10 Reasons to be Bullish (EP. 472)

11:01Michael Batnick:It is great. Can I say one more? So these are all wonderful charts from that. You mentioned the Taylor Sheridan interview. One of the things that he said, because everybody's like, how the hell are you making all these shows? It doesn't seem possible that you are pumping out this volume, right? Between Landman and Yellowstone and all the spinoffs and Lioness and Madison, whatever, and, you know, Mayor of Kingstown and what's it, Tulsa King. And I'm sure there's a few others that I'm thinking of. And he said something along the lines of ideas are easy, but I just, I'm on my ranch. I lock my door and I don't come out until I'm done.

11:40Ben Carlson:effort. And he was saying that I probably don't work as hard as some other people do. But no one messes with me.

11:47Michael Batnick:So know what Chartkid did last week? And he said, man, it feels good to send these out. He sent a copy of Risk and Reward to all several hundred subscribers that are on the Exhibit A platform. And he was jacked up to do it.

12:03Ben Carlson:Signed copies, too.

12:04Michael Batnick:The little things go the long way.

12:06Ben Carlson:Yeah. Anyway, obviously there are plenty of other counterbalances to what matt posted about being bullish there's plenty of other stuff you could and you've heard it though everyone knows what the bearish arguments

12:17Michael Batnick:are i think yeah um all right this is an awesome chart from wait it's all right and maybe the the

12:23Ben Carlson:most bearish one is just i the returns have been so good i think that's the most bearish thing you could say is that we've pulled forward a lot. Ah, right. It's priced. It's returns have to be lower because they've been higher. That's the, that's the only thing I could say,

12:39Michael Batnick:but not as high as you might have thought. So bespoke us a chart showing the S and P returns on a percentile rank basis for one year, two year, five year, 10 year, 20 year. and over the last five years we're in the 59th percentile not nearly as high as i would have thought now there's 2022 in there which i think right you know i keep saying that we forget about once that one falls off it's going to go up a lot higher okay 10 years 78th percentile probably lower than i would have guessed i'm sure i would have guessed 90th and 20 years now we have the gfc in here so once this rolls off it's going to shoot up but 54th percentile

13:30Ben Carlson:but you're right these are still lower than most people would assume right that's fair that's pretty good um how about this another one from exhibit a matt small caps had since 2005 small caps had their biggest spread over large caps in that time and by a wide, wide margin. The last time we had a small caps outperforming this much in the first six months of the year, 2018, you'd have to go back to like 2006 before this happened. Small caps outperformed by 12%.

14:00Michael Batnick:I still don't have an awesome answer as to why this is happening. We were talking with Belsky that it's not just like a market cap thing. It's got to be a sector thing. I think that's where I've landed. Although I don't really evidence there. Because if you look at the S &P 500 and you break it down by decile, and you look at year-to-date returns, the mega cap are winning. And it's not like buckets 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are doing well. They're not. So the larger stocks in the S &P 500 are outperforming. The equal weight is not really outperforming. And yet the Russell 2000 is outperforming by a wide margin.

14:37Ben Carlson:So I told you last week, I put this in, I took all the Russell 1 ,000 holdings from Y charts and year-to-date returns. And I put it into Claude and I said, where are these returns coming from? And it wasn't one sector, one, it was biotech. And of course, there's like the semis and AI part of the small cap where it's happening, but it's all over the place. Like I said, it's like two thirds of the returns, two thirds of the names are up year to date. It's a lot of small caps.

15:07Michael Batnick:Well, then also on the narrative part of it, I think conventional wisdom says that small caps tend to do better when the cost of capital is coming down, which is not even close to happening. Right. When Main Street is outperforming Wall Street, I don't know if that's real. Maybe I just made that up.

15:24Ben Carlson:So how about this? Is it a flows thing? If money just finally flowing in there to where they find some value? I don't have a good answer either.

15:34Michael Batnick:All right. Getting back to the large stuff.

15:40Ben Carlson:I think when you don't know a good answer about the market. Flows. But the market is usually right about these. This is the market getting ahead of something. Could it also be an AI thing where people are going, you know what, we're trying to look forward to where the next winners from AI are going to come from.

15:57Michael Batnick:No.

15:58Ben Carlson:You don't think that's it?

15:59Michael Batnick:No.

16:00Ben Carlson:You don't think that smaller companies are going to benefit from AI?

16:04Michael Batnick:That's not what you just said. they may benefit from ai but you think enough investors are like saying we're going to buy small caps because they no i don't think so that's that's you're reaching for trust all right i am reaching out because i don't know um so symbolist is a chart showing equity market concentration we've spoken about this a lot that the u.s but this is an incredible visual the u.s is actually at the lower end. So the top 10 companies as a share of the index, India and Japan are smaller than us. Everything else is more concentrated, significantly so.

16:42Ben Carlson:Yeah, it's not even close in most cases. There's a handful of countries. It looks like, I don't know, a dozen countries where the top 10 make up almost 100%, probably 99%.

16:52Michael Batnick:The massive difference that sort of makes that chart totally garbage or perhaps useless is the size yes so seven u.s companies have a similar weight to the next seven biggest countries in the msc all-country world in the next combined tesla meta amazon microsoft apple bet apple nvidia are as big as france china korea canada uk

17:15Ben Carlson:taiwan and japan look at this next one from uh deutsche bank they had this america 250 report and they show that the U.S. accounts for half of the world's public market capitalization, but they also show the MAG-7 on here. And yeah, the MAG-7 would be, as a country, the second biggest to the U.S. if you just stripped out the MAG-7. Way ahead of China, way ahead of Japan. Total world market cap. I don't know, I think this is through June 30th. $167 trillion. Kind of a lot of money. Okay, this is a crazy stat on AI stuff. Someone flagged this. I saw this on Twitter. Samsung had a big meeting, internal meeting, and somehow all the quotes leaked or something, or they put it out to a press conference.

18:00Ben Carlson:This year's profit for Samsung will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business. Oh, my God. One year of profits is more than the 40 years previously combined. It's kind of funny. Talk about the market knowing and not knowing things. So over the past year, Samsung is up over 400%. In the past five years, the company is only up 300%. Okay, so all of that return has essentially come in the last year. So you had a few years there where Chattipity came out, and then you had AI stuff going on in 2023, 2024, 2025. It dipped a little bit, and then it took off.

18:45Ben Carlson:Why was the market so slow to understand that there would be a memory shortage? Can't answer that. This seems like one of those things where the market really was, everyone was behind on this. Was it just people thought like, there's no way this is going to happen this quickly. There's no way. Yeah, I, out of my, out of my depth.

19:07Michael Batnick:Samsung.

19:08Ben Carlson:A lot of stuff we don't know today.

19:09Michael Batnick:Yeah. Yeah. Well. Markets make it. Markets do that to people. Can't know everything. Samsung fell 7 % last night. Hang on.

19:15Ben Carlson:That's a huge red flag though. If you are talking to someone in the, that a pundit, a wealth manager, hedge fund manager, if they know everything, they're full of shit. No one knows everything when it comes to the markets.

