The Compound and Friends - Pulling Out

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

On episode 37 of The Compound & Friends, Michael Batnick, Allison Schrager, Sam Ro, and Downtown Josh Brown discuss: corporations pulling out of Russia, the SEC's crackdown on Chinese ADRs, inflation, the role of risk in innovation, Amazon's stock split, and much more! Thanks to FTX for sponsoring this episode! Download the FTX App today in minutes and use referral code "compound" to earn free crypto on every trade over $10: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ftx-crypto-exchange/id1095564685 Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at: https://www.idontshop.com 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/disclosures/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What? Did you ever get it? No. Never? No, never. You were one of those. I was not careful at all. Are you one of those?

Yeah, I'm one of those. I never got it. Yeah. No, you had it. You just didn't know. Maybe, yeah. I could tell by the look of it. Can I take a picture of you guys in Stacey's book? I could tell by the look of it.

Because it'll be so exciting. Yes, wait. Where's her book? Whose book? Stacey Vanek-Smith. Where's her book? Oh. Machiavelli for Women.

Machiavelli for Women. Where is it? Right next to Henry Kissinger. Or the Giants. I don't know, I probably have a headlli for women. Machiavelli for women. Where is it? Right next to Henry Kissinger. Or the Giants. I don't know why I put on my head for this. I got nervous. I got nervous. I had to cover up. We're going to do a book special for Mary.

A Monday night thing like what we did with... Is it out yet? Oh, yeah. The Bill Gross book. It comes out the 15th, I want to say. Okay. So we'll have her on a week later. By the out the 15th, I want to say. Okay. So we'll have it on a week later. By the way, true story. I said this on the podcast.

You laughed. I wasn't kidding. Robert Pattinson in Batman looks like a young Bill Gross. Yes, he does. Google it. That's perfect because he seems sort of evil, but might be kind of good. I said that Willem Dafoe should value

Bill Gross in the book this doesn't look like a much more handsome young Bill Gross aren't there pictures of Bill Gross from the 70s

yeah so show me put up a shot alright fine yeah it's a good idea I gotta say my favorite thing

do you know Mary Childs yeah go to a book party next week oh you are going are you guys going I didn't get the invite. I'm sure you did. You probably went to spam.

Maybe. Come on, come on, come on. What? I mean, no. Not really. Yes, yes. Not why? Yes.

The hair? Yeah. Yeah, yes, exactly the hair. Am I? Come on. Yeah. I said much more than that. Yeah, sure.

All right. Anyway. Yeah, sure. All right. Anyway. He would do a better job than if I did it. But I got to say, my favorite part of this whole thing is I guess Bill Gross just published his memoirs or something. Outing himself as a psycho? Yeah. Or whatever.

But it's like the counter story. Some people are just so lucky. That's a great time for Bonds. Wait. His career. Good time for Bonds. Yeah, Bill Gross published his memoir? Yeah, Bill Gross just published a book. Oh, he was trying to get ahead of this book.

I think it was like he was waiting for it to come out so that he could have his counter narrative. Did he participate in Mary's book? Do you know? I feel like he might have. She was spending a lot of time out there. Yeah, because she was dropping the bombs for Bloomberg when this was coming out with Mohammed and him. But it's so much worse now. It's because now it's not even a story.

He's like harassing his neighbors and in lawsuits. Right. He was allegedly dropping fart bombs in his wife's house or something. In his wife's house? They said he was doing weird shit. It's a little weird. It's a little weird. It's a little out there.

Yeah, and he has some... It's like when you're a billionaire, no one's correcting you or telling you not to do whatever. Well, isn't he always crazy? And Mohamed Elian was the one who kept him in line. I was always team Mohamed. Always. Well, what they said was that you almost have to be a little bit crazy. Crazy and Mohamed El-Erin was the one who kept him in line. I was always team Mohamed. Always. Well, what they said was that you almost have to be a little bit crazy to have like the confidence to become the Bond king.

But then it becomes a liability. How much was his skill and luck though? Because Bonds just had their best ride ever over those 30 years. I'm glad you asked that question, but weren't there thousands of people who didn't become the Bond King? In his defense, there was a lot of Bond managers that didn't become famous and the best. Yeah, but he was a fund known for Bonds.

All right, Ali, I agree. F*** that guy. Listen, I'm not impressed with him, but I'm just saying, like there can only be one Bond King at a time as per Highlander law. Self-promotion and ability to make yourself a bond king is something. It's like becoming a money honey.

I'm so glad you said that because actually he was the only bond manager that was doing those memos on a regular basis, which took off. You know, like Buffett wrote his letter. Yeah. There is something to that, which Michael and I would know a lot about. And it's not nothing. It's not a trivial skill. It's not nothing. And know a lot about. And it's not nothing. It's not a trivial skill. It's not nothing. And communicating with the public.

But it's not something. No, it is something. Communicating with the public is part of being a Bond king. Gunlock does it. It's not above writing a letter. His Twitter account is a dumpster fire. I'm sorry. Jeff's?

Yeah, but that means it's working if you're having that much of a reaction to it. That means it's good. I don't follow. I see him retweet it from time to time. Why? What does he put in on there? Is it memes? He's not doing memes.

No, it's just not my thing. Wait, what are you drinking out of the shot glass? What is it? Comus. Oh. All right. All right, guys. Welcome back.

Does everybody's headphones sound good? Everyone's in position? Five, four. Everyone's good, Duncan? Yeah. Three, four. Sound good? All right.

It's still low energy in here. Turn it up. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. 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. Today's episode is brought to you by FTX US, one of the largest crypto companies in the US. It's the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets. You might have heard of FTX from their partnerships with Tom Brady, Overrated, just kidding, Steph Curry, or their recent big game commercial at the Super Bowl with Larry David.

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You can do that. The FTX app has automated investing where users can take a little bit of money from each month, pull it from their bank account, dollar cost average right into your favorite crypto. To learn more, hit the link in the description and download the FTX app today in minutes and use our forward code COMPOUND to earn free crypto on every trade over $10. All right, Allison's here. Sam is here. Fan favorites. Third time? Third time?

Third time? No, this is two for you? In this incarnation. I mean, you've been on the channel a lot. And what about you? This is three for me. I don't know if this is going to bring me back. And Sam brought gifts.

Do you see that I now have, I don't know if you noticed, but I now have sounds. I don't think I had sounds last time you were here. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, that's interesting. That's pretty cool, right? Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Oh, no, that's interesting. That's pretty cool, right? Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So actually, this is about to be like 40% more expensive.

Why? Because it's a product that comes in a can, in a bottle, and everything's getting more expensive. Right. And then, you know, rice and grains. Ethanol. I just learned that ethanol is like alcohol or something. Yeah. I'm a chemist. Right. You just learned this? Yeah, I just learned that ethanol is like alcohol or something. I'm a chemist.

Just learned this? Yeah, just learned it. Okay. So what we have here is – Soju. Soju. And the company is Jinro. And Jinro is like – King of soju.

Either the number one or number two. Is Jinro the company that was in Lost in Translation? No, that was – Suntory. Suntory, yeah. Close. Close. All right, we're going to hit that.

I'm so glad we have you guys here today. Let's first talk about – Especially Allison. Especially Allison. No, I feel like you guys are the right people for the right moment in time. Because what's going on right now has stock market ramifications, obviously. But a lot of this stuff is above my pay grade, as somebody who's not an economist, obviously, I have opinions, which sometimes is all that counts. But Allison, you've got expertise. And Sam, I know you're reading a lot of what the sell side has to say

about the implications of everything. So the first thing I wanted to get into was just this idea that really almost nothing else matters other than Russia right now, with good reason. It feels as though companies are announcing things. There's a reaction in the stock market for a few hours, and then that fades. And we get back into like, okay, Russia, prime time, this is everything. What's the most surprising thing? Allison, I'll start with you. What's the most surprising thing about the conflict?

Maybe not that it happened, but what aspect of it do you think you're most surprised by? Well, this is less economic, but just how it sort of brought everyone together, because I didn't think anything would. I thought we'd gotten pretty indifferent to global conflicts that weren't directly happening to us. So I think everyone coming together and being so united on this definitely surprised me. So Putin's gift to the world is togetherness. Yeah. I mean, you would have thought that, you know, the coronavirus pandemic would have brought everybody together.

But it ended up being divisive. It drove a wedge between us. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I agree. Who's been brought together, though? Are you saying countries or people? Almost everyone. Republicans and Democrats. Except for Tucker Carlson.

We're about to pass a bipartisan bailout or sort of aid package, and I feel like we're hearing less, like, let's interrogate our past and look at everything bad we've done, because I think our mission in the world seems a little bit more apparent. And also, as I said, our relationships with NATO. I think I was talking to someone – actually, it was Ian Bremmer a month ago where I asked him – Not to brag.

