All In on US Stocks (EP.392)

24:04And he's his whole point is, global diversification worked, right? If you didn't go to extremes, you got almost 6 % after inflation, would you have done better going on in the US? Of course, you would have looking back on it now. But the point is that the you had your yin and Yang. And it worked out pretty good being in an all world portfolio for that 50 year period. Yeah. But the charts like this, and I don't disagree with Colin, I'm just saying charts like this don't change anybody's mind. Like, right. Like, oh, true. Yes. I don't care. I don't care if you started 55 years ago with what the returns of dollar look like.

24:36Look, I started 12 years ago and I've seen nothing but US outperformance. Why would I not put all my money here? The funny thing is, is my tweet going kind of viral for that? But I, it was probably pretty even. I scrolled through the responses before it started getting, you know, psychos like usual. But it was a lot of people saying, yes, this is true. I'm worried about U.S. valuations. Diversification still rules versus other people saying, no, you're an idiot. Technology is changing. It was a pretty even. There wasn't like, all right, one more thing. I had Die Hard on again last night because I watched holiday movies over the holidays.

25:08And Die Hard was a screaming sell signal for Japanese stocks. How did no one think of this at the time? It came out in 1988, and Holly McClain works for a Japanese company? Like, how was this not a screaming sell signal for Japanese stocks? What were they doing back then? Well, they were not podcasting. Where were all the anecdotes? We would have been all over this. Right? If the internet existed, I'm sure people would have been throwing out heaters. I still can't believe that Bruce Willis is 32 when he filmed Die Hard. He looks so old. 32 years old. He looks like he's 55. I, I, explain it. Is it just sunscreen?

25:46What is it that made people look so old back in the day? Did everyone just smoke and sunscreen? No sunscreen and drink? He was 32. That's unbelievable. 32, yes. It's hard to believe, right? Hmm. Yeah. All right. This is a great piece from Gunjan at the Wall Street Journal. More men are addicted to the crack cocaine of the stock market. Did you read this piece? I did. This is fantastic. So she said, at Gambler's Anonymous in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, and one man called options a crack cocaine of the stock market. Another said he faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading losses.

26:18One young man brought his mom and girlfriend to celebrate one year since his last bet. So she's going to these Gamblers Anonymous meetings and saying most of them, or more of them, are now people who have become addicted to the stock market. So Pennsylvania's gambling hotline has fielded more calls tied to gambling and stocks and crypto since 2021 than it did in the prior six years combined. This other place in New York, 10 % of patients are seeking help for addictions tied to trading. Before 2020, there was no such patience. Is there a solution here? How do we help these people? I don't think there's a solution because I think that what people have said in America resoundingly is if I want to blow myself up, I'm going to do it.

26:57Just let me do it. And I think this, getting back to the cultural thing, I think this is just a cultural thing we have. I don't think there's any way to stop this. What if the brokerages said, you can't do more than 100 trades a month? Oh, that would not be a bet. I mean, that's a lot. No, I guess, but to your point, Ben, there were people who say, well, f*** that, what do you mean? Yeah. Why are you going to restrict how much I want to trade? Yeah, I'm responsible. I can do it. So they said, listen to this. New patients often suffer from withdrawal symptoms, including severe anxiety and depression when they first stop trading.

27:30Some start fidgeting or repeatedly tapping their fingers against the table, itching to place a trade. They talk about this one guy who's like sneaking away in his house all the time to place trades. And it's sad. Yeah. And it's going to get worse. I guess the thing is with the internet age, there's going to be a way to do this somehow, some way. And I think I don't know what the answer is to stop it. It doesn't, it's not all that surprising, I guess. But you're going to see stories like this about sports betting and everything else in the years ahead. So to that point, if they're going to find a way, let's just say that one app was going to say, okay, we're setting the limit.

28:05Well, the other app would say, all right, our doors are open. Come on in. So the idea that we can somehow eliminate this, because it's horrible. It's really sad. There are people who are destroying their lives and not in any way to make light of this at all or to poo-poo it, but this exists for gambling. This exists for alcohol. This exists for all sorts of things. And I don't know how you police addictive behavior. It's an illness and maybe just groups like this or the answer, I really don't know. Yeah. And again, unfortunately, with the internet and the information age being what it is, there's probably going to be more addicted people falling down these rabbit holes, unfortunately, just because the access is easier.