19:27Michael Batnick:Yes. So Samsung reported seven, I'm sorry, the stock, the stock is down 7%. Micron pre-market down 6 % or so. Micron is in a 25 % drawdown.

19:39Ben Carlson:It's all priced in.

19:42Michael Batnick:Western Digital looks significantly worse.

19:44Ben Carlson:Wait, you've been championing this 30 % Micron drawdown. This thing was going to happen.

19:48Michael Batnick:I'm not rooting for it. I just... Sand... Not Sandus. Western Dig. You got a vacuum going on there or something? I do. Okay. I'll close my door.

19:59Ben Carlson:Let's just pretend it's not happening.

20:02Michael Batnick:Western Dig down 34 % at the open. Peak to trough. Or current prices from peak. One sec. Anyway, is this the top for these names? Who the hell knows? But money is definitely rotating out of the AI names and back into some of the software names.

20:18Ben Carlson:But that was the easiest call to make. that we've been saying for a few weeks, eventually these stocks are going to get slaughtered.

20:22Michael Batnick:Yeah, that was not a brave. I don't think it was going out on a limb.

20:25Ben Carlson:Didn't go out on a limb on a limb. Hey, out on a limb, you got that one.

20:29Michael Batnick:Boom. You know, somebody emailed us. I was talking with a friend actually at the beach over the weekend about how sometimes your brain breaks. He was looking for a phrase. And I said, dude, I gave him like the Leo gift. So this happens to me five times a show on the podcast. I can't, you know, once the camera's recording, the mic is on, you know, lights get bright. Yep. Okay. Retail has become the structural bid. This is from Citadel. Retail investors are deploying capital at a record pace. June is on track to become the strongest month in our history with daily purchases running nearly four times last year's average.

21:05Michael Batnick:There's another one showing that retail investors are buying the dip heavily, aggressively. Retail investors purchased nearly three and a half times the average daily amount on S &P 500 down days during the first half of 2026. the strongest buy the dip behavior in our data set unbelievable even on rallies they continue

21:21Ben Carlson:to buy nearly one and a half times the daily average wow by the way someone from citadel emailed me said hey citadel is the hedge fund citadel securities is the market maker there's a difference we know okay we know that you know that i know yeah apparently i didn't didn't say

21:40Michael Batnick:it all them citadel and citadel securities okay um well i believe this comes from citadel security. Setting the record straight. It says, well, it says Scott Rubner. Rubner, Rubner.

21:51Ben Carlson:Yeah.

21:51Michael Batnick:But then the source of civil securities.

21:53Ben Carlson:Those are really good reports that they put out. I like it.

21:57Michael Batnick:You know what? I thought, you know when this happens, speaking of like not knowing everything, when you think something, when you're reading something, you're like, oh, that's because of this. And then you scroll down and then like immediately you get refuted. Right. That happened me with these charts okay so i thought uh well yeah the mag 7 like the favorite retail names have been underperforming for all year they just they just keep doubling down and you know putting more more and more and more and more mag 7 literally been the next chart retail investors in the past week showed less interest in mag 7 stocks and on roughly 85 of trading days since 2022.

22:36Ben Carlson:Rotation.

22:37Michael Batnick:So they have no interest. Right. My instinct was completely wrong.

22:42Ben Carlson:So part of the reason Mag7 is selling off is obvious. People are not interested as much anymore.

22:47Michael Batnick:And people are not interested. The question is, are they not interested for the right reasons? I don't know.

22:53Ben Carlson:They're not interested because they're not performing. How's that? Yeah. It's all momentum play, right? The returns slowed. So they went and found momentum elsewhere.

23:02Michael Batnick:The market is interesting how like, And sometimes it will, and I'm using like Apple in this case. Last week, two weeks ago, I said on the show when Apple fell 6 % after that it was going to pass through price increases. I thought, I was like, huh, I would thought it would be, the stock would rally 5 % on the day because they're obviously taking some to the bottom line, right? They're going to like, they're going to raise more than they need to. And is that going to slow people down from buying Apple? I highly doubt it. Stock fell 6 % and the next three sessions, it's back at an all-time high.

23:31Ben Carlson:Oh, okay. So that was an algal-driven style up then.

23:35Michael Batnick:I suppose. Here's another good one from Luke Kawa at Sherwood Securities. Just kidding, just Sherwood. The correlation between the daily change in the S &P 500 and net purchases of single stocks in Robinhood is negative 0.54 so far this year. A testament to the eagerness to buy dips and dial down purchases during big up days. So I guess Robinhood probably routes a lot of their orders through security through citadel securities but the finger waggers will say this is going to end badly just wait you know what people have uh pucker up buttercup remember that guy that email that came in years ago to us oh yeah yep pucker up buttercup um yeah people have been saying this

24:18Ben Carlson:forever yeah i i and i i will take the other side of this sure when there's a financial crisis it's going to be painful but it's not going to be painful because people buy stocks and they keep going down. Like that's not going to be the painful part. The painful part is going to be

24:33Michael Batnick:people losing their jobs and not having savings to invest.

24:36Ben Carlson:That's going to be the painful part.

24:37Michael Batnick:Yeah.

24:38Ben Carlson:All right. Hendrick Bessenbinder, new report already. You know, I saw somebody,

24:43Michael Batnick:you were about to say it. I saw somebody refer to him as Hank.

24:46Ben Carlson:Hank Bessenbinder. Okay.

24:47Michael Batnick:All right. I like it. Do you know Henry's my middle name? Did you know that? I did not know that. And growing up, I was embarrassed about two things. Well, more than two things, but two things.

24:57Ben Carlson:Hank Batnick.

24:58Michael Batnick:I was embarrassed about my middle name, Henry. Not a kid's name. And I have a large big toe. That embarrassed me when I was a kid. Now you know my deepest, darkest secrets, Ben.

25:09Ben Carlson:You do have a freakishly large big toe, don't you?

25:11Michael Batnick:You've seen my big toe?

25:12Ben Carlson:Yeah.

25:13Michael Batnick:I mean, I wouldn't say it's freakish. It's dominant.

25:15Ben Carlson:Yeah. It's long. I like Henry as a name. That's a good name.

25:21Michael Batnick:Well, it came around in 1992. Henry was not, you know, Henry was embarrassing. So he has a paper on do nothing.

25:30Ben Carlson:He looked at like the S &P 500. And if you just bought these 500 stocks and let them go and didn't rebalance. And he's saying like a lot of the just buy and hold portfolios work better. Anyway, that wasn't the interesting part of his paper to me. The interesting part of his paper with me, he looked at different size portfolios. He looked at like 500 stocks, 300, 100, 10, and then one. And he looked at what if you just bought the biggest stock every year in the S &P 500 going back to 1971. It's not that many stocks. IBM for a long time. AT &T there for a little bit. Exxon, GE for a very long time.

