Morning Brew Daily - Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Episode 484: Neal and Toby reflect on the numbers that stood out throughout the year, including Warren Buffet’s Treasury Bills, Digital Cameras, and Toby shares his favorite tallies from the year!  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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pwc.com slash US slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brewAI. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, 5. 44% 3 septillion. Oh my gosh.

It's a special Neil's Numbers episode. It's Friday, December 27th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Friday, even though the days of the week feel a little made up during this stretch from Christmas to New Year's. We're back with another special episode, one that is near and dear to my heart because it's the best of Neal's numbers. Each Thursday, I bring you three of the most fascinating stats from the week's news, hopefully making you the most interesting person at your dinner party in the process.

For this episode, our team poured over every number I discussed from 2024 and picked a bunch that stood out, either for representing a bigger theme from the year or just because they were so wacky. Toby, are you ready? By the way, your commentary is a big reason why Neil's numbers is so popular. Oh, you'd flatter me too much. Neil, this is my favorite segment every week. Not only because I learned a lot, but also you do most of the talking. So let's dive right in. All right. I guess I will start talking then.

One of my numbers from back in January was that we were entering the biggest election year in history. In 2024, 76 countries with more than half the world's population, over 4 billion people voted in elections, including eight of the 10 most populous countries in the world. What did we learn now that all those votes have been counted? One pattern that was clearly evident is that voters were fed up with inflation. The incumbents in every single one of 10 major countries with elections this year were handed losses by voters, including the Democrats in the U.S., Britain's Tories, Emmanuel Macron's coalition in France, and Japan's liberal Democrats.

It was the first time this has happened in 120 years. years of record keeping. Yeah, I mean, among democracies that held elections this year, 80% saw their incumbent party lose. Some places, it was longtime incumbents too. In Senegal, it's now president, became the first opposition candidate to win a president election since the country became independent in 1960. So it really was a year of people saying, we want change, we want something different. And you saw that, and just the sheer amount of elections that were held and the sheer amount of incumbents that did end up losing. And maybe a 1B number that I want to add over the U.S. presidential election was the sheer

amount of outside spending from corporations, individuals. That was a major theme in the election that happened in November with two weeks to go before election day. Outside groups poured in $1.1 billion into the presidential race, which was surpassing, which surpassed the record set in 2020. And I remember you would talk about some Senate races. just in specific states outspent even the entire election spending of countries like France or Canada or something like that. So it truly is a unique phenomenon to the U.S. just how much we

spend on elections. Okay, moving on to a number from the summer, Berkshire Hathaway owns more treasury bills than the Federal Reserve, which is a sign of how Warren Buffett has been stockpiling cash and sparking debate over why he seems wary of the stock market. At the end of June, Berkshire owned $234 billion in treasury bills compared to the Fed's $195 billion Treasury Warchest. Buffett's T-Bill pile is more than several countries, including Brazil, Mexico, and Germany. And his overall cash pile of $325 billion would allow him to easily buy all but 25 of the most valuable public U.S. companies, including Goldman Sachs, Disney, Pfizer, and AT&T. At the same time, Buffett spent the year selling off holdings of his two most treasured

investments, Apple and Bank of America. Toby, what does Buffett see that we don't? It's always a little scary because Buffett, he's called the Oracle of Omaha for a reason. So he's sitting on a record cash positions as the market is sitting at record high. So something's got to give here. How about this? I'll out-neal number you. I could never do that.

But here's a number for you. Berkshire Hathaway's cash alone now exceeds Bershire Hathaway's total market value just 10 years ago. So it is literally holding more cash now than what it was worth just a decade ago. So truly one of the biggest cash piles, I was thinking, Neil, and so we are recording this before the end of the year, before maybe there's been more developments in this story. But one company that Berkshire Hathaway could buy is TikTok. Because remember, one thing that we keep saying is there's not enough suitors out there who could afford TikTok. Berkshire Hathaway could buy TikTok. Again, not Warren Buffett's typical business zone.

But I was just thinking, like, wait a second, he could. this is one company that he maybe would see value in. This is one company that could afford TikTok, and there aren't that many. I like that idea, Toby. If that happens. In the portfolio next to the railroad's insurance companies and fruit of the loom, I could see that happening. I'm sure Buffett would have a lot of expertise to give to the TikTok CEO.