We talked to him too recently. I saw. That was a great show. And I asked him, what do you think the odds are that NATO is still going to be a thing in 10 years? Oh, and I asked him, you know, what do you think the odds are that NATO is still going to be a thing in 10 years? And I can't remember what he said, but the probability was greater than even, but still non-trivial, maybe not. And now I have no doubt NATO is going to be around for 10 years. Is NATO partly, is the idea of NATO partly at fault for this? them, but maybe it would have been better for the people running Ukraine, not Zelensky,

but just people for decades, not to have been fixated on this idea of joining NATO. Like maybe things would have been calmer or this would have happened either way. I mean, I'm not a political scientist. This isn't my expertise, but I did go to Russia shortly after Crimea. And I got the sense that Putin really wants to get the Soviet Union back together. And I know from living in Eastern Europe in the 90s that a lot of Eastern European countries aspire to be more like Europe. So whether or not there's an institution they could join, just they would have had an affinity to not be part of this old Soviet Union, be more part of Europe. And he wouldn't have stood for that whether or not there's an institution or not. Right.

for that, whether or not there's an institution or not. Right. So, Sam, most of the strategists that I read, and I read probably not as many as you, but a lot of them, it's a lot of this is what happened during the last 10 conflicts. Right. What else do they really have to go by? You know, I think that's a good starting point. And everyone just sort of seems to say that, oh, well, you know, you look at these 50 different conflicts and then it's either 10 days or 100 days.

The economy bounces back. Market bounces back. But they're not really thinking about like, you know, the fundamentals like that's responsible for that. Because like, you know, of course, with every conflict, the economic backdrop where it starts from is always different. Right. So it's like it's one thing if like the market's been crashing for, you crashing for a year and then some conflict happens and then a couple of days later the market rallies. Well, maybe there was some other things happening before the particular conflict. Right. The conflict is never the only variable that's kind of crazy that everyone always sort of like dances around, like, you know, the ultra worst case scenarios that, you know, how do you prepare for stuff like that?

You know, it's I don't know if there's really an answer. Yeah. Well, you know, there are those sort of like the super worst case scenarios where, you know, none of this matters anymore, right? Like finance. Well, that's the whole thing. If you're like writing sell side research for Merrill Lynch and they're like, what would the Dow Jones do in the worst case scenario? You ain't going to care about the Dow Jones in the worst case scenario. But I think something that's actually sort of like being forgotten already is what the world went through with the COVID pandemic.

And that's still happening, right? You look at all these geopolitical events and it's like, this happened, that happened, this many people died, these people were upset about whatever. It's like 900,000 Americans have died in the last two years. And that's like- More than any war. Yeah. It's like 50 times Pearl Harbor. It's 50 times 9-11. It's still happening. It's like 50 times Pearl Harbor. It's 50 times 9-11.

It's still happening. Right. There are going to be more people dying of COVID this week in the U.S. than 9-11 and Pearl Harbor combined. Right. This week. Yeah. Does that desensitize us to the images that we're seeing on TV of like – I think they blew up a maternity ward last night. Are we just like, yeah, death is now in our face every minute.

We can deal with this. I think that's one of the reasons Ukraine is having such a big impact on people. It's because, you know, anyway, we might be less sensitive to people dying disease. I mean, violence still has a special resonance. It's different. It's different. And it's metropolitan cities. Like this could be Queens. We were driving down the L.A. the other day and I said to Josh,, imagine just an airplane, like a fighter pilot, filing over the L.A.

Well, I mean, listen, this happened, you know, like 20 years ago, you know? 9-11, like, we were attacked on U.S. soil, and it was three miles from here. You know what's different also about this conflict versus Crimea? And, you know, I know there was an incursion into Warsaw in the early 80s and there was shit with Budapest. Like I know Russia has been doing this pretty much since the beginning of the Cold War and never stopped. But this time, every man, woman and child has a video camera that they are highly accustomed to pulling out like so fast that when their child smiles, they have video rolling. So now you really have the first urban like area conflict, a city where like millions of people

are capable of filming it constantly and uploading it to social media. We've never really had an experience like that. And I think to allison's point that is galvanizing more sentiment toward you know ukraine from everybody and uniting people maybe because we're all watching the same shit and it's horrible yeah and it seems like things are happening a lot faster too right it's like you know a day after or two days after the invasion you know the sanctions come down The sanctions are sort of working. Two days later, there's more sanctions. I remember SWIFT was such a big deal at the time, and I feel like that's sort of in the rearview mirror.

Yeah, it all happened within a week. What do you think about that? That seemed to shock everybody that Germany was in and that the United States was in on removing Russian banks from the SWIFT system. That seemed to have been like a line that nobody thought they would cross that quickly this is a really new territory because this is like economic warfare right usually this is it people keep saying sanctions are about deterrence but this is like full-on economic warfare which we're turning off we're turning off their economy yeah have we ever done anything like that before i mean i know we like uh you know to some degree germany during world war one and world war two but i mean we were much less globally integrated that we did – to some degree Germany during World War I and World War II. But I mean we were much less globally integrated then. We did this to our allies once 100 years ago.

The onset of World War I in Europe, we knew that like 20 percent of the stock market was owned by Britain. And it was backed by gold. And they were going to want that gold back if they were going to get into the war and start sending troops to – so we shut down the New York Stock Exchange, which effectively kept all that gold trapped. If you couldn't sell stocks, then you couldn't access remuneration for those stocks. That word's tricky. So they shut down the New York Stock Exchange I think for six months. Six months? Something like that, yeah.

And it's never happened before that or it's never happened since but they couldn't afford to have all the gold sucked out of New York and sent on steamer ships across the Atlantic to fight a war that's kind of

f***ed up that they did that six months like what about shareholders who are American how long was how long was World War I

stock market shutdown do you know of him I think it was nine months or something like that nine months 1914 never heard of this it's know of it? I think it was nine months or something like that. Nine months. 1914 or 15. Never heard of this?

No, that's crazy. I believe you. I think June to December. So not nine months. I think it was less. But what do you guys make of – actually, before we get to this, I learned yesterday. I was talking to Sal Gilberto. He runs two cream funds, which are I think like the only publicly traded ETFs that have like corn and wheat and all that stuff.

Corn and wheat or corn or wheat. ETFs that have like corn and wheat in a lot of stores. Corn and wheat or corn or wheat, one of those two, Ukraine and Russia are responsible for 30% of the global exports of those agricultural commodities, which is super scary. And we got this 7.9% inflation print this morning prior to the commodity spike. So February's numbers are going to be worse than what we just saw, which is already the worst number in 40 years. Like this is crazy shit. Yeah. I mean, this is particularly bad for folks in developing nations and low income ranges and stuff like that because they're much more close. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or whatever, but they're much more close to the actual raw product, right? People actually go

out and they buy grains and they buy meat and they cook stuff in their kitchen. It's not processed so that Kraft and whoever is absorbing some of those costs and you don't see it as quickly. And of course, in developing markets and for low-income folks, this is a higher percentage of their expenses. Right. Food at home index rose 8.6% over the last 12 months, the largest such increase since 1981. That's amazing because food at home has been going down all these years. People aren't used to this at all.

Again, food away from home, same story, 6.8%, largest 12-month increase since 1981. And again, prior to the spike that we just saw. One of the things that's super scary about this is with the economic and financial warfare, we've never really seen like the complete like breakdown of trust where the fact that we could just like turn countries off. And that is frightening. Well, that's one of the things I wanted to ask you.

Like, let's say it's the right thing to do. So Russia stockpiled $630 billion worth of reserves seemingly in advance of knowing they were about to do this. And basically we were able to coordinate with global central banks to make it so that that money was not usable. That might have been the right thing to do this time. usable. That might have been the right thing to do this time. But what does that do over the long term for sovereigns, countries thinking that the US dollar is a reserve currency? Maybe it's not anymore. Yeah, $630 billion, but it's based on trust. These are like digital, basically, buttons on somebody's balance sheet. No, you have $630 billion, good luck. Right. So if Russia can't actually use that money, again, maybe that was the right decision now.

But what does that mean five years from now, 10 years from now? You would think this is a watershed moment for cryptocurrencies. Like that's something – this changes things. Is it though? I mean, are they – I mean, I think we're also seeing that they're not really the answer. Well, not right now. No. But I think – Russia can't operate by Bitcoin. It's not big enough.

I think we will look back on this moment as one of the things that like sharply accelerated the transition or the adoption, the widespread adoption of crypto, whether it's CBDCs or Bitcoin or something else that hasn't been invented yet. Like the idea that something could just be confiscated, I think is going to change things. It is, but you also need reliable internet for that to work. And it doesn't seem like they have that either. And that's also a whole other kind of scary, right? Like this weapon.

Yeah, okay. So, you know, financial weapon or whatever. Maybe that doesn't exist anymore because, you know, assuming crypto, you know, picks up. Then, you know, what are the options there? The bad guys keep financing whatever they can because crypto exists? I don't think that they can evade sanctions to the extent that we're doing them and get around not being able to use Swift.

I don't think the world's systems are set up to sell wheat and fuel for Bitcoin. That idea probably we're not even close to. It doesn't seem like that's really going to help them. I wanted to ask you guys about the long-term consequences of corporations pulling out from Russia. Did any of that surprise you? How quickly they reacted?

I mean, it's like eight or nine years ago, I did some boondoggle tour through Coca-Cola and it was right after we lifted trade sanctions on Myanmar. And we were talking to some global VP. And he was telling us how they sell Coke everywhere. Anywhere where they're allowed to sell, they sell because they always had, I mean, this is self-serving, this idea that there is almost diplomacy. You bring Coke abroad and they're just like, we will sell Coke anywhere we're allowed to. And they have now pulled out of Russia. Like they've – I can't think of Coca-Cola ever voluntarily pulling out of any market with the exception of India because when they went socialist, they wanted the secret formula.

So they pulled out for them. But that was the only time they've ever voluntarily pulled out of a market. Were you telling me that the US has never attacked a country with McDonald's? I think there's never been a cross-border war with a country that had a McDonald's in it, but I could be making that up. I think there might have been a New York Times columnist that said something. That sounds like a Thomas Friedman. No, it was a tweet.