26:02Ben Carlson:And then Apple. Microsoft a little bit. So it's like seven names or something. And by the way, look at GE's run from 94 to 99. It was up 45 % per year or more. 40 % or more per year every single year. Up 45, up 40, up 51, up 41, up 68. In consecutive years. Unbelievable. No wonder this thing crashed. But it's kind of crazy if you look at it, because the idea is I've seen studies before that say like, hey, if you buy the biggest 10 names or something, you're going to underperform. The average return for just buying the biggest name is 11.3 % per year. I think the I think it slightly underperforms the S &P, which was, I don't know, 12 % per year or something like that, or 12.5.

26:47Ben Carlson:But it's not like the returns are terrible.

26:49Michael Batnick:So I saw this stat back in probably 2016 for the first time, I'm guessing. And this was a Ned Davis chart. And it showed that if you only owned the largest stock, you significantly underperformed the index, which does make intuitive sense, right? Like trees don't grow to the scry, mean inversion, et cetera. So there used to be a big gap.

27:14Ben Carlson:Yeah, I wonder if Apple being doing so well has changed this. Apple broke the data series. I think so, because Apple has done so well. You're right, I think it's kind of increased the average. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. All right, here's something that I'm sick of. I just want it to stop forever. I want to stop pandering to people who are doing well off, complaining about their financial situation. There are people who legitimately have a gripe against the economy, against how much things cost, but not these people. In San Francisco, even$180 ,000 tech salaries are no longer enough.

27:48Ben Carlson:Okay, and they talk about how open AI and Anthropic and all the rich AI money coming in is hurting people. And they interview people and they talk about this 27-year-old who's earning$180 ,000. And her partner earns$185 ,000. And it says, these days, even though six-figure salaries are no longer enough in San Francisco. Boo-frickin'-hoo. I feel sorry for the teachers and the firefighters and the police officers and the service workers. Those people, how do those people survive in a place like San Francisco?

28:16Michael Batnick:Right, amen.

28:16Ben Carlson:If you're a tech person and you make six-figure salary, I'm sorry you're not as rich as the AI people. I'm sorry. Deal with it. I'm not going to feel sorry for you because I'm sick of these stories that are trying to make upper middle class or rich people feel bad about their situation and allow them to complain. Am I being too harsh? No. I get it. They're saying, hey, a lot of people are going to have to, these people are going to have to move to Seattle or Austin or somewhere else. and there's a huge concentration of wealth in San Francisco. They don't build enough housing. I get it. It's got to be super annoying.

28:54Ben Carlson:You work in technology. You can work remotely. Yeah. You make way more money than the vast majority of Americans. Well, I guess I'm empathetic to that,

29:05Michael Batnick:but also nobody's writing an article about the firefighters and the teachers. That's what I'm saying. We should. You're right. Those are people that deserve sympathy. You're right. San Francisco is a weird place, especially right now. Now, I haven't been to San Francisco in like 30 years. Not 30 years. I went when I was 17. So I can't really comment on what goes on there or what doesn't. But from this aspect alone, in June, so Mike Simonson tweeted this. In June, 44 transactions in San Francisco closed at at least$1 million above the final ask price. So they show this data series going back to 2024.

29:43Michael Batnick:And obviously this, you know, 44, it's not a gigantic number, but this used to never happen. Why would a house go over a million dollars above the asking price? And now there is literally just not enough homes to house all these people. And there's way too much money. There is a huge imbalance here. So how do the firefighters and the teachers survive? Don't know. Matter of fact…

30:08Ben Carlson:How would Danny Tanner survive? Was he working on a morning show for Full House? He had that great house on the hill in Full House. There's no way that, but listen, Danny Tanner took on roommates. Uncle Joey lived there. Uncle Jesse lived there. Uncle Jesse's family lived in the top floor of their house. They made do in San Francisco. Right?

30:31Michael Batnick:Full House. I don't think you can make do anymore. No.

30:34Ben Carlson:I get the frustration, but I'm just saying there's other people who deserve more sympathy than tech workers making$400 ,000 a year. in their 20s. In their 20s. Move somewhere else. That's the thing.

30:50Michael Batnick:All right. This, I thought, was a moderately interesting email. Hey, guys, weird little AI story, but I think you'll appreciate it. I connected my budgeting app to an AI tool, which meant that I'd eyes on my brokerage account, most likely judging my position, sizing more than I'd like. I was in the middle of overthinking some portfolio moves and asked it for a podcast that could make me sound smarter as I convinced myself to buy SpaceX or the IPO. It said animal spirits. Rude that an AI knows me better than I know myself, but it was right. And now I haven't missed an episode since. That's a genuinely useful AI use case, if a slightly humbling one.

31:20Michael Batnick:Also, I had AI write this entire email, including the subject line with the explicit goal of getting you to click it. So really, the AI recommended your podcast to me, and then turned around and wrote an ad copy to get your attention. Did it work? It's basically running my financial life and my correspondence at this point. Send help. This did not sound like AI.

31:37Ben Carlson:Yeah, but do you think you don't think this is a person who went and changed a few things for AI or not?

31:42Michael Batnick:Probably not. Well, I don't know. Maybe, maybe could have, but the point is that you're able to have all of these tools go through your scent box, learn how you write. And this is, this is just it.

31:58Ben Carlson:I was using Claude the other day for some sort of research piece. And then at the very end, I think it was when I was researching small caps or something. It said, tying back into what you've been writing on a wealth of common sense. And I didn't even, you know, it just, it tied it back into my stuff. And it was, but it was pandering to me.

32:15Michael Batnick:Yeah. Right? Well, you know how the conversation was like, we're tied to this AI slop. It's so obvious when it's written by AI. Yeah. It's not going to be obvious anymore, which is, I guess I have mixed thoughts on that.

32:27Ben Carlson:I don't know. I still feel like I'm going to be able to, I'm going to be one of those people that can spot it. Were you able to spot this one? That sounds like a good game show.

32:35Michael Batnick:like spot the ai yeah give me five pieces of writing and i'll tell you which one the ai produced all right people are gambling let's talk about it okay uh joey politano wrote this

32:48Ben Carlson:for the argument uh americans are set to lose nearly 250 billion dollars gambling this year a record high up more than 60 since 2019 and that's before counting unofficial betting via prediction markets or crypto can anything anything stop america's gambling boom yes a recession can

33:03Michael Batnick:Can I zag here? Okay. This is a sign of good times. This is a sign of a really healthy economy.

33:14Ben Carlson:Yeah, you're right. People have money to blow.

33:16Michael Batnick:Yeah. Now, I understand that there is obviously an element of hopelessness in here, that there are obviously a cohort of these bettors that are doing it because they see no light at the end of the tunnel, right? Like, obviously, there's a group of people. You're right.

33:33Ben Carlson:You find out who the real degenerates are in a recession because they're still gambling. Right. They're not using it as entertainment for side money.

33:40Michael Batnick:But he's saying that Americans are set to lose nearly$250 billion in gambling, a record high at more than 60 % since 2019. What a sign of progress. Now, you might hate it, and I certainly don't.

