The Compound and Friends - Investopedia Brown

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

On this week's episode of The Compound & Friends, Michael Batnick, Caleb Silver, Jenny Harrington, and Downtown Josh Brown discuss: the return of volatility, the Fed and tapering, dividend stocks, Investopedia data, how Build Back Better could impact investors, junk bonds and the search for yield, young men opting out of college, Google’s $2.1 billion purchase, and more! This episode is brought to you by Rocket Dollar. Use referral code COMPOUND at rocketdollar.com/compound to get $50 off at sign up! 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

There was like sprinkles in it. No, you know what it was? It was Axe Body Spray. Yeah, it was like vanilla Axe. It was vanilla Axe. It wasn't good and it's not cheap. It's like a $70 bottle. Yeah. Just listening to it made me sick. The funniest part

is that the name of the tequila is Calabasas. And I was just in Calabasas for the first time visiting my brother. And it's all like giant houses, gated community. Just the idea of a tequila being named

for this place is hilarious. Like once I've seen it. You know what Calabasas means? No. Squash. That's what the word means? It's Yiddish. Is that Hebrew? There's a cream for that.

Guys, are these my headphones? Yes. Join us. Squash to kill. Oh, sorry. I googled libation, Caleb, and Investopedia came up. No, dude. I wrote that term before I got here on the train.

Jenny, do you remember you and I on the other side of Bryant Park, we did NPR together for Robin Farzad? Yeah. Do you remember that? Yep. When the hell was that? I don't know. That's when I first met you.

15, 16? I love Robin. I love Robin, too. Oh, you know Robin. I just saw him in Richmond just last year. We were driving down south, and he's down there with his family doing his full disclosure pod. He's such a good dude. Yeah.

I didn't – his Miami book came out. Hotel Scarface. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's how I met you for the first time because Robin's like, I want to do this thing for the podcast about like Wall Street. Right. Why won't they – why won't Wall Street apologize? Yeah, something like that.

And then he's like – and my friend Jenny is going to be the other person on the podcast. I'm like, all right, let's do it. So that was fun, though. That was awesome. I think you and I spoke uninterrupted for two hours. I don't know. I don't know if we used it all. You did. Yeah, I definitely did.

I definitely did. And he did use it all. And it was good. We've got the close in four minutes. Dylan, cover Tesla short. it all and it was good we've got the close in four minutes dylan cover tesla short dylan's in michigan right now well he heard me good luck never let this market close good luck uh jenny you covered all your shorts before you came over here you don't want to leave any loose ends no you know i'm such a cowboy during the day just swinging swinging around

short positions that's right laying on the derivatives. Where's your office? How close to your house is it? Five minutes, New Canaan, Connecticut. Look at you. I know, but I live in Norwalk. That's the dream, though. It is the dream.

Kids' school is five minutes away. It's fantastic. Good for you. And you work, I didn't know that you worked with your husband. Do you guys like to any workplace disagreements carry over into the home later that night? 100%. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I was going to ask you how does anybody win an argument with you? It's impossible, right? Oh, you don't know my husband. Okay. All right, fair.

Okay, he's going to listen to that and be like, that's bullshit. But the reality is is that dude should have been a trial lawyer because he can out-argue anyone. And I just, you know, like I don't have the vocabulary

he does. The only reason I have a good vocabulary is thanks to him. Yeah, you you're tenacious i don't i don't feel like you i don't feel like you like say okay you you you got this one no but i give up a lot because like he's smarter than me oh i shouldn't i feel like giving up is smart it's like all right whatever yeah yeah but like really like he's got those trial trial lawyer skills you know he can just go and go and i'll say to him every day like, oh, what did you read today? He's like, nothing. What did you hear today that was interesting? Nothing.

And then when we're arguing, there's this like insane wealth of knowledge that just pours out the statistics that sound like – He hustles you. Yeah. And then he has all these statistics that I'm like, oh, you just made that up. And he's like, yeah, go check it out. I go check it out. It's exactly right all the time. So after 20 years of being together – So you know better. Yeah. I just kind of give up. Okay.

All right. He's usually right. Who works harder, you or him? Me. Okay. What does he do? He runs the operational and compliance side. Yeah. Jenny's got a, Jenny's like literally investing all day. There's so many solo practitioners in, I don't want to say wealth manager i'll say asset management how do you do both things like you really can't you i feel like you need help well i've got eight employees oh you you do i'm saying i'm talking about people that work by themselves solo you can't i it's unimaginable to me yeah because how are you listening to a conference call for a stock you own and waiting on hold with an IT person because whatever just happened here, right? Right.

And also dealing with your client who needs $20,000 sent to them tomorrow and the other one who wants to know why you still hold AT&T in the portfolio. You literally can't do a good job of it unless – Well, if you have 11 clients, you can. That's what I was going to say. But they want to talk to you. You're the boss. You're the one making the decisions. It's not like you can be like, talk to my assistant. She can help you with that.

And I feel like everything with you is very personality driven. It's going to be hard for you to put somebody else in front of those important conversations. I think that's right. So you have eight people? Yep. That's great. How long have you been doing this?

Well, I left Neuberger Berman in 2006 and came to Gilman Hill. Yeah, and then I bought my partners out in 2009. So it's been nice. Good timing. I know, right? Tough times. You bought them out at the bottom? Ish?

Kind of. Okay. They just gave it to you. Like, leave the keys. Yeah, exactly. All right, good for you. There wasn't much to buy out. Good for you.

Well, we're definitely going to get into your portfolio later today. Okay. And I'm actually looking forward to that because you and I get like two minutes on the show to go back and forth-ish. Right. There's no nuance behind what either one of us is saying. I don't really know much about like your process. Right? So I know more about your brother's ice cream than your portfolio

uh big john how we looking duncan how you feeling you nervous no i'm good you feeling good feeling good all right 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. management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Today's show is brought to you by the good folks at RocketDollar. Listen,

if you have a friend who is starting a level one protocol and you're trying to get tokens at 0.005 cents, that is going to be worth $100 in two weeks. That's a 5,000% return, I'm guessing. you're worth $100 in two weeks, that's a 5,000% return, I'm guessing. Then the way to do it is in Rocket Dollar. You could bring your own deal. Rocket Dollar is a place to go to invest in non-traditional asset classes. To learn more, go to rocketdollar.com slash compound. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to literally the best financial podcast that is in existence, I would say. Jenny, you listened to it once. What'd you think? Loved it. You can't, when you hold your fingers up, the audience doesn't see that you-

Twice. I listened to it twice. You listened to it two times. All right, round of applause for that. What'd you think? What'd you think of what you heard so far? On the podcast? Yeah. Or today? No, just in general. On the podcast? I think it's really cool. and I think it's, I thought listening to it, particularly given

how long it was, that I would tune out, and I was really surprised by how engaged I stayed throughout the entire thing, and I like the way you kind of weave in, like, real life, some investment, but it all weaves together really nicely. Yeah. Is Michael pretty good on it, too? Michael's amazing. All right. I agree.

I agree. And Caleb, you were day one, I'm hoping. I listened to the Leiden episode over and over on loop just to get psyched up for this. You know Tom? Yes. Is he not like the sweetest, greatest? The sweetest, coolest. He's the Steve McQueen of the finance industry.

Just cool as a fan and couldn't be sweeter. You just dated yourself big time. Tom's the best. And Tom. Well, Tom is like probably going to buy you someday. So he just keeps acquiring properties. I know. So, all right. Well, listen, I'm very excited to have you guys here. When you showed up, I said that you're two of my favorite people that I've met since I've been in this business. I like seriously mean it. And I don't say that every week. That's not what you said before we

started. No, no, no. Truthfully, truthfully. So Jenny, let's give you a big introduction. You are the founder of Gilman Hill, CIO, right? That's your title? Well, CEO. To be fair, I didn't actually found it. I did buy my partners out in 2009. Okay. Well, you're remaking it in your image. That's good enough, right? That's right. Okay. So congratulations on that. And a lot of people know you from the Halftime Report. And how many times are you popping on? Almost once a week now. Oh, wow. Look at you.

Yeah, look at me big time. Are you taking some of my spots? I don't think so. Okay. I don't think anyone would do that. Look out. And Caleb Silver. And Caleb, you and I know each other, what, 12 years?

At least, yeah. Right? other what 12 years at least yeah right so i used to come to cnn money with paul uh paul paula monica that's right and lindsen was in the mix phil perlman and you were i think the first person to ever put me on tv i know and i'm i apologize for that to everybody else but i think it worked out really well for you but you were an instant star on oh look at this TV I mean thank you thank you because you are who you are you're organic and that's what you brought and that's what we were looking for and we taped some stuff with Paula Monica and Poppy Harlow and a few other people hobby wasn't weren't those the good old days of like uh financial media when you could still have a lot of fun and stop like people

had no expectations for ever making money again in stocks. It was like 2010. Yep. Like the bottom completely fell out of investor sentiment. But then there was this new crop of stocks that started to work like Netflix and Lululemon. Oh, like my portfolio? Well, this is like – I just feel like it was a time when like people were like, yeah, LOL, the stock market, nobody cares.

But then they started to go up again. And I guess we had a lot of fun. We did a bunch of stuff for the web. And now you have a really big job at a really awesome site that all of our viewers have probably landed on in the last week, like at a minimum. So tell us about what you're doing at Investopedia. I am the editor-in-chief. So I am the head editor at Investopedia. We are 23 years old. Investopedia is like an internet dinosaur. That's 230 years in internet years.

Who started it? Four guys in Canada, in Edmonton. They had this idea because they had heard about this company called Google that was trying to index the Internet down in Mountain View. And they knew a lot of people were looking at this is 1988, 1999. Internet stocks were popping. CNBC was just coming on, FNN, Bloomberg TV, where I started my career. And they said, you know what? I think a lot of people are looking up these obscure terms that these folks are saying on TV.

Nobody knows what P.E. ratio is or what margins are. So why don't we create a dictionary of financial terms? And furthermore, why don't we create test prep for all the series tests you have to take if you want to get into the securities industry? And maybe Google will point to it as they index the internet. And that turned out to be a pretty hot idea. Yeah. So you are the EIC and business is booming. Traffic is booming. Over the last year, you've had a bumper crop of new investors that like, where else do you turn to to learn these terms? I actually can't. TikTok.

All right. So other than TikTok, I can't think of anywhere else. So probably millions of people landed on your site for the first time. Do you have a look through into the demographics of people that are hitting your site? Absolutely. Not just what they're hitting our site, but which particular articles they're looking at, where they are in the country or where they are in the world, male or female, zip

code. We can get pretty deep without getting too creepy because we get a lot of our traffic through Google. But when we have a year like the one we've had or a year and a half like the one we've had, the traffic is just coming in from all sides. Nobody comes in the front door of Investopedia and goes to the homepage and says, what do you guys got going on here today? I actually come in through the back door. I visited Investopedia on incognito mode because I'm embarrassed to be looking up stuff. Why? You think he's tracking you?

