The Compound and Friends - Saint Patrick's Day Show

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

On episode 38 of The Compound & Friends, Michael Batnick, Dan McMurtrie, Leanna Haakons, and Downtown Josh Brown discuss: equity markets, value investing, FOMC decision, private markets, stock picking, Chinese stocks, Nicolas Cage, 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's so funny? What? Look at this f***ing guy. I tried to put my headphones on. Yeah. Put them on like hip-hop. There you go. Alright. It's tough. Hat's not coming off.

Hey, do you guys know that I'm half Irish? Are you really? Yeah. You didn't know that? Did you think a lot of people of eastern european jewish descent had red hair and red beards i guess i really just didn't think that much about it did you think that i don't see race fair thank you i appreciate that because my mom's family is from the west no other side the western part of ireland is called county mayo and i learned that everybody from County Mayo

when they when somebody says where are you from and they say County Mayo they finish with God help us yeah so like that is very you so people say you know where's your family from it's just like a knee jerk all my family's from County Mayo God help. So I'm like, what is that about? Are they the Jews of Ireland? Probably. Are they the Kvetches of Ireland? Yeah. What it's about is that during the potato famines, and there was more than one, I also learned, the aid from England, what little aid actually came?

It was riveting. Arrived in Dublin, which is on the other coast. Right, they didn't get all the way there. By the time it got to the West Coast, there was nothing left. Right. Or even the food aid that they brought was rotten. So County Mayo, God help us. You know, what's a movie?

You're part Irish, I hear. Yeah, sure. Hall Pass. You ever see Hall Pass? The Dublin line? Yeah. What's the Dublin line? We don't have to go over right now.

Okay. Good enough. Good enough. Welcome to the show, guys. We haven't started officially yet. Jason Sudeikis is so good in that movie. So when's the Fed announcement on rates? Is that 3.30 or what?

That happen already? We did it yesterday. John, are we coming in? I've been like psychotic busy. Yeah, I think we need to change the profile on that camera. There's going to be a lot of the minute comment for me. A lot of what? Of the minute comment.

What does that mean? Oh, got it. Well, I didn't add anything to the stock. When did you guys update this outline anyway? 20 minutes ago. Okay, that's pretty much kind of what I saw. 15 minutes ago. You didn't read everything that we linked to?

No, but last week, as soon as Nicole shared this, I went in and put in my favorites because I didn't want anyone to steal them. We got it. I'm into all anyone to steal them. We got it. I'm into all the documentaries and everything. There's so many right now that are coming out, though. I didn't watch the third Kanye one.

I'm not watching. I mean like the business ones, like the Icon. I haven't watched it yet. Oh, the Icon was so good. I'm waiting for the murder-suicide before I watch the Kanye documentary. Ooh, Dan. I'm in. That's super dark.

Too soon? It's super dark. What are you drinking? Oh, thank you.'m in. That's super dark. Too soon? It's super dark. What are you drinking? Oh, thank you. Is that homemade? Yeah. You don't have to go as high as mine. Oh. It's like a Gatorade thingy.

I wish I had like a green alcohol drink. I'm still recovering from Vegas like a week later. How long were you in Vegas for? Four days, just too long. That's too long. Yeah. Anything longer than two days is a mistake. That's like two, might as well be two weeks.

Yeah. Four days. Did you make it out all four nights?'s too long. Yeah. Anything longer than two days is a mistake. That's like two, might as well be two weeks. Yeah. Four days. Did you make it out all four nights? Yeah, unfortunately. No. Yeah. Are you serious?

How old are you? 30. Oh my gosh. Was that for work or for fun? It was for Buddy's bachelor party. Too much fun.

And half the people had never been to Vegas before so they're like, we want to go to every casino and I was like, that's not how this is done. They're like, I don't care.

We walked like cumulatively 25 miles or something stupid like that. I was like, we want to go to every casino. And I was like, that's not how this is done. They're like, I don't care. We walked like cumulatively 25 miles or something stupid like that. I was like, this is – I can't say who it is, but I just saw pictures of friends of mine my age who were in Vegas for a nephew's bachelor party. I don't know why they were there. Apparently this kid wanted to party with his uncles. Millennials need like help knowing how to party. So they have pictures of one of them so passed out and incapacitated that the hotel provided a wheelchair.

But he had to eat before he went to sleep. So they're wheeling him through the Venetian, which has the only place that has any open. They have a food court with like subway. They arrived there at 5.45 a.m AM as these places were pulling down the metal gates. Right. So I have pictures and video. Let me see. No, I wasn't there.

Of a gentleman my age being wheeled up to the counter in a wheelchair ordering a sub at 6 in the morning. And I just said, how did I miss this trip? Yeah. Because that could have been me. You know? We could get you a wheel chair tonight. Yeah. That's a thing that could happen.

Go for it. Shane Smoker's concert until 5 in the morning, which is not my vibe. Were they good? What did they do? They press enter on a laptop? Yeah, they played slight remixes of just like basically karaoke wedding hits

for half of it. Yeah, is that someone's actual phone? Was that, yeah. Oh. I thought that was a new sound effect. Yeah.

Okay, I actually love the Chainsmokers at Salt in September. Were they good? Yeah, I mean for a conference concert was cool. When I was at Salt

they had Lenny Kravitz and he tore the place down. He was amazing. I think that was like that was maybe the year before like a long time ago already something uh this was the salt that was in New York oh no I'm saying you that you're talking about with the chain smokers yeah yeah this past so I saw you there yeah I was there for an hour yeah we did a quick I would interview I

wasn't I wasn't able to stay long so alright we're all good yes you good John yep have you done color charts yep alright let's do it three claps second clap

third clap Third clap. Episode 38. Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by me, Michael Batnick, and our castmates are solely our own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Today's show is sponsored by FTX. FTX was founded in 2019, which is wild. Can't believe it's only been, what year is it, Duncan? It's 23 years. Sam Bankman, free the founder, was on the Forbes list of the richest under 30. I don't even think he's 30.

Actually, he can't be 30. It's under 30, right? It's under 30. That wouldn't probably be under 30 years old. This year, we spoke today on the show about valuations with private companies getting compressed. Not FTX. FTX US raised $400 million at an $8 billion valuation. That's only the US subsidiary. FTX International was at a $32 billion valuation. So needless to say, they're doing well. If you are looking to get access to crypto, NFTs, download the FTX US app, enter the promo code COMPOUND to get free crypto on every trade over $10.

All right, we're back. We're back. Another all new episode of The Compounded Friends. We have two fan favorites back with us today. I'm very excited to welcome back Leanna Hawkins. Do I pronounce that right? No. Okay, do it the way I'm supposed to do it. Hawkins, like Black Hawk Financial. Okay, who said?

Are you sure about that? It's true. Okay, all right. They call me the Hawk since I was 19, a little wee one in the industry. Leanna Hawkins is back and ready to crush today. Welcome back. So nice to have you. Thank you.

You are dressed up the way that we are for St. Patrick's Day, but somewhat against your will. I feel like you're not as... I'll take an all-black New York look with the green tie. I'm with you. That's where I draw the line. All right, very cool.

Dan McMurtry back in the house. Dan, say hello to everybody. What's up, everybody? Dan just got back from Vegas for, what did you say, four days? Yeah. Okay. How long ago, though, did you get back?

Sunday night at like midnight. So it's Thursday. You're okay. By now, it's enough. When are you going back? Hopefully never. Okay. And Mike was not in Vegas recently.

What's going on with you? Everything good? It's good. Ready to pod? Yeah, let's get to it. Ready to get down to it? Ready. Mike doesn't do small talk. Did you guys know that? I mean, that's not what we're here for.

Let's go. Mike's a pleasure to meet like in real life at a party. Go up to him and be like, hey, how's it going? I don't know. What do you need? What are we starting with? John, throw up this chart. Why don't we start here? Value of investors' revenge. Not that chart. So I'll set it up. It's been a minute. The last couple of years, like almost going on a decade, Dan, you know better than me, has been rough for long, short investors, which are traditionally like long, cheap, short, expensive, which has been like the widow maker for way too long. And you know what? I'm happy for you all. It's been too much pain. So we're on the other side of that. We're looking at Berkshire divided by ARK, just ripping up into the right.

What is going on? How are you doing? How are you feeling? Wait, the Berkshire ARK ratio chart is back at 2017 levels, having erased five years of pain for people that actually look at things like earnings and book value. Yeah, it's pretty awesome to have a little bit of – have something make a little bit of sense. Is what he said true? Are most long-short investors value-oriented? I don't know that that's true.

I think on a – maybe by count, but by AUM, definitely not. The last few years, all the AUM went to really growth-oriented – Quant and growth-oriented managers. For long-short fundamental, it skewed massively growth. But even within that, you would still say long-quality cheap – I'm sorry, long-quality short junk? So what happened was basically over the last like five years, if you look at statements that a lot of prominent hedge fund managers made, there was this progression of them kind

of giving up their tools. So they said, OK, first, we're not going to do anything that's not TMT. Then they said, okay, we're not going to short. Then we're not going to do small caps. And like right at the moment, right at the moment where they kind of got to this point where they told all their investors- Long-hauling NASDAQ 50 is what it turns into.

Right when they all got to long-hauling NASDAQ 50, that was exactly the top. And then it's been really, really bad. Who was the value investor that literally shut it down at the top? I feel bad for that team. There were several. Yeah.

And now you're seeing the growth guys start to get unwound. And the issue is you have a lot of guys who launched, call it 2014 to 2018, had okay records and had one or two awesome years and then have immediately given all of it back. And it's not that there's credibility issue with their LPs of how do you assess that manager's skill looking at that record? Because it's so clear that so much of it is single factor driven. That's really, really tough. Isn't it smarter, though, to just shut it down and then when your environment comes

back, make your comeback, no high watermark? But look how quick it happened. Leanna, can I get away with that? The value of the long-term relationships, though, is what's tough, right? Like you can't just say, hey, we're going to put a pin on it here and come back in two years when what we were doing initially is in favor again. Wait a minute. But what if I say – but wait. What if I'm like, you guys, I was dead serious about retirement, but the fat pitch now is so obvious.