Okay, sports gambling was in the headlines a ton this year. It's only grown since it was basically legalized by the Supreme Court in 2018. But the findings of two studies over the summer. revealed some of its negative consequences for Americans' personal finances. One study showed how Americans were taking money out of their stock accounts to fund their online betting. It found that for every dollar spent on sports gambling, net investments in stocks and other financial assets dropped by a little over $2. And then in another study, the average credit score in a state was found to have fallen 0.3% after the state legalized sports gambling,

and that triples to 1% if the state allowed online sports bet. heading. Toby, sports gambling has become a massive industry here. Should we expect more of a reckoning now that we've got more data on its harmful effects? Yeah, because it's not just data about the amount of money you lose by putting them into your account losing. It is the opportunity cost of what that money could have been doing in the stock market. So it's even bigger than you probably imagine. We also read some of these horror stories this year where professional gamblers, people who do this for a living, figured out that if they tried to reverse engineer the behavior of gambling addicts, they would get fed better.

boosts, better deals from the gambling site. So they would do stuff like check their phones in the middle of the night, log on the app at 2 a.m. And those behaviors signify to the sports gambling websites that, hey, this is someone who probably has an addiction to this. Let's feed them a deal. And they were doing that just so they would get a better edge on things. So there really was a little bit of, this was the year where sports gambling really was widespread,

rolled out to a lot of different states. and now we are seeing just the second order and third order effects of it. Yeah, it'll be curious to see whether in the next administration or Congress, there will be some regulatory crackdown on sports gambling, because it really is the Wild West. But you're going to see more studies like this come out, and lawmakers might be, you know, like, hey, draft gangs and Fanduel, you know, maybe you shouldn't be able to do those, you know,

predatory marketing practices that you just talked about, Toby. So we'll see what happens with that. But, yeah, I just have a few more numbers about the size of, of sports gambling now in the United States. Americans were on track for 24 to wager $150 billion on sports. That's up from just $7 billion in 2018 when the Supreme Court legalized or paved the way for legal sports gambling. And earlier this year, Flutter, which is the company that owns Fandul, overtook the biggest

physical casino, Las Vegas Sands, in market cap. So you're starting to see a changing of the guard there. Let's turn to the always fascinating automobile industry for the, next number. In September, Norway became the first country in the world with more electric vehicles on its roads than gas-powered cars. The country is the world leader in EV adoption thanks to government incentives such as allowing EV drivers to use bus lanes and exempting EVs from certain taxes. For other countries, though, the EV transition has been rocky this year. In the U.S., J.D. Power lowered its projections for EVs sales from 12% of new cars to 9%.

President-elect Trump is expected to blunt growth even more by pulling a $7,500 EV tax credit when he comes into office. Over in Europe, growth is slowing for countries not named Norway. European EV sales rose just 0.8% in October from the year earlier. So the question remains, is Norway a sign of things to come for everyone else or just an extreme outlier? If any country was going to do this, it was going to be Norway. Because you're right, there are these generous government incentives, but also it's one of the wealthiest countries. and the world, so they can, the residents there can offset some of that upfront cost of buying an electric vehicle. It is funny, too, though, because a lot of the incentives that the

government does offer for electric vehicle buyers, they are funded in large part by the money the country makes by selling its oil and gas reserves to other countries. So they hope to end all diesel and gas vehicle sales by next year. Again, if one country is going to do it, it is Norway. But I would say that they are a bit of an outlier and not indicative of. or maybe not indicative, but definitely one of the people higher up or the countries higher up the adoption curve on. Oh, yeah, they're by far, yeah, they're by far in a way the highest adoption for EVs. The question is, how long will it take the rest of the world to catch them? Two years ago, it seemed like EV adoption would be super fast.

I mean, rates were going at 40% here in the United States, even faster in China, but due to a variety of factors like the high cost, of cars and the lack of stations. Here in the United States, growth has almost slowed to a trickle. They're just going to grow less than 10% in the single digits here in the United States. Adoption is much faster in China. They're growing at 50%. And the question, I think this will be something that we talk about a lot on the podcast next year is what are we going to do about the Chinese EVs that are quote unquote invading Europe

in the United States. The United States has put a tariff of 100% on them. Europe has also placed some tariffs. but, you know, Western carmakers just can't compete with these Chinese EV companies. Okay, this next number stems from possibly the best article I read this year, which was Katie Weaver writing in the New York Times about why we should abolish the penny. There were some astonishing stats about how many pennies exist. In a conservative estimate, 240 billion pennies are lying around the United States about 724 per person.

