The Compound and Friends - Dangerous Mansion Shortage Threatens America

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

On this week's episode of The Compound & Friends, Michael Batnick, Leanna Haakons, Doug Boneparth, and Downtown Josh Brown discuss: Carson Group’s billion dollar valuation, name brand hedge funds, bank disruption, the collapse of debt spending, direct indexing, TikTok's crypto ban, the Delta variant, and more! This episode is brought to you by Masterworks. Visit https://www.masterworks.io/compound to skip the 10,000 person waitlist. 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/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah, you look great. You both look great. Look at me. Otherwise, it was back to t-shirts. Is that paisley? Do I have that right or no? I think so. It's definitely a floral pattern. And look at his belt. The color is matte. I know. He's killing it. He's so on brand. Even the Taco Bell hot sauce I got on my pants on the way in.

What kind of trousers are those, sir? It's Amazon 21 dad collection. This is... Adriana Goldsmith? Oh, okay. Looking good, dude. This was from Womanox Summer Camp 1999.

Doug, you're a veteran now. This is three. Two on this show. I crack the year open with you. You're the first person to come back. I'm going to make a point of that. You've ruined it. A come back. I'm going to make a point of that. Okay. You've ruined it.

A repeat guest. That says something. He's a repeat guest. No, I'm the most frequented guest on the Compound Show. So far, you definitely are. Packy's coming back in a couple weeks. He's awesome. He's awesome. Doug, did you grow up on jet skis?

My friends had them. I know Josh is a jet ski now. Dude, I'm the jet ski king. Josh invited me yesterday. Did you go? I brought Mike out. We went. That's the picture today.

One of us fell off. One of us fell off their jet ski. Which one do you think it was? Dude, I didn't fall off. I flew off. Oh, my God. I do it all the time. Are these two-seater, three-seater?

I mean, my friends would have the big three-seaters. I got the big three-seater. Those things are diesel. I'm not putting friends would have the big three-seaters. I got the big three-seater. Those things are diesel. I'm not putting anybody on it. Put the kids on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like, when you're on a three-seater just by yourself, though. I saw Josh flailing around like a seal.

Dude, I was— Or? I think I was doing, like, 60 miles an hour. I hit somebody's wake, and I went off the back. Like, my hands let go. There were no wings. No, not waves, a wake, a very specific wake. And I went flying backwards,

and then Mike was coming in hot right behind me. He'd run you over? There were five of us, and we were like numbers four and five. So I'm on my back in my life jacket. You can't really swim with a life jacket. I don't know if you know that. And you know when a turtle's on my back in my life jacket. You can't really swim with a life jacket. I don't know if you know that. And you know when a turtle's on their back, they can't flip up?

That was Josh. Dude, so it took like- Where's the content? It took a couple of minutes to like swim back to my ski, climb back on, but- Did you hurt? You get your bell rung on that? No, again, this is like a very regular thing for me.

But this time I really flew. So the first time I went out with my friend Matt. You have that one kid with the pickup truck and the jet skis, lives on the farm. Not Josh. Definitely not. Max Arioli. No. The kid is Italian as it gets.

We put the thing out on the intercoastal. It's a bokeh. We're going out there I'm holding the inner tube with the rope to the tube around my like wrapped around my arm bad idea we hit choppy getting out

through the intercoastal out into the water and it was just a choppy day in general I accidentally let go of the tube with the thing wrapped around my arm and it pulled you it got tight it got tight

it could have pulled your arm off. Would have ripped. I still think about it to this day, how lucky I was that I punched him on the back to stop. Otherwise, it just would have torn through it. You know how weak your Twitter game would be with one hand? So slow. So slow.

A lot of spelling errors. It's not even funny, but- I still have the scars. Isn't the intercoastal calm, though? Isn't that the whole point? It was where the intercoastal met the ocean, and it's inherently choppy there. I feel like you guys are 13.

Boys are always 13. Wait, didn't boys grow out of this in their 40s? I guess not. I'm stuck at 13. I'm the youngest that I've ever been when my kids are away at summer camp and I just have to occupy my time. I literally regress. Doing things you wouldn't want them to see you doing. Fifteen years later, a kid I knew literally did lose his arm. Is that how we want to set the tone?

I hope that wasn't being – no, we're going to just redo that. I forgot this is how we get the intro. We're not redoing anything. I'm so excited that you guys are here. I didn't realize that you were friendly. Like I literally – well, I kind of did, but not to the extent. You guys know each other through Instagram, basically, or Twitter? It was social media.

Was it social? I think so. Or it might have been like FinCon or something. I've never been to FinCon. Oh, then it's not. It was social media, and we had coffee down by my office. I've never been to FinCon either. Do we talk about this?

I don't know. I don't think we talked about it. It's a big deal, though. Yeah, it's all the different bloggers and podcasters. I feel like it skews more personal finance than investing, which is probably why I've never been invited. They have a big advisory, like, RIA area. Yeah, they created that part out because they realized, like, they were kind of, I think,

alienated. Morgan Housel probably goes to that, right? Where? What? I don't know if I've ever seen him there. They created that part out because they realized like they were kind of, I think, alienated. Morgan Housel probably goes to that, right? Where? What? I don't know if I've ever seen him there. No, Morgan does not. I just got an email an hour ago. I thought you and Doug would appreciate the recommendation for the Taylor St. Baristas on 33rd.

Taylor Street. Taylor Street. What did I say? A coffee person told me about that recently too. The London company. If I see ST, that's Saint in my street. What street? I don't know why you didn't say street.

Whatever. Why didn't he say street on East 40th? You ever been there? No. No. I have not been to that one. A guy who owns a coffee company and he told me to go to that place because it's a London outpost now that just opened in New York.

I was going to tell you. This does Taylor Street Baristas? They should change their name to Taylor St. Baristas. Why? Because you f***ed up the pronunciation? Yes. Okay.

Meet me on the corner of 40th St. That sounds reasonable. All right, here's Big John. Coming in with three claps. One. See how professional we are, Liana?

You excited for this? I like it. All right. How about Friends? Episode seven. I like it. All right.

Compound and Friends, episode seven. Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by me, Michael Batnick, and our castmates are solely our own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. How do hedge funds invest outside the market

without touching Bitcoin or meme stocks? They invest in blue chip art, an overlooked asset class that is expected to grow by over $900 billion in the next five years. Contemporary art prices rose 14% per year from 1995 through 2020. So it's no surprise that over half of ultra high net worth investors allocate over 10% of their portfolio to art. Thank you. We've partnered with Masterworks to let the Compound and Friends listeners skip their waitlist by going to masterworks.io slash compound today. Welcome to the most exciting, the newest, most popular financial blog in existence. A blog?

Wow. Financial podcast in existence. What are we doing here? Yeah, I still have a blog. That's very anachronistic. Welcome to the hot stuff. This is like, uh, this is the most fun that I have personally ever had creating content. We call it the compound and friends. You guys are the end friends. And the idea was like, we were sick of doing zoom stuff. We were sick of like doing remote things. Let's, let's get together with our friends and hang out. And let's act like it's pre-COVID.

But I guess this is post-COVID now. We're all here. We're all healthy. We're in New York. What do we think? I'm a regular now. Yeah. No, this is your second appearance.

Yeah. Don't screw it up. Mike, how are you feeling today? He only comes to the city for this. Big time. Basically. You're feeling big time today? I have good energy.

Good energy today? Okay. Liana, how are you? I'm feeling good. All right. Back with the boys. Let's do it. We love having you here.

Oh, and John is here. And Duncan Hill is here. Whole gang is together. And here we go. I want to first introduce Liana because you've not been on the show yet. But you are with Blackhawk Financial. Just give us like a quick 30 minute rundown of. All right, so I'll take over the show then.

Give me the elevator pitch of what you're up to these days. So I have a company called Blackhawk Financial. We do marketing and business development, mostly in the alternative space with different funds. And a few years ago, I wrote a book called Young, Fun and Financially Free, which is. We have it here, Did you see it?

Yeah, I did actually. And it's primarily a millennial book, Money 101s, Everything Spending, Saving, to Investing. And that's what sort of brought me into the media and social media space. I'm mostly on Instagram, but on Twitter a little bit. I started off more on Twitter, but now I do a lot more graphically entertaining. Your stuff is funny. Thank you. I like the memes, entertaining stuff, teaching people about money and investing. And yeah, that's sort of how I got to meet Doug and you guys is through the media world and helping educate young people. Welcome to the compound. We're going to start with some RIA stuff. I had to start with this because I feel like it's a big deal on a lot of levels.

We're going to congratulate Ron Carson. Big time. So basically what's happening here is he had a private equity firm that he had sold 29% of his business to five years ago. Longridge. Right. So they had $6.5 billion under management when they sold the stake. Right. So they had six and a half billion under management when they sold the stake. And it looks like the stake has been resold published and did the calculation in their head of their own AUM, what the multiple was, and had like a nice daydream. Did you not?

Oh, 100%. Of course. We're good. When I say every, myself included. Is that what you did? Yeah, I'm done. I sold to, myself included. Is that what you did? Yeah, I'm done. I sold to McKinsey. You reached out to the investment bank mentioned in the story. Yeah, I reached out to Payne Capital and struck a deal.

But most firms do not have the scale that Carson has. Right. So we did the math. What did we say? The multiple is like 6% of his assets. Yeah. But, but there's a huge, but the, but is he has two other business lines that do not show up in the AUM calculation.

Correct. He does. How much value are those business lines to Bain? I don't know if they're recurring, I guess $1 is as good as another dollar. Well, I think that's what makes the valuation of mystery here is, you know, Ron. And I think for anyone like a Ron, you know, a Rick Edelman, the scale, like you said, I would love to take a look at,

you know, the numbers, what's under that hood there to really dive into it. I would simply be like, okay, what multiple of my revenue would I get? Because that's really all there is. Big dogs like this. There are maybe 10 companies in our industry,

18,000 RIAs. There are maybe 10 companies in our industry. There are 18,000 RIAs. There are maybe 10 of them that could potentially have a value of a billion dollars in the near term. So it's a very unique asset. Private equity loves our space because it's annually recurring revenue. Hold up. Budget based on it. Would you just get an offer? I just got hot off the press. I actually did. On the way in. I'm not making this up. Budget based on it. I, I, would you just get an offer? I just got hot off the press.

