A Healthy Pullback (EP.357)

24 Apr 2024 · 59 min

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Animal Spirits Podcast Episode 357 Summary

Episode Title

A Healthy Pullback Hosts: Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson Podcast Description: A show about markets, life, and investing.

Episode Overview In this episode, Batnick and Carlson discuss the recent stock market dynamics, analyzing the necessity of a market correction, the economic environment, and generational financial insights. The hosts explore various topics, including:

  • The significance of recent stock market pullbacks.
  • A historical perspective on the 1990s as an outlier in market behavior.
  • The differences in economic growth as a policy choice.
  • Generational insights regarding financial well-being, particularly Gen Z.
  • Comparisons of living conditions between the U.S. and Europe.
  • The ongoing housing renovation boom.

Key Discussions

  1. Stock Market Correction
  2. Pullback vs Correction: A 5% decline is seen as a healthy pullback, while a 10% decline marks a correction, and 20% signifies a bear market.
  3. Recent Market Behavior: The S&P 500 experienced a 25% increase over five months, leading to the necessity for a pullback to stabilize growth.
  1. Historical Context of Market Behavior
  2. The 1990s were highlighted as an exceptional period with minimal corrections, leading to sustained growth.
  3. The hosts express skepticism about replicating such calm periods in today’s fast-paced market driven by information technology.
  1. Economic Growth as a Policy Choice
  2. Batnick and Carlson debate whether economic growth post-recession is a choice dependent on government spending policies.
  3. They cite past decisions made after the 2008 financial crisis versus the pandemic as key influences on recovery trajectories.
  1. Generational Financial Insights
  2. Recent data shows that younger generations, particularly Gen Z, are faring better financially than previous generations at the same age, challenging nostalgic perceptions of economic hardship.
  3. However, the discussion reflects a nuanced view of wealth beyond earnings, emphasizing the importance of time freedom and managing lifestyle inflation.
  1. Living Standards: U.S. vs. Europe
  2. The episode compares housing sizes, living conditions, and economic opportunities between the U.S. and Europe, highlighting greater living space in the U.S.
  1. Housing Market and Renovation Boom
  2. An increase in mortgage-free homeowners and the renovation boom reflects trends in homeowner priorities and market demands.
  3. The hosts discuss the shift in homeowner expectations and how it influences the housing market dynamics moving forward.

Main Takeaways

  • Healthy Market Dynamics: Regular pullbacks are essential for long-term market health, allowing frothy assets to stabilize.
  • Importance of Economic Policy: Economic growth is heavily influenced by governmental fiscal policies, highlighting the need for strategic decision-making in recovery periods.
  • Generational Perspectives on Wealth: Financial success is evolving, with younger generations potentially being better off than previous cohorts.
  • U.S. Housing Trends: The U.S. housing market is experiencing substantial renovation activity, indicating a shift in homeowner preferences towards modern living spaces.

Recommendations

  • Financial Literature: Listeners are encouraged to engage with resources such as financial blogs and newsletters to stay informed about market trends and investing strategies.
  • Engage with the Podcast: Feedback and suggestions for future topics are welcomed through email at animalspirits@thecompoundnews.com.

Conclusion Overall, this episode of Animal Spirits provides valuable insights into current market trends, historical perspectives, and generational economic conditions, promoting a broader understanding of investing and financial well-being.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Franklin Templeton. Ben, do you remember back in the days of the pandemic, and even before the pandemic, when high yield bonds, high yield bonds. And there was, you know, at the time, people were allocated there because that's what you did, I guess. When treasuries were offering you 65 basis points, you said, I'll take more risk. I'll get 5%. Where are high-yield bonds today? I mean, depending on where you're looking, 7%, 8%, 9%, right? The yields are much higher. So spreads are still tight, right? Spreads are still tight relative to treasuries because there's not – we're not in recession.

0:51The economy is doing well. Market environment is good. Franklin Templeton offers a high-yield corporate ETF, FLHY. What would be the investment case for high-yield bonds today? Well, it sounds like a lot of the bad stuff was kind of washed out during the pandemic, right? Like the zombies? Yeah, all the zombies were kind of washed out a little bit. And so I guess there's this idea that because they're called junk bonds, which they need a new PR agency, obviously, for that name. High-yield does sound better. Yes, but I think it's more high-quality. I think fixed income to the benchmarks are more inefficient, right?

1:27There's a reason that the stock market benchmark index funds are hard to beat. But in bonds, the way that they're set up is that a lot of these companies and a lot of these debts are added to an index just because someone borrows money. That might not be a high quality borrower or lender when that happens, right? So I think it actually makes more sense that it's a little easier to beat fixed income benchmarks as well. You know who my favorite active high-yield bond manager of all time is? Michael Douglas? Glenn Guglia. Close. Oh. Julia Guglia. That's funny. Why? I don't know. Okay. So to learn more about the Franklin High Yield Corporate ETF, FLHY, please see the link in the description.

2:11Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

2:42Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael Ben. What do you think about that? Nah, I'm probably gonna drop that. Yeah, fair. All right, Ben, we did it. We had a correction. The S &P 500 did whatever it did. Wait, wait, wait. No, we didn't. 10 % is a correction. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You're right, you're right. A pullback. 5 % is a, that's good. 5 % pullback. 10 % correction. 20 % bear market. What do you say for crash, 30 or 40? I'd say, well, it depends when. If it happens fast, because COVID was a crash. That was 34%. So if you have like a 30 % bear market, that's just like a slow bleed. That's not a crash.

3:20It depends on the speed. Right. 2022, that was a bear market. 2020 was a crash. 2020 was a crash. That was a crash. Yes. So I feel much better about where things stand than I did a couple of weeks ago. So you're in healthy pullback territory then? It is very, incredibly healthy. Okay. This is very healthy. We needed it because the market, this is coming from that Davis research, Ed Klisseld, the market was coming off an all-time heater. There's a heads where it's not mine, but it's true. The S &P 500 surged 25 % in five months for only the seventh time since World War II. So we had gone, we were updating the stat about how long it's been since without a 2 % pullback.

4:01It was, it had been, I don't know, 80 days, 90 days. It was a long time. He also notes that the previous dates should sound familiar for end of major bears, 275, November 82, July 09, and August 20th. These were the end of major bear markets. And so this is great. So it's kind of saying this is, to your point, healthy behavior. You have a huge rocket off the bottom. and then you need to not just a, what do you call it? A correction over time? Correction through time. Through time, but with a healthy pullback. We need a correction through price and we got it. You know, this is like, there's too much foam on the beer.