33:54Ben Carlson:He's showing credit delinquency soars in the years after gaining access to legalized sports betting.

34:00Michael Batnick:Okay. Okay, so this is the dark part that I was just talking about. Whoa, I just messed up the guy. This is the dark part of it. So it is, these are small numbers. Right.

34:14Ben Carlson:Right? In the relative scheme of the whole economy, you're right. $250 billion is a drop in the bucket.

34:19Michael Batnick:So the change in the credit delinquencies, it's like, what is that, half a percent?

34:23Ben Carlson:Like, well, is it 10 % of gamblers are problematic or 5 %? You're right. It's a, it's probably a small number, but there are, there are people who are getting their lives ruined and it's easier. You and I have heard stories. People have their lives ruined by gambling just because it's easier to do. And that's unfortunate, but you're, it's, it's also a small number of people.

34:43Michael Batnick:Yeah. So I, if I could set my fingers in and make the shit go away, I would.

34:47Ben Carlson:Yes, I agree. There's no, there's no real use for it besides advertising for podcasts. Yeah.

34:52Michael Batnick:The human stories of people losing their lives is beyond, beyond, beyond tragic. Um, okay. Okay, so that's true, but it's also true that I think that you don't have$250 billion worth of gambling in anything other than a pretty healthy economy.

35:04Ben Carlson:I will take the other side of this and say that number is never going lower again, ever. Unless we have a prohibition on gambling, that number is as low as it's ever going to be, and it's only going to get higher because we're going to keep making it easier and having more platforms to gamble, and that number is never going lower.

35:18Michael Batnick:Yeah, you might be right. I'm not calling a top where I have no idea. It'll dip. I think it'll dip during the next serious recession as people lose their jobs. But maybe it gets really dark and then people really start gambling. That's what if people decide, like, I need to do something.

35:33Ben Carlson:I'm going to keep gambling.

35:34Michael Batnick:Well, you know why they're not going to do that? Because I think people are smart enough to understand in general that the more you gamble, the more you lose. So there was an episode on the OddLots podcast. there was an article in the times written by uh adam isco and he was talking about the sharps that's what they're called sharks with a p these are like the intelligent bettors on these platforms polymarket and kalashii that are actually winning a lot of money and i thought these guys were very interesting the guys who are doing this And they're just kind of, they're not like Wall Street people.

36:18Ben Carlson:They're just kind of regular people who have feared out that there are still some common sense loopholes in the prediction markets, and they know where they are.

36:26Michael Batnick:So Prince Hal, a struggling screenwriter turned full-time Calci trader, has been trading for about a decade. He showed me how he builds inflation forecasting models that consistently outperform major financial institutions to the tune of$3.7 million in lifetime profits. He said, me and the banks are doing the same thing. I think it says more about the market than it does about me. They can't beat an acting major in a garage with Excel. The author said that he asked a macroeconomist who forecast inflation for a prominent Wall Street hedge fund to review Prince House trades and methodology. And he said, quote, I'm actually dumbfounded.

37:01He told me this guy might literally be Nostradamus.

37:04Ben Carlson:So him, this guy explaining how he built his inflation model, I thought was fascinating. He talked about how, listen, inflation is stuff that's the inflation number has already happened. So he says, I got on the phone with BLS and I figured out how they calculate this stuff. And I created a model, which just looks, and he said, listen, gas prices are kind of, there's a lot of prices that are known. The other stuff, you have to make some guesses and estimates, but he's like, I don't understand why the Wall Street people don't do this. And the reason is, I thought about this. He's like, well, how are these Wall Street people so bad at forecasting?

37:33Ben Carlson:And I just literally built the same model that BLS uses and I'm really, really close. Why don't they do this? And you wanna know why? Because most of the strategists on Wall Street are not quants like this guy. They're not in the basement running numbers. They're marketers. That's it. They don't care how accurate they are. They want to have a wide range of results, right? You don't think that's fair? They want to have a wide range of results? What do you mean? Well, you want to be in the headlines. I mean, obviously, if you have a... I'm saying the reason that they don't have more sophisticated models like this is because most of the strategists, again, they're going on CNBC and they're going on Bloomberg and they're marketing people.

38:14Ben Carlson:They're not want people for the most part. Anyway, I thought his whole story was really interesting.

38:23Michael Batnick:Yeah, me too. It was, what does that say about the way things are done? Is it groupthink? I'm not sure exactly what it is. But what you said, his point was, I'm not trying to forecast something that I think is going to happen. That's obviously extremely difficult. I'm trying to model something that happened.

38:40Ben Carlson:Right, it already happened. The prices have already changed. But I thought their point, the whole thing about prediction markets though, and they were like, listen, we don't think that this is something that's going to like totally revolutionize and change the world because it's zero sum. And that's the thing. What happens when the suckers leave the poker table? How do you keep finding enough suckers to keep coming in?

39:00Michael Batnick:Well, so this is the thing. There are a lot of suckers, but don't you eventually sort of run out of people? So they were saying like this, this happened in in poker and what was the other one that they used the other example that they

39:14Ben Carlson:used uh fantasy football and yeah the same thing yeah yeah like there's there's the the sharks are

39:20Michael Batnick:waiting and eventually the minnows just say i'm not going to the sharks anymore this is what happened in the fund industry when people went passive they left we're not going to try to pick active management we're just going to buy index funds yeah i'm so people who are left competing are the pros. Yeah, I'm so curious to fast forward. I don't know how long it takes for that to happen. Is it in 10 years? Is it in 20 years? Where people are like, I don't f***ing gamble on Calci. What are you, the biggest moron on the planet? All you're doing is go and get professionals.

39:53Ben Carlson:So do they have to change the way that they, do they have to become like, do they have to take the other side of some of these bets somehow?

40:01Michael Batnick:Well, Susquehanna and these market makers, they're taking the side of every bet at the right price. here's an interesting story.

40:10Ben Carlson:Wait, so we keep saying this. So what would, why would we be wrong on this? What would cause us to be wrong? On which? That eventually this kind of runs out and peters out for these predictive markets.

40:22Michael Batnick:Okay, here's how. If people bucket this as entertainment spending money, if they say, yeah, I lose 3 % a year or I'm making that up, whatever it is. I have$1 ,000 a year that I use for entertainment purposes. And that's just what I lose every year. And I have a great time doing it.

40:46Ben Carlson:Yeah, like people who trade options and stock trade. Yeah, they're fun.

40:50Michael Batnick:But I've mentioned this before about my own gambling habits. Somebody emailed me and it's like, hey, this is fun. I'm just getting into it. I'm like, oh boy. But they're like asking for safety tips and whatever. I don't really have a great answer here. But for me personally, my FanDuel app now shows my cumulative losses. And I lose. I've lost$0.07 on every dollar. That's where I'm at today. But guess what?

41:18Ben Carlson:You're essentially paying the VIG. That's your losses.