I actually did on the way in. I'm not making this up on the way in driving in today. I get a call from someone who says they're at, you know, they were literally seeing if I wanted to sell the practice. I'm not kidding. It was a RIA. It was a PE backed RIA aggregator,

right? I mean, that's like telling me you got a robo call. Listen, dude, listen, do you get gassed up from that? Listen, it's like telling me you got a robocall. Listen. Dude. Listen. Do you get gassed up from that? Listen.

It's a big deal. I'm not big time like you. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. I'm like this guy over here. I asked them. I'll match that offer. I asked them.

I knew they wouldn't necessarily give me the right answer. I asked them, what multiple are you giving on the target practices you want? We always operate under like two, you know, two to three. They said five to nine, depending on five to nine, what?

Uh, five to nine, um, revenue. So, wow. Goldman, which is insanity.

You're going to bring up, uh, United Capital right now. So Goldman paid, uh, what did they pay? Uh, $750,000.

Yeah. When United Capital was $25 billion. What would it be worth today? So they paid $750,000. I mean, over a billion then. Probably two. Maybe two. Everything's only gone in one direction. So I don't really know what to make of it

other than I really wanted to ask. I'm like, what are you paying just on gross revenue? And it was five to nine, which seemed astronomical to me. I don't know how you- The difference is they're keeping Ron Carson. He's 56 years old. This guy's got like 20 good years in him as a business leader, whereas Goldman bought the whole thing. They didn't like buy a stake in it.

They took it. They took it. So that's two different things. And then what would you even do? How old are you? 36. What would you do if you sold your firm today, even for a big number? Would you tweet memes?

The dream is to probably stop tweeting. Coffee shop in the morning, bar, like a speakeasy in the evening in my town. All right. Liana, you get a bid for Blackhawk Financial tomorrow. Then what? Honestly, this one is kind of out of my space because I'm not an RAA. Not yet. Not, but not yet. But I've been told many a times I probably should be.

I bet you have. But I mean, I guess it's only natural for us to be seeing more and more of this with money market share moving from the brokerage side into independent. But how many deals of these are we seeing? Like, again, I'm not that caught up on seeing these types of transactions, but is this something that's really common for you guys now in the RIA space? Not this big. The reason we're talking about it is the size. Yeah, not this big, but, I mean.

It's happening. A lot of it is being driven by just people needing an out to retire. Yeah. I think the smaller people go to the Focus Financials of the world. Focus Financials probably doing a deal a week. Yeah. They're probably doing 50 deals a year. They're like the Tiger Global of the world. Focus Financials probably doing a deal a week. Yeah. They're probably doing 50 deals a year. They're like the Tiger Global of our space.

That's the most voluminous way to do that. If you're like a sole prop or an ensemble practice, you could probably walk right in there. So I got a call like three months ago from a guy that has not really been nice to me publicly, like giving quotes to reporters about me on stories that nobody even asked me for a quote just doesn't like you but i ended up speaking to him it's fine he doesn't dislike me he just like was making a name for himself by by i guess referencing me yeah which is okay it happens um but he just got like a big check from a private equity firm and they told him take this money go buy people happening, I think, all over the country.

So he calls me up. He's like, listen, we have amazing back office and we have great marketing and we have in-house compliance. And I'm like, dude, I appreciate it. We built all that. What do I need you for? That's the standard line, though. They want to give you-

Which makes sense if you haven't built it. I think the majority of people, again, I would like to think really neat operations here. But I'm under the impression that most advisors who are the single, solo, or ensemble, they're 60-something. What's the average advisor? They're not going to build it, right. They haven't built it or they haven't built it up enough to even be in a position – I think they've got a lot of work ahead of them to refurbish what they currently have into modern times. Like they're working, they got paper in the office. Right. I think there's, I think there's just going to be this 10 year run of more roll-ups, more, there are too many firms. We all know that. Like it's not a secret.

I feel like we're in like year four, at least. I think it's a demographics thing. We're young. There's been going on. Year four of takeovers? Yeah. Like year 10. There's been, on. You're four of takeovers? Yeah. Like you're 10. There's been, yeah, it's been happening for a while. This is, we're young. If you're 60 to 70 and you haven't created a succession plan yet, you're getting out here. Thank you. I try to tell that to Barry every day. All right. No, Barry's, Barry's been very good about that. Okay. Let's

pivot because we have a hedge fund expert in house or an alternatives expert in house. I'm not obviously an expert on the space, but I watch it closely. I'm fascinated by it. It looks like this is a good year for the typical hedge fund, but it's a really shitty year for the famous hedge funds, at least based on my read of this. So this is Bloomberg. Despite the single digit returns of many large investors, the industry overall saw some of the strongest first-half gains in years.

Hedge Fund Research's fund-weighted composite index was up 10% in the first six months of 2021, while its equity index surged 12.7%. So not bad, still trailing the S&P 500, but most of these firms are trying to do something very, very different from the S&P 500. But then you have a lot of famous firms that are struggling. Liana, what'd you take away from this? I think a lot of what this is about is sort of comparing apples to oranges. Like I don't really think in a lot of this particular article, it's saying, you know, the differences between the performance of 2020 and 2021 first half so far. But I mean, the average performance of hedge funds overall since 2009 has not been higher at all since 2020. And so we don't really get those opportunities like we did March last year very often for them to leverage and take advantage of. So it's kind of, it doesn't really make sense to compare like D1 Capital having 50%

in 2020 to their 4% in the first half of 2021. I would take that to a year. Like, if I could have 2020, I could live with what they're doing in 2021. For sure. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's a different environment this year. So again, the 2020 returns, they haven't seen them since 2009, which is kind of cool. But to compare it to first half of 2021, it's just not the same thing. So 2009 was like a very similar year to, I guess, 2020. Yeah, there's that opportunity there, right? Right.

The market like completely buckling in the first quarter. And then you spend the whole year coming back. So if you were bold and you did a lot of buying in the first quarter, you had a great year. Yeah. I mean, if only I wasn't graduating college in 2009. Right. It would have been great.

I did great in 2020 as well, but it's a totally different story this year. I think it's still weird to talk about hedge funds as an asset class. It would be like saying the mutual fund industry had a good or bad year and you're just lumping in commodities and bonds and stocks yeah because they're all different strategies different assets within them they're breaking that out though yeah but even still like a lot of i mean you could talk to the self-reporting nature of all a lot of these indexes like do they really reflect the average hedge fund they don't because the ones that leave drop out of the index the ones the hedge funds that close drop out of

the index they stop reporting and so closed drop out of the index. They stopped reporting. And so their track records are gone too and they were probably shitty track records. So probably the experience of the average hedge fund might be even worse. This thing with 0.72

is worth getting into. So they basically lost $500 million backing Plotkin at the firm that was blown up by gamestop and you just think about how many people made money trading like meme stocks and stuff this year and i was just thinking like only this is the only business on earth where the average person who knows absolutely nothing even though we're only talking about six months, the first half of this year,

could be doing that well and Steve Cohen could be having this bad of a year. Not that it's catastrophic for them, they'll be fine. But like, can you imagine like three guys that have never picked up a hammer or a nail building a house as well as somebody who's been building homes for 25 years? That's why we trade because there's always a way.

This also seems like a very short-sighted headline in that, you know, I view it, I kind of view it like this. Cohen maybe had, you know, averaged down his investment in Melvin Capital. That's what he did. Right. And so he's trailing because of a short-term loss when Melvin Capital's talent, you know, seeps talent in terms of what they do. And I think potentially long-term, it's probably a great decision for him to, you know, seeps talent in terms of what they do. And I think potentially long-term,

it's probably a great decision for him to, you know, take a $500 whack to, you know, we'll find out. Well, even with the loss, he's still up 5X of when he got the stake in it 2014. How much money, how much outside capital does he have versus like his own money in that thing?

Oh, like how much is he seeding other uh firms with i think all of them are doing a lot of that because it's hard to keep somebody who's like a like a very hot portfolio manager they're going to want to go out on their own so you either can say that's my competitor or you can say here's 200 million dollars i'm seeding you you know so i think i think there's a ton of that. You saw Julian Robertson doing that for decades. It looks like Ken Griffin is down 3% from the $2 billion he had to give Melvin Capital. That doesn't sound so bad. 3%?

Why are we even talking about this? Yeah. They're going to make money. 3%. That's what I think. A lot of the stuff I found in this particular article was like headline flashy, but really does this have any real impact on what they're doing or their overall performance year to year, decade to decade?

Are you telling me that there was an article that didn't have relevance? I find that hard to believe. For a headline? Like just a flashy headline with a bunch of- They break it out. The macro funds had trouble this year because you had this huge run in the 10-year treasury. And it was up 83 basis points in the first. It was up 100% at one point on the year.

And now it's only up 40-something percent. So that's a whipsaw. Whoa, what did you just say? Did you just say the 10-year was up 40% and now it's? It's up 40% year to date. At one point, it was up 96%. We don't do that here. What, we don't do percentages on percentages?

Yeah, I thought I heard you. All right, we'll go back to basis points. The 10 years surged 83 basis points in the first quarter, but then it didn't last. So that's a whipsaw. Growth versus value was a whipsaw, right? They ran the value stocks up, and now that's over. Place done.

Growth came back. All right. That's all I got on this. I found it interesting. They look at the biggest funds. Third Point seems to be doing great. They always seem to be doing great. But then a lot of these really well-known funds are back to low single-digit returns, 3%, 4%.

And it's not been a tough year to make money, to be honest. These headlines are how you just provoke the Redditors. I don't want to make anybody mad. And the meme. No, not you. I just mean like the headlines. It's like how you get the meme stonkers all riled up and get them back. I feel like the press just wants that story back because it was so sensational.