4:42You got to blow some of it off. And we did. So if you look at it, we're still up 22 % from the October lows and 5 % down from the highs, which a 5 % correction happens pretty much all the time. I think it's like, I don't know, two out of the last hundred years or something, we didn't even have a 5 % correction. Was it 2017? One of the recent years. 2017 was straight up. It was like a 2 % or 3 % correction. But here, listen to this one. So these are the peak drawdowns this year. Not like cumulative, but just this year. Apple down 15%. Tesla down 43%. NVIDIA down 19%. Facebook, not Meta, Facebook, down 10%.

5:15And the S &P only down 5%. So the question was, what happens when these huge mega cap companies fall? Does it bring down the market? The answer is no. Not really. A little bit, not much. Not yet, not yet. Yeah, but I mean, these are pretty decent-sized pullbacks in a lot of these names, and it hasn't, like, crushed the stock market. That's what I'm saying. To Ben's point, we had the pullbacks, corrections, bear markets, where we really needed it, and these individual names. We needed NVIDIA to cool off. NVIDIA was down 19.8 % from its peak. We needed that. That super microcomputer is down 40%.

5:50That's the one. AMD took a whack. Micron. So all of these names that where you were seeing froth, we got the – you need to get some of the enthusiasm out of this. Now, I will say, Ben, you mentioned like the mega cap tech is correcting and the market is doing fine for now. And I'm not – I'm not hoping for this. Obviously, I'm not anticipating this or predicting this. If we get a bomb report out of NVIDIA and big tech really starts to careen lower, that probably will have a bigger impact on the market. Yeah, it makes up 30 % of the market or whatever it has to. Yeah, of course, just by arithmetic.

6:26But I love this setup. I love that you're getting rid of some of the froth before earnings because if NVIDIA has another blot quarter, maybe they will, maybe they won't, then we're set up for a healthy next leg hire. So I was thinking about this. We have these compressed cycles now that I've been talking about this for years. Our tech has sped everything up. And so you get these periods of froth, and then you have a correction, and then froth. and it's like we keep going back and forth doing this for the last, it seems four or five years or so. So I actually thought about this to the 90s and how we're, I've been, for some reason I've been really, maybe it's because I'm middle age, very nostalgic about the 90s period now.

7:04Maybe it's just because of when I grew up and I was in grade school and high school and heading into college in those years and just very nostalgic for that period. And I feel like in the stock market, we're never going to see a 90s again because the information age was just starting. So look at the drawdown chart I put in here for the 90s. So the worst correction you had was there was an early 90s recession that kind of is forgotten historically. The SNL crisis. Yeah, and that's housing prices actually fell then, which doesn't happen very often. And you had 19 % in change in the S &P. Let's round it up and give it a bear market.

7:35But then you had the 98 Russia thing, which was emerging markets that kind of was another little. Oh, wait, but then between that period of time. Nothing. No 10 % correction. That's six years of not even a 10%. That's wild. Between like 1991 and 1998, no 10 % correction. So that was a decade. Not only did you have the bubble at the end where you had five years in a row of 20 % to 30 % gains, you had just calm waters for the entire decade. And I just don't think that's possible anymore. With the speed at which prices move now because of information. Yeah, information. Ben, you mentioned having nostalgia.

8:14For when you were young, 90s were a great period. and they were even better because we were young at the time. We were talking at dinner the other night. Man, we're getting old. The movie Twins, which is a classic, absolute, absolute staple of my childhood, was, what year did we decide it was? It was in 88. 88? You know what else I saw over the weekend? It's the 35th anniversary of? A movie that I claim to have seen in theaters, although now I'm sort of questioning my memory, but I really feel like I did. Field of Dreams is 35 years old. Did you wear that t-shirt because of it? No. You're wearing a Field of Dreams t-shirt.

8:51Did you really literally just put that together? I, honest to goodness, just put that together. Well, we have people who work with us now at our firm who - Who have never seen that. Well, they were born after these movies came out. Yeah. Yeah, we are old. But I think, so you know how there's a lot of people, especially in the baby boomer cohort, who looks back so fondly on the 1950s period as like this, The 1950s was just this, like, we need to go back. That's going to be the 90s someday. I think we're getting closer and closer to people saying, because especially the dividing line of internet, owning your life in smartphones and social media, thinking back on what a simpler time it was before all that stuff existed, I think there's going to be a huge, the 1990s is going to be the 1950s for millennials and Gen Z.

9:35Yeah. Thinking back on that time. Yeah. Okay, so why am I... I don't know, happy is the right word that we got this pullback, but feeling good about it. We've been asking for it. Yeah, I've been asking for it. Fine. We got it. Good. Great. Torsten Slock tweeted, there are simply no signs of a slowdown in corporate earnings. The economy continues to power ahead, fueled by easy financial conditions, and this is an upside risk to inflation over the coming months. But look at this chart. We're looking at S &P 500, 12-month forward EPS. and this is what everything hinges on. If earnings were too slow, and not even earnings, but guidance.

10:19Guidance is the thing. You don't get credit for what you just did. Netflix is a great example of that, right? Netflix's stock had a hell of a run, a stock that I own, and they had a hell of a quarter. If you look at their financials, they were range-bound in terms of their net income or whatever. They even beat the subscriber estimates, right? Yeah, just a monster. They're firing on all cylinders. Stocks sold off 10 % for various reasons, but my point is, you don't get credit for what you just reported, right? You get credit for what you're going to do. And so, so long as earnings per share estimates keep rising and companies keep issuing positive guidance, then the market should be fine.

10:54If and when that changes, then, you know, different story. So one of the things that I like to poke fun out of finance is we only inflation adjust certain things. Like GDP is inflation adjusted. People always say, what, did you inflation adjust this? Inflation does that? No one ever inflation adjusts earnings, but I think it's a good thing. But for some reason, no one ever talks about the unintended benefits of inflation. This earnings chart, obviously these companies are doing well, but corporations are a big beneficiary of inflation for this period. Wouldn't you say with earnings as high as they are?

11:26Do you remember? Well, I will say, let me give you a piece of data. This is from the transcript. In the fourth quarter, Procter & Gamble, which is soap and dishwasher stuff, right? It's household items. and chemicals and whatever. Procter & Gamble's October to December 2023 quarter. Pricing up 4%, volume flat. This is from the transcript. I think I might have mentioned it, but in case I didn't. In the most recent quarter, again, pricing up 3%. Volume, 0%. So that's for the last two quarters. No growth, 7 % pricing. All of it has come from higher prices. So is this good for corporations and investors?

12:05Yeah, it is. Pisses us off, consumers, but it's good for investors. Yeah. And then it's also good for debt holders. And so corporations, US government, that's the thing that no one ever, when people talk about how much debt we're in, I know it's still a problem, but we literally just cut 20 % off of our debt too. We added a bunch, but we cut 20 % off as well on a real basis. True. You know, I'm sure I must have subliminally grabbed the shirt, but it wasn't intentional. Okay. Cause I saw it in the doc here. Okay. Um, Felix Salmon from Axios. This is interesting. So in the 14 quarters since the brief 2020 recession ended, U.S.

