this with a different story?

Did they? No tunnels. No lottery system for saving people? I don't think they did a spaceship. They, but more, I was kind of in and out of it. Morgan Freeman is the president. And he talks about, listen, we know this asteroid's been coming for a year. We've built the spaceship. We're ready to go blow it up. We don't want to tell

anyone. But he says to avoid economic calamity, they're freezing wages and prices. They don't, they don't want people to prosper off of this. So they froze wages and prices. What do you think the economic impact of the president saying, listen, we've known for a year, there's a meteor coming to hit the earth. We're going to try to blow it up. What does the stock market do? Goes to zero? You think so? Don't you think everybody sells? Yeah, but the relief rally When they blow up that asteroid Would we be up like 90% on one day?

Yep. If it crashed? Yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, one more. I think I've mentioned this before. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I don't, Is Deep Impact worth watching? It's not bad.

I mean, it's a 90s movie. Again, Armageddon is 10 times better, but there's a lot of good, it's Elijah Wood and Tayeone and Morgan Freeman plays the president. Does the day after tomorrow have tsunamis? Day after tomorrow is when like everything freezes over. Yeah. You know what's a great tsunami joke? I saw Kevin Neal and do this live. Was I with

you when I saw this? No, I wasn't with you. I was somebody else. I was laughing for three weeks. He said the tsunami, remember the one in Southeast Asia, the tsunami was so strong and sucked in the letter T. But just his delivery, you can imagine. That's not bad. All right, one more. Downsizing with Matt Damon. It's on Netflix. It's not a good movie, but the concept is good. So it's actually an Alexander Payne movie, which I think he's got a new one out with Paul Giamati, really good. The holdovers. But I'm a huge Alexander Payne guy because I love Sideways. His other movies haven't been as good.

Descendants was okay. Is that with Cloney? Huh? I like his movies, usually. Wait, is his descendants with George Clooney? I think of somebody else. Yes, that's one in Hawaii. Yeah, I love that movie. I like that one. Okay. So, downsizing is the scientists figure out how to shrink you. Right? Shrink a person down to like six inches tall.

And they do this because they are trying to save the planet from all the resources we use, but also because like you're way richer. So they say that like Matt Damon has a net worth of $152,000, but that translates into $12.5 million in downsized land because he can like live in a mansion there, right? They say like $1,000 buys $1,000 worth of stuff there because it doesn't cost as much as not as much materials. So you can be like a mansion for tiny you. And I think they said like 3% of the population did it. Like how many people do you think would do this if they had the chance now? Because people complain about inflation. They complain about like

how affordable housing is. People would do this if they had the chance, right? these days? Like the people who complain the most, do you think they do this? And it was kind of like, listen, you can basically retire if you go to Downsized land and just party all the time because your money goes further. I don't know about that, Ben. All right. Anyway, the movie's not very good, but it's a really good thought exercise and like the

premise is good. What are your thoughts on the Adjustment Bureau? I like that one. I like that one a lot. Slop down, underrated Matt Damon. Yes. I'm a big Emily Blunt fan. She's great.

All right. And last week, you mentioned that you got a pet peeve how people in movies just take pills without water, which is a great observation and 100% true. I got another one. So over the weekend, I was watching the Lost World, the Jurassic Park movie with Kobe. And I noticed how in movies, people just seem to be totally unbothered by walking through rivers or puddles as if getting your socks sweat isn't the worst thing in the world. That's true.

I step on like a quarter-sized piece of water in my sock and like my night's ruined. Ruins your day? Yeah. So they were just walking through the river. just when they could just be walking on the knot river So Kobe is super into like animal movies now

I told you I was watching like King Kong versus Godzilla He had a book fair the other day So he came on with a shark book and a shark tooth So what do you think I showed him? Jaws Wrong Jaws is too scary

The Meg loves it Wait He could handle the Meg Because my son's been asking to watch it forever Uh We were watching the Meg this morning. He loves it. Okay. We didn't know if it was too violent for our son.