Liana, what's the biggest misunderstanding about alternatives that you hear when people in the media, myself included, are talking about these funds or these strategies? I would say that, sure, they are risky, but I wouldn't say that investing in a long-term manager with a wonderful track record of performance is any riskier than giving your money to a financial advisor. Right. Well, it depends on what they say they're going to do with it. Yeah, of course. So, okay. And how much you actually, you know, even with your, with your RIA, like, are you actually watching what this guy's doing or this woman is doing? How often do you look at your own portfolio? How often are you doing reviews? So I would say that it's not necessarily

any riskier depending on who you're putting your money with. So you feel like it's, you feel like it's within the competence of most people to even be able to vet a hedge fund manager? Or mostly you have to count on just getting a little bit lucky with who you pick? I think most people decide to make alternative investing decisions based on their peers. And I know this guy, I know this guy, but a lot of people do that with their financial advisors as well.

Oh, I agree. And if you're not an expert in the industry in any way, it's going to be hard for you to vet an RA in the same way. I agree. And then maybe the other issue with that is if you're betting on the biggest winners, I mean, this is assuming you have access to the best hedge funds and almost nobody does. But let's say you do and you have this whole process and you work with consultants, et cetera. Oftentimes you buy somebody after they were the number one performer of the year. Like that was it. Yeah. Like they often, there's a thing that we kind of say in the industry too, like often your first fund is your best fund. So if you can find an emerging manager or a manager that's gone out on their own to start their own fund and you

somehow find out about their launch through your other high net worth investor friends, that might be a great opportunity to go in on someone's first fund because they do usually say that that's when they perform the best. So then you probably have to do like five of them. Yeah, because it's always going to be the flagship fund that takes off for the first five to 10 years. And, you know, that's what everybody gets hyped about. But then they start building funds around that and the firm grows,

but you're not necessarily going to get the same returns as whatever the breakout fund was. Right. Then they start trading natural gas futures and it's all over. Did you see in this article though, I mean, not surprising, but about Impala and Glenview,

their commodities and resource-based hedge fund. And then the other Glenview is healthcare-based hedge fund. Like those returns are insane, but obviously, you know, completely makes sense given what commodity prices are doing and how people are investing in, relying in, talking about everything to do with healthcare at the same time.

So Impala, 49% year-to-date. Yeah, that's wild. Can't possibly think that that's going to repeat. No. Like you just had oil price go from zero to 75? Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, again, nature of the market and commodity price is what they're doing right now.

But it's still pretty crazy to see. Right. I guess if you have them as part of your portfolio, you can say, see how smart I was? Yeah. That's what we all do, isn't it? All right. Scott Galloway, 80s test. This is one of the funniest things.

I never heard this before. I wonder if he made it up. He's talking about disruption to banks, which I want to get into with you guys. But this is the 80s test. This is Scott. Put yourself smack dab in the center of the store, product, or service. Close your eyes. Spin around three times.

Open your eyes. And ask if you'd know within five seconds that you were not in 1985. Theaters, grocery stores, gas stations, dry cleaners, university classes, doctor's offices, and banks still feel as though you can run into Ally Sheedy or the Bengals. Is that reference? You're too young for that reference. I did make a note. I don't know who Ally Sheedy or the Bengals is. but this kind of, you know, theaters, I, you know, I went

to a theater or two when I grew up. I only got the bangles reference. You got the bangles reference. Okay. You're, you're right on the, on the tail end of who should even know what that is. Okay. So yes, most bank branches you walk into, if you took the eighties test, you would have no idea what year it is. And so what he's pointing out is those are the types of businesses that are most ripe for disruption. Are either of you guys using neobanks? I know you are using Marcus. Is that what you're saying, a neobank?

I wouldn't consider that. No, it's a bank bank. It's a bank. Well, it's connected to Goldman Sachs. Would you put your money in an app? Yeah, I don't have a problem with adopting early technology. I would avoid Chime apparently, which we'll get to. But I still use traditional banks.

So Galloway said it's hard to imagine an industry more ripe for disruption than the business of money. And man, is he right. Yeah. John, throw this chart up. So we've got FinTech just raised $30 billion. One out of every five venture dollars in Q2 went into FinTech. This is remarkable. We went to, we went to, was it like a Riskalyze conference in 2014? It's like a FinTech conference. Benzinga.

Benzinga. That's right. And I thought like, this is a joke. Like what are the, what is this Robinhood? What is this company? And that was like many hundreds of billions of dollars ago for FinTech funding. Right. And I got to say, I am, I'm thrilled with this because I am trying to refinance my home

for the last six months. And it's an absolute nightmare. Like top to bottom. Really? They're asking me about specific charges and bank transfers and not like giant amounts, but like, oh, I see you went out to dinner last Thursday. I'm like, why is that relevant?

I've been, I saw, I called my broker. I said, I kind of. This is in the middle of a loan. I'm making up the, I'm making up the dinner part. But other than that, like we should be. If you moved a thousand dollars from your account on a wire out, they'll ask about that. So I called him. I said, honestly, I feel like the bank is like trying to lose me as a customer.

And if you ask me, like, I'm done. I'm not giving you any more documents. I've given you the same documents now three times. I'm ready to close. You should have been ready to close four months ago. This is ridiculous. So I guess they just don't prioritize refi. Obviously, the business is booming.

They want to do mortgage originations more than refi. I get it. Fine. But there is like plenty of room for a company to come in and just kick the shit out of banks. But can you get that size of a refinance on an app so much easier? Yeah. You really think you can? I really do.

So why didn't you? I'm not saying I can today. Okay. I don't know that it's that simple. You should be able to. And I don't want to – I've never dealt with this company, so I won't even plug it. But there are companies that do this. And I don't want to, I've never dealt with this company, so I won't even plug it, but there are companies that do this.

I refied in the middle of the, somewhere in the middle of the pandemic, former months is what I remember. So it had to have been July or August or September. And I. You and everyone else. Yeah, and the whole world. And I went with guaranteed rate. I've heard of them. I never really, you know, had any experience.

It wasn't an app, but their portal and their tech clearly where they made investment, I would have approached it just like you did. Extremely cynical, ready to be questioned on every little thing. Business owner, giant pain in the ass. Giant pain in the ass. Show me everything. And it was with that, having said that,

it was actually smooth. To my surprise. I had it nicely organized because I knew what was coming my way and we're financial professionals. But even then, it was smoother than when we first bought the house. Well, this was like going to a proctologist. It's six months and I'm still not done. I'd be very frustrated. Do you think that they might, well, I guess two things. A lot of different processes for different things have been delayed just due to COVID and people working from home.

These are like big bank employees that are maybe not necessarily working the hours they should. But do you think that maybe they're making it difficult because they're trying to deter people from doing it? From what I'm told, they're just insanely backed up. They don't have the staff for this. I think it's volume related. So I think that's all it is. But nevertheless, just like – I'm like, oh, Robin, I need your paychecks again. She's like, again?

I feel like it's the fourth time. But that's the problem though. They don't have the people for this. It's too much manual, not enough automated. That's – yeah. Which is what the fintech disruption is about. Like why are these subjective decisions? What are they based on?

They keep asking me for the same stuff. I'm like, you have my May statement. I gave it to you last time. And if this was, if technology like intervened, they would already know that they already have it. So. Well, that is the frustration with the traditional banking system and why millennials and people in the underbanked and unbanked communities don't necessarily, it's more so than convenience and expense and all the minimum balance things that go along with using traditional banks is the distrust of the banking system. So that's why a lot of younger people and, yeah, those – the unbanked communities, they would prefer to use something like Cash App or Ally or – they want to use something that's young and cool and seems transparent which we have we don't necessarily know yet except for it looks like chime is going down pretty like hot and heavy right now but you know that's why a lot of people the these neo banks or challenger banks is appealing to them so nobody wants nobody wants these younger people as customers um which is the opportunity for the

fintechs like the only people that want them are people that are going to sell them a horrible insurance policy or a horrible credit card. Like they're just not coveted by the old banks. So that's the- I just think they're not motivated to revamp. Yeah, these are a hundred plus year old banks, some of them technology.

Like how old is the tech? Like my brother actually does technology for a large financial firm and- Probably 20 years old at least. Oh, I broke down 40 years old, 30 how old is the tech? Like my brother actually does technology for a large financial firm. And- Probably 20 years old at least. Oh, I broke down 40 years old, 30 year old technology. It is so hard and so expensive. What they do is they just put Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid. You know, like-

Yeah, they don't rip anything out. They build on top of it. Their exchange server links to a domino server. Remember Lotus, like one, two, three? I mean, I know I'm young, but I'm old enough to know the way it worked. And they just build pipe and connect pipe, pipe, pipe. What are you going to do?

Tell a $40 billion company, hey, all of your tech needs to be completely destroyed and built back up. Yeah, go tell that to the shareholders as you go to make a $4 billion investment in tech and lose 20 cents per share. I almost don't think that would cost them. Like if they wanted to be,

PayPal's $300 billion, $300 a share now. Yeah. It's bigger than all of these companies. But I feel like that was built in the new era, not like the old tech era. Yes, but they have never been penalized by shareholders for making big investments. It's not a hugely profitable company. Yeah, but you can't compare that to Wells Fargo. Because the fintechs are valued more as tech companies than they are as banks, right?

fargo because the fintechs are valued more as tech companies than they are as banks right well i almost feel like there's room for one of these banks to say we're not focused on profitability over the next five years we're focused on global domination of but that's what they're unwilling and i kind of feel like that's where like marcus comes into it like goldman's doing something different to try to bring that market into eventually the wealth transfer the marcus clients become the goldman clients and like that's the smart way to do it from a bank perspective if goldman if goldman They bring that market into eventually the wealth transfer. The Marcus clients become the Goldman clients. And like that's the smart way to do it from a bank perspective. If Goldman is able to show user growth with Marcus that's sufficiently fast enough user growth, nobody would pay attention to the amount they're investing. Like the story would just be users.

I'm shocked that Marcus is not increasing their rate a little bit and using that as like a loss leader. Like everyone else is giving you 70 basis points. We'll give you 110, come here and they'll monetize them elsewhere. That's what first Republic bank does. But on the student loan refinance side, it has been the biggest game changer for my household and my clients bar none loss leader, give you a rate that's stupidly below even the SOFIs and common bonds of the world. You can't compete against them. And they're going to cross-sell and wallets share you real good.