It's enough pennies to hand out two to every human who has ever been born. born. The U.S. cent is the most produced coin in the history of civilization, making Lincoln's portrait on it the most reproduced piece of art in the world. In the piece, Weaver argues that the penny has no purpose anymore, and all it's doing is taking up space and money. Consider, it costs three cents for the mint to produce a one cent coin. Toby, you on board with abolishing the penny. Yeah, this was something that I wrote about all the way back in high school. People have been talking about abolishing their penny for a long time. The sheer amount of penny, out there is staggering. Since the U.S. first began issuing the penny in 1793, they produce

half a trillion of them, which is more than the number of stars in the entire Milky Way galaxy. So one of the parts of this article, which was fantastic, as you mentioned, is that if some of the pennies that were to be lying around were to be found and cashed in that banks, it would just overwhelm all the storage we have in the entire United States. So it is completely impractical to try to, you know, return these pennies to circulation. It is almost better that they are laying under our couches in between our seat cushions, stuff like that. There were so many just oxymorons that come with being a penny. The fact that it costs more to make a penny than it does to actually spend a penny never made sense. So I don't know if we will see any movement on this front because

you do need an act of Congress to banish the penny. Do you think we will see any movement on this front? But what I understand, there's been a lot of fits and starts to try to abolish the penny, but there's just always something more important going on that you can't get lawmakers to say like, okay, let's actually vote on abolishing the penny. And then you mentioned all of the logistics that require, going into that. Canada abolish the penny a few years ago. But they kept the concept of the scent. So you have, you know, competing things going on here. And I don't know if Americans will be amenable to that change. Maybe we should just take all of the pennies, melt them down into a, you know, copper liquid and then create a statue in front of the Fed as a testament to capitalism.

There you go. That's my idea. Track them down and you get on that. Up next, more numbers coming your way. Today we helped a... Latte for Sam. Coffee shop get an insurance quote simply and easily. And made sure... A floral delivery van was able to make someone's day.

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When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Neil, as always, thank you for those numbers. Sometimes throughout the year, though, when there are a few extra numbers to go around, you can't choose just three. I get to jump in with some Toby's tally, and I'm going to do that on today's episode as well. The first tally I picked up this year was $2,047, which is the price per square foot on the most expensive street in the world, Milan's via Monte Napoleone. Now, this was a fun story. Milan's luxury fashion scene propelled via Monte Napoleon into the top spot, surpassing New York's

Fifth Avenue. But that is not why I picked it. I picked it because we got a few emails in text from people who said that this number in particular helped them win some of their trivia competitions. Now, I don't know if one of the writers of Bar-Trivia. around the country, heard this Neil's numbers and got inspired, or if it was just a coincidence, but still, this one will hold a special place in the Neil's number pantheon for being helpful enough to win trivia for a few people, Neil.

That is all I'm going for. That really is all you're going for. Help you win trivia with Neil's numbers. I also think you chose this, Toby, so you could say via Monte Napoleon. It does roll off the tongue pretty well. And do you remember some of the reasons why it became? Well, yes, the reason why this, yeah, reason why this. This street is the most expensive.

Yes, there are luxury goods companies going in there. But it's also just tiny. So it's a matter of supply and demand. Fifth Avenue is much longer. And the Bond Street in London, all these other ones are just bigger. So they can't charge as many rents to be on the actual street itself. If you extended the street in Milan or, you know, took in another street to normalize the length with Fifth Avenue,

then I'm not sure Milan would still win. But I've been there. It's super fancy. It is super fancy. but all that matters is somebody won some bar tab and some far off bar in the United States because of this Neil's number. Okay, the second tally I remember from the year is that digital camera sales grew in 2023 for the first time in the 13 years.

And the reason I picked this one is because it feels like a lot like a Toby's trend, honestly. After shrinking every year since 2010 due to powerful smartphone cameras replacing single-purpose cameras, there has been an uptick and interest in these vintage shooters. of late. Part of the rise is also because sales absolutely hit rock bottom. There are 1.2 million last year compared to 10.4 million in 2010. But also people are nostalgic. They want that vibe that only digital cameras can impart to photos rather than relying on their smartphone. So I like this one because it speaks to the broader trends that we've touched on in Toby's trends this year as well.

