The Compound and Friends - The One With Ryan Detrick

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

On episode 131 of The Compound and Friends, Michael Batnick and Downtown Josh Brown are joined by Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, to discuss: bullish signals, small caps, odds of a third bear market in 5 years, Nvidia, election year data, and much more! Thanks to Public for sponsoring this episode. Go to https://public.com/ and activate options trading by March 31st to lock in your lifetime rebate. See disclosure below for more details. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Options are not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Certain complex options strategies carry additional risk. Options can be risky and are not suitable for all investors. See the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options to learn more. For each options transaction, Public Investing shares 50% of their order flow revenue as a rebate to help reduce your trading costs. This rebate will be displayed as a negative number in the “Additional Fees” column of your Trade Confirmation Statement and will be immediately reflected in the total dollars paid or received for the transaction. Order flow rebates are only issued for options trades and not for transactions involving other assets, including equities. For more information, refer to the Fee Schedule. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. See public.com/#disclosures-main for more information. Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Josh Brown are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My kid is in the stock market game now, as most high school kids are. Do you know about this? Did you play this when you were in high school? Sort of, but it wasn't. I did it in middle school. Yeah. All right. So my son's in ninth grade and he joined the—

It's not part of a class. It's a club. So he joined— Obviously, he joined the stock market club. He's embarrassed to tell people who his father is, which is funny. But some of the kids in the club know. They want me to come speak and he's like, I will literally not go to school that day if you come to my school.

So the nugget. So the nugget is in this stock market competition. So I'm teaching him like what to do. This is the funniest thing ever. First of all, his biggest position is NVIDIA. So today I am like number one dad on earth. But I was teaching him so he has, it's a three month competition

you can buy you can sell and you can sell short and there's leverage which I find to be hilarious we didn't have that in our day this game is on the internet and it's sponsored by SIFMO which is the securities industry financial market

I don't know, something, whatever the A is of America. But it's an industry thing. So anyway, he's like, dad, I have $100,000. I could do whatever I want. What should I do? So I start going, oh, let's maybe do a little bit of Disney. And let's maybe sell short Supermicro computers.

He's like, what do you mean maybe? Like, tell me what to do so I could win. I'm like, well, I don't know. It's not that simple. I don't know what's going to happen. He's like, what do you even do? It's so much worse than that. He's like, explain to me, don't you do this all day and like on TV? I'm like, yeah, but dude. They'll put anyone on TV. I'm I'm like dude there's too many options like you could literally do anything it's a blank canvas so I'm like I don't know what to tell you to do

because not only do the things that we do have to work out they have to work out like before April 30th right so I don't like really know not that I could help before May 30th so I start like giving him advice and half the things go up half the things go down and he's like you really don't know anything do you i'm like no he's he can't believe he's like he's like stunned because if it were let's say it were

like a baseball competition and his dad was derrick jeter like he would probably be getting really good pointers on how to win this, like a competition, like how to hit and feel the baseball. He'd probably win. I can't help him do any better than any other kid in this contest. So I've got a 16-year-old daughter, and she thinks I'm pretty useless at most things.

Right. My 13-year-old son's getting there, I guess. So I've still got an 11-year-old. He likes me, but, you know, we're getting there. Okay. I'm getting there. So I guess it's— Does she pay attention to what He likes me, but we're getting there. I'm getting there. So I guess it's- Does she pay attention to what you're doing with market stuff or not yet?

My daughter? Not really at all. Although I'd get the green light when she needs money, if that counts the same. But she's not like, hey, dad, I saw you on CNBC today or- I mean, it is so like probably like with you. When I'm on CNBC, they don't even know. I'm like, I'm on TV in one minute. Keep the dog quiet. They don't care. I mean, I've done it so like probably with you when I'm on CNBC they don't even know I'm like I'm on TV in one minute keep the dog quiet they don't care I mean I've done it

so many times I had a proud damn moment in the elevator we were going up to the room and we walk in and one of the guy in the elevator

goes Michael love everything that you guys do I was like oh thank you Joe and we walk down and Kobe goes are you famous

oh that's me who you are did you say yes I hope you said yes you definitely didn't I don't think, that's me. You are. Did you say yes? I hope you said yes. You definitely didn't. I don't think I said yes. I'm pretty sure I didn't say yes. I've had a few times people walk up to me

and say something because they know me from what I do and my kids usually just think I paid the guy to say that. Enough about us. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, literally. Listen to this.

For another record quarter, revenue of $22.1 billion was up 22% sequentially and up 265% year-on-year and well above our outlook of $20 billion. For fiscal 2024, Nice. I know that's a real person, but why does she herself sound like AI is powering her voice? Because I'm sorry. I have it on 1.5 times speed. That's my bad. But she said the world has reached a tipping point of new computing era.

I would have said that happened a year ago. I guess it's first happening now. I mean, that's the big takeaway is that it seems to be that – I think Jensen Wang made two really good cases during his remarks. One is all of the old infrastructure is basically worthless and obsolete, and we have to start all over again. That's like a really big build. I don't think that that's what most people expected.

Okay. That's a big one. The second one is now this is going to be a services story. And they very deliberately are pivoting the conversation away from how many GPUs can this company possibly sell to don't worry about the GPUs because now we're selling enterprise services to the whole installed base. And there are NVIDIA GPUs in every data center all over the world. And everywhere that we've put our equipment will now require software and services. So that's kind of what Apple did with the iPhone a couple of years ago. He said, don't count how many units we sell. It doesn't matter.

We're a services business. The installed base is the units. Now focus on how much revenue we generate based on that installed base. So that makes NVIDIA maybe different than a chip company. It does. I mean, you think about it, you know, the old saying, surprises in a bull market happen to the upside. And we're talking to NVIDIA, I know.

But it's like truly a couple of other, I guess the guy at the table said up 15% a day of. Not to brag. Yeah, not to brag. But most people said, ah, stock's up a lot. It's dicey. And sure enough, no. And then you see the net incomes up 900% the past year.

Well, maybe the stock up a lot makes a lot of sense because they're making a lot more money. Maybe sometimes the whole world isn't completely crazy. Jensen was asked how their expectations for a data center has evolved. And he said, we guide one quarter at a time, but fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth, calendar 24 to calendar 25 and beyond. They literally can't make, they cannot make the products fast enough.

So I do think that as much as this particular earnings quarter was hyped, it was worth the hype because had Nvidia shit the bed and the stock went down 18%, it would have taken the market down with it. All of the enthusiasm for all of the other Mag7 names, the air would have come out of the balloon. Yesterday, people were mocking CNBC for having a countdown on the screen for Nvidia earnings.

It was- The stock's up $100 today. Do you think the countdown was merited or not? Looking back, I mean, is today your actual birthday? No. Okay. My birthday is Sunday.

Okay, so it's still kind of your birthday celebration. How old do you think I'm turning? Well, I think you're one year older than me, so you're either 46 or 47. Oh, so you know. I just know how old I am. Are we the same gen? I'm turning? Well, I think you're one year older than me, so you're either 46 or 47. Oh, so you know. I just know how old I am. Are we the same gen? I'm 44 right now.

I thought I was a lot older than you. I just look young. You're 44? You were born in 81? No, no, no. 78. I'm f***ing 44. What are you talking about?

Hashtag math. This is amazing. Wait, let's get to the bottom of this. Let's get to the bottom of this. Pull this guy's birth certificate. It's 78. I know that much. You're right.

I guess I have 45. 1977. I make up numbers all the time on TV. I'm doing it again apparently. I'm turning 47. I was born in 77. So there you go. So I'm turning 46 then.

There it was. You just said you were 44. I'm 45. I'm wrong. What is your real name, sir? I'm 45, I swear. I forgot how old I am. When you get to a certain age, that's proof, right?

Well, Rob's so old, he forgot he was at somebody's wedding. Did that last week. All right, we're ready? All right. Hey, John, what episode is this? It's the first episode. Hey, John, what episode is this? Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Red Holtz Wealth Management.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Today's show is brought to you by investing platform, public.com, which just launched options trading. In an industry first, Public is sharing 50% of its options revenue directly with you, the customer. So when you trade options on Public, you actually are getting some dollars back. That's pretty cool. It's a more transparent approach to options with no fees and you get something back on every single trade.

Go to public.com and activate option trading by March 31st to lock in your lifetime rebate. This was paid for by public investing. Must activate options account by March 31st for revenue share. Options not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Full disclosures and podcast description, US members only. Episode 151. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Compound and friends. Episode 151. Thank you, John. Wait, what's the Star Wars one? 131. You'll find out. Is that new? Don't make

me show you what it is. Hey, guys. This is a show I've been looking forward to for a really long time. We happen to... 131. What? What did he say? 151. A lot of numbers are off. What is it?

131. Alright, start everything all over again. Now, you know, our audience has been looking forward to this. You're our most requested guest. Everyone's like, when are you going to have Dietrich on? I swear to God. Let me give you my intro that I wanted to give you. You are, look deeply

into my eyes. You are, look deeply into my eyes. I'm doing it right now. You are, in my estimation, among the finest of all of the quantitative and technically oriented people following the markets. Not just because you're right a lot more than you're wrong, at least from what I can tell, but because of how illustrative you are when explaining the things that you follow and why you think they're important. You have that gift. But more than that, you're a good person. There are a lot of people who are as smart as you,

and they're dicks, and they're nasty, and they do I told you so games. You're like a good guy. So I root for you, and you make me money, and I appreciate your friendship, and I'm so happy to have you on the show. I'm just going to leave now, Josh. Dude, I mean every word. I truly mean

every word of it. Michael doesn't like you that much, but I said we're going to have Ryan. We're getting Ryan. I don't care what you say. All right. You know that the two of us are huge fans. I want to talk really quickly about your career trajectory. So I think I met you at a Linzen Palooza event or a Stocktoberfest event.

Does that sound right? Yeah. Okay. 2014 or 2015. Okay. Probably around then. Okay. So, yeah, I got the bug in 99.

Okay. Xavier University. Well, you were either 12 or 16 then? Yeah, whatever. These numbers make up numbers. It is episode 131, everybody. I know that much. I am 45. But, yeah, I got the stock market bug in 99. And I always loved numbers. And I was hooked. I knew that's what I wanted to do. And I made a lot of money on the way up and

lost a lot of money on the way down. And then I realized, oh, I could have made money on the way down. And that was what I wanted to do. So I did a couple of different smaller jobs out of college. Worked for an options newsletter for about 10 years, give or take, in Cincinnati. Started doing the media stuff. We were bullish coming out of the financial crisis. I was on TV all the time because nobody was bullish for many, many years. People forget that. They really weren't. And then I started leveraging social media. And that's how we all were connected. We always had our first Phil conversation, right? Phil Perlman. And then met at- You know you're going to see Phil tonight, right? Yeah, exactly. I'm looking forward to that. He's going to at the- You know you're going to see Phil tonight, right? Yeah, exactly.