And you know what? I went out to lunch with the VP. I'm like, you're not going to get me. He's like, yeah, of course, you're an advisor. But you've already referred how many clients to us? And we love you for it. And I'm just like, you guys are genius. Are you in their commercials yet?

Not yet. After this show. 25% of US households are either unbanked or underbanked. Half the nation's unbanked households say they don't have enough money to meet the minimum balance requirements. 34% say bank fees are too high. And if you're trying to get a mortgage,

you better hope the house isn't cheap. Meaning like nobody wants these small transactions, small accounts. They're not marketing to try to get a mortgage, you better hope the house isn't cheap. Meaning like nobody wants these small transactions, small accounts. They're not marketing to try to get them. So if you built an app, that's your audience. And then the idea is you get really good serving that audience and you move upstream, which someone's going to do and shock everybody. It's an opportunity. So we saw Robinhood do that on the brokerage side.

Someone will do that successfully. Maybe somebody already is. So what is going on? Cash App. I would say Cash App is the one that's primarily in that space. And they're helping people do transactions with Bitcoin. And the king of that is Tyrone Ross. You know.

My good friend, our good friend. Wait, does he like – And you guys got to have him on the show because he's like – he's all over this. Tyrone, come here every day. We'll do the show. We'll flip the mics on. Is he cash app yeah so he loves it yeah and so he he's a big proponent of it because he talks about like the big b versus little b little b being the bitcoin big b being the blockchain and giving people that are unbanked who don't meet minimum

balance requirements and all you know don't have a great historical credit line or credit record and all of that. Or no credit record. Yeah, and allowing them to be able to transact with family and friends without having to go to check cashing and saving all those fees. So I really think, yeah,

Cash App is doing a huge service to that community. We're a Venmo household. Yeah. I don't know why. Not a Cash App household. Same here, but only because I think it was... I have both apps, but first of all, I paid one person once in Cash App. I think it was Venmo, Verizon, and Cash App household. Same here, but only because I think it was... I have both apps, but first remember, I paid one person

once in Cash App. I think it was Venmo, Verizon, and Cash App is AT&T. I wanted to actually... I wanted to try their Zelle, right? That's what the bank's version of it is. Zelle is owned by a consortium of the banks. It was like their competitive Venmo. Nobody's Zelling anybody anything. I only use Zelle.

Really? I've used it twice. Don't ever Zelle me. But the difference with that, though, is because Cash App, you can buy Bitcoin directly, and you can use it for exchange between family and friends. You can't do that on Venmo. And it's a digital wallet, too. Yeah, and it's a digital wallet. It has secure storage.

So, I mean, I don't need to go down the crypto rabbit hole right now, but that's where Cash App has a huge advantage. PayPal is now involved in Bitcoin. Yeah, but you don't get it. They bought some for their balance sheet. They're letting you do something with it. First thing I did was try and buy cryptocurrency on all the platforms just to see how they were doing it.

I thought that could have been a competitive advantage for the companies. PayPal was very easy, but you don't get a digital wallet. You have to transact in their ecosystem. And then you got Jack out there with Cash App. Why do you want the digital wallet? Why does it matter? You can't transfer your Bitcoin outside of PayPal.

So just to be able to hold Bitcoin in it. Yeah, just if you want to hold the asset. Which isn't, you know, you just want to do it. It's fine. It's super easy. Are you paying people for things in Bitcoin or not yet? Not yet. Are you?

No. Would you accept Bitcoin for services rendered in any way, shape, or form? I have no interest in doing that. Maybe not today. Right, maybe someday today right maybe someday yeah someday i wouldn't give my bitcoin to someone that's the other thing i'm long bitcoin i'm not trading it why why would you do that is the i agree with you you're trading away the fantasy

that it's going to go to a million i need my fantasy desperate desperately like i don't know the difference the split like for robinhood for. I don't know what their asset split is between people that are using it for like day-to-day banking and investing versus crypto. Do you guys know? What, Robinhood? Yeah, Robinhood split is between like cash transactions and crypto transactions. Oh, I would say that it's crypto trading. Yeah. I don't even think, like.

I saw the Dogecoin stat was like 8% did you post that I forget what it was I think it was a third of their crypto revenue was from Doge which is yeah let's keep it moving we want to talk about Chime or no yeah what the f*** is going on at Chime what's wrong with these people they sound like criminals

I get probably 15 different DMs a day on Instagram with fake chime. Fake chime. Wow. What's it called? Invitations to open an account. So that's when I was reading this, I was thinking a lot of these complaints, I would assume,

are consumers that open an account through someone else that's a fake chime, not actually chime. Let's set this up. And they just haven't made it through all the complaints yet because Vero and Chime I get consistently. And the fake Vero and Chime are always commenting on. So here's what's going on. Chime – this is ProPublica. Chime, a neobank serving millions, is racking up complaints from users who can't access their cash. The company says it's cracking down on an extraordinary surge in fraudulent deposits.

That's little consolation to customers caught in the fray. So, Liana, that's what you're saying? Yeah, and so I think that, you know, of course there's probably have been some accounts that have been closed for fraudulent reasons or frozen until Chime can figure out, like, you know, verify the person's identity or whatever's going on in the source of the assets.

But I think a lot of this is probably consumers that have opened up Chime looking like, I'll get messages from Chime.one, Chime hello, good morning, Chime. All the end, it shows the Chime logo. Yeah, and so people are sending links to people on Instagram or Twitter, wherever, inviting them to get free $100 when you open a Chime account. Today, I get 50 of them a day. Why do they have so many impersonators?

I don't know. It's Chime and Vero that I get all the time. It must have something to do with the onboarding process. It being really easy to open a fake account or share an account with somebody else. But so, all right. So this gets back to this idea that like banks have thousands of employees. They have thousands of employees just working on things like impersonations and fraud and fraud protection. Chime doesn't have a workforce like that.

So when they have an issue and they need to lock down accounts, they're doing that in an automated way, probably across the board. And then it's going to take them a long time to go through, okay, this is real, this is fake, this is fake. So look at this, you go to their website and it says Chime, banking that has your back.

LOL. And then on the bottom it Chime, banking that has your back. LOL. And then on the bottom it says – Has a knife in your back. Like literally it says, Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Well, what is the appeal of Chime to begin with? No overdraft fees. Do I have that right? Yeah.

Is that the whole story? Yeah. I'm on their – sorry. I got caught up on their Instagram page to see if it was any good. Doug, while you're looking for that, listen to this stat. Of the nine... What? Of the nine... Were you about to say something? Get paid early, online

banking, fee-free overdraft, no hidden fees, pay anyone mobile banking. That's like the grand pooh-pah of it all. This is the definition of you are the product, right? Yes. So, of the 920 complaints filed about Chime, 197 were tagged as involving a closed account.

Meaning they're closing people's accounts, which doesn't sound great. Wells Fargo by comparison. Now Wells is like the poster child for bank complaints. Wells has six times as many customers. They have 317 complaints. 317 versus 920 for Chime. What are they doing? Something's going very wrong there.

Yeah. If that's not a publicly traded company. But I think they were talking to a SPAC or – Well, they were the biggest before Robin – outside of Robinhood, they're the biggest non-public fintech company. But they were probably on the runway to come public. I'm sure they still are. They probably still are. What's the difference if they pay a 40 million dollar fine yeah what's the if you're gonna come public worth 20 billion out of the shoot who cares yeah i think that last

last they were at 15 so i almost feel like that's a rite of passage for a fintech coming public it's like how horrendous was your scandal yeah and did you survive it and no publicity is bad publicity well like robin hood when they shut down trading and stuff with the meme stocks, people lost their shit over that. They had five days worth of market cycle, wall to wall, talking about Robinhood. Gained six million customers during that time. Did they really? Yeah, while everyone thought everyone's up in arms,

they probably brought in more clientele than before. I probably said something smart-assy. I don't tweet anymore. I tweeted this in my head. If Robinhood Republic, like how much would it be down? You've been dead wrong. The trade is by last thing I'll say is I watched this really weird TV channel called the wealth of entertainment. It's like dream cruises and five star vacations. I fall asleep to this stuff every night. Every commercial is a FinTech back to back FinTech commercial, including Dave, including Chime,

one after another. So it's kind of weird that we're talking, I mean, it's just that, and the way they advertise their product is definitely downstream. Like I got my paycheck early, so, you know, I could buy XYZ. And it wasn't even like buy food.

It was like, so my kid could get candy. I was like, what? There are too many, by the what? There are too many of these and they're all raising boatloads of money. They're going to rip each other to shreds. $30 billion, that latest funding. I have no idea what the differentiator is when I watch like three of these commercials back to back.

It's the same thing. Can I sum things up on FinTech as basically saying the only thing that matters in the end is cost to acquire a customer. And the more war chests that these companies amass through SPACs or IPOs, the more expensive it's going to be to

acquire a customer. These are customers who are basically paying you nothing. I hope you're able to exploit these people. There's $70 trillion of wealth transfer in the pipeline, so that's what they're all targeting eventually, the millennials. That's exactly right. Mike, what's $70 trillion of wealth transfer in the pipeline. So that's what they're all targeting eventually, the millennials, right? That's exactly right. All right, Mike, what's going on with this?

Debt payments collapsing as a percentage of earnings. It sounds like it's good news. It is good news. So Robert Burgess tweeted. We have this chart. The percentage of earnings that U.S. households are spending on debt payments has collapsed. This is in percentage terms right here? These debt payments are, yep.

These debt payments are obviously first and foremost your house, your car, your student loans, whatever other loans you're taking out. And this is good news. There's more money for the economy. So the money that people are not spending on debt service, they are able to gift Netflix, right? Amongst other streaming services, Paramount Plus. They're able to buy cars. They're able to... I'm reading this as a reduction in debt service.