I'm only kidding. But I'm not kidding. I actually do. No shame. No shame in looking anything up. Look, there's 36,000 terms on the site. There's probably 50,000 finance terms out there. You can't know them all. You can't know them all. You can't know them all. And I'm the editor. I don't know them all. I look them up all the time. So don't feel bad about that. But we know a lot of people do that thing in the meeting where they drop their phone to tie their shoe and look up a term and come back up and they look like the smartest person in the room. But look, we are here to educate people about investing. We are not. We do news, but we do it in an educational framework. We don't try to beat anybody to the earning stories. It's all about knowing the basics and knowing

financial literacy, investing literacy, so people can make a career out of it. You guys know this is a marathon, right? So many people think investing and trading is the sprint. I feel like I've been through a marathon. Right, right. Let me just, to that point, i was just looking at chipotle because i was thinking about like stocks and own on that were hot what did you imagine netflix chipotle was one of them i feel like chipotle was one of them so back in 2009 speaking of a marathon chipotle was worth like two three billion dollars and you're like for a taco joint like that's a lot of money um and it was a lot of money is a lot of But today, Chipotle just closed at an all-time high, $55 billion. And people were saying when it was $2-3 billion, it's just burritos.

I don't get it. It's a bunch of beans. They're saying the same thing. And at $20 billion. But what's the annualized growth rate on that? Well, I can't do that on my math in my head. Yeah, just click it. No, no, no.

She's saying the annualized, the compound growth rate. I don't know. I'm going to say 37%. I'm guessing. The compound growth rate for Chipotle? Does anyone have a quick pay calculator? Give me my HP 12. I'll do this right here.

Why are you not on Investopedia? That has that all. I'll do it in a sec. Talk amongst yourselves. I've got Excel. Okay. Well, so I guess the thing that's most interesting this week to start with is that we had like a little mini panic on Monday.

And I wanted to get you guys take on it because – That was a fun crisis. It was fun. It wasn't long enough for me to like fully, really like panic. Like I feel like I got gypped a little bit. I agree. I didn't get a chance to start running through my mind everything that's going to get triggered and go wrong. Is that the new correction?

Four hours and then we all just get past it? I don't know. But Michael mentioned that Monday was the first down 2% day since May. Hang on. Time out. Just real quick. So 54 from three over a 12-year period is 27% annualized. Amazing, isn't it?

Yeah. That's insane. Pretty good. For a bunch of beans. It's the market. It's a lot. And Chipotle survived the Evergrande crisis. Barely, barely.

Anyway, the first big down day. So it's following one of the longest streaks for the S&P, being within 5% of its all-time highs over the last 70 years. I think it's the eighth longest streak. So people have gotten very spoiled. Let's start with that. And they almost expect all of these crises to wind up very quickly. And so far that's working out.

I don't know. What are you hearing when clients call in in the wake of something like Monday? So I had a client email me first thing Monday – or sorry, last thing Monday saying, I'm assuming that you're getting ready to write us all a note about what's going on. Well, you do that. I get your notes. Right. But I wrote back, ha, ha, ha.

This is nothing. Like, are you joking? Right. We were down, what was it, like 1.5% on a year that's- You don't even get out of bed for 1.5%, let alone fire up the word processor. No, but I think it's interesting that these clients suddenly think a down 1.5% move is something severe, particularly in the wake of this year. a half percent move is something severe, particularly in the wake of this year. I was stunned that they haven't become more accustomed in my mind to these. I've been thinking of it as a binge and purge market, right? Like we binge, we purge for like 15 minutes, we rally back up. It's pretty

wild. So you fired that client. No, but I think then it's funny because you have like, I would say she's representative of a lot. And then it's silence because the next morning we're flat. The next day we're back up. Everybody who panicked on Monday for their 15 minutes is embarrassed. They don't want to tell me that they actually panicked. So I actually see it as people are really quiet. I don't get a lot of calls on that. I don't get a lot.

I think people are worrying. I think the reason why this one might have resonated with normal people that don't follow the markets on a daily basis. It was headline news. And I was watching Good Morning America, as I do every morning. It's my wife's favorite show in the morning. And so Michael Strahan was talking to the reporter about the China headlines. And literally, I had to, I rewound it

because I was just curious. From the time Michael started talking to the end of the segment was one minute and two seconds. The reporter didn't even come on until 30 seconds in. So it was so fast, but it was USA Today news. It was Good Morning America news. And it was the Lehman Brothers Redux news. So John, throw up this chart. This is from Danny Berger. We're not able to. Oh, really? Okay.

We're doing this on the laptop. I'll show you guys. So this is from Danny Berger at Bloomberg're not able to. Oh, really? We're doing this on the laptop. I'll show you guys. So this is from Danny Berger at Bloomberg, the story count with Lehman. How hilarious is that? And so I think a lot of people inside the financial industry – This is 2020. Wait, where's – Yeah.

OK. So you see the spike all the way on the left-hand side. Deutsche Bank did a survey, surveyed its clients. And I think 8% of financial professionals said like, this is much ado about nothing. So I think most people, most people in the industry were like, guys, really? Like, is this a deal? Yeah. Is it Lehman? Probably not. But I think that because it was China, it was news. And I think people are waiting for something. When was it? It was middle of July, right around July 20th that we had that last kind of big pullback. What was that? Was that

inflation fears? I can't even remember. Right. But I think everyone's desperate for a pullback. I want one. You want one. That was Delta. I'm begging. July was Delta. Oh, you're right. That's exactly right. I think May was inflation. That was the growth pullback. I'm dying for a pullback. It's so boring. There's nothing to talk about. Yeah, and you know what's funny? I put up on Twitter that night in July. I put up, here's the real reason. Like you can listen to all these people try and say it's Evergrande or it's tapering, you know,

or it's the debt ceiling might be worse than we think. But the reality is we're due. Yes. You know, we're just due. That's just it. It's hard for people to swallow that. And is it Evergrande or is it Evergrande? And I'm going with Grande like Ariana Grande and the Rio Grande.

But to your point, one of the top spiking articles. It's actually pronounced Lehman. I thought it was Evervente. How do you say Lehman? Do you say Lehman? No, I say Lehman. No, Bence is Lehman. It makes no sense.

Who does that? Ben does that. That's like an old New York man thing to do. Lehman rather. You can't break him out of that? After we, he's like, is it Lehman. No, Ben says Lehman. It makes no sense. Who does that? Ben does that. That's like an old New York man thing to do. Lehman brothers. You can't break him out of that? After we, he's like, is it Lehman? I'm like, no. Who says Lehman?

No, it never was. Well, how did Lehman Brothers collapse was the top spiking article on Investopedia the other day. Because they kept hearing the word over and over and over again. And people who had never even heard of it are looking it up now and then asking me and us, is this the same thing? And obviously it's not, but that's what people do. So I wrote a quick article on whatever day it was. Like this, it was nothing. Like the market at the worst on the day

was down 2.3% or something like that. It was like, this is a panic. Are you kidding me? We're still 4% off the highs. It was nothing. But that's that Minsky moment thing where people just forget that these things can go down. Right.

And then the suddenness of it. And by the way, anything that starts with the future Sunday night is more ominous. True. Than something that takes place on a Wednesday. That's a good point. And by the way, the stocks are not up for the week. We took it all back. I know.

Stocks are up for the week. That stock might even be back almost all the way back from where it fell. Evergrande itself. Yeah. Hold on. But that's not – I don't think it is. It's rallied like 25% today. Yeah, it's down 90% from its highs.

It needs to rally like 9,000%. Okay, it's got room to run. There you go. Let's just put it that way. What you're saying is there's still room if you want to buy it. Exactly. And you know what? That week in July, same thing.

Closed up on the week. Oh, really? Right. What are you serving up to? So all these people are searching, how did Lehman Brothers collapse? What are you serving up to that audience? What do they see? Burrito bowls.

Burrito bowls, obviously, because you have to have some of those. You're giving them like dick fold stuff? Like deep, deep stuff? Or just like debt? They had a lot of debt. They had a lot of debt. But what we do instead, we write a new story about Evergrande. But then we go into the stories that people are already looking up, like, how did Lehman

Brothers collapse? And then we make sure that we update it and maybe even put a call out there about Evergrande so that people realize that there's context there because they're not looking up how did Lehman Brothers collapse randomly on a Monday or Tuesday in September. That's because they're hearing it in the financial media.

It's bleeding over to GMA. Michael Strahan, great defense event, is talking. So, you know, it's, it's into the- If Strahan's involved, then you definitely want to- Mainstream. Somebody, somebody sent me an email accusing Ben of poo-pooing the story as he was very blasé about it. And I think it's usually the right take, right? Usually like not panicking is like 99% of the time the right strategy. But you could also not panic and also acknowledge that this is a big deal. Like we could do both of those things.

So BlackRock, for example, owns $381 million worth of Evergrande's debt. And who owns that? Investors, right? BlackRock is not a hedge – it's not their hedge fund. It's investors. UBS has $275 million worth of debt. But pause for a sec. Go ahead.

Because put that into context, right? It's a blip, yeah. For BlackRock? Yeah, for BlackRock. How much do they have under management? Like $20 trillion? Yeah, whatever. But pause for a sec. Go ahead. Because put that into context, right? It's a blip, yeah. For BlackRock? Yeah, for BlackRock. How much do they have under management? Like $20 trillion? Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah, no, it's...

It sounds like a big number superficially. No, the problem is they own it in their treasury ETF. That's the issue. It turns out. I mean, some people are clearly blowing up over this, like obviously. Yeah, well, to wit, another big search on that day.

Did you say to wit? To wit. I've been using that a lot lately. I like that. He's very classy. Very classy. Feel free to borrow it. How to sell puts, people were looking up that day as well.

So people have their ready- How to sell puts, which is a bullish trade. Yeah, you've got an advantage when you see that stuff spiking. Yeah, we know exactly what people are thinking. Oh, wait, how to sell puts? How to sell puts. Oh, sophisticated audience. Right.

They were buying the deck. They might have been confused. There's another question. What's the maximum I can lose on a covered call? So people were all over the place thinking about what does this mean? How can I trade it? How can I, you know, I know this is going to bounce back. We know that the dip buyers are out there, but people are so quick now with the information and the action. I think I've heard you guys talk about it on here and on Animal Spirits. Everything is so compressed. It's happening so damn quickly that there is no time to actually see the market correct a little bit. People want to jump right back in or jump right back out.

There are so many reasons to sell. I know you have that fantastic chart I quote all the time, reasons to sell all over the place. But now everyone is looking for a reason to sell and then a reason to buy really quickly or no reason at all just because they don't want to miss out. really quickly or no reason at all just because they don't want to miss out. I heard Savita from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, if it's still called that, say that we're switching, we're making a transition possibly from mid-cycle to late-cycle. I'm like, already? Like, I just bought stuff like six months ago thinking, wow, this is as bad as it gets. We're already at the end of that cycle.

But I guess if everything is compressed into shorter and shorter time frames what is a cycle even could a cycle be two quarters at this point like i don't even know i mean if you take last year it was we had the full thing in one year right compressed not even nine months there's another chart so carlin tweeted this today it's household and profit net worth change year over year. And obviously a lot of- That's absurd. Obviously a lot of this is concentrated in the hands of like the uber, uber wealthy, but still, people are still flush with cash and clearly eager to buy the dip.

Yep. $5 trillion household net worth increased year over year just because of the stock market, people's investments in their homes, et cetera. That's not supposed to happen within six months of a recession starting. Can we talk about the time frame compression for a sec? No, please. Yes. Really? You don't mind if we do?

This is like my favorite subject. Okay, thanks. What's your take? Here's what I think. When I started in this business in 1994 as an intern, think about how long it took for us to get information, right? So I was interning up at the Seagram building and the portfolio managers, I worked for Keefe managers and they need a research report on say Citigroup.

And they'd call their sales guy, sales guy would call the research guy. Then they'd send the idiot intern who thought there was a fourth avenue in New York City to go get it. You know, she walks back and forth looking for- Is that you? Yeah, I was like way too embarrassed to ask.