28:47So Gunjan and her colleagues wrote another piece in the journal. So this is on the cover of the journal today, The Physical. It says, crypto cult fuels micro strategy rise. By the way, I don't actually think physical newspapers are going to die ever because— I know. Are you going back to them here? But I do think that it's in secular decline. Like the print as a percentage of overall reading is in secular decline. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, for sure. So that's – so anyway. So, okay. So we're talking about micro strategy. No, there's going to be a paper at some point that's going to go, no, we're not printing physically.

29:20There's going to be a big story in the coming decades of one of the huge papers saying we're not printing anymore. If you want it, get it online. That's going to happen. Maybe. The dollar – yeah, probably. The dollar value of MicroStrategy shares changing hands at one point in November topped every other US stock in ETF except NVIDIA. Look at this chart. They have a chart of MicroStrategy options volume daily. And the call options went from whatever, zero to infinity basically. And Peter Atwater was quoted. I thought this was good. During times of uncertainty, you see the popularity of Colts, figures who demonstrate a sense of absolute clear control and direction that people just naturally fall behind.

29:58Talk about Michael Saylor there. Social media is a fixture of these investing groups, which have mushroomed into a hub of nearly nonstop chatter. In MicroStrategy, Dan, a chat room on the gaming platform Discord, more than 4 ,000 members chat about MicroStrategy. Luntz is one of about 23 ,000 members in the, quote, irresponsibly long MicroStrategy group on Twitter. I've been told, there's another quote from somebody, I've been told you find your tribe there. He said, I can't talk about MicroStrategy to anybody. I can't talk about Bitcoin without anyone saying it's a Ponzi. So, yeah. This is the other part of it, is that you have the ability to put all these people together.

30:39Right. And they see one person or a couple people who have done well with this, and they hop on the herd mentality. And then you have all these addicts together. Yeah, and the other part of it is, not to call everybody in here an addict, but the other part of this is that the isolation and, like, the social loneliness and all that sort of stuff, people find their tribes on the internet. And it's so easy to rally around a figure, a character like Michael Saylor, right? Yeah. Like he's like a magnet for attention. AMC and GameStop. And yes, I don't want to get like too deep with this, but part of this is like, I think religion filled this void for a lot of people in the past.

31:20And now they're looking for their own religion and they're finding it on the internet. Yeah, totally. Right? This is church for some people. Yeah. All right, switching from retail to strategists from RenMac. Strategists have never chased the market higher or harder with targets than today. So they've got a chart showing the percentage change in strategists' forecasts against the S &P. And it's been the highest 12-month change ever. So if you remember, coming into 2023, I'm pretty sure consensus on the market for this year was negative. It was very low. The S &P was – It was a tiny return. I actually think it was like 4 ,600 coming into the year where the S &P was-ish, and that's where a stretch thought it would end the year.

32:04So going into 24, I don't know what the average target is. Is it 7 ,000? Whatever it is, a hard about face. So I'm very curious to see if in a year from now, are we going to be like, well, obviously, the market wasn't going to perform well. Like, look, look how everybody was chasing and performing and, you know, or is it going to be, uh, yeah, they were right. I don't know. It does really seem like it was an everyone in the boat thing the last three or four months. Like, and every, you know, and yes, that's why I think a, a slight, even like a slight down year in 2025, people be like, what? How about this?

32:45I would say consensus bowls are usually right. But when you have like this type of thing where it's like everyone turning from bearish to bullish, that's different. Yes. That is like the one concerning thing. For me, that's a yellow light. Speaking of traffic. Wait, do you speed up when you see a yellow light though? It depends. So with Waze, you see where the – what are the lights with cameras called? You have those in Michigan, right? At the lights? No, that'll give you a ticket? Yeah. No, we don't have those. Oh, really? Mm-mm. Huh. So we have them all over the place. Unless I'm totally mistaken.

33:23I've never seen them. No, no, you must, because if you know about it. So we have them all over the place here. So there are cameras on lights so that if you go through a red light or a yellow to red, you're going to get a ticket in the mail. So I tend to... So Waze shows you where those lights are, which is kind of magic. Oh. I mean, Waze does the same thing. Remember when you were younger, everyone had a friend who had the, what was it called that could detect cops on your car? Oh, yeah. I don't know. I didn't have it. But everyone had a friend who had that. And I feel like it never really worked.

33:55But Waze tells you when a cop is coming too. Yeah. When you're on the highway. Yeah. So anyhow, I was thinking about traffic. I am, not to brag, a pretty good traffic merger in the car. Okay. I'm not one of those jackasses that goes all the way to the front. But I don't wait in line for, I'm not at the end of the line. But respectfully, when I see my shot, I take it, you know? Yeah. The people who go all the way to the front, like, I think it should be legal to hit them. Scum of the earth. Yes. No offense if that's you, but come on. Do better. No, offense. Yeah, offense. But with walking traffic, I'm terrible.