12:42GDP has soared by$8 trillion or 40%. By contrast, in the 14 quarters after the 2009 recession ended, GDP rose by a relatively measly$2 trillion or 14%. Now the counter here would be, well, yeah, the government printed, spent$5 or$6 trillion. This is what you get. But I think the point is after a recession or after a huge calamity like a pandemic or the financial crisis. Economic growth is a policy issue. Well, no, I disagree. No, it's a policy choice. No, dude. We chose not to spend money after the great financial crisis, and we had a crappy recovery because of it. After the pandemic, we chose to spend money.

13:21We had a great economic recovery. It was a credit crisis. It was a credit crisis. I don't think it was a policy issue. What would have been the appetite for this? These are completely different things. There's a lot of stuff the government could have done following a great financial crisis, like making some homeowners whole. There's a lot of stuff they could have done that would have helped out. But the thing is, we don't get the 2020 government spending if we didn't get the lack of spending in 2009. Yes. But I'm just saying, in periods like this, economic growth is a policy choice. It is. It has to be.

13:56I think you're oversimplifying it. It's pretty simple. When we spend trillions of dollars, we added$8 trillion to the economy. The reason why we were able to do that, why there was political will for that on both sides to push it through is because the nature of the recession was completely outside of the financial system. I agree. But now we know this and the genes out of the bottle, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. I'm just – I feel like we've gone back and forth on this. I just think you're oversimplifying it. If ending a recession or fueling growth was merely a policy choice, then we would never have deep recessions anywhere.

14:31It's not that simple. Well, no, it's more about the recovery than the recession itself. But to have or to not have a recovery just being a policy choice, I think you're oversimplifying it. We literally have examples. The last one we didn't do it, crappy recovery. This one we did do it, awesome recovery. Okay, but you think, what about the rest of the world? I'm going to get to that right now. Here, we'll do this other one first, and then I'm going to get to U.S. versus Europe, and I'll prove this to you. All right, go ahead. Okay. Jeff Weniger shows the average annual wage in the U.S. versus the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Japan.

15:07And this thing has a huge—it's basically the same number all the way through the 2000s until 2008. And look what happened since 2008. U.S. wages took off. Wages in these other countries stagnated. And look at how much it took off even more. This is average annual wage since 2020. We've left the rest of the world in the dust. Yeah, but we already did that. Look at 2019. We were already, they were already in our dust. They were, but then look at that, the insane jump higher since then. And they've basically stagnated. I mean, listen, obviously the policy decisions that we made this time around massively contributed to growth.

15:47But I, maybe I'm nitpicking. I think you're oversimplifying it say that recoveries are a policy choice. But then in Europe, they had this fiscal responsibility. We got to pull back and that's going to help. And that's been devastating to them. Look at this next one. This is kind of fun too. Just US versus Europe. It is average square feet per dwelling. And they break it out by state and then by country in Europe. And look at how much more room we have than those Europeans. Oh, it's right below the average chart. It's the color coded one. The purple in US and the yellow. Oh, there it is. I'm sorry.

16:20So it's average size of dwelling by square foot in the US versus Europe. We have so much more room than them. Listen, they have way better sights to see, way better history. They don't have air conditioning, and they have smaller places to live. This is crazy, right? We don't know how good we – people in the US don't know how good they have it sometimes. Wow. Crazy, right? How many mudrooms do you think they have in Europe? Not many. Wow. Wow. Another interesting thing to come out of. If the government spent more money, I'll put, if I'm going to be chancellor of some European country, a mudroom for every house.

16:58We'll spend so much money. But the thing is spending money. It's like, where does it come from? And obviously not every country. We can literally print our own currency. Maybe that's one of the reasons. Dude, come on. The rest of the world doesn't have that luxury of just unlimited demand for their debt. Which is kind of funny because. Like if other countries had to do it, they'd crash their currencies. They tank the economy. Which is funny because that's so many people complain about the fact that we can just print currency here whenever we want. And they act like it's a bad thing. It's like one of the biggest benefits that we have as a global superpower.

17:29Totally. Totally, totally. Callie tweeted a chart of business applications. And COVID was a watershed event in this aspect and so many others. There's pre-COVID and post-COVID. And it was trending higher, but it was like three and a half million business applications a year in 2018 and 2019. And now we've had a stair step higher and we've reset. It's now five million plus. Remember, there was a brief period for one or two months where people were talking about every single startup is going to be liquidated from COVID. Right before we really knew what the response was going to be. And I initially thought no one is ever going to want to start a business again after going through this because their customers are all gone.

18:13Their revenue is gone. They're going to have to fire their employees. And then look what happens because the complete opposite. It is pretty amazing. Yeah, COVID, it was a reset and it gave a lot of people the ability, the freedom, the gumption or chutzpah to say, you know what? I'm done with that job. Like I want to do my own thing. And we spoke last week about the nature of work. I forgot in what concept we were talking about. I was just saying that we've worked the same hours over the past like 200 years or something. but I was claiming that weight color workers today, they don't really work hard.

18:45It's we pretend like we do. I think we've traded physical exhaustion for mental exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. So I feel like I'm going to sleep early. I'm just, I'm exhausted at the end of the day. And you're right. It's definitely not because it's anything physical that I'm doing. After we recorded the podcast, I was thinking about this. This was my Tuesday as of 1.30 PM. I had 17 Slack channels going. Here comes a not to brag. This is not a not to brag. I think I speak for a lot of us. I sent four emails. I had done two podcasts. Obviously, that's unique to us. And I did three phone call meetings.

19:20So take out the podcast. But that's typical of a lot of white-collar workers. It's just a lot of phone calls and meetings and this and that. And it's – Yes. That's the economy. You do wonder that tradeoff of physical for mental exhaustion, if that's why anxiety levels are so much higher these days. Because you're constantly using your brain as opposed to... I think one of the beautiful things about doing physically taxing work is that you get to see the fruits of your labor right away. You paint a house, you get to see how much you've gotten done in a day or whatever. You plow the field, you see how much work you've put in.

20:00Crops grow. You don't get that anymore as much with a desk job. Well, another difference in terms of the anxiety and stress levels is that once you're done with a physical job, whatever that may be, you're done and you're done. You go home and you're no longer working. There's no line anymore. There's no line. Slack never stops. Emails never stop. So one of the things that my brother always talked about with my dad, my dad was a CFO for a hospital. And he retired in the early 2000s. So email stuff had just kind of come on board. But when he left the office at night, he would literally leave his work behind him.

