Animal Spirits Podcast - Your Budget Sucks (EP.397)

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

On episode 397 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: Future Proof Citywide in Miami, the DeepSeek rug pull on Nvidia, what this means for the Mag 7 stocks, the most beloved bear market of all-time, Howard Marks on why this isn't a bubble (yet), hedge fund fees, leveraged ETFs, the price of eggs, hiring a private chef, a young couple's monthly budget in Brooklyn and more! This episode is sponsored by Kraneshares. To learn more about the KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF, visit: https://kraneshares.com/KWEB 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 our friends at Crane Shares. Like a lot going on in the technological world these days. New AI company out of a place called China, if you haven't heard of it. We're going to talk about on the show today. What is that? A startup economy? Something like that. Chinese retail web sales totaled $2.1 trillion in 20203 compared to $1.1 trillion in the United States.

They have a lot more people than we do. But they spend a lot more money. I was looking at their GDP per capita. Like their economy rivals hours, but, you know, the denominator thing. Not as impressive. Be that as it may, their technology, their technology evidenced by the Deep Seek R1 v3, 9, or 6er, impressive. They've got some things going on.

So, Crane Chair says that China's internet population is over a billion people in 2023. So that's 77% of the population there, which is kind of interesting. The U.S. internet population is 311 million, which is 93%. So they have room to run there. Anyway, total China retail sales $6.5 trillion in 2023. Crane Shares is a way to bet on this with KWeb. Check out craneshares.com slash Kweb to learn more.

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions

in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. One more plug for our trip down to Naples, our trip that's Ridholt's wealth management. We're going to be their president's week. So that's Wednesday, February 19th through the end of the week If you are interested in speaking to us, I'll be there with Josh and Chris and a bunch of the team.

Reach out to info at redholtswalt.com. Got one more plug for today. Wait, was Naples founded by Italians? Got to be, no. Is that the explanation? Okay. There's a, you know what? I'm not going to say what I was about to say.

I don't want to get shamed. I'll say it. There's a Naples Italy, now? Yes. Of course. That's why I said it. Of course. Of course there is.

Yeah, he knew that. All right, future proof, Ben. By the way, this t-shirt that I'm wearing, is that you and I? Or is that just a generic, that can't be you and I. We didn't have surfboards. All right, never mind. Never mind.

It did look like our silhouette, though. We're getting very close to future proof in Miami. Yeah. So we're doing something new and exciting. We're doing, so every year we do a wealth tech demo, which we're doing again this year. So please, link in show notes. If you are a wealth tech company and you want to reach advisors, there's no better place. I talked to a fintech founder yesterday, and I said, you'd be perfect for something like this.

and I explained to what if it is about the demo and getting in front of the advisors. He's like, oh, my gosh, that sounds amazing. Yeah, perfect. All right, we're taking this a step further. Emerging managers. That's right. Emerging managers.

So what is an emerging manager? No offense, but if you are day trading leveraged ETFs or single stock ETFs, that's not an emerging manager, okay? You might have knocked it out of the park at 2024. We're not talking to you. You can call yourself a boutique investment. So we're looking at, that the, these are the criteria. Below a billion dollars in assets under management,

managing your first, second or third institutional fund, less than five years managing money for institutional investors. And we're looking for, well, sizes vary. But anyway, if you think this is a fit for you, you've got something interesting, unique, hit the application. We'd love to see you there. Miami, March. Citywide is not all going to be advisors, but also a lot of money managers. A lot of money managers. We have the boardwalk, so we'll share the link in the show notes and show the picture on YouTube, just the boardwalk of what it's going to look like next to the beach, where all the stages are and everything,

and I'm getting excited. Oh, and how can we forget this? The best part, Ben, who's going to be performing? We have musical acts. All American rejects are headlining, and the fray is opening for them. And, I mean, that's 2000s. What do we call it the aughts? I still don't have a good term for me.

I don't say the aughts. It's the 2000s. That's what it is. Okay. But if you say the 2000s, it feels like, anyway, So I pulled up the All-American Rejects, like tap songs on Apple Music. I'm a boomer. I listen to Apple Music instead of Spotify.

I'm not going to apologize for that. It's just what I do. And I don't know. The first six songs, I'm like, oh, I know that one. Oh, yeah. And the Freight. How to Save a Life was one of the best songs of that decade? Where did I go wrong?

One of the great songs of one of the best Scrubs episodes of all time, which is a show that's been lost to history. I never watched Scrubs. I love that show. It's the same guy who did Ted Lassow, the Lawrence. Ben, speaking of history, this is, I think we're probably a few years away from this, although you're closer to it than I am. How come, I was on the train the other day with Chris and our friend Dave,

how come people of a certain age, let's say in the, I don't know, 44 to 48 age range, which I made up, how come they say what you did you graduate high school instead of just saying, how old are you? That's true. That is a way of getting around it. That's a good question. But just, come on, don't beat around the bush. We could all add 18.

Class of 99 here, right? Yeah. Dude, you're 56. Yeah, that is. That's a kind of question you hear the dads ask at youth sporting events, right? I'm saying, why? I don't know. You're not fooling anyone.

We could all add. All right, so yesterday was one of those days in the stock market where, luckily for me, my schedule was on the light side, which means I only had 11 meetings, not to brag, L-O-L. Just kidding. And it was one of those days where it just nothing, but I was glued to the screen. I'm not going to lie, right? It was one of those days that you get in the market, I don't know, a couple times a year, depending on the environment.

These are the really fun day. Yeah, it kind of reminded me a little of the Japan unwinding thing, the carry trade unwind or whatever where Japan was down 12% a day. But, but that was, we knew that was like, you know, more or less nonsense. It was going to blow over. This is, you know. People were calling it a lame and one at the time, but. Nah, come on.

No, this is fun. My favorite thing about this whole AI episode is watching this technological revolution, easier said than done, play out in real time, is just, you didn't have this in the past. In the past, it was all hearsay and gossip and rumors, and you'd wait to hear stuff in the newspaper or the magazines. We're seeing this stuff play out in real time, and it's happening in hyperspeed. Yeah, it's awesome. How quickly it's happening. What an adrenaline rush, huh?

It really is. So Eddie Ardenio was the first one I saw say, like, this is going to be bad news for the Mag 7. He put out a note this weekend, basically saying, like, listen, this new Deep Seek, which I'm not a big fan of the name, no offense. It doesn't roll off the tongue. Right? Yeah, I agree. I agree. So just saying, like, might that be good for Nvidia, might not be good for Mag 7.

That whole idea seemed to snowball. Invidia at one point was down almost 20% yesterday. Because the idea is, well, this company was able to produce an AI system without nearly as much bandwidth and investments as all these other MagS7 companies are. Maybe we don't need any as much GPUs, whatever. That was the whole story. Invita got crushed. The semiconductor ETF, shaking my head, SMH, was down 10% basically. I also looked at the returns for this thing over the past six years or so.