It's true. But McDonald's pulled out. Wait, did you say it was a tweet, so it's true? Yeah, McDonald's pulled out, right? And that's like 10% of their revenue. That's material. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing here too, right? So it's like we're talking about Russia and India, but China and Brazil. Now we're talking about this

whole brick story that so many companies said, this is where we're growing into. It's like we've matured. You're a gigantic company, you've matured, and you fully penetrated the US audience. Russia has 100 million people there. And if you didn't have a lot of exposure, that was going to be one of your big growth opportunities. And that's no longer the table. Wait, is it 10%? Can that possibly be true? Yes. How many people are in Russia? McDonald's? 100 million? Russia's the 11th biggest economy, and it's 10% of McDonald's revenue. They love McNuggets. They must love that shit. I have no idea. Who doesn't? Any thoughts on the market's reaction today? I know it's like one day, so whatever.

But it seems like on the CPI number, there wasn't like a big reaction in the stock market. People have been freaking out about CPI for over a year now. We all look at that Bank of America fund manager survey that comes out every month. I think it was about – it's either 11 months ago or exactly a year ago that coronavirus went from number one to two. And the top risk that fund managers were screaming about was inflation and higher than expected inflation. You know, this is one of those really rare times where I was definitely 12 months ago saying, it's very rare that the risk that is so apparent actually transpires and becomes the risk.

And this is one of those really weird times where it did. A lot of people have been worried about inflation over the last 12 months. I was not one of them. Wrong, obviously. And it actually came true. Obviously, we didn't see the Russian thing, but we had inflation before this. This makes it worse. We shouldn't understate the degree to which the Russia thing is sending this into overdrive. 100%. We would not have like food commodities limit up day after day. And certainly we wouldn't have the natural gas spike if it weren't for the conflict. I think from a sentiment standpoint and from a market standpoint, everyone was just a little bit better prepared for that surprise.

There's no bulls. Yeah. There's no bulls. Yeah. There's no bulls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on, before we get off this, Allison, do you have any takes on the London Metals Exchange, like canceling those orders?

Sam, you, anyone? I wanted to ask, Goldman Sachs today shuttered their Russia business. They're the first major Wall Street bank to leave since the Ukraine war started. They won't be the last. Goldman Sachs is estimated to have 940 million in total exposure or less than 10 basis points of its total assets, according to Bank of America. So it's a rounding error, but maybe it's – the importance is more symbolic.

What do you think follows from there? Is everybody just do the same thing? Don't you think they were getting pressure from clients probably? Yeah. I mean as I said, it's like the Coca-Cola thing. It's like you just can't do business there. Yeah. I mean I don't think Coca-Cola, if they weren't getting the sort of pressure from all the other European countries, would have ever considered it.

It's now just – I mean it's sort of like the ESG movement. It's like now you're expecting – Yeah, I'm starting to think Russia is an ESG. It is. What you wonder is if – is this self- expecting... Yeah, I'm starting to think Russia isn't ESG. It is. What you wonder is if... Is this self-defeating? I'm starting to worry about that. Well, also, do you wonder

is this like causing more harm than good? Because now we're just punishing average Russians and it's not like they want to live under Putin either. They want McDonald's. That's an incredibly sad part of it. Well, he f***ing did it.

Like, Putin did this to his people. Yeah, but certainly they elected him. Or at least not the... And you see like, you know, the tens of thousands of people in the streets like protesting and all this stuff. And they're all exposed to all this. Do you remember when like JP Morgan had to answer for like – they had employees bribing government officials in Asia like, we'll get your kid a job at JP Morgan? And people were like, isn't that how you do business in these countries?

There's no real other way. And we do business that way here too. I'm sure we do. It's just maybe less overt or less offensive. Yeah. But it's not different. I think everyone just sort of made a collective decision at the same time, also understanding that this was going to come with a cost to yourself. Come with a cost to yourself, right?

Like even when Biden was talking about the oil import ban, like the first thing he says is gas prices are going to go up, but that's the sacrifice we're making for this to fight back. I was – dude, Tim Dillon is crazy. I was listening to him this morning. He's like – Yes, he is. He's like going through the price of gasoline to get from Manhattan to the Hamptons, like calculating it.

And he's like, look, guys, it's very simple. Do you care about Ukraine or do you just want your summer back? This is the choice that we have to make. Obviously not seriously. But I think like this idea of Americans sacrificing, we'll probably do it for a week or two. And then it's probably going to morph into let's go, Brandon, and turn off the sanctions. Like even early coronavirus, like everyone seemed to agree that, all right, we're going to all go home, stay home, go back to the offices or whatever.

For five days of that. Yeah, five days. It was like – well, it was Easter, right? Wasn't it? It was like Trump says everything is going to be fine by Easter. That's like two months after sending people home. So now you, right. Now you want a guy in the heartland with a pickup truck or a suburban.

You want this guy to give a shit about Ukraine more than three or four days with gas prices at $6. It's going to be really tough to do. He doesn't know where Ukraine is on a map. He's not watch glued to CNN. Like, it's just like, wait, what's going on? Why are we sacrificing? What should we be doing? Tapping the reserves?

What can we do? We are tapping the reserves. It's like a drop in a bottle. So what can we do? Drink some of this soju. Well, I mean, so I think that's actually a question that more people are going to start asking, right? They're all going to become – this is going to go on for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and everyone is going to decide that they're a geopolitical expert now.

And so the person in the suburban that's got 20 miles a gallon on his SUV or whatever is going to say, why don't we just start firing missiles into the Kremlin or whatever? Missiles instead of sanctions. I said this is maybe a watershed moment for cryptocurrency. We'll look back maybe for green energy or some sort of energy independence. Or the opposite. Because I think it feels like it's not – I mean the fact that Biden wasn't a big fan of fossil fuels has nothing to do with prices now because those policies haven't had a chance to really take effect.

But I think it's not a good look that he was making it harder for oil companies to do business, increase their cost of capital, fewer applications being accepted for fracking, shutting down the Keystone. Nothing to do with prices now, but it's not a good look right now. It makes us look like we're going to be more vulnerable. So instead of green, it could be like maybe it was a little premature to go in all on green and we should increase our domestic energy. Can we open that back up?

Let me get this straight. We can't drill. We can't have pipelines. But then also you're going to cut off the flow to the rest of the world via sanctions. So de facto, 95 percent of the cars on the road are going to struggle to be able to fill our tanks. That ain't going to work politically. It didn't work in the 70s. Electric vehicles are 2% of the cars in the world.

Yeah, and I think even if we get over – That's more than zero, though. That's more than zero. Well, that's also part of the story, though, right? Like, you know, even the last – Don't they use minerals for the batteries that are there, too? Right, the nickel and the palladium and all that stuff. That didn't work, though.

For Nixon, it didn't work for Ford. Yeah, but fuel economy for cars is way up. It's only been going up since then. True. And when I was in high school, I drove a 79 Impala station wagon. 79, nice. Yeah, it was a used car that got passed down to my parents. And it had 15 miles a gallon. That thing was like the size of a living room. It had nine seatbelts in it. I wanted to ask about China. So I don't know how closely you were following what went on today. The US, the SEC, the administration have been making noises about forcing Chinese companies that are going to trade on our exchanges to comply with our rules.

Good timing. How dare they? Today, some shit went down. Obama, yikes. These stocks had like a fast motion crash in the middle of the day. K-Web's down 10%. What this is basically about is the SEC identified five US listed ADRs. Which ones?

Yum China. There's a biotech company called Beijing. Very clever. That sounds like what the Simpsons would call a Chinese biotech company, right? Yeah. Beijing, I like it. Ticker BGNE. For failing to comply with the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which sounds made

up, but I know it's real. Accountable Act, which sounds made up, but I know it's real. And they would delist US listed ADRs in 2024 for failing to allow the PCAOB, which is the accounting board, to access their audit reviews. It seems like this is not well-timed, but whatever. They decided to go for it anyway. How much success are we going to have in driving these companies into Hong Kong listings and, I guess, losing the ability to invest in them for Americans? Will it matter? Will it matter to these companies? Will it matter to our investors? I don't know. What do you think? I think I'm getting ahead of myself in saying that an economic war with China would be a lot more costly for us than... Yeah, why are we pulling on this thread right now? Is it at the end of The Godfather where they take out all the enemies of the family at once?

Yeah, maybe that's it. Things are going to be bad now. It's a kitchen sink quarter, as they say in corporate America. Alice, do you have a strong opinion about U.S. investors being victimized by Chinese blue-chip tech companies? I have a strong opinion about that, but I am concerned about general decoupling of financial markets and sort of trade in general. I worry that – I'm now wondering if we sort of had this golden era of global trade and prosperity.

And I think anyway – What do you mean had? What do you mean had? I don't like that. Well, as I said, I'm sort of worried about this. And I think there is something to any way everyone expected if we went into Chinese markets that see how great capitalism is and overthrow their authoritative government. That didn't happen. I think there is something to more global integration, fostering goodwill.