20:39It was pre-Blackberry, pre-iPhone, any of that stuff. You didn't check your computer for emails at night. It was just – there was a demarcation there that just does not exist anymore. Yeah. When you can always – like I don't get why people ever even turn their out-of-office thing on anymore. Like that seems useless to me, the out-of-office. Because you can check your emails from anywhere you want. Nobody's ever out of office. No, you're not out of – you're never out of office. So we have nostalgia for those simpler times, but it's not black or white. It's not like now is bad and then was good.

21:09I mean, there's obviously a lot of wonderful things that came out of the internet. And one of the negative side effects is we're always on and we're always a little bit overstimulated and overanxious. Yeah, we can do stuff more efficiently, but it's always there too. All right. So remember all those talks about how, you know, generations now are way worse off than their parents, right? That was a thing for a while. From The Economist, a typical 25-year-old Gen Zer has an annual household income over$40 ,000, more than 50 % above baby boomers at the same age when adjusted for inflation. You look at this chart, every single generation, from the lost generation to the greatest generation, silent generation, boomers, Gen X, millennial, Gen Z, each younger generation in succession makes more money than the previous generation adjusted for inflation.

21:58It's pretty amazing. I know people for years have said, I'm way worse off than my parents were. This is the kind of good news data that makes people very angry because you can always do a yeah, but, right? This kind of thing will piss someone off. I don't feel better off. I don't feel better off. Yeah. Have you tried to buy a house? Have you done this? Have you done that? Have you seen how much they grew? All that stuff. This is what the data says though. That has been a constant over modern history is that things are always getting better and it feels like they're always getting worse. Yes, it really is true.

22:28Although I kind of wonder, in the 90s, did... Yeah, they probably did. Do you remember some of the movies that came out? The 90s, like I said, easily one of the greatest decades in history. Think about some of the movies that came out then. Fight Club was this book and movie for a nation about people who were just depressed with the way things were going. Think about that as a... as like an ethos. How about Limp Bizkit? Was there anybody angrier that had their finger on the pulse of like that movement? Yes. So I think that there's always going to be that pushback, I guess. Although I wonder, our parents in the 90s, they must have thought, yeah, we have it way better than our parents, because our parents' parents were in World War II.

23:08So maybe what I just said about people I think are getting worse, maybe that's probably not so accurate. That's true. Okay. I always talk about how everyone is bad at the economy. And I think one of the things is, it's not like people are dumb. I think a lot of times, they're just naive. But even economists are bad at the economy. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. They show the quarterly average of payroll changes, actual and forecast. I love these kind of charts that show like the forecast of interest rates and what actually happens to them. This is the forecast of monthly payroll changes.

23:40And every month since the start of 2023, the forecast has been, it's going to fall. Payroll is going to fall. People are going to be out of jobs. And every month it's been higher. And it even uptick again. And people have had to change their forecast. And the forecast are still calling for, Although I guess that's like doubling down at the blackjack table until you win, right? There's like the opposite chart of analyst estimates. You know, they're usually overly optimistic. Oh, yeah. Lower them every... Look at growth forecasts. Same thing. People have been constantly predicting economy is going to fall, economy is going to fall, and growth is going to fall, and it hasn't.

24:17I will give economists a bit of a pass, like this go-around. This was not easy to foresee by any stretch of the imagination. It was also a herd mentality thing. Like when a bunch of people started jumping on the recession train and it seemed like a recession was imminent, I think a lot of people looked around and said, yeah, I'm going to call it two. No one's going to be – people are going to love that recession forecast if it happens. And they're kind of like, yeah, they'll make fun of me a little bit if it doesn't happen. But at least we have numbers here. Rewind yourself to that period of time in terms of through the lens of career risk.

Read the full transcript

24:50What was the upside of saying no recession? True. You know, I mean, cool. Like, you know, you were saying no recession purely to be a contrarian. Like, you know, ha ha, I'll say no recession. But if there was a recession, you'd look like the biggest asshole ever. It's like, dude, everyone saw this coming. How did you miss this? That's a good point. You didn't have a job. There's like two different kinds of contrarians. If you're a contrarian and you're bearish, you look smart. If you're a contrarian and you're bullish, everyone thinks you're an idiot or you're not that smart. Yeah, Tom Lee gets mocked.

25:20The guy's been right for a decade plus. Right. Yes. Jeremy Siegel is called a permable, and those guys are right more than anyone. Yeah, come on. Yeah. Yeah, that is an interesting double standard. All right, what are we looking at here? Oh, we got an email about one of our listeners got a SWAT team sent to his house. The crypto scams are wildly out of control. What was the nature of the story? It was basically one of the Coinbase. It's always Coinbase. It seems like people use Coinbase as a, just must be because they have the most customers. So it's basically like, send me this money from your Coinbase account, or I will send a SWAT team to your house and say that like someone's been kidnapped.

26:00And it's like, you know, you hit delete on that. And someone emailed us and said that like the cops actually showed up to their house. Someone actually called in and said, which I don't know what that really does to you. Scares you a little bit, I suppose, but I'd be pretty freaked out. Yeah. Did you see the email that came in? Somebody said that they, they, uh, it was a, a scam. obviously they got emailed by Jerome Powell. No. Did you see that? No. Saying what? Send me some money. I forgot. It was a long, silly email. Okay. Uh, I think on the compounded friends last week, we talked about boomers with paid off mortgages and how, what an advantage that is for the housing market.

26:36So Lance Lambert at Resi club sent me some charts that he made and it's the percentage of mortgage-free homeowners. And it goes, it shows it by year and it goes from 32 % in 2010 to nearly 40 % now. Then he also broke it down by different county. I guess you can get this data, which is crazy. And down by the U.S., look at that middle part of the country from like Texas up. How many of these counties have 70 % of homeowners with paid off mortgages? Good luck by Alaska. Look at all those people with paid off homes in Alaska. I mean, imagine being a, I don't know how many people live in some of these counties that have a high percentage, but imagine being a first-time homebuyer in one of these places.

27:19The disadvantage that you're at. It's wild, the access to data and information. It's pretty cool, right? We, and I mean like all of us have and how it's reflected in the market and all that sort of stuff. Like this is a beautiful chart. There was something else I saw this week that I was like, man, this is wild. So Fred Katz tweeted, the Knicks have added referee tendency statistics to their media notes. First time they have offered this info publicly is in their game notes they gave to media before game one. So they show Scott Foster, Bum, and two other refs who I haven't heard of. And it shows like, it breaks it down by foul calls, defensive three-second violations, traveling violations, offensive fouls, technical fouls.