I'm looking forward to that. He's going to walk up to you. He's going to go, yeah! He's going to be so excited. That's what he's going to do. And then it kind of went around. And I wanted to work more with people, wanted to work more managing money,

worked at an RAA for a minute in Cincinnati. They were bought out 30 days later. So I was, OK, I was out of a job. That wasn't helpful. No, but then I realized someone that I'd met at a conference a year or two before, at Howard's conference, that at the time, I was out of a job. That wasn't helpful. No, but then I realized someone that I'd met at a conference a year or two before at Howard's conference. At the time, I didn't have any money. And Howard flew me out on his own dollar to his conference.

You're kidding. No, I'm dead serious. Howard's a munch. Howard hooked me up a big time. And directly because of his generosity, he got me out there. So when I met, he hooked me up with somebody else. He did the same thing for me. Yeah, exactly.

Our stories are similar. And I met someone named Burt White, who was a big one of the main guys at LPL. Shout out to Burt. Yeah, Burt's awesome. He's a mentor and a friend. And he hired me at LPL, worked there for six years, six and a half years, had a lot of fun. And then Burt left to go work for Carson Group, which is RIA based in Omaha, where almost 50,000 families served. And about, I'm going to make these numbers correct, I swear, 34 billion in assets. And I saw what Burt was doing. I said, oh, that looks kind of fun. You know, I mean, go work somewhere. What's the biggest, so what's the biggest difference between Carson Group? I know

you're sort of in the same role. Yeah, same role. But what's the biggest difference culturally from LPL to Carson Group? Yeah, Carson's just, you know, quote unquote, smaller, right? Not so institutional. 32 billion? Yeah, exactly. 34, 34 billion. But you want to get something done, you just do it, right? And you have the trust in you. And it's an RIA. It's not a broker dealer. That is correct. It's an RIA. Ron Carson started it in 1983 in his dorm room, University of Nebraska. Yeah. So it's been an interesting career, ups and downs, fired, laid off, all types of stuff. But it's funny how it is true. One door closes, another door opens. And I've been at Carson for about a year and a half. Well, it'll be two years this July.

And just loving it. It's a blast. Congratulations. We're big fans of Ron's and so much respect for the firm that he's built. And I think know, I think it's great for you. I think a lot of things happen for a reason. And it sounds like you think the same way. So some of those earlier gigs that you were in, they weren't meant to be your career. They were just meant to be somewhere where you learn something

that you take with you to the next thing. So it's good that you have that attitude too. Yeah, exactly. So how did you hit upon your style? Because as I mentioned in my intro, you are looking at market history and technicals. And you said seasonality and sentiment, which we're going to talk about all that stuff. You also will listen to people that come from a discipline that you don't, like global macro. will listen to people that come from a discipline that you don't like global macro. So it's kind of a melange of different types of ways to view the market. And you combine them, I think, in a really

interesting and thoughtful way. Is that, was that accidental? Or did you say, I want to add all of these skill sets to my repertoire until it's something bigger? What's your history in that sense? So I started, I just had my 15-year anniversary on Twitter slash X. I got that alert. So I think I learned a lot from social media back in the day because I would share a tweet and you'd see it was popular. What I found was popular was when I said, hey, the last four times this happened, XYZ happened next, or the last 15 times this happened, what happened next? Give us some statistics, give us some stats and some numbers. And then read the replies. What's that? And then read the replies. Exactly. Yeah. Read the replies and read the likes and see if it works, you know? And I learned real quickly that telling stories, you know, I

mean, I've learned so much. Social media is like a cheat sheet, right? You just see smart people and you follow them. And I've learned so much. It was like Sam Stovall, right? I mean, Sam was amazing. I saw Sam present many years ago and he told stories and he told jokes and it was so cool. I've seen really great presenters and it's like really boring. And you walk out of like, oh, that was kind of boring. But I kind of took little bits from people like that. And then I got pretty good with Excel and just, you know, just following the markets and finding little things. I mean, you know, silly, like people love the silly stuff, you know? I mean, I think I sent it to you guys, but like when Philadelphia wins a championship, bad things happen.

I joke that's why the market was up, you know, last year. Mike sends me that shit. He goes, can you believe this shit Ryan's writing? Well, I said a lot more than just that. The silly stuff, the silly stuff will get you booked. Like you will get on Bloomberg TV or Yahoo Finance because you say like the Valentine's Day indicator

like that's fine but then you have like you have a lot of depth no but so you do the silly stuff but that's obviously

you know it's silly what you do that I love is I am a big believer in long term market psychology data because

it is just purely behavioral and I don't care how many machines are running today or how much money is in index funds, the behavior of market participants will never change. So when you get washouts and that breadth ruts and the last 13 times it happened, yeah, we don't have a thousand years worth of data, but to me, that shit is powerful and meaningful. And it kept you, credit to you, on the right side of a lot of this in 2023. What year is it? In 2023, when everybody was, or going into 2023, when everybody was bearish, you saw the washout and you stayed bullish. You're right. I mean, you think about it. I mean, your average bear market without a recession is about 25%. Well, we had that bear market in 2022 at 24%. It never feels like it's enough.

It never, it doesn't. But then you see also, well, six of the last 18 bear markets bought them in October. Oh, by the way, midterm years under a first-term president usually do poorly. And any one of these by themselves, okay, sure. But then when you stack them on top of each other, and this stuff that JC talks about, like, you know, I mean, there were less new lows in October of 22 versus in June of 22. So there's some strength internally. Yeah. The headlines were terrible, but we saw that strong fourth quarter and we were one of the few places that said, Hey, I was going to say, you know, you know what else you had on your side? You could probably, it would be very difficult for you to find anyone to agree with you. We were hated. People hated it.

People were mad. People were angry most of last year when we were bullish. Why do you think that is? Like not people within Carson, like people that don't even – Sure, you're right. People that have no stake in anything that you're saying. Why is it so triggering when you're bullish and others are bearish? That is a great question.

I mean it feels I think because you're going against what everybody else is saying, that tribal mentality potentially. You know, maybe some people truly didn't feel good because of all the social media and all the negativity we have, but it really was amazing to me. And it's hard. You know why? People don't like to be told things are going to get better when it feels like they're going to get worse. I actually think it's slightly different than that. And I wrote something and deleted it because it would have been really dangerous for me to publish this.

So I'm just going to say it into a microphone. I'm not going to go really far in depth, but I wrote 2000 words on this last summer. Last, yeah, last summer after the market had been up for like six months. I think it's crabs in a barrel. So there's this weird phenomenon where you fill a barrel with like a hundred crabs,

they will start climbing on top of each other. And one of them will eventually get to the wall and start pulling itself out. And for, for reasons that scientists like still are unclear of, the other crabs will latch onto it and pull it back down. Now, some scientists think that the crab is trying to not pull it down, but like leapfrog it, like use it for leverage to get itself higher and get out of the barrel. But other scientists say, no, this is just straight up antisocial behavior. It doesn't exist elsewhere in the animal kingdom. We don't really have a good reason for why crabs will pull themselves, pull each other repeatedly back down into the barrel. I think there's one other place in the animal kingdom where that exists. And I think

it's financial Twitter. I think people who are unhappy with the state of their careers, people who have bills that are too high or have not found that special someone or their career is stuck in a rut. I think it really pisses them off when other people are making money or going public or having success or whatever. And so I think there's this tendency in the commentary to just shout down anything that might look remotely positive amongst those people. Now, the thing with those people

is they over-index on Twitter. Because quite frankly, if things are going great in your life, you don't have time to spend 10 hours a day commenting on everyone else's opinions. So I think there's some element of it when Ryan Dietrich comes out and says, actually guys, it's a bull market.

These people are like, oh, you know what, Dietrich, screw you. What do you mean it's a bull market? It's usually worse than that, what they say. Sure, sure. In Midwestern parlance, screw you. There you go, there you go. So I think there In Midwestern parlance, screw you. There you go. So I think there's a really big element of that.

And that's where the behavioral stuff that Michael was referencing becomes more than just crowd psychology. It almost becomes like the more you listen to individual people, the more in danger you are of hearing an opinion that really has nothing to do with the market and everything to do with the person sharing that opinion. And it becomes really important to not have negative people in your life.

So that's, that's the tooth. That's the distillation of a 2000 word post that I'm not going to hit publish on. Um, but I have witnessed this firsthand, like over 10 years on social media. I've seen a lot of it. Yeah. Those are good points that I agree with. I also think that being bullish in a bear market, it makes you, or even, or if we're coming out of a bear market or whatever, you look reckless. And I think people think like, don't tell me to buy stocks or get bullish. Are you trying to like, are you intentionally trying to lose me money? Right. I think it looks reckless. You ignored some stuff. You ignored the yield curve. You ignored leading economic indicators, which were screaming recession.

You didn't seem overly focused on M2. Right. Why were you able to not worry about those things where so many people seem to be like very myopically focused on them? Yeah. I mean, those – boy, every day. Every day you turn TV on, someone's talking about LEI, negative. Yeah, probably me. Well, okay. Go on. Yeah day you turn TV on, someone's talking about LEI, negative. Yeah, probably me.

Go on. Yeah, everybody else is talking about it. But what we were saying was we looked at different things. I mean, we looked at real incomes, right? Last year, right now, last year, this time, real incomes. That's incomes take away inflation. We're making all-time highs. I mean, people were making more money.

We said, listen, inflation is probably going to come back. We saw a lot of reasons inflation is going to come back. We saw that. We all know the consumer makes up 70% of the economy. There were some real positives there. I mean, we just didn't see these big worries. And yes, M2 was out there in the yield curve. But we've written and talked about it. You guys have had people on talk about these things. They were there, but the real hard data. You know what I mean? Look at the manufacturing surveys. Now, maybe they're finally above 50 for the first time in forever. But look at the hard data. I mean, literally, manufacturing is up about 1.5% the last year.

Now, I'm not saying that's a ton. I'm just saying, but if you look at the surveys, what the people feel, it was just wildly different. Your good news is good news, Guy. I hope so. Because here's how I could tell. guy? I think, I hope so. Because here's, here's how I could tell if you were looking at real incomes, making all time highs. Um, so, so wages minus inflation, right? If you were looking at that as a good news is good news person, you would say, why are you talking about a recession? People are making more money than ever, even net of higher cost of living. If you're a good news is

bad news person, meaning you're more worried about the Fed than you are about people actually doing well, then you would look at that and you would say that's evidence that inflation is not coming down fast enough. So it's really funny to me how two different people could see the same data point and interpret it bullishly or bearishly, depending on what they wanted to do, because we all had that choice, right? So that's an interesting thing where you could be looking at the same data as someone else, but just getting a different output from how you think about it. And I'll say this. I mean, I share a lot of it on social media, but I look at a lot of different studies. And it's people like, well, that's maybe bullish or

that's maybe bearish. And it's hard to quantify it. It's just a feel. I've done this for a while where there's just stacks so many. This time a year ago, I was stacking so many potentially positive things on top of them with if everybody's thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking. General Patton, when everyone else was saying one thing, we just said, boy, the opportunity. Literally the second line of our outlook that came out, you know, beginning of January last year, we said we could hit new all-time highs this year. And people, I mean, I literally had a reporter. I don't want to say who. A reporter reached out and said, that's not true.