Yeah, it's a good thing. Well, this is 13%. So households... Pre-crisis, pre-crisis. Pre-crisis, households were spending 13% of their income, percentage of their income to pay – either pay off debt or make the interest payments on debt. And now that's down to 8%. Is that because they now have less debt that they need to service or they're just paying less? No, they got cash to knock out some of these debts.

They don't even exist anymore. Yeah, that's what I equated this to is that they have less credit card debt and they paid it off. That's a part of it. But the card rates didn't fall. What if they don't and they're just spending more money? Am I getting something fundamentally wrong here? I think they're going to start doing that and then this is going to flip. Well, it's also mortgage rates.

The average mortgage rate is 3.25%. Fair enough. What is it down from now? I mean – Four? What was the mortgage rate in 2019? Four and a half? That's a good rate.

That's a significant savings. Significant. So on a $100,000 mortgage loan coming down a point and a half, how much are you saving per month if you're that household that was able to refinance? A lot. That's a decent amount. A lot. Okay. I'm reading too far into it, but that little kick up there before that big drop,

I would imagine, you know, that's COVID right there, right? A little boom, dip, right? So it picked up because people were taking money they were getting and throwing it at their debt. All right, meanwhile, stop nitpicking charts. Meanwhile, Doug. Twice. Palm Beach is running out of mansions for sale.

I bought them all. There you go. Yo, the headline for this is dangerous mansion shortage threatens America. That's amazing. What will the millionaires and billionaires do? Why is there a shortage of mansions in Palm Beach? Because there's only so many. These people won't die on time.

There's only 25 for sale. Go ahead. BlackRock bought them all at a 20% premium. That's why. The average price is $11.7 billion. Crisis. $11.7 million. That's insane.

Insanity. Price per square foot in Palm Beach is the same as Manhattan. I found that was the only part of all this that I found shocking. Which what? The square foot per square foot price is almost comparable to Manhattan. I found that was the only part of all this that I found shocking. Which what? The square foot per square foot price is almost comparable to Manhattan. I mean, that's... 1500 to 1545.

That, I was pretty shocked. Yeah. So, like... What's Palm Beach like? Who lives there? Melvin Capital. That's who lives there? And Donald Trump.

Yeah, Steve Cohen. I've only been there, like, to go out to dinner or whatever. I mean, Star Island? I didn't spend any time there. I mean, they got a lot of retirees. Here's what I think. To your point earlier about interest rates going down.

I mean, if you're flooded with money, if you're just crazy rich, you go scoop up real estate here and leverage it for free. Right? So I guess like— Do you think the person that buys an $11.7 million Palm Beach home was waiting for interest rates to fall? Yes. You really do? No, I just felt that they viewed it as an opportunity to go buy it or upgrade it or do something with their capital. They traded it up from the $8 million house.

No, I just think they're that much more wealthy coming out of the pandemic now. Here's an interesting – How much money did they make? So my opinion is this has nothing to do with mortgage rates. No. This is stock market wealth. Correct. Or people that own other properties. The appreciation on that- To support Josh's view, I think 30% of all houses were bought with cash. Of the mansions you're talking about? No, no. Just in general? I don't know if this was the last month or two months ago, but 30%.

If you had $100 million invested, someone who would be buying an 11-minute home, you have $189 million at the end of 2020. Right, you have $100 million in stocks. Go buy your second mansion. And you're taking loans against that from Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, whatever. And that's what you're buying it with. You're not waiting for a 30-year jumbo, jumbo, jumbo mortgage to tick down in price. No, that was silly of me.

The portfolio going from there. It's silly in a good way. Yeah, come on. I walk back things I say all the time. Well, they're probably even getting a better rate on a collateralized loan against their portfolio than even a mortgage rate. They're getting free money from the bank.

So the numbers across the US, cash purchases were 30% of home sales over the same period. So highest since 2015. All right. Scott Schleifer, a partner at Tiger Global Management, bought $122.7 million mansion in Palm Beach in February, marking the highest price ever paid for a property in there.

What do you do with that? He paid for it with Chime Stock. Do you buy that thinking you're going to sell it for $180 million in five years? What are you literally doing? They don't care. You're living for free. No, but seriously, $122 million. No, seriously. You're going to live there, and then you're going to sell it.

You might make money. You're not going to lose money. You're buying to sell it. What are your taxes on that property? $5 million a year? I would like to know what property that is. What is the cost of upkeep? Like, all kidding aside, do you make a bill?

You have to make, what's that address? I'll zillow it. They didn't put the address. How much does it cost to staff? Like just take a guess. That thing's bigger than the breakers is what that is. What would you guess? The staff alone, a million.

A million dollars a year. If you have a staff of cleaning people calm that's like 90 grand to pop i honestly think that a lot of well with specific to palm beach and anywhere else in florida i think it's an acceleration of baby boomer retirement out of higher tax states and to them the comparison that they're saving in taxes of not living in new york or california anymore why would you even care how much your mansion costs per year in maintenance? You're saving X times more than that in your taxes you're not paying anymore. You're not paying New York State tax.

You're not paying New York City tax. If you moved your whole firm out of there, like a lot of hedge funds did, you have significant savings across the board. You don't care about the gardeners. But anyway, this mansion shortage, this mansion shortage, it can't continue. We got to build more mansions. This is completely unsustainable. Where's my mansion?

I've never even been to Palm Beach. It's North Ocean Boulevard is Billionaire's Row. But it's old too, right? Outside of the billionaires, it's an old... No young cats are like, you know...

Nobody's partying there. Liana, that's why you haven't been there. I know. I was actually, I was looking at places there last year, but then everyone said

you're going to be like 30 years younger than everyone. And you're going to be single forever. They're going to think you're the babysitter. Yeah, exactly. This is 72-year-olds with their Robert Graham shirts that are just copped at Nordstrom. The Robert Graham shirt is the one with the cuff that turns up and it's a different pattern? I had one. Yeah, they're awesome.

Those are super cute. Oh, that's nice. I see a lot of that when I go out to dinner. That's a big like 50-something year old. That's got to be big in Long Island too

in that crowd. But it's like a generation older than me. Yes, correct. You know when you turn the cup up and it's like let's say the shirt is striped.

It's like polka dots underneath the cup. Yeah, so it's got like another cut. Oh, look at that. He has crowns. But that's not Robert Graham. And skulls.

Okay. That was custom made for you. Correct. This is very judgmental of me, but to me, that's such a turn off. What? Not that I'm, like, looking for men, but, like. Yeah, oh, no. I'm done with a guy.

I like it. Doug, I like it. Thank you. Thank you. Doug, you look handsome. Appreciate it. Yeah, you see what's on the inside of this T-shirt? Sweat stains?

Your deodorant? All right. Vanguard's getting into direct indexing. We don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but I want to take a little bit of a victory lap. It basically said in December that this was going to be the biggest trend in investing in 2021. I don't think it really is yet,

but it might become, I might end up being, I'm saying I'm right already, but like Vanguard doesn't do stuff like this. First corporate acquisition. They've never, they've never bought anybody. Right.

That's, that's true. Yes. Yeah. It's at, it's, it's kind of at ends with like their, their culture and philosophy,

the whole, the whole thing, not just acquisition, but like getting into. Let's explain to people that aren't aware of what's going on here. Vanguard has $7.5 trillion under management, probably half of which is index mutual funds and or low cost active mutual funds. And then the other half is ETFs. And for a couple of years now, it's been apparent to a lot of us that there's going to be a next thing that displaces a lot of ETF business.

Not kills the ETF, but like, what's the next, next, next thing? And custom indexing seems like it's going to be it. And Vanguard just bought this company called Just Invest. Good name. They are a provider of tax managed, that's the key phrase, by the way, tailored wealth management technology, including Kaleidoscope. Not a good name. A highly customizable direct indexing offer. So this is like instead of buying an index ETF, you can just have all the individual stocks in your account, but it's done algorithmically. And there's constant tax loss harvesting taking place throughout the course of the year.

Daily, it says on the website. And we – I mean we're proponents of it. We don't work with Vanguard, we work with um o'shaughnessy yeah and their product's called canvas which is a way cooler name and kaleidoscope real cool stuff uh but we think it is the future it doesn't make sense for every single investor i think it's like a size thing i don't think you want to do this with fifty thousand dollars i mean if you have like concert like that tax thing obviously applies to folks with concentrated low basis positions and really want something – I mean, that's amazing. Oh, yeah. It goes way beyond taxes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But who does that – it's not every retail investor. No, but so from our perspective, if we're talking to a prospective investor who's like $8 million net worth and $5 million is in Facebook stock, I can't buy this guy the Qs. I'm just giving him more facebook more so the ability to build an index portfolio but leave that out there aren't great solutions for that kind of concentration away from this correct so that is that is where i feel like the applications this is huge i don't know that that's the typical Vanguard client, which leads me to believe that they want to use this for advisors. That's what I was curious about as well, is that they're not really the institutional ultra-high net worth advisory firm

to go to for direct indexing. But that's, I mean, it makes sense that they're building out this suite. Well, the product itself here says it already has branded solutions. You can just go white label it. So you're onto something there because they're already built to do just that. When does Schwab turn theirs on? As soon as the week before this launches.

Well, so now here's the thing though. This probably didn't cost them much. We don't know what they paid for Just Invest, but I think they have 20 employees. How much could they have bought this company for? How much in assets? We're talking about Vanguard. They could do one of these a day if they wanted to.

Yeah. Here's one thing. A billion dollars in assets in this thing, I believe. Pennies and drops in their pocket. Here's one thing I want to say about this. If they are going to position this as a tool for advisors, we have found that setting up high net worth client accounts, working with O'Shaughnessy on Canvas,

we have found that that is a very front end loaded proposition. There is so much care and work that has to be done on the front end. Vanguard can't staff this with 20 people and expect to be able to onboard any advisor clients because i know how much time my traders are spending on the phone setting these accounts up and checking and double checking if you screw something up on the front end with an algorithmically driven portfolio that's buying and selling 500 stocks yeah good luck unwinding it like it's a real problem so

this is not like let's throw an ETF in somebody's account, which is Vanguard's bread and butter. So I just, I hope they're planning to staff up. I'm telling, hi, Vanguard. I hope you sponsor my show one day. I'm telling you from experience, you're going to need very, very capable people on the phone. What if they're just putting it in, you know,

their tool belt here if the next generation index investor is going to be calling on these types of things? They can grab it out of the toolbox and be like, all right, we really do need to build this out because from a wealth transfer, the millennials, the Zoomers who are going to be their customer, their average customer in the next 20 years, they need this. That would make sense if they were doing these sort of things,

but they've never done this before. So I don't think they're just going to buy it and see how it goes. I think they're going to put resources behind this. Do you think the average person even knows what this is? I have been hearing about direct indexing and building direct indexes for family office clients and ultra high net worth and institutions for the last few years.