34:36I always bump into people. No, you go. No, you go. It's rules of the road. You stay to the right. Right? Is it that simple? Yes. Walking traffic is rules of the road. If people don't get that, if you go to a mall and you try to walk on the left side... No, of course. I don't walk against traffic. I'm not a psycho. Oh, so you just go to the right. Of course. It's rules of the road. I'm going to try that next time. I'll report back. Okay. We spoke a couple of weeks ago about why inflation is necessary and a great alternative to prices falling. So there's an article - The lesser of two evils. There's another article in the journal about China.

35:20Prices won't stop falling in China and Beijing is grasping for solutions. Here we go. Chinese leaders this week pledged to do more to stimulate the economy, including by cutting interest rates and boosting government borrowing. But pressure is building on Beijing to take even more forceful action to prevent a downward spiral of deflation that becomes self-reinforcing, potentially landing China in a longer-term recession. China's GDP deflator, a broader gauge of price levels across the economy, has been in negative territory for six consecutive quarters, the longest stretch since the 1990s. Here's a coup to grab-in.

35:52The fear is that deflation is becoming ingrained in China. As falling prices sat profitability, companies could postpone investment or shed workers, leading more people to cut back on spending. Others might put off purchases because they think prices will drop even more. Here's a quote from Penelope Prime, founding director of China Research Center in Atlanta-based think tank. She said, it becomes a vicious cycle. And that's it. So nobody likes inflation. Nobody likes high inflation. But it's a necessary, I don't want to say evil. It's just, it's a thing. Doesn't it seem like China is like the yin to our yang when it comes to the economy and the markets and such?

36:29Yeah. Like we, the US is an outlier in so many ways, but China is an outlier like in the opposite direction. Very much so. Yeah, it's very confounding. Benedict Evans does a big presentation every year exploring the macro and strategic trends in tech. And this year he called it AI eats the world for 2025. And I pulled out two charts that are pretty wild. And the whole thing is worth thumbing through. He shows the quarterly investment for Apple, the R &D, before the iPhone launch, compared with Meta Realities Labs operating loss for the last eight quarters? And to the structural point that we made earlier about US tech, and is it really so, so, so different this time, meaning the way that these companies work, the way that markets have responded to it, does it render historical comparisons completely useless?

37:28And this is a really good chart showing that to be the case. Again, it's comparing Apple's R &D before the iPhone came out, which was zero, basically, compared to Meta's Reality Labs operating losses. Okay. Which was completely apples and oranges. Right. Pun intended here? Yes. There was like a before and after. Yes. The amount of money that these companies are pouring into stuff, that is – it's kind of funny. The 2010s were like this thing where these companies don't have to invest in anything and everything is so efficient, but these companies are spending tons of money on this stuff now. Because they could afford to.

38:05And no sector in the history of mankind has produced these sort of profits, sustainable profits, where they've been able to do these sort of things that just continue to make their moat wider and wider and wider. And potentially fail along the way and still be fine. Yeah. Right? Like Facebook had a huge stumble when they first changed their name to Meta and their stock got dinged, but it didn't really matter. They could ride out the storm. Right. So one of the big themes with AI is job displacement. And of course there will be lots of new job creation, but that's part of the worry as always when there's a new technology that comes to market.

38:43He has a chart showing the elevator attendance in the United States. And there used to be almost 100 ,000 people worked in an elevator, as an elevator attendant. So before, I guess you could just push the button to go where you wanted to be, somebody had to manually get you or take you where you were going, whatever floor you were going, which is a wild concept. Do you think that was mostly at the fancy places? Or is that obviously? I don't know. I guess probably not. Yeah. This is going to happen here. But what a wild chart, right? So in 1900, it was 20 ,000. It went all the way up to 100 ,000.

39:18It was like a real industry. Yeah. dare I say sector, elevator attendance. I was thinking about this. I'm watching 1923. So I bailed on Yellowstone, as you know, after the third season, credit to me. Good decision. But I saw a preview for the second season of 1923. So you and Josh both said 1923 is worth watching. So I am watching it. And there's one scene, I don't know if you remember this, where refrigerators and laundry machines the first iteration comes to wherever they are. And to see that was really kind of cool. It was very, yes. Right? Because their reaction was like, why do we need this?