28:03It shows the crew challenge overturn rate. Like, it shows it by individual referee. Right. They call more fouls than them. That's crazy. So So every aspect of everything has this level of granularity. It's pretty wild. Everything that can be quantified will be quantified. Yes. All right. I've been calling this one for a while. Bloomberg had a piece on the home renovation boom. And it shows nationwide homeowner spending on home renovations, four-quarter moving total, just up and to the right. There was a brief interlude there in the 2008 crisis. And now it's rolling over a little now, but just astronomically higher since the early to mid-2000s.

28:48They also tried to break down the number of homes not sold because of locked-in mortgage rates and just keeps rising. Like, this is the activity we would expect in a normally functioning housing market, and so more houses are building up. I think we built our house in 2017. There's already stuff that we look at back, ah, we wish we would have done this differently. You know what the big one is, especially with kids? I would not have carpet in any of my house. Isn't your whole house hardwood floors, basically? yes that if you have kids carpet is is the worst form of flooring there is for children oh yeah there's no way new houses are putting down carpet anymore no it's it's i mean i'm sure it's it's cheaper than other stuff but where does carpet even go anymore it seems so so antiquated probably in in bedrooms yeah if anything bedrooms but they have like the they have the what we've gotten the waterproof vinyl, whatever fake stuff.

29:41It looks kind of like hardwood, but it's also waterproof for kids. I would just cover my house in that stuff. The house that I grew up in, the entire upstairs was carpeted, not the kitchen. Right. I think about how many times my parents replaced carpeting over the years, like four or five times probably, because it would just get ruined so easily. It is funny too. If you had an old house and you like rip the carpet up to change the flooring, there'd be like beautiful hardwood floors underneath carpet. Like people thought, Like, screw these Herbert floors. Let's put carpeting over it. That's one thing, and I'm sure we could have a long list of things that weren't better in the 90s.

30:14Carpet, number one. Yes, housing. That's a good one. Houses, if you look at houses built in the 90s, they might as well have been built in the 50s at this point. Well, they were. That's why there's a renovation boom. I've said this before, but I'll say it again. The layout of the house that I grew up in made no sense. So upstairs, there's like a split level. Upstairs, it was my bedroom, my sister's bedroom, and my mother's bedroom with one bathroom. It's like they didn't think about this stuff. With one, and my bedroom was legitimately 10 by 10. Maybe it was probably a hundred square feet. So it was tiny.

30:55And same thing with my sister's bedroom. And the master bedroom was probably 15 by 15 and one bathroom. and then the kitchen was attached to all that. Who thought that was a good idea? They just like throw the rooms together and shake it up or something. Yeah, a lot of houses don't make any sense. In America, half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them. While middlemen like PBMs and 340B hospitals drive up costs, Biopharma is investing$500 billion in new infrastructure and manufacturing here at home and helping patients buy medicines directly at lower prices.

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32:14Ben, last week we spoke about the grass is always greener syndrome. Yes. The notion that we go on vacation and we say, I can really live here. What a wonderful existence this is. Well, I listened to the episode today and you read an email from a listener that talked about downsizing their house to reduce expenses and extra time and money. And you also read an email about how you will adjust to wherever you live pretty quickly. So this person moved. I don't want to say where to. Their house value tripled. COVID upended our lives and thinking in a lot of ways we decided it was a good opportunity to cash out and try something new.

32:51We had some great family vacations at Disney. And so we purchased an investment property there in 2021. one. They've been living there for almost two years and I've learned some valuable lessons. When we came to Florida in the past, we were on vacation with no responsibilities. So everything was relaxing and fun. Yes. Now we have work, school, appointments, and a big house to upkeep and clean. Everything grows constantly here. So the landscaping needs to be maintained all the time. When guests come to visit, they are on vacation, but we are not, which creates a weird dynamic. so anyway this person sums it up very well I've learned that bigger isn't always better there's a lot of value in keeping things simple and easily manageable that is one of the things that plagues everyone is the grass is always greener syndrome whether it's a larger house or a vacation house or an I could live here house yes it is true you get this ideal in your head and it's never exactly like it we had a handful of emails from people like this Right?

33:53Like people, it's a buy the rumor, sell the news type thing. Yes. Yeah. We got a few of those. Okay. Another one from Torsten Slock. This is, yeah, this is Torsten Slock. In the US, do you see this chart before I quiz you? Yeah, I saw it, sir. I was reading it. 87 % of firms with revenue over$100 million are private. I would never have guessed that. I'd love to know. Obviously, inflation adjusted. I'd love to see like a line chart over time. of the percentage of companies with that sort of level of revenue that are public or private. And I'm just going to guess that this has gone higher and higher and higher over the years as regulations make it less desirable for companies to come public, as private markets have exploded in terms of liquidity and all that sort of stuff.

34:42And private equity firms have gotten much larger and larger. Yeah, private equity is a big piece of this too, obviously. Yeah, yeah. They can keep them private because they're funding them. Yeah. All right. This is now the third bite of the apple we've gotten. I've gotten out of the Bank of America conference call. I spoke about some charts on what are your thoughts. We spoke about more with Art Hogan on TCAF. By the way, did you have a good time at TCAF? I had a great time. It was fun. Good feedback on that one. Not to brag. A lot of people were commenting on my physique. You look amazing. Kind of awkward.

35:11I mean, credit to you. This camera angle just doesn't do me justice. It really doesn't. That's true. No, because you know what? It's funny you mentioned that because I was watching a little bit on YouTube and I got to say, you look jacked to the tits. Do you still have your physical trainer? Your trainer? Yeah, I still do have my physical trainer, although I feel like I'm like getting hips somehow. What does that mean? I don't know. I look like, I'm like wide down here. I'm not, I'm not, we look very different. Let's just put it that way. All right. But these, yes, no, that was fun. But I think these credit card and financial firm earnings calls are very helpful in terms of economic activity.

35:54Yeah. So there's no company that I can think of in the United States that represents the state of the overall consumer better than Bank of America. Would you agree with that? I'd have to think about that. Let me get back to you. Pretty close, but I'd have to think about that. How about this? Maybe you could probably put JP Morgan in there, but I'm just saying just from the point of learning about the consumer through an earnings call and an earnings deck, nobody does it like they do. All right. So in terms of they have a chart on credit card days past due trend, they break it down by 30 days, 30 to 59, et cetera, and the longer it goes out.

36:31They said we were encouraged by the trend of delinquencies because the late stage increases slowed and early stage delinquencies improved as well. and that leads us to believe we should begin to see consumer net charge-offs start to level out over the next quarter or so. That's good. So there were some delinquencies, but it's getting better. Yeah. Let's see what they said about commercial real estate. Roughly one-third of our office exposure is now categorized as reservable criticized. And importantly, the pace of the increases in reservable criticized exposures has slowed each quarter since the second quarter of last year.