41:21Michael Batnick:Yeah. And I love gambling. But if I do a million dollars worth of bets over the next 10 years, am I comfortable losing$70 ,000? I mean, it's not that much fun. You know, so, you know, I don't know where the line is. All right.

41:40Ben Carlson:Well, it's already probably bigger than we would have thought if you would ask us five years ago. So maybe we'll continue to be wrong on this.

41:46Michael Batnick:They said like 40 % of men between ages, whatever, 18 and 40 have gambled. I think that's probably light.

41:54Ben Carlson:And it'll obviously spike around political events. That stuff will still continue to be big.

41:58Michael Batnick:Oh, that part was interesting to me. One of the reasons why they're why they're consistently able to make money on elections is there's an emotional element to elections like there isn't with inflation.

42:08Ben Carlson:People are betting on who they want to win, not who they think will win.

42:11Michael Batnick:So maybe there's some persistent alpha there, but if enough money comes in, all right, whatever. This story was interesting. Spotify deletes stream of chart-topping song after suspicious Calci bets. So the platform removed more than 500 ,000 streams of Malcolm Todd track earrings. Unconcerned traders propelled it to number one. That was a FT story. So look at this chart.

42:35Ben Carlson:So they had bots playing the song over and over again?

42:38Michael Batnick:So I think it cost, Matt Levin was writing about it. Like it takes a dollar to play a song a hundred times or whatever it is. So somebody did this enough times, spent enough money to do this and bet on this to be the number one song and made like a 10 ,000 % return or something like that. Weird shit is happening. So Matt wrote, prediction markets are truth machines in the sense that they give people incentives to figure out what is true and bet on it. But they are also obviously and increasingly falsehood machines in the sense that they give people incentives to make bets and then distort reality to make those bets pay off.

43:15Michael Batnick:Because of prediction markets, it is now lucrative to figure out what song will be the most popular, but it is even more lucrative to make a different song look most popular. Prediction markets can make it harder to know what is true. Joe had a good point. Um, I thought an interesting point. So I think most people are like, anything inside of trading related should be punished and criminalized and prosecuted. And I think we generally agree, especially if you are in a position of, if you're an elected official straight to jail. But for everything else, Joe's point was like, sort of who gives a shit in the sense that you really want government resources being allocated to this of all things.

43:53True.

43:54Ben Carlson:Well, I guess the counter to that would be the people who give a shit are the ones who bet on Olivia Rodrigo. and go, hey, wait a minute. I got screwed. I was going to get a payoff on my bet. And now some jerk did his Spotify thing and he won. So you're taking advantage of -

44:09Michael Batnick:You're gambling. This is gambling.

44:10Ben Carlson:All right. That's fair. That's true. If you bet on which Spotify song is going to be number one with your money -

44:15Michael Batnick:It's hard to have a step. Do we really want government resources there? Buy or be aware. Okay. Two interesting nuggets in private markets. This is from Bloomberg. The total amount of money in software investments held on the books of alternative asset managers is difficult to assess, but by some measures could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In 2025, the value of software-related private equity transactions reached$203 billion, according to a recent report by PitchBook. So check this out. Money flowing into the software sector has gone from around 25 % to half of new private equity and venture capital, more than double that share from 15 years ago.

44:55Michael Batnick:there's going to be some really, really bad numbers over the next decade that we find out about.

45:02Ben Carlson:It's kind of funny to think that private equity used to just be more hard asset kind of businesses. And now in the past 15 years, it looks like they've just made a huge, huge push into tech to try to keep up with VC, I guess. You're right. The whole industry has kind of been transformed. is that wild and you can't just cut your losers short when you're in private equity you have to deal with it for a long time

45:32Michael Batnick:alright so let's do a market check it's 9.50 Tuesday morning and the AI names are getting smoked sandisk down nine amat down 10 uh western digit down eight intel seven amd seven micron six

45:56Ben Carlson:and a half yeah that's what happens in momentum names a couple weeks ago josh and i were talking about roundhill launched dram which is obviously you know explosive explosive success credit to

46:10Michael Batnick:them. Then they launched RAM. This is the business, which is the double X lever, which has now been cut in half in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Is that nine trading days? But there's options on RAM. So we spoke about leverage a couple of weeks ago. We're on the other side of it now. So. Okay.

46:34Ben Carlson:Yeah. So that, that, that ETF is down a quick 26%. Which one? DRAM.

46:39Michael Batnick:Oh, DRAM. Buyers will step in, but is it right now or is it 15 % lower? We'll find out. Okay. One more. So we've spoken not as much in recent weeks. Some of the noise has died down about the private credit outflows. Well, that was mostly on the Wealth Channel. Large institutional investors are diving in. North American direct lending funds that seek to attract institutional clients raised at least$16 billion in the second quarter. The three months ending in June 25th, this was the second strongest quarter in four years for fundraising by such closed-end funds, which raise money from investors only once they have a finite life.

47:33Michael Batnick:Isn't that interesting? So retail is running out and large money is diving in.

47:42Ben Carlson:I guess it makes sense that, yeah, if you have a longer time horizon and you see some disruption here, hey, we're going to hold for the long haul. That's the biggest problem is people who didn't hold these things, didn't know that you had to hold these things for 10 years or whatever. All right. Really cool report in the National Bureau of Economic Research, Enber. A couple weeks ago, I talked about the 0 % credit cards. I said, how is this possible? Who's paying for this? They kind of have an answer. Every time a consumer swips a credit card, the merchant pays an interchange fee, typically 1.9 % of the transaction value.

48:16Ben Carlson:That's the average. Most of which funds the rewards that cardholders receive. Because merchants generally charge the same prices, regardless of how consumers pay, consumers who use cash or debit cards effectively help finance the rewards enjoyed by credit card users. So the idea is if a merchant is paying 2 % more for this fee, everything goes up by 2%, right? So if you're paying in cash or you're using a debit card, you're not getting that 2 % to 3 % back on your rewards, you're the one who's paying this. You're paying higher prices because of it. You are the one who is subsidizing the rewards.

48:51Michael Batnick:And sometimes, I mean, oftentimes, a pizza spot will be like$850 cash,$915 credit card.

48:59Ben Carlson:Right. That's pretty rare. So they say because credit card usage rises with income, the system generates an estimated$9.2 billion in annual transfer from households earning less than$150 ,000 to those earning more. Yeah. Wait a minute.

49:14Michael Batnick:I think that's becoming standard around here. Standard might be a stretch, but I feel like I see that all the time. That's not uncommon.

49:21Ben Carlson:Yeah, maybe.

49:23Michael Batnick:No, well, you and I live in different places. Okay.

49:27Ben Carlson:That's true. But you're right. We said it's getting subsidized, and that's effectively what's happening.

49:35Michael Batnick:Right.

49:35Ben Carlson:All right. From Bloomberg, U.S. car payments hit a record 770. Sorry. 777. I can't say this. $777.

49:45Michael Batnick:That is tough. Yeah.