It's just unbelievable how much this is up. So you could say, again, my whole thing of looking for an excuse. But you always rip on me for making the Grand Rapids Hedge on these sorts of things. But this is why the way this AI story has played out, this is why I do the Grand Rapids Hedge. The whole story from the start has been out of left field, out of left field. No one saw this coming. No, the entire story of this. Are you moving the goalpost on what of Grand Rapids Hed Hedges?

No, the Grand Rapids Hedges is playing both sides, right? Yeah, the Grand Rapids Hed Hedges is having no opinion. It's boring. But that's why with AI, I'm going full grand opportunity because no one knows anything about how this is going to play out. And the people that are the most certain are just wrong all the time. And here's the most annoying AI person to me.

You know who it is? It's the ear to the ground AI guy who tells you, you know what? Actually, Chad GPT level 3.7 is when you have to go on. No, no, no, now it's Claude 3.1. No, it's perplexity. And the people who try to say like, this is the one, this is the thing.

And then a new one comes on. It's a very fluid situation, Ben. Yes. So, anyway, a very exciting day in the markets, though, I thought, because you had these semiconductor stocks getting slaughtered and everything else did okay. Even software companies did okay. I mean, yeah, the S&P 493 did quite well. So you made a good point yesterday to Josh and I.

This would be the most loved bear market of all time if we get a rotation out of tech and the rest of the market, you know, whether or not there's a bare market. market. But if just, I think there's so many people that are just dying, salivating for Nvidia to get cut in half. Oh, yes. And worse. The professional money managers especially would be dancing in the streets is what I said. Because they want, and listen, I fully understand how human behavior works. I would be the exact same way. But they want all the retail traders, all the no nothings, all the people that didn't study this in school and take it seriously as a profession. They want their comeuppance. And I get it. Again, I would, you know, I'm a human

too. I'd react the exact same way. Yes. Everyone wants second level thinking to finally matter, not first level of things. So yesterday, S&P growth was down almost 4%. S&P value was up 1%. International stocks were basically flat. Dividend stocks were flat. Small cap value was up a little bit. A lot of things worked.

Yeah. Staples had a hell of a day. So, yeah, it would be the most beloved bear market of all time. Hey, we did it in a, I don't know, it's just, sorry for shoehorning this in here, but, man, that bills game. Man, that bills game. So I'm an idiot because every year I bet on the bills. I feel so bad for those fans.

Like, I felt crushed, not even as a better, but, like, genuinely, I felt disappointment as a sports fan and as somebody who likes to see somebody else got a chance to win. And I'm not even like a Chiefs hater. You know, Mojones is obviously, you know, on his way to go at status. But just fucking brutal. Oof.

Like, how do you... I was reading for those, too, because I feel like they're connected as tortured sports fans with the lion. So I was reading for them, too. That was tough. Is it possible getting back to the AI stuff? Sorry to cut you off on your parlay of the week. Is the market overreacting more than Allie Larder in Landman?

She does dial it up a bit. Do you finally finish it? I feel like I'm asking this every week. No, I'm almost there. I think the show's been... You know what? We don't want you. Stop watching.

I'm sick of asking you. No, I think Billy Bob is so much better than everyone in that show. That is the only part that I... He's so good. Okay. Well, if you would get to the end, you would see that there's somebody coming in season two who could match his acting ability. But is this just going to be another one of those blip things where everyone overreacted for a weekend in a day? And then in two months we go, I don't remember that? Because just like when the AI stuff first started, it was Google is done. Remembering Google had that rough like three weeks stretch? Yes, yes. People were pouring dirt on Google's grave. That was wrong. It just seems like the narrative machine goes so quick because the expectations get so out of whack. I would just, the only part of this I like, I know a lot of people were talking about this, like,

well, it's a Chinese company and that's bad for America, but I just like the fact that maybe these Mag 7 companies have some competition. That's the only part of it that I thought was actually a positive. I think that's actually a good thing. Yeah, I think you nor I nor most people are qualified to opine on what this means for the tech and then therefore what it means for the stocks. No, and I don't not, yeah. Literally, who knows.

But, you know, you know who I think might know is this guy Ben Thompson. So Ben Thompson has a substack called Stratory, and let me just quote him for a minute. He says, in the long run, model commoditization and cheaper inference, which DeepSeek also has demonstrated, is great for big tech. A world where Microsoft gets to provide inference to its customers for a fraction of the cost means that Microsoft has to spend less on data centers and GPUs or just as likely sees dramatically higher usage given that inference is so much cheaper. Another big winner is Amazon.

AWS has by and large failed to make their own quality model, but that doesn't matter if they're a very high-quality open-source models that they can serve at far lower cost and expected. Apple is also a big winner. Dramatically decreased memory requirements. I'm going to blah, blah, blah. Forgive me because it gets very technical and I don't get it. Meta, meanwhile, is the biggest winner of all.

A big barrier to realizing that vision is a cost of inference, which means that dramatically cheaper inference. And, okay, again, I'm going to blah, blah, blah, because it's just technical. Google, meanwhile, is probably in worse shape, a world of decreased hardware requirements, less than the relative advantage of that from TPUs. All right. So to conclude, he says, so this is all pretty depressing then, question mark. Actually, no. I think that deep seek has provided a massive gift to nearly everyone. The biggest winners are consumers and businesses who can anticipate a future of effectively

free AI products and services. Javan's paradox will rule the day in the long run. And everyone who uses AI will be the biggest winners, will be the biggest winners. Another set of winners are the big consumer tech companies. A world of free AI is a world where product and distribution matters most. And those companies already won that game. So maybe not all bad. Maybe not all bad at all, actually. So I guess the point is maybe these companies don't have to invest as much as much as they thought they did in all of this.

Now, the other part of that is like, wait a minute. Starlink, is that the name of it? They're raising $500 billion. Probably not. How much cap-ax are all these companies spending? Did that just go to waste? Or, you know, like partially through all that is for the market to figure out? Is open-AI the biggest loser then?