I mean, there's definitely a little bit of violence. Honestly, I don't really care about that. It's more my wife, but... Okay. I cannot wait for a dream scenario, the A24 movie with Nicholas Cage. Did you see the trailer? Yeah, I just don't like people talking about their dreams, so I don't know if I'm going to watch it. Wow, you're that, you're that much of a hard-o for dreams? I'm just kidding. Nicholas Cage is in a movie out like every three months, though, so it's hard to

get excited about one of them. Nobody emailed us about when evil lurks. Come on, people. If you're a horror fan, when evil lurks, let's hear it. Okay. I want some feedback. Got another dementedly gnarly shutter movie.

Very upsetting, called Kidnapped. Some 2010, and I believe, I don't know where, it's a foreign movie, but very grisly. Very grisly. Do you enjoy these movies?

I love it. Okay. I'm not an Apple TV guy I don't think I watch anything on there except for Severance but you know what I did watch over the weekend or last week maybe

probably last week not over the weekend there's a Godzilla TV show called Monarch Legacy of Monsters now I have to say and I think I've said this before I don't love the Godzilla movies I obviously watch them

but I don't really enjoy them this one There haven't been any good ones right there really haven't been No. This one, this show is promising. Now, there's only, only two episodes were released, but, you know, I'm trying to think why I don't like the Godzilla movies.

You know what the best Godzilla movie is that was not Godzilla is Cloverfield? I rewatch that one recently. If that, if they were replaced that alien with a Godzilla, it would have been, that would have been the best Godzilla movie ever made. There's too much screen time for Godzilla in the movie. So, like, once you see him, it's like, whoa, and then you see him 20 minutes later, it's like, I want to go home. Like, I get it.

With this, there's actual character development, and it's like sort of the origins, and it's a slow burn. And it's a good TV show. And you barely even, for two episodes, you barely even saw Godzilla. One last, one last thing. So that's on Apple TV. I listened to the Ridley Scott Hall of Fame with the big picture. Listen to this man's resume. Now, most of these movies you knew were him, but I'm sure there's something that you were like, Ridley Scott did that.

All right, so Alien in 79, Blade Runner in 82. Thelma and Louise at 91. I'm on the corner of Blade Runner's overrated, but keep going. Okay, okay. Thelma and Louise in 1991. In 1996, White Squall. I saw White Squall in the theater. Did you know that?

It's actually a pretty good movie. It's a great movie. There was a white squall joke in the latest episode season of the bear. Did you know he did the white squall? I did not know that. That's a good movie. No idea. I didn't know he did Hannibal.

The guy from Party of Five. He did Hannibal. Not a good movie, but I didn't know he did it. Obviously, Gladiator, Blackhawk Down, matchstick men, which I love. That's a good movie. One of my favorites, I love matchstick men. Didn't know he did that, too.

You didn't know he did that? American gangster, which good but disappointed, but very much watchable. Body of wise. Man on fire? He didn't do that. Is that his brother? That was Tony Scott, yeah.

Okay. Body of Wise, Prometheus, The Martian. I don't even think I knew he did The Martian. That's a really good movie. What a freaking resume. And then most recently, he did Hasef Kucci, which I didn't see. Last Dole, which I liked. Obviously, Alien and Covenant, which is, you know how I feel about aliens.

I absolutely love them. And then Napoleon, which I haven't seen yet, but I'm going to. What a resume. Holy shit. It's kind of crazy that him and his brother, because his brother, obviously, has iconic movies, too. Top Gun, and Fire, a lot of the Aies movies. Good stuff. True romance.

True romance is Tony Scott. Yeah. Okay. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. It's not my favorite holiday. Wait, what do you say being thankful is overrated? No, that's what Duncan said.

Did you say that? I said it's not my, I just said Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Oh, Dr. Pocopo's in your mouth. Okay. Yeah. Not the best week of the year, but it's a good week. Okay. Well, Ben, where do people, where do people reach out to us?

Where are they famous? Final spirits at the compound news. dot com there we go see you next time