Yeah, but you're savvy. I'm saying, do you think a retail Vanguard investor would even know what this is? No, but that's where I also think, I mean they've been saying this for high net worth and institutional clients. I was going to ask you guys if you had heard more about this and what the minimum level of assets it would be appropriate for an investor to have option to direct index. Because, yeah, it's a lot of setup. It's not an easy thing to put into – What's the smallest account that we would do a direct index with? A quarter million. Quarter million. Like we wouldn would do a direct index with? A quarter million.

Quarter million. Like we wouldn't do a $100,000 direct index portfolio. I thought it would have been like five million. But with fractional shares, why not? No, I know you can do it. The question is, is it worth the effort and the complexity? No, I don't mean that. If the tax savings aren't that great and there's no concentration.

I don't think it's the answer for everyone. I think it's derived by the – what kind of value can it provide that particular client. And I think there is a minimum asset in there. I think this is driven on ESG impact investing. Big time. Families and high net worth investors that want to customize, like, you know, they use the term value-based investing tool. That's where I think this comes into play.

Right. So rather than trying to find, let's, Liana, let's say you're my client and you're like, look, I'm very specific about what I care about. I don't want to own any companies that have no women on the board, which in the S&P 500, I didn't think that exists anymore. But let's just say, or you were like, I don't want any nuclear or whatever your like, whatever your thing was, rather than me trying to find a mutual fund manager who has that portfolio that's as specific as you want. This is a tool that I could use to do that. I can literally screen those things out on on canvas and give you that portfolio.

And oh, by the way, as an added benefit, with mutual funds, you usually get hit with taxes. I'm actually going to make your tax situation better because I'm going to be harvesting all year. Every day I'm harvesting. I don't think this is a threat to the ETF. Dude, that would be a sick show. I'm going to make that T-shirt for the show. Every day I'm tax loss harvesting. Super nerdy.

Super weak. Leona's right. Number one right on the site. Granular ESG for all your clients. I think there's going to be a pretty high minimum AUM to get this product. 31 flavors of ESG. So I pick up the phone with a client like, all right, what's your problem? I'm vegan.

All right, no problem. I got you. I think there's more of a threat to the ESG mutual fund ETFs of the world than – like I don't think that direct indexing is going to take a meaningful piece from ETFs and mutual funds. Five, 5% would still be a ton of money, but I think that this definitely should be like the black rocks of the world

should view this as a threat to their ETFs. If you owned a conference called the inside ETFs, which somebody does own, would you be rethinking the name of that? Given that this looks like it's going to be the next hot thing in wealth management? I kind of would be. Well, I think there are different audiences, though, to the ESG and impact ETFs are for

every retail investor and your mother, brother, cousin. But this is not for that. This is specifically for high net worth. That's what I think, because there's so much customization involved, it's going to be for another level. I agree. And by the way, I don't think a solo advisor can do this

because of how hard you have to work on the setup. I'll be honest. I've been, I've been, I've been building out an alt platform.

What's this kid? What's his name? Cliff. You got to train Cliff to like do this stuff with you. And I think, I think we could get there, but if just building out a multi-custodial.

Are you jealous that he's more handsome than you? Yes. Okay. He's not allowed to do face-to-face with clients? He'll be off social media for a long time. Okay, good. Go on. I spent a year building out a multi-custodial platform to plug in a Canvas or whatever direct indexing platform.

And you're not wrong. I mean, just me alone doing that and having to call compliance. It took a year. It took a year. It took a year just to have Schwab and Fidelity and a rapper O'Shore together and trained up to now go approach a product provider and be like, we're ready.

And what am I, like, with what money? It's one of the biggest bottlenecks in our account opening process. Like, going from onboarding, like, the first day you start onboarding a client to when that account is actually funded, asset allocated, traded, whatever. It's early days. This is one of the big bottlenecks, and it's not anyone's fault. Right. It's inherent. This is the nature. This is what makes it very different from an ETF.

ETF is very easy. Okay. We're very easy. Okay. We're going to keep going. So no more crypto influencers on TikTok. All right. So I have some time freed up now. Hallelujah. Because that was my plan for August. I was going to sell a shit ton of altcoins.

Some SafeMoon. DeFi coins on TikTok. Something you've never heard of. Do you do crypto stuff at all? I haven't seen you do it. Reporters call me and ask about crypto. I just never really thought that I was an expert in that, but apparently I am. You should answer their questions anyway.

I do. Definitely. I definitely do. Do you come across stuff on TikTok or Instagram that's heavily promotional of crypto? I feel like I don't see it that often. I don't do TikTok. It's just another platform. It's too much for me. You're missing a lot of

my dance moves. Damn. I guess I got to get back on there. There's a lot of crypto content on Instagram for sure and even more so junk and scams. It's like the new FXx for millennials how will tiktok how will tiktok's algorithm know whether something is promoting or just talking about they so what they did is they banned paid promotional um crypto stuff you can't do a commercial

correct all that cringy stuff of some, you know, pump god 89, you know. Stop talking about Ben Carlson like that. Yeah. Ben,

Ben on there, you know, pumping horse coin, you know. You can do that all you want and mislead investors and,

you know, point to three ticker symbols and specs and tell them it's going to go to the moon. Look how easy it is to buy a safe move. Oh, I hate it so much. But you can still do that. What you can't do is set up an advertisement campaign or a promotional campaign. So people are still going to pump this shit then.

All day long. All day long. But it's a step in the right direction. I think the Chinese government, which now bans cryptocurrency, loves the fact that TikTok is helping Americans blow themselves up in crypto. My favorite account on TikTok is Vanguard. They're hilarious. Yeah, they're killing it. I saw Tim Buckley doing the Dougie the other day.

It was pretty impressive. All right. Delta variants. Does anyone give a fuck anymore? I'm done. But it appears as though we're yawning our way through it. We're all four feet apart, spitting each other's faces right now. I'm not going to go. Because we're vaccinated. Is that it? It entertainment industry, our projects are being postponed again. And that's, I actually just had another, one of my followers on Instagram messaged me about that today,

saying like he's a freelancer in the industry and media and two of his fall projects already got pushed back to 2022, which doesn't make me feel good. So more from an economic travel, borders opening up. My whole family's in Canada. They just opened the border for vaccinated people

with a Canadian passport. Americans. Yeah. Oh no, Canadians living in America. Americans. Yeah. Oh, no. Canadians living in America. Yes. They still don't want us. No, they don't want you guys for wealth.

We piss them off. So I don't want that stuff to, you know, I don't want the shutdowns to happen again. The results of the poll so far are, and this is, you know, hundreds, not thousands of investors or people on Instagram, 44% say they are worried. 56% say they're not worried. Okay. Worried, what, about how this might impact the market? Worried about the Delta variant, about how it's going to impact life overall. Not this article is specific to U.S. equity markets.

That I'm not really worried about. But overall, I am concerned about shutdowns and travel. Hit that out of the park. I'm thoroughly annoyed that it's an opportunity to go through the psych ops and all. It's just going to be a headache in every part of your life. And there are real health, like I feel for immunocompromised. Dude, we went from, oh my God, I'm going to die to, oh, this is so annoying. It only took us a year and a half. It's impressive. It's a privileged take to say that as vaccinated people who are healthy

and can feel pretty good about it. But if you're immunocompromised, I read an article that if you have AIDS, COVID, hands down, that absolutely makes sense. Imagine the frustration of healthcare workers. Yeah. Yeah, because they have another wave of the shit now. We're like, this again, didn't we just do this? Especially if they live in a place with a low vaccination rate. That's where the states

right now, those hospitals are are full again so my wife watches good morning america like a psycho and every morning they talk about the delta variant and it's all like a side i was gonna say she's gonna love that line who's the loveliest good honestly don't tell me about psychos she's the loveliest person i know i'm sorry on his behalf i'm not calm i mean watching good morning america sociopathic behavior. Duncan, do not edit that out. Do you hear me? I'll back you up on that. I'll back you up on watching GMA is nutty.

Yeah, who doesn't? I can't do it. Anywho, but the point is that all of the people that are getting the Delta variant primarily are not vaccinated. Yes. All right. This is Michael Semblist. Not all of them, though. Actually, the reason why I did this poll was, I don't know, you guys probably know who this is, Sambalista not all of them though actually the reason why I did this poll was I don't know

you guys probably know who this is but Kat Sadler she's one of the big e-network hosts and she did this post that was like reposted all over the place

on Instagram yesterday lying in bed like sick as a dog for five days vaccinated with the Delta I know three people that are they were all J&J

vaccinated got Delta in the last month way lower not in new york they're in southern states but i do know a lot of i did hear from quite a few vaccinated people i heard from somebody today who was double vaccinated got covid yeah dude i can't go back through this again all right this is uh this is michael semblist one important chart to watch is the first one from the uk so far a large spike in Delta infections has not led to a surge in overall hospitalization or mortality. However, this masks what's happening to unvaccinated people over 50 in the UK.

14% of such Delta infections end up in the hospital. Almost 4% died. Figures which are 4x higher than for vaccinated people over 50. So in the UK, 90% of their over 50-year-olds are vaccinated. Can that possibly be true? 90%, you said? 96%, they said. Wow.

Reducing the size of its at-risk unvaccinated population. However, in the US, vaccinations are 75% nationwide for people over 50. So we're trailing the UK. Most of this is in rural counties where Sean Hannity told them, don't worry about it. Or we're at the- Ingram said some stupid shit

and they believe it. Congratulations. We reached a point in society where like, you know, when they had the polio vaccine, like everyone ran to it like, good, I don't need to die of polio. And here we are in 2021.