Because everyone yesterday wanted to say it's in video, but is it really open-AI? You would think. I mean, Sam Altman tweeted this morning some thoughts on the state of the matter. Again, nobody knows. The market is obviously in flux trying to figure out. Will this blow over? Maybe is this the pin that burst the bubble? Maybe. I wouldn't take anything off the table. That seems a little too easy. And it seems like if everyone waiting for the dot com bubble to blow up from this, it's just these companies are so much more high quality. So even if you got a correction or bare market in all of these stocks, like waiting for the dot com bubble to blow up to me seems like an over. I think the idea that there's going to be an 80% decline in the NASDAQ is far-fetched. And if you want that, my God, be careful what you wish for him. Jesus, Louise. Like, I still don't even use the AI tech very often. I play, I've dabbled in all the models, but it's not like I just found Apple pay a couple months ago. Yeah, I'm not, I'm never going to be someone who like is, again, ear to the ground guy on this stuff and using it all the time and finding the best

modeler. I've tried a little bit of each of them. And I still haven't found a way to make it part of my day of life. I'm sure at some point it will be. It just now it isn't. But my only take on it is it's not, I don't think we're going to get a Google moment where it's like Google obviously one search. Like I remember using Ask Jeeves in the past. I was an Ash Jeeves guy. Some of these other really horrible ones that just didn't do anything when I was in college. And Google obviously won. It seems to me like there's not going to be one winner from all this. There's going to be multiple winners. Doesn't that seem more likely than there being just one? Okay, this is it. This is the AI model everyone's going to use. I don't see it working that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

Speaking of Apple, we have a lot of value shoppers in the inbox and the audience. A lot of people inquiring about Ben's knockoff AirPods. And I'm here to tell you listeners that I was on the phone with Ben the other day. And I said, what the dude, are those your AirPods, your fake AirPods? It sounded like, that's like, hello? Yeah, hey, what's up? I'm like, dude, come on. He goes, oh, hold on.

Let me take my AirPods out. Sir, you get what you pay for. I don't like to use my actual AirPods for phone calls. those for just listening to this one is from chart kid matt he did s mp 500 x tech and then the whole sp 500 and x tech yesterday finished at an all-time high pretty crazy so that i think the jason gupfert sentiment trader stat of the day was even with the s&p losing nearly 1.5% more than 300 of its stocks rose today since the index became 500 stocks in 1957 this had never happened before the only little days of 250 advances were in 99 99 in 2000 wait a minute those were the

tops. Those are the tops. Dude, a rotation, like, so if you look at, like, the ratios, RSP divided by SPI, or the staples divided by the cues, like, it was a monster movement. And it would be so incredible for everyone, except for people that are concentrated in the max seven. It would be just so great if we get a rotation. Small caps, midcaps, international, dividends, quality, whatever it is. Doesn't it feel like we get so many more of these, this has never happened before stats?

I feel like the 2020s is the decade of this has never happened. before. Yes. Right? I feel like these things, this crazy thing has never happened before just happened. I think it's because of the speed at which this stuff is transmitted. So Walter Bloomberg tweeted, so retail investors bought the dip yesterday. He said, or it, is this a robot again? We just don't know. Retail investors bought a record, $562 million of Nvidia stock yesterday, according to Vanda Research, our friend Gungeon at the Washington Journal's cited something similar. Many individual investors bought the dip in NVIDIA, buy versus sell orders, and the buy-sell ratio in NVIDIA, Broadcom, Vanguard's S&P, just an overwhelming amount of buy orders.

So one of the things that a lot of people don't realize and that one of my favorite underrated books on the markets is Bull, A History of the Boom and Bus by Maggie Mayhar. about the 80s and 90s bull and bear market, and she extended it to 2004 to see what happened in the aftermath. People kept buying stocks throughout the dot-com bust. It wasn't like people fled. Like, the mutual, people didn't completely flee mutual funds in techs. They kept pouring money in.

And even if and when this thing ends or whatever it is, like the whole big tech boom, it's not like these people are all the sudden going to go, okay, I'm out right away. Because they've been conditioned for 12 years to keep buying. Yeah. It's going to take a lot to, to unwind that muscle memory.

Did you listen to Howard Marks and Oddlots this past week? I did not. So he wrote up, we talked about him last week about his bubble memo. It was actually really good. And I thought his take was interesting. They asked him, like, so you've been looking for like signs of a bubble. That was his piece, something about some time of the bubble. And he said, what I say in the memo is that, in my opinion, the current environment lacks

behavioral aspects of a bubble. So he's saying numerically, some of the numbers seem like a bubble. bubble, like some of the valuations and the craziness of what's going on. But he said that's just, and a bubble is really, it's not a rise. That's a bull market. It's not high prices. A bubble is a temporary mania in which people are so agog at things that they throw over all discipline on caution. He says, I'm not really seeing that level of behavior yet. I think people are conflating like pockets of mania in the meme coin stuff, which we'll get to and some of the, you know, the regetti, the quantum computing stocks, but I call it Rickettoni. Like there is definitely like

areas of mania. The leverage ETFs is a clear sign of, I mean, that is a clear sign of mania, no? But it's not the whole everything, right? We're not that far away from literally everyone predicting a recession. That's not, you don't get that into mania. Well, I guess the other thing is like, I don't hear from, I don't really hear from friends ever about like hot stocks, do you?

No, it's been a long time. 2021, I heard a lot. 21. 21 was nuts. Yes. My plumber, remember my plumber walking on? That was 21. It's not that. And does not mean socks careful 30%?

I'm just saying behavior-wise, I would agree that it seems obviously there's, you know, there's examples galore of excessive optimism perhaps. But mania, I don't think so. Yes. It is just, it feels like, so we last week we talked about the Trump coin stuff, that feels like a year ago at this point. Now that the AI stuff is already taken over. It is just crazy how these stories just in the market,

suck all the oxygen out of the room now. Yeah. All right. How's this for, uh, huh? Renmac. Europe's stock 600 is now overbought. You heard that right. That looks, if I'm a technical analyst, I'm saying that's a breakout.

The real message is that it has punched through resistance to make a new high, German dachs, all-time highs. Um, Europe can't compete. Okay. Maybe. I mean, I'm not, you know, look at, look at the chart. Not to like kick the Europeans while they're down and behind. but in no world would you have imagined that the new AI bottle came out of Europe, right? Anywhere?

No. Like, it came out of China. Like, would that have been the most shocking news of the century that, like, no, actually it came out of Europe. Someone in Europe developed this. It's kind of crazy how that, like, you wouldn't even expect that anymore. Anyway, I love Europe. Sorry. Just had to say that.

All right. Sean created this for me. I want to look at the sector performance by administration, because I feel like a lot of people are now already saying, like, whatever Donald Trump is going to do, it's going to lead to this, and it's going to lead to that, and it's going to lead to this. And obviously, it's funny how something out of completely out of left field could change that narrative immediately. So this is sector performance and total performance by Trump and Biden, and both were pretty similar. They both had mid-double-digit return annualized basis. Wait, hold on. This is so interesting.