Wait, you're walking somewhere for a research report? I'm dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to walk to pick it up and it was either send a runner or send the intern, right? And by the time I got there, who knows how old the research report was? But they called Smith Barney and they called DLJ and they called Lehman Brothers. You know, they called everyone.

And then they'd get a few research reports back. They'd read it, blah, blah, blah. Then they'd call the company. They'd ask for annual reports. They'd put all that data into Lotus. I think that's what it was, right? Now, think about the way we have access to that information. I've got my Refinitiv, which is Thompson. People have Bloomberg, right? You've got every bit of data you want at your fingertips. You can process information like we were able to process- You could speak into a phone and have it called up on your screen.

Yeah. That's crazy. We can have 100% of the information that we need to make investment decisions in, I don't know, one hundredth the time. Yeah, so why wouldn't things speed up? So they should speed up. Right. Right? And just digesting what was going on with the crisis last year and getting our arms around it was infinitely faster than it could have been even when I started in the business. And so I think that's why we're seeing—

I'm trying to picture you running up and down Madison Avenue probably thinking it's the most important document in the world. And so I think that's why we're seeing- Trying to picture you running up and down Madison Avenue, probably thinking it's the most important document in the world and you've got to get it back up to the 35th floor so they can make a trade. Did the trade get placed? To be honest, I don't remember. Did you save the fund? I saved the fund in my nine West loafers

and my Goodwill, what was it, like Adrian Vittadini suit. Yeah, it was awesome. So now that retail is like, was as high as 25% of the daily volume, and think about how fast they're reacting to information, whether it's not TikTok, but some of it is TikTok, and message boards, and Reddit, and stock twits, whatever. Like they're a big player on the market now.

Without a doubt, there are a million, I would say there are a million people who when Davey Day Trader says he's buying Apple calls or whatever it is, I think there's a million people that do the same trade. Yeah. I mean, look at what happens to us. More than that are doing credit. Yeah, when you guys talk about stocks on TV. Right.

I mean, to me, it blows my mind. When we do our final trades or the Ask Halftime questions, it blows my mind that I can say, hey, this is what I bought for my portfolio and it actually moves. Because I think like not a thing. How does that happen? Algos are scraping that. Like they're literally, they're transcribing what you're saying on CNBC and Bloomberg, what everyone's saying, and it moves.

But you know what? If you read the Twitter feeds, people, like individuals are taking the same stuff too. Totally, totally. And so you get that little tipping point. Totally. It's not just robots. And you get the momentum. It's pretty wild.

It's also expanded outside of FinTwit, obviously, to retail traders. 20 million people joined the stock market last year. But think of all the other places where you're getting that information. I know you know the EYL guys. Love those guys. Those guys are great. The Trapper. There is stock information coming out and people with ideas that are coming out of places that we don't come from

that is having a big influence on the market right now. That is such a key point. Because I know advisors that walk around, financial advisors that do content, and they call themselves influencers. And then they tweet a link to something, and there's two likes, no retweets. You are not an influencer. The Earn Your Leisure guys last night did a live stream on YouTube with Ian Dunlop, and they had another guest on. And there were like, I don't know, 5,000 people watching that live.

And these are active market participants. It was at night, so they weren't trading stocks. But like it wouldn't shock me at all if the next morning 1,000 of them took action on some of the things that were being discussed. That's the new influence, and it's not coming from anyone on the street. Right, and think about even that part of the timeframe compression. Think about 20 years ago, they would have had to call their – they would have had to figure out what their account was. Oh, yeah. Call their guy.

Figure out how much cash. Call the broker. The broker had to put the trade in. Now they can put that trade in overnight. And take it off just as fast. Right, execute instantly. It's a good point. And then the speed that information travels, like obviously.

I remember listening to David Tepper talk about why his fund is named Appaloosa. At the beginning of his career or at the beginning of when he started the fund, all the research would come to the buy side shops via fax and it would be an alphabetical order. So they went in the dictionary or something and they found Appaloosa and it's like a beautiful horse. So they would be the first fax of the morning for all the research from every brokerage firm. So interesting.

That is what the world was like not that long ago. No. Within our lifetimes. When I started at Goldman Sachs, I was the dummy on the end sending the faxes out in the morning. So you would have sent David his fax first. Yeah, and information used to be alpha.

Like everybody – that's over. Everybody has the same information instantaneously. That's right. But do we think that interpretation of information is still alpha? Like let's say everyone has the same data all at once, which is by design. That's like in the rule books is reacting quickly is not going to be a strategy anymore because that's software so it's still interpretation of what to pay attention to and what not to is still i think that's still an edge i just don't know that anybody can claim to hold on to that edge for long agreed

no you also need the weight you need to be able to move a stock with enough weight and not everybody can do that so information technology but also the ability to move money quickly, that's still an advantage. That'll always be an advantage. And I don't think that that's an advantage unique to this industry, right? Like if you think about, we were talking about film before, you need to be able to interpret, hey, if I want to make this film, I see what's special about it. I see what's unique. I'm going to make this where no one else sees the value in it. The same with the stock market. You need to have enough expertise or enough talent to

interpret that information. So if that's your strategy, then you have time. That's what I was going to say. The edge is time and the ability to withstand volatility. That's right. Patience is alpha, in my opinion. I agree. You should get a t-shirt. Patience is alpha. Or a new tattoo. I like that. I kind of feel like that's, I kind of feel like there's some truth to that. All right. So we're

laughing our way through this Evergrande thing, but I wanted to share this with you guys. Nick Colas, who I read every morning at a data track, he's talking about, we've had the third quarter earnings, which are going to start in four weeks, three and a half weeks. We're going to start getting those results. We've had 12 straight months of Q3 estimates being revised higher, higher, higher. And then the last two weeks in a row, consecutive cuts for a consensus estimates for the S&P 500. Like for me, that seems like it should be the type of thing that we're paying more attention to. Maybe not on an individual stock level, but like, I don't think the, I don't think most people on wall street think that Q3 would be lower than Q2, but as it stands right now, that's, that's where the consensus is. Um, what are we like? And you

look at FedEx blowing up yesterday. Like what are we in store for in four weeks when we start hearing about this summer? Like a lot of businesses struggled this summer. I think we're in store for in four weeks when we start hearing about this summer? Like a lot of businesses struggled this summer. I think we're in store for what historically was a normal quarter where 89% of companies don't be on earnings, right? That's not normal. We're in for pre-announcements. We've already gotten some, but there's more pre-announcements coming. That's normal.

Like a normal quarter is messy. And it's not fun. You know, I've been saying for the last few weeks that if the markets were as easy as they've been for the last three years, there would be no need for professionals. There would be no need to do anything at all. Right. So now we need to interpret this data and say, okay, you know, you didn't beat, but here's what it looks out to in the next two, three years. What am I going to do with that? How am I going to make this decision? looks out to in the next two, three years.

What am I going to do with that? How am I going to make this decision? You're going to need to go back to your Investopedia because you've actually forgotten some of the formulas that you need to use to value a company. I got to look up Tobin's Q. I heard you guys talk about animal spirits. I got to get myself back up to speed. None of this stuff has worked for 15 years, but I feel good like it's something that's going to come back.

Let's hope so. To what we were saying earlier, yes, FedEx missed. Stock got sold off today. But don't you think people's memories are so short right now that even if we get this bad news, company to company, you may see a big dip. You may see a big drop by individual companies or throughout sectors. But this wave of passive investing, the amount of money, the heaviness of the market right now, it's almost like what else are you going to do? And what else are you going to do until interest rates start to go up or you really feel like they're going to go up? There's nowhere else to go unless you want to play in crypto. What do you do? I mean, there's so much money in the market right now. It's everywhere. And I think people's memories are just so short right

now. And they're just looking for another opportunity to buy a stock at a discount and ride the wave. And I don't even think you need to have a short memory to make that argument, because if you think about it, anyone who's new to this business in the last 10 years has only ultimately experienced up and short pullbacks that they get out of. What would take for that mentality to be shattered? It ain't going to be one earnings quarter. Like it would really – I feel like it would really take six months of consecutive lower highs. I think you're right. We haven't had that.

Every sell-off we've had, none of them were orderly where it's like lower high, lower highs. I think you're right. We haven't had that. All right. So every sell-off we've had, none of them were orderly where it's like lower high, lower high. Like it was all just like V and then V-shaped recovery. We haven't even had a plateau. It was elevator down, elevator up. You're right. Let me give people the data on what I'm talking about because Nick's stuff is behind a paywall. But basically, I mean, these are minor adjustments, but they're still adjustments lower.

But basically – I mean these are minor adjustments, but they're still adjustments lower. 49.23 a share for Q3 S&P earnings on September 10th. On the 17th, it was 49.11. And Nick is saying, quote, if the street is right and 49 per share is the correct number for S&P Q3 earnings, then US large caps are a raging short right here. Large caps are a raging short right here. There's simply no way a market that trades for 20 times 2022 estimates is expecting Q3 results to be down 7% from Q2. So I think – I don't think 20 times earnings is a lot. For a market without earnings growth, it is. I think it's not – OK. But I'll get on Michael's side for one sec, which is with a 1.3% 10-year treasury and the Fed still pumping

in what's likely to be another $700 billion. Also, though, probably declining. Right. No, no. I mean, between now and when they end the taper. Yes. But earnings are at record highs right now for almost every single sector. So if we didn't grow quarter over quarter, so what?

Well, that's a great point. But that's going to matter on an individual stock basis a lot. Oh, totally. FedEx is blowing up. Totally. So we've never had a Q3 during an expansion, an economic expansion. We've never had a Q3 earnings in any year that was lower than Q2.

I think all of those sort of data points need to get thrown out, given the pandemic. Or the expectations are low enough that we do smoke the numbers if estimates continue to be cut. But I think you're right. I think this year is just resetting the bar. Next year will matter versus this year. I agree.

It's such a weird, all the comps are so weird. And then again, back to the point of so many retail, new retail investors and traders in the market, do they even care about earnings this quarter beating earnings last quarter? They don't even know what that is. They don't even know what that is. So they care about what looks cheap, what can I buy, where can I buy it, how quickly can I get it, and how can I get jiggy with it if I want to buy options or find another exotic way to play the market.

Tell us what this Investopedia Anxiety Index is. So we track, and we've been tracking for 10 years or so, traffic to fear-based terms, fear-based terms in the market like correction, like bear market. Plunge. Plunge, right? Like economic terms. Yeah, economic terms, recession, depression, et cetera, and even personal finance terms like bankruptcy, foreclosure, et cetera. And we've noticed and we've done the math and we've had actually quants do the math that the anxiety index, the traffic to these terms spikes ahead of the VIX. So people are looking things up when they get freaked out, just like the other day when people are looking up Lehman Brothers.

Before they act, they look up. Before they act, they look up. I would think that's concurrent. Interesting. They look up things first, not everybody, but a lot of people look up. What does that mean? You get a 10-second head start. Right.

They look it up. They sell. That's the gap where you want to buy stocks or sell stocks. They look it up, they sell. That's the gap where you want to buy stocks or sell stocks. So the anxiety index was screaming like a two-year-old in a toy store when it's time to leave, obviously back in March 2020 because things were going crazy. But it has become really, really quiet. budging because I think there's this complacency that this is just going to grind its way higher, or there's so much money out there that there's no way we're going to see another 5%, 10%, 15%, 25%, 35% drop. People are just not used to it. And this new crop of investors, to your point, Jenny, they've never seen anything like that. They don't even know what a bear market is.