Yeah. And I think people probably are nodding their heads when they're listening to this because maybe you've been to a party or a gathering of young people and somebody without a digital camera. And you're like, what is that? So, I mean, that's happened to me a few times. So I've actually saw this Neal's number come to life in reality, which was kind of cool. It also speaks, I think, to some, we could probably could have done a Neal's number on any sort of vintage product, like records or, you know, vinyl, things like that, that have gained a second life in 2024.

Yeah, some of the other stories that come to mind are Hot Wheels being the most popular selling toy in the world, partly driven by these nostalgic collectors. Also, vintage shopping, that was a Toby's trend as well. It's just so hot right now. Nostalgia is very much in. The one aspect that we haven't discussed, too, is that travel made a big comeback post the pandemic. And so that led to another increase in camera sales as well. But yeah, that was a quasi-Tobie's trend slash Niels number right there.

I see what you did there. Yeah, I know. Okay, my final tally is just a banger. And that is everyone in Japan will be called Sato by 2,531, unless some changes are made to marriage laws in the country. So in Japan, married couples are not permitted to use separate surnames. So that means Sato, which already tops the list of most popular last names in the country, will see its share exponentially increase throughout the years until in 500 years times.

Everyone in Japan will be named Sato. This study was also published on April 1st of this year. So people at first thought it was a joke. But it was real. And the author said it was to drive awareness of this outdated. marriage rule. My first thought is this is going to be a nightmare for sports announcers. I mean, we're doing the game. Sato passes the Sato. Passes the Sato shoots and I'm not, if I'm listening on the radio, I don't know what's going on. So I go out, my, you know, my thoughts are with all

the sports announcers that have to deal with all the Satoes. When I think of Niels numbers, this is the one that comes to mind though, just because it's so out there. You would never think about it. You would never come across it unless you unearthed it. So that is just in my top three of Neil's numbers of all time. Okay, Neil, to close out the show, I have a quiz for you to see just how well you know your own numbers. This quiz picks out some themes

that emerged over your year of numerology. Let's see if you can recognize your own tendencies. All right, so question one is, you did 11 numbers related to America this year, stuff like, why does America suddenly have a record number of bees? Why Americans stopped moving and Americans saying they needed a one and a half million dollars to comfortably retire?

But what do you think was the second most popular country you talked about this year in your Neal's numbers? Well, we just did one on Japan, so that's top of mind. You know, we talked a lot about Germany this year. We talked a lot about Argentina. I'm going to go with Argentina. No, I'm not. You're shaking your head. That's not my final answer.

Oh, God. I don't know. I will say Japan. Japan was in a two-way tie with Russia, actually. there was the number that we just discussed about everyone being called Sato, but also there's a number about how Japanese diaper makers are shifting their production from babies to adults given the increasing amount of elderly people in the country. On the Russian front, some stories included how Russia is spending so much on their war with Ukraine

that is actually boosting the economy now, which was not the case when they first started. And of course, there is the two una decilion rubble fine that a Russian court handed down to Google for restricting state media channels. That is a two, followed by 36 zeros, which is more than the entire world's GDP of $110 trillion. That also probably is up there as the highest number on the Neal's number of Pantheon. I think it might be.

Yeah, two one decadalian. All right, do you know what your most popular animal you talked about this year? You low-key do a lot of animal-themed Neal's numbers. Do you know what your most popular animal was? Let's just go base rates here, dog. It was not. It was not dog.

Well, that's actually thinking about, what are some of the most popular animals in the world? I mean, the one I think humans most talk about is the dog. Yeah, that's true. I thought you were going to say humans. Or, you know, I think birds. You're thinking too land-based. Whales. You talked about fish and whales the most.

I kind of lumped them into the same category. You did two stories on fish and whales. One was about the school of cod that were estimated to have eaten around 10 million anchovy-like fish in just four hours. And what was the largest mass predation event ever recorded? That was a fun one. And then the other marine theme story you did was about a really down bad whale who recorded the longest migration in history, over 8,000 miles across three oceans in search of a mate. And then the final aqua-themed one was about cocaine sharks.

Do you remember this one? No. I know. I couldn't believe it going back through it either. There was a study of 13 sharks off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. and they all were found to have cocaine in their liver and muscles. The level of cocaine in these sharks were reported to be as much as a hundred times higher than any other previously observed in marine life.