Because even like sector by sector, I mean, there's one or two, wait, what? That doesn't make sense. Like energy, for example. but outside of energy and maybe materials like gas, but everything is like pretty tight. Yeah, the biggest one is obviously energy

that under President Trump, energy was down 12% per year and under Biden, it was up 27% per year. Which is the opposite of what you would expect. Yes, and I guess that's the point. And the other point is energy

is a pretty small part of it, but yes, that was my surprise thing too is like how well it did under both presidents. Yeah. All right. Did you read the Seth Klammer piece in Bloomberg? No,

about it last week with Bob Elliott, but I did not read the piece. Okay. So they said that they pulled $7 billion from Claremont's group, and he's one of the legendary value of hedge fund managers, and he gained 4% per year since 2014. And heading into the crisis, I guess, in 2008, he was annualizing for 26 years at 20%. So obviously one of the legendary investors. But this does not surprise me at all that he's had such a poor time, because I did this presentation a number of years ago, and I use a quote from Jason's Wig that Claremont said in May of 2010, this is like the bull market has barely even started yet.

He talks about how holding interest rates at zero or screwing everything up, and he says, I am more worried about the world more broadly than I've ever been in my career. He said this in 2010. And I used it as an example of people getting stuck in the fighting the last war mentality. And so Claremont having really crappy returns doesn't surprise me at all. Oh, wait a minute. Two things. This quote is 15 years old. I'm sure he changed his mind.

But he didn't, obviously. Well, I don't know about that. He's held, no, the story says. But wait, but wait, he's not as, again, I don't know for sure, but he's a bottom-up stock picker, right? He's not a, this is not a macro fund. No, it's like a multi-strategy. He's more of like a credit guy, actually. Oh, really?

Okay. But he's been- Hold on. I'm just saying, like, is he, was he shorting things? He was basically essentially keeping 20 to 30% of his fund in cash. So he's been very conservative. Okay. And here's what I think might have happened.

You never know these things. I remember when I, when we came out of, of the crisis, we had a hedge fund manager, a long short hedge fund manager at my old endowment. And he had a $3 billion fund and he was kind of one of these guys who did really well during the crisis. And coming out of the crisis, remember all the worries about Europe and the European Union and all that stuff? And he was so freaked out about that. And he's a bottom-up stock picker, right? But he got into macro and he said, you know what? I have the majority of my net worth invested in this fund. I am getting ultra-defensive and I'm going to stay defensive

because all of my money is invested in it. Is it possible that Klarman just made the good a billion dollars and said, you know what, I'm not taking any more risk. Like, it's mostly my money anyway. Who would know? I don't know. You know, I was also pretty conservative in 2012. You should have seen my portfolio, shorting Amazon. I think I was short, I think I short a green mounting coffee. So you've heard of Claremont's margin of safety book, the value investing. It sells for like $2,500 on Amazon. I looked it up for, and it's always had this mystique about it because it's impossible to find. I mean, that is, that is comedy, right? Have you ever, so someone a number of years ago, I mentioned this that I'd never read it.

Someone sent me a PDF of it. Yeah, it's a PDF, yeah. So someone sent me a PDF, and I read it. I don't know if you've read it before. The price got the expectations way too high. I mean, it's a pretty good value investing book. But, like, nothing you've never heard in a Buffett, any of the Buffett books before. So not to kick the guy by he's down again.

Although I did see a tweet that said basically, like, yes, Klarman made 4% for a decade on his fund, which is, you know, cash-like returns, I guess, basically. But he probably earned over $300 million in management fees on his $20 billion. dollars in vested capital so he probably did okay still here's one that my brother sent me he said did you see this hedge fund story i did not hedge funds have this is from reuters hedge funds have charged their investors 1.8 trillion dollars in fees from 1969 to the end of december 2024 so i guess 1969 is when the what was that guy's name and more money than god the first hedge fund guy um oh

alfred winslow there you go uh over the past 55 years hedge funds have kept roughly half of the money they made from trading profits. So from fees, all the profits that have ever been earned in hedge funds, the hedge fund managers have kept half of that, which is an insanely high number. And look at this. They show the top 20 managers and plus all other managers in the total. And basically, if you weren't in the top 20 managers, they themselves earned, I don't know, a third of the total gains and just in the top 20 managers alone. So I mean, we know this, right? Like if you can get into one of the top performers, you're going to have fantastic returns. And the fees will have been well worth it. And if you can't, you're, it's not going to. And they, they said those ones charge even

higher fees. They could be like three and 30 or two and 30 or whatever it is. It's the whole Ray Dalio thing. He said there's 8,000 pilots in the air or 8,000 planes in the air and 100 good pilots. Yeah, I don't believe that. That's made up. What is? That, how does he know there's 100 good pilots? I mean, listen, it's a good, like, it's a good analogy. It's a good baseline for analogy, but it's completely made up. Remember the Justin Timberlake movie with Milakunis, like the Friends with Benefits one? And his whole schick is that there are no good pilots, the plane flies itself. The pilots aren't as good as they say they are.

I don't remember that line. But I will say, Justin Timberlake, I enjoyed him on screen. One of my favorite movies, one of my favorite garbage movies of all time, like truly, Alpha Dog. You ever see that one? Bruce Willis. Maybe not a bad movie. I forget the name of the kid who plays it, who's the main character.

But I agree. There's got to be good pilots. because you've had a rough landing in your time before, right? And on a, like, I feel like the landing itself, that alone, even if the plane is flying itself the whole rest of the time. Have landings gotten better over time? I feel like it's been a while since had a rough one. Did you see the tweet that I was going around over the weekend about this guy saying,

like, oh, everything's so hard to navigate these days. Oh, yes. Nothing works. And now this guy is an anti-monopoly attorney, I believe. So he's got a vested interest in seeing these things. Life is so much easier now. Yeah, give me a fucking break. than it has ever been.

Like just even last night, this is a minor example. I put air in the tire. And remember back in the day, you had these stuff like fine quarters and you would go from machine to machine and they were only... You had that measurement thing that like

the thing would come out at the end. Well, true. But then in came the air machines at the gas station and they never worked or they lasted for 30 seconds. Now you tap your Apple Pay. The machine goes on. It lights up.

You set the tire pressure. You set the PSI. It shows you what it is. It's so easy. And there's just a million. I was listening this morning to the rewatchables before sunrise, which I've only seen once. And it was one of the most enjoyable movie viewings I've ever had in my life. It was just, I don't know, I probably saw it five years ago.

The first two movies are two of my favorite movies of all time. Unbelievable. So anyway, on the podcast, they were talking about like life pre-internet and how if you met somebody and you had a great connection and you lost their phone number, like they were just gone forever. There was just no way that you would find them again. I remember if you tried to meet a friend somewhere And if you weren't at the same right place at the right time

Like you just sat there and waited There wasn't like hey I'm over here text Yeah I was sat there So I didn't experience that because like in 1999 I was 15 So you were a little bit older than I was But yeah life is easy now come on It is much easier All right, we got

You know it's been a while actually Since we got a question about levered ETFs Did you see the Nvidia ones yesterday The Nvidia three times levered ETF was down 50-some percent. The two-times I was down 30, whatever, what you would expect, but I'm not going to lie. I was tempted to buy NVD all at the close. I didn't because I

just don't want to go down. The two times one? Three times. I don't want to get into that behavior, but I thought about it. Just buy it for a quick balance. Yeah. So, all right. You know, like, I'm a young person. I'm contributing. Why wouldn't I just buy? And I think the ticket that the game was Upro. Upro is a triple levered ETF, I believe. Is that right?