That was a cute bear. Do we need an exogenous event, again, to send stocks 30% lower? Can stocks fall 30% absent a COVID type? God forbid something really, I don't even want to say bad happens. Like, can we have a recession? I'm saying today, not, not ever, of course ever we can, but like what could cause stocks to fall 30% other than a shock right now? No, it's backwards. The next recession will be caused by the stock market. Could be. Well, that happened in 2000. Right. Like there was nothing else. It was the stock market. And that's going to be the thing.

The economy is – I hate saying this out loud because people are going to get mad. The economy is no longer big enough to offset whatever the Fed is doing and whatever the stock market is doing. I think you're right. So it's going to be the other way around. And people – I don't think people remember that – we didn't have a bad recession in 2000. You don't think a slowdown in the economy could take the stock market down? No, I think it's going to be the other way around. I think he's right.

I think if stocks have a six-month bad stretch, wait until you see the consumer confidence data, University of Michigan stuff, CFO's sentiment. That's how big the stock market is now relative to the economy. It is so effing big. If you pull up the Buffett indicator on Investopedia, you would see that that's right. The market capped the GDP. I'm pretty sure it's on an all-time high. Well, it's reversed. It's bigger now.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's my own personal opinion. I could be dead wrong. But because it is and because there is so much money in the stock market, we know only about half of people in the country do invest, that can invest, but there's still so much in there. Again, what is the other option? And I understand that we don't really have options right now because interest rates are low and for all the other reasons. But once you have this massive money, and I know this is a conversation that goes around

and around, but where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Put that in the bank? Yeah, but Caleb, I don't disagree with you. I do. But look at this chart from Yardeni showing bond ETFs and mutual fund flows. They're buying bonds too. People, this is an alternative to stocks. I don't get it. But record number of bond flows, I don't know where this is coming from, but people are buying bonds. Right. Well, look at the junk bond market. The Journal had that story earlier in the week about soaring junk bond issuance. There's so much money out there and people are looking for yield under any stone they can find it. That's why you're having these crazy coins pop in.

The NFTs are popping. Everything is popping because people are just looking for more upside wherever they can find it. And maybe we'll run out of places to look for it. But the stock market really hasn't disappointed, even when the news has been bad. Let's get to that bond, the bond flows and the bond funds for a second though, because I had an interesting conversation yesterday. So I'm on an investment committee and we had a conversation with one of our bond managers who for the organization that, I don't want to say it, this endowment, right? It's like 120 million bucks. The IMF.

Right now, it's like 120 million bucks that The IMF. Right. It's like 120 million bucks that this bond manager manages for us, like very high end, high quality. And the conversation we were having was for so long, individuals in particular thought bonds were a source of income. And that for this big organization. Well, they were. They were. Right. And then for the past five, 10 years, the salespeople at this organization have changed the conversation with their clients. Stability. Okay.

And growth. And in the last year, the and growth is gone. So all they're selling bonds on now, all the salespeople, and this is huge, like a multi-trillion dollar asset manager, and all their salespeople are selling bonds to the end clients on is stability. So I see that. I'm like, wow. But it does work.

Right. And when you've got cash yielding 0.1, suddenly the bonds at like 1.3 or 1.5 suddenly look good. But it's interesting to me. I see that and I say that's how actually scared people kind of are. I was on Monday and Tuesday of this week,

I was out in Indiana meeting with clients. And one of the clients that I met with immediately said, like, is now a bad time to invest. The market is so screwed up. You know, the market's really screwed up. It's a record high. Right. But that's not what he means. He means there's like all this bad stuff going on. I said to him, I'm like, the market's always screwed up. Like, tell me any period in time where you can't think of like 25 different things. But I think of people like that and if they don't have – and if they're going to the average investment advisor who just kind of succumbs to their fear-mongering, they're going to keep pumping them into those bond funds. They're going to end up with a 50-50 allocation so the client could sleep at night and they'll earn no money.

That's exactly right. Or think of all the huge endowments and public employee retirement systems and sovereignties who just straight up have a huge allocation of bonds. They have no choice. Even spreads. Like this is BB. The spreads are 2%. It's crazy. It's crazy.

Microsoft or Google can borrow at 2%. Like low-grade companies can borrow at 3% or 4%. It is – Coinbase just borrowed at I think 4.5% for 10 years. Which is hilarious. Coinbase. It's like a barely legal business. Like literally Coinbase is borrowing I think for 4.5% to 10 years. While they're being sued by the SEC, they're borrowing at 4%.

So the demand for bonds is extraordinary. Let's go to the Fed thing this week. So the Fed whispered finally taper, which thank God they should have done this four months ago. I was stunned. Were you? No. I'm just kidding. I think – I mean I have a very strong opinion about this.

I don't know better than the Fed. That's not where I'm coming from. But everything we're describing are the symptoms. The cause of this is just money being like thrown at people. And the Fed isn't the only central bank doing it, not the only instrument of government doing it. The Treasury did it last year. I think it's doing more harm than good. But here's the takeaway.

Quote, if progress continues broadly as expected, the committee judges that a moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted. So let's hope they're doing this before Thanksgiving. of asset purchases may soon be warranted. So let's hope they're doing this before Thanksgiving. Not taking all the accommodation away, but like, do we need to be at maximum emergency levels of stimulus? They're still driving 120 miles an hour down the Meadowbrook. Right, but now they're honking the horn.

Yeah, but that's okay. They're going to 95. Yeah. Stocks rallied before and true to form, stocks rallied after, which is a lot of fun. What was your takeaway from how things seem to have reacted? I mean we have these great charts that it looks like a six-year-old wrote on. Is that you?

Yeah. Well done, sir. In the doc. But what was your take on like how the markets handled the whispering of the word taper? And they didn't even say taper. whispering of the word taper. And they didn't even say taper. I mean, I'm always surprised when we have a pullback and then when it rallies up this much on something that we completely expected.

70% of people expected it. Yeah, so like I don't get it, you know? That sounds kind of dumb, I guess. Caleb, what do you think? I mean, maybe it's finally like finally they said it so we can finally start buying stocks aggressively. You know what? We know you're dancing around this for the last couple of months.

There's this infighting. So they say amongst Fed governors and FOMC members, right? Nine against nine right now. But they finally just said, here's what we plan to do. But it didn't come out until the press conference, actually, when a reporter actually asked Powell that question. Yes. That he actually put a timestamp on it because they can't do that in the official documents. But it's finally just this relief of just say it already. We know what you're

going to do. Everybody knows what you're going to do. We just want a reason to either sell right now or buy right now. This grinding around in the middle that we've been doing for the last month or so in the stock market, I think it's, you know, folks are getting tired of it and we're all back, you know, from the summer. People either want to buy or sell. And that you're seeing these extremes for the first time really in a long time where we had that 2% drop, 2.5% drop before stocks recovered the other day. But then it was all the way back. So I think people are just like, just get it out. In the summer of 2013, we have a sample size of one for something like this.

But whatever. It's instructive. In the summer of 2013, the market panicked when the term taper was mentioned. And it was swift. And it was stocks and bonds. And then the taper didn't actually start until December, I think. And then all through 14, each month, they removed a few billion dollars from the buying. And then by the end of 14, they were finished. And then in 15 is liftoff for interest rates.

Think about that timetable, if this is even remotely close. So taper mentioned now, maybe they start around Christmas time or November or January, whatever it is. And then each month, what's the number, $120 billion a month? $120 billion. Each month they remove $10 billion. This could be a year of very gentle removing accommodation and then liftoff for interest rates in 23. Like is that – like why wouldn't you buy on that if that's what it looks like it might be? I think this gets back to Michael's point before, which is 21 times earnings is that cheaper expensive with money pumping in.

It's not expensive. Right. But it gets more expensive. It's not expensive. Right. But it gets more expensive. It gets more expensive. Fair. Yeah. I think the idea that stocks could get re-rated is certainly a risk, right? That's a big risk.

But again, it always comes back to re-rated against what? Interest rates. And re-rated how? Caleb's right. Like again, re-rated against real estate? Re-rated against a 10-year treasury? I think that with the demand that we're seeing for bonds today already with rates at one and a third. I don't know why I just said one and a third.

With rates super low. Like what would the demand be for bonds if rates get up to two, two and a half, three percent? I mean, it's funny. Three and a half percent seems like impossible right now. Impossible. Yeah. I would buy the shit out of a treasury at three and a half percent. know my dream is so everyone would do it everyone else would yeah you're not going there you're not gonna get the chance yeah my dream is to see munis at eight percent again

this is my dream yeah because you know what i'm gonna do it's by the way it's never gonna happen munis at where eight percent and then i'm gonna sell out my taxable equivalent yield that'd be about 12 so you sell out my client's portfolios, and we're all going to drink cocktails on a beach for a rest stop. Stocks are selling at 11 times earnings if munis are at 8%. Do you think anybody has the patience to wait for bond yields to climb? That's my point. No one has patience. There's so much money waiting.

By the way, munis at 8% means these cities are literally on fire. Yeah, that's why it's literally impossible. Right. CNBC delivering alpha survey. They did this this week. I think the day before the FOMC survey. This is very interesting. I hate surveys, but given the market.

Well, I know who's in this survey, and they take this very seriously. They talked to 400 chief investment officers. They don't call you for this. They don't call Barry for this. What's funny is there's two options here. Is now the time to be very conservative or very aggressive? There's no in between. There's no in between. Cause it's, yeah. Cause it's not fun. Yeah. It's not fun. But this, all right. So, but I would, so 76% said very conservative, 24% said very aggressive. If I had to choose,

I wouldn't say that now is the time to be very aggressive. I would be part of the 76%. But the wording of the question, what kind of market risk are you willing to accept for yourself and your clients? A, now is a time to be very conservative in the stock market. B, now is a good time to be very aggressive. My point is it's interesting that nobody would say out loud now is the time to be super bullish, but that's how everybody's behaving. You would answer that on a survey. You would not say that to a TV camera. You would not say, I'm going to get super aggressive. But nobody says now is the time to load up on stocks. Yet the market is acting in such a way that every time it dips, that's how people are acting.

But let's define what super aggressive in the stock market means right now, right? Because you used to say- AMC, GameStop, Quinto. Yeah. I think about it in terms of asset allocation. That's what I was- Yeah. Yeah.

Keep going. Like, should you be 90-10 right now? Should you be down to 60-40, maybe even lower? That's how I would view it. Well, that's how a CIO would view it. A retail person would view it as, do I YOLO Chipotle calls into the earnings? Or something conservative like Tesla.

It's two completely different conversations. You're right. P.S., individual investors, we survey our readers all the time. AAI surveys their readers all the time. It's very similar to this. I think investors all feel the same way about this. It's a little bit sketchy out there. We're kind of at highs.

There's all kinds of dicey things happening, but I'll take some more if it's going to get cheaper. If that ever flipped, it would be the greatest sell signal ever. Absolutely. I don't know what it would take if the last year doesn't get that to flip, like recency, because we've never had a double this fast. Or maybe we've had one. No, not like this.

So we keep talking about the market and we spoke about this last week, but there's so many stocks that look like absolute shit. Like there's a lot of stocks that aren't working all over the place. You don't have to look very hard. No, there's many bear markets

all over the market in the mid caps and the small caps. You can find them if you're looking, but if you're looking at the overall market in these big stocks. Yeah, if you look at the SP, you don't see it, but like Zoom looks horrible. AT&T, I mean, there's a, there's a million sites that don't look good. I own a few of them. I, I, I agree. This is the expectations for the S&P over the next 12 months. 51% the S&P will go up more than 5%. 44% the S&P will be flat. And 5% the S&P will fall.