Right. This is my – I would almost be selfish if I were to keep this talent and expertise to myself, given the macro environment being so favorable to what I did. Are you looking for a fundraising job? I mean, yeah. I guess you're a media marketing guy. You could do it once, right? You could probably do that once.

But also, you had to pull that off in like three months. That's what I'm saying. That's so quick. You had to call it right. You had to move really fast. Well, wait a minute. Is that true? What if this is the start of a 10-year cycle of value outperforming growth?

Could be. Is that possible? Can't be. the start of a 10-year cycle of value outperforming growth? Could be. Is that possible? Have we ever had that? No. Not really. I mean, value tends to get kind of like four-year runs, it seems like historically. The Fed, in their guidance yesterday, kind of said they think that we're going to have this one, two-year period of inflation, and then we're going to go back to low growth, low rates. They took the term off right now.

They're usually right. Powell said the value one has just started. I think that's what he said. I'm not quoting exactly, but – Yeah, Powell said we're going to have a to low growth, low rates. They took the term off right now. They're usually right. Powell said the value one has just started. I think that's what he said. I'm not quoting exactly, but – Yeah, Powell said we're going to have a value regime. Right, yeah. Well, I mean, but we could sit here and feel really bad for hedge fund managers all day, right? I feel good for them.

It's about – No, this is what they want. This is – Dispersion. All of this is really good education. Everything that's happened, especially in the last two years, is such good education opportunity for retail investors and young investors, millennials that are now starting to make money and want to get into investing.

I know that we like to talk about things in our industry and the professional investors, but I mean, your audience on this show is the retail people too, I think. And that's who I talk to with financial literacy and my stuff on social. For them, like a lot of the retail investors that just started probably had the mindset, like why would I ever buy anything that's not TMT, tech, media, telecom? I think it goes both ways.

And now they're going to have to learn oil stocks. Well, that's what's funny. I mean, I, like me personally, I'm more of like a value-oriented investor, but a lot, but that's also- That's the Canadian in you though too. Probably, I'm more of like a value-oriented investor. But a lot – That's the Canadian in you though too. Probably. I just, you know, fight for the underdog resources.

But I think a lot of – it's also just a factor of what I'm personally interested in. I don't know a lot about technology. I don't care a lot about technology. But when it comes to money, I do sometimes. I usually find the men in my retail investing space that I talk to or message me on Instagram, that type of thing. If they're in the technology or software business and that's what they're interested in personally as a retail investor and in their careers, they are going to be more prone to looking at the growth stocks because they're hearing about them. They actually know what that technology looks like and the prospects for the future. Whereas me, I'm not going to bet on that growth horse as much because I don't know about it.

And the valuations seem so freaking high. So I naturally gravitated to the airlines and resources and everything in the last couple of years. Is what Dan said about the last couple of years corroborated by what you've seen, which is that the only real way to have raised money in recent years is to raise it for a growth fund? I mean, yeah. That's who's getting the flows.

Well, it's turning to crypto now, which is something I'm really into and invested in. Which is value in a way. Yeah. In a way. So Dan, who are the winners? Give it to us. You have this provocative take. Give us 10 stocks that are going to work this year.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Yeah. No, I mean- Duncan, zoom in. Look, there's a lot of complicating factors in the market right now. You have inflation.

You've got supply chain. You've got real wages moving all over the place. You've got all this stuff happening. Kanye. There's a lot going on. A lot going on. I just think it comes back to price matters. I actually right now I don't have that much of like a sector bias because I think there's been this big regime shift from basically buy things that go up to people going, holy shit, nothing works.

And I think you can go back and across sectors. Like right now there are a lot of companies that are – you're not going to buy – this idea that you need to buy the best business, that's going to go out the window. And people are going to go back and look at, OK, what actually makes sense price versus value, which is supposed to be the whole thing, right? That's the point of value investing. Value investing is not don't buy software. It's not don't buy retail. It's not, it's get a good price. But if you go out, I mean, just making up names, I mean, you can go buy, you know, Target at 14 times, buy Williams-Sonoma at 11 times. These are earnings. You want to go into industrials or staples, you can get things at, you know, seven, eight, nine times cash flows.

And so, yeah, the economy might fall off a cliff, but it's probably priced for there. And even though there are some things that are, I think, causing things to decelerate in the economy, the consumer is just roided up and bulletproof right now. I mean, the consumer doesn't have any leverage on. But if you're long only, it's a different conversation than if you're long short

or someone that has the ability to hold cash. Like if you're long only and you think the economy is going to fall off a cliff, you'd just be like, well, what will hurt me the least? And of course, that's going to lead you toward lower valuation stocks. But wait, hold on. We were talking about like the consumer. So we just had an email yesterday that was interesting. Somebody said, when I started listening to you all,

I never thought I would lead to quality Disney World advice. My wife and I were debating about the genie pass, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We went for it and it was key. By the way, parks are packed. They are speculating that this might be the busiest week ever in the history of Disney. Recessions are different than I thought they would be. Yeah. Because these are people that other – this is just pulled back demand.

Half of these are trips that were canceled two years ago. So my point is like it's so weird to figure out where we are in the cycle, where we are in the economy. Like can we go into a recession and the consumer still be like bulletproof? Is that, I mean, it seems to be like a totally incompatible, but maybe we have a weird thing that. Well, the amount of savings are still higher now, like consumer wise than they were pre pandemic. So, and people have yet pent up demand to get out and do stuff. Can we have like a general slowdown of the economy with things still on fire?

Does that totally not make sense? I think so. The people at Disney this week, two things about that. The people at Disney this week, probably a lot of them were supposed to have been there last year or a year before, promised their kids and it's a make-up trip.

So it's not like more money being spent. It's just time shift. What percentage of overall consumption this year is going to be stuff like that? Oh, a lot. 69. What about you guys? Every dinner I get invited to is, hey, haven't seen you in two years. Yes.

Come to dinner. You got to go to that dinner. A lot. I agree with you. And the travel stocks, I think, are reflecting that. I mean, right now flights are booked. I mean, it's crazy. Didn't Delta just say they had their busiest two-day period ever?

It's nuts. I'm on a trip crazy. Didn't Delta just say they had their busiest two-day period ever? It's nuts. I'm on a trip this summer that was supposed to be 2020. So I think a lot of people are. And I don't know if a downturn in the stock market is really going to affect that this year. Well, housing is still really strong. And I think the other thing, I tweeted something about this, but I don't think it's appropriately analyzed. about this, but I don't think it's appropriately analyzed. If you look at the options a consumer has right now, if you want to reduce spending but keep the amount of stuff you're buying the same, if you go from, for example, the classic thing in restaurants is getting pizzas delivered versus

picking them up at the store. If you go pick up the pizzas, it's $6. You feed a family for $15, $18 versus getting delivered, you're going to pay $35.40. You go through DoorDashash, you're going to pay 45, 50. It's so funny. We just did that last night. Right. There's so many options for the consumer just to say, you know what? I actually care about that incremental 20 or $30. And you can recoup a lot of the gas pressure and things like that from those costs just by making little tweaks. Like maybe we're going to do more Costco and we're going to do less, you know, Whole Foods. My kids were on Uber Eats ordering Wingstop last night, which is not supposed to cost what Peter Luger costs. Right.

And I'm like, before you hit enter, how much is that? And my daughter's like, $32. I'm like, where is this place? Sunrise Highway. Sunrise Highway. I said, you know what? Drive right there, spend five minutes, spend $12. $8 or $9 is not life-changing, but I'm driving there.

The service charter's on a lot of things. Actually, two interesting points on that. Pizza, let's start. Domino's. Have you guys seen the new incentive that the carryout pickup they have? They give you credit for every order if you pick up instead of – or carryout instead of delivery. They give you, I think it's $5 or $6 credit. It's probably cheaper for them than trying to find delivery people.

It's cheaper than trying to find delivery people, hiring them, reimbursing them for gas. My, I do Instacart and stuff, living in the city, get groceries a few times a week, produce and things I don't want to carry home,

quite frankly. So all of the service charges, some of the service charges, it used to be like $3.99 for $25 of whatever. Now it's $6.99 just in the last few weeks. So all the service charges

on the delivery things are going up. That'll eventually hit the pocketbook, but in the short term, it's not going to affect demand. the last few weeks. So all the service charters on the delivery things are going up. That will eventually hit the pocketbook. But in the short term, it's not going to affect demand. How great is it if like the new economy is the less lazy you are, the less things cost you, which I think is how it should be? That's a frugal, healthy perspective. I kind of feel like that would be cool. I might start walking to Whole Foods again. We'll see.

That you should pay less to exert less effort, right? foods again we'll see that you should pay less to exert less effort right well well like insurance companies uh try to incentivize people for not being fat slobs and sitting around all day so like why wouldn't the actual economy work that way too wouldn't that that that doesn't work but uh you know no i know it doesn't work i just mean it would be nice if that were an incentive out there damn what's this what's this crazy chart that we've got from Blake LeBaron? Agent-based model of asset prices? Okay. This looks like –

Something tells me this is going to be over my head. Yeah, mine too. No, no, no. It's not that complicated. Okay, so basically there's a paper which Jim O'Shaughnessy retweeted. It's great. This guy – I think this was published in 2001. He basically created a computer system that made up random trading strategies.

And he basically assumed that if the trading strategy loses over a certain amount, that manager gets fired, right? And so he just has those managers, those theoretical managers just run money and the winners get more money and the losers get less money. As a simulation. As a simulation. Yeah. And what he essentially shows is that over time, you have a reduction in the diversity of strategies. You end up with a bunch of strategies that are mostly the same.