40:03And the guy's like, well, so you have time to do other things. He's like, what other things? Yeah. Yes. And now that's all we have is other things to do, right? Right. It's nothing but other things. That's all. It's like we complain about so many things because we have so much time to complain. Yes. In the past, when you were working for 12 hours a day on the farm, you didn't have time to complain about stuff. Yeah. Right? Can you imagine, like, tweeting on your break from the farm? Right? Oh. What did they do? They rested. Yeah. All right. Joey Paul Tano. This is on Blue Sky. What are we calling it again?

40:40Skying. Skying? Skiing? Skiing. All right. He has a chart of America's aging housing stock. It's the average age of U.S. housing units. He said, it's the oldest it's ever been and just keeps getting older. We don't have enough homes in this country, and too much of what we do have is dated and decaying. I think that the transition from, we've talked about this in recent weeks, baby boomers in their houses in the years ahead are going to be passing them along to the next generation or selling them. It's going to be a way more expensive proposition for people than they realize because a lot of these houses are going to need to be updated to suit the taste of younger people.

41:15And I'm seeing this already in neighborhoods around where I live. It's like an old 50s or 60s house, kind of like a flat ranch or whatever. And you see all the brand. They try to make like a modern farmhouse, you know, with the white and the black. And then they put the brown post on it and stuff. And it's like an older house, but it's been updated to fit today. And it's total renovation. I think you're just going to see a ton of that in the years ahead. And buying a house is going to be way more expensive than people think because it's buying the house and renovating it to get it up to HGTV standards.

41:46Right? This is going to be a big thing because we just don't build enough new housing in this country. Yeah. So what are the implications of this, do you think? Again, younger people getting screwed because they're going to be paying higher prices for housing that they're not going to like. And then they're going to have to pay more money to have it renovated. How? Debt, I guess. Right? All right. Jason Zweig did a story about private credit. He kind of compared private credit to owning corporate bonds or high yield and just saying how much of a party this is. And you and I have been getting all kinds of emails all the time about this stuff.

42:20So he compares the total annual expenses of private credit funds to high yield bond ETFs. And he shows that in 2023, the average expense for a private credit fund was 4.12%. And that's including, I guess, they take 20 % of the profits or whatever. And I just don't see how the math works for private credit. with 4 % fees and borrowing rates of, I don't know, 15, 17 % for some of these companies because you're promising yields to people of 10 to 12%. How does that math work? For both the companies that are borrowing at such high rates, I don't see how it all shakes out. I don't see how you get 12 % returns when you're paying 4 % in fees, and then that means the company's paying 16 % to borrow money.

43:08How does this work? It seems to me the bottleneck here is companies borrowing 16 % can't possibly continue to pay rates that high. Yeah. I agree. I mean, part of this is probably just leverage, I guess, is like the, that's the difference. Well, I think, it is my view, and this is like an hour-long conversation, that private investments are coming in a big way. So Jason's right. There is going to be a tidal wave. And I think we're in the first inning of that tidal wave. It's early. Yeah, it's early still. So I think you could look at this through a skeptical eye, which is warranted, fully warranted, because there's a lot of opacity in here and high fees, which are guaranteed.

43:52So certainly you should look at this with a skeptical eye. Like, why are they coming to market? What do these things actually do? All that sort of stuff. But I also do think that the tidal wave is going to force competition. and fees are going to come down probably fairly significantly in the next 10 years. That's fair. And then the other side, it would be not to say like, oh, this is a bubble. It would be to say, these returns are going to come down. You can't promise these high returns anymore. That's not going to last. So I think they're coming for your 401k, which actually probably makes sense, right?

44:24These are long duration instruments, illiquid. Probably makes sense if you're going to own them to own them in a retirement account that you're not going to touch anyway. So yeah. Yeah, these are coming for baby boomers too, who want to have some more perceived safety in their retirement funds. And they see a yield. That's all they need to see. 10 %? Sign me up. Exactly. All right, this is interesting. I'm a 45-year-old male. I'm sorry. I am a 45-year-old married. This guy was 45 years old. I was retiring 10 years. All right? I should have just said that. All right. I want to know what your retirement plans are.

45:01Will you guys just put your nest here in some safe 60-40 mix instead of forget it? Do you plan on picking stocks in your retirement? I definitely don't plan on picking stocks in my retirement. My plan is to retire as early as possible and just go to my favorite diner every morning and research small caps to invest with a couple of bucks and keep the rest in healthy mix of index funds. Please share with us what you guys imagine your retirement would be like. All right, so I kind of misread this at first. I thought he meant like, what do you guys plan on doing in the future, like work-wise? Not necessarily, how do you plan on managing your money in retirement?