You're kidding, right? It was John Uthors? No, no. I forget who it was. No, I'll leave it there. But yeah, I mean, it felt weird. But then, like I talked about, we know these cycles. These cycles work. The seasonality stuff, it tells a story. But hey, on average, we knew a year ago, when you have a first-term president pre-election year, you know what the stock market does? Gains about 20% on average. I mean, we knew that. And when you're down the year before and up 5% in January, the rest of the year is up like 27% on average, never been lower. We knew these things a year

ago right now. People ignored them. And we didn't. We were over at equities. I want to ask you a philosophical question. So you're in an RIA now. RIAs are 95% or more long only. You probably can't be the guy that's going to see the downturn coming. Or maybe you can be, but even if you think it's going to be bad, you probably can't speak of it in those terms. And I know this from experience. And Barry Ritholtz and i have talked a lot about this barry became famous as the guy who saw the 0708 top and then the crash and then went positive but like

not only do i not think he could do it again and neither does he i won't let him yeah so you know is there some is there some like uh element to that where most of the time you're probably going to default to a more constructive outlook just by virtue of what you're trying to help people do? Yeah, I think it's probably true. I mean we could go to evenweight equities. We're evenweight equities for most of 2022. That's as bad as you get, evenweight. Yeah, so far in my career, I guess. I mean since a bit of Carson.

But, yeah, I mean there's other things you can do. But you're probably right. And we know this. Belsky, you guys had a great conversation. I'm not too different than him. Markets usually go up, right? And, and, and, and, you know, I mean, I love the, the seven-year itch, right? We've talked, people told us before 1950, new bull market, seven years in, bear markets, seven-year itch, and then market went up for another 11 years. 1980, made new highs, add seven of that, 87 crash, 13 more years of bull market. Oh, you like the seven-year rule?

I love it because I've been talking about it for a while, too. 2013, we broke out to new highs. Add seven, that's 2020. Bear market. I know we had two bear markets here, but I just think this cycle has a lot more life to it. So, Josh, I hope to answer your question. Maybe we've got hopefully several more years of a good, strong market with a stronger economy, people think, that we won't have to worry too much about that quite yet. That's how I'd answer it. We did the bear market. Two of them.

We had two of them, 2020 and 2022. So we had – one was down. I mean one didn't last long, so maybe you could throw that out. The second one was real. Oh, yeah. A NASDAQ and a 35% drawdown, S&P and a 25% drawdown. Small caps more. And guess what? And it took eight months. December 2018, we had one. It was only 19% or 19 point whatever. But people act like this has been like a one-way market for the last decade. It just hasn't been.

Yeah, returns have been stellar. Returns have been absolutely stellar, but it's not been that easy. No, it hasn't. I mean, just on the 10% pullback correction we had last year, right? 10.2% on October 27th. I shared this chart. You look at your average year. It bottoms on October 27th and then starts to rally into the end of the year. And that's just one data piece, I know. But, you know, we're hearing just, it's incredible the amount of fear we were seeing just on a 10% correction in the midst of a market that was up on the year last year. Then you have a 14% rally the final two months of the year, one of the best rallies ever. I looked. When you gain 10% the last two months of the year, what happens next? January has never been lower, like six out of six times higher. And the next year has never been lower, higher all six times. The media goes zero to 60 on those 10%. Yeah. On those 10% corrections. Fast.

Like they don't wait for it to be down 11%. As soon as it's down 10%. Publish. They're like, get me Ray Dalio. And Dalio will be on Squawk and he'll be like, it's 1933. No, 37, dude.

It's 37. You wish it was 37. It's always 37. You know what's weird? You're going to wish it was 37. We had this collision of the highest inflation that we've seen in decades

with an incredible technological breakthrough that pushed earnings a lot higher than they otherwise would have been, to have those two forces bang into each other at the same time, it was a very unusual market environment, market and economic environment. Well, it was.

I mean, I don't have too much more to add to there. I mean- Thank you. It was so profound. It was so perfect. So Cliff John is perfect. No, give me Stal too much more to add to there. I mean, you know. Thank you. It was so profound. It was so perfect. So, you know, Cliff, you had a nice part. No, give me a stalwart. No, you had the 9% inflation. And we know it was supply chain driven.

Was it really ever about demand? No. Demand was always solid. We kind of saw that. So, and now you've got the positives. And like I talked about, you know, the idea that we thought we started a new bull. I think we started a new bull market 2013 when we broke out. And again, these cycles, these secular bulls last a while.

You know, the surprises happened to the upside. And supported by fundamentals. And supported by fundamentals because earnings are earnings. How beautiful is that? It's not all multiple expansion. No, it's not all multiple expansion at all. That's a good segue. Let's talk about how the fundamentals have really supported most of what's gone on here.

By the way, Ryan, thank you for bringing a billion charts. Did I set a record? I don't know. No, 44 pages, that's a record. Okay. For the doc, love it. You're welcome. All right, let's get into it. I don't know, it's what I do.

So this is NVIDIA, and you made the point that this is not multiple expansion. This is earnings growth powering most of what we've seen. And if anything, it's negative multiple expansion because NVIDIA has actually been getting cheaper as its earnings have been far outpacing its share price, if you could even imagine that. What multiple are we looking at here? Well, this is simply how much the stock has gone up since the start of 2021, right? And you think about gains, well, it's earnings, it's dividends, and multiple expansion.

Those are things. So we took a look at earnings. Earnings was 231% since 2021. It started 2021. The stock's up 130%. So you've actually had- Negative 102 percentage points in multiple. Yeah, multiple actually have gone down.

So it's just incredible when you think about that. But you look at the other MAG-7. That's what we're sharing here. The other MAG-7, or 6, I guess, a lot of the gains have come from earnings. And again, you know, maybe these stocks, I don't want to go against what you guys, last week, love last week's podcast, you guys talked about, you know, MAG-7 in a bubble. I'm not going against that necessarily. I still think it's a bubble. Yeah, I mean, that's what I was getting at. It feels a little bubblicious, but at least we're having some earnings coming in on it.

And we're more neutral tech, let me be very clear. We're more neutral tech. We're not underweight tech. We're more neutral. But at least you have the earnings here. Bubble. When you use the word bubble,

in my opinion, I know we throw it around all the time. Yeah, we do. In my opinion, that means that there is almost no world in which economic reality can support the valuations that exist today. Right.

And therefore, the stock must decline 70% for things to get rational. So I would put it differently. There are degrees of bubbles. And what I've been saying is that what separates this from 99… No, but it's fine. …is that this is reasonable, but I call it an activity bubble. So is it a bubble? Sure.

But is it really a bubble? Like a bubble bubble? It's not a speculative mania. It's an activity bubble in that everyone has an opinion on these seven stocks. Everyone is trying to overweight them. Everyone is raising their targets on them. It's not for no reason. The fundamentals are great. It's just that the theme is becoming of nifty 50 S proportions. Valuations definitely have not gotten there. They could on Tesla. I would argue they have, uh, on meta. They're well on their way. Meta to me, meta looks like the one that's going to truly get into nosebleed, uh, territory. So I,

look, I, I agree with the fact, the premise, the rallies of these stocks, the biggest stocks in the world have been accompanied by amazing fundamental growth. I'm really just talking about how obsessed everyone's become with this group of stocks and maybe bubble is the wrong way to phrase it. Maybe I should be – maybe I should come up with another way to say what I'm trying to say. I guess I don't – I just think that Nvidia is in a class of its own. I don't lump Google or Amazon or Apple, certainly not Apple. I mean, Apple stock is not even doing well. I don't think individually, I don't think individually they, they, well, you kind of have to lump Microsoft with Nvidia because it's the biggest customer, but I get,

I get what you're saying. I think it's really the theme that's in a bubble more so than the individual stocks. That's probably true. And then you think about how we're hearing it's only seven stocks going up, and we've pushed back against that literally last week. Yeah. The S&P 500 advanced the Klein line in all-time high. We like mid-caps a lot. If you talk about what's our biggest overweight bet, it's mid-caps, okay? Not many people talk about mid-caps. Mid-cap 400 AD line, all-time high. I mean, you think about that, okay, well, that means there's probably a lot of stocks that are actually participating in this. Why do people say it's not that way? Don't know.

Well, it is true that the MAG-7 are driving the bulk of the index's gains. The gains. It's also true that the equal weight NASDAQ 100 index today is at an all-time high. So, yeah, the NASDAQ 100 was up. Was it up 56% last year? Yeah, it was. So, the equal weight was only up 20%.

But it's not just seven stocks. It's that the seven stocks are just going up so much more than everything else. And their earnings are growing so much faster than everyone else. And S&P 500, equal weight. I mean, I know I sent that chart. 15-week high today.

Literally, okay, I knew it was very close, I assume. So again, I'd be more worried if you're telling me the equal weights were 10, 15% away. Like, oh, okay, maybe it is just a few stocks. Those stocks matter. We know their earnings have come from there also. But there have been a lot of other positive places out there.

And again, I've got some other seasonality things. Maybe there could be a well-deserved break. We can get into that stuff. But just big picture, we just think this economy is probably going to continue to surprise the upside, which keep this bull market going. We've said this for the last year, that if the RSP were to roll over and it was only the MAG-7, yes, that would be reason for concern. That hasn't happened yet. No. To a degree, I know it was very quick last week. I mean, tech was about the only group down last week, and look what happened. We had CPI hot and expected, PPI hot and expected, expectations for Fed cut, rate cuts, pushback. Small caps and mid-caps actually were green last week.

You know what this is a chart of? So for the audience who can't see that I'm holding this up, is this going up or down or sideways? That is going up, if you ask me. Straight up. Straight up. This is Berkshire Hathaway. Oh, there you go.

Look at financials. Berkshire Hathaway has a higher RSI than most stocks in the NASDAQ right now. That's true. Sean said it was 83 going into today. The stock is going straight up. Based in Omaha, same city as Carson. Josh was talking about this company that makes the uniform

for work genital workers, genitorial workers. I got in trouble for it, I said. What did you say? I said they make cleaning lady costumes. Ridiculous. What the hell made me say that?

Somebody was like, dude, chill out with how you talk. Well, anyway, they make uniforms for workers. And the stock is at an all-time high. Which stock is it? Cintas. They're based in Cincinnati. It's a Cincinnati company. That's where the scent comes from.

Also, sometimes you wash your hands, they'll make some of the soap. The real economy is doing okay. That's the real economy writ large. You know what another one is? ADP. Look at a chart of ADP. This thing looks like it's doing like AI biotech. That's like, that's a stock that's about to break out.