49:48Ben Carlson:Okay. How about we call it 780? With more than a quarter of U.S. car buyers taking out loans of seven years or more, The average amount financed reached an all-time high of more than$44 ,000. Average down payment fell 10 % from a year ago. More than a fifth of new car buyers signed up for monthly car payments of$1 ,000 or more in the second quarter, leading many to owe more on their car than it's worth, and others default on the loans. I had Claude come up with this for me. They took Edmund's numbers. And so at the end of 2019, the average car payment was$575 or something. So it's up$200 a month since in this decade alone.

50:32Ben Carlson:And I keep kind of asking this, but how much of this is the type of car you drive versus people just paying more? It's obviously a little bit of both. But if everyone, we snapped our fingers tomorrow, everyone said they gave up their trucks and they gave up their SUVs, their huge gas guzzlers. Although they don't guzzle as much gas anymore. My Telluride gets an amazing gas mileage because it's hybrid. Anyway, they gave those up and everyone bought a sedan. Everyone buys a Camry or an Accord. How much do those monthly payments go down? A lot. A lot, right?

51:03Michael Batnick:Yeah.

51:04Ben Carlson:So a lot of this is consumer choice. And the point of the article was no one is changing their behavior. Despite this, despite the fact that there's huge sticker shock. And I said, when I bought a new SUV recently, I had massive sticker shock. Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe how expensive these car payments are. but no one is doing anything about it. And that, to your point, maybe, is that just bull market behavior? No one's reigning things in yet. Right? No one's pulling back. No one's making substitutions. Great point.

51:37Michael Batnick:I found the email that I wanted to read before. So speaking about like teachers and firefighters, somebody said, I keep thinking about my future children entering the workforce 20 to 40 years from now, not the future AI engineers, surgeons, or high-income earners, normal jobs, the common man jobs, teachers, nurses, retail workers, bankers, firefighters. What does sense of achievement look like for them in 30 years? Price out of homes, Disney vacations, new cars, Chipotle. What if our kids grow up and turn out to be common and most will? The goal when having children is to hopefully prepare them with a life better than mine.

52:14Michael Batnick:And I'm not sure that's true anymore or easy to accomplish. This is the sad thought in my opinion. Thoughts?

52:22Ben Carlson:That's every parent's worst nightmare. Obviously, that their children will be worse off than they are. But the data shows most kids are better off than their parents. I understand the worry, but I think thinking that far out into the future, we have no idea what's going to happen.

52:37Michael Batnick:Yeah, I think that's probably the right take. And also, I don't think that people that went into teaching 15 years ago were like, I'm going to go on a Disney vacation and another vacation a year. And in 15 years, I won't be able to afford it because of inflation. Like those things were never really attainable. Don't give me the 50s, whatever. Like, yeah, things are more expensive. I get it. But so yeah, I don't, I don't know. So I have a friend recently who I hung out with from high school and he's, he's an elementary

53:07Ben Carlson:school teacher. His wife is a principal. He says, we don't make a lot of money. Like he said, I would love to take my kids on more vacations. We can't afford it. If my kids want something, and his kids are teenagers now, they're older, I tell them to get a job. He admits, because we're teachers, this is the life we chose. He's a teacher and a football coach. He doesn't make a lot of money, relatively speaking, right? I'd love to take more vacations. He says, I can't, we can't afford it. So he understands this trade. You're right. Unfortunately, everyone can't do that. And that's just the system we live in.

53:44Michael Batnick:yeah, I just, I think it's, it's more pronounced today, but it's not, that's not, that's always been the case.

53:50Ben Carlson:What's more pronounced today is that you just see the other people taking the vacations and you didn't see that before.

53:55Michael Batnick:Yeah.

53:56Ben Carlson:It's just shoved down your throat. All right. I got, I went through the comments last week. I haven't done this in a while, but I pulled out a couple of them. One of them was fast forward six months. Michael says my Range Rover has been in the shopper over three months over this check engine light. If I could bet on a Kelshi, I'd put money on that. Here's another one. I think this guy was talking about leasing cars. I don't know. But he says, these guys make tons of poor financial decisions. They must be overpaid. Probably. I think that there is something of a personal finance graduation that when you make more money, you should make decisions that personal finance experts would say that's a bad decision from the personal finance perspective.

54:37Ben Carlson:That should be your goal in life to do something that people personal finance people say that's a bad idea because if you compounded it over 30 years right i think that that should be your goal in life to have lifestyle creep it's not a bad thing that's a good thing it's a great thing right i was i was you spend money on that what are you you're that's that's insane you're wasting money

55:00Michael Batnick:that should be your goal in life i was 25 years old unemployed and unemployable I had worked the previous six years full-time because I was kicked out of college twice and I had nothing else to do except for work. So I had, I had a cush bank account. I don't know how much it was. Let's say I had$30 ,000. I felt rich when I was like 19, right? That was, I mean, I had all the money in the world. Um, no prospects, but I had a decent amount of money for a kid. And then I was, uh, cold calling, trying to get people to buy life insurance policies. Not really. I stopped cold calling. I just went into work in 2009 because I had nowhere else to be.

55:39Michael Batnick:Where else was I going to go? I was paying$400 a month in rent for this job from my office, swear to God. And the money was going to zero. My bank account was going to zero. And my eye was twitching for a year because I was so stressed. My mom was dying. That was part of the stress, but there was a lot of financial, emotional stress and things were really not good for me financially. And then I get a job and I was making no money when I started for the first couple of years because we were starting from nothing. And I had to be smart with my money and I had to budget and count every dollar and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

56:18Michael Batnick:And now I mind the other side of that. And it's awesome. Everybody should strive for that, to not have to make spreadsheet financial decisions for their entire life. And is renting a car a suboptimal financial decision? Yeah, but I am not optimizing for my spreadsheet anymore. And I think a lot of people would be surprised at some of the financial decisions I make because I am not optimizing for the biggest number. I really don't care about what my liquid net worth is because, A, I'm optimistic about my future earnings potential. but I'm 41 years old and these are like probably gonna be some of the best years of my life.

56:56Michael Batnick:I'm spending money. That's what I choose to do.

56:59Ben Carlson:Right. When you're in your 20s, you do have to be the spreadsheet person. I was too. I was. You have to be. Everybody does. When my wife and I first got married, I had to have a conversation with her because she was going out every week with her friends like P.F. Chang's like, we can't afford this.

57:10Michael Batnick:Actually, you know what? The other side of my experience is the Ivy League investment banker kids who don't have to make any spreadsheet decisions when they're 23 years old because they're making $110 ,000 a year.

57:22Ben Carlson:Right. I was not that person either. But I thought to myself when I had that talk with my wife about like, hey, you're going out to eat too much. I felt like, man, I can't do it. I have to make more money. I can't do this in Penny Finch my whole life. Yeah, you do it in your 20s and then you hopefully graduate. Anyway. All right. Lucas Shaw. Great stat here. Netflix top show lists have been losing 30 to 70 % of their audience between seasons one and twos. Executives are trying to figure out why. We talk about this a lot. So they talk about how So season two of Beef suffered a 70 % drop. The Night Agent shed 50 % of its audience for the second season.