That's where you get that. People really don't think that it will fall. I would take flat. I'd be thrilled with flat. Flat after last year? Yeah. But think about the last three years. Plus 30 in 19, plus 18 in 20, plus 20 this year.

We could chill out. 2017 was plus 27%. 2018 was flat, I think. And 2018, the bad year, was flat. Or down two. Total return might have been down 1%. Yeah, a crash by today's standards. I want to hear about some of these search terms, Caleb, on Investopedia right now.

So we talked about the Lehman collapse. How many of these that you listed for us, and we'll put these on screen for the YouTubers watching this, but run through some of these and tell me how many of these are always on the list and how many of these are new? So when I asked for this list, we call this the spikers list. This is for outliers. This is for articles or terms or definitions on the site that are spiking 500% or more beyond their normal seasonal spikes.

I can anecdotally confirm, Caleb, one of the terms in here is what are top leveraged S&P 500 ETFs? We have been getting more and more emails from our younger listeners, talk me out of using a levered ETF. TQQQ. Why would I? Send them to me. Anyway, so this is anything that was outside of PE ratio, which is always spiking, or PEG ratio, or compound, the classics.

Those are always on the list. What is Theta? That's spiked? What is Theta? Spiked. And I had to go look that one up because I didn't know what Theta is, even though it's the first name in my fraternity. But I didn't know what it meant in the options world. I do.

Just look at Michael's portfolio. You'll see Theta everywhere. It's time decay. So I learned about Theta when I bought a Zynga put 24 hours later. I bought it. I bought it, and it was down 70% as soon as I pressed buy. Said no one ever. Yeah.

Anyway, obviously this week the Lehman Brothers things were popping. People were looking up top leverage S&P 500 ETFs. They obviously wanted to know about tapering. We've been talking about it. What is tapering? Operation Twist. Why does anybody care about that one? That's a throwback.

That's for the year. That's so far this year. So the bottom list is the top spikers year to date. The top list is just this week. So I pulled the recent for you, and I pulled the so far this year. What's the maximum I could lose on a covered call? Well, it's covered. It's covered 100%. What is market manipulation? That's funny. So this year and really 2020 has been an explosion of people just diving around our site looking for what do these things mean? And then when we had the meme stocks going nuts earlier in the spring, everyone was looking up naked shorting, market manipulation. What's a short squeeze?

What's had a short sell? Obviously, what is Dogecoin? What is the plunge protection team? Is that, oh my God, that's hilarious. That means like Zero Hedge was talking about that, or like some YouTuber was going crazy about the plunge protection team. This is why Investopedia is such a great business, because if you're not a market participant, like, and you hear the word capitulation, you're like, wait, I don't know, what does that mean? Right, it's a great word, but when you think about it

in terms of what it means for markets and investors. I wouldn't know what it meant when I was 21 years old. A quick anecdote. Sometimes we see terms pop in for like whatever reason, I have to go look it up. So one year, a couple of years ago, Rico was pop in, right? Racketeering. When year, a couple of years ago, Rico was popping, right? Racketeering.

What? Like two or three years ago. It was just popping. I was like, what is going on? And I was like, something's going on out there in the world. And it turns out that it was the rapper Tekashi, 6x9, got arrested for racketeering and weapons charges and threatening to kidnap somebody. And they were hitting Investopedia? And they were hitting Investopedia.

Do you have a lot of Takashi content on there? Oh, I do now. I have a whole section. But I mean, people were popping. And the YouTube rap shows were putting up our definition on screen. When Billions is on TV on Sunday nights, we have so much traffic to our sites. People looking up, what do these things mean when Axe is talking about it, when Succession is on?

We get traffic. Koppelman would love to hear that. I tried to get Koppelman when Axe is talking about it, when Succession is on. We get traffic. Koppelman would love to hear that. I tried to get Koppelman to come on and talk about it. If you can help me with that, I would appreciate it. But people are, I wrote the- He doesn't do a lot. I wrote the listeners, the viewer's guide to billions for Investopedia because we were getting so much traffic during showtime-

That's hilarious. That I had to do it. And I got to keep it up because now what? We're six, seven seasons in. There's a whole bunch of new stuff going on. But we get traffic for the oddest reasons beyond just market participants just because we have 36,000 terms on the site. What's on billions this year?

SPACs? We haven't hit SPACs yet. Crypto? I don't know anything. I have no comment. Well, are you watching? They just came back two weeks ago. I'm asking for a sneak peek.

No, never going to happen. All right. All right. So you have this bird's eye view then into like what the terms that the new investors are really interested in. Half of these things seem like just classic things that they should know about. And half of these things didn't exist even five years ago. Like what is Ethereum? Right. The fact that people are asking that like in 2021 with a stock market up 18%, it really tells you like how hard people are looking for new things

to do. That's only up like two or 3000%. It's a blockchain. So I get it. But you know, we have to keep writing new crypto terms because new coins are popping, new terms are popping around the crypto sphere. So we're constantly writing new stuff, but we spend much more time updating the old stuff because it's usually, look, like I said, no one's coming in the front door. They're always like, what does that mean? Either Googling or binging and whatever your search engine is and coming to us through this weird backdoor, side door entrance. And then we have to make that old content. Some of it was written in 2002, 4, 8, 10. We have to bring that up to date with a modern reference and a case study.

That's what we spend a lot of time doing. So, Michael, you said you guys are always one of the top results. Well, the reason is we put a lot of time and effort and money into making sure we're updating all that content to give it a fresh date stamp. I have a business proposition. You tell me the top 100 terms and it's me and Jenny. I love it. Do a video and you just embed the video

and it's like, I'm Jenny from Gilman Hill. I don't think the internet is ready for that, but I want to try it. Let's do it anyway, Josh. Are you guys doing a lot with crypto?

Do you have like what is Uniswap, for example? I bet we do. Don't test me on that, but if we don't, we'll have it tomorrow because I'll assign it tonight. So we have that.

But we also have what's the difference between Ethereum and Ether? What's the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum? What's the difference? So we have to have all these comparisons out there. Okay, Michael, we're going to write it. And actually, you could write it for me if you don't mind. I like it. I think it's admirable that these kids are looking things up with as much gusto as they seem to be.

I think that's cool. I'm impressed. Educated investors, we all want that. And that's the thing. There's two ways of looking at the last year and a half, which is so many new market traders and people coming in trying to make a fast buck and gamble and trying to trade the market.

Oh, right. Oh, so what? That's what everyone does. And then the other side of it is, hey, we have a lot more market participants and hopefully they'll make more than one or two trades in their Robinhood or Webull account. And they'll go on to make a lifetime of investing and learning. Cause that's what it's all about, right? That marathon. And hopefully a lot of these people

will stick with it, keep learning and actually build portfolios. Yeah. Keep gambling and sell it all for Ethereum. My favorite, uh, like, you know, all the hustle porn on like, um, Instagram, like, like there's a lot of people doing like how to be a billionaire that live at home. With their parents. Sometimes, this is the one I saw that I liked though. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you learn.

I was feeling good. That's pretty good. It's very accurate. It's kind of deep. I was feeling that. That should go on a t-shirt too. We're not going to spend a ton of time on this, but the Build Back Better plan will absolutely have ramifications for our clients, definitely your clients, Jenny.

What, if anything, are you being asked about some of the way the new taxes might affect investors? Are you worried about this yet or is it too early? No, we're worried. So it's a dividend income strategy, right? So if the dividend tax goes up, that kind of stinks. Tell everybody how dividend taxation works. So right now, dividend taxes and long-term capital gain taxes are the same.

So they're both in that 15% for if you earn, what is it, under $450,000. 20% if you earn over $450,000. And then the 3.8% in addition to that. Which covers Obamacare basically. Now what I think is interesting is that at this point, it's only saying or rather the last thing I heard was that that tax rate's only going up for households that earn over a million dollars. That's what you're hearing. Is that where they're at right now in the negotiations? That's the last I heard. I hope

that's still true. If that's true, the reality is not that many people are affected. Not that many people earn a million a year. They have millions. No, I looked at it. But they've accumulated it over years and years. That's right. Only about 250,000 households in America. Duncan, you're f***ed on that for sure.

Poor Duncan. Oh, and you dropped the F-bomb. I did. I want you to know I'm on my best behavior today. Is your mom going to listen to this? Probably. She thinks you're awesome. Tell her I said hi.

Yeah. All right. So what are you telling people that are like, you're not going to change how you invest? No. And for 98% of our client base, maybe more, it doesn't matter. They're not going to be affected, but people are kind of freaked out by it. And then the conversation which you and I are both having too is, oh, well, should I take my capital gains this year? If capital gains taxes are going up, shouldn't I take them this year instead of next year? The reality is if it's only for households over a million,

very, very, very few people will actually be affected by it. So let's hope that that's still what happens. To me, that seems fair. It seems there's a lot of double taxation anyway by the time you get to capital gains and dividends. So it seems pretty unfair to me to hike it higher than that. Yeah. I don't get the sense that we're getting that many questions about it,

but am I wrong about that? I wouldn't know. Maybe I would. You would? I feel like you would know. If we were getting that many questions about it, but am I wrong about that? I wouldn't know. Maybe I would. You would? I feel like you would know. If we were getting a lot. I mean, it's so early. These proposals are just coming out a week ago.

Yeah, but I've been being asked about it since before the election. Like, oh, if Biden wins this, is that what's going to happen? So I've had a peppering of it all year. I would say I don't have a pickup in questions right now. It's kind of the same It's just part of the conversation Would you change your strategy? Oh, never

Never Well, because think about That's good, you shouldn't For better and worse, right, Josh? Well, no The tax regime is going to swing back and forth Right Look, you could go nuts with Opportunity Zone funds and all that shit

If you really feel like you have clients that need that But to your point Most people are not going to be that affected and think about too i do something really specific right i manage a dividend income strategy so most of our clients have hired us to replace income you know whether they retired or started or started an income stream because it makes them feel better but they need that that income. And the reality is, is a 20% rate on it versus a 22% rate or 23. It's not material. And they don't have any other place to get income from, you know, particularly with bonds not going there either.

So, so it's kind of like, sorry, you know, you don't have a better choice. And by the way, probably. Are you doing REITs also? Yeah. It's kind of crazy. So that dividend. That's non-qualified. That's a distribution.

So that's ordinary income anyway. It's ordinary income anyway, but it dividend, that's non-qualified? That's a distribution, so that's ordinary income anyway. It's ordinary income anyway, but it's not a huge part of the portfolio. But this is why interest rates are so important, because you could get 3% on Hershey or Colgate or whatever the numbers are, or Pepsi. But you can't. You can't even get that much? No. It's wild. Like maybe

1.6, maybe. Really? Yeah. Well, on some of the staples you can get up to 3%. But anyway. Okay, only if you go out really, really far. Like, maybe. Really? Yeah. Well, on some of the staples, you get up to 3%. But anyway. Okay. Only if you go out really, really far. Like I haven't looked at bonds in a couple of weeks. No, I'm talking about stocks. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry.

No, no, no. I'm talking about consumer staple stocks. Sorry. Yeah. So my point is, would you rather get 2.5% from McDonald's, 3.5% from Coke, or earn a bond? To me, if you need the income, that's not even a question. 100%. So you need to stomach the volatility. So you know the income, that's not even a question. So, okay. So you need to stomach the volatility.

So you know the dividend's coming. Right. They're not going bankrupt. Right. And by the way, when you're in a March of 2020 and you're freaking out because your portfolio is down and you say,

well, look, the income's coming to me. You know, Colgate, Pepsi. There were dividend, there were dividend cuts. There were definitely buyback cuts.