They might all be momentum. Some say they're growth. Some say they're outright momentum. And what you see is the market is really good at pricing whatever when you have the wisdom of crowds, which needs diversity of opinion, right? And so the point is when one style works really, really well for an extended period, every other style gets crowded out of the market. So you can see here on the top, you see kind of the price trend. And on the bottom, you see rule dispersion, which is just like how different

people's strategies are. And so look where they reverse. It's always you get all of a sudden, everybody's strategies are basically 40% the same right there where it says 80. And then the price tanks. And all the price tanks and all of a sudden all these strategies come back. So this is what's happening with gross versus value, etc. And it's kind of ages old. This is an argument for having multiple managers or multiple strategies inside of your portfolio. Because yes, because if you don't have that, what you're seeing there is you're in the short term, you get smoother returns or maybe higher returns. But you're taking an immense amount of rebalancing risk. And you're also making a bet that you're

going to make the smart rebalancing decision. Time that really well, not if even if you miss it, once you tank, are you then going to make a smart decision when you're down 30% of your portfolio? You do the opposite. But the problem is, isn't this the nature of markets that eventually people will throw in the towel on what's not working for such a long period of time? I was looking at a chart, a three-year chart of small cap value versus ARK. And ARK was up like literally 300 percent and small value was up 30 over the same time. It's like a four-year period. That feels like an eternity.

You're like, all right, clearly this shit is broken. I'm going to stop inflicting this pain on myself. And then from today, like it literally crossed all the performance. Right at the moment. Right at the moment of maximum pain. But there's no avoiding this. This is what markets do. Right.

And we've been in a weird period recently where it's just been so long. No, the only way you avoid it is with asset allocation and making sure that you have, if you want to be a little tilted, it generally makes sense to, you know, basically play the hot hand a little bit. But so many people, especially people coming out of the tech space, you know, they start with, okay, I work at Facebook, I have a bunch of Facebook stock, I'm going to buy, I'm going to diversify into Google, and then I'm buy a little Amazon, I'm gonna buy some CrowdStrike, I'm gonna buy some NetSuite, whatever it is. And all of a sudden, you've got a guy, you know, fast forward three years, private banks are saying, hey, why don't I lend you some money against your shares, and you can buy more stuff and do venture?

And then all of a sudden they've got a leverage-long portfolio that's all one bet. Yeah. And some of it's illiquid now too. Right. And that's where real pain happens. People tend to buy what they know as a retail investor or start there. I actually think it's easier for individual investors to like stay away from this shit than it is for professionals. It is once they actively start thinking about it or they see their portfolio like it looks right now

and they're like, what the beep was I thinking the last five years? Because individual investors don't have outside capital like chirping at their ear. And after like literal years of underperformance, I don't know how people could like stay sane and not give in. I got a DM from a guy, all in tech guy, retail.

And he's like, I'm going to watch this commodity rally instead of sell all my tech shit and buy it because I know the minute I buy it, that's the top for commodities and the whole thing is going to reverse. But if I were to do it, it would be right at this moment. And literally that was WTI crude at 130. Like he knew it. He's a retail guy, but he knew I feel so compelled at this moment to sell all these fucking social media companies and just buy Chevron. He goes, that's how I know it's over because I'm literally about to do it. And he was dead right.

So he's a retail guy, but he knows himself. When you get that feeling, like one of these we spent a lot of time on is very similar to poker, trying to like really feel how you're feeling and thinking about how that's influencing your investment decisions. And the one that kills you-

Is that a Peter Frampton song? What's that song? Do you feel how I feel? do you oh my god you well done Michael thank you

thank you if you're if you're feeling like making that trade will be relief will like make you comfortable it's so bad

especially when it's when it's adding exposure it's it's always the worst possible time or what about when it's like oh my god everybody is getting rich.

Oh, I heard you talking about this with Frederick and the, at the bottom in March, 2020, like if you like literally feel compelled, then you should have the where, well, not you should,

it's hard to be the self-aware that everybody else is feeling this. Right. A buddy. Yeah. It was a buddy of mine who, who's been a trader a long time. And I called him, it was like the 17th or something.

It was like right around the bottom. And I'm like, dude, what do you think? This is crazy. And he's like, honestly, it's like 11 a.m. today. I felt myself begin to vomit. I felt my stomach going. From what? From just the market ball.

March of 2020. He feels himself begin to vomit. And he goes, I go to grab for the trash can. And then I stop and I go, wait, I felt this before. Everybody else feels this. I need to vomit. And he goes, I go to grab for the trash can and then I stop and I go, wait, I felt this before. Everybody else feels this. I need to buy. And he put his entire account in like two or three ETFs.

It was like small caps, miners or something. And then just shut his machine off and bailed. And it was the best trade I saw of the year. It's the hardest thing to do. What is this Chinese,

China-focused, long-short managers? Yeah, so that was just something somebody posted, which was- John, you have this? Yeah, that was just an example of like, you know, people are saying hedge funds are back. Hedge funds are not back. They're having actually a really bad year. How many China-focused long-short managers are there in the United States? Is that a huge

category or- Not so much the United States. A lot of them are Hong Kong-based, but, you know, basically everybody's getting tattooed, but particularly the Asia focused guys. US long short's been really, really rough, again, because I think of the growth bias and that getting unwound. Imagine selling this track record. I mean, right.

But this is the cumulative of everybody. Yeah. And it's just pretty painful. Let's give some people some of the highlights so they know what we're looking at. So America's, on the right, America's average long short, America's fund Let's give some people some of the highlights so they know what we're looking at. So America is on the right. America's average long short, America's fund is down 9.49% for the year. Event-driven down 7.41%. Again, these are strategies that are supposed to be hedged or not correlated. Josh, remember a month ago I was saying these long short guys must be like killing it right now?

Not everyone. Well, the issue particularly in early March is you got a couple days of like really violent unwinds. And so during those individual days, just none of your modeled correlations hold up. And so you have to make sure that just on the other side of that, you still have liquidity to kind of reinstitute the strategy. Usually it comes back if you know what you're doing because over time, you're not – over time, not taking that much beta is one thing. But it's almost impossible to have no beta on any individual day. That's very, very hard to accomplish, especially when you have these violent kind of top-down unwinds. So I want to get your take on the growth stuff, like what's going on.

I saw this tweet yesterday or the day before. Somebody wrote, Zoom, which is the company that became a verb during the pandemic, is down 12% since the pandemic started, which is mind-boggling. 12% since the pandemic started, which is mind-boggling. In that period, revenue is up five times from $830 million to $4.1 billion. Operating margins are up from 4% to 28%. And look at this chart. When I looked at this, I was like, this looks like Piton over the last three years. Yeah, it does. It looks exactly like that.

And obviously completely different companies and fundamentals, right? Yes. I understand that these things obviously were overvalued. I think this is one of the weird things where consensus was right so quickly. In 2021, everyone understood that this was going to be unwound. But they quintupled their revenue. Yeah, but the part that I don't really

understand is that these companies are below pre-pandemic levels with such bigger businesses. Where on that chart do you think people bought? This is not fundamental. It's just an unwind. very, I mean, where on that chart do you think people bought? Right. So this is not fundamental. It's just an unwind.

Yeah. I think everything that's happening right now is an unwind. So by that logic, like, are we going to see, like,

and I'm not commenting on Zoom, it still might be expensive, who knows, but like, there's going to be some, like, fabulous buying opportunities. Absolutely.

Am I too bearish on Peloton? I think it's a zero. I actually did a poll about this on Instagram last week. That's the right place to do it. Looking at that three, looking at, you know, a it's a zero. I actually did a poll about this on Instagram last week. That's the right place to do it. Looking at that three, looking at a lot of your- You took the poll on Peloton?

On Peloton, if you'd buy it at this level or not. Where is it, $20? Not even, I don't think. Peloton violates one of my three laws of investing, which is one, Americans are fat. Yeah. Two, moms be shopping. Yeah. Three, know that company's not going to cure alzheimer's yeah

those are the three rules those are anytime anytime is it anytime a company is involved with at least one of those rules you're saying much yeah i will not anybody mentions alzheimer's i'm out you know anybody's like americans are gonna be healthy i'm out anytime somebody's like moms love this i'm like bye why oh oh you will buy yeah anytime anytime it's like our core consumer is like the upper middle class mom i'm like i'm so in so wait the moms definitely love piton but i think all the ones that we're gonna buy it already have it that's the conflicted with rule one but that's what it's so different like just i mean you can pull up the the three to five year chart of piton i'm looking at right now it's it looks wildly similar to zoom it's almost at the exact same level it was now it's at 23 or 24 today but it's almost at

the exact same level if not slightly below pre-pandemic i think even the bulls at this point their argument is that someone's going to acquire it yeah that's why i would say speculative money in it if you don't care about it but so then why do they have to acquire it at this price unless you tell me there's a bidding war, why can't they just wait till this thing really dwindles away? And then if in fact that's what has to happen. Yeah, I don't know technically with Zoom or with Peloton what their support levels look like right now.

But I would say, Peton, yeah, throw money at it if you want to do a little bit of gambling. Zoom's problem is no switching cost. Like if you and I have a Zoom meeting and then I Google meet you, you don't care. Yeah, the Zoom thing confuses me obviously a lot more than Peloton. What do you think? Do you look at Zoom or –

I've looked at both of them. I think Zoom is a good business but zero switching costs. I also worry that – I worry that some of these things will be negatively associated with the pandemic. Forever. Right? Yeah. That's a concern I have. It's not good to be in a pandemic ETF a year after the pandemic.

But five years down the road, won't everybody still be using Zoom? And who cares? Now I'm seeing like most of my meetings are not coming across as Google Meet. Like it started 100% Zoom. Then it was like a little bit less, a little bit less. We're getting a little bit back to phone meetings. There are people that will be forever associated with the pandemic. Do you know that?

Yeah. That's not good. Like, I don't think Fauci will ever not be pandemic Fauci. But he loves it. I mean, he- I mean, will he still though when we've moved on to something else? Let's talk about like the recent market action. Throw this chart up to Centumatrader.

This is a good one. So this is showing the NASDAQ composite after two 2.5% gains following a 52-week low. This is fairly unusual and it tends to happen more often than not near market bottom. 2.5% daily gains? Back to back after a 52-week low. That is a bottom. That's a bottom. Historically, that has been the bottom.