57:56Ben Carlson:I liked the second season of Beef. Did you watch it? Yeah, I thought it was just okay. Not as good as first, but I liked it. But they show all these different shows. Four Seasons is one of them too, which I like the second season too. But most shows these days should be one season. And I actually am more excited when I find out something is a miniseries and it's not going to be more than... Most shows aren't good enough because most shows today would have been movies in the past. And when they go to the second season, they're doing it for a money grab or they just shouldn't be two season shows.

58:27Michael Batnick:I think it's hard for the Netflixes of the world, though, to just continue to pop out one season shows. Because when you have a hit, obviously you're going to make more of it, no?

58:37Ben Carlson:Of course, yeah. You got to keep trying. And obviously there's just more shows today. This was a crazy one, though. Lucas says, betting against Netflix has long been a fool's errand. And he talked about why the stock price is so bad. And it is in a 50 % drawdown still-ish, which is kind of crazy. So 42 % drawdown from the highs. Netflix still accounts for half of the most-watched shows on streaming. So it's still a massive, massive winner in streaming. And the stock doesn't care.

59:06Michael Batnick:I bought more Netflix last week. It's probably a poor decision. The stock is not acting very well. This is an interesting story, though.

59:14Ben Carlson:Yeah, but every time Netflix has fallen 50%, 60%, it's been a wonderful buying opportunity.

59:21Michael Batnick:That is true. But yeah, you're right. Most seasons are not worth continuing. Like, I'm saying this every week. Are you watching Cape Fear? I love that show.

59:33Ben Carlson:Nah, I'm not into Cape. I didn't get into it yet. I probably will eventually.

59:36Michael Batnick:I'm having a rip-roaring good time. I don't want to see a second season.

59:40Ben Carlson:Right, it'd be too much. Because guess what? That was originally a movie.

59:44Michael Batnick:they're stretching out for most shows one season is enough except for taylor sheridan

59:51Ben Carlson:for the most part i don't know about that i mean yellowstone went down quickly but that was a

59:55Michael Batnick:three-season show well but he said he said on the interview why it went down like they wrote they wrote it for three seasons and then they stretched it and yeah four was garbage um all right this is a good chart uh mike sicardi tweeted this somebody made a um is this like a histogram i don't know

1:00:11Ben Carlson:like a distribution of there we go yeah of rating chart for every film by genre and the takeaway is horror is up top very fat tales because there's a lot of really really really bad horror movies right there's way more people that hate and way more people that like there's a lot of ones and

1:00:31Michael Batnick:a lot of fives yeah i don't even think it's taste per se it's just there's genuine garbage in horror. Which makes sense

1:00:37Ben Carlson:because there's so many of them.

1:00:38Michael Batnick:Yeah. And it costs very little to make them. Whereas documentaries, for the most part, are generally pretty high quality. Same thing with, like, sport movies. Right? There's not, like, a ton of, like, garbage sports movies. Like, they're generally pretty okay.

1:00:54Ben Carlson:That makes sense.

1:00:54Michael Batnick:So that is a tighter distribution. Documentaries, war, tighter distribution. Animation. Yeah, animation is there.

1:01:02Ben Carlson:But you talked about the movies this year, Obsession, and what was the other one called back rooms or whatever. There's so many, they're throwing stuff against the wall and hoping something sticks. And when it sticks, it really works.

1:01:12Michael Batnick:I saw this on my TV and I just couldn't believe it. I mean, of course I couldn't believe it, but Instagram is now on TV. That was a sponsored ad that popped up on my TV and I just said, nope.

1:01:27Ben Carlson:So you can scroll through the reels on your TV?

1:01:30Michael Batnick:It is so, I know I've mentioned this many times. I am so addicted. Everyone is so addicted to Instagram.

1:01:38Ben Carlson:Never happened to be. It is the most powerful narcotic on the planet. I check it like once a week, maybe. I don't know why. Instagram never did it for me. I'm still a Twitter guy.

1:01:47Michael Batnick:You got to get involved. I'm just going to don't. It's terrible. All right, this is interesting. So Constellation Brands, ticker is STZ. I'm sure there's an origin there. But Constellation Brands is doing terribly. And a large part of this is the GLP-1 story, I think. Shifting habits. So beer is 91 % of their sales.

1:02:10Ben Carlson:I don't think it's Ozempic way yet. I think this is just young people. There's a lot of young people not drinking as much and having fun and people having more gummies. And I think it's been a longer-term trend than that.

1:02:22Michael Batnick:Okay. The market cap peaked a couple years ago at$50 billion. It's now$22 billion.

1:02:27Ben Carlson:And they're the ones who own Modelo and Corona and such, right? Right.

1:02:31Michael Batnick:Sierra Nevada, and yeah, Pacifico, Corona. But you know what's interesting? Only in the United States. So AB InBev, Anheuser-Busch, owns it globally. Isn't that weird?

1:02:49Ben Carlson:Owns what globally? Pacifico, Corona. Oh, so you say only dropping off in the United States. I think that's something that we've learned in the World Cup from people coming here. like Scotland drank Boston out of beer or something. We can teach the Europeans about consumerism and Europeans can teach us about the joys of partying and drinking. Yes.

1:03:10Michael Batnick:So anyway, Anheuser-Busch, the stock is rocking because globally people are drinking. So it's just in the US that people are not fine anymore. So what's driving the sales at Constellation Brands to the extent that anything is, is something called Ponies. You know about Ponies, Ben?

1:03:28Ben Carlson:No.

1:03:29Michael Batnick:Okay. The name pony dates back to the 19th century, according to Molson Coors. It is commonly used as a synonym for small. So ponies are like the seven-ounce beers, these little tiny things. What's the point of that? Everything in moderation. Anyway, so I asked – I was talking to Claude. I said, so just so I understand, Corona is growing around the world but struggling in the U.S. So outside the U.S., which is Anheuser-Busch, revenue grew 8.3 % in 2025. with volume growth in 30 markets. You're right.

1:04:02Ben Carlson:Anheuser-Busch stock looks great.

1:04:04Michael Batnick:But in America, it's not doing well. And this is pretty depressing, but this is what Claude said. The reason isn't the brand, it's the customer. Constellation's U.S. business is heavily dependent on Hispanic consumers, about half its sales, who have pulled back on spending amid immigration policy concerns and economic pressure. Fewer social gatherings, fewer store trips, less spent per trip. Add tariffs on the imported product and a generally soft U.S. beer market and the US version of Corona is fighting uphill while the global version is putting up some of the best numbers in the industry.

1:04:34Ben Carlson:Very interesting. Yeah. We keep saying it. We'd be happier as a nation if we just drank more. Fertility rate would increase. Right? How do we fix a fertility problem? Alcohol. That's how you fix it. That was a Jerry Seinfeld bit about how 90 % of the population is ugly and they said, how are people procreating and getting married? He said alcohol.

1:04:58Michael Batnick:Yeah, I think we could use a little bit more lubrication.