Yes, because it gives us all this shared thing to lose. Yeah. If if things get violent or we stop talking. Like I don't in some ways I think I'm optimistic, although I could be completely wrong, that this is not going to lead to a Taiwan situation because there's a lot more mutually assured destruction to these sorts of sanctions on China than there is from Russia. I mean, we're tied up in Russia, but not nearly as tied up as we are with China. So we had Dan Nathan on the show last week, and he's like, hypothetically, China pulls this shit with Taiwan right now. Is Disney pulling out of China? Not a chance. Are any of these companies pulling out of China? They'll say, no, it's different because blank. And I think we all kind of like- Well, become Taiwan experts. Actually, they have a historical claim. Yeah. Yeah. Right. They'll become Taiwan experts and they'll give China the cover for basically doing what it wants. And I think China probably knows that.

One of the most sort of odd, uncomfortable things of the last couple of weeks was, you know, hearing about, you know, the U.S. sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics. But then, you know then reading in the papers that we don't have any government officials going because they're conducting genocide over there. And for a lot of people, this is the first time they're hearing about this or getting attention to this.

And it's like, wait a second, why are we sending people over there? Why are we doing business with people over there? Why are we tolerating this? And then it seems – But we won't go to the Olympics. We won't go to the Olympics. And then we're willing to do this with Russia.

This is a serious question, and I really don't know the answer to this. Did the Olympics actually happen? I'm dead serious. Like is there any evidence that an Olympics took place? Did anyone see any event televised anywhere? I saw some scandal about a Russian skater. Yeah, but did they skate? Or did they just have the scandal?

I think she fell. Guys, I think it mattered to the athletes. And, you know, they're all... I feel like two institutions... I'm just teasing. We love the Olympic athletes. No longer matter? Like, the Oscars and the Olympics.

Nobody cares. I'm absolutely convinced there was no Olympics this year. There was just commercials for it. It was all replaced with curling. Of course you did. Yeah, it was all curling. And how did that go, Duncan? It wasn't that exciting.

Well, give us all the details. We have so much time. It's okay. Why did you watch curling in particular? Because that's what, when you were flipping through the channels, that's what you stumbled on? Yeah, it was just on. Or were you looking for it?

It was just on. I watched some snowboarding. You have CNBC on and then it goes to five and it cuts straight to curling. Did the Chinese actually win like a lot of medals in this? Was it worth it for them?

I think they did. You think so, but no proof. I'm pretty sure none of this actually happened. I'm pretty sure none of this actually happened. I don't really know. You know that thing how there were movies

that everybody thinks were movies, but they weren't? Kazam. There's a movie poster for Shaquille O'Neal. It's like the Mandela effect where everybody sort of agrees on the same thing, but it's actually false information. Wait, Kazam was not a movie? That blew my mind too. Josh has his own movie. It was called Kazam.

It was not a movie. It did not happen. It was a fake fake poster was shack dressed as a genie and his arms are folded and it just looks like it should be a movie right there never was that movie that's a great example but you can't name another and then no no another example is um the monopoly man yes i can the monopoly man everybody thinks the monopoly man wears a monocle. He does not. Stop. What? Come on.

Yeah. It's right up there. He has a mustache and a top hat, but no monocle? No monocle. Everyone thinks he has a monocle. He has no monocle. What the hell? How can we think he has a monocle? Here he does.

In some pictures, he does, though. Nah. Oh. I feel like it's just when he reads. There is another example of that. Oh, here it is. It says the Mandela effect and how it affects you. I'll give you another fake movie poster.

Air Bud 2, golden receiver, and he has a football in his mouth. And people think that that movie actually happened, but there was only ever one Air Bud. Air Bud 2 absolutely happened. You knew that? No, it didn't. Did it? Oh, yeah. But it wasn't a football movie.

I think he still played basketball. So why did they make Kazam posters if it was not a movie? I think somebody just made it as a goof, and everyone just thinks that that actually happened. But it never really happened. I was always partial to Homeward Bound, personally. Homeward Bound is a great film. So listen. So the Chinese put out their own statement, and they were like – they put it out at midnight China time, which tells you that they actually care about this.

And they were basically like, we are continuing to cooperate and we hope we can resolve this amicably. So part of me feels like they don't care and they'll just repatriate all their countries. They've been making it harder for Chinese companies to trade on US stock markets as well? They've been demanding them to come back at gunpoint. So maybe they, I don't know if they care or not. So our friend, Brendan Ahern, who runs Crane Shares, put out a statement that they're going to switch out of US ADRs into Hong Kong share class.

The ETF, which is gigantic for a Chinese tech ETF, will remain the same. They'll just buy the stocks on a different exchange. So there is a workaround if you want to still invest in these things. I think the long-term cultural effects of what's going on right now is kind of weird. It's not great. It's not great because a lot of the exchanges of information and cultural stuff starts with these sort of economic trade business interests, right? Like, you know, someone's dad goes to China

to do some business, they come back and it's like, I'm going to tell you all about all these cool things I learned in China and, you know, all those kids I brought you souvenirs. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Are we going to have less of that? We have a chart of Alibaba, Crane Chairs, JD.

John, throw that up. Like, this is just, is this a year? Nine months? This is like substantial. It's even worse if you bring it back to like February. Crane shares is 70% off the highs, I think.

I mean, if you're a US investor and these companies leave the New York Stock Exchange, you don't care. You're like, please put me out of my misery. I mean, this chart kind of looks like a lot of high growth tech stocks too from the last year. Right. US or China, it almost wouldn't even matter. Oh my God. Baba, is Baba below the IPO price?

That stock is- Hold on, let me see. That's one of the biggest crashes I think I've ever seen. It went from 320 to 90. No, it's not below the IPO price, but it's close. You don't hear from Jack Ma a whole lot anymore. He's not in charge of it anymore. Right.

They told him to take five. So back to inflation. What do we want to do with this commodity spot index? Throw up these charts, Big John. The price change of one week price change. The biggest weekly change ever. And again, this has not yet shown up in the official CPI data. We'll see that next month.

Do we have more charts here? Today they did February CPI, and it's another record, 7.9%. Is that the number? Yeah. No, I think we got January. Did we get February? We got February today, and it broke another record, 7.9%. Is that the number? Yeah. No, I think we got January. Did we get February? We got February today. We got February.

It's February. And it broke another record. Right. All the way back to, yeah, January 1982. I still have this stupid opinion that the cure for high prices is high prices. Am I going to be wrong? Yeah. This time I will be.

Well, I mean, I think I was reading Jason Furman on Twitter saying we've reached the point where it's getting baked into wages. Yeah. And once that happens. Then that's it. The genie's out of the bottle. The genie's out of the bottle. And, you know, I think anyway the Fed is going to do some rate hikes, I doubt they're going to be as aggressive as they were going to be before. I think, yeah, the wage thing I think is a big deal because I was actually talking to my parents.

Can you explain what that means, though? actually talking to my parents. Can you explain what that means though? So like we now are paying people and implicit in that dollar amount is what we think it costs them to get to and from work. Yeah. And put food on their table. So now it's the wage price spiral. So people demand higher wages to compensate for inflation. So they have more money. So they spend more. So prices go up again. And then they ask for even higher wages. Okay. So it's like a feedback loop. It's paying for that demand. Speaking of Jason Furman, I saw him tweet this today. This is disgusting. We're looking at a chart of real average hourly earnings.

And he said average hourly earnings have been declining for more than a year as inflation has outpaced nominal wage gains. This is larger than any 12-month pre-pandemic decline since 1980. So nominal wages have been going up. Cool, especially in the lower end. Like they were getting the biggest gains. But look at this. Inflation took all that away and then some. And at the low end, you know, things that are most affected by inflation take up a bigger share of your budget.

So I was born in Queens 39 and a half years ago. Are you Peter Parker? I'm Peter Parker, yeah. I'm one of the multiverse peter parkers and you know i never really quite understood the story of how this happened but my parents picked up family we all moved to kentucky and it wasn't until a couple as one does yeah as one does but it wasn't until a couple weeks ago you know i'm talking to my mom and she's like telling me how beef prices are going up and stuff and i'm like yeah you know we have this

historic inflation, whatever. And she said, yeah, that's why we moved to Kentucky. There was inflation, but your dad's employer couldn't give him a raise. And so- So you need a lower cost of living. We need a lower cost of living. So the alternative is staying here and starving, or we're going to go to a place where everything's a lot cheaper. That's, so what part of Kentucky did you end up in?

Louisville. Oh, wow. Okay. But the problem is nothing, there's no problem with Louisville. The problem is now you can't, where are you going to go? It's food, right? Food is food. Yeah.

I mean, there's been, there's less dispersion of prices than there was in the eighties. Yes. But rents, there's still a huge dispersion between, for example, Queens and Louisville. That's true. And New York rates in particular. Right. Almost anywhere other than here, save for Miami, would be better

from a cost of living perspective, which is why I'm so smart. I'm hiring so many people in New York. Some part of me should maybe listen to my own commentary. How much is a burrito bowl these days? Forget about it, sister. Sam, you wrote about the other side of the surging oil price story.

Can you get into this a little bit and explain what you're telling people? Yeah. I mean, to be clear, no one's disagreeing with the fact that rising costs of energy and the rising costs of anything that you don't want to pay for, that's going to pinch. And that means less discretionary, whatever, less money for fun. But if we're thinking from a higher stock market-wide or macro economy standpoint, yeah, you have to go back to these bigger trends of energy intensity in the economy has been on the decline for decades. Fuel economy for cars have been improving for decades. Thank God, though, because if that were not the case, this would be so much worse. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Does the average company use less oil than it did 20 years ago, 30 years ago? I think the message from these sort of energy intensity charts, I don't think I have it up. Or maybe if you scroll down a little bit further. But it's just, oh, you hit the paywall. I should give you guys- We hit the reg wall. I think I'm registered.