Well, we politicized this, but I don't know. I just I feel like if we're going to take a big step back this fall because of a huge unvaccinated population, it's not fair to the people who are young and trying to live their lives and did get vaccinated and did spend a year distanced from people. Not seeing their loved ones, not sure, like we did, we paid our dues. Yeah. It would be very fucked up

if we all have to go back to kids being homeschooled. Well, that's it. I view it through like selfishly a young kid lens. We just got like word that, that yeah, we just got word that the town next to ours for elementary, yeah,

for elementary school, their whole school system, go back. No, no protocol. Yeah. No school, their whole school system, go back. No protocol. Yeah. No protocol. Go to school. That's it.

And I can just see it now. I could see this thing getting to a point. It's like, well, Delta's here. You know, kids are going home. And they're f***ing again. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah.

You have a take on this? Well, I was actually surprised. You've been banned from your home country. I know. Do you want to go through this again? Well, mean from a personal perspective i haven't seen my family in over two years so if that border closes again i'm not gonna be happy about it over the border okay but you gotta pay later i also am going to paris and monaco for my birthday in august to september that better not get canceled either because Cause I'll be real. Well, are they freaking out in, in France?

But I, you know, I could just, I can see there's like a pattern already and I, I just don't like it, but I don't know how we're going to stop it unless more people start getting vaccinated. Well,

I think in Europe they are, but they don't have as good vaccines as we have, but they're not going to like the way America looks potentially. Right. So we have the best vaccines and the population least likely to want to get them. And in Europe, they have that AstraZeneca piece of shit. And they're like almost all vaccinated. All right.

It's a disaster. But I hope we're wrong about this thing making a big comeback. Me too. And I don't want to spend any more time on this. It's so depressing. We're into Soapbox. Speaking of, I guess, the pandemic

for the last time, I want to just pay homage to the worst call I've ever seen. This comes from somebody who has three of the top ten worst calls of all time. This is James Altucher. You guys are probably familiar. You guys listening are probably familiar

with something james has said or written james i'm still not contributing to my 401k based on his advice so right james became famous for saying things like don't ever buy a house don't invest in stocks he did a really big push don't invest in a 401k. Some of the worst pieces of advice, just speaking very objectively, because it's not personal to James. He's anti-oxygen. Don't breathe. He likes to say the exact opposite of what everyone else says,

provoke a huge reaction, and then monetize by selling people altcoins. And then bury a ticker symbol into his thing. I remember when you were talking about that on a previous podcast. So Jerry Seinfeld ripped him for this. So it doesn't, I'm not going to do it again but August when was this? August 17th

2020. Op-ed in the New York Post for God's sake. New York City is dead forever. And he definitely got the reaction that he wanted. This is one of the biggest trolls I've ever seen. But it's basically, I love New York but it's never going to come back. Okay, so here's what's going on.

Fast forward. We actually have a shortage of rentals in Manhattan. It's about 11 months after he wrote this post. But let me share this with you. Lease signings in New York City apartments hit record highs in June, leaving far fewer available than is customary at this time of year. With vaccinations underway, leasing activity has continued to rise. Inventory can't keep up.

For the third month in a row, Manhattan broke records with 9,600 new leases signed in June, the most since Miller Samuel began tracking in 2008. That escalated quickly. You're a renter in New York. It's crazy out there. What's going on? So. You had to move, right? The news on the street.

I didn't move during COVID. I definitely, definitely negotiated my rent down. But the word on the street is that the West Village is full of early 20-year-olds and it's frat house and And everybody my age in their 30s and 40s is moving uptown. Okay. Because the streets. You can't live like that. It's crazy. But they all, you know, kudos to them.

They all moved into the city when it was half the price, 40% less, 30% less. These are kids out of college. Yeah. If they're going to be stuck somewhere, they might as well be stuck in an apartment. Out on the sidewalks on a patio or something. So they all did it in spring and early this year. But my friends that are now moving back in the last month or so, yeah, no deals anymore. And they're in shock at what's happened with some of these neighborhoods.

Yeah, like really. It's funny. You walk downtown on the weekend and it is like a street frat party. So what happened to your building? They're throwing up everywhere? Well, I live on Central Park South. So I was already with the elderly. Okay.

All right. So you got out. So you got out. You got out before it was cool. Yeah. Okay. Good for you. I like that neighborhood.

Central Park South. Dog mom, you know? Yeah, yeah. Got it. All right. The Met. Metropolitan Museum. 10,000 visitors a day.

In the last month, I've been to a sold-out concert at MSG. A Knicks playoff game at MSG, also sold out. And what else did I do recently that I don't think you were able to do? I keep seeing signs that the city has come back. I know we're not 100%, but is this the worst call you've ever seen? Pretty much invalidated within a year? I don't know. What do you think? I reposted it when you posted it. I love it.

We were like, this is real? You don't post that much on Instagram, but I saw that one and this is... Yeah, you curse on here. I was going to say this is bullshit, but maybe it's true. It's total bullshit. Jerry took care of it. What's that? Jerry Seinfeld. Yeah, can we pull up his response? I would like to see that.

He was basically like, the world is tough enough without some asshole on LinkedIn. Shedding tears for something that's going to be totally fine. I had not written in a long time. That was one of the few blog posts I actually wrote during the pandemic. It was like NYC made. I'm just like, this is absolute crap. I came up here in debt and you know people people like say oh you did what your dad did yeah i came up here i sold my car

shipped four boxes bought a 600 mattress at sleepy found a random craigslist roommate moved to murray hill only in new york kids october 2008 lehman collapsed the day i got off the airplane come on man new york city new New York City ain't dead. It has bounced back faster than I actually thought that it was going to. In the middle of COVID, I was thinking like three years or something. From the ashes, the Phoenix Rises. But it not just bounced back. When you tell me that the village is filled with 20-year-olds again,

it hasn't been like that in 20 years. But that actually is what the city needed. It needed a lot of the old blood to go to Florida already and young people be able to afford to be here. If Rio ain't packed on a Thursday. Rio. You know, in Murray Hill, you know, then we got problems. I was a Joshua Tree guy back in the day.

So I had my own table there. Doug, Soapbox, what do you got? I have the whole billionaires going to space thing here. What, you like it or you don't like it? I'm kind of annoyed by it now. You don't want to hear about it anymore? No. Same.

I don't. Let me know when I can like literally go to space. And there's something about like all the billionaires, not all the billionaires, there's something about billionaires all wanting to get off this planet. It's like two or three of them though. I know, it's all of them.

All the ones you need to know about. It's like two or three of them, though. I know. It's all of them. All the ones you need to know about. It's like, why is everyone trying to dip? There was this one meme or tweet or picture. It was newscasts. It was like, the fight for billionaires to go to space and in the chyron below. Do you think that you just get to a point where you have so much money that there's nothing else left

on this world to do? But to leave the world. What else would you do? You have a problem with this? There's a lot of billionaires that aren't going to space. Well, that's what I said. Michael, you're misinformed. They all want to go to space. But it said, like, billionaires are fighting to go to space. Like, poverty

has hit all-time high in America. It's like, oh, look at this mess. I'd be more impressed if they were, like, spending this kind of money on trying to figure out how to live to 150. How about this? I so don't care. Genetics and bio stuff. Let's like switch topics.

Who cares? I'm done. All right. Liana, what do you got? I want to talk about being single and fabulous. Which you are. Because I am. Guilty.

We all agree. As well as 47% of other adults in America. More single people now than there has ever been before, which— I don't even acknowledge your existence. Like, the 47% of the country— This is what I'm saying. I know. People don't talk about single finances when more people are divorced, widowed widowers. You're so right.

Late millennials just living it up. So what is the price of freedom? There definitely is a price for it. Obviously, we can't file joint taxes. We will usually earn less money than married counterparts living in one household, living paycheck to paycheck.

We're more likely to do that. Investing less and unable to buy homes because we can't get approved for the mortgage in New York or wherever. All right, there's a single person tax because a lot of the tax, a lot of the rules have been written to encourage families. Yeah.

Like everything from mortgage deductions. Like the list is like very long. Also being single is a luxury that most people can't afford. It's the cost of freedom. Yeah. But so anyway, there is an article here from the Simple Dollar, 13 ways to beat the single person penalty. Maybe we can put that in the show notes for the 47%. So anyway, there is an article here from The Simple Dollar, 13 Ways to Beat the Single Person Penalty. Maybe we can put that in the show notes for the 47 percent.

112 million unmarried Americans over the age of 18. What's the best thing in here? Honestly, a lot of it is kind of planning. There's no real tips and tricks, but really taking advantage of tax-deferred you know, being on top of your budgeting and spending. And you can. Consider a side hustle. It's bad advice. Consider taking your career to the next level.

Wait, number three, get married. Here's the thing. If you are. Yeah. Listen, listen. This is not. Number one, stop being single. This is not for lack of trying.

Okay. We try. We try. But, you know, you just have to be on top of your game even more if you want to have the luxuries like owning a home or doing a lot of the things that married couples do. Liana, they're trolling you. This is so f***ed up. Number nine, learn to cook.

Learn to cook. That's a little messed up. Which I do. Learn to make coffee. Get a roommate. No thank you. I mean, this, you know, I was also just going to be sort of promoting myself on the show as a single and fabulous woman but i'm i'm kidding consider yourself trying to help the singles out there consider yourself promoted no i think it's a really good point um there so much financial

uh content or wealth management content is literally geared toward uh nuclear family like husband wife two kids dog that is who almost everybody thinks they're talking to. Half the country is not that. I think that's a really good point. You know how many guys I know in their 40s, in their late 30s in New York City, they're single and never been married with wealth that could be managed. They must be so toxic. Someone's got to write a blog for them.

Yes. All right. Do you have a- Not me, but- Do you have a soapbox this week? I do, but let's skip them. Yes. All right. Do you have a... Not me, but... Do you have a soapbox this week? I do, but let's skip it. Okay. Sounds good. Yay. I was looking forward to it, too. I wasn't.