1:05:01Ben Carlson:There you go. Let's do recommendations. All right. My wife and I watched the drama this weekend. I believe you were the one who recommended it originally. Zendaya, Robert Pattinson. And all I knew is the premise of the movie. Four friends are having dinner or drinks, and they each share the worst thing they've ever done in their life. That's the only thing I knew.

1:05:19Michael Batnick:Don't spoil it.

1:05:20Ben Carlson:Okay, I'm not going to say. I won't spoil it. The only thing I will say, and I told my wife this, so that's the only thing I know. I know that there's a twist coming and that's it. I thought it was a really creative movie. I thought the premise was really good.

1:05:35Michael Batnick:I didn't - Come on, man. Just have a good time.

1:05:38Ben Carlson:I'm not. My wife said I was being too nitpicky. I don't buy that Zendaya was the one who did this thing. There's no world - That's a movie. I know, but it would have been way more believable if it was Robert Pattinson and not her. And I know why they did it. She was more of the shock value, but I didn't for a second believe that she did this. Not for a second. There's no way you can believe that she, this person. Take this stick out of your butt. That looks and sounds like this. There's no way. No way. It just wasn't believable. Having said that, this is a new genre of movies and I know why you like them.

1:06:09Ben Carlson:It's uncomfortable. The wedding scene at the end was so uncomfortable. It was like the most uncomfortable scene I've seen in a long time. And that's a genre of movies now. So it was really well done. It was really creative. That was my biggest nitpick is that I didn't buy for a second that she's the one who would have done this terrible thing.

1:06:27Michael Batnick:Okay.

1:06:28Ben Carlson:But the premise was, and I thought about it, what would I say? What's the worst thing I've ever done? I still got to think about it more.

1:06:37Michael Batnick:Oh, me too. Credit to me. I've done many probably not awesome things.

1:06:42Ben Carlson:Yeah, I couldn't come up with something like, oh my gosh, like the things that they said on this movie. Guess what?

1:06:48Michael Batnick:We'll do that reveal next week.

1:06:50Ben Carlson:I think I would have taken that one to the grave. I don't care how many glasses of wine I've had. I did this tweet the other day. I rewatched Dazed and Confused once in a while. When I was in college, my sophomore year, I lived in the dorm still. And one of my friends, Dazed and Confused, was his favorite movie. And we'd go out to a party, and then sometimes we'd stumble back from the party, and we'd put pizza rolls in the oven in the dorm. We'd bring pizza rolls back up, and we'd put Dazed and Confused on it until we passed out. I love that movie. I watch it all the time. I realized as I was rewatching it this time, first of all, they talk about the bicentennial in the movie because it took place in 1976.

1:07:22Ben Carlson:It was supposed to. but this movie was released in 1993 okay so I thought I did the math and I said if Days of Confused, if that happened today it would be a movie in 2009 so 1976 to 1993 is the same as 2009 till today and I put the tweet out and it went kind of viral and a bunch of people said yeah that's Superbad Superbad is our Days of Confused because it's the end of school and I kind of felt like wow Superbad is the 2000s Days of Confused that's a really good analogy

1:07:54Michael Batnick:I do think that Superbad is like the movie that I saw that was just the best at the time like where I was I guess I was in high school I was a senior or junior and it was just perfect it was absolutely perfect to be a senior in high school seeing that movie on screen with your friends for the first time the most fun

1:08:19Ben Carlson:American Pie came out the summer of my junior or senior of high school And the movie hit differently because of when it came out. Of course. And when I saw it. But yeah, I like the idea of Superbad being the dazed and confused of today.

1:08:30Michael Batnick:Somebody sent me something on Instagram, a picture of all the actors in American Pie, and it made me feel old. And you know what, Ben? We are not that young anymore. Yeah, we grew up with them. We're old too.

1:08:44Ben Carlson:Wait, I have a story for you.

1:08:46Michael Batnick:When Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are on the steps of the monument, what are we going to say looking back? We're just a couple of kids. And the other person's like, we're not that young.

1:08:55Ben Carlson:We're not kids anymore. I have a, about being old, I got one story I'll share. So we're at our lake and we're having, it's 4th of July night, right? And the kids are doing sparklers in the backyard. And we have friends over and little kids running around doing sparklers. And we're roasting marshmallows on the fire and waiting for it to get dark enough for the actual fireworks to come. And we have this backyard that kind of runs up the lake. And we have neighbors that kind of share the backyard area, right? And they decide, some of the guys, their kids are older, like college age, right? They decided we're going to write some fireworks off before the show, right?

1:09:25Ben Carlson:So they're doing bottle rockets. And they moved the bottle rockets away from their group because they didn't want to light fireworks them. But they came over very close to us, right? They went away from their group. They came to us. And it's these college kids who have been drinking. And they're not letting bottle rockets out of a bottle, which is why they're called bottle rockets. They're holding them with their hand and letting the bottle rocket and let it go with their hand. But as they're doing this, they're dropping them and they're, you know, falling. and the bottle rockets going everywhere.

1:09:53Ben Carlson:And they're right next to us. And we have little kids running around with sparklers and these guys are cracking up because it's hilarious. How old were they? 20s, you know. I probably would have been doing it back then too. But they're, and finally, like everyone in our group is getting very uncomfortable because these kids are like dropping these bottle rockets and now you hold a bottle rocket wrong and it goes the wrong way. It's, you know. So I finally, it's my house. I have to say something. I said, hey guys, can you do that somewhere else? we have little kids here and they go, well, we're trying to have the bottle rockets go up, you know?

1:10:25Ben Carlson:And I feel like such an old man. Cause in my twenties, I would have been doing this too. Right. But they're holding in the bottle rockets, like blowing up on them almost. Right. And, uh, they go, yeah, sorry. We were trying. And I'm like, yeah, you know, you're, you're holding them. You're going to shoot one in the wrong way. And you know, someone's going to, whatever it's there's kids. So they, they leave. And my daughter is just mortified. My 12 year old is mortified that I said something. And, um, that's being an adult. you have to be the bad guy sometimes.

1:10:49Michael Batnick:Good for you.

1:10:50Ben Carlson:Right? Am I a jerk for saying something? Definitely not. Usually you give me crap for not saying anything when I call out my window.

1:10:56Michael Batnick:Yeah.

1:10:59Ben Carlson:So yeah, my daughter has never been more embarrassed of me that I said something to the college bros about holding bottle rockets and lighting them around little kids.

1:11:07Michael Batnick:You had to.

1:11:08Ben Carlson:Yeah. Middle-aged guy. Young at the cloud. All right. And then you sent me a picture of you setting off a Roman candle. two feet from your boat. Just, boom, boom, boom. You know? It was sort of anticlimactic. It wasn't, it was kind of cool. Next week, we'll do 10 reasons to be bearish. Okay. Just to balance things out.

1:11:30Michael Batnick:Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you for listening. Even the people commenting on us making stupid financial decisions. Personal emails, personal responses. We'll see you next time.

1:11:54Michael Batnick:Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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