It's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This was the 6th and 5 out of 6. I'm sorry, 4 out of 5 previously happened at the bottom. There was, it's one, two, three, four, five. This was the sixth and five out of six, I'm sorry, four to five previously happened at a bottom. The only one that didn't was, was that 2008? I can't say from your hat. Is it possible that seven,

seven instances just really isn't enough to tell us much? No, no, no. Because this tells you, I mean, yeah, obviously it's not a hundred times, but this is, this is, this, to me, this is a meaningful chart. After a 52 week low,

you have back to back two and a half percent gains. Like that's capitulation. That's a bottom usually. Um, so when did this happen this week? The last two days. Okay. Go to a bespoke chart below that. What is this saying? This is showing that now this is, this is a broader look. This is just showing that back to back two and a half percent gains, generally speaking, like that, that does not happen during a healthy market, right? So you saw a lot of those. So there's been 27 times. 11 of those came during the dot-com bust,

like on the way up and on the way down. Four happened on the way down in 2008, 2009. I mean, a ton of volatility is not indicative of a healthy market. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Even when you get a plus 2.5% day, that's probably because you just lived through a negative six percent week or something.

If somebody pitches a strategy right now and says that it's a total addressable market, it's like the types of stocks they're choosing, do they get punched in the face or laughed out of the room? Well, that's a bull market strategy. Liana, if you ever hear that term again from a professional, what's your response to that?

I'm buying the companies with the biggest TAMs. Yeah. I don't have a prepared statement for that answer. However, I do think that this is probably the wrong time to be trying to sell that sort of strategy. But in a way, it's kind of like some of the stuff in digital assets and crypto is selling it a little bit the same way. But TAM is a private market thing.

Like public investors, I feel like, don't really say that, do they? No, they do. That's the problem. They were. That crossed over.

Six months ago. Six months ago. That was definitely used as like a key term sales pitch. If you're pitching the TAM when you're already $40 billion,

like, shouldn't you have some, shouldn't you be like hitting that TAM? Shouldn't you just have revenue? That was the Zoom story the whole way along, right? Is that we still have this much growth and this TAM. And then there were multi-TAM stories.

Wait a minute. What happens if I get into that business too? Insta short. Like what happens if Amazon is all of a sudden doing health insurance? Well, I think that also this pitch of the TAM was a big thing around like the year of ipos 2021 do you know what the total addressable market of this podcast is like in theory um

i don't know but i know that because seven billion it's definitely a little bit seven billion and actually if we break that down into ears it's 14 billion ears wow could uh potentially sponsors must love that all right so now maybe it's 14 billion ears. Wow. Sponsors must love that. All right, so now maybe it's gone too far. I'm hearing TAM stories mean, stand for, total annihilation of money, which maybe that's a good thing for these stocks. This entire philosophy of investing, though,

I think has just been murdered. And historically, I feel like this type of thing takes like 10 years for people to ever revisit once again, like once something has done this much damage to investors. So if you're coming public in the next year, you probably don't have a slide in your deck talking about your total addressable market. Probably not. I think that's maybe the worst thing you could say. I just threw this in really quickly.

The effect of the NASDAQ crash feels like it's already being felt in VC. Maybe not in crypto. But this is data collected by Carta, which provides

equity management and other stuff, blah, blah, blah. Carta is like if you invest in a private company, you log into Carta and you could see

if there's any shareholder notifications or if there's any shareholder notifications or if there were any rounds or whatever. They're basically saying series A to series C stages in the United States, prices are already in decline. Valuations for those deals are already falling. It's a whole thing at a tech crunch. Mike,

this is like as soon as we thought it would show up or sooner. What do you think is going on here? I didn't read this yet, but my take was that Instacart, for example, is already a public company that just happens to be private. And it was actually – we just spoke about this. Fidelity marked it down by 18% since they invested in February 2021. DoorDash is down 70% over the same time, which is hilarious. T. Rowe, a little bit more conservative. They marked their investment down by 5%. Okay. So here's the coup de grace. Instacart, they're carrying it at a $32

billion valuation. DoorDash is 26 and DoorDash has three times the revenue. It's tough. It's a big lift. That's a bold strategy, Cotton. so i think that these like growth equity areas again they are publicly traded they will have to get marked down but i still think that like series a and seed like i think that they're going to be uh i don't want to say immune but like i don't think those valuations are coming down what percentage of the hedge fund business started like really getting involved as either becoming crossover funds or sponsoring SPACs. I got a great chart.

I feel like it was like 10%. I'm just making that up. That and 25 maybe. What's that? The question is, are you doing it by firm count or dollar basis? Because all the big ones did. Here, here, here. Every big hedge fund was a SPAC sponsor.

It's free money. Look at this. So this is nontraditional investor participation in private markets. Who is that? I'm having trouble hearing you? Oh, it's my wife. 77% of dollars last year, 77% of the $330 billion raised came from non-traditional investors. That's bananas. Meaning not venture funds. Bananas. So these people are pulling back. But again, I feel like the entire series A market, like all of it is still a tiny dollar amount. So I think that that can still be silly for a while. Yeah. The earlier this,

that's Michael's theory is the earlier the stage, the less sensitive. Because why, if you're, if you're a pre-seed or seed or whatever, and you're, you're trying to build a business that, you know that might have customers in a year, might have some real market value in three years, why do today's valuations matter, number one? Number two, if it's a $15 million valuation, who gives an F? It's such a tiny dollar amount. Yeah, but you have to think of it in the way of an investor's mind. Every dollar that they're giving to someone means something. And the valuation of that from the get-go is always going to be sensitive, particularly when you look at the way that technology is performing right now

in the broad market. I was going to say, I was going to say exactly that. It's a mindset thing, right? It's the sentiment of the sector right now. If you had five stocks blow up and then the sixth one is a private company asking you to write them a check, like you're definitely writing a lower check

than you otherwise would have. I don't care what stage they're in. If you're in a bad mood, fine. Because you're angry. If you're a C, there's a floor. There's a floor. So if the floor is $8 million or $6 million,

what is the difference? You look like you have a SPAC announcement coming. You want to make it now? The issue with the venture market is everybody kind of copied what I guess Masa and a few other people started doing, which is just these nuclear orbit strike amounts of capital where you get a company that's kind of proven the concept. And they go, OK, I'm going to give them so much money that nobody would dare else come into this. that nobody would dare else come into this, right? Or we're just going to go scorched earth and we're just going to spend $200 million and we're going to hire every salesperson

with a brain in the industry. We're going to just get all the distribution. And the issue is if you pulled that off and you could kind of show the right charts, you could get these crazy multiples and the math actually worked. Did that work for, what company did that work for? What startup did that actually work for

that didn't blow up? Well, WeWork was the famous like failure, but Yahoo is the original one, I believe. So Sebastian Malaby, who wrote More Money Than God, You've Got on the Wall, just came out with the power law, which is a similar history of VC. And I think he goes through Maz's investment in Yahoo. And the funny thing talking about Yahoo is like everyone was aware that Yahoo's trash – or Yahoo's technology was trash. It was just terrible.

And Maz had just said, who cares? I can just buy the market and I'll flip the stock out and I'll make an insane amount of money. And so he was making the IRRs on his money were just made up numbers because it was kind of like with poker where he just decided I'm going to play so aggressive that nobody else is going to be able to keep up with me. Meaning all of those other early search engines looked at the amount of money Yahoo had in its coffers and threw in the towel. Yeah. Yeah. Yahoo could at that point, basically, they had so much money that even if they were doing everything pseudo manually, the other people couldn't keep up with them. And Google, you know, Google needed a few more years

that wouldn't work long term, but it was a great trade. But you saw the same things happening. Like, you know, we were short Grubhub at one point. And the reason we were short, a lot of our shorting is competitively oriented. So a lot of the reason we were short Grubhub at one point. And the reason we were short, a lot of our shorting is competitively oriented. So a lot of the reason we were short Grubhub was not really specifically because we had issues with Grubhub. It was just that DoorDash raised so much money in the private market and had been very clear that they were going to use that to attack like a psychopath with an ax. And I remarked to a friend of mine, I said, you know, Grubhub is locked in a cage with a psychopath with an ax. It's not going to go. Meanwhile, Grubhub's like, we have positive cash flows. I'm like, that is not the strategic move. Yeah. When the other guy has $300 million.

You have 5% market share. Right. But you have positive cash flows. Right. You pick the wrong. I saw a tweet yesterday that Masa is down $25 billion. I mean, he's a fast, loose, super aggressive player. Like, that's what he does. He always kind of, I mean, he's a fast, loose, super aggressive player. That's what he does. I mean, the guy's a king. No disrespect to Masa at all, but his strategy is super high ball. You can't do that right now.

I guess you can. Well, he can, but it's not paying off. Yeah, I mean, it's tough. Okay, let's pivot. Fed decision yesterday. Does everybody feel like money got a little bit tighter overnight? I was going to get Kobe ice cream yesterday,

but I was like, dude, in this economy? 25 basis points. I'm sorry, you have to wait. All right. So Powell said, in my view, and I'm the person in charge of this, the probability of a recession over the next year is not very high.

I feel better. How do you guys feel about all this? Feel okay? Well, for me, I mean, I'm not managing money or I'm not managing anyone's money other than my own. So it's not like this interim volatility that I see it as is not a big issue for me. It's not a big, I advise people in, yeah, the stuff I do on social and millennial investors to not try to be bothered by this. Stick to your plan and know that the market's going to be volatile.

No, we get corrections here and there. That's fine. Take these as opportunities and look five years out, 10 years out. Yeah, don't give it down. I don't know. They should be praying for corrections. You might not like it as much, but I'm looking at everything. Powell said labor markets are, quote, tight to an unhealthy level.

Yep. Meaning we need more unemployed people, but you can't say it like that. No, I need more immigration. Should he be canceled for that statement? I mean, I think everybody should be canceled at some point. I agree. I'm an immigrant. We should get over it and say we need more immigrants.