37:06Reservable criticized. I think that's how they categorize maybe write-offs. Okay. Reservable criticized. So how much are they taking for net charges, I'm guessing. Okay. So we believe the losses on these office properties have been front-loaded and largely reserved. We expect the losses to move lower in the second quarter, and we expect a notable decline in the second half of the year when compared to the first half of the year, absent any material change in expected real estate prices. Now, they could be wrong, but they have no reason to be overly optimistic right on an earnings call. Isn't it true, though, that the banks being better capitalized are in such a much better position to handle this commercial real estate, whatever it is?

37:49If this thing happened at the same time as 2008 or whatever? Oh, forget about it. So look at these charts. So they show consumer net charge-offs, and they, like a lot of other people, were taking big provisions for losses that mostly never materialized. Now, it is going higher, but not catastrophically. These are net charge-offs, not reserves. So these are actual charge-offs. But if you look at the commercial side of it, talk about being front-loaded. This is the thing that we keep saying. There's all these articles about there was a building in St. Louis that got written down tremendously. There's all these articles.

38:24And you're like, well, where is the wider crash? Look at the commercial net charge-offs that they took in the first quarter of 2024 compared to previous quarters. It quadrupled. big one. We know that commercial real estate is f***ed. Right. And the banks know it too. Right. They're holding all these loans on the books. They know it. Yeah. So they're writing them down. All right. Alex Morris has a wonderful substack where he talks about, I think he owns 13 companies in his portfolio. Netflix is one of them. I also own Netflix. And it's just a really great way to read about these companies, the fundamentals, and it's like easily digestible.

39:03So I'm happy to pay for that service. Here's a chart showing Netflix operating income. And Ben, I was mentioning earlier in the show how the financials of Netflix had gone sideways for a couple of years in terms of their operating income, right? Look at that breakout in 2024. So Alex says, it's pretty astounding to think about the evolution of Netflix's financials. In 2014, the business generated revenues of$5.5 billion, revenue. Fast forward to 2024 and EBIT, That's earnings before interest and taxes. Basically, bottom line. And EBIT, or close to it, EBIT is now at$10 billion despite spending$17 billion on content.

39:38How wild is that? You know what they're way better at at Netflix than every other streamer? When you're binging a show and you go from one episode to the next, these other streamers, Netflix just goes right into the next episode. These other streamers make you sit and watch the credits and you have to fast forward it or hit back to go to the next episode. You just want to, when you finish an episode, you want to watch the next one right away. These other streamers just don't have it. how come Netflix is the only one who's figured this out? They make it easy for you to keep binging. I don't want to sit through all the credits.

40:06Give me the next episode. Alright. Wait, one more thing on this topic about why do companies sort of do things this way. I was listening, and this is a bit of a tangent so forgive me, but I was listening to Fantasy and Amanda Dobbins at The Big Picture and they were talking about their most anticipated summer movies. Did you listen to this? No. Any good ones? So I can't wait for Alien Romulus and Mad Max, the new Mad Max movie, or the new Fury Road movie. Future also, yeah, looks good. Looks amazing. They mentioned the new, or the English version, the American version of Speak No Evil. Okay. Speak No Evil is the most horrific movie in terms of, like, it hurt to watch.

40:51Why, it was a British movie or something, or what? No, it was Nordic. I can't remember where. Okay. And it was just so beyond grisly. Just anybody that has watched it, it shakes you to your core. Like that's how bad it was in a good way, but also in a bad way. So anyway, I bring this up to say that they completely, completely spoiled the movie in the trailer. They gave it away. And I kind of wonder if, and they were alluding to this. one of the reasons why they might have done that is to, you need shock value to get people to go to the theaters. Because otherwise, if it's not Mission Impossible, people aren't going.

41:30So you show the release, and then people are like, what? I have to see that. But they really spoiled the movie. Okay. What was the horror movie that I spoiled that one time? You got mad at me. Barbarian. The Justin Long one, yeah. Okay. I was perusing the D.R. Horton. The other one I like for the real estate market is just looking at the home builders, right? DR Horton is one of the largest homebuilders in the country. So they said, they talk about how mortgage rates are impacting, and they also talked about their buyers. And they said their buyers have an average FICO score of 725, average loan-to-value ratio of 89%, meaning 11 % down payment.

42:04First-time homebuyers represented 15 or 57 % of the closings in the quarter, which is pretty high. Still see strong buyer demographic and demand, and we remain consistent that we have seen fluctuations in rates, but they've not really been significant enough to have any meaningful impact on our backlog and people's ability to qualify. So rates going to 7.5 % haven't really slowed buyers down. They talk about how if rates were to go from 7 % to 8 % again, that's a little more challenging. So they said if it goes that high, we would expect to see our incentives increase to keep our base. So if rates go higher, they're going to keep buying down these mortgage rates to make it, I'm sure they figure their sweet spot, whatever it is, 6 % or something.

42:41If I was in the market right now, I still would be a new home buyer if I was a buyer, if that's possible. I think they're going to make it way easier on you than trying to figure out the demand or the supply in the regular market. Also, great. The search feature on quarter is amazing. So good. I just was searching for keywords on here because I didn't want to go through the whole thing. Very helpful. All right. I do wonder, what do you think happens if rates go back to 6 %? Let's just say if and when. I don't know. 6 % is going to feel like a blessing for people that are on the side ends right now.

43:21Because mortgages have been at 7 for so long. Everything's relative. So you anchor it to the high price, and you look at your down payment and your monthly payment, and at 6%, it'll be a big difference. I agree. Okay. We've been reading some good emails from people's attitudes. Last week, we talked about how rich people that don't feel rich, right? They make$400 ,000, but they don't feel like it. This person says, I have a weird thing where I feel considerably richer than I probably am. I think it boils down to almost solely to free time. I work an easy job and own three small businesses, so I have a reasonably good income.

43:47But because my job is easy, I can basically do whatever I want whenever I want. My conjecture is that free time during the day is a feeling of being rich that people want. They don't equate rich with money. I work hard, I'm not rich. Rich people are always doing non-work things and I'm always at work. So saying that if you actually have control over your time, that's being rich. Yeah, that's certainly a part of it. I like that take too. I think the backlash that people have to these attitudes, it's very, very simple. if you're making$100 ,000 and you see somebody at$400 ,000 saying that they're not rich, what the$100 ,000 income person does is, what?

44:25If I made$300 ,000 more, I could do whatever I wanted. And while that might be factually true, the person who's making$400 ,000, you don't go from$100 ,000 to$400 ,000, right? It happens gradually for most people. And their expenses rise with their income such that at the end of the month, they don't feel rich because they're probably not saving a ton of money because their fixed costs, their cars, their houses, their this, their that probably crept all the way up. So I think like that, it's very simple. That's where a lot of the backlash comes from, I think. Do you think that's accurate? Yes.