45:29Which is, he's more asking the latter. I think, so my retirement money is, it's index funds, right? I'm not trading my retirement account. Although I do have a SEP IRA in which that's where my stocks are. But I don't think I'm going to be 65 years old or 70 or whenever I retire actively trading stocks or like actively being like super active in my portfolio. I just don't see it. No, my portfolio will be as simple as possible. It'll be, yeah, a mix of stocks and some fixed income and some liquid cash reserves. Very boring. Also, I'm very bad at predicting how my future self will feel. True. At 70, I might be like, I still got it.

46:11Or now I can actually focus on picking stocks. Now I actually have time to focus on becoming the next Warren Buffett or the next Paul Trudeau Jones. So I don't know. I would say that's probably not going to happen. but I've also learned my lesson over the years that I'm very bad at predicting how I'm going to feel in the future. The only thing that I can say is that I will probably have a higher allocation to equities than most retirees. I think my risk tolerance will still remain relatively high. I also don't know. I am also pretty sure that you're just going to be in a target day fund. Let's be real.

46:42You know, I don't actually own any, for as much as you talk about, I don't own any target day. Well, okay, that's a lie. I own target day funds for my kids' 529 plans. How's that? And also maybe some tokenized real estate. Who knows? Yes. What are you talking about? You'll be having one of those big ski masks on, and you'll be trading stocks, like pushing stuff around. I might be. So, Ben, Carry On was the top show, the top movie of the year for Netflix. That's crazy, right? So it was the biggest, I think, yeah. Well, you know why? Because Hitman was so good, but not quite as maybe like universal appeal as Carry On, which was just pure silliness fun.

47:18So I watched Carry On, and it was a rip-worn good time. and incredibly silly. Robin walked in and she's like, why is he running like that? And I'm like, because he ran track in high school. That's why. That's true. Yes, they had to mention that part. So to me, it was like, remember the movie Phone Booth with Colin Farrell? Oh, yeah. It was like Phone Booth in the airport. Yes. Good fun. Kind of movie that's been done, but just in a different place. So Lucas Shaw had this survey where he asked different people in Hollywood, if you were going to sell a show to a streaming service, where would it be?

47:52And it was Netflix over all else, obviously. Netflix was number one by a huge margin. HBO Max was the next one. Apple TV was actually the third one. And I wonder if that's because they know they'll get a lot of money from Apple. But I mean, if Carry On had come out on Hulu or something, there's no way it's as big as it is. No, you're right. You know, it would have been seen by nobody. It's Netflix is the thing. Yeah, it's Netflix, right. All right, Jeff Dean tweeted, after 25.3 million autonomous miles driven, Waymo vehicles have an 88 % reduction in property damage claims and a 92 % reduction in bodily injury claims compared to human drivers per mile driven.

48:30This is one of those things that the evidence is going to just be so resoundingly clear that these things are safer than human drivers. And I still think in America, we're going to fight it. It seems like this is, I wonder if this is like under discussed, underappreciated, or maybe it's just because you and I are not in an area where this exists. I'm sure people in San Francisco are like, yeah, what do you mean? Like, right. This is a thing that it's not that it's not even that new anymore. It's been here for a year or whatever it is. But I think, uh, like this is an example of like something that's so wild and incredible that just is under celebrated, right?

49:00Like we move on like, oh yeah, of course you're self-driving cars. Right. Yeah. It is. It's kind of a miracle. Yeah. It's a miracle. Yeah. All right. Had to pause the podcast, send this immediately. You always buy the new. So last week we talked about, someone asked us, would you, would you give your son or daughter when they turn 16, your old car or buy them a new vehicle? And we said, no, you always give them the hand-me-down. We were pretty clear on this. Someone said, you always buy the new driver the new car. New cars have safety features that are crucially young drivers. When they don't have the experience of an older driver, they need all the braking, line spot, lane assist, all those safety features.

49:31Your car comes, you want your child to have a millionaire bag, not just the one that popped out of the steering wheel. So it's counterintuitive. You always get your car, your young person, the new vehicle. And obviously, this is - That's obviously right. Of course it's right, yeah. It's obviously right, but it's obviously wrong. Let me tell you. there's never been another generation when this has been the thing. Growing up, did you ever have friends who got new cars? Maybe there was like, we had one rich girl in our high school got a new car. Everyone else got beaters. I said I drove the 89 Honda Accord.