Yeah? Yeah. Okay. Let's do some of these funny charts. Why America wanted the Chiefs to win. Tell us what happened. Is this any time a team whose mascot is a Native American wins a championship?

No, no, no. I'm not going to get in trouble like that. All right. No. You're trying to get this guy pinched? This was the… I'm trying to piss Duncan off. All right, go ahead.

Yeah, no, this was, again, last Super Bowl when it was the Chiefs versus the Eagles. And it was a playful one that when the Eagles, I'm sorry, when a team from Philadelphia, bad things happen. Athletics in 1910. Oh, I saw when you put this out originally. Yeah, so I mean, athletics.

I love the disclosure. We do not suggest ever investing based on who wins the World Series or Super Bowl. You know, compliance. They take away all the fun. But just, you know, all these, I mean, 1929, 1930, 1980, Phillies won, recession, double dip. 2008, Phillies win, financial crisis. Not great.

Sorry, can I narrow this for people? Yeah, go ahead. In the Philadelphia Athletics, they went to Oakland eventually? Right. It was a Philly team? They were a Philly team at the time, yeah. The Athletics won in 1929. And in 1930, which was the start of the Great Depression,

they won in 1980. The Phillies won in 80, 08, and 2018. All right. So crisis averted this year. No Phillies even in the Super Bowl. You must have been rooting for the 49ers. I was. As an AFC guy, as a Bengal fan,

the Chiefs and Bengals have a healthy rivalry. And I'm a Ohio State boy, too. I didn't go there, but like Ohio State, they got a couple of Ohio State guys on the Niners. You think this kid Burrow is like the future? He better be. He gave him a lot of money. But yes, he keeps getting hurt.

He's not a big guy. No, he's very good, obviously. I mean, the few years he's played the whole season, they made the Super Bowl and the AFC Championship. The problem is the other couple of years, he hasn't made it to the end of the year. So I think he's good, Just like anything, you've got to keep him upright. Stocks

do better under horned animals. What is this bullshit? I thought you'd love this one. Michael doesn't like it, but he's trading on it either way. No, again, don't invest in this. You're the dragon, right? This is Chinese zodiac. We just started the new...

Dragons sometimes have horns. Tom Lee noted this. Maybe he might say it on TV, but he said, you know, you pronounce dragon long in Chinese. I didn't know that. So long is dragon in Chinese. But playfully, goats and ox, year of the goat and year of the ox are the two best years if you just look at the Chinese zodiac. Again, I'm aware it's silly, but they have horns. And this is the year of the dragon.

No other animals on here have a horn. No, a dragon does, but dragons a little further to the right. Dragons don't necessarily have horns. Not all of them. the dragon. No other animals on here have a horn? No, a dragon does but dragons a little further to the right. Dragons don't necessarily have horns. Not all of them. That's true. Some do.

You're right. The J.R.R. Tolkien dragons do not have horns. Don't they? I don't think so. Chinese dragons. I don't know. Do dragons have horns

that you could think? I don't know. Figment did. If you're like... Oh, Figment did have horns so I am getting more bullish. There you go. Rats and snakes

don't do as well historically. What about the dragons in – what's the Marvel movie with the ten rings? That had dragons in it at the end. I don't know why that matters. All right. Let's do one more of these before Michael tunes out. No, I like this one. Let's do the – if stocks are down the previous year, this trifecta is very bullish.

Oh, no. This is not bullshit. This is not bullshit. No, this isecta is very bullish. Oh, no, this is not bullshit. This is not bullshit. No, this is bullshit. That's why. Yeah, we can skip that one. This one. This is the one.

All right. If stocks are down the previous year, this trifecta, what's the trifecta? So we shared this a year ago. This is one of those things a year ago right now we were sharing in the trifectas, the Santa Claus rally, the last five days of the year and the first two days of the new year. So, again, back in 2022, early 2023, we were higher then. The first five days of the year, we're higher back then. I believe in all that stuff.

And then in January, we had a huge return, up 6%. But you're down the year before. So this is the stuff that we were sharing more than the other stuff we just talked about. So sharing, listen, maybe there was a washout. That's a psychology, Michael, we were talking about. There's this washout.

Now there's a strength, there's a strong buying pressure. For whatever reason, it's happening. This is the real shit. And then you look at the previous years, literally never been lower. Up, what is it, 27% on average for the full year return. You got 54, 58, 61, 63, 71, 75, 95, 12, and 19. And then obviously 23.

So these are those little clues, little nuggets that I try to find and found a lot of them this time of year ago. But that's a great one. And what did we get,? 25%. You were stacking the shit all up to 23. Yeah. I do believe this though. And I do believe it's an artifact of like psychological stuff from all of these years, but yeah, look at this setup that we went in, like in hindsight, of course, but look at this setup that we, that we went into 23 with. Horrible year, down 19.4%. Horrible. One of the worst ever. And then bonds. I mean, talk about bonds. And then the last five days of the year, the market rallies. And then the first five days

of the new year. Now, if you're of the bearish disposition, you would say, oh, they're about to rug us. Right? Yeah. Like, oh, first five days are up. This is how they fool you. But if you're like somebody looking at data and you just say, well, does this happen frequently? Turns out, not really. But the last 10 times it happened led to really good outcomes for investors. One other way on this, remember we bottomed, I think it was October 12th or 13th

on the S&P had that bear market. We had that CPI print that was hot and expected. Market was down 2% at the start of the day. Finished the day up over 2%. That's 2022, right? Yeah, it was October 2022. It was October 14th at the start of the day, finished the day up over 2%. That's 2022, right? Yeah, it's October 2022. It was October 14th or 13th of 2022. But down a lot on that CPI print, finished up over 2%.

So, it had a 5% swing from the lows to where it closed, and it touched a 52-week low in the process. The day that happened, I tweeted out that I did the numbers. I mean, it happened, I forget the off the top of my head, but very, very rare. And normally, most of the time, it marked a major, major low. Not surprisingly. Go back and find this tweet and look at the comments. I mean, just people hated that comment or that statistic. And you never know.

But then we had the rally, and the rest is history, as they say. Dude, I love that. Let's talk about the setup going into now. I mean, going into it. It was six weeks in for 24. It's obviously not exactly the same setup, but… I still… I'm sorry to cut you off.

I still have not acclimated to 2024. Like, my brain's still not there yet. What do you mean? Like, you don't believe that the new year started? No, like, when I say… When I go to say the year, I think I'm still saying 2022. Wait, not 23? You're still stuck in 22?

Yeah, I think Ryan's rubbing off on me. Okay. Yeah, sorry about that. So what's the setup for this year? So we got through the first earning season of the year. We'll have a Fed meeting a month from now. Pretty much everyone is now in the no-cut camp. There won't be any real surprises there, I don't think,

unless they come out with a hike. It's unlikely that that's really going to be a big market mover. What do you make of the current setup? Overall, you have to say positive, but I'll go this route. When you look at election years, what amazes me, just how some of the seasonality stuff has played out. Now you look at an election year. In an you know, in an election year and a first-term president, the last 10 times the election year has been higher. So that's in the back of my head,

knowing that that tends to be strong. We can get into the economy. The economy still looks strong. One of the big keys to us, and I know some of your previous guests have talked about some of these concepts, but we're big believers in this. Productivity, right? We created 8 million jobs the last two years in our economy. And look at the jokes. People aren't quitting. People aren't really getting laid off. And I know some of the headlines layoffs, but just today we saw initial claims didn't go anywhere. So let's just say people are happy where they are. If it takes a while to learn what you're doing for your job, you're not moving across the street. We think we're on the cusp, I guess you could say, of a major jump in productivity. I mean, we've had a 3.9% annualized productivity the last three quarters. We haven't seen anything

like that since the mid-90s. And you mentioned cuts, hikes. We're not saying March is off. I'm sorry, March is off the table. May is off the table yet. We still have another two CPIs, another two PCEs. But in the mid-90s, what happened? Well, Greenspan saw this. We had very strong productivity back then. When you have strong productivity, it opens the door to pay higher wages. We had like 2.4% inflation in the mid to late 90s, and wages were up around 4% to 5%. That sounds kind of similar to right now. And if you have this AI boom coming and all the incredible infrastructure that we have going on, manufacturing, huge jumps in manufacturing, construction, so 12 months in a row, a lot of these things are going on to us to say,

if we have a surge in productivity that is abnormal outside of a recession, because normally productivity goes up in a recession. That's how it works. Everyone around you has lost their job. You better work twice as hard. But now we've got this higher productivity, and we think the chance for a couple of cuts here, and again, maybe may still a chance you can cut. And why is the Fed worried? Well, if we cut, inflation comes back you can cut. And why is the Fed worried? Well, if we cut, inflation comes back. We haven't had a good track record with inflation lately. But we think with higher productivity, inflation stays under control. So that's a big key concept for us this year is good, strong productivity. So this is how you could have economic growth

without a worry over inflation. Yeah. And the Fed could cut, potentially. The ingredient in the middle that you need is higher productivity. Yeah. And we're seeing it. I must be very clear. For three quarters now, we've seen inflation. Yeah, and the Fed could cut, potentially. The ingredient in the middle that you need is higher productivity. Yeah, and we're seeing it. I mean, let's be very clear. For three quarters now, we've seen it. Now, again, it could roll over. We don't anticipate that. I mean, investment's such a big part of productivity.

Because once you have a maturing labor force, an older labor force, you know, where we've already made 8 million jobs the last two years, so it's going to start to slow down. That's fine. Then companies start to invest in themselves. What are we seeing? I mean, we're seeing incredible, like, high-tech manufacturing has just been soaring. And that's a lot of, yes, that's the CHIPS Act.

That's the Inflation Reduction Act, which really was about EVs and things like that. Those are things literally during the regional bank crisis. Remember that? The 8% regional bank crisis last March, which was very scary. You know, crisis in lowercase. Yeah, well, you know, standard. I work with a really smart guy named Sunu Varghese, our macro strategist. He does a lot of this stuff. He was talking about all this really big stuff. We're allowed to use the F word on this, right?

I want you to. Okay. Fiscal policy. Fiscal policy. See what he does. It upsets people. I'm not going to cuss on this podcast. This Midwestern. I cannot cuss on this podcast. I'd like to. Maybe once you hit stop. Anyway, that's all right. But I mean, fiscal, everyone's, ah, the government, the government. We get it.

But some of these things that governments put in play are really good. The onshoring, bringing stuff back. We've talked about these concepts. But it's true. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, right outside of Columbus. Intel's building one of the largest chip facilities, like, in the world right now. And we just, we're seeing it in the manufacturing data. I just got a text on that.