Energy cuts. There always are. But I don't think that a lot of the staples did not cut their stocks. And this is why I think that dividend strategies work, even if they're not the most tax-effective way, because people hold on to their dividend-paying stocks. That's exactly right. And you get them through. So my conversation with my clients last March, the psychological component of it was unbelievably beneficial. March, the psychological component of it was unbelievably beneficial. So when everyone was terrified, right, and portfolios were down 30% in like two weeks, the conference, the calls with

the clients were going, okay, but you needed $50,000 a year to live on. And that's completely intact. And you know, you're talking to me on your Verizon cell phone right now. Like you think they're cutting their dividend right now? I own that piece of shit. The dividend is all the only thing that's good for – But it's the better than a bond. Yes. And then you balance out the portfolio and you have some things that have a lower yield and higher growth and you have some things with a higher yield and lower growth. But so what?

If McDonald's falls 30%, 40%, you know McDonald's is not going anywhere. No. So you could hang on. Right. And if your experience has been the past 10 years, stock price is probably coming back sooner than you expect. But that dividend income stream for people who need it for either for the practical elements of their life where they just need their salary or they need it for the emotional relief that it gives in a bad market, that's what gets you through. One of the things I realized last year along this is – and this is kind of – I'm portfolio manager, but what I'm about to say is bad for portfolio managers and amazing for investment advisors. Definitely say it. Okay, I will. But I'm like, I could be the best portfolio manager in the world. I could make

Warren Buffett look terrible, right? And if I hadn't been able to do the investment advisor kind of job or work with advisors who understood the strategy and got their clients through or manage a portfolio that was able to do that, a lifetime's worth of great returns would have been for nothing. Yeah. And so really, really. That's a really great point. Yeah.

It really occurred to me last year that the investment advisor and the psychology, you know, that they're able to bring to their clients and get them from. But you're doing both of those things. You're not holding yourself out as I do financial planning. Yeah. But you're talking to the clients directly. So you are fulfilling that psychological component that I agree with you. That's the whole ballgame.

You could have the most optimized portfolio on earth, but if it can't be held onto at the most crucial moment, what is it all for? And being able to talk to clients, whether it's through the advisor because we work with some advisors and then some clients directly. talk to clients, whether it's through the advisor, because we work with some advisors, you know, and then some clients directly, but whether whoever it's through, if the client knows, like, okay, and we can all make fun of me for owning IBM because it's a total dinosaur. But you know what, when you're in March of 2020, and you're like, look, IBM's paid a dividend and raised it for like 35 years straight, AT&T, Verizon, like, yeah, you've got other stuff in there too. And it's a little bit mixed up. But when you can talk through that, whether it's the advisor talking the client through it, then it's not, oh, the market's scary. You know, it's,

I understand that. I was reading, I was reading your letters. You put me on, you put me on the list. No, I listen. Uh, I, I said this on my Instagram, uh, when I was playing the clip of me demolishing you in the bet. But I said, Jenny's like one of the few people I know on TV that I would actually give money to in real life. Oh, thank you. So I definitely meant that. Caleb is the other because he's got this algorithm that tells me what everyone's searching for. So between you two guys.

I want to move things along because we have to get to this junk bond thing. Speaking of dividends on stocks, like dividend paying stocks in my mind are a better deal than junk bonds. 100%. And the yield on junk bonds is only slightly higher. Didn't we just do this? $3 trillion market for low-rated companies' debt having its best year ever, powered by a rebounding economy. What does best year ever mean in terms of raising money? Money coming in.

Money coming in. In the junk bond market alone, U.S. companies have issued more than $361 of bonds uh with speculative grade all right so there's very little fear in the stock market there's even less fear in speculative uh bonds but like what even is a speculative bond because is anyone not have enough money right now so like there's any corporation other than this thing in china like in a situation where they don't have cash i feel like even during cash, I feel like- Well, even during the crisis, I feel like Royal was raising money at like 9% or 11%.

Like that's not a lot of return given the level of risk. And I'm sure they're going to pay it back, but- Yeah, the airplanes were raising money. So like, what else do you need to know? So is there even a junk bond that exists right now? Evergrande? In the United States anyone is anyone really a junk bond well there were a bunch that were that are no longer those fallen angels are no longer

junk bonds anymore they're fine to your point probably not well what a default i mean but defaults are defaults are so low defaults are alone how could you default right now you can't and that's the whole cannot that's the whole zombie company thing right like with as long as interest rates are this low and money is this free, nobody can. Would you still say, though, given that that's where we are and the Fed doesn't seem to want to disrupt that, that dividend paying stocks are still a better deal than junk bonds? I mean, this goes back to Michael's point. I would feel way more comfortable owning some of those consumer staples. Like, what are you going to get?

Equity. Right. Five percent versus three percent. You've got some growth. If things get ugly for whatever reason, whatever exogenous thing happens next, where do you want to be? Yeah, it's not even close. It's like you get the 3% dividend. You have some upside if the stock goes up or you could get paid back 5% or blow up. Right.

Yeah. The junk bonds won't get treated like equities for a minute. They always do. This is why I think that obviously the Fed is a huge player in the field, but so are investors, and the demand for fixed income for any yield is going to put a cap on interest rates, I think.

And I was asking, actually Ben, this question a couple months ago. Is the Fed always going to have to be here to save the day whenever we get hit rocky times? Their job is to not protect the stock market. LOL. Is it?

Why do they always make announcements when we're violating the 200-day? Exactly. But, I mean, is that safety net just going to be there? Or the fact that we know that it could be there, is that just going to change? Or has that already changed investor psychics to the result? The downside is not going to be that bad no matter what. That's a trillion-dollar question. $64 trillion question.

Let's talk about this young man opting on a college thing, and then we're going to go straight into favorites. So this is Scott Galloway again. By the way, Scott's supposed to be on this podcast later this fall. Me and his assistant are working on that. It's a daily project, but we'll get him here. He's not a native New Yorker project, but we'll get him here. He's not a native New Yorker anymore, but we'll get him here.

So I think- This podcast needs more bald men. I agree. But I think this is still staggering to me. Who wants to read these? Why don't you go through these, Michael? In 1970, 59% of US college students were men. That number has decreased to 1940.

No, to 40%. I'm sorry. What did I say? Don't blow the hole. I'm going to take you off this task. U.S. colleges now receive 35% more applications from women than they do from men. What is going on? I don't think this is like that potentially alarming and dangerous.

Oh, it's not? And terrible. Do you spend any time on the internet? I understand. I understand that disenfranchised men are more likely to cause danger to society. So from that point, but- Well, what's more disenfranchising than like in 2021 and beyond

not being able to get one of the jobs that actually pays a little wage? Why do you have to go to college to- Oh, well- That's changed. That's changed. I think that's changed now, but maybe only temporarily. I don't know about that. changed. That's changed. I think that's changed now, but maybe only temporarily.

I don't know about that. I have two data points. So I was in Elkhart, Indiana on Monday and Tuesday. I've never seen anything like this, right? And this is the RV manufacturing capital of the world. Everywhere I went. By the way. Channel checks?

What's going on? No, clients. Do you own the stock or you've seen clients? I have a bunch of clients out there. Okay. Really, really like awesome, wonderful people, nice place to go. I've never seen anything like this. Everywhere I drove, huge flags flying.

Now hiring, hiring, now hiring, hiring. $70,000. This is what I heard. $70,000 like starting salaries, right? There's no need for a college education on any of these jobs. Can you be here? Right. They were joking around.

Some of my clients were joking around like, oh, and they get a bonus if they stay until Tuesday. They get another bonus if they stay until Friday. Right. Stunning. Then I was watching, okay, because I live in this 1784 house, right? So I watch this old house. I'm watching this old house. They've been doing this huge promotion for the past month.

You live in George Washington's vacation condo. Yeah, where he peed on the wall. Right. Okay. I wasn't going there. You guys all remember what it was? France's Tavern or whatever. That was their claim to fame.

So I'm watching this old house. And they're doing this whole thing on how apparently there's no succession planning in the building industry. So they've dedicated all these shows to saying basically don't go to college. This old house might get mad. Do construction. Do construction. Do construction. Yeah. You can have an amazing job.

You can make a ton of money. So I think it's interesting because everywhere I'm going, I'm hearing like actually there's all these jobs and there's this huge need for people in the crafts and in the trades. So anyway, I see that. Jenny, I think what you're trying to say is good help is so hard to find these days. I think that's true i think what's more dangerous than not going to college is going to college getting six figures of debt and not having a real a real life i think that's more what we're seeing going on i don't think they're going i don't know if it's worth it maybe i'll drive a truck and make 75 grand a year i don't think it's that i think people have given up on the idea that they're going to have a better life if they go to college

yeah but honestly would any of us like not send our kids to college? Come on. We're saying these things, but would any of us not make sure our kids go to college? I think we're in a little bit more of a privileged situation than a lot of other people. When you actually have to make that decision, to your point, $250,000 for four years of this, or even $150,000 for four years of this, and then I'm in debt, and I may not get the job that I want. I think people are giving up. And that notion that I can't live better than my parents did, I think is much more prevalent now

than it was a few years ago. It's corrosive, and that's corrosive. I see that, and I'm kind of encouraged because I think there's something off in the supply-demand of workers and what we need. So I see that. I'm like, hey, great. Maybe the system's calibrating itself.

All right, so that's actually the positive way to look at it. And as somebody who's said, I'm sending my kids to college in like 15 years. I love this. I want prices to go down. Oh, your kids are going to do their classes on chain. Like your kids' college is going to be blockchain college. Can I add something? What's up, Duncan?

As a former adjunct professor, I just want to point out that I think the scariest part of this is that college wasn't just always about getting a job. That it's also supposed to be about having an enlightened, open-minded populace. And that, yeah, it's scary to me. We're definitely not going to have that either way. Yeah, I mean, especially when we want people to get a vaccine. It's probably not a great idea to not have people understand why. Oh, people are supposed to be finished in college socially like to some extent. Like finishing school finished.

Yeah, not like – What do you mean? What's the salad fork? People, when they leave – if you go away for four years, you should be at that point able to move to any city, make new friends. You should have like networking skills, like very, very non-academic skills that are equally important to like get along in the world. I do think college gives that to 20 year olds in a way that they may not get on a job site.

But again, it's not always an option for everyone. And not everybody needs it. Right. You know, not all jobs require that. Fair. Where are the libations? Where'd you leave that? Does your hat say world pandemic champions? What the hell is that? Does your hat say World Pandemic Champions?

What the hell is that? No, pandemonium. Okay. Pandemonium. That says pandemic, no? Yeah, no. It's from the hip-hop community. You definitely wouldn't understand.

The libations are here. We need an opener of some sort. I'll use the bottom of my shoe. Let me see what you got. Oh, well, I got some gifts. Look at this. From Jenny and I. You open one and you open the other.

But I'm an Italian Renaissance art enthusiast and major and I love me some Italian wine. Michael is now biting the bag with his teeth to open it. Do we have video running on Michael opening a gift? These are two.

Like an animal. I'm tired. The animal spirits is so appropriate now I know. I think we have to send you back to college to finish it. I didn't finish college. Two robust reds. One is a Brunello de Montalcino. And the other is a Barbaresco.

These are good autumn reds to have with, I think, our friend JC. This is so sweet of you. Thank you so much. He would welcome these choices. Do we have a straw? Duncan, do we have straws? I think you need that helmet with the two cups and the straw that goes in your mouth. What's a Barbaresco? Is that the grape

or is that the region? The Barbaresco is the grape. Brunello is the region. But we don't play around when it comes to Brunello. This is beautiful. Thank you, Caleb. If we're unable to find a corkscrew between now and the end of the show... The bottom of your shoe... Do you have a corkscrew? Use the bottom of your shoe.