Upro ETF from pro shares. Yep, three times a daily performance. Okay. So I, so I, went back three years, and over the last three years, the S&P is up 45%. Pro Shares is up, I'm sorry, Upro is up 70%. So barely, barely twice as good. In fact, barely, really not even close to twice as good with a drawdown that,

with a 45% drawdown, 50% drawdown. Yeah, who needs that? Come on. Who needs that? These products are not meant to be bought and how. I don't know how many times we could say that. Even the purveyors of these products say that. These are not, these are trading vehicles.

We've, we've had on, we've had on people from direction many times, and they basically invented this category. And they're like, this is a trading vehicle. Do not buy and hold this. That's not what it's for. The thing is, if you look at like the two-time NASDAQ 100, the performance is otherworldly, but it's also, you put it in context of a time when a raging blow. market with not a lot of volatility and how about this in 2020 this thing lost 65%

oh no i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry in 2020 it lost 71 77% in three weeks could you freaking imagine that's a depression in three weeks yeah you can't stick with this what are you nuts so we're recording this market just opened on tuesday and Nvidia is up 1% or so at the open. No, half a percent. Okay, I, you must be, is one of us behind or is one of us ahead? What do you think? I don't know.

You definitely use 15-minute delays, no offense. No way. Mine says real-time, 933. I would have expected like a 5% bounce today in Nvidia after falling almost 20% yesterday. I don't know what that means, but yeah, maybe your levered one, you would have got out for like a little minor gain and that's it. Uh, yeah. So, all right. Um, interesting, interesting from Ben Johnson.

May I remember when, uh, SPY was the king of the world, of the ETF world? It's still the ETF. It still is to me. When I plug in an ETF into any of the into Y charts, whatever, SPY is when I use the most still. Yeah. Sorry. Uh, V-O-O-I-V, nothing but respect for you, but, uh, it's still SPY to me. However, Ben Johnson shows that, and Ben Johnson is at Morningstar. Remember a couple of months ago, I was like, I'm just throwing around these names, assuming that everybody knows who we're talking about.

And I said that in the future, I was going to say who these people are. I don't think I've done a good job on that. Well, Ben Johnson, our friend at Morningstar, great analyst there, tweeted the ETF, S&PREKness. Not bad. Started as a one horse race in 1993 with SPY. Today, they are four in the field and the chase for the market chair are setting up for a photo finish among the top three, and he looks at the market share of IVV, SPY, V-O-O, and SPLG, which, you know, not even worth mentioning.

And wow, SPY had, again, 100% back in the day, and it's about to be eclipsed by what passes it for us. I'm going to say VOL. So I suppose what this chart is really showing is the massive importance of the platforms for BlackRock and Vanguard. And fees, because SPY, I know it's not a big deal, but they're stuck at nine because of their relationship with S&P, like they just can't go lower. So IVV and VO are at three basis points. Yeah. Okay, this is, I don't know concerning is the right word, although it's not great.

Kevin Gordon from Schwab tweeted, so far this month, there were just 98 companies where at least one insider purchase of company shares versus 447 at which at least one insider sold. That buy-sell ratio is on track to be the lowest record, lowest on record going back to 1988. So if insiders aren't buying their stocks, as much as they're selling them. Do you think they were just waiting for the, because of the 2022 bear market, though, that they've been putting off sales until things came back? That I don't know. I don't know. But it also makes sense, right? Like, if you're an insider, probably already so much of your compensation is tied to the stock. And it's been nothing but up until the right. So like,

why would they be buying their own stock? Right. Yes, sitting on massive gains. Right? Because they're already probably getting issued a ton anyway, so. All right, let's talk about the economy. This is from my friend Colin Roche at Discipline Funds.

Is that a good bio for you? He says one of the most important pieces of the news this week was the new tenants rent index. NTRI leads the actual CPI rental data and came in at the lowest rate of change at this cycle, down two and a half percent. This has been and continues to be the main reason why I'm not worried about inflation flaring up again. So there have been people who said, like, I'm worried inflation is coming back.

Cullen is not there. The rental index continues to fall. And again, it's negative on a year-over-year basis. That's good news, correct? It's great news. Grand prices are falling. I don't know how long it's going to last because they're not going to be building in more apartments with 7% mortgages, but for now, it's great.

Just talk me again in two years when it's going back up. Bookmarked. Noted. We've discussed this in the past. This chart comes from, who is this from? Goldman Sachs, probably. Goldman, okay. Rolling 20-year volatility of U.S. real GDP growth.

And, yeah, things are much calmer in the economy, hard as that may be to believe, than it was in the past, like dramatically so. There's a lot of people who really hate the Fed and who really hate government spending, but you could say that those two things have, basically helped make the economy way less volatile. Okay. Count a point. Have you seen the price of eggs?

I'm just kidding. But seriously, have you seen the price of eggs? So, look at this chart from Mike Sakari, throwing it to the dock now. The, he shows the price of eggs, the three are average, where prices are in 2024 and where prices were in 2025. So I see this. A dozen eggs, up $4 a year over year. It's too much, Ben. I don't like it. So let's say you buy a dozen eggs a week, right? Let's call that fair for some most families. I'm a dozen that guy.

And an eggs went from $4 a carton, that we call them, a carton? From $4 for a dozen to $8 for a dozen. That seems like a huge price increase. That's $16 a month. $16. You can't even buy an applebee's meal for that anymore. Is it really worth losing your mind over for $16 a month? I understand people buy a lot, but I understand people getting mad about gas prices.

I don't understand the infatuation with eggs because how much of the needle is it really moving? You would have to buy a lot of eggs for it to really impact your budget. That's all I'm saying. No, I don't think anybody's necessarily up in arms. It's just, you know, it's a chart.

I think it's also just one of those things that people latch on to. Okay, this is from the Wall Street Journal. They are a little worried about because Americans are carrying beer credit card balances. So, J.P. Morgan said in its most recently quarterly report, don't pay off, right? Those are the amount that doesn't get paid off each month. The proportion

of people making the minimum payment is above pre-pendemic levels. Same thing from Capital One CEO said the same thing on an earnings call. You can see the revolving credit card balance fell dramatically during the pandemic. It looks to me like it's on the same trend as 2013. It's just kind of back on that trend. But they also show the share of credit card holders making only minimum payments. And it's up to 11 percent, and it's about as high as it's been since 2020. And my main takeaway here, now that sounds bad. My main takeaway here is that this number is always right around 8 to 10 percent. I don't know how important these people are to economic activity. I'm not trying to marginalize a group, but if 2% of the population is now just making

the minimum payment on their credit card balance, I guess I don't know if you'd call these people subprime or whatever it is, but are they really moving the needle? If you're forced to make just minimum payments in your credit card, are you actually moving the needle for the economy? And should you really worry about this? All right. I think that the second chart, the share of credit card holders making the minimum payment is much more important than the revolving credit card balance because the denominator is what matters. And to your point, Ben, it's higher than it's been in the past, but it's always like this. So it's always in a range of between 8 and 10%.