But that's actually the solution to most economies struggling. No, but we need like the right kind. Like Liana. more irish yeah the market the economy is so weird right now i like trump's uh immigration policy if they're pretty and thin let them in okay let me tell you i came in during that one that's right that's how we got i may as well have been from afghanistan it was tough so but he's actively saying the labor market is too tight. Does that mean there are too many jobs open? There's 1.7 jobs for every worker. Or too many people earning a living?

It's not the stuff. But it's a weird place to get to. Yeah. You run interest rates, real rates, negative for two years and then say things are too good. Actually, good news, good news. Lisa Bromwicks tweeted, the volume of negative yielding bonds has fallen to the lowest level since 2015. Yeah, that is good.

What's this yield curve chart? We've got yield curves inverting all over the place. Who's this? Here's the issue, though. I put a thread in the chart. Modest Proposal is a great Twitter handle. Put up a kind a thought experiment of what would a recession look like. And so he worked through, OK, a recession is so smart,

crazy. And he goes, a recession would have to come from corporates investing less or the consumer weakening. And the issue is, you go look at the consumer. And I've been trying to do this. It's really hard to figure out how the consumer slows down here or goes negative at least. Incredible balance sheets. If you think the consumer is going to cause a recession here, you're making a bet implicitly that for the first time in American history, the American consumer will choose to not overdo it. That they're going to like say, OK, I still got a lot of savings. I'm not going to go to that credit card. I'm just going to calmly take it down. I don't know. February retail sales missed.

I think that March retail sales will be worse. And I think that almost all of that has to do with what it costs to fill up a gas tank at the pump. But here's the question, right? The question is, is that a trend or is it people going, holy shit, gas prices, then they get used to it, then they kind of recalibrate. Because when people see big changes quickly, right? I'm now – I think the street is a little bit ahead on the narrative of consumer spending being weak because what they're seeing is people going, holy shit, this price moved. But that doesn't mean it's just going to be this snowball of them spending less and less and less.

I think people are just kind of adjusting to it. And wages are still growing pretty damn strong. I think it's slightly negative on a real basis. But let's say it was break even on a real basis. That's still a net negative for consumer sentiment. And the consumer sentiment surveys are falling off a cliff. Sure. And those typically lead consumer spending. Like, again, it could reverse. And if there's a ceasefire and all of a sudden the price of oil and gas drops quickly, we may digest the price rise and see the consumer rebound quickly. How about a recession that doesn't f***ing tank the economy, where it's just like a mild recession? We don't do that anymore.

Well, I mean, so there's a consumer side, which is just I think that I think the issue is that people saw a very rapid increase in prices. Yeah. But it also didn't stop. It was one way. There wasn't like any volatility. It was just a trending market. And that really freaks people out. And now you're seeing oil sort of form a range.

I put in the notes. I think I think chartists are having a field day right now because, you know, pick a major chart S S&P 500 on a monthly or oil, whatever. They're all behaving like textbook technical analysis things. Yes, because those are the only people left with capital to trade or technicians. Yeah, everybody else is – anybody who had any beliefs is dead. Right. Value guys died first. Then they came for the growth guys.

I like your idea. I hope that's what it turns out to be is that we digested. And this is something that was in that modest thread was it's actually, again, if you go over to the industrial side, you go, okay, corporates are going to invest less. If you actually look at where the nominal dollars are coming from, like the actual big number, no adjustments, is Microsoft going to invest less in the cloud? Is Google? They just invested in consensus. Did you see that? Yeah. The question is, are the major corporates, are the top 50 corporates really going to invest less in the cloud is Google. They just invested in consensus. Did you see that? Yeah.

The question is, are the major corporates, are the top 50 corporates really going to invest less? Are the defense companies going to invest less? Definitely not. It's actually very hard to see. Oil and gas, CapEx will be up. Okay, even look at autos. Look at autos.

All of them, they invest or die. I agree. For them, right? So the issue is on the corporate side, I can't find many corporates. I'm concerned about inflation because every company I'm listening to or talking to is saying we think inflation is going to moderate in the next six months and also we're raising prices in the next six months. Yeah, we're passing it on. Right? And I'm like that's not how that works.

But I can't find a company that's not investing right now. That's a really good point. The cure for high prices is stimulus checks. There's also a couple of points there, Josh, with what you said about gas prices and stuff too, is pandemic has boosted online sales and e-commerce. I actually just like brought up a little stat here. So online spending still only represents 21% of total retail sales. That's crazy. But that's up 44% year over year from 2020 to 2021. That's the crazy part.

And that'll continue. So I think gas prices not as much of an effect on consumer spending. I think it'll have more of an effect on the continued boost in travel and what happens with those companies. It's funny that they waited for everybody to move to the suburbs and get their first SUV that they had to wait six months for because of a micro trip. Dude, you know what I saw?

And then they're like, okay, double the gas price. We're ready now. I swear to God, I saw a Hummer H2 on the street the other day and I was like, oh my God, it's 2003. Those were the dumbest trucks ever. I didn't even know they existed anymore. But it was an H2.

Did they bring back the H2? There would be no reason to do that. It was the original yellow paint job. Remember that? There is an EV one now, right? For real. But is it the H2? That was the thing I was really confused about. Yeah, there's an EV Hummer either on the street or coming, and that's

like a big part of it. All right. Who is this Rabobank quote from? I'm Rabobank. So Rabobank is like a European bank. They said, actually, before we get to that, let's look at some implied yields. So the implied yield on the December 2024 Eurodollar future contract is 2.39%, which is 28 basis points below the year earlier contracts, indicating that traders expect the Fed's benchmark rate

will be cut over time, which is hilarious. So to Rabobank, they said, quote, we are now... Look at this. Oh, wow. That's a fat one. I was thinking about the H3. And I looked it up. This is the big boy. They stopped production in 2009. So it's just – Oh, my God.

Yeah. Sitting on the street in Queens. That's hot. So Rabobank said, we are now pricing for a policy error and the inevitable rate cuts and new QE that will have to follow. In other words, just as the Fed drives himself a cliff, Mr. Market is already pricing in the trampoline at the bottom that will take us to even higher highs. Yep. What's funny about that is the rate hike cycle from 04 to 06 was 17 individual 25 basis point moves every single meeting. The rate hike cycle that ended at the end of 18?

Three. Was it three? Nine. Nine? Was it three? Nine. Nine? It was nine? I know that now consensus is seven because that's what the dot plot says. And we just had the first of seven where there's one and seven more. To Rabobank's point, I can't imagine it.

You already have, I think, two-year, five-year, and 10-year are within three basis points of each other. So we're going to now deliberately invert the yield curve. I can't imagine seven. I'm sorry. The five-year, I think, just went above the 10-year. The 20-year is above the 30-year. It's all messed up. The 20-year yield curve is above the 30-year.

The 20-year yield is above the 30-year yield. It's funny. Right, already. That didn't take long. I think the five is above the 10, but I'm a positive. I think they're equal or it could be inverted already. And twos are skyrocketing. Well, yield curve control

is something a bunch of the economists are talking about. Do they decide to go and intervene and specifically try to influence specific durations? Target the later duration. So what would they do? Try and push down the two?

Sell it. No, sell the 10-year. Just try to buy and sell to create the shape on the curve you'd like essentially. Buy the twos and sell the tens and steepen that way. I mean I don't know if they could really do it. The Fed should hire Renaissance to run that for them. I feel like you could do that. They've done it before.

They should get the – what's his name? The chewy guy who's buying GameStop and Bed Bath and be like, look, you need to get these treasury prices up. But the point is how frequently do rate hike cycles just end and then nothing? Or is it most of the time it is a policy error at the end and the Fed is already back to cutting a la 2019? I just don't understand. This sounds weird. But from a consumer standpoint, why are you really that worried about – like right now the consumer has a big bankroll. They have access to credit.

Everything is pretty good. Yeah, mortgages are up, but home prices are up so much. Rents are also going in a certain direction where buying still makes sense. If things get really bad, I think the American public expects more STEMI checks. I think that's the end of the day. So I think everybody is just wondering like, OK, how long are we going to do this charade of hiking before we get back to more stimulus? You can't do stimulus checks simultaneously with the job market is too tight. Right.

And there are 10 million job openings. My point is if it gets bad. I know. But just think – what are we even saying at that point politically? We're out in like a – This is another planet. This is why I feel like there's no historical precedence. Like history is junk right now.

It tells us nothing. Things are so weird right now. No, so I'm going to ruin your audience for a second. So there's this book called The Price of Peace, which is a biography of Keynes. Oh, that's amazing. It's insane. It's such a good book. And it's talking about him being in the room when they're deciding like how are we going

to do World War I and Versailles and the New Deal and all this other stuff. And it's a really good read right now because it's talking about the social, personal, political, mathematical angles of environments where the rules are being made up as we go along. Yeah. Which is where we've been in the last – Yes, yes, yes. And what you see if you go back and you look at that, which is 1900 to 1950, is every time the government does anything in the last few years, you've got these guys on Twitter

who are like, this has never happened before. Bullshit. You just – not well read. This happens all the time. The only – there's a guy on New River Investments, Guillermo Roditi, who's fantastic, and he always says the only rule of financial markets is that the rules change at like exactly the wrong moment. I think we're just in another one of those right now where – Stimulus checks but employers can't find people to work is literally unworkable politically and any politician that's for that is going to have a really tough time explaining why it's necessary.

However – What if you go into a recession and all of a sudden the jobs go away? Well, so that's the thing though. If you have 10 million open jobs, you go into a recession, let's say half of those jobs disappear. You still have 5 million open jobs. How can you get unemployment to go back to 10 percent? I don't know if you can. I don't know if you can.