49:59We had huge, massive snowstorms when I grew up. And guess what? I learned to drive way more conservatively. I didn't have antiloc brakes. I would hit my brakes. You know, and so guess what? So there are studies that show that antiloc brakes actually increased the prevalence of, it saved like fender benders, but it increased the prevalence of single car mess ups. Like have you ever been in a snowstorm before and you see a massive truck or SUV just fly by you? Yes, yes. And you go, oh my God, what am I? And then like three miles down, you see him in a ditch somewhere. Yeah. So I think - It's made drivers more brazen.

50:31You're absolutely right. Yeah, so sometimes the safety features, obviously, if you're a parent, you look at this, you go, of course I'd get my child the car with all the safety features. But also, what if all those safety features make them drive like an idiot? So I can see - But isn't this how luxury— No parent is doing second-level thinking with their child safety. But isn't this how luxuries become necessities, though? Like, people say, like, I can't afford to live anymore. And there's people who should be doing better off financially that aren't because of this kind of line of thinking. Right?

51:01But, yeah, but are you going to tell a parent, no, don't make your child as safe as possible? Of course not. Here's another email that we got in cars that I will bend the knee to. Your car advice to give the old car to your 16-year-old and buy a new car for yourself is spot on. However, Michael said putting too much money, $10 ,000 on a car is way too much. If you put down that much money and the car gets totaled, the money is gone. In my opinion, this is just false and terrible advice. This is what insurance is for. If you total the car off the lot, you'd get the 10K from insurance, and the insurance company would pay the bank the rest.

51:29The bank would never lend you the money without getting it properly insured. Okay, so I guess it makes sense. Well, how about this, though? Yeah, I guess it's six of one half dozen. You're putting a big amount of money into a depreciating asset, but either way, you're going to be spending more on the month. You know, I don't know. By the way, speaking of emails, I want to do better for the audience. So last week, I got a little bit salty with somebody in the inbox who said that I was so frothy and all that sort of stuff. And I want to say this. Our inbox is a safe space, okay? So if I or Ben, let's be real, probably me, if I say something that you don't like and you want to let us know in the inbox, I will not air that in public, okay?

52:12If you have a gripe with something I say, I will keep that between you. Add this to the Michael email etiquette list. I will keep that between you and me. I should not have gotten defensive on the podcast, so I apologize. Hand up, I will do better. I will never bring your dirty lunch to the air, but I do reserve the right to change my mind. Okay. This is like the opposite of Festivus. This is like the mea culpa. Festivus is when we air our grievances. Well, I'm trying to do better. Listen, I'm trying to grow. I'm trying to do better. Okay. Ben, if you just get 1 % better each day,

52:46compound, Twitter thread, et cetera, motivation, hashtags. Hashtag Marcus Aurelius. All right, this, you know when you see something, you're like, oh yeah, why doesn't that exist? Somebody tweeted, Apple is developing a smart doorbell with advanced facial recognition that would let you into your house using Face ID. Duh. Why the heck doesn't the ring just let you in when it sees you? Why can't you just do this? Because you have a key. I don't know. Is it really necessary? Oh, it's necessary. So I have a keypad on my door. Yeah, we have a keypad in our garage too. Yeah, but why do I have to do boop, boop, boop, boop?

53:27Wait, did I just give it away? What my code is? No, why can't I just see your face and open the door and the door unlock? I don't know, because what happens when the internet in your house is down and you can't get in your house anymore because you don't have a key? There's an override. Okay. It seems like a cool feature, but it also seems like it's way too complex. How? I don't know. Is it necessary? Is it necessary that I drink my own urine?

53:54You're doing the dice thing too much. No, but it's sterling. I like the taste. All right. Here's the thing, though. It's the kind of thing where you'd use, like you have friends come over and you'd show them, like, look at how cool this is. And you probably never would use it. What do you mean? You just literally look right in it. I don't, maybe it's because I... You thought the Apple wallet was too complicated at first. Sorry, maybe it's because you turned your garage into a mudroom. So I have a garage. So I just go, I hit the door on my garage door and I go into my garage and I walk into my house through the garage.

54:23So I never use my front door for anything. So I can't get into my garage. This is so annoying. When they built the mudroom, You know, there's like the motor on the garage, by the way, that isn't necessary that I drink my own urine. That's from Dodge. It's a line from Dodgeball. Okay. So if you're like, what the hell did Michael just say? It's a line from Dodgeball. So when they built the mudroom, the wall backs up against the motor of my garage. And so there's an app on my phone that lets you open your garage door on your phone, right? I'm sure you have one too. I'm sure most listeners have one.