It's already outdated. Is it? Yeah, there you go. I know they're we're seeing it in the manufacturing data. I just got a text on that. It's already outdated. Is it? Yeah, there you go. I know they're halfway through building it, but it's not AI. Well, they can slow down. Well, you know,

but you're right. It's not AI, but they're still, they're building chips and there's technology coming. Yeah, go ahead. Is every company, Josh was talking about this

with Walmart's earnings, is every company, I mean, the lines are getting blurred between industrials, retailers, and technology. They're all integrating it. Jensen was talking about it last night on the earnings call. Everybody is integrating technology in a big, big way. Yeah. If everyone's a tech company, then really nobody's a tech company. It's just, it's all tech. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean,

when I was recruited to Carson, they said, you know, we're a tech company. Yeah. First. Yeah. Then financial services. Because everybody, if you're not on the edge of tech, is true. Let me give you an example. It's a company.

I own the stock. I'm not, it's not an endorsement. Sam Sara. You know this name? I don't think I do. The ticker is IOT. Okay. So, Internet of Things.

Basically, this would have been classified, in my opinion, 10 years ago as an industrial. They call it a tech company. What does it do? It's kind of both. So everywhere that there is a company or a government organization or whatever that has a fleet of vehicles, those vehicles either have gasoline or they're electric. They probably have cameras on them. We're talking about equipment. We're talking about like anything on wheels.

This is the property of a company. They need to track it. They need to know how charged it is. They need to know how much use is on it. They need to be able to see what's going on around it. If it gets stolen, if it gets moved by an unauthorized person. Think about airports. Think about like big wholesaling warehouses.

Okay. So this company is making the software and some of the hardware for that level of ongoing monitoring of all of these vehicles that are part of infrastructure. But they're using AI, so it's like kind of being called a tech stock. I don't know what it is. It's a $17 billion company. They got to $1 billion in ARR in eight years, which is almost unheard of. Went public at precisely the worst time, 2021, I think. So it came public at the top, got killed. Now it's rallied all the way back. It's to me, it's part of this industrial

renaissance that's going on right now that you're describing that's happening in Cincinnati and Wisconsin and Arizona and all over America. Maybe it doesn't matter what it is. Maybe the important thing is, like Michael referenced Cintas, these stocks have charts that are going higher. Like, regardless of what industry it's in, business seems to be getting better. So here's what I was going to say to this. I'm not a CFA. So a little bit more about me, I traded options for almost 11 years at a shop in Cincinnati. I have my CMT, chartered market technician. So the way I was brought up to the world was supply and demand, relative strength, looking at market sentiment and those things. And

believe me, I look at fundamentals and macro views too. But at the end of the day, if you tell me that literally I believe today XLF made a new all-time high, IYT transferred to an all-time high, industrials, XLI made an all-time high, that is the message of the market. I'm an old school John Murphy guy, right? John Murphy, message of the market. The market is telling us that the cyclical things have been leading. We've liked cyclicals for a while, so I'm going to be very clear. XLI looks amazing. Yeah, I mean, and again, maybe it's not as industrially as it used to be. But you know what?

That's nice looking, and there's some strength there. And again, what do we want to not see? I mean, if you're bullish, I guess you don't want to see utilities leading, staples leading. We're really not. We continue to see those at relative strength lows against the S&P 500. We've seen that for a while. That is what the market's telling us. And we can decipher what's an industrial or not, but those are positives.

This is the market relative to the staples. There you go. Markets at an all-time high, and this ratio is crashing. Yeah, and that's what you want. If you're purely bullish, that is exactly what you want to see. You referenced that day last week where the NASDAQ had a really ugly day. Tuesday, yeah. But a lot of sectors were the beneficiaries of money coming out of tech and going somewhere else.

The somewhere else is banks, industrials. So healthcare got a bid that day. Yep. So there's no shortage of things to be bullish about right now, which is kind of what I've been saying over the last week or two, just from a purely gut perspective. This concept that the market, quote unquote, needs Apple and Microsoft, what if that's backwards? What if the rest of the market can only advance when a half a trillion dollars comes out of those stocks and gets redistributed?

Yeah, no, I like that. Because again, I kind of talked to this already, but last week when tech was weak, we saw other groups. We said, oh, the market was down last week, but yet most stocks were up. Why? Because small caps and mid-caps did really well last week. And this week, yeah, I know tech's taking it, being the champion today, obviously. But nonetheless, it really is a broad-based rally, in our opinion.

And you can find some cracks that I know— John, can you do this working yet again? Swag, bread, thrust? Oh, yeah. Let's talk about that. That's a really good segue into this idea. So a breadthrust, this is Marty Zweig, one of the greatest technicians of all time, RIP. But the idea here is when the preponderance of stocks in the market all go up at the same time. Or oversold first and then go up.

And then simultaneously melt up. That's not a bearish signal. It's the opposite. No. And I mean, again, I know we have it here. But just last year, we actually saw two of them. March 31st, we saw Zweig breath thrust. And at the time, I noted, hey, a year later, this is using data from Ned Davis Research,

big fan of them. Since World War II, never been lower a year later for the S&P. Never. Never been lower. And then we had another one on November 3rd. A double breadthrust, if you will. A double breadthrust for the year, which, hey, it is what it is, up 13.7% for the S&P three months later. That's the best three months after a breadthrust, or I'm sorry, it was a wide breadth breadth thrust since, what was it, coming off of the GFC. I mean, so again, these are the things that when I noted that in early November last year, come in and remember how scary it felt coming into the late October then, people hated it. And it was like, ooh, maybe there's something here. So again, these are just little nuggets,

little bullet points that Marty Zweig, and he's got the 10 or 11 things which are amazing. It's the trend, don't fight the trend. And then number six is don't fight the Fed, but he's like number one matters more though. So even Zweig, people say don't fight the Fed. That's true. I'm not saying fight the Fed. But again, to Marty Zweig, he would say the trend is really all that matters.

Now, believe me, we follow other things. It's powerful. If you were bullish in 23, de facto, you were kind of fighting the Fed. The Fed was telling you we're going to raise the cost of money. And then they did it. It was like, is this the interesting thing to me?

If you look back five years from now, like people that weren't really trading, people that enter the market, they might get the idea that, oh, the NASDAQ loves rate hikes because we had the most aggressive rate hiking cycle ever. And a NASDAQ doing double the S&P, up 50% on the year. It's kind of like where we get into this area of maybe there's not enough market history

for us to really safely draw any conclusions. Well said. And of course, AI obviously boomed then too. But I mean, we were in the camp also that I mentioned inflation coming back. I know the Fed was very hawkish. We get that. But we thought eventually inflation was going to come back. We can talk more about inflation. But I mean, the bottom line is when we look at inflation, we just see so much of it as shelter. Barry's had people come on. We've all been talking about similar things.

44% of core CPI is shelter. Well, Mike, you know this. What is it, like 60% of people own their house and most of them have their house paid off. So should that shelter really impact everyone? Probably not. If you take out shelter, of course, CPI, the last three months, it's annualized 1.1%. You know, it is what it is. And we started seeing some of that last year. I mean, for the last eight months, year over year,

rents are down. If you look at apartment lists, that's the private's data. Now, I know the government's data is still higher and we get that. Eventually, it's going to come back. But we thought there'd be a pivot for the Fed, and there was. But I guess the pivot wasn't officially until, what, December of last year. But the market clearly sniffed it out. They hiked. I think it was July was that last hike. The market sniffed it out, and inflation coming back was the clue.

And that's, I think, you know, why it's such a big rally. If shelter is so outsized in that popular measure of inflation, there's an argument to be made that the most dangerous thing the Fed can now do is to lower the cost of a mortgage because that component is really short-term sensitive and we could get a re-acceleration of inflation just because of a bounce in shelter costs. Well, no, you're right. And I would devil's advocate or counter back the whole productivity thing I mentioned earlier. If productivity is as strong as we think it can be going forward, maybe you don't have that jump back in inflation, so to speak. Again, kind of like what Mark Twain said, history never repeat, but often rhymes. I use that all the time. I know other people do. Mid-90s, we saw that, and I think there's some similarities now. I want to ask you about the first rate cut, speaking of inflation. So,

John, we have this chart. Not all first cuts are the same. Okay. So, there is a thing. There is a market meme right now that's fairly pervasive, which is that, oh, no, no, no, no. It's not the inverted yield curve that matters. It's when it un-inverts. That's when the countdown to the recession begins. Or, stated differently, the first rate cut of the cycle. That's when the countdown to the recession begins. You point out S&P 500 returns after the first rate cut of the cycle. That's when the countdown to the recession begins. You point out S&P 500 returns after the first cut over the last 10 cycles. There are a lot of different stories in here that need to be told. And it's not always the same result.

It's not. But you mentioned yield curve. One thing I want to point out here. There's different yield curves. We all know that. But the 210s, kind of when you say yield curve, that's what most people think. Do you guys remember what date inverted by chance? Yeah, 19. Well, it was April Fool's Day. You can't make that up. April Fool's Day is when the two tens- Of 2019? Yeah, yeah. I think so. Yeah. I mean, you can't make that. No,

no, no. The more recent one, 2021. It was 2021. 2021, April Fool's Day, 2021, because it's been inverted for a long time. But nonetheless, nonetheless, but what we're sharing here on the screen right now is the idea of there are different types of cuts, right? And when you have a first cut, we would argue this is more of a normalizing cycle. And those would be, you know, 20, remember 2019? Things were pretty good. The Fed hiked a little bit. Then the economy kept going. This is not a panic cut. This is not a panic cut. Holy shit, things are broken. Right.

And that'd be like, you know, obviously— What are the panic cuts? 87, Greenspan. After 87, crash. COVID. COVID. And then the Russian ruble crisis in October of— September, October.

So I was there for that. That was 100% a panic cut. Yeah. Because it was between meetings. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it was between meetings. Yeah. And it was more than 25 bps. And it was specifically explained as this is because of things going on in Asia.

Yeah. So that was definitely a panic cut. So again, we don't have 100 years worth of data or 500 years for that matter. But we've got three normalization cuts and forward returns have been fine. Yeah, exactly. Mid 80s, 89, you know. and fall returns have been fine. Yeah, exactly.

Mid-80s, 89, you know. So Ryan, your data says that if you take the panic cuts, which by the way, 12-month returns after the panic cuts are plus 17%. By the panic, apparently. Right. Normalization cuts, 12-month returns for the S&P average, 13%. Anybody would, anyone would take that.

The recession cuts are trickier. If the Fed is cutting because of the onset of a recession, the 12-month outlook is negative 11. So I guess you have to hope that the Fed's first cut is not because they think the economy is meaningfully weakening and they have to do it. Right. Exactly. And who knows? We might be able to do this again in six months and we say, oh, I guess that first cut was a recession. We don't think that's the case again. I mean, this cycle, what's driving this cycle at the end of the day? Credit drove the 80s and 90s. Well, AI maybe, but I think it's income. This cycle, we would argue, has been an income-driven cycle. And you hate to say, well, what are the four most dangerous words? This time is different.