Is everyone going to be an entrepreneur and launch their own crypto app? unemployment to go back to 10 percent uh i don't know if he can i don't know if he can is everyone going to be an entrepreneur and launch their own crypto uh app i i mean god willing i mean i have a coin coming out soon you make a good point i'm totally kidding um there's just so many things at play like us we haven't even touched on russia ukraine like the end of a two-year global pandemic coinciding with like people talking about world war III where – like there's just so much shit going on. Like how is anyone supposed to actually forecast what this is going to look like economically for investment managers, consumers? Like what are we even talking about? I'm one of the only idiots.

I feel so bad. I don't want to be these guys changing the yields and the rates. Like f**k that. I think like ukraine is more meaningful to markets than the fed right now just because of course the the bond market already tightened seven times for the fed so there's little he could do other than a 50 basis point hike that would shock anybody the real surprises are coming from the war yeah the price of oil as a result so many like geopolitical things that need to settle down

and give us some clarity or a little bit of guidance, I think before anyone can really speculate how this is going to play out. Yeah, well, I think the issue is – War is bad. War is bad. For or against? We're going to cut this clip for Instagram. I think the issue is 2020 was so crazy because we had what most people would consider an act of God happen.

And human society, broadly speaking, just said, no, we're canceling that. We're just going to print money, stimulus. We're going to whip up a vaccine in four months. Yeah. I mean it's outrageously amazing that we pulled off what we did. And setting aside the vaccine issue, part of it was we had all these levers we could pull with monetary and fiscal policy because we didn't have inflation, because there was no risk of prices going crazy. And we just had a crazy backstop. Now we're in this position where

our options are much more limited. Yeah. Right? And so any incremental risk, whether it's Russia, whether it's China, like pick a topic. Variant. It's variant. All of those things are now much more serious in terms of the severity of what can happen. It's not at all a given that we can handle unknown unknowns. At almost zero interest rates, having done multiple rounds of stimulus, what do you do to confront the next thing? Right.

The genie's out of the bottle already. We just had the strongest three-day change for the S&P since November 2020. Yeah. I'm bullish again. I don't know about you. I want to pivot to Citadel has to talk to the public now. This is in Bloomberg Businessweek. public now. This is in Bloomberg Businessweek. Citadel was thrust into the spotlight in 2021 with day traders, lawmakers, and regulators all scrutinizing the firm at the center of one of the U.S. stock market's wildest periods. They're less a hedge fund than a market maker, I think,

in the eyes of most market participants at this point. They have both, but they're different businesses. Right. They're about to learn that amid the uproar, the financial giant had its best year ever. So they posted record revenue of $7 billion. They cleaned up on all the volatility, topped the firm's previous record, which was the year before, 6.7. All right. So in the pandemic period, Citadel made itself like $13, $14 billion. And now they've decided they're not just going to sit there and let people talk shit about them, but they're actually going to go on the offensive. My first thought is definitely hire some meme people

and maybe ramp capital. And like what better way to communicate with the public than Twitter trolling in 22? What do you think? I mean, how do you address a largely fabricated issue? What's the fabricated issue? I just think this whole conflict that it's like retail versus Citadel. Look, if you're trying to high frequency trade on your Robinhood app, it might be you versus Citadel. They have a 40-year-old CEO, and I doubt he's really the

person making the decisions here. I'm sure it's still Ken forever. This is his quote. You get to a point where staying under the radar is no longer an option. We want to be able to tell our own story rather than having the story told about us. Leanna, when are they hiring you to do this? They say they're getting into crypto market making too, which is a big opportunity. Well, that's not controversial. That's a good idea.

I should be running that. What would you advise them as far as starting to talk with the public? What should and shouldn't they do? I mean, I think that they have to be sensitive to what their reputation has been thus far. Hasn't been good. Exactly.

That's why they make so much money. So they got to play it safe. But at the end of the day, I mean, if they're like bringing in buckets of money, like people are going to want to know why, how, and what's the plan forward. And I mean I don't think it's that big of a deal. Why would they care about their reputation in the comments section? Because they don't want to face Elizabeth Warren once a month in hearings.

The next time the stockbroker melts down. This is like a thing. It's like, Michael, when did you stop beating your wife? Never. Okay. Yeah, it's like that type of thing where it's just it's like michael when'd you stop beating your wife never okay yeah it's like that type of thing where it's just like you know it's like a ridiculous the the structure of the claim assumes that they did anything i can't i still can't figure out what citadel actually did this

just seems like they democratized the markets i don't even know what that means very profitably you know but they did they brought democracy to the stock market where once there wasn't any. Listen, I think Ken Griffin should just pretend he's like all into ESG. That seems to have worked for some other asset managers we won't mention. I don't know. They seem to get left alone. Rhymes with Black Hawk. They should run around just talking about like governance and all the women they've hired.

Isn't that enough? Like what else do they really need to do here? They need to buy the constitution. It will be interesting to see what they do. I still vote for meansmanship. Ken Griffin did say that he likes to play Call of Duty. And so I think he needs to live stream himself just brutally trash talking some children. If he goes on Twitch and literally like plays Call of Duty like against Alvin Kamara.

And wins? Like, yeah, 100%. Alvin Kamara? Anyone. He's got to do that. He's an athlete. Or he's got to box – what's his name? The YouTube guys.

Box Jake or Logan. Yeah, he's got to box Jake or Logan Paul. That's the two A's out of this. And then the internet will collectively say, okay, touche. Yeah, we like this guy. Yeah. And then he can clap back at Elizabeth Warren on Twitter like with a plum. Right.

And everyone will retweet him. I agree. Well, you know, it looks like – I mean just with this starting, it looks like they're having sort of a PR new plan of how they're going to move going forward about being more transparent and hopefully gaining some trust. And good luck to them. All right. Stock picking. Turns out – How is this possible?

This blew my face. Turns out it's not easy to them. All right, stop picking. Turns out... How is this possible? This blew my face. Turns out it's not easy to do. There's something called the SPIVA... SPIVA? SPIVA. SPIVA. Well, I'm Italian. The SPIVA scorecard that is

S&P Dow Jones tracking active managers versus their benchmarks. 85% of large cap managers underperformed the S&P 500 in 2021, which means 15% outperformed. That's one of the worst years on record. And in large cap growth, it was 98.6% underperformed. Why does it seem like it's getting worse, not better? underperformed. Why does it seem like it's getting worse, not better? I mean, it's- So to Dan's point earlier about crowding, I thought finally, fang underperformance, finally,

these poor active managers that keep underperforming have a chance to shine. I'm genuinely rooting for them. And what in the world? Is it because nobody owned enough Tesla in 21? What were the stocks that killed you if you were active last year and you didn't own? Tesla was definitely one that was brutal because a lot of guys were – It wasn't even in the benchmark the whole year. That's the problem. I don't know. I mean I don't manage long only money.

I think it's really, really difficult because you have to figure out how to blend not just your fundamental views but where the actual flow is going, all these subsector things. It's really, really tricky. Dan, do we still have too many active managers? That's what this says to me. Is it just like there's too many smart people fighting each other to the death and they just can't win? What the hell is going on? Yeah, it's that. But I also think it's an issue of scale.

So these funds now – the funds are getting so large and the fund houses are so large that like a big reason why certain factors will underperform in a given area is just investors pulling money away from small cap value and putting it into large cap growth or something like that. You have this issue where there's just – there are a lot of managers and there's really not that many underlying securities that you can put enough money into as a $20 billion or $50 billion fund. Like I have no idea. The universe of 50 stocks that will move the needle. It's harder to be nimble and adjust the bigger that you grow. And there's a finite universe of stocks that will help you if you get them right. Right. And at the end of the day, at that point, it's really about who else is at the poker

table with you versus the cards because you are the market when you move in or out. I just thought – I thought last year would have been a better year for active given how much sector rotation there was and how little contribution came from like Amazon. And last year- But that's also kind of betting on timing, right? Like how quickly can you move? Yeah. How quickly can you get into the new trend?

85%? How is it even possible? The other thing that happens a lot with those mandates is the things you would need to do to win are not necessarily what you've told your investors you're going to do. So I'm going to make tactical timing calls on a week-to-week basis.

And if you fail, it's one thing to lose money, but if you lose money in mandate, nobody's that mad. But if you lose money out of mandate, you're fired. Do you think, so if you started buying like heavy, heavy concentrations of energy stocks in the fourth quarter of last year, if that didn't work, it did work. But if it didn't buy- If that didn't work, it did work. But if it didn't buy.

If it didn't, that's your job. It's not like, oh, you weren't good this year. Your job is gone. Do you think that if managers had the opportunity to close it up and not let investors see what they were doing, they would outperform or perform better? Yes. Over how long can you close it up? Because these are annual.

I know you can't. I'm saying theoretically. Maybe some, but some wouldn't. And that's the problem. There's some people where you're like, what were you doing the last three years? Like I don't think a black box is – It doesn't really work with like the agency costs. Like it's not – that's not going to – there are some funds that like – there are funds that raise money once.

They're private. Then they close. They never raise again. And some of them have done spectacularly well. Other ones, the investors find out five years later that all their money is gone. It's not – and then your ability to raise money under that type of structure is mostly determined by how did the last one of those go for that individual LP. So somebody is still buying your old track record no matter what. Right.

OK. Chinese stocks had a huge rebound. Do we want to say anything? Michael, what do we want to say about this? This is pretty surprising how quickly – That was a Russia thing. What do you mean? The day after Russia invaded – leading into Russia invading Ukraine, you had a lot of like very prominent Russia experts saying there's no way this happens.

And anybody who says it happens is an idiot. And like there are very, very strong opinions on on this and i was kind of sitting there like i don't know anything about russia it might happen i who knows and then it happened that evening i got the invasion right that evening invasion i got 15 to 25 phone calls of holy shit dude do you think this means time or just this means china's gonna go go for Taiwan? Everybody said that. Right? Everybody said it. Yeah. And then when the sanctions got dialed up and they started really going after SWIFT and Russian assets, all of a sudden the VIE structure, all these US-listed China stocks. What's VIE?