44:59And I'm actually okay with the, the other part is people always say like, it depends where you live. You know, that's, that's a big one, but, but I'm actually okay with lifestyle creep as long as you have savings rate creep too. Just keep your savings rate the same. Like, cause you should have lifestyle creep. If you go from$100 ,000 to$400 ,000, unless you're a complete fire psycho, you're going to spend more money, and you should spend more money. Yeah, that's what money's for. But you should also have, you should also save more. Like, if you have a 15 % savings rate, keep it 15%, and then your spending will go up two, and you're already knocking out the savings.

45:28That's Mike. All right, Bloomberg had this piece about billionaires avoiding taxes, talking about, like, having control of your time. So this is the lead into this article. And New Jersey's Teterboro and Long Island's, how do you say that? Islip? Islip. Islip. Airports, dozens of private jets destined for Florida takeoff at such times as 1142 p.m. or 1154 p.m. Over at JFK, a regular freight from San Juan, Puerto Rico arrives at seemingly purposeful time about 15 minutes after midnight. Meanwhile, tax attorneys tell stories of clients idling their luxury SUVs near the New Jersey entrance to the George Washington Bridge shortly before 12 a.m.

46:01waiting for the clock to turn before crossing the state line to New York. So this is the idea that you have to live somewhere else for a certain amount of days if you don't want to pay the New York taxes, right? Billionaires who split their time between Florida and New York. So they're like literally sitting on the highway because they, the New York state, like they'll track people somehow, right? Do you really spend enough time away from New York that you don't pay the New York taxes, right? For me, I think a big thing of wealth is convenience. And this doesn't feel very convenient to me. Even if it's saving yourself millions and millions of dollars in taxes, and I get why these people do this.

46:34Imagine being a billionaire and doing that. It's so inconvenient. You think at that point, you know? Yeah. I get it. It's millions and millions of dollars. Right, right. So I think everyone's knee-jerk reaction is those motherfuckers. And I totally get that. And I'm mostly there. But I also do kind of understand. It's like, yeah, sorry. I'm going to sit in this car for another 30 minutes so not to pay$7 million more in taxes. You wouldn't do the same thing? I would just hope that if I'm a billionaire, convenience matters more to me than saving a little bit of money in taxes. Listen, I'm with you.

47:07I'm with you. They showed a chart showing that the New York millionaire departures have jumped since the pandemic. And like everything else, we spoke about this earlier, there's a dividing line before and after. And it's wild. It's like triple almost. There was like less than a thousand people leaving, a thousand New York millionaires leaving before the pandemic. And now it's at least two and a half times more than that. This jumped out to me. New York's Department of Taxation and Finance has 300 auditors dedicated to conducting residency audits, and they are notorious for their thoroughness. Bank records, phone bills, and family photos are under the microscope.

47:41Auditors are backed up by sophisticated artificial intelligence-fueled tax monitoring systems that flag inconsistencies and returns. The AI component of this, like, this is coming for everything. Yeah, right. Yes. I asked Bill Sweet about this before. If you had a client in California, New York, who wanted to move somewhere that had lower, I'm moving to Texas, I'm moving to Florida, and living there more than half the year, whatever the number is, Bill said, especially in those two states, they'll check your credit card statements to make sure that you're spending enough in the one state versus the other one, where you have your driver, all this stuff.

48:17But you're right, the AI component of it will be even harder, but way harder to beat too. Speaking of California, last plug, last plug. I'm doing a live show with Josh on Tuesday. So a week from tomorrow. You take off your spring break soon, right? We'll record this Monday because I'm leaving for California tomorrow. We've got Matt Bellany of The Puck. We're going to be talking the business of streamers in Hollywood. And we've got Doug Ellen, the creator of Entourage, who actually grew up in my town and I think went to my high school. Oh, really? So that's Tuesday, April 30th, Lincoln Bio. I rewatched an old Entourage episode recently, the Bar Mitzvah episode, where Ari's daughter, is it Bat Mitzvah or Bar Mitzvah?

48:57One of those. Bat Mitzvah. and Turtle and Johnny Drama just get stoned and eat all the food. And it's just excellent. That show, towards the end, like a lot of shows, it probably overstayed its welcome. But at the beginning, that show was just, I loved it. Fire. Another one from Apollo. Younger households tend to have lower credit scores and the consequences that Fed hikes and associated tighter credit conditions tend to have a more negative impact on younger generations. So they've got an average credit score by age. And of course, this goes up and to the right, meaning the older you are, the more likely to have Ben Carlson like credit scores.

49:30See, this is why I'm an old soul. I've fallen with a 78-year-old plus where FICO scores. So we spoke earlier in the show about boomers having 30, what was the number, 39 % of their mortgages paid off? Or was it boomers or not boomers? Overall, the number is like, yes. That's overall, but the large percentage is boomers, obviously. So just another example of young people being more impacted by the current climate. Right, which makes sense that young people have lower credit scores because they didn't have a time to build up a good credit score. Part of it is how much credit you use and on-time payments and all that stuff.

50:03A few people emailed us and said, self-driving cars eventually solve the auto insurance crisis. How? Well, auto rates are going to be way lower if there's self-driving cars all over the road, right? Are self-driving cars, this is a naive question. Will there be less accidents because of self-driving cars? Yeah, that's a hope. They have the sensors and stuff. They can talk to each other. But who pays for it? But still the car driver, the owner of the car, will still pay for it. Yeah, but how is that going to work, though, if you have the self-driving car company that puts in the sensors and the monitors and it gets in a car accident?

50:39Is it really your fault if the car is driving? So, yeah, I don't know. But it feels like this is one of those ones that I think I've mentioned before. My oldest daughter just turned 10. And when she was born, I asked the question to some people. I said, is she ever going to need to drive her own car? because we were talking about self-driving cars back then. It seems like this is one that's taking way, way longer than people would have thought or hoped. I know in some cities, they're using them as taxis now, but I would have thought we'd be further along at this point than we are for self-driving cars.

51:08It seems like a 2040 story. Here's a good chart from Charter. Uncrustables are now nearly a$1 billion business from Smuckers. Wait, what's Charter? Actually, Robinhood just bought them. You don't subscribe to Charter? Mm-mm. Okay. Like most places, a quarter put an R on it instead of an E. Good. Yeah. I think Robin Hood just bought them. So why do all little kids hate crust? Do you cut the crust off everything for your kids? I do. It's why do they hate crust? What is so bad about crust that kids don't like to eat it? None of my kids like crust. I'm constantly cutting crust off in it. Like, try it, you guys.