Well, actually, the 50s and 60s, in our opinion, is the last time you saw income-driven cycles. It can happen. It'll happen again. I mean, clearly, we had a credit-driven boom before the GFC. You know, we've had that. But this cycle is a little bit different from that point of view. This cycle is being driven by two things, Taylor Swift and sports betting. It's the only thing that anyone is spending any money on.

So here's another thing. I tried to buy Taylor Swift tickets December of 22. I bet on Taylor Swift. I eventually did. Say more. Yeah. I did actually finally get them. But that 22. I bet on Taylor Swift. I eventually— Say more. Yeah. I did actually finally get them, but that was the day Ticketmaster blew up, and it took for—

You have daughters? Yeah. My daughter wanted a ticket, and I got one. I did it. But I mean, I just never— You have a 16-year-old daughter, and do you have any others? Just one. Just a 16-year-old daughter and then two sons.

Were you the hero of the moment? Yes. She was pretty excited. But it was this most stressful thing to buy that ticket. But what I'm getting at, then, you know, I was joking with our shop. I said, there's no way there's going to be a recession. Did you try to buy Taylor Swift tickets? Like, or go, we travel, get to travel.

I go to any steakhouse. Like, they were packed in late 22. And I know about the inverted yield curve, right? But an M2 and these things. But just go out and try to buy a Taylor Swift ticket. It was impossible. It's a rolling Super Bowl coming that summer. And I joke, you know, that I think it's going to be Creed this summer.

Creed's coming out this summer. They're going to save the economy. No, OK. Well, anyway. I like Creed. But they're coming out this summer. I think they're going to keep things going. But still, it's just that real world versus what the economists say in their books.

And you talk about yield curve. Goolsbee said it best a couple of weeks ago. But again, what's going on now? Well, there was a supply issue. And normally, it's a demand issue. When the Fed starts to cut, the yield curve inverted because it thinks the Fed's going on now? Well, there was a supply issue. And normally, it's a demand issue. When the Fed starts to cut, the yield curve inverted because it thinks the Fed's going to cut. Well, now, maybe it's just saying the Fed's going to cut and things are a little different because, again, this cycle wasn't about demand. It was always about supply. And that's why this inverted

yield curve truly hasn't mattered yet. And I know every time you can probably find it. Heck, I probably said it too. Oh, the inverted yield curve before GFC. Let's ignore it. But there's other things that need to line up first. And to keep it simple, credit markets, right? The credit spreads. And what are credit spreads saying? And to us, last March, we didn't see credit spreads blow out. That's why we added some equity risk in late March when people thought we were a little crazy. Even in October, we were promised a credit event by some people. We didn't get that. And again, the credit markets are still fairly calm, right? In fact, they're very calm right now, but we're going to get a pullback eventually. I mean, on average, you get one 10% correction a year.

Maybe you're going to get one this year sometime. But what the credit markets tell us, I think they're the smartest people in the room. I'm going to follow what they have to say versus what any yield curve has to say. Do you think there's any truth to this idea that you have – like your anecdotal data is better than other people's. If you're like a middle-aged dad, you're kind of like more mom. You're kind of like more in the economy than someone whose kids are already grown up and moved out and you don't have like as much necessity

to spend the way that you used to. Because I happen to just notice that people of our generation tend not to get as bearish on economic data as people in their 60s and 70s. And I sometimes think like if this guy could just be around like what I'm around when I take my kids on a vacation or something like and just see what I'm seeing. Like maybe this person is not living the right lifestyle to really have good anecdotal data on what's happening in the economy. I agree. I mean my daughter just turned 16, bought her a car. So now it's an extra $500 a month.

My insurance went from – That car insurance. Yeah, $2,100 to $4,600. But here's what I'm getting at. It's worth every penny because now I've realized I don't have to drive her to school anymore. She's going – so it's like, okay, I'm paying more money. That's what I'm getting at. You talk about productivity.

I can sleep in a lot of days because she's driving herself to school. I didn't even used to do that. So, yeah, that's a playful way to look at it. But, again, there's some truth to that. And, yes, going with your kids, seeing things through their eyes. So this summer it's going to be J-Lo. The Jennifer Lopez tour will be like this year's Taylor Swift. I actually think Luke Combs is going to be the biggest tour this summer.

Taylor Swift. I actually think Luke Holmes is going to be the biggest tour of the summer. But nothing really has changed from last summer to this summer in terms of like the state of the economy visibly. Well, here's one thing that hasn't changed from this summer to last summer. Small caps

still suck. And this is one thing that bears might be hanging their hat on. The Russell 2000 is still in an 18% drawdown. The year rolled over and a lot of people were bullish on the Russell 2000 coming into 2024. It's flat on the year. S&P is up six or 7%. When the market goes up, the Russell is up less. When the market has a down day, it's down more than the S&P. What does the Russell need to like shake off the rust? Yeah. I mean, well, there's a Russell and there's also the S&P 600, which has more companies making

a little more money than the Russell 2, which is a lot of companies that don't make money. But just in general, I mean, we do like small and mid. Now, like I said, mid is probably our biggest outsized portfolio bet that we have here. So I do lump them together. But, you know, let's just put it in context. Russell 2 had a 22% rally the last two months last year. Okay. That is like, if you look at the top 10 best two months ever, and I know I sent it, so I don't know if you know the chart or not. John, we have the historic two-month surge in small caps. Wait, hold on. While we're looking at this, Ryan, this is important. I didn't realize the extent. I knew that the 600 is not the same thing as the 2000, the S&P 600. The S&P 600 is in a much smaller drawdown.

And that's when, at least when we invest, Carson, yeah, we were actually the S&P 600, and it is, you know, little. Russell 2000, 25% of the components are not profitable. Exactly, exactly. So anyway. There's an industry difference as a result. So this is just another way to look at it. But again, we just had one of the largest two-month rallies ever. So what I'm sharing here is the 10 best two-month

rallies ever for the Russell 2, 12 months later, up 27% higher, 9 out of 10 times. So Mike, what I would say there is we had a historic end of year rally. I think small caps are kind of just biding their time right here, catching their breath. And we're still optimistic that they're still going to do fairly well. You know, is it going to be this big rotation like we talked about earlier, Josh, from large caps to some other areas? Maybe, you know, maybe. But this is interesting because this is actually showing what happens to the S&P 500 after a giant small cap rally.

Well, you know what? That's a typo then because it's Russell 2000. Sorry. It does say, you're right. This is Russell 2 data. I don't even know. Look at old Hawkeye over there. Good job.

Nice job. I don't even know if I could be convinced that this even matters anymore. Not that we don't want to see small caps rally. I hear you. But let's say they don't. Who gives a shit? People are making money. But like honestly, if NVIDIA is a $2 trillion company at this point,

like what's the market cap of the Russell 2000 every company stacked on top of each other? You're right. It's like Yertles Turtles. It's like, it's a stack of turtles. Who gives a shit? I hope it falls again. Right.

The stock market that people care about is in great shape. There's earnings growth. Not every company is growing earnings like in video, of course,

but like, these are so small at this point. These are, we're talking about $5 billion market cap companies. I mean, is it a stretch to say corporate America's on fire? I don't think so. No, I think it is. I mean, I know, you know, we've got a lot of debt in our country. We know that, but again, then you look at corporate America. I mean, corporate America-

Unemployment, less than 4%. 24 months in a row, I think. Margins near all-time highs. Earnings at all-time highs. Revenue at all-time highs. Yeah. You mentioned one thing, though. You said what's different or similar to last year. I will say one thing is different right now than last year, obviously, is we're just listening. We're talking, right?

I mean, people are feeling better. Look at the consumer confidence is breaking out to highest levels we've seen in a while. And I'm not saying that's bearish. I'm just saying that that contrarian in me says oh you know okay everyone's starting to agree people are feeling a little bit better josh and michael are getting all bowled up well you know you had me on your podcast finally i'm like i'm a huge bowl all last year i'm finally on your podcast wearing a happy birthday josh shirt you know i mean come on we bumped you for grantham that was the tell got to be- I got an email. We bumped you for Grantham. That was to tell. That was to tell. I got an email last week. Ben and I got an email. You guys used to be more balanced. Now you're all

bullish. I was like, well, we're talking about the stock market and it's going straight up. What would you like us to say? Well, true. Don't believe it. It's going to crash. Get out now. You have a couple of seasonals that I want to do. Stocks tend to do better in early February and worse later. Yeah, which clearly is not working at all right now. This is January effect. Is there anything worth pointing out here? Just that when January's higher, the full year gains almost 17% versus if January's lower, you're up about 2% on average. So again, it's just fairly ignored. I'd throw it in the that's bullish for this year. And this is the chart here that I put together. Clearly, we're rallying today as we do this. But historically, the second half of February and even into St. Patrick's Day, especially in an election year, tends to be a little bit weaker. So just be aware of that. I know, you know, egg on your face today with the rally we're seeing, but just be aware of that. Also, when you gain 20% the previous year, like we just did, you were in that March-April timeframe,

February, March, April, you tend to get a little consolidation. Perfectly normal, right? I think it's perfectly normal. We'd still be a buyer of any weakness, or at least not sell on any weakness. So, Ryan, I'd love to ask you. I want to do these last two. John, put up the Carson Cycle Composite. Yeah. So, this is one that I put together, and it looks at the average year, the past 20 years, year four of a presidential cycle, year four of a new president, a year after a 20% gain, and a positive January. You smush all that together. And I used this last year repeatedly in a different scenario for last year, and it worked

wonderfully. So, right now, again, potentially some chop, some churn into late March would be perfectly normal for a year kind of that we're seeing right now. So, again, yes, we're still overweight equities. We have been since December 22. But we'd be open to the idea that, I mean, S&P just went up 14 out of 15 weeks and gained more than 20% during that 15-week period. In the history of the stock market, that's never happened before. So let's put some things in context here that the little pause would be perfectly normal. You were saying, you were saying like,

if your prediction is another bear market this year, statistically, we've never seen. Well, I mean, Ben just wrote that blog on it. Yeah. Three in a row would just be so far outside of the data that we have. Election years tend to be week early and rally late. This is consistent with JC. Yep. And you'll see him later tonight. But just this general idea that so far, we're actually doing better

than a typical election year. So we're running far ahead. Well said. And I mean, election years, Sam Stovall's got a joke. I don't know if you've heard it before, but if the opposite of pro is con and the opposite of progress must be Congress.