54:53But in order to reset it, you have to like, like scan the QR code on the back of your motor and I can't get to the motor because it's pressed up against the wall. So I don't know. I don't know what to do. See, this is the problem of technology. It's so annoying. If you just had the old garage that you could just lift up on your own, you'd be fine. And so yesterday, Robin was getting annoyed because the kids were out playing in the snow and they come in and they take all their dirty clothes off right in the front door. And she's like, this is what the mudroom is for, but we can't get in because the garage, you're an idiot.

55:19And I was like, I am. I don't know. So you, so you have the motor and you can't use it. you just got to make your garage door just put a door on it like don't take the garage door off put like a regular door you walk through you know how much garage doors cost they're like a fortune really i don't know they're like i think they're like a couple thousand dollars i'm saying just put a regular door on there let me just put a regular door have someone come and put a door wall it out door cut a hole in my garage yeah yeah why not right well Well, but then how would the— If you can't open it anyway.

55:57That's a good point. Just put a door on there. Like, it's another door to your house, and that's your side door to your mudroom. But that's weird to just have a door in your garage. All right, let's move on. All right. From the New York Times, a friend sent me this. We had a little Christmas gathering this weekend, and I got a bunch of beer. And I'm not a beer snob. I get the common man beverages. I had a four-pack of Guinness. You know those Guinness draft ones? Yeah. And it has the little nitrous thing in it, and it pours great. So we were drinking them, and my friend said, oh, you got to split the G on this.

56:24And I said, what's split the G mean? And apparently, if you go get a Guinness now, it's this hot Instagram thing, TikTok thing, but obviously I'm middle-aged and don't know these things. It's a big thing. Guinness took off this year because there's a thing where, you know, you get a Guinness at a bar, and they give you the Guinness glass, and it says Guinness on the top. And the point is, and so it's probably a third of the way down or so, which is far and away the best draft beer you can get in a bar, right? Like, you look the coolest if you're holding a Guinness. It's true. There's no cooler beer to hold than a Guinness.

56:52That's true. And so what you try to do is on your first sip, you gulp it down all the way to where it says Guinness, and you have to get where the middle of the G is. So if you do that, you win a free beer. Oh, I like that. We've got to try New York when I come in a couple weeks. Okay. So they say that apparently, so it says, you can spot some Guinness in some unexpected places across New York City, including Mexican restaurants, diners, and natural wine bars. It is the fastest-growing import beer in the country based on bar, restaurant, and brewery sales over the last year, according to Nielsen.

57:18The numbers are completely bananas right now, says Oren McGonagall. Oh, man, that guy owns an Irish bar, huh? Owner of the Dubliner, a two-year-old pub in Boston. In 2023, his bar sold more Guinness than any other bar or restaurant in the city. Purchasing volume with the stout is up 60%, 63 % to meet rocketing demand. Here's the great thing about Guinness. It's basically like a Miller Lite. 4.2 % of alcohol. It's about the same strength as Bud Light, and it has 125 calories, lighter than Modelo. The counterpoint, there are people drinking multiple Guinnesses? Can I? Because I can only have one.

57:48It is hard to drink more than one. But yeah, you get it at a bar. And you have to chug it down to split the G. And guess what? Guess who did it on the first try? Sean. This guy. Nailed it. Sean would probably do that. Happy birthday, Sean, by the way. I took my kids to get a haircut this weekend. And I saw some poor, balding bastard get the Michael treatment with the mirror. And I started getting cold sweats just for him. And I'm thinking like, I wanted to say to the bar, like, come on. Stop doing that. He knows. He knows. Yeah, or just hold the mirror way further back. Like a rearview mirror.

58:22I'm pretty sure full-headed men don't get the mirror treatment. Just saying. No, no, every time. They got to show me the back that it's like straight or whatever. All right, fine. Maybe you're right. But for the balds, how about you just take a pause? Yeah. Don't show them the back. Has there ever been a history, a time in the history of baldom, where somebody said, hey, wait, mind holding the mirror to the back of my head? Right. Yeah. I want to see the different angle of it. No bald has ever asked for that. Do you remember the infomercials in like the 1990s of that round pulp heel guy who would do the spray stuff on his hair to cover a bald spot?

58:58It was literally like hairspray or spray paint. And he would just paint his hair and be like, see, you can't see the bald spot anymore. So I bought, what was, I bought a road game back in the day. How long do you stick to it for? I did it like three days. I was like, there's no way. A for effort there's no way plus it like stunk and it like matted your hair down this is the worst product ever okay you gotta use a blow dryer to fluff that hair up you use a blow dryer obviously oh yeah I use a blow dryer yeah can't have wet looking hair alright recommendations I watched the first episode of No Good Deed on your recommendation excellent cast there's probably like 10 people that I've seen in other shows and movies before the quality of Netflix shows is still a little lacking.