It's a really simple chart. It's like OECD economies. It's like the global developing markets, emerging markets. And since like the 70s, the thousand barrels per dollar of GDP or whatever, I don't know what the metric is, just has been on decline for decades. So yeah, we're just less exposed to this. Everything's more efficient. Slightly mitigating factor, but the sticker shock doesn't go away. No. Like whether or not we're more energy efficient, people don't like to see that number. But are we using more energy overall because we're making more stuff, even if we're making it more efficiently?

Yeah, I think so, but on a per capita basis, I think the situation has improved for individuals. John, let's go to this PCE shares chart, energy, goods and services. John, let's go to this PCE shares chart, energy goods and services. What is this saying?

So this is from one of Neil Dutta's notes from Renaissance Macro. And this is energy goods and services spending as a percentage of personal consumption expenditures. So that decline starts in, let's say, 1980. Yeah, it goes from, you know, almost 10% down to about 4%. It's not, you know, the numbers aren't mind blowing, but it's in line with these trends of, you know, energy is becoming less a part of what we're spending money on. How much of this is because prices went down? And how much of it is because of efficiency? I think it's probably a bit of both because, yeah, you see like in, you know, the early 80s and then you also see, you know, in 2008 when we had that big oil price spike that

the price move certainly has an impact there. So, yeah, it's probably going to jump up, you know, when we get. We can already see it. Oh, yeah. It hasn't affected earnings. Put this next chart up, John. Earnings keep rising, whatever inflation does. Rising earnings per share has been a constant through different inflation regimes. This time might be different just given the speed of the spike. You know why earnings are going to get hit? Because consumers are going to get hit. And so ipso facto.

The magnitude is too great for us not to see. Not saying a recession, but. Another thing too, though, the U.S. has become a net exporter. Or as of, I think it was as of 2020 or as of 2021, the U.S. has become a net exporter of petroleum and refined petroleum products. Yes, which doesn't help with the price though. It doesn't help with the price, but a lot of this money is going back to U.S. companies. That's interesting. It's just moving from California to Texas.

Right. Or New York to Oklahoma. It's not necessarily money going out the door to different consumers in another world. Right, and this is why the energy ETFs, the US energy ETFs are up 20%, 30%. So if you could bet on a city's economy right now, you would want to be long Houston, short Honolulu. Right.

That kind of thing. You know what's nice to see? I know it's short term, but whatever. When we announced that we were going to stop importing oil that day, crude spiked to 130. It's now down to 106. So it's pulled back quite a bit. Some of that is market mechanics. Just a lot of people getting way too bullish at the same time. And I don't know, most of these commodity spikes don't last for long. Oil is just a really weird one to figure out too. I mean, we had negative prices two years ago. But, you know,

I mean, this is also a thing where, you know, it's not an asset class where that's necessarily, you know, buy the rumor, sell the news kind of a thing. What do we think about Carl Icahn selling Oxy to Warren Buffett?

Is that who sold it? I know he sold his stake, but does the timing match up? I think the timing is about the same. They had filings at about the same time. The irony is that Icahn's stake in Oxy was an activist stake saying that they should not have bought Anadarko. He was trying to stop the merger. Well, he did well.

The value of the company now is predicated on the fact that they bought Anadarko. Like the reason Buffett wants to invest is because it's the biggest natural base. By the way, I watched the Icon doc. We were talking about that at dinner last week. Yeah, did you like it? I loved it. Did you watch it? Yeah, it was good. I was actually going to bring it up for my what I'm consuming.

Let's just do it right now. Just real quick. I feel like this is weird to say because he's obviously like a shark, but there is like a sweetness about him. Well, there's also something kind of like just direct. Like he just goes into companies and just speaks the truth, which most people won't do. The shareholders going, the TWA employees going to his door. He's like, are you going to let me talk? Are you going to let me talk?

He brings his kids outside. I thought what was interesting about it, I kind of knew this history, but most people didn't. He didn't start off as I know everything. He was like an options broker. He was just very good at figuring out how to make money. And I almost feel like if he ended up in Hollywood or as a military contractor. He's 100 out of 100. 100 chances at life he'll become rich every time.

Yeah. Yeah, right. I feel like if you just reset everything, within like five years he'd be right back. He could have ran Hollywood. Right. So what is that? Is that Queens? And apparently he could have been a philosopher too.

Is that like the Queens in him? Or was he from the Bronx? No, I think he's from Queens. Yeah, well, the story with his father. By the way, I was also born in Queens. No, we know. Just to reflect back on what we just said. When when he cried thinking about his dad like not loving him and stuff like that was that was uh yeah he has a sweet relationship with his kids too yeah he called

his dad a communist yes that was crazy i do that uh he well so the other the other cool thing was his relationship with his wife she looks way younger than him and she is they bust balls that was great but i think like most people would look at that and be like oh she's there for the money no actually she worked with him and they spent a ton of time together and they've been together for a long time yeah she wasn't like an 80s trophy that he forgot i googled that i googled that while i was watching i thought that was cool that they had that relationship like the 90s i think uh and his son and his son is like actually driving major investment decisions. Remember that?

That Netflix investment was his son. Yeah. I didn't know that. I thought that was a- I remember that. Who's responsible for Blackbuster? Apple, too. He sunk that.

Oh, okay. Icon sunk that. He f***ed that up. He crushed it. They could have been Netflix, and he really messed that one up. Well, anyway, back to Occidental Petroleum. What Buffett sees in the company is what Icon fought the company to not do. And I think that's why Icon gets the reputation that he's a vulture or a raider or whatever, because very often when he runs into a situation,

it's to stop a company from making a big investment and have that capital come back in the form of a dividend. So now Berkshire is going to push Oxie to get into the metaverse. Yeah, it's very likely. Allison, you're talking about risk a lot these past two weeks. I read your, it's called the known unknowns. It's your sub stack letter. I'm a weekly reader as well. Michael is a weekly reader.

You're worried that young people are too compliant and that people are not willing to take enough risk or rebel enough in order for our country to continue to innovate. And one of the examples you cited, I was giggling to myself, was you walk around on the streets and you see people in their 20s wearing masks. And you're like, what the fuck is wrong with these people? I'm so with you on that, like 100%. There's a negative correlation between age and outdoor mask wearing in my neighborhood. Why are we wearing masks outdoor? They don't even work indoors. And if we're in our 20s, what are we doing at this point?

People who are 80 are maskless on the street, but people who are, I live near NYU, all the NYU students are all wearing masks all the time. They are. It could be that they're all immunocompromised. It's probably not that, though. It's probably exactly what you're saying, which is that, I mean, why aren't these kids, like, bigger badasses?

Well, especially even during, like, when things were bad at the pandemic, they were always at the lowest risk, yet seemed, like, seemed to be going along with everything. So what's the problem? First, what's the problem with this? Well, I mean, it's a-

We know they're not having any sex. Yeah, we know that. That we know. They're not individuating from their parents. Like they go to college and still talk to their parents eight times a day. Yeah, we know that too. And individuation from your parents is important. It's part of your psychological growth.

Like the boomers turned 18 and fled. Yeah. Like all their faults. I'm not a boomer, so I'm not like, I'm not doing an encomium to boomerhood. But they left. They were rebellious. They did Woodstock. They were rebellious.

They grew up. They left. They did whatever they wanted. Yeah. They had protests where they got arrested and protested unpopular things. Like, they were rebels. And you probably become really good parents, too. Like, if you have, like, a long track record of making mistakes and getting out of that.

Yes. Well, aren't they parents to them now? Well, I don't know. All right. So we have a generation of rule followers. So we're probably not going to produce the next Steve Jobs out of this crop. Exactly. Or the next Mark Zuckerberg either.

So maybe it's good. Yeah. Well, that's true. But, yeah, I mean to be an innovator, you have to be a rule breaker. I was reading this book by Joel Maltz. Guilty. Who wrote about the culture of growth. And what you need is you need people who push back on the prevailing wisdom, question the

rules, question authority. And that really is what he thinks is behind prosperity. So if you have a bunch of people who are like, yeah, I'll follow all the rules. And in fact, get kind of angry at older people not following the rules. That was a great viral TikTok that was going around that splices Kanye West talking and Steve Jobs talking. They're basically talking about the same thing.

And Kanye starts by saying, when you're a kid, if you stand on a table, your parents are going to yell at you and they tell you to get off that table. That's a rule that they set in front of you. And as you grow older, people are just constantly putting these tables around you that you can't stand on. And before you know it, you don't know why, you know, you're not standing on those tables. And he's like saying that, like, you know, if you really put your mind to it, like, you know,

maybe you should stand on a table and, you know, take that risk. Is that a dare? Yeah, we're going to do it right after this, after a couple more shots. Who's a great millennial? Muhammad bin Salman. This guy, this guy,

this guy knows how to shake shit up. So he, he like gets a little bit of power and he locks up everybody in a hotel. And he's basically like, everybody here is going to give up all of their money back to me. Duncan shaking his head. And pledge loyalty to me. That's a guy that was not afraid

of breaking some rules and some taboos. I feel like there's... Is that taboo in Saudi Arabia, though? I guess not. Like what? Locking people? No, it's never been done before. Never had a royal lock up the other royals and demand loyalty. If he wants to be rebellious, let women drive. Now we're

going crazy. Do you have any rebellious, so let women drive. Now we're going crazy. Do you have any idea what could happen if women start driving all over the place without any supervision? Is it going to be flying cars in the UAE? Well, so what happens with this whole generation of rule followers now? Are they terrified of their own shadow? Do they just not take the risks that are necessary for us to have creative destruction and capitalism? Or maybe are we worried too much about this and they'll come out of their shell? I mean, I worry about it some, but sometimes I think maybe even it's good because you'll always

get that minority who are rule followers, who aren't rule followers. And in fact, they have so much to rebel against because all, I mean, I hate rallying against Gen Z and millennials because I actually, the ones I actually speak to are actually delightful and thoughtful and hate all what do you what do you think you are are you an xer i think i'm just born the same year as you and me are the same but what are we we are not in a generation no because we're too late we're not gen xers won't claim us no we weren't because remember the whole slacker thing like that wasn't us we were too young we were like in junior. But the millennials won't have us either, Allison. They will not claim it.