Do you remember why they had cocaine? I think this happens when, you know, smugglers dump cocaine off their boats. Yeah, but just the headline of cocaine sharks. So you do love a nice marine theme. Well, I think the ocean is so vast and mysterious to us that it certainly lends itself to eye-popping stats like a humpback whale, you know, sojourning 8,000 miles for sex or the largest predation event ever, ever recorded. You know, that thing, you know, those things just don't really happen on land unless it's the insect kingdom. They just don't get that sheer quantity. So the ocean is

a remarkable thing. It's a, it's, it lends itself to Neal's numbers. Do you know who the most talked about person in Neal's numbers were this year? I'll say, well, Warren Buffett was definitely one. I don't know if I talked about. about, or Jerome Powell or Warren Buffett, one of those. You're thinking in the wrong realm. It's not a business-related realm. It is entertainment, and it was Taylor Swift. Oh, no, I'm so predictable.

She edged out Caitlin Clark, actually. Caitlin Clark appealed multiple times as well. Some of the Taylor Swift numbers were she drove more luxury travelers to Paris than even the Olympics, five times as many U.S. travelers, to be exact. Also, the tortured poets department broke the record for weekly vinyl sales, which is another thing we've talked about. She sold $700,000 in just a weekend. And then there was also, this one I had totally forgot about,

there was this Monmouth poll that found nearly one in five U.S. residents believed Taylor Swift was conspiring with Joe Biden to steal the election. So that was 20% of the electorate thought that Taylor Swift was part of this grand conspiracy theory. So can't escape T.C. She is inescapable. I guess my goal is to have fewer Taylor Swift stats next year. I don't have a goal. It's whatever happens.

You know, whatever's the most interesting. You let the numbers come to you. All right, the last part of this quiz. Do you know what the most popular fruit you talked about this year was? Tomato. Apple. It was the humble banana. And the two stories were, one, the duct tape banana that sold for how much?

$6 million. Over $6 million at the Sotheby's election or auction. It was this avant-garde art piece that was supposed to be commentary on art itself. And then finally, the other one was Trader Joe's hiked the price of their bananas for the first time in decades. Do you remember what they hiked it from and two? Let's go. 19 cents to 23 cents. That is completely right.

They hiked it 4 cents, which is actually a 20% increase for the first time since early 2000s. That got a lot of people up in arms because, you know, Trader Joe's is supposed to represent, you know, bargain brand prices and seeing the banana price jump up. Even four cents was enough to get people a little mad. What I didn't mention in Neal's numbers was Costco because their soda hot dog combo stayed at $1.50 cents. So Costco, if you want to stay out of Neal's numbers, you keep that $150. I was going through the food ones you did, and I was like, did he do any other hot dogs one? Because I think we did talk about that $1.50 hot dog, but no, bananas was the most mentioned fruit in Neal's numbers this year. All right, finally, to close out the show, I think the only proper way to cap off a Neal's Numbers episode is to do a Neal's numbers.

of Neal's numbers. Basically, I just sat down and calculated how much information you shared with us this year. You did a Neal's numbers segment 50 out of 52 weeks this year. The only weeks you missed were one Thanksgiving. We were off. And then there was one week in October where Kyle and I did Kyle's calculations and I did Toby's tallies. I'm batting 960. You're batting really high. Good number right there. Since you've given us three numbers per segment for 50 weeks. that's 50 times three. That is 150 different numbers this year. That is a lot of numbers. Also, I just went a little deeper, too.

If each one of your intros ended up being about 250 words, that means you've written 37,500 words just dedicated to Neal's numbers alone. And I did Google it. The average young adult novel is about 50,000 words, Neil. So you've written a young adult novella of sorts, all dedicated to your numbers. I need a vacation.

You go. And on that note, honestly, let's wrap this thing up. Let's wrap it up. Thank you so much for spending your morning with us. Toby, thank you for calculating the Neal's numbers of Neal's numbers and giving me that quiz. We hope you all have a great Friday and we'll see you back here on Monday. For any questions, comments or feedback, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at morningbrew.com, especially if a Neal's numbers of the course of the year helped you win trivia. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer and I got one more number. 30 because Emily's birthday is today and she's turning the big 3-0 Emily. Happy birthday, Emily. Raymond Lue is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Eugenwa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup's brain is swirling with numbers. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

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