That's a good one. Anyway, but I know I've got the chart on elections, but I think it's really interesting because people say who wins and who loses, what's it matter? Of course it matters, but I think the makeup of Congress matters more. We took a look. We've got a split Congress now. We know that. Smallest majority for Republicans, 140 years. Democrats have a very slim majority in the Senate. We get it. The last 13 years, you've had a split Congress. Take a wild guess what the S&P has done. It's gone higher. Maybe it's random. Maybe it's not. But that division we have, to get anything done, look what's gotten through from Congress lately. Well, infrastructure, that makes a lot

of sense. The onshoring, let's bring stuff back. that makes a lot of sense. You know, the onshoring, let's bring stuff back. That makes a lot of sense. The Inflation Reduction Act, which again, wasn't about inflation, it was about EVs and batteries. But still, that's been really positive. So to get anything through, and I think when this election's all said and done, of course, who you voted for matters, but the makeup of Congress to the listeners, everybody out there, might matter more. And I think we're still going to have a split Congress, all things considered. If it's not, it's not going to be a major wave. It doesn't seem like there's going to be any kind of- Yeah, there's the chart there.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, split, you do a lot better historically than if you have a blue wave or a red wave in the- I don't even see this show up on people's list of risks for the stock market, like who wins. I just, it doesn't seem to be a really big factor. Not yet. People don't like that there's an election just given like the rhetoric that comes along with elections.

But I don't feel as though this is something that the stock market is particularly concerned with. At least not yet. What's the stock market not like? It's the uncertainty, right? And we literally probably have two ex-presidents or one current president, one ex-president running. So it's not going to be a shock whatever their policies are or aren't. I mean, you know, so that's kind of where. Now, we're seeing some in the news now.

Look, what do you guys think of this? I mean, if President Trump were to win, going to go after China more, could there be trouble upsetting another trade war? We all remember 2018. I mean, February 5th of 2018. What happened that day? Well, that was the first day that Powell took office. It was also the Dow dropped 4.6%. the worst first day ever for a Fed chairperson. It also was the start of the trade war. 2018 wasn't very good with that trade war. Now, I don't say it's just because of

the trade war, but that didn't help. I mean, what do you think there? I forgot that he kept Janet Yellen in place for like a year and a half. I totally forgot about that. That was hilarious. And Janet Yellen, the shortest Fed chairperson ever, but I think she was third in terms of market returns annualized. So she did a great job. You just picture him like, tell this lady the lower rates. She won't listen. All right. Who are we bringing in? You talk about the consumer being in the best shape, and I don't want to spend a ton of time on this. This is really what the stock market is. It's a bet on the US consumer, the US stock market. This is where all the market cap resides, pretty much. I know the global economy is important, blah, blah, blah. But in reality,

the engine for earnings is the US consumer. And that probably hasn't changed over the last couple of years. If anything, that effect might be even more profound. Yeah, I mean, listen, we hear about $1.13 trillion in credit card debt. Everybody talks about every quarter that data comes out. And that's a lot. I'm not saying I'm a fan of all that debt. But there is a lot of equity out there. And I don't know if they've got the chart or not. But we did take a look.

Which one? I don't even know which one. I've seen a few consumer ones. I have consumer borrowing. John, it's a 47 from the bottom. Yeah, there's too many ones. I have consumer borrowing. John, it's a 47 from the bottom. Yeah, there's too many charts. I have household incomes. I have consumers yet to stretch their borrowing capacity.

The one I really like is household balance sheets, assets, liabilities, net worth as a percent of disposable income. I mean, I think that one, because you think about net income, what is net income? Well, it's assets minus liabilities. Right. But okay, big deal. You've got to normalize it. So we normalized it by disposable income. So to keep this fairly simple, we think we have a lot of debt, and we do.

But if you look at it, guys, based on disposable income right now, liabilities as a percent of disposable income is 100%. It was 100. There it is. There's a chart. It was 98% in 1999. It was 100. There it is. There's a chart.

It was 98% in 1999. So, yes, there's a lot of liabilities, but there's a lot more income that's happening right now, or disposable income, I should say, that I think you normalize it. And then when you take a look again at what we're seeing now, we literally have record wealth, right? We know that. So record assets subtract the liabilities and, again, normalize it based on disposable income. subtract the liabilities, and again, normalize it based on disposable income, you could make the argument, and I guess we have been for a while, that consumers actually are in some of the best shape they've been in, at least since the late 90s. And all this debt we have, yeah, it's not crazy about it, but there's a record income. I mean, what was $17.5 trillion in debt? That's that data that comes out every three months is E.1 from New York Fed, $17.5 trillion of debt. It went up about $988

billion last year. Disposable income was up $1.33 trillion last year. Nobody talks about that. You could argue consumers actually were less leveraged, and I would make that argument, less leveraged than they were the year before, even though we added all this debt. And again, I'm not a fan of the debt. I'm just saying you got to look at it. And you guys on Animal Spirits listen all the time. Thank you for citing a lot of our stuff. I mean, you guys cited this too, but like credit card utilization,

that's how much you're using relative to your balance. And I've got that chart too, but it's like 24% right now, okay? Yeah. This is the big bad chart thing that everyone's worried about. Yeah. Well, this one here is actually credit card debt, relative to disposable income. And it's a five and a half percent. It was eight

percent before the GFC and it was running even higher before the- What's the number here? At six and a half percent, we're back to the average. Yeah. Just the average. So we're below average. Again, credit card debt relative to disposable income. So that's not the story. Also- That's not the story we hear. But hang on, going back to the liabilities. Mortgages, yeah, technically it's a liability. Technically. But that's not toxic. That's like an asset too. Right. Exactly. I know it's classified as a liability, but come on.

You're right. Exactly. How many people are defaulting on their house right now? Not many. Nobody. Nobody. And literally in the fourth quarter, bankruptcies went to 114,000, 113,000, went lower in the fourth quarter. U.S. bankruptcies dropped in the fourth quarter.

It was running at 200,000, okay, before COVID, pre-COVID. So again, are we seeing these spikes in delinquencies? Yes, in some cases we are, but it's a spike. Maybe it's normalizing relative to where we were before the pandemic. There are parts of the economy where you could poke at, for sure, as you always can, that things are maybe a little bit shaky. I think the only credible bear case right now is that things are too good and everybody's bullish. And that's, okay, fine. I'm not saying that's not a reason, but that's tough.

That's a tough reason to actually be banking. One of the recurring themes on this show, a lot of the people that we have on, especially people that are chief strategist types, they will remind us and themselves and the audience, things don't change that quickly. And one of the things with financial media in general is like everybody wants the new narrative, the new story, what's next, what's next, what's next? You could have a period, just go on for a long time with no change or only minor

changes. And that feels like this, like when's the recession? It's like, all right, well, how many years are you going to wait for it before you just acknowledge like life is, is passing you by? Like we're just, we're not in one. Okay. There needs to be a catalyst. It's not going to be the rate hikes. We digested them. There has to be a catalyst to knock us off course. And maybe there will be, but it's hard to see right now what that is. No, you're right.

And again, you know, you think about, well, maybe the most, biggest reason to be bearish is because stock market's doing well and people are bullish. That's not, that could just be a normal eight, five to six percenter. And like you said, Mike, how bearish? Historically, that is a terrible reason to be bearish. I's not, that could just be a normal eight, five to 6% or, and like you said, Mike, how bearish. Historically, that is a terrible reason to be bearish. I'm not bearish.

I mean, exactly. Big picture. Exactly. I'm bearish because everyone else is in a good mood. Yeah. That's, that's some weird shit. Hey, did you have fun on the show today, Ry? I did. I'm looking forward to tonight as well. Yes. This was a blast guys. Thank you. I know Mike, you gave me like an open invite like a year ago. It took me a while to get here. Maybe it's a signal the fact I'm here for short-term markets. Tom, there we go.

It's all right. It's all right. But no, this was a blast. Historically, every time Ryan is on The Compound and Friends, we'll find out what happens three, six, 12 months later.

Thank you, Ryan. Here it comes. So we keep referencing tonight. So this is, I guess, technically my birthday show. Yes. And tonight, we have like, technically my birthday show. Yes. And tonight we have like 100 people coming to hunt and fish. And this won't go up until tomorrow, so I can say this on the air.

But I'm really glad you're in town for this. Who are you most excited to see tonight? Now that I've seen you. I'm looking forward to seeing Howard. You won't see him. Oh, he's not coming. He has a leak in his roof in San Diego. What?

I swear to God. Well. I swear to God. He was supposed to be here. Sorry, Howard's not coming. He has a leak in his roof in San Diego. What? I swear to God. Well. I swear to God. He was supposed to be here. Sorry, Howard. This is the most Howard thing ever. He sends me and JC a text at like six in the morning. He's like, hey, guys, I have something wrong with my roof.

I can't leave San Diego. I'm going to send my daughter to the party. Oh, wow. Instead of Rachel, which is great. But that's a very Howard text. That is. Who else? You want to see Phil? Yeah, Phil. I never met Dan Ives very Howard text. That is. Who else? You want to see Phil?

Yeah, Phil. I never met Dan Ives. I mean, you know. Fahmy. Fahmy. Oh, yeah, Fahmy. I mean, I saw the list. It's amazing.

And by the way, so can I just do one promotion? I want you to. Okay. So I do have a podcast, Facts vs. Feelings. We do want to do it with Sonu Varghese. It's not all too different than this. It's fun conversations. And we're doing a live stream next week on Thursday

and we have Dan Ives, we have Libby Cantrell, we have Kathy Wood. You know, we've got some really, that's a nice lineup. It's going to be a really good, really big time lineup.

Neil Dutta also from Ren Mac. We've got those four. So for four hours we're going to live stream. You can follow wherever on my social medias. You can go to

carsongroup.com backslash or slash Leap Day and sign up for it. But that's on Leap Day. So they're not wherever on my social medias. You can go to CarsonGroup.com backslash or slash Leap Day and sign up for it. But that's on Leap Day. So they're not all on at the same time. You're going one conversation to the next. Exactly. 11 a.m., the noon, the top of the hour is a different person for four hours. So I'm going to be

interviewing those four people. Four hours? Four hours. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see how that goes. We'll have some DoorDash delivered or something to stretch a little bit. Do you get a break? Do you get like a little five-minute break in between? We got some little 10-minute breaks in the middle there. But it'll be a lot of fun, and I love doing that stuff, and I love visiting with you guys doing it again.

Yeah, man. So this is awesome. Well, that's a great lineup. Let's tell people more about your podcast. How often are you putting on episodes? Yeah, so it's called Facts vs. Feelings. Every week we do it, usually Wednesday mornings when it comes out. And it's been really popular growing, and it's good. And then of course I'm on Twitter at Ryan.

What's Sanu like? Oh, he's awesome. He's one of the smartest guys you'll ever meet, but also one of the most down to earth, normal guys. And we shared a lot of his charts just today on this show. And he looks at the macro stuff. I look at the technicals, but yeah, he's amazing. Got a great personality. He's my boy. He's awesome.'s awesome very very cool shout out to all right so uh we'll have everybody check out the facts versus feelings uh why'd you name it that by the way just because i think it made sense right because i like to look at facts but feelings matter we were dealing with people's investments feelings matter um but i would still

say i side with facts more than more than anything like it. But facts versus feelings just made a lot of sense. We've done, I think, 72 or 73 of them so far. And again, our first live stream, The Sleep Day, which would be awesome. That's so great, man. I love it. I love seeing you out there doing your thing. Anytime you're on TV, I tell people this. You're a volume-up guy for me, for sure.