We're generationless. No, you're a boomer. Yeah. We're generationless. So millennials, we're a bloomer. We're boomers. So we're free to comment with no stake in any game. I kind of like that outsider status.

You have no home. You have no home. I think if there's evidence of some hope here is all these reports of small business applications spiking and everybody going out and doing their own thing. Yeah, but aren't there a lot of old people who are retirees or starting their own business? That's a great question is who are these people? But it's also a lot of young people. So many people are leaving.

I mean, millennials are getting a lot older now. So, you know, I think a lot of these people are And they're changing jobs more because we have this downward trend in job changing. But can we address this part? This is you. Listen, hold on. Hold on. 30% of millennials are bald.

So millennials are not kids anymore. No, they are not. I think we're actually, we're talking about the older Gen Zs is what we're talking about. We're talking about the kids coming out of school now. Allison, this is you and this resonated with me. This is concerning not only for their well-being, but also because you need to be defiant to be a great innovator. Coming up with good ideas requires rejecting the prevailing wisdom and questioning your elders. You can't be a rule follower, let alone an obsessive rule enforcer and moral scold as many young people seem to be lately.

So you probably wrote that just for popularity on Twitter. any young people seem to be lately. So you probably wrote that just for popularity on Twitter. But I do see like people filming their elders and then like uploading it to shame them. And they are scolds. And everything you say is problematic. And friends is problematic. And like things that you would normally look at

and be like, all right, what could possibly be harmful about this? I'll tell you what, that that kind of like pervasive force within culture maybe is more pronounced online than it is in real life. But it's a thing. It's messed up. I mean, I think you worry more about being shamed and scolded by young people than old people.

And it should be the other way around. Right. Young people don't seem to have any patience or tolerance for somebody who thinks differently than they do right now. But maybe it won't stay like that forever. Also, as I say, the actual Gen Zers I know when I teach or when I interact with older people's kids actually are great. And if they complain to me about anything, it's the fact that all their peers are annoying. So there is a critical mass of people who are rebels. They just aren't being – maybe they'll come into their own and fight back against the annoying people in their own generation.

And a lot of these kids too probably graduated college into a booming economy. And so it probably – they don't have to worry about stuff like work and paychecks and paying the bills and stuff. So this is the only thing that they can worry about is, you know, criticizing society. Right. Although it is crazy that the whole pandemic happened. It was not really a huge risk to young people, yet they were like so enthusiastic about all these huge restrictions on their lives. I'll still never get over that. You know what's great about Gen Z?

They don't tweet. Yeah, they just send TikTok. Tweeting is millennial and Xer bullshit. Yeah. Gen Z will go on TikTok and shame you with a duet. So they'll take a video of you saying something and they will go side by side and roll their eyes. They're going to upload this

and say, and then they're going to start marching out in front of the building. Can you imagine? I can't imagine. Tucking this in here, Biden came out in favor of acknowledging the existence of crypto. Mike, was there anything in that?

Talk about OK Boomer. I read this for three minutes and I was like, I can't. There's nothing in there. It's word salad. There's nothing. Anything worth mentioning from that or not really? Maybe what was excluded from it. It wasn't like, we're going to shut this down. Or this is like... Oh no, he's like, we're going to Maybe what was excluded from it. Like it wasn't like, you know, we're going to shut this down

or this is like... Oh no, he's like, we're going to figure out how to regulate it. Yeah, so that's got to be like, the fact that it's not terrible news to the crypto community is about as good as it is.

Yeah, as I say, Bitcoin price rallied because it's basically a stock at this point. There seems to be a lot of excitement and enthusiasm about regulators and banking authorities racing in here to police all this stuff. I thought this was supposed to be the opposite of that.

But apparently this is now just another Wall Street play thing and everybody wants more regulations so they can get their ETF. Is that a reasonable read on Bitcoin's price rallying on increased regulation? Maybe it's like a real asset now. Yeah, I think that's what it is, right? It's like, you know, you hit critical mass with like the high risk takers who are willing to put money into this in an unregulated market. But now everyone's looking for, well, who's going to be the next buyer? And, you know, once you put some regulation into that, then it's like, okay, you open

the doors to institutions and it's like, okay, you open the doors to institutions and it's like, okay, here's another trillion dollars that we can pour into crypto. It's cool that JP Morgan is going to come in and be part of all this decentralization, I guess. There was a chart in Barron's last weekend showing the breakdown on who's trading crypto, like the volume, and institutional investors are now a bigger and bigger player, which might explain why it tends to act, at least in the short term, very much in line with the NASDAQ, like on big news releases. It's the same pool of capital. Really? How much of it is institutional money?

There was a chart in Barron's and it showed the breakdown between institutional and retail and institutional volume is growing and it's basically dominating at this point. Huh. Well, institutional dollars will eventually dominate all these markets the longer they stay around because it's just bigger money. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

Who put this in the doc, downside risk? Morgan Stanley, strategist, see equity storm forming. Oh, here we go. Allison, look at this chart. So institutional is the blue line. Retail is the top. It's black.

It's tiny. It's basically all institutional dollars now. So this is all pension money? Great. I guess hedge funds on behalf of Kentucky teachers, which, by the way, you saw that. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, yeah. What a shit show.

What? Kentucky teachers are in? The Kentucky teachers pension system is the second biggest holder of Scourge Bank. It's like a small- I think it was a small percentage of the pension fund itself. But still. But yeah. All right.

All right. What's this? Global earnings revisions turned negative for the first time since September 2020. This is notable. I think we get a global recession. I'm obviously not rooting for it. But Michael Wilson from Morgan Stanley wrote, recession. I'm obviously not rooting for it, but Michael Wilson from Morgan Stanley wrote,

we are firmly in the grasp of a bear market that is incomplete in both time and price. Earnings delivery is paramount at a time when liquidity is being sucked out by central banks across the world. Removing the support could leave some indices floating on air. And they say any relief should be sold. They're not by the dip anymore. So there's going to be a furious rally God willing we'll get some sort of resolution Or even talks of one And everyone's sold, everyone's bared up So we'll get

We will get a nice bounce at some point But the problem is Then what? Sam, you have some pushback on this Yeah, I really like I follow all the strategists pretty closely. They send me all their research and stuff. And this one, I kind of had, I had two issues with. The first one was, when you look at this chart, it's like, yes, this is accurate. This is what the data says.

But I don't know if you guys got the other chart that I sent that was below that. We do. Changing S&P 500 quarterly earnings per share. Yeah. First two months of the quarter. First two months of the quarter. So it's basically the same message, but it zooms out. And instead of going to 2020, it goes out to 2017. And so this is something that was flagged by Nick Colas at Datatrack. And basically the message here is early on in the quarter. Do you see what they're saying? They're always cutting estimates. Analysts are always cutting estimates. In the first two months.

Yeah, going into earnings season. And it's always the current quarter. I don't know what it is. I think it's like earnings management and it lowers the bar for earnings beats and stuff. Because in every single one of these quarters, by the way, more than 50% of companies are beating expectations. This seems to have shifted though in 2020 and 21.

So what Nick was saying was, you know, with early 2020 and 2021, this is like very sort of in line with what happens in early recoveries. The analysts underestimate how big or how aggressive the recovery is coming out from the bottom. But after, you know, a couple of quarters, you get back to this thing where, you know, all right, it's, you know, the quarter just ended, earnings season is about to start, people are always nervous, and you start cutting estimates going into the earnings announcement. So, so then, and then, and then they report, and then they beat expectations by whatever percentage. So maybe the market's getting ahead of this. In fact, the market is already sussing

out some sort of economic slowdown, right? I mean, you also had the whole – I mean, we can go into the valuation question forever. But valuations, restrictions, giving people sort of a reason to sell. I don't know if – I'm not really convinced that we're on the cusp of a recession because there's still so much pent-up demand. I mean, this was a big theme in the Q4 earnings season. It was a big theme in Q3, too, where companies were all... Anything in terms of caution regarding

sales in the current quarter or the next quarter had to do with the fact that they couldn't keep up with demand. They didn't have enough workers to sell product. They didn't have enough workers to manufacture product. They couldn't put together their products because... In other words, none of it was a demand problem. It was not a demand problem. It was all a supply problem. I guess you could say, but we've never seen inflation run at these levels without a subsequent recession, especially

when rates are normalizing. But it's also often the Fed that causes the recession. That's not going to be the case this time. Or maybe it is the Fed's inaction that's causing the recession. Well, here's the thing. The Fed's just in a bad spot because it's sort of like after a while, inflation does so much damage, you know. There's nothing they can do. So, I mean, you know, before you get to the recession, though, like you have to do something so bad that, you know, all the employers decide to take off all their 10 million open job listings. Right. So this is we're not going from a place where, you know, where the economy has matured. All the signals are saying that the economy still wants to grow. It's just that there's not enough stuff and not enough supply.