John's bringing a corkscrew. I've been taking my wine tips from JC now for the last year. Can we talk about this Google purchase real quick before we move on to favorites? Yes. So what exactly did they buy? They bought the building that they're currently occupying space in. Oh, the one in Chelsea? It's called St. I'll tell you what it's called,

but they spent 2.1 billion on Manhattan real estate. Talk about a contrarian bet. We're back. And you know I bought the SL Green earlier in the year. Yes. Actually, yeah. Do they own that building? They don't own that building,

but they own a tremendous amount of Class A New York City office space, stocks being priced as if no one's ever going to be here again. This is on the west side of Manhattan. I think it's in Chelsea. Yeah, it's in Chelsea. It's massive. Right across from the Chelsea market. It's enormous. There are about six restaurants within the Googleplex in there where you can eat if you're an employee. You can have Asian food

in one part of it. You can have barbecue. It's a massive building interconnected with these cool hallways. But to your point, look around here. Michael and I went to the Google HQ in Venice. I've never seen so many chefs work for a software company. That was so cool. They brought us in for lunch. That's awesome. They have a lot of chefs. Beyond epic. That was a lot of fun.

What's going to happen around this neighborhood? This feels like the deadest part of town. We're down on Wall Street now where it feels like it's popping. Where are you guys? We're down on 28 Franklin, right up the street from the Stock Exchange. You know why it's popping? Because it's a residential neighborhood. Yeah, but you know what?

As of the last year. Yeah, I heard Steve Roth speak at a conference a couple years ago, and he said Manhattan, for the first time in his career, Manhattan's flat, right? Manhattan real estate's flat, where it doesn't matter where you live or where your office is, prices are flat. Right? Manhattan real estate's flat. Where it doesn't matter where you live or where your office is, prices are flat. It used to be neighborhood to neighborhood. Do we believe that, though?

You know. I don't know. You don't think it's coming back to flat? Not here. Right now, it's not. You really don't? No. Even the storefronts are still closed.

We have that at the office buildings. Like, the storefronts. I'll make you a bet. Okay. Now you have my interest. I don't know how to measure it. Now you have my attention. I know how to put the terms in place for the bet, but I don't know how to measure it. You want to bet on an office

occupancy rate for midtown Manhattan? I can get you the data for that. Wait, Caleb, what's his chart? Is that the right number or is it occupancy? You're telling me rents? That's what I'm thinking. Rents? Maybe two years from now? Are they flat with other areas? Flats of 2019? Or is it flat with other areas? Flat to 2019? Or is it flat across the island?

The turnstile data is still awful in New York City. Yeah. I mean, New York City is still tough. But all these big class A buildings, not the little ones, but big class A ones, they still have eight, nine-year leases on them. I'm very bearish on New York City commercial real estate. Where do you live? Long Island. If you lived in the city, you probably wouldn't pay.

Maybe. I do, and I'm bearish on it, too. You're in Manhattan. You're uptown. I just think it's done forever. I really do. I think it was such a watershed moment, the pandemic. We do this project with New York One where we've been tracking the New York City economic recovery. It's delicious.

Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers to everyone. Cheers. Thank you. Let's all take a sip at the same time. Well, you're saying delicious three times.

I've got to get after it. It stings the nostrils. It's only going to get better. Really? So we've been tracking the New York City economic recovery, looking at data like real estate sales, pending sales, looking at rents, looking at swipes, MetroCard swipes, open table reservations, unemployment,

and COVID hospitalizations. You have this data on your site for everybody? Yeah, and we put it on New York One. We're on New York One every Wednesday with this data. That's awesome. Yeah, and we've been doing this since right around June of last year, so three months into the pandemic. It actually looked good, but what's this recent dip?

I don't like that. This is a recent dip. This is Delta. Delta. This is Delta. This is also some- Ever recent dip. This is Delta. This is Delta. This is also some Evergrande. But this is also a drop in home sales. People stopped coming to New York because of Evergrande. A drop in real estate sales. Manhattan and Brooklyn were on fire with real

estate sales for the past, I don't know, nine months. But now inventory is super tight, right? Prices are very high on the high end only. That's the only thing that's available right now. So people are buying less. People are renting more. You've seen the rental market pop back. It's not a demand problem. It's a price problem. Not at all. Right. And we have kids back in school, but the subways are only about 50% right now because no one's coming to these buildings in the Bryant Park area or even further downtown, and that's killing all of the little businesses around it, right?

These ecosystems are very tightly tied together. So we're only about, as of today, 71% of the way back. We were 77% of the way back. But I feel like we're going to stay in this three quarters of the way back for a long time. I think 100% back is unattainable. I said like 75%, 80% is max. How far?

You would take the other side of that? Apartment, office, or retail? Office, office, office. Well, they're all related though in Midtown. You can't have retail if there are no office workers in Midtown. So retail has been in the dumps for a long time though, right?

My brother's ice cream company is a direct beneficiary of that. They've got amazing spaces over the past five years. Duncan, she's doing a commercial. When did FAO Schwartz leave? Five years commercial. When did F.A.O. Schwartz leave? Five years ago. I think so. Yeah, no, you're right.

That's been a secular decline way before the pandemic. I just think you don't bet against New York City. I think we can all argue that we would believe it's the greatest city in the world, right? Anyone here want to argue on that one? And it's going to recover. Whatever format that recovery comes in, people want to be here. It's the greatest city in the world, right? Anyone here want to argue on that one? And it's going to recover. Like whatever format that recovery comes in, people want to be here.

It's amazing. It will be as big but in different ways I think is a good take. I think I'm with you on that. And it's interesting too for me to talk to all my clients who are in Seattle or Indiana or Florida. They're dying to come back to New York. Like they're dying for Broadway to fully reopen. Yeah, for like three days. Yeah, to visit. Buy some t-shirts. Are they dying to walk down

34th Street? Because I wouldn't be. I think the point is How'd you come into the city today? Grand Central? Yeah, I took the train. It was shockingly normal. I'd rather come into Grand Central than Penn, I'll tell you that. Any day. But the bottom line is, as people return, the city's going to return to some version of normal.

It's the greatest city. Rental rates, however they flesh out, they're going to be okay. You just don't bet against it. But there is no feeling that you have to be here. Not right now. I would say when I started my career, it was like if I want to be in media, if I want to be in financial news, if I want to do any of this, I got to be here. You have to be here. Now I feel like I can spend a little bit of time there, but I don't know if I need to be here or if I need to raise a family here, which is another thing.

That's a good point. Nobody needs to be here nine to five, five days a week, and they never will. But I don't – do you really think everyone who is here needed to be? I think, at least from my friends. Well, they were supposed to be. But a lot of people just like being here. A lot of people like being in New York because it's vibrant and it's alive. I like being here too, one day a week.

I love being here one day a week. Yeah, that's the problem. Because we all grew up in the suburbs. You can't sustain all these lunch places. Okay, it's different. We all grew up in the suburbs. We didn't grow up in small rural communities where we were bored forever and you dreamt of like, I want to move to New York.

Shout out to all our rural listeners. We know you're not bored forever. We love you. For young people, it's great. Thank you for raining, man. Loves our world. All right, all right. Let's move on.

Well, yeah, I guess we'll have to, only time will tell. Time will tell. Let's do favorites. I don't want to go first. Wait, I was surprised to see your American Ross. I saw the first episode. Super dark. I don't want to go first. Wait, I was surprised to see your American Rust. I saw the first episode.

It's super dark. I love it. I love it. It's the right time of year for that shit. How many episodes did you watch? All right, I guess we're doing this. I watched both episodes. What came out so far?

Two was good. No spoilers. American Rust is- Set the stage. What's his name? Jeff Daniels? Jeff Daniels. He's like one of the best actors.

Who would have thought the guy from Dumb and Dumber is one of the best television actors in the country? He was good in Newsroom. He's good at everything he does. He's good in everything. And Maura Tierney, she was in- She's great. She was on News Radio.

She's been in a million things. She was in The Affair, the other Showtime show. She was in a million things. She's awesome. So Jeff Daniels is like a small town Pennsylvania sheriff who gets like involved in a lot of shit. I don't want to say any more. But if you like – I don't want to call it a murder mystery because I kind of feel like – That's how I described it.

Yeah, but you know who did it. Right. So – or maybe we don't. So anyway, if you're into dark shit and good acting and good writing and slow burn, this is the show for you. Can I go next? Please. Go. Shoot.

If you're not into dark shit and you're not into good acting and you're not into good writing. Go on. That sounds like my wife's favorite. The only show. Yeah, Robin, listen. Yeah, what is it? 90 Day Fiance. Okay.

And even better than 90 Day Fiance, and by the way, it's like the only show I watch, is the Twitter feed, which is hilarious. What is this? Tell me all about it. Oh, my God. I'm clueless. Okay, so I think it's on Bravo. That makes sense. Shoot, What is this? Tell me all about it. Oh, my God. I'm clueless. Okay, so I think it's on Bravo. That makes sense.

Shoot, what is it? You know Impractical Jokers have that true TV, it's like their only show? Yes. This is like if it's Bravo, it seems to be like their only show. They've got like 90 different iterations of it. And so what it is is people in America who want to marry someone overseas and they get this like 90 day, whatever it is, K-1 visa.

They bring them here. They've got 90 days to get married and the drama ensues. And then can they return them if it's not good? They do. They do return them occasionally. I usually root for them to be returned and it never happens, which is super disappointing. So it's like, there's like border patrol come and send them back home. No, I've never seen that happen.

It sounds brutal. No, no, it's not brutal. Yeah, but the person has to leave the country if they're not married. But it like never happens, right? And by that time, they hate each other so much that they just go home. But it almost never happens. They always stay. And now they've got 90 Day Fiancé the other way where people are moving to other countries.

It's very, very lowbrow. Is it like men having women come from overseas or the reverse? Both. It's a mix. So are there women that import men to marry? Oh, yeah. I don't know. That's a great idea for a TV show.

I can't believe you haven't watched this. It's fantastic. So what are these, 30-minute episodes? Oh, no, like two hours. I mean, they start off like 30 minutes. I think the first time I watched it was on an airplane. I call my husband. I'm like, oh, my God, we got to watch this show.

All right, I'm in. I got to check this out. And the Twitter feed, I know you don't like it. Have you seen this? I have not seen it, but I'm on an airplane. I call my husband. I'm like, oh, my God, we got to watch this show. All right. I'm in. I got to check this out. And the Twitter feed. I know you don't like it. Have you seen this? I have not seen it, but I'm tuning in tonight. You're into it. It's a perfect TV show.

The real one is like Sunday nights. Robin would be into this. I'm shocked I haven't. But Josh, listen. I know you don't like the Twitterverse anymore. Okay. But the Twitter feed for it is hysterical. Why?

I don't know. They just pick on everyone and everything. And they're so mean. And it's fun. But not mean in a bad way. Just mean in a funny way. Are they tweeting clips from the show you're saying? Clips and like commentary. I was sitting on the airplane Monday morning reading the Twitter feed from the Sunday night show, like crying, laughing. Okay. All right. Listen, I can't promise that I'm going to check out the Twitter feed, but I will watch the show. Okay.