So there's this thing called variable interest entity, I think it is. VIE, basically, when you buy Alibaba on the exchange here, you're actually buying a Cayman piece of paper. Right. You're buying a piece of paper here that owns a Cayman piece of paper that has a contract with a company in China saying that they'll basically hold on to the Chinese ownership for you. But there's no actual like direct tie to the actual cash flows. And so that's something like Chainos and people like that have said that's ridiculous. You don't actually own the stock. That's been the bear case for a long time. But nobody cared because everybody kind of played ball.

I would note the Chinese government never like fully affirmed that that was legal. It's just been like this it's fine. We won't talk about a thing. But the second the West decided to shut down all the Russian assets, all of a sudden it was like, holy shit. These things actually could go bust. I think you just had like a force. All of a sudden you had career risk. I think you said that on like a podcast.

Well, the China funds were saying, actually, we're going to buy the Hong Kong version. Like they were bailing. That's right. K-Web is 70% Hong Kong now. They did that quickly, right? It's been over time, but I mean, they knew that like the writing was on the wall.

They can't do ADRs. So if K-Web is giving up on VIEs that trade on the New York Stock Exchange, then why would anybody else want to stick with that strategy? Right, and so it got sold to that view. And then there was a day where China came out and said, you know, actually we're not going to go crazy. 4 o'clock in the morning, East Coast time. John, throw up this K-Web chart. They had Crane Share CIO on last week when it was really dropping and obviously I started buying it. And then he said, yeah, now they've moved into 70% and they're going to continue that strategy.

So there was literally like names up. So we're showing the portfolio weight versus the percent change. Nobody can see this, but let's just stop. Let's stop with the Bloomberg chart, which is the yellow and green stuff. So some of the moves that we saw yesterday, I think came up with a 40% yesterday, 37% was the biggest, biggest up move ever.

Yeah. This is nuts though. Like the degree you have stocks in this index that are up 80% on the day. You know what that is, Josh? That's a healthy market. Yeah. No,

it's an efficient market. I'll get, I'll, I'll even Alibaba, which is, I don't know what I do. Baidu went up 40% yesterday. My favorite is Joe Weisseldahl goes on when there's big price moves. Is he the best?

He's like, the market has repriced the cash flows. So it's Munger that's Alibaba now, right? That's what everyone's talking about. He was a buyer, right? Yeah. I don't know what it was. I was just looking at this last week and last week and early this week every day i was putting a little bit into ko for just me personally for you i love munger and i'm like i'm a little bit suspicious that he just like he's like not he's

not certain that he's gonna have he wants another good argument with somebody and so he's like you know what before before the end yeah he's like he's like i could definitely have a you know he like he loves to argue and so i feel like he I could definitely have a, you know, like he loves to argue. And so I feel like he's maybe just being like, yeah, you know, this will be fun. It is really funny. And one thing I'll say about Chinese internet stocks in general, I feel like this is what the crowd is here for. Like if you're somebody that's investing in Chinese internet stocks, you don't think you're buying insurance stocks. You know what you're doing. Like you know what this market is capable of and so this has got to be a little bit like a little bit fun for the people that are like that's that's my view

on it personally that's why i've been putting some money into it and then yesterday it was like yay um but how do you what do you guys think as in the wealth management space professionally with clients that are asking you, how do we get access to Chinese growth exposure with all of this stuff going on? Is K-Web, an ETF like that, the best way for retail to get access? So from our perspective – well, yes. If specifically you're looking for tech exposure in China, that is way superior than picking a Chinese tech stock or three Chinese tech stocks. Yeah. Because you don't know if the one you picked is being run by the nephew of the prime minister's

rival and he wants to make the guy disappear. Exactly. Because he didn't bow low enough. So clearly you should do an index approach. But I do think that that question of can you even own these at all if the next big conflict after the Russia thing, assuming the world still continues, is between the West and China. I don't know what these stocks are going to do in that situation. But I guess that's why yesterday was the pop. And that's why they sell at nine times earnings because the market understands that that is a permanent risk yeah

permanent cloud hanging over if anyone is interested i actually started it was one of eric's um eric baltunis from bloomberg etf analyst his trillions podcast where what they did an episode with the china um analyst and she spoke about k-web and gave gave a really good breakdown of some china opportunities and that's where i started thinking about it a couple months ago you had good you had good timing yesterday what are you gonna do now let it ride um no i well i sold a little bit okay um for a short-term gain but we'll see i mean i i bought it initially the idea was it's been on my watch list for a couple months k-web and then when this started happening last week and it was dropping i was like well i'm not

looking at china exposure for a year i'm looking at trying to exposure for 10 years so why not put a little bit in and then got a little surprise yesterday speaking of exposure uh nick cage is back cannot wait for i'm so excited i'm seeing this in the theater i just can't i mean i went to wikipedia and i looked up nicholas cage i went down the entire list of films and I'm like, I don't think I've seen any of these. He doesn't make films. He makes movies. Stop it. None?

Seriously. Have you looked at the – he's younger than me. Not the recent films, but like – All of them. The Rock. The Rock. The Rock starts from 1982 and the very first one, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I know that name.

I'm pretty sure my dad watched it a bunch, but I can't even – What is he in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I know that name. I'm pretty sure my dad watched it a bunch, but I can't even. What is he in Fast Times at Ridgemont High? It says Brad's Bud. Raising Arizona was a film. I hated that movie. I never heard of that either. I've heard of Time to Kill and stuff, but I can't even think of this film. Time to Kill.

I've seen all these movies. I'm so in. Of course you have. Have you seen this? I've seen all of them, yeah. So two things. Maybe it's a guy thing. I think this is going to be, yeah, I've seen all of them, yeah. So two things. Maybe it's a guy thing. I think this is going to be...

Yeah, a lot of his movies are guy movies. I think this is going to be the biggest non-Marvel movie of 2022. Like the biggest non-superhero. That's number one. Number two, Rotten Tomatoes. I don't think I've ever seen this before. Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 100 out of 100. Wow.

No, there was no audience score yet so what is this then? it's like the pre-score there's no audience score they're saying it got 100 of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes people have seen this film Michael hang on a sec

the Lionsgate comedy has already generated a 100% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. That means nothing. But I'm psyched. I'm psyched. I'm psyched. I'm psyched.

I don't think that any other film has ever gotten that. That seems like – It seems like a bit is what it seems like. You're giving too much credit. It's funny. I wouldn't think that a Nicolas Cage film would fit the South by Southwest audience. Well, it's somewhat artistic in the way that being John Malkovich was somewhat artistic. That was a movie.

It's self-referential. It's about the movie business. So wait, what's the best Nicolas Cage movie ever? I mean, there's 19 reviews on that score, though. So who are the 19 people? Producers, directors, crew? They're film critics. My favorite Nicolas Cage movie ever is Matchstick Man.

All voted right before South by Southwest. Right, Matchstick Man. Your favorite or a good one? My favorite. Okay. I'm notstick Man. All voted right before Self by Self List. Right, Matchstick Man. Your favorite or a good one? My favorite. Okay. I'm not saying the best. It's my favorite.

What do you got? Con Air. Good for you. Keke Rock. That's like saying McDonald's. Yeah. I like that. Nothing wrong with that. Differentiated.

Leaving Las Vegas. That's a good one. Come on. I mean, the acting. Nick Cage acting alone, I think, is his best thing ever. Darla was the prom queen. Is her name Darla? That was The Rock.

You're actually a movie person. What's the best Nick Cage film? Adaptation. Adaptation. Yeah, I liked Adaptation a lot. I mean, if you're talking about film school type films. That one lost me. I really liked Raising Arizona.

That was probably my favorite. What's when they steal the Declaration of Independence? National Treasure. National Treasure. Oh, incredible. That movie is a National Treasure. Incredible. Yeah, it is. Gone in 60 Seconds.

Yep. He's a car thief. That's with Angelina. So you saw that one. I know that, yeah. That one you know. That was a car one. Faceoff was a good one, obviously.

Faceoff classic. He's been in some- Wait, let me see that. Ghost Rider. Let me see this. You remember Ghost Rider? He's been in some pieces of shit. Oh, he's made-

That's the thing. I thought people made fun of him because his movies are terrible. He turned into a meme, but he used to make good movies. Recently. When you make as many movies as Nick Cage has made, you are the distribution. He's made every level. So he bought like Tyrannosaurus Rex skulls and like ran out of money. OK.

Here's what's funny. Here's why people make fun of him. Just can you look at the cover of – I never heard of this movie. USS Indianapolis Exactly. Men of Courage. Just the look on his f***ing face on the

it's right there. Men of Courage. Oh yeah. He's ridiculous. He's a character. He's a parody of a parody of a parody. I want to meet the women

who want him in that film. I want him. The interview where he's like do you go over the line? Do you remember that interview? Alright. I just always think of the SNL one where they have him How about... I want him. The interview where he's like... No. Do you go over the line? Do you remember that interview? All right. I just thought I was thinking the SNL one where they have him and Andy Samberg as him.

Yes. Inside the cage in the cage. He also has a very imitation, like easy to imitate way of speaking. Oh, yeah. And it's hilarious. All right, let's go to favorites and then we'll get out of here.

It's St. Patrick's Day. Everyone wants to have a drink, I assume. Get f***ed up. All right. Let's go to favorites and then we'll get out of here. It's St. Patrick's Day. Everyone wants to have a drink, I assume. Get f***ed up. All right. Leanna, let's start with yours. I'm super into these. I'm so excited. So, okay.

Favorites. Two things out this week. Well, I guess the dropout was out a few weeks ago now. Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes. Oh, I heard those good. So freaking good. I didn't watch this. Where is it?

Hulu. Okay. Or online. You can find it, I'm sure, are those good? So freaking good. I didn't watch this. Where is it? Hulu. Okay. Or online. You can find it, I'm sure. Is she good? She is nuts. Is the actress good? Yeah, that's the thing.

She, Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes is amazing. They start from her as a high school girl, and it really shows how she was crazy. There was always something in her head that was weird. The acting is insane. Is it better than the one on Netflix that we were all obsessed with? What was that called? And that didn't give as much background. It didn't dramatize her whole family story and stuff as much.