And we're a little bit higher than that now. So, yeah, but it's not great. I mean, obviously, you don't want to see this. No, it's, that's the worst financial move you can make, paying the minimum payment on your credit card and rolling a balance over. Yeah. Bar none. Yeah.

Oh, this is a good substack. People were debating this on Twitter. It's called The Purse, and they have this home economics thing where they look at someone's actual budget. And this is the kind of stuff that always, always, always makes people on social media ad. I feel like some people would probably rather have their Google search history be put online than their budget. Because it's impossible to have a budget online and not get someone mad. So they went through all the numbers, and it's a 38 and 39-year-old in Brooklyn, and they make like $400,000.

And they say that their take-home pay after taxes and stuff is like is 25 grand. They live in Brooklyn. And they go through their checking account balance and an emergency fund. I'm just reading this. So checking account balance. All right. What's the big takeaway here, Ben? So they have like, I don't know, 200 grand in retirement accounts between a 401k and Roth.

Their monthly contributions to retirement plans are almost $2,500. All right. So 10%, not bad. So 10%, so not tear. A lot of people are saying, like, you make $450,000 and you're only saving $25,000. That's a way small number. So they're saving $30,000 a year. I think that's actually pretty decent, especially for in Brooklyn.

And then they says they own a $1.5 million. townhouse in Brooklyn. And their mortgage is like $6,500 a month. People get really triggered when they see the economics of how people spend money in high-cost living areas. It's like, oh, if I made $400,000, it's like, dude, calm down. Yeah, I didn't get as, people were debating this one. I just think.

What were the talking points? Just why aren't they saving more? Why aren't they wealthier? A lot of these things like that. I think if you and all your group of friends all wrote down your back of the envelope budget for every month, here's how much I make, here's so much I save, here's how much I spend, here's what I spend on, I don't think anyone would agree like, oh, that looks pretty reasonable. Everyone would have a problem with someone else's budget. Yeah.

Right? There's no budget that someone looks at and goes, perfect. That's nailed it. You're great. I feel like you probably have a perfect budget. Let's be honest. No, no, no, no. You'd look at my, You look at my spending on clothes and shoes and you'd say, what's wrong with you? Okay. Yeah, everyone has something like that. But I think everyone should have something like that. Yes, that's what the money is for. Yes, exactly.

All right, I got a little more thing on A-A. I do feel like the money, money is to be spent however people want to spend it. As long as they're being, like, reasonably responsible, all right, if you could be saving a little bit more, who cares? Yes. The only people who I have a problem with are, like, you don't save any money. Pick up truck drivers, better. we know. I'm just saying if you're spending extravagantly not saving anything, like that's

that's the problem. Yeah, that's irresponsible. It's 9.48 a.m. Eastern standard time, NVIDIA has undercut the lowest from yesterday. Ben, back to you. Okay. That's good. That's a good traffic update. Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, CEO, talking about regulation. And this, this number, I think, blew a lot of people away there. So it blew me away. He's talking about regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each new crypto coin, do you still call that? That sounded really boomery. It's totally infeasible at this point. They can't do one million a week. Are you saying that there's one million new coins being created every single week, which absolutely, to steal your phrase, blew my face off. If you would have

told me a hundred or a thousand, I would have been surprised. A million? I mean, I guess the whole thing is it's, that's the whole point of this infrastructure is you, it's easy to start and plug in. I never in a million years would have guessed. If you would have said, guess how many new crypto tokens are being created a week? I never would have guessed a million, ever. Dude, there's going to be 100 new ETFs a week. James Seiford over at Bloomberg tweeted, Tuttle Capital just filed for 10 different leverage crypto asset ETFs.

So, including the two-time-long Melania ETF. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Who needs this? This is just playing up to the degenerate site. two-time-long Trump coin. Sure. Awesome. This is one of those things where is deregulation in crypto actually going to be a net positive or not? And a lot of people in crypto seem to think, of course, it will be. So I don't buy the fact that, like, oh, all of this supply is going to drown the market because nobody wants any of the supply.

You know what I mean? Like the 850th,000s, I can't even say that word. You know what I'm? No, people want Bitcoin and whatever, some other. But the amount to supply, yes, it's wild. I guess it's like podcasts, right? There's a million podcasts, but the top 5% of them drive all the traffic and revenue or something? I think so. Ben, I want to play from you a quote from Larry Fink.

Larry is the CEO of one of the largest asset managers in the world, BlackRock. And the tone, his tone, like many others, had changed just a little bit over the past couple of years. Tell me if you could sense a difference, Ben, of what he used to say a few years ago compared to what he's saying today. Okay, I'm pretty sure I watch this on C&BC,

but let's hear. Okay. Every time I hear his name, I think about, you see what happens, Larry? You see what happens, Larry? If you're frightened of your debasement of your currency, or you're frightened of your economic or political

stability of your country, You can have an internationally based instrument called Bitcoin that will overcome those local fears. And so I'm a big believer in the utilization of that as an instrument. And so if that becomes true, and you see that it is, it could be a proper hedge against maybe hope, security or equities. The question is, could you see a two or five percent allocation? I was with a sovereign wealth fund during this week, and that was a conversation.

Should we have a 2% allocation? Should we have a 5% allocation? If everybody adopted that conversation, it would be 500,000, 600,000, 700,000 per Bitcoin. Does it also- I'm not promoting that, by the way. That is not my promotion. Ben, how much can I put you down for?

It is wild. I mean, all of these people were so negative. And I'm not throwing shade. But anyway, it goes to your point. Like, is deregulation bad of crypto? Could it be bad for crypto? No. It's a short answer.

Fair. Yeah. So it is funny. If the ETF would have just gotten approved earlier, people's opinions about Bitcoin would have changed quicker. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

All right. The guys threw up a good survey on the YouTube channel. What type of work environment would you most prefer? And the choices were in the office Monday through Friday, a hybrid or a remote. And this is probably about what I would expect. I'm surprised that in office got 15% because I would think like who wants to be in the office five days a week. Remote got a third of the votes at hybrid, which is what I do. It's 53%.

I can't tell you how incredible. And I understand I'm privileged to say this. I know a lot of people don't have this luxury. But everybody at our company does. The ability to work from home on certain days and then also be in the office with your colleagues on others is beyond words. Monday through Friday is really tough.