51:47What's the problem? You know, now that you mention it, I'm shocked. So Kobe, he eats two pieces of raisin bread. That's his thing. What do you want? Two pieces of raisin? He eats it twice a day, I feel like. He like folds them and rips them in half, and he eats it like this, and he just eats until the crust is gone, and then he gets rid of it. So you have to cut it off for him, huh? I'm shocked he doesn't have to cut it off. Yeah. Well. Have you seen these uncrustable things before? Of course. Just these little circles. It's the middle part of the PB &J. Genius. It is pretty genius, but I don't understand why all little kids hate crust.

52:18What is it about crust that they don't like? Yeah, I'm sure there's a reason. I don't know what it is. okay you know what i'll take a guess it's just not it's a little there crust can be abrasive it's not quite as soft as uh you know the only thing i'm good at cooking for my kids is grilled cheese what's your secret i don't butter the bread i put the butter on the pan and let the butter melt then i put the bread on there yeah that's how i do it i didn't know that you won't do it the other way hmm about the only thing i'm good at cooking then i have to cut the damn crust off for him. All right.

52:53We got an email. I'm staying at the Four Seasons in Denver. Four Seasons, that's in a very expensive hotel, right? Yes. Bull market and emails today. Went to the pool today and got a single margarita. I got a pathetic half glass mixer margarita high school bullshit drink. The bill was$45 for a single drink. Would you complain? I didn't. Billed it to the room. Not happy though. You'd complain I wouldn't. 45 that's borderline we already we already know your history you definitely complain dude 86 dollars i'm sorry that you're too much of a nice guy to not complain 86 dollars that's that's just highway robbery 45 that is borderline depends how about this if i had if i was a little but yeah i probably would say something that's egregious he said this was recommended by the server if you get recommended though they should tell you by the way, this is 45 bucks.

53:47True. So then he said, uh, I complained to the hotel checkout and they took out, they took the drink off. So see squeaky wheel gets the grease, Ben. All right. Uh, all right. Recommendations. What do you have? All right. Josh pounded the table on for fallout with us last week on Friday. And so my, I think my wife and I watched three or four episodes this weekend. It's good. It's, it's a show that feels like a movie. Did you watch it yet? I tried to, and my Amazon wasn't working on my TV. Okay. But I'm in. Yeah, we binged like three or four episodes this weekend, and it's very good. All right, I got sucked into Office Space this weekend on HBO Max.

54:26Easily one of the best movies of the 90s. I have a few things here. Our rich talk, you know? Lawrence was having the talk on the couch of what would you do with a million bucks? And Lawrence is the guy with the mullet. Yeah, Lawrence, which is just great. Yeah, he's the guy from Drew Carey, just plays it perfectly. We all know the line. But no, this is a different one. I'm not using that line. But he says to Peter, what would you do with a million bucks? That's a conversation they're having. I almost inflation adjusted it, but I don't want to be that guy. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. What is it?

54:55No, I didn't. What did the movie come out? 1998? I didn't do it. I thought it was earlier than that. But it's probably$2.3 million an hour or something like that. So Peter says, I would do nothing. And Lawrence says, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin. He's broke. Don't do shit. Getting back to the time thing. right? Which I just, I loved that line. Uh, whatever happened to the Michael Bolton guy? He was great in that movie. And then he never did anything again. I'm going to, you're so, I'm going to guess he went off the rails. I'm going to guess it was Metal Breakdown.

55:22Okay. Cause he was very funny. And one other thing, is that Jennifer Aniston's best movie? I think it might've been her first movie. No. Big one? Nope. Nope. You know what her first movie is? What? Leprechaun. Oh, good call. That was pre-friend. So, I mean, Next is probably Along Came Polly but it's probably Jennifer Aniston's best movie. I do love Along Came Polly. Anyway, it's got another nostalgia piece for me but just that movie even though it was in the 90s still just ages perfectly. You know what's one of my favorite Jennifer Aniston movies? What's the one where she gets fake kidnapped with Clive Owen?

55:56Derailed? Oh, I love that movie. Yeah, it's okay. I mean, that's a very me movie, right? Yes. That was actually not bad. It was a little twist that she, yeah, it was fake, yeah. what do you got? Kobe watched Space Jam 2.

56:15Truly, truly horrendous. Pretty bad, right? He loved it so much. This was last week I forgot to say. He made us do like a movie night where he was like, you got to watch this. So we sat with him and we watched it. And I mean, whatever. He loved it. But it was like truly unbelievably bad. Shocking. I don't even know how it happened. I feel like it kind of got swept under the rug a little bit. Like, we'll give LeBron a pass. Yeah, I have no idea what happened with that. My son's top Tom Cruise movie this week was Edge of Tomorrow with Emily Blunt. Good one. Love that movie. He's watching that? Oh, yeah.

56:46Good for you. I mean, he's into every Tom Cruise movie there is now. Somebody emailed us, emailed me, hey, my kid's 13, can I take it to see Civil War? And I was like, ooh, I don't know about that. And I'm going to think it back. I saw Nightmare on Elm Street when I was like six. I saw 8mm when I was, I don't know why I said it that way, but 8mm was one of the darkest movies ever. I think I was probably 14 when that came out. Okay. When you're a teenager, then, yeah, you sneak into movies. So that doesn't count anymore. Yeah. Anyway, it's playoff season, so I'm probably not going to be watching.

57:17Although, maybe I'll watch a movie on the plane. I'm pretty much out. Did you go to the Knicks game yesterday? I'm pretty much gone until June. Or two days ago, whenever it was? Oh, yeah. Fun? Top five game in my life. Really? Okay. That's recency bias. Yeah. No, it's not, dude. It's not recency bias. You don't know the history of the New York Knicks like I do. It's not recency bias. You mean your regular season Charlotte Hornets game with me wasn't top five? So just speaking about like being old and all that sort of stuff, I've been going to the Knicks game since 1992. And really nothing good has happened.

57:50There's been like a few moments in time. But I never stopped going. So it's been just, I mean, you know, you're a Lions fan. It's just been torture. And we're finally on track. Okay, I'm pulling for you. I'm a Jalen Brunson fan. Thank you. Okay. So I will, I guess I'm bringing a mic to California. The show must go on. Not going to do the show. Yep. We'll do the show live from California next week. You'll have some travel stories for us, I'm sure. Check out Talk Your Book this week. We actually talked about The Bull Case for India. That was a good one. Which is very topical and interesting and right up my alley.

58:24Email us, animalspiritsathecompoundnews.com. Thanks to the production team, as always. And we'll see you next time.

58:36Thank you.

From the publisher

On episode 357 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: why the stock market needed a correction, why the 1990s is an outlier (in more ways than one), economic growth is a policy choice, Gen Z is doing better than you think, living in the U.S. vs. Europe, the number of households with a paid off mortgage, the renovation boom, and much more!

This episode is brought to you by Franklin Templeton. To learn more about the Franklin High Yield Corporate ETF (FLHY) visit: https://www.franklintempleton.com/.

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Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense
Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor

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