All right, Michael, what do you got? On HBO Max, they break down, there's like categories. So like, for example, there are, and they're pretty, they're pretty granular, like directors in movies. So like Rocky, for example, Stallone directed Rocky. So that was one of the category, another category that's always like award-winning indie films or something like that. And I don't know what compelled me to click on this one movie called blue ruin, but I went on the rotted tomatoeses as I do and saw 96% for the – Is that about the Smurfs? So 96% for the critics, 79% for the audience. That's good enough for me.

The tagline is a mysterious outsider's quiet life is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home. I'm in. 90 minutes, I'm in. It's only 90 minutes. You guys are all highbrow. You really are. That's what everyone says about us. I'm drinking fancy red wine. I'm talking about like thoughtful shows.

Out of a coffee mug. I'm so glad you picked up on that. This movie was dark and gritty and violent and I loved it. Who's in it? Nobody you know. Perfect. So you will watch something where you don't know anybody that's in it or anybody that directed it. He watches German shit. Like he watches like –

But you'll look up the ratings and what people are saying. Well, I want to make sure it's not a 30. You're a genre guy, so you go after the genre. To me, I have to recognize something or somebody before I take the chance. So this is a big pleasant surprise. I had no expectations. But 90 minutes, I gave it a shot. Good movie.

All right, Caleb, what do you got for us? All right, well, I thought you were going to share with us the LL and Q-tip clip that you had there I would have we don't have the screen for me to put it would have lost

all its effect Josh thinks that this is like a hip hop podcast that all of our listeners are hip hop that's why I was scared to come on every time

I thought it was so that's all you all have to rap to get out of here so you all have to have a freestyle I wrote it I did write a diss rap

in case this didn't go very well what rhymes with Investopedia oh I got some good stuff if you like LL Cool J and Q-tip I did write a diss rap in case this didn't go very well. What rhymes with Investopedia? Oh, I got some good stuff. If you like LL Cool J and Q-Tip, then you're going to love this mashup between Biggie and Tribe Called Quest.

That is ridiculous. Dude, I watched this. If you're a fan, then that's ridiculous. We'll include the link to this YouTube in the show notes. It's unbelievable for people that like that genre and like those artists, and I like them both. Do you know what I'm doing tonight? Did I tell you? I'm going to see Nas.

Oh, my God. In Queens. Oh, how perfect is that? Well, the other thing, this guy that I'm really into is this guy Harry Mack. Anybody heard of Harry Mack, the freestyle rapper? You give him any words, and he just creates a freestyle on the spot. This guy is ridiculous. He got me through the pandemic.

Best thing I've seen probably in the last year, he used to walk around Venice in California and just walk up to strangers and say, give me three words. They would give him three words and he would just go off on an amazing rap. But this guy gets on YouTube live and Facebook live and he raps and you can tip him and you can give him the words, type in the words. And if he raps, he creates a freestyle. He makes like five grand a night just rapping there in his room, and he is incredible. He went viral during the pandemic a few times. On the podcast front, I'm addicted to Smartless. I know it's a bunch of guys that look just like me.

It's hilarious. The one with LeBron James is really funny, and LeBron is very, very funny, funnier than I thought he would be. Two times I've been listening to this podcast while driving on the highway and I had to pull over because I'm crying so hard with laughter that I'm going to cause an accident. Who made you laugh the hardest, Jason? I'm a Jason guy. I'm more of a Jason guy. He's so fast. So is Will Arnett.

They just throw shit back and forth at each other. They're hilarious and they get great guests. They just had Daniel Ricciardo on from NASCAR, I mean from Formula One. Thought it was amazing. Last three things. Three books.

Last three things. Last three things. You have to understand, Caleb is a cultural, a cultured man. I'm a renaissance man. I brought you Brunello from 2013.

Actually, you should be taking notes. I need some culture. Well, Michael knows about Cebu. This is the Society for Advancing Business and Editing Writing. This is the business journalist group that I'm the president of. We do a Best Business Book of the Year award.

You were a judge last year. Our short list is out, so people can check that out at cebu.org. But three books that are on my shelf I'm rotating through right now, The Cult of We by my buddy Maureen Farrell and Elliot Brown about WeWork and the demise there. I would read that. I just started it. It's good. The Devil's Playbook about Big Tobacco Jewel and the demise there. I would read that. I just started it. It's good.

The Devil's Playbook about Big Tobacco Jewel and the Addiction of a New Generation by Lauren Eder of Bloomberg News, and An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Shira Frenzel and Sasi. I hate Facebook. Is there anything new to say about Facebook, honestly? Should I read that book or skip that one?

I would read the intro and see if you want to go further on it, but we have 10 great books on the short list. I got these three in rotation right now and they're all really good. Great business journalism

in the last year, by the way. Yeah. The best book last year was The Price of Peace by Zachary Carter. Did not win, but that was my vote. That was a very good book.

We did choose The Price We Pay, which is about... Ben read that, but I didn't read that one. Which is about how upside down the healthcare system is. That's a tremendous book by Dr. Marty Macri.

But anyway. Those were some great favorites. Jenny wants to go back to the drawing board because she rolled up with 90 Day Fiance. I'm good. What else? And Caleb rolled up with a list of 10 books. You know, I'm proud of my favorite.

I might want to rethink mine. Dude, that's awesome. We'll check that list out and we'll link to that also. And that pretty much does it for the show. Do you guys feel like we should try it one more time from the top or do you think we got it? No, I'd rather redo it. You want to redo the whole thing?

Yeah, because I laughed too much and I said Fonzie which sounded really stupid. When you laugh though, it's infectious. I feel like that's probably like one of the best parts of today's episode. We need more laughter. Duncan, what do you think about that? Yeah, more laughter is always good. More laughter always.

All right. And Caleb, you had fun today? I had a great time, and I was so amped up for this. I did three full sprints around Bryant Park and about 250 push-ups. Look at you. I just wish the monitor worked. You're in good shape right now, by the way. I meant to tell you that.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I waited until we were on air so everyone would know that. I appreciate that. Did you change anything about your lifestyle? I did. I did the carbs only on Saturday, which I call fatter day. Lots of heavy jump rope and some flowing vinyasa just to keep it long and lean.

And I feel good. I could kick. I'm 50. I could kick my 25 year old's ass. Look at this. Take his girlfriend and his job. He's better than this guy. All right.

Well, listen, we love the fact that you guys came over to do this. The Compound and Friends is all about this. So hopefully you guys will both come back, maybe together, maybe individually. We'll see what happens. But this has been a blast for us. Michael, did you have fun? Tons of fun. Duncan, did you learn anything today? Yeah. Bunch of stuff,

right? Yeah. I've got to look up Tobin's Q. Well, no you don't. Trust me. Alright, what do you got? I have some gifts, some parting gifts. Is that okay? Yes. Gifts are always okay, but just don't feel bad. We don't have any gifts for you. He's like throwing me under the bus. No, no, no. I didn't bring anything.

These are from Jenny and I. Just give me the keys to your car. It'll be fine. And I took some chances here. But you had Tom on, and Tom brought like half a liquor store and got you guys NFTs and authentic playing cards. Yeah, well, how's he going to top that when I invite him back? So I took a few shots. Batnik, Michael, I know you're down with the orange and the blue.

Dude, is that Starks? That's Starks. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? It's also the type of thing you might not buy for yourself. I really know're down with the orange and the blue. Dude, is that Starks? That's Starks. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? It's also the type of thing you might not buy for yourself. I really know him. Dude, you're the best. Can you do me a favor, though?

I think he's a kiss-ass. Are you kidding me? Could you please wear a T-shirt under that? Caleb. Would you do that? No, wear no T-shirt. Josh, I had my daughter wrap these for you. Oh, my God.

I know you're a hip-hop head. I don't know if you're a vinyl guy. Oh, yeah. But if you have that, then I think these are gonna make you happy. I got these. Shout-out to the folks at Cinderblock Records in Harlem on 142nd Street. Best record store in Manhattan, if you're looking for the real deal. I said, give me Queens.

Now you live in Harlem. Give me Queens. Give me Long Island. Give me deep hip-hop. And I walked down the street. And people were going nuts. Where did you find this? Cinderblock Records on 142nd Street. You don't know what this is. And Frederick Douglass.

What is that? All right. Explain to everybody the significance of this. Fife and Q-Tip are both on this. Okay. Let me see that one. Do you have vinyl? Do you have a record player?

He's going to get one now if he doesn't have one. This is Let Me Be The One. This is the LP version. Uma remix featuring Phife, acapella, and Q-Tip on the Silk's House remix. This is just deep Queens hip hop. Somebody found this in like a basement or an attic somewhere, right? Because there's no way it would have survived in this condition. I was walking down the street, and this one, Mr. Magic's Rap Attack.

If you're a Biggie fan, that's what he's citing. Mr. Magic's Rap Attack. If you're a Biggie fan, that's what he's citing. Mr. Magic's Rap Attack. I know that. I know that lyric. I know, but read some of the artists on that. Look who's on the cover of this.

Look who's part of this. It's compilation. Anyway, my guy at Cinderblock always has what I'm looking for. This is amazing. Will you come back on next week? I'll come on next week.

I'll bring more Bruno. I love that everybody brings presents. Oh, thanks. Because you need the Investopedia socks come on next week. I'll bring more Bruno. I love that everybody brings presents. Oh, thanks. Because you need the Investopedia socks. They're smart. Oh, guys, wait. I do have presents for you.

Here, Josh. Take a Simon. And Michael, here's a Rubik's Cube for you. Can I have a dividend? Yeah, you can have a dividend. I'm not done. Thanks for the socks. It's almost Hanukkah, but Michael has one of these. What is happening?

I brought some of my own swag because I want Josh to promote it. This is the Investopedia Express hoodie in XL. I'll definitely rock this. I know you'll rock it. You're a hoodie guy. This will be on What Are Your Thoughts next week. Can I see the back? That looks pretty awesome. It is awesome. Kind of jealous, to be honest. Jenny used to call me Investopedia Brown.

Like Encyclopedia Brown. I showed him the cover of the book. That is so good. I think that's a TV show in the making, by the way, Investopedia Brown. Like Encyclopedia Brown. I showed him the cover of the book. That is so good. That is so good. I think that's a TV show in the making, by the way, Investopedia Brown. I like it. I mean, do you want to collaborate on the rewrite of that series? Duncan? Yes.

You need to sock up. Awesome. Thank you. Who's good, sir, over there? Look at this. Caleb. You're a mensch. Swag city.

You are truly a gentleman. You're a scholar. I feel like we need compound socks now. These are really awesome. Socks are the greatest giveaway. And I appreciate it, and I really appreciate you having me. But I do want to say this from the heart. You all in the Ritholtz family here are among the most generous, kind, giving people in the industry.

Yeah, you do a lot of media. You make a lot of noise. But what you actually do is give voice to a lot of people. Not just me, obviously,enny and your friends but think of all the people you've helped and what you're really all about is celebrating other people who are trying to educate trying to help people trying to get through thank you very much yes and i want to say ditto right these are good people these are good people who all they want to do is help people and help other people get their voices out there. So I appreciate you guys.

You are so smooth, Caleb. Guys, thank you so much. And the hair? I'm so impressed. Are you kidding me? All right, let me wrap this up so we can kill this wine. Guys, thank you so much for listening. And remember, if you want to watch clips of this show, you're going to youtube.com slash the compound.

RWM for the latest in financial blogger fashion. Check out the official compound store, idontshop.com. Duncan, take us out of here. This is life. It really is like Hanukkah. Jenny, did you have fun? I had the best time.

Other than getting thrown under the bus by the Hanukkah by what's it Hanukkah Harry? Hanukkah Harry over here the man's on the bench