You can't put a price in that, right? Yeah. I think there are some of the people who say in the office, I think there are some people who love the camaraderie. Oh, yeah. Hey, Jerry, how was your weekend? Obviously, knowing me that that is not me, right? But everyone knows that person who just spends their whole day walking around and socializing.

Barry is Mr. How's Your Weekend? Yeah. Oh, yeah, good. Let me tell you about mine. Yeah, but that doesn't surprise me. And getting back to your comforts of today, the ability to work from home, I think this is the thing that people still don't appreciate enough coming from the pandemic. And obviously not everyone, as you said, gets. that luxury. But the fact that we just kind of had a pandemic and this is the outcome is just

it's kind of amazing if you think about it. You, how many hours a week do you save of being on a train versus what your life was like before? All of the hours. Now, listen, anytime we talk about like the pandemic and how lucky we are, obviously I feel like awkward about it because there are a lot of people that don't have the luxury that we do. And also, let's not forget that like literally a million people died. So, you know, with that obvious understanding, It is just a before and after for sure. All right. This is an interesting email.

Hey, guys. In the past, you've talked about the wealth horseshoe effect where a certain upper bound of money becomes burdensome. It's a really entertaining discussion, not one that I'm remotely close to wrestling with. I think, you know, who among us are. Where do you think hiring a full-time private chef fits into the wealth spectrum? Whoa.

Yeah, he went there. Okay. Can I tell you what I'm, you know, I like cooking. You know what I did last night? Not that yes, but I'll tell you. I made, uh, sauteed some shrimp in like terriacchi sauce and I, I made my own cauliflower rice. No, that's that hard. You just put it in a blender and you just shred it up and, but I like cooking.

I, that's not even, a private chef is not even like a 0.1% or not a 1% thing. It's like a top 0.1% thing. that's a that's pretty upper echelon stuff i don't i don't know how much it would cost how much does a private chef cook i mean that's crazy talk let's put it this way we have we have we have a we have a range of clients at our firm in terms of wealth and having conversations with them i've only ever heard of it one time with one of our clients so it's interesting question but i this might be the this might be the this might be the question that is the least relevance to anybody listening

I don't think a single one of our listeners has a private chef, and no offense to all of you, including Ben and I. I don't think any of us will ever have a private chef. But it is interesting, I guess. Yeah. I think it could actually be kind of awkward, just walking in and have someone in your kitchen. Yeah, how many meals a day do you eat? What do they do the rest of the time? But, I mean, it would be pretty amazing to be like, just give me my favorite tonight. Give me the usual. That part of it would be pretty cool. Counterpoint, it destroys, it destroys like the joy in eating. right if you have like great food for every meal it's like

that is true there's something like this like you have a peanut butter and jelly and then you have like a steak and like the steak is like oh it's like a treat yeah make it a treat also if you have a private chef do they clean up with themselves like who does the dishes like if I have a private chef I don't want to do the dishes too I want them to do the dishes I'm a big dishes guy as you know you saw my dishes last night oh it like a bomb went off honestly if my wife did that I'd talk I'd talk I'd I'd give her divorce papers if my wife loaded the dishwasher like you do. They come out clean.

No way. There's no way. It's like dishes on top of dishes. I don't know how it closes. Do you take your top rack off? No. Okay. All right.

I will take a video unveiling of the dishes and show you spotless. All right. You must have a really good dishwasher. Story time. Monday nights are pretty busy for us. The Carlson family as far as practices go, right? My daughter has soccer and basketball back to back, and my other daughter has soccer. So it was my night to drive last night.

So I drop, pick up one of the teammates, drop the older daughter and her teammate off at basketball, then take the younger daughter to soccer, right? And then I'm going back to get basketball and then back to soccer, pick her and up. So I'm waiting for my daughter at soccer, but it was like a blizzard last night. It was dark, and it was windy and snow everywhere. And I'm parked right in the front, ready to go. Yeah, the Midwest is going to take over the world. Fair.

Hey, make it a treat, right? We appreciate Summers more. True. So there's this guy trying to back into a spot, and he's holding up the line trying to back into a spot. Oh, come on, man. Right, yes. There's a line of people waiting,

and he's trying to back in right next to me. What type of car are we talking? SUV, a Chevy Traverse or whatever. And he's backing up and backing up, and he's so far off that he is literally backing up right into me. And he probably gets within, it looked like he was within three inches of hitting me, and I'm sitting in my car, and I'm looking at...

And, you know, objects in the rear of your mirror are closer than they appear. Yes, but you have the... Everyone has the camera now. So then he straightens it out, and he does it again. And this time, he is within a paper's razor's edge of hitting me on the side. And I'm sitting in my car going, oh. You're a honk?

And then finally he repositions it four times. How are you not honking? How are you not honking? Okay, this is what I was going to ask. Finally, he gets in, and he's so close to my door, I literally cannot get out of the car. And he, like, sits in his car and goes, like, nailed it. Should I have honked? I did not honk, midwest night. Should you have honked?

I should have honked, huh? Should you have honked? I didn't want to scare him and have him hit the gas and nail me. You should have put your head out the window and screamed. I was screaming inside of my car, but yes, I was not. Obviously, he didn't know that I was in my car, right? Anyway. Wait, so how did this resolve itself?

You get out of the passenger side? I literally had to climb out over the passenger side of my car. Dude, come on. Yes. Have some self-respect. You climbed over the bed. Yeah, that was pretty bad. All right.

Recommendations. Oh, I got a question for you. Okay. So I'm doing a little remodeling of my office. So my kids, you can't see it. I'll send a picture for YouTube to Duncan. But my kids said, hey, your walls are too white in your office. You need to hang some stuff.

And so they, for like the last two years, every time they come to my office, they hang a picture of theirs. And so my whole wall now is just kids' pictures from school that they've drawn. It actually looks kind of cool. But I said, I need to, like, class it up in here a little bit. And maybe this is college dorm room classing it up, but I bought three posters from Amazon of my favorite finance movies. What are those movies?

Okay. And again, this is maybe college dorm room, but I don't care. So tell me what movie posters did I buy for finance movies for my office. Okay. I've got like five, but I think within the five I'll get the three right. Wall Street, margin call, boiler room, the big short. Okay. Stop at the first three. You got me. I'm too easy. That was it. So Wall Street, Boilerm, margin call?

Yes. Can I see these posters? Oh, I don't, they're wrapped up. I got to, I still got to hang them at all about. So you have to frame them? Do you get them framed? Yes. College dorm room, maybe. Do I care? No. Very much. It screams. I'm in finance, but I also won't honk at you if you back your car into me. Exactly. All right. Gladator 2 came out on Paramount Plus. My wife and I watched it. two and a half hour long, I think. Gladiator won, the first one of my...

I think it's probably the best movie of this century. If not, it's in the running. Yeah. Absolutely love it. So this movie was totally unnecessary. I actually thought the first hour or so was like, oh, this is pretty good. Then we kept watching.