All right. Favorites. I'm going to do this really quickly. The Odd Lots podcast episode from this past week on the labor market was awesome, and I love Joe and Tracy, and I listened to pretty much all of their podcasts and this one they had this guy from omni hotel yeah omni is like uh the ritz carlton of the south yeah like they're like beautiful hotels in nashville austin all over florida so this guy

kurt alexander is the cfo and there's a lot of interesting stuff in here about how they got to the pandemic as a hotel chain. But he's talking about the secular shift in what kinds of jobs people will even do. Like people will not clean hotel rooms, it turns out. I can't imagine why. And how many hours per day people are willing to commit to working. And he's just talking about this idea that they might have people that work three hours a day and they might just have to get used to that being the new. That was that part. That part was interesting.

That was interesting. And he's like, we'll figure it out. One thing he was talking about, though, he was saying, if I have somebody that cleans 12 rooms a day and then Target is paying the same hourly salary to somebody who just stands in front of the store and wipes down a fucking shopping cart, I lose. I can't get the person to do what I need them to do at that price if they can do something so much easier and less intense for another company across town.

That's a reckoning. Like there should be robots cleaning these rooms at this point. What are we doing? Like the Jetsons. We're sending billionaires to space. We're sending billionaires to space. We're sending billionaires to space. We should be sending industrial

grade Roombas into hotel restrooms and Madison Square Garden's bathroom. That's what we should be working on. Where's the nanotech? Where are the cleaner bots? Where is this? This is so bougie. I don't know. I feel like we should stop there.

Liana, thoughts on cleaning hotel rooms? It's not for me, but, you know, it's for someone. It should be for someone. But obviously, you know, the last year and a half or however long it's been has shown people that not working at all and having stimulus checks or doing something where they can work from home is probably better than doing that. He had 20,000 employees pre pandemic. That number dropped to 1800. They figured out that in almost every state Omni has a hotel in the workers were better off with the $600 a week from the federal government plus the

state benefit than they would be staying working there. That's a microcosm of basically what's gone on for a huge chunk of the population. And that's coming to an end in six weeks. I think you're going to start hearing a lot less about labor shortages very soon. I have a bunch of clients. They work for a payroll software company. One is down in Florida. One of the clients is a big restaurant group.

At any one – lots of restaurants across the a big restaurant group at any one lots of restaurants across the state of florida um at any one jack in the box no at any one given time their job postings are like pre-pandemic like 8 000 jobs that's how big the restaurant group is right now it's like 80 000 or something oh my god they just can't nobody wants to be a major d no one wants to be a server. No, no one wants to do any of that. Any of that.

To the reason you point, but give it, give it two months. I have a feeling. Yeah. Plus people's kids will be back in school, which is a whole other thing besides the money. Yeah. How do you commit to going spending a whole day or night waitressing or,

or bartending when there was children at home on, not in school. But this is why I don't like any of like the economic data we're getting right now. I want to look at it two months, three, four or five months from now and then come to a conclusion, whether it was inflation or whatever it is you're trying to point here.

It's just, let's get these benefits to stop. Let's see what the employment numbers look like. And then let's see what the deal is. Great. Okay. Liana favorites. What did I say?

I can't remember. Oh, here we go. Okay. So you said you like those shirts where when you turn the sleeves up yeah I got it you know these are going to be on the Christmas gift list for every guy this year I'll pump gambert out of Westfield New Jersey since yeah you're all talking about there you go so you guys some I think was one of your guests last week mentioned

TIP the investors podcast which I talked to you about actually last time I was in the office they have a millennial one as well it's TIP millennial investing podcast. It has over two, 2.7 million downloads. I've been on that podcast. It's Robert Leonard, right? Yeah. Have you been on it? He's awesome. It's not as good as this though. He's like late twenties, real estate stocks, motocross racer, really cool guy. Very nice guy. What do they talk about? All different investing topics. My favorite episode came out a couple weeks ago, maybe. Episode 91. Warren Buffett's

number three. Charlie Munger's number one favorite business book of all time, which is Influence. Have you guys read that? Is that Cialdini? No. It is. Actually, I'm rereading that book. It's so good. You'd love this podcast episode. I like this particular episode because he's interviewing the author of the book obviously and going over why charlie

and warren gave him a class a share of berkshire halfway the author because this book meant so much to them during their business career barry had him on yeah he told the story so persuasion influence amazing episode great podcast for, you know, anyone at all. I'm going to check out the pod and the book. I'm going to read that book this year. It's really good. I'm really good at knowing who wrote a book without ever having read it. I can almost

pretend like I read it. Out of all the classics, it is definitely one of the better ones. And this episode gives a lot of the major points of the book and influence and, you know, giving a gift before you ask for anything. Lots of sales stuff, so it's great for anyone. What, what episode was yours? I was the eighth episode, October 2nd, 2019. Back when you were still a millennial. Here's something from that, from that book. They did a study that if you, they, they studied people asking to cut in line. Hey, do you mind if I skip ahead of you? And like 75% of people said yes, if you provided

a reason. Hey, and the reason could be, hey, can I skip ahead? Because I have things to do. Like it could be as simple as that. Like you could just say, can I skip ahead? Because I need to skip ahead. 75% of people said yes. It was roughly right. And when you didn't provide a reason, it went down to like 25%. So there are ways to like hack people's brains that aren't like super gross salesman-y. Like just if you're asking for a favor. For example, I asked a guy on the airplane next to me when I took a flight with my wife if he would switch seats with me because my wife – and he said no. That's lonely. But if I – I mean – anyway, so I was in the 25% where I gave a reason that he still said no.

What's wrong with this guy? Was it like a middle seat he didn't want to sit in? He goes, I need the aisle for the bathroom. Oh, I get that. So I said, okay, fair enough. I didn't push. Are you letting somebody cut in line in front of you if they give you a really good reason? I don't care if you go into labor, honestly.

It's just not going to happen. I think I can sniff out your BS and I'm going to say no. Duncan, you're letting them in every time. I'm a yes man. I would definitely say yes. That's why he has to cut me. Do you even need a reason, Duncan, or you just be a nice guy and do it? Probably just avoiding confrontation.

Avoiding confrontation. I think like if I'm with my kids or why, like I got to show my kids I'm a good guy, you know? Oh, I'm like that. Yeah. Hey, look what we just hooked this guy up, right? But my kids already know that it's total baloney. Mine are young enough to put on a good impression. I feel like it's not very New Yorker to let people cut in line.

We're about efficiency. That's inefficient. No, somebody cuts without in a sneaky way. That's enough. Then there's razor blades coming out. Yeah, it's dangerous in New York because then everybody else behind you is going to get aggressive. Yeah, they do that on the highway with an on-ramp. Like, why would you let that guy in front of you?

I don't know, because I'm not in that big of a rush. Don't ever do it again. They say New Yorkers are rude. I just think we're efficient. I think it's about efficiency. Yeah, I think we're dicks. All right, Doug, you're the last one. Before we get out of here,

what's your, oh wait, we got Mike too. What's your favorite? So relating to the parents in the crowd here, check out Bluey on Disney+. I'm going to watch that tonight. You should. It's a cartoon from Australia. Everyone's a dog.

They're seven-minute episodes. Very digestible. I cried four times. No joke. It is absolutely beautiful. Everything about the show is gorgeous. Have you shown this to your kids yet or are you just watching it solo?

My wife caught me watching it by myself. You have a five-year-old who's into this? She did 108 episodes. There aren't that many episodes of this? Well, there's seven minutes each. But there's two seasons, 50-something episodes a season. Guys, I'm telling you, it's just beautiful. I'm a big cartoon fan, you know that, but this is gorgeous.

We're going to jump all over it. Favorites, Mike, what do you got? What did you say? Come on, seriously? I forgot. What did you say? I said Joe and Tracy's podcast episode. Odd Lots, right.

Odd Lots. You're going to come up with this on the spot? No, I got something. Okay. The White Lotus. It's a miniseries. It's a strain of weed. It's a miniseries on HBO.

There was one episode, and I'm very intrigued. It's on HBO? It's on HBO. It was good. What is intrigued. It's on HBO? It's on HBO. It was good. What is it? What's it about? It is about, so you find out in the opening scene that there was a murder at a hotel, and then they work backwards.

And it's about a bunch of rich people at a hotel in Hawaii. And I think it's going to be- Oh, I saw a preview. I like stuff like this. It was, like, I love the music, right? It was, like, very unsettling. It was unsettling, and you're not sure why, cause nothing really happened. But it's like, it's like jokey.

Oh yeah. So you're a big Knives Out guy. Yeah, exactly. Okay. It's satire. It's dark comedy. Okay. Which I'm a big fan of.

I need a new thing to watch. There's good people in it too. Great cast. Who's in it? Connie, Connie Burton, Connie Brighton. How do you say it? Jennifer Coolidge. She's crazy and hilarious.

She's insane. 7.1 on IMDB. That's good. You know the faces for sure. They're not like big names, but you know the faces. They've been around. Yeah. All right.

We're definitely going to check that. What is it called? White Lotus? White Lotus. All right. On HBO Max. Great favorites. Hey, I want to thank you guys so much for coming by.

I miss hanging out with people. And it's so great to just like catch up and hang. And hopefully everybody in the audience feels like they're a part of the hangout. And if so, then we've done our job. I think we learned a lot today, right? Oh, yeah. I think we have new cartoons now to watch. Oh, sure.

Okay. All right. I'm not going to recap everything we've learned. Thank you guys so much for listening and for all the new five-star reviews. We really need those five-star reviews for listening and for all the new five star reviews. We really need those five star reviews for the algorithms on all the podcast platforms. If you want to watch clips from today's episode

and see Doug dressed up as Prince if he had a CFP designation, then you can go to youtube.com slash the compound RWM. Duncan, anything else I'm supposed to do here? The other podcast.

Yeah, that's enough already. All right. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next week. All right, guys. Was that fun? That was awesome. Let's take a quick break and get it one more time

to make sure we have everything we need. Thanks again to our sponsor, Masterworks. Go to masterworks.io slash compound for more information.