So watch it. Your whole kids, everyone will like it. What's We Crash? I didn't see this either. That's the WeWork story. Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto is playing Adam Neumann. I didn't even know about this. It comes out tomorrow, Friday.

On what? Apple. I didn't even know about this. You didn't know about the show? I didn't know that that was coming. Oh, yeah. It's out tomorrow. But they've been shooting that for a long time.

Look at Jared Leto as him. Look at that photo. Let me see. Looks like James Franco. When that whole thing happened, a friend of mine was like, I don't understand why all these people are so like taken in by this Adam Neumann guy. It's almost as if they've never met an Israeli before. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, like just the way he talks.

This is going to be the greatest, the grandest. We're going to change the world. We're going to elevate everyone's consciousness. He's like, that's just how Israeli guys talk. I mean, anything, business, investing, all this stuff is psychology and human behavior. Think about Madoff, any Ponzi scheme, like Jordan Belfort.

These people were just, there's something about them that is charismatic and they draw people in. And it's not instant. It happens over time, right? All right, Dan, what do you got? Severance on Apple is just amazing. That's what I was going to say. It's like, it reminds me a little bit

of when Lost first came out, where it's like a show that slowly turns up the like, what the hell is going on factor. This is Ben Stiller's creation. Yeah, he's so good. I thought it was kind of like, what was that sci-fi show with Anthony Hopkins? Westworld.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That type of show. We're like, what exactly that sci-fi show with Anthony Hopkins, Westworld? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That type of show. We're like, what exactly the fuck is going on? Right, yeah. But can you understand it? Yes, yes, yes. It's one of those things where it's a very simple premise. The idea is you accept a job where they put a chip in your brain.

When you walk in the door to the building. Sounds like you were so far. Right. So when you walk in the door to the building, all of a sudden you can't remember anything about life or history or anything outside of work. And when you're in here, it's just you're here. And there's nothing else outside in the world. And they completely limit your access to anything else outside the office. When you're outside of the office, you can't remember anything inside.

So all of a sudden, there's two yous. There's you in the office. Oh, my god. And so it's a really simple premise. But then it sort of spirals in all these like weird what if, what is the self type questions. And then obviously something nefarious is going on in the background, but you don't know what, oh,

it's Citadel, right? And each, that's actually what it is, right? Is there some guy? Hang on. My favorite part of that show,

there's no spoilers, is John Turturro and Christopher Walken. Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, they're both in it. They have scenes,

they have scenes together. I'll have to watch this. Yeah. The Jesus and Christopher Walken. What's his name? Is that Adam Scott? Yeah. It's phenomenal. Alright, and you gave us the Price of Peace, which is the Keens documentary. That was the best book I read

in 2020. Now, when will that be on Hulu? I hope soon. It's a monster book. There's a good audiobook of it, too. Okay. It's legit one of the best biographies I've ever read. Alright, The Batman. Anyone see it? Let's do it. You saw it? Yeah, I saw it. Did you see it? I haven't seen it too. Okay. It's legit one of the best biographies I've ever read. All right. The Batman. Anyone see it? Let's do it.

What do you got? Yeah, I saw it. Did you see it? I haven't seen it yet. I've heard highly mixed reviews. You call yourself a dude? Liana's excused for not having seen it.

I was going to see it last weekend but I was in Vegas so can I replay my dude card? I asked Josh what he saw. He wouldn't tell me until the show so let's do it. I think that it's

the perfect Batman for the current generation. That's horrible. Which is not a compliment. It's emo Batman. Even down to the black eye makeup when he has the mask off. It's a Batman who literally cannot speak. He sits there almost like afraid to say something. Out of costume.

He sits there almost like afraid to say something out of costume, like literally so perfect based on teenagers that I recently encounter. And I have two in my house, so I meet all their friends. I was thinking he was going to pull out a phone halfway through the movie. Like Commissioner Gordon is like yelling at Batman, and I was waiting for Batman to like pull his phone out and just be like start f***ing scrolling sorry what yeah I'm sorry someone's snapping me like almost like you couldn't hold the attention of what's going on in the movie and I don't know how old Pattinson is in real life he looks like

he's about to cry in every scene that he doesn't have the mask on and in half the scenes with the mask on like there's tears welling up in his I don't know what the this is about. So what, did you hate- Maybe it's just a little too close to like, isn't it, was it, what's the vampire show called he's in?

Oh, yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? He's not stretching very far. Yeah, that's what I mean, maybe for him as an actor, it's just like a little too, with bats, vampires. I actually loved seeing the makeup on his eyes because I always wondered how come Batman's eyes were black. Without the hood on.

Did you hate it? Here's the thing. I didn't hate the movie. It's just that I mean And he's supposed to be hot? Batman's supposed to be hot, right? He's pretty hot. He's in great shape. If you like emo guys. He's in great shape.

But honestly, it was too much. But I didn't hate the movie. The acting was just not good. None of the acting was good. Turturro might be the best part of the movie. Is that the guy who's Gordon? No. The guy who's Gordon is actually a good actor normally and he's terrible in this.

He's in Westworld. He wasn't good. Not good. And he's a good actor. Yeah in west world yeah yeah he wasn't good not good uh and he's a good actor yeah but very bad he was very bad it was weird his lines are bad his lines are like he was bad damn it batman he was bad he was bad wait so did you damn it batman get off your phone you didn't you didn't hate the movie i thought it was good i was entertained by it was good um too long what else i'd say oh entertained by it. I thought it was good. Too long. What else did I say? Oh, Colin Farrell is in it.

Unrecognizable. Penguin. Did you see some pictures? And I was like, I can't. That car chase was a good scene. Not a bad scene. No, I would give it like a six. It's definitely not as good as the Christian Bale Batman.

I don't think that this version is really even necessary. It's probably better than whatever Ben Affleck was originally going to do. Am I the only one? I don't want a realistic Batman. That's a really creepy, if you actually think through that, it's like not a, it's not a good look.

Wait, is this actually, speaking of looks, do I actually look like this? All the time. Is it? Oh God. You look like a leprechaun. I literally do.

Yeah. I almost bought you a box of Lucky Charms as a prop for the table. I was going to ask. Let's actually finish here. Are Irish people the last people it's okay for everybody to make fun of? You're Irish. Yeah, I think we've always been.

I'm half Irish. I can speak on this topic a little bit. Go ahead. I just think we are like – and I used to live in Boston and I went to Notre Dame. So today I have 3x mana multiplier if i'm playing any dice games or board games the notre dame mascot is a drunk leprechaun with his fists up yes a visibly drunk leprechaun you can't do that with any other race or ethnic group correct no cannot hell no absolutely but i think the reason is i think that given the mascot like

we are such prolific trash talkers of everyone and everything, most ourselves, that it's kind of like everything is cool. There can't ever be a team like the Fighting Jews. It's just I don't think that would go well, right? Right. So like Cleveland is now the commanders. And actually their – the name of that team wasn't offensive. The logo was despicable obviously. But fine.

They fixed it. The command – no, not the commanders. That's the Redskins are now the commanders. So what's Cleveland going to be? The protectors? I don't know. No, you don't know? The long short managers?

OK. They had to change it. The Redskins it was an offensive name and they changed theirs i think they're the commanders so i had that right yeah okay uh i don't i feel like notre dame 100 years from now is going to be a drunk leprechaun it's our thing like we if anybody else said that we would be it's like who are you offended on pride i think almost in the stereotypes. Oh, yeah.

Whereas most other groups are like, don't you dare say that. In 100 years, it'll be the Irish leprechaun in a wheelchair being rolled out. Right, yeah. I mean, it's, you know. I mean, at this point, we have like, you know, it's not just Irish guys who are the leprechaun.

They have a new leprechaun every year. And like, we've had black leprechauns, brown leprechauns, all sorts of leprechauns. But they're all belligerent drunks. Well, that's the important – that's the through line. The dividing line, right? Yeah. Liana, your last name, Hawkins, is Norwegian I think, right?

It's Nordic. Norwegian. So you guys have the Vikings. That's not offensive. That's like cool. I mean they like – Minnesota Vikings is like cool points. Pillage, rape and murder but – Yeah, but not in the logo though. At least That's not offensive. That's like cool. I mean, Minnesota Vikings is like cool points.

Village rape and murder, but. Yeah, but not in the logo, though. At least he's not doing that. It's just the horns on the helmet, guy with blonde hair. None of that's offensive. There's a big Norwegian day in New York, usually. When is that? June, I think.

Yeah. What does that celebrate? I can't remember. A rape or a pillage of Manhattan that took place probably at some point

people go down to like Scandinavian house on park and we eat salmon they sing Frozen soundtrack yeah alright

alright well listen we're gonna wrap up we have a rooftop happy hour to get to we don't forget reviews for the podcast

we were gonna read read one. You read it. Oh, let's get it. I'll react to it. Okay. I'll just read the first one here that Nicole shared with us. The subject is goes great with ADHD meds. It says, I'm way too scatterbrained to pay attention to most financial podcasts.

Luckily, Michael starts cursing people out if a topic gets discussed for more than a few seconds. That's true. P.S. Josh, please bring back the financial history bedtime stories. Oh, man. That was two years ago. It's a good one. I don't know if I have any more. All right. That was a nice review.

Who left us that review? That was Alexander the May. Alexander the May? M-E-H. May. The May. Okay. Alexander, we appreciate you.

Guys, leave us a review and the best review we come across, we will read it live on air and give you credit. And you can show that to your mom and dad and they will know that you are serious about your career. Okay. Thanks so much for listening. Don't forget, New Animal Spirits every Monday and Wednesday. Check out idonshop.com for the latest in financial blogger fashion. Leave us a review and a rating on the apps. It helps us a lot.

Anything else? We good? That's it. Hoppy St. Patrick's Day to you. We'll talk to you soon. So, all right. Now I can swap. Thank you guys so much for coming by. Was that fun? It was good. So, alright Now I can swap it out Okay

Thank you guys so much for coming by Was that fun? It was good It's always good