And they get to the part where they put sharks and water in the Coliseum. I don't know how they ever would have gotten sharks back in the day, like how they would have caught sharks and then put them in the Coliseum, and then take them out of the Coliseum. Maybe I'm nitpicking. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad. I thought Denzel... It wasn't bad?

I thought that there was enough breadcrumbs to the first one of that. I thought it wasn't bad. It wasn't good. It was an abomination. I know there's a lot of people who hated it. I didn't hate it. I was kind of entertained. Here's the other thing, though.

Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors ever. He mailed it in, didn't put a self-address on the back, didn't put a stamp. This was one of the most mailed-in performances I've ever seen from a good actor. So, I was entertained. I didn't, like, have a bad time watching the movie. That's what I mean. It was still kind of entertained. The CGI'd baboons were horrendous.

But, okay, but I could say that I had a decent time watching it, but it was a piece of garbage. It felt like a movie that went straight to HBO back in, like, 2006. Yeah, it felt like a gladiator knockoff. I agree. The quality was just horrendous. And Ridley Scott, I mean, I know he's an older gentleman, but he's a, you know, he's a That is the biggest thing I thought, like the quality of, you know, he's a good thing. the first one was so... The script was terrible. It was so bad. Again, I had a good time watching it,

but it was a piece of shit. That's what I mean. Yeah. It totally unnecessary. All right. So we watched a few 80s movies with my kids. I love sharing some of my favorite movies with my kids. We watched Goonies with my kids. And my kids absolutely loved it. My daughter was like, where's, when's Goody's two coming out? Like, well, this came out in like 1985 or something. So maybe they'll make a new one, probably not. Can I tell you the last time I saw Goonies? I was eating magic mushroom which I think is perhaps socially acceptable now? Only a few microdose. Okay.

If you macrodose, no, it's not. So I macrodose. This was in 2000, what year? I graduated high school? 2002, I guess. And there's one scene where a skeleton prop like comes out of the wall to scare them, whatever. And my friend said, is that Willem Defoe?

If he said it's straight face, that's pretty good. The part where they asked Chunk to tell all the bad stuff he's done. And he's crying and he's talking about how he did fake puke in the movie theater and then everyone else puked. Um, perfect acting for the, I mean, I don't know. I love that movie. Okay, I should watch it with my kids because, yeah, I don't really even remember the movie that well. And another one I watch with my daughter, Adventures in Babysitting. For some reason, this was a big one in the Carlson family household growing up. Never heard of it. It's not the greatest movie ever. It's a Chicago movie. Elizabeth Shoe plays a babysitter. And honestly,

without her in it, she's so good in it. It wouldn't be that good. But the whole thing is, she has to pick her friend up from downtown Chicago from the suburbs. And she has all these kids that she's babysitting and then hijinks ensues. Great 80s premise. But the whole thing is that she gets a flat tire on the way and they need $50 for a tire. And the whole movie is like how they can't come up with like $50 for a tire. This is in 1987. And again, I said I spent $3.50 on one a couple weeks ago. It's just funny to hear that number to be like $50. Yeah. And that was like a big deal. Okay. That's all I got. Um, okay, I watched on your recommendation a real pain. What did you think I would think of the movie?

I thought you would like it. Okay. I very much liked it. However, I know that we're very attuned to this, more so than most, I would say. More so than most movie viewers. I pride ourselves on the ability to distinguish where and how you watch a movie matters a lot. Hence, me going to the theater, our airplane movie discussions. If I went to the theater and watched a real pain, I think I would like it.

If I was on my couch and strictly watched it on as a standalone, I don't know how much I would have liked it, but I watched it on my iPad with the Knicks game on my main TV. Oh, that's a horrible idea. No, no, no. The next game was on mute. Okay. The next game was on mute, and I was, you know, back and forth. So in that setting, I very much like the movie. If I was just glued to the screen for 90 minutes or whatever, I probably would have been like, yeah, it was good.

But I really enjoyed it. It's a slowish. Yeah, I mean, not a ton happens, but, you know, two great actors. Okay, conclave, not for me. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, just not for me. I watched it. Yeah, not for me.

Anyway, it was nominated for Best Picture, which I guess, you know, it makes sense. So here's the list. Anora, the Brutalist, a complete unknown, conclave, Doom, Part 2, Amelia Perez, I'm still here, Nickel Boy's The Substance, and Wicked. Any movies that you feel particularly strong, about winning? I mean, the only thing I feel particularly strong about is this is one of the worst lists in a long, might be one of the worst list in a long time. Are there any movies on here where you go, man. I mean, I saw Wicked and Dude, Dune, Part 2 is incredible.

I just, there's no like stand up, like in 20 years when we look back to this movie and be like that that movie was amazing. I don't think there's any on this list that are going to be like that. I love DeNora. Is it like best picture? I don't know. Yeah, you're right. Pretty weak list. Although I didn't see a bunch of this. My kids have watched Wicked like five times already and they listen to the soundtrack all the time. So they'd give the shout for Wicked here. Okay. So I watched Meet the Parents for the first time in a long time.

Like in fall. I watched it in full. Why did I watch it in a full? Robin was sick last week. So I was sleeping in a room by myself and fired it up. You know, you told me that you did that. And then my wife got sick, had a little, had some sniffles and coughs. And I said, I'm out of, I'm sleeping in the basement.

Yeah. And I didn't get sick. She had the flu. I didn't get sick. I know we know this. This is not breaking ground. But holy shit, is that movie so funny. I rewatched recently, too.

I have nipples. Greg, can you milk me? Is really one of the best lines of all time. And the whole thing. The whole thing. It's just so, so, so good. And I haven't seen it for 20 years. We saw it a hundred times when it came out.

So if you're a young person, if you graduate at high school in 2015. Watch this movie. Perhaps peak Ben Stiller, like one of his better performances ever? What a run. All right, so almost 10 o'clock, as we're finishing

this up, Nvidia is up 1%. The NASDAQ 100 is up 60 basis points. Not like a coming back, storming, coming back, but putting up a fight. I think this kind of thing happening is, I think it's really it can't be

too easy, right? The whole, like, I didn't like the fact that it was seemingly too easy for this AI stuff. To be like, just add Mag 7. Here, have it. Control this space. Yeah. I kind of like the way this is playing out now. I want to see the back and forth. Yeah.

The 2020s has to be one of the most exciting decades ever for financial markets. And the fact that we have social media to follow along, for all the bad stuff about social media and you and I have talked a lot about it, there is a lot of downsides of social media. Being able to watch this stuff play out in real time is absolutely. one of the better parts of social media. Yeah. No doubt.

No doubt. All right. Keep the emails coming. Animal spirits at the compound news.com. Personally emails, personal responses. We'll see you next time.