Well, thank you. And I think you do a great job. We always close the show every week with favorites. And we try to give people stuff that maybe when they're not looking at markets and the economy, like something else to pay attention to. So what are you into these days? Well, I will say I saw some previews for Shogun on FX. It looks amazing.

I'm going to watch that. It looks really good. When does that start? I think the 27th, I think, of this month. Next week. So soon. It starts soon. But people that have seen it say it's pretty awesome. So that really good. When does that start? I think the 27th, I think, of this month. Next week. So soon. It starts soon. But people that have seen it say it's pretty awesome.

So that's good. And I know I'm a little delayed in this. I finally finished The Crown. I really enjoyed finishing that. That's a good show. It's very off-brand for you. Well, yeah. What got you interested in The Crown?

I don't really know. I just started watching it. I just kind of was into it. Now, Michael and I would probably watch a lot of movies together. I mean, I like over-the-top action. I love The Beekeeper. I just kind of was into it. Now, Michael and I would probably watch a lot of movies together. I mean, we, I like over-the-top action. I love The Beekeeper. I know that came out a lot. Is The Beekeeper the most popular movie of the year so far? I will. I haven't seen it yet. The Beekeeper's awesome. You'll love it. It was awesome. Is that on streaming?

You can do it now. You can do it on streaming now. You can pay for it or buy it, I guess, pay-per-view at home now. But Beekeeper with Statham was so amazing. I loved it. I couldn't stay with The Crown more than like three or four episodes. There's like no martial arts. Well, that's true. No, there is no martial arts. Or very little. There's like a little bit. Yeah. And they do end it like in 2005. So I kind of thought it'd be cool. You know who did the costumes for the crown? Who's that? Sintas.

Really? There you go. That's why the stock's up. The uniforms. So on the flight last night, I only watched the first 30 minutes, but I could not believe, could not believe how good BlackBerry was. Really? I was shocked.

It's like the founder good. Remember the founder with Michael Keaton? But it's a dramatization of what? Of the story of research in motion? Yeah. So again, I only saw the first 30 minutes, but super duper duper. Why is it so good? Did you see it?

Yeah, it was one of my favorite movies of the year. So it got a 98 by the... I just saw it this morning. It got a 98 from the critics and a 94 from the audience of On Tomatoes. It's spectacular. What happens in it? The first 30 minutes,

it's just incredible characters. Some nerdy founders, one super nerdy, genius founder, and some shark CEO that comes in to take over. Incredible writing, incredible acting. Really? It's so unexpected. You have to watch it. What service is it on?

I was on an airplane, but probably stream it anywhere. Okay. Blackberry. All right. When I saw this come out, I'm like, no, I think I'm good with that. But cannot recommend it highly enough. Have you seen it? No, I have not, but I think I need to. F***ing awesome. True Detective season four finale. They landed the plane.

That's a contrarian take. No, they did. It was fantastic. The whole thing was six episodes. Everyone that I know hated it. Well, I can't speak to other people's taste. I would just tell you, Jodie Foster is phenomenal. All the actors are really really great they didn't

lean on a lot of celebrities most of these actors you've never seen in anything i i didn't i just her relationship with navarro just didn't i just didn't buy it there was nothing there uh yeah i i don't know i just i thought that uh they had a tough task to do because they don't have the creator involved anymore and the creator is actually rooting against it succeeding. Oh, really? Yeah. Nick Pizzolatto apparently was like shitposting about it, the new season. Well, I think ending a murder mystery is almost impossible.

It's almost always a letdown. And I – so I said this on the podcast with Ben. I didn't like the ending, but I didn't – but I enjoyed watching the show, if that makes sense. There's a couple of things with this. One of the things is I like movies where they spend time on atmosphere and ambiance, and not every scene necessarily moves the plot forward. But you almost feel like you're escaping into another world watching it. You almost feel like you're escaping into another world watching it. I appreciate that when showrunners or cinematographers or film directors do that.

They took some time to do that in this show so much so that as you're watching it, you're not like on your phone. You feel immersed. So I agree with that. But you have to watch it, first of all, at night. Second of all, in the dark. Third of all, can't have a phone in your hand. You either surrender to it and you join the world that they create for you or forget it. Don't even bother. And I felt that way about the first season of True Detective.

You felt like you were transported into this world that the characters inhabit. They did that really well with this. And Alaska is a f***ed up place. Like, no offense to our Alaskan listeners, but it's perpetual night at this time of year. And so that's – you have to like be in the right frame of mind to watch the show. Well, to your point, Josh, it is a show that I watched at night with my phone off. So I enjoyed watching it even if I didn't love the ending. But let me ask you this for the end.

So there was nothing really supernatural about it. No, that's the point. Right. So that was a nice misdirect.'t love the ending. But let me ask you this for the end. So there was nothing really supernatural about it. No, that's the point. Right. So that was a nice misdirect. That's the point. And they successfully did that again. I think with True Detective, I think the job that HBO Max had

was to bring in a showrunner who could go back to what made the first season so magical and try to recapture that because seasons two and three didn't work. And the thing that the first season so magical and try to recapture that because seasons two and three didn't work. And the thing that the first season did was it started out. You thought you were in the presence of supernatural forces, but then by the end, all of that was explained by like real world phenomena. And I thought they did that this time really well. So anyway, anyway, I can't recommend this season enough. Also, I think I'm a Bill Ackman

stan now. Did you listen to Lex Friedman and Bill Ackman podcast? No. What the f*** are you talking about? I think I love Bill Ackman. You listened to the Bill Ackman-Lex Friedman podcast? I listened to the whole thing. It was three and a half hours. Wow.

I'm shocked. This is more shocking than your true detective take. Why? This just does not seem like a thing that you would do. It's so good. What if I tell you I'll pay you money to listen to it? I'll do it. All right. Wait, no, say more.

Go on. What if I tell you that either Bill Adman is Academy Award-level winning chops as an actor? I don't – that's not true. Or you genuinely believe as he relays these horrible experiences that he went through and then gets back to the triumph of more recent times. But like he tells a story of like 2014, 15, 16, 17, just being annihilated by life. Like literally Carl Icahn blows him up. Then Paul Singer comes along and tries to put him out a bit, force him to liquidate. Then he gets divorced, then valiant. And it's like one mishap after another, he owns all of the mistakes that he made leading up to it. It doesn't seem like he's acting at all. He genuinely makes you feel how he felt in those

moments. And then the comeback is so good. Okay. I buy that. Leading up to those moments during the Herbalife saga, he was such a colossal, arrogant prick. He says that. Okay. Do you know what he did after Valiant? So he was humbled. He called for a block of granite and a chisel and he put his investment rules into rock. And he told the people that were around him who probably also suffered as a result of his decisions.

If you ever see me deviate from these core principles again, hit me with a hammer. And ever since then, what has he done? He went back to his knitting. He's an activist, but not in the sense of, let me get into a fist fight. He's like an activist in a good way. He owns companies that he actually likes, like Chipotle, for example. Who told you to listen to this?

This is not, this does not sound like you. I like Lex Friedman a little, a medium like him. I don't, so I don't, I've never listened to his podcast. I don't, I just, I his podcast. I don't get it. Where did this guy come from? I almost was professor at MIT. No, really? I can't listen to it.

I don't understand. He came out of nowhere and now he's interviewing Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. How did he do this? He sent all these emails saying, I'm a professor at MIT. Come on. No, seriously. I'm literally telling you the exact story that happened. He sent all these emails during the pandemic saying I'm a professor at MIT.

Very successful people, when they get something from somebody who's in the faculty of MIT, they're like, yes. So he got these really great interviews. He also has this really interesting deadpan thing that he does, the way he asks questions.

His tone is always very even. He doesn't get overly excited. And he's willing to listen to anyone. So he'll have people on that are somewhat controversial talking, and he'll let them talk. And it's disarming, and it's charming, and people like it. And he's not the only person that hit upon this. There's a girl named Bobbi Altoff. You know who that is?

Okay. She's like, she looks like she's a 14-year-old girl, but she's actually married or now divorced. She got a Drake interview. It makes no sense that she was able to get a Drake interview. She does interviews like literally on Instagram. But she just sent him a DM, shot her shot, and he said yes. It was part of his rollout for his last album. Ever since then, she's gotten like every hip-hop star to be on her show.

She does this deadpan style of question, like interview style. People are so disarmed by it because she doesn't sound like anyone else. DM Jim Simons right now. No, I'm just making the point. because she doesn't sound like anyone else. DM Jim Simons right now. No, I'm just making the point. There are people that are doing content very differently from like a mainstream media approach.

And it's really hitting. And Lex is one of those people. People really like when he talks to, he had Bezos. Yeah. Like, anyway, how did he do it? He figured out it's very effective to put MIT in the subject line. People say yes. And then it feeds on itself.

And it's like it became a thing. And now it's like, oh, yeah, of course, Lex Friedman is going to get Putin and Elon and all these people. Of course he is. Because he just – he became – He went from zero to Lex Friedman like overnight. Yeah, but that's dope, though. It's kind of crazy. I think that's fly. I like people that invent themselves. It's kind of crazy. I think that's fly.

I like people that invent themselves. I'm one of them. So I respect the hustle. Anyway, Bill Ackman is great on this podcast. He tells all. He's very charming. I know he weaponizes that charm sometimes or is notorious for having done so. But honestly, if you listen to him tell his own story, it's really good.

Well, you know what? I will listen to Bill Ackman tell a story on this podcast, on this podcast alone. I don't think he's coming on our show. Put MIT on the subject line, he might.

That's, you know what? MIT professor. You cracked the code. Hey, man, thank you so much for coming. We think the world of you. I hope I made that very clear to the audience.

We want everyone to follow you. You're LinkedIn made that very clear to the audience. We want everyone to follow you. You're LinkedIn, Ryan Dietrich. You're on Twitter, at Ryan Dietrich. What's your OnlyFans? You're on all the things. You did a great job all of last year. I hope you'll be right again this year. Thank you so much for coming.

Duncan, we have time for one review. You want to go ahead and read that for us? Yeah, I've got a good one. Steve Z says, absolutely fabulous. A tour de force. Engaging, entertaining, educational. Best podcast. Thanks, Josh, Michael, and team.

I was going to say, is that a Lex Friedman review? No, it's for us. All right. Hey, guys, if you haven't left us a review yet, wouldn't this be a great time to do it? Tell us how great the show with Ryan Dietrich was. We would really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

And thanks to everyone for listening. We appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. I think we're ready to record. What do you think? Should we do it for real? Let's do it. Yeah?

All right. That was good. That was good. All right. That was fast. I want to take those clips. Take those clips. All right. There you go. All right. All right. All right.

All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right.

All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right.