So what happens is, you know, as these prices go up and, you know, the cure for high prices, higher prices, you lose some of that incremental demand. But, you know, it's like, you know, the U.S. economy is basically like a hot restaurant, right? It's like it's fully booked, but there's also a line waiting outside, right? Someone cancels their reservation because they can't make it. They're going to still fill those tables because there's still someone waiting in line. The sticker shock of what it costs to hire the next 10 employees actually does make employers start to pull people – pull those open jobs off the table and just say as much as we would like to add people right now at prevailing labor costs, we literally can't do it. And everybody having that idea at the same time actually is possible given the current dynamics in the labor market. Well, gas prices are so high no one can drive to the restaurant. Right.

Well, speaking of gas prices, that's actually what's going on with the energy producers, right? Like, sure, they can make a ton of money selling even more. But they need to use energy themselves. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, they have to use energy themselves. But they also went through that cycle, right, where they see the fluctuation and then the prices come down a little bit, but they were just drilling too much. They had too many operators out there and half of these companies go bankrupt. It's also possible to have a mild recession, right? Like a recession doesn't have to be catastrophic world ending.

We used to have a lot of mild recessions. Remember the great moderation? Yeah. Well, it's harder to have a mild recession now because we've centered the whole economy around the stock market. And stocks don't do anything mildly. Well, and that's why the Fed – I mean even if you look at the Fed's plans, they want to go to neutral. Like you don't – like you can't go to neutral. What's neutral? 7% right now? No, neutral is like 2%.

But like that doesn't fight inflation. That just doesn't juice inflation. Right. But they're not even planning on doing much about inflation. Well, I think they think it will go away eventually. Yeah, that seems to be our solution for everything. All right. Hard pivot.

All right. This week we're going to do Josh's gossip corner. What does that mean? Barry Diller is being investigated for insider trading. And when I read this, I said, nobody could be this stupid. I can't listen. I could be wrong, but let me just read this to you guys. And not to get personal, but would anybody really do this?

U.S. probes trade by Barry Diller and David Geffen before a big merger. So basically, these guys were buying call options on Activision days before Microsoft bought the company. Additionally, they're friends with the old CEO of Activision. I mean, it looks so ridiculously bad. Is it possible it's just the coins? I don't want you to accuse anybody of insider trading but like what was your take when you read this it seems insane to me that rich people would even think about doing something like this on purpose yeah i've got so yeah so when i saw this um and listen i'm not a

conspiracy theorist or anything like that but when i saw this you know i'm thinking it's got to be either one extreme or the other extreme right one? One, this is completely not true. They get clean. It was coincidence, paperwork mixed up or whatever. Or, again, let me preface this. This is me putting a conspiracy theory hat. Yeah, yeah. Maybe this is so prevalent among the billionaire community that everyone's just constantly trading on, you know, insider information and options and stuff.

Right. And then this is like one out of a thousand billionaires who, you know, didn't file their paperwork correctly and it got out. And then this becomes like, Or they just made so much money because this was just, it was a $40 and it went to 93. I mean,

this was a big controversy. So it's, so it's, so it's Diller. It's his son, his von Furstenberg. I think this is son-in-law. Von Furstenberg. I think this is son-in-law. I think so.

Okay. And Geffen. I mean, these are some of the richest people in the history of the world. Do you think they'll go to prison? No. Bought options to purchase

Activision shares at $40 each on January 14th. This is a good part. In privately arranged transactions through JPMorgan Chase. So they don't buy the filthy options that like me and Batnick buy. Filthy options.

They have like bespoke custom-made contracts. Martha Stewart had inside information on oil. So they bought these and Activision was trading at 63. So they bought in the money options, which maybe makes it less bad. It looked like less of a gamble. Did anybody in the world not think that Activision was for sale? I feel like that was very commonly known. So a lot of these mitigating factors don't make it look as bad

unless they have text between these guys that are like, yeah, trust me, pull the trigger, now's the time, which they probably don't have. You know what's really interesting about Activision is there was a lot of – people were accusing Buffett and Berkshire of frontrunning this thing. And Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, something that they never do is they talk to the press or address things. They never put press releases out. Their earnings announcements come on Saturdays.

The one extremely unusual, maybe first non-quarterly earnings press release that Buffett issues is addressing these accusations. I don't think people like being accused of crimes. Well, yeah. I think – yeah, I think – I don't blame them because that looked crazy too. But look, companies get acquired and somebody has to own it. And oftentimes it will be rich people that own it and hopefully that's as simple as it is here. Yeah, and people commit crimes.

So maybe it did happen. I don't believe anybody's this stupid. It's so crazy that maybe it did happen. I think that's their defense. Are you king me? Do you think I'm that stupid? No, but if I were Diller, that's what I would have my lawyer argue.

You can't possibly think that I would risk everything i've built over 70 years on an on an options bet in in an insider trade what yeah you can't you're an honor you can't uh amazon 20 for one split today and uh or last night and 10 billion dollar buyback which is tiny it's a multi-trillion dollar company this is like a long time coming i'm evolving my thinking on buybacks i think all the gains held what's your thinking i i used to like have this very high minded warren buffett-esque take on buybacks where i was like, it doesn't change the fundamentals and only an idiot would buy a stock because they announced a split. It's just like getting 16 slices out of a pizza pie versus, you know what? That's not true. Tesla did a split. Stock still hasn't come down to earth.

Apple. Same with Apple. Yep. I feel like that's a move. Nvidia did a four for one. It's up 50% since then. If your stock's going down, just split it. That'll kickstart. That'll get the bulls involved. No, but people like different sizes of things that they buy. That's why there's a price club and a convenience store and everything in between.

And give the people what they want. And when you do, you get rewarded. Yep. So there's a higher margin on the smaller pieces. So it's not that they know that their stock price is going to go up anyway and they're taking advantage? No, I don't think it's that simple. It's probably a pretty good sign that they're confident the stock's not going to crash anytime soon. What's this B of A research that you have?

So this was from B of A's Jared Woodard, and he wrote this after the Google 24-1 split. from B of A's Jared Woodard, and he wrote this after the Google 24-1 split. And basically, so he had some research showing that, you know, on average, you know, these companies tended to outperform. Companies that are splitting. That are splitting. But I think what he was trying to say is, or I think what he's saying is that, you know, it's not because of the split itself that, you know, these stocks rally. It's because the companies that tend to announce splits are- Are good companies. Yeah, they have earnings momentum and all that stuff. So-

You know why that's not the case this time? It was the case after he wrote this about Google. Google had just rallied furiously, and it was a bull market for tech. Same with Tesla's split. Same with Nvidia's split. Same with Apple's split. Amazon has been flat for two years. Stock is going nowhere.

So it is a slightly different case than the other tech giants in recent history that announced splits. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be investing in Amazon, but I just think it's like – it's something that's different. Do you have anything to say on splits? Bullish? Bullish. Memes are bullish alright we're going to do favorites and then we're going to take a brief intermission and then we're going to do another hour and a half does that sound good to everybody?

Allison have you brought us a favorite? we did yours? we did mine alright Sam what do you got for us? Afterlife, have you guys been watching Afterlife? I watched one episode of this. It made me emotional. It's incredibly depressing.

So this is a Ricky Gervais style comedy. And so he's the creator of The Office. He is? Yeah. The British version. The British version, and they brought it to the US. He was Michael Scott, but his name was, what was his name? David Brent.

David Brent. David Brent. And so his whole comedy is this sort of mundane, everyday stuff that live people go through. And so instead of the 9 to 5 office setting, the storyline is about him coping with his wife dying. High oil prices. Oh, the death of his wife. Yeah. So it's like – I mean, it's heavy. It's pretty depressing. But like, you know, like kind of with The Officers,

like these sweet moments where like, you know, you extract something from this terrible tragedy to, you know, to go on. But yeah, so this was the third season. Like, you know, if you don't want to watch it, you can go right to the third season and start from there. Does it get funnier? It gets, oh, I mean, no, it's dry British humor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But at the end, like, he figures out a way to get closure, you know, with the loss of his wife. And it's like one of the sweetest things that you'll see. And it's like, you know, that's how I'm going to think about loss. All right, I saw one episode. I'll give it, you think it's worth giving another shot?

I think go right, yeah. Go right to season three? Go right to season three. Go right to season three. Okay. And then, you know, just sort of plow through. And it just like gets sweeter and sweeter. And then you're depressed. And then you're like about to cry because of how good it is.

Did you like season three the most? I don't remember. Because I actually liked season two a lot, I think. I don't really remember one and two. I think it was just so long ago. Why did you liked season two a lot, I think. I don't really remember one and two. I think it was just so long ago. Why did you like season two? Is that the one with all the car chases? What was going on in season two?

Just the character development. Just casual nudity. It's like Steve Carell pops out of the metaverse. They dropped a couple of characters in the third season, too, just because of COVID-related scheduling kind of stuff. I'll give you a very different show for mine. Winning Time. Did you see it yet?