59:46Yeah, it's not HBO. Yeah, it's not HBO. But just from the first episode, it's about real estate, which is interesting because it's very timely. So here's my financial lessons from this show. Even though it's about like there's something mysterious going on and all these other stories coming together, we'll see if I stick with it. But here's some of the financial lessons. Number one, don't be house poor, right? Ray Ramon with house poor, he has no money besides what's tied up in his house. Number two, you need diversification, right? They have one asset, financial asset, their house. They're stuck, right?

1:00:17Number three, he needs a home equity line of credit, right? Dennis Leary gets out of jail. He needs 80 grand and he's extorting him. He has no way to get 80 grand. Guess where you get it from? Home equity line of credit on the house he wants, right? He has no HELOC. Number three, there's a lack of housing supply. There's this one house everyone wants, right? All 10 of these people want to buy this one house because there's a lack of housing supply, right? And finally, there's the one couple where the wife is pregnant and they have to take help from the mother-in-law to buy a home because they can't afford the daycare versus a mortgage payment, right?

1:00:50This is where young people get hurt again. So there's a lot of financial lessons in this show. There really are. And think about it through that lens. Of course I did. We'd finished the show last night and it was, it was like a, I'd say a B minus. So do I stick with it? You don't have to. Okay. I kind of get that feeling. One other thing. I would like there to be a Christmas pop culture hall of fame. All right, so do it. Take the lead. So I think you have to vote it because there's holiday classic movies and music that has just already been inducted into the hall of fame. Like we know what the classics are.

1:01:25So when new stuff comes along, someone has to vote. Like, is this a classic or not? Right? Because I'm nominating, The Ringer did a story about how the holdovers is already a classic. And I tend to agree. Come on. Really? I watched it again this weekend, man. It's a very good movie. I know it's slow. That is like the definition of not a rewatchable. I've rewatched it like three times. I really like that movie. So like 1994 was a great year because the Santa Claus came out with Tim Allen and All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey. I thought you were saying like Pulp Fiction and Shawshank.

1:02:01Those are an immediate entrance into the Hall of Fame, right? It's funny. my two daughters are working on a dance that they learned on YouTube for All I Want for Christmas is You. And that's all they've been doing for the last two days is working on the dance moves of this song. It's very cute. But I nominate from the 2010s Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson. That goes into the Hall of Fame. I never saw that. No, it's a song. Oh. But like there's a new, there's a song from the last couple of years by Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani. It's kind of catchy. But that one, no, you didn't make it. Sorry, not in the Hall of Fame.

1:02:31Okay? So that's my idea. Christmas Hall of Fame. Okay. Every five years, we hold a vote. All right, make it so. Okay. Wait, did you tell me that you're watching Landman? I did get into it. We're two episodes in. Okay. Good call. I like it. Just wait until you get more into it. The first two are like not even that great relative to. I've always been a fan of Billy Bob. I feel like he always kind of plays the same cantankerous character, but in a good way. It's fantastic. I took Logan to see Sonic 3. My kids are becoming cinephiles. They love going to the movie theater. My kids do too. My wife takes them all the time.

1:03:03On pranks and stuff. What? You still won't go? Why are you boycotting the theater? No, a lot of time, like, if there's a break, like, on Christmas break, like, today they're going to see Mufasa, but I'm working. Okay. Sonic 3, quite good. Okay, Sonic 2 I thought was a little, eh. I didn't see the first or the second, but the third one was pretty good. But how do you know what was going on if you didn't see the first two? I mean, it's not, you know. Is Jim Carrey the bad guy again? Because he's been the bad guy in all three movies. It seems like it's got to kind of run its course eventually. He's a bad guy twice.

1:03:34He plays himself and his grandfather. Okay. Yeah, it was good. Okay, listen, everyone, 2025 was a good year. I hope it was a good year for you too. You mean 2024? Yes, that's exactly what I meant. I hope 2025 for everyone is as good, if not better, than the last 12 months. We know you have a lot of options to listen to, right? as somebody who listens to a lot of podcasts, I can't listen to every podcast that I want to listen to and neither can you. So the fact that you chose to ride with us means a lot. So from Ben and I and Duncan and the whole team, thank you. This is kind of like Ocean's Eleven.

1:04:15Like, did you practice that today in the mirror? No, how was it? Very good. A little long. What is Brad Pitt saying? Yeah, very good. We appreciate it. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. See you next time.

1:04:31Thank you.