Not yet. I didn't love it. It's so good. It's one episode. It's so good. The first episode was so good. It's about the Lakers in the 70s when the team changes ownership to this guy, Dr. Buss,

who he's like a guy that hangs out with Hugh Hefner. I watched it with my son, who's 12. The opening scene takes place in the Playboy Mansion. And no exaggeration, I think there's 30 naked girls laying on a living room couch. And my son's like, very quiet. And I'm like, waiting for this scene to end so I don't have to turn the channel or throw him out of the room. And I'm like waiting for this scene to end so I don't have to turn the channel or throw him out of the room. But we got past that. And he now will watch anything I recommend. John C. Reilly is one of my favorite actors.

And he's so good. Just look at his face and you start laughing. So he plays Dr. Buss. What's he a doctor of? PhD. Bullshit, doctor. It's like physical education education i'm just kidding i'm just teasing uh he doesn't have the same phd that you have i don't think certainly not the same

one that i have i don't think uh he but he's um he's hilarious but i think like uh they did a really good job casting magic johnson so far it seems like i don't know the young actor's name but he has like that star quality like he has the big smile and uh you kind of root for actually i think that i think that this is what severed adam mckay and will ferrell's relationship oh is that will ferrell wanted to play jerry bus or was going to i could see that and then he gave it to john c riley and they're basically the same person john c riley is that why will ferrell's running around as Jackie Moon? Yeah, as Jackie Moon at like,

what's it called? Golden State Games. It's possible. That was really funny too. Yeah. He was hitting threes though. He's the funniest. He doesn't look like

Jerry Buss either, but it could have been, it could have been funny with him in it, but I think it's less of a slapstick comedy with John C. Reilly in it. Right?

Sure. So, the only other one I had was Al Pacino was interviewed about playing the Godfather. Did you realize it's the 50th anniversary of the Godfather? Did you know that Mario Puzo grew up in Merrick? No. Really? Yes.

That's true? Yes. From our town? Yes. What bagel store did he go to? Plaza. When was this? 1940s?

No, for real. I don't know when he moved out. But I saw a picture. My dad sent me a picture of his house. It's like a Merrick house. High Ranch. How about that? Godfather fan?

Yeah. You are, right? Yeah. And I've been interviewing- Then we released it. I'm just a big fan of the mafia. I, it was a straight- Same.

Well, it was kind of like, one of the upshots of the pandemic is when New York got weird again, the mafia sort of came out of the woodwork again. They did? Yeah. The Italian mafia? Yeah. I lived near Italy and they'd have secret restaurants that sneak you in through the trash.

I've been interviewing a mob hitman for my new book. Wait, wait. What? What book? What are you writing? Record Scratch. Yeah. We're going to need another hour.

An economist walks into a... She's writing an instructional on how to whack a guy. Well, he said it's much harder now with all the cameras everywhere, and that's one of the reasons the mobs have come. What's the book about? It's exploring our changing relationship with risk. That's why I keep writing about it. Is it a sequel to Brothel or just in the same vein?

I'm doing the stories again because that was just fun for me and the reader. But the last one was sort of just, here's some well understood principles of finance. Here's a fun way to look at them again. This is, I'm actually making an argument about why our relationship with risk is changing as a culture and why it's a problem. It's true that it is, but a lot of it is on purpose.

Yeah, no. Because we don't want it to be easy for a mafia hitman to operate. Well, actually, I make a different argument, which is in the past, like, the world was pretty risky. You didn't have access to capital and it was dangerous. So the mob actually, their purpose was actually risk reduction, right? Gave you capital if you needed it and they imposed some law and order. Are you joking around right now?

What? They gave you capital if you needed it and charged you an interest rate. They made it available. What's the name of the book? Do we have a name yet? The publisher doesn't like it, but I sold it under Do the Wrong Thing. Oh, I love it. I like that thing too.

Why did the publisher like that? I don't know. Oh, you're right. That's such a great name. If you need a secondary name, it should be actually the mafia provided access to capital. That'll be your op-ed that you write in the FT. They did. I mean, it was a lot of money.

Say what you want about the mafia. They didn't have payday loans then. It was, you know, this was an important function. Do you know about the Samuel the Bull podcast? Yeah. Are you listening? You got to interview him. You're definitely interviewing him.

I'm interviewing John. She's interviewing him. I'm interviewing. He hasn't written back to me, but I've been interviewing John Elite. Have you been listening to him? Oh, he has a podcast too. Yeah. Are you listening? You've got to interview him. You're definitely interviewing him. I'm interviewing John Elite. She's interviewing him. I'm interviewing – he hasn't written back to me, but I've been interviewing John Elite. Have you been listening to him? Oh, he has a podcast too. Yeah. That's how you pronounce his last name?

Elite, yeah. He's got a big cigar on the cover of his podcast, right? And a neck tattoo, yeah. Yeah. But he's fun. He's so charming. Talk about a big smile. Is he like a guy that like left the life or – Yeah, he –

I don't know who he is. He went to – well, he turned on John Jr., Gotti. Not a big smile. Is he like a guy that like left the life or? Yeah, he. I don't know who he is. He went to, well, he turned on John Jr., Gotti. Not a good idea. And then, well, and then went to prison for like a bunch of years for killing two people. And now he's a motivational speaker. Yeah, you should maybe do your meetings with him on Zoom. I'm just spitballing here. I didn't know you lived in Little Italy.

Oh, I moved to Grunge Village, but during most of the pandemic, I was right near Little Italy. And the mob was like out, like you'd see these. You're noticing an uptick in what? You're noticing what's going on. A lot of men in white tank tops on Mulder Street. That's mad racist. I'm just going to put, Alison's being racist, Duncan. Can we edit this part out? All right. Listen, listen, we're obviously going to be excited for your new book. What are you? You're still in the writing phase. You're probably a year away. Yeah.

I know how that goes. Yeah. I'm doing academic publisher too. So it's going to take. All right. While we're on the subject to wrap up, let's just plug your, uh, let's plug your sub stack and then we'll get to Sam's. Uh, you are the known unknowns.

I know I mentioned that just now. That's the best way to read your stuff on an ongoing basis. And you link to some of the articles that you contribute elsewhere from there. Yeah. So you can get everything, Alison, from there. Yes. Okay. How's subs going?

What's going on? Everything's good? It's good. I'm impressed with the Substack people. They're pretty good. I mean, they're not as efficient as the mafia, but they get the job done. Well, you know, I mean, the economy is evolving. Fair enough.

And are you cutting all ties with your subscribers in russia no because as i said i i think we're sort of that's becoming self-defeating right we want we want them to understand our point of view we don't want to okay exactly enough uh sam rowe i love you know i love your you know i love you love your letter obviously duncan doesn't which is why we hit the paywall when they try to. So I try to work on him. He doesn't listen. Tell everybody how they could subscribe to your stuff. It's ticker.co.

Yep, ticker.co. That's T-K-E-R dot C-O. I've got a sticker. Was the I and the C and the E extra money when you made the domain? It was going to be extra. What's T-K capitalized? You did the right thing. was going to be extra.

What's TK capitalized? You did the right thing. So what actually happened was I was squatting on a Substack URL for like two or three years. And so as a placeholder, I didn't want to put like a name of a publication because I was still employed. So I just had TK, TK in there.

It's a journalism thing. It means, you know, something to come. And so I was playing around with different names for the newsletter and all of them sucked. And so I was playing around with different names for the newsletter and all of them sucked. And then I was just looking at this and I just changed the second TK to ER and it was great.

It didn't start with the and it was short. Every Substack letter has to start with the? Yeah. Yours doesn't. Hers doesn't. But that is a convention. Yeah, those are the only two good newsletters. It's like the something. Yeah. The Facebook, right?

The Facebook. Okay. So you're TKER.co. Yep. Okay, guys, Sam reads everything so that you don't have to, and he gives you like, here's the most important thing I came across. You're a huge time saver for the audience. That's the whole idea. It's the opposite important thing i came across you're a huge time saver for the audience that's that's the whole idea it's the opposite of michael's blog really you're like cutting to

the chase you know it's funny so the the the only newsletter that i promise on a regular basis is the sunday edition and then you know some weeks i might send up four issues some weeks i'll be completely quiet um and the readers seem to be responding positively to that you're doing a great job we appreciate it alice and you too guys we had so much fun hanging out with you as we always do so thanks for coming back to the show we'll have you back soon i hope right okay and in the meantime thanks for bringing by the say it for me one more time soju soju uh you're i mean, I say that to Michael all the time. I do say, you are soju.

It's delicious. I'm into it. I'm probably going to guzzle this bottle as soon as this guy shuts the cameras off. We wanted to mention the reviews, right? Nicole told me that. Yeah, we want people to rate and review. Why aren't they writing reviews for us, do you think? I don't know.

Okay, listen up. We just have to motivate them. We ask so little of you guys, but we love you and we give you a lot of show. And the only thing that you can really do to help us is to write a review for us because the algorithms really focus on that. So if you think we're doing something good

and you have fun listening to it and you think more people should hear it, write a review, a good review. And what we're going to do to promote that kind of positive feedback is we're going to read our favorite review each week live on the air. We're going to have Alison read it. Actually, she's going to call in and do this for us every week. So please write a review. It's very much appreciated. Did I hit all the things? Yeah, yeah, that's it. It's good? Okay.

Hey, thanks for listening. Make sure you like and subscribe. Make sure you leave a review. Make sure you check out Sam and Allison's stuff and we will talk to you soon. If you guys want more electronic reviews,

I don't see a break from the Packers. We don't want that kind.