Business Optimism Crashes (EP.307)

25:20Hey, let me ask you a question. Those are all good points. I agree with all of them. So this blunt tool word phrase that we throw around, can you explain what it means? Because I'm not quite sure that I get it. It's blunt. It's not very precise, right? It's – they're trying to – let me think. No, like literally – like, okay, I'm Googling a blunt tool. Think about it. A blunt tool is a hammer. Yeah, they're using a hammer, yeah, to try to hit a pin, right? Exactly. That's what you do with a hammer. So my point – I don't think that phrase makes sense. I think it's the opposite. A blunt tool will get the job done.

26:01not if you're trying to do something that that requires precision and a little bit of a care right they're they're just haphazardly raising rates to five and a half percent and hoping all i'm saying you'll never hear me say interest rates are a blunt tool okay all right i'm gonna hold you i think we need to i just i just i just incepted it into your you're gonna say it in like five minutes and not realize it all right here's another one this is i think this is good uh from The New York Times, average hourly earnings climbed 4.4 % in the year through April. That compared to 4.3 % in previous months and more than was expected.

26:37Powell says, you know, the labor market is still tight. But look at this chart. We've talked about this before. Wage growth in green has been lower than the consumer price index since inflation took off in 2021. And now these two numbers are converging. Isn't this a good thing? Inflation is falling and wages are ticking back up a little bit. What's wrong with that? If let's say wages go above inflation, if that's possible, that hasn't happened yet in this whole time. Isn't that a good thing? Should we be celebrating that? Real wage gains? Yeah. Yes. Right? I think this would be a good thing. You're doing a lot of defense on the Fed today.

27:14I'm just pointing this out. Is the shoe on the other foot? I don't know. You're defending the Fed a lot today. I'm just saying. I'm not saying everything they've done is bad and they've been in a pretty precarious situation. Because people have asked us, and we've mentioned this, isn't the way to fight fiscal policy like this just to raise taxes? And no politician in their right mind is going to raise taxes to fight inflation. So the Fed is – that's the blunt tool thing. They're the only ones – they're the only game in town now that are trying to stop this. No politician is trying to stop inflation.

27:44Politicians would probably make it worse. So I do give the Fed credit because they're the only ones who are even trying to do something, even though the tools that they have don't work as well as they would like. It doesn't feel like I'm defending the Fed. What it feels like is this is not an easy job to – It's not. My whole thing is it feels like they're not even trying for a soft landing. Why don't they just chill out a little bit and let things – see what happens. Let things settle a little bit. It's like when you get a new pizza and it looks so delicious and you know if you take a bite, you're going to burn the top of your mouth.

28:22You just know it. And every time you still take that bite because, eh, what if it doesn't? And it still burns your mouth. Like, just let it cool off for 10 minutes. See what happens so you don't burn the top of your mouth. I feel like the Fed is way too quick to burn the top of their mouth every time. In both directions. I think they're done. What is a— I hope so. They should be. So target rate probabilities for June. All right, 88%, say 500 to 525. All right, here's a question for you. Since you use this way more than I do, the probabilities. How do they calculate that? It's like Fed Funds Futures.

28:57Okay. So I can't tell you. Who controls those? Who's trading Fed Funds Futures? Traders. I can't tell you how it's calculated, but. Okay. You don't want to see how the sausage is made. I'm just asking how the sausage is made here. Can't tell you. I mean, you're a big Fed guy, so you should know. How about this? Well, there's a methodology. See, we've reversed roles. I used to be the Fed guy, the Fed apologist. You're the Fed apologist now. All right, here we go. The probability of a rate hike is calculated by adding the probabilities of all target rate levels above or below the current target rate.

29:28Probabilities of possible Fed funds target rates are based on Fed funds futures contract prices, assuming that rate hikes or cuts are uniformly. OK, so there it is. Do I need to keep going? Man, good enough. I didn't really care. I was just curious, you know. Well, I think I think I did, sir. All right. So they spoke at the meeting about, I think Powell said something along the lines of, he does not expect a recession. And I think Yellen said something similar. So from the Atlanta Fed, on May 4th, the GDP now model, now cast of real GDP growth in Q2 2023 is 2.7%. See, this is my point. Maybe everything the Fed's doing, it's useless and doesn't matter.

30:11We don't have a counterfactual, but if the Fed were to stop at 3 % or 4%, maybe we would just be in the same situation and it just wouldn't be as expensive for people to borrow or they wouldn't be getting as high yields on their T-bills. We don't know. If they stopped at 3%, we just don't know. Here's another one. San Francisco Fed, approximately, and I think, I know we've spoken about this so much that maybe it's gone from over-communicated to under-communicated. San Francisco Fed, approximately$500 billion of excess savings remaining in the aggregate economy. Should the recent pace of drawdowns persist, excess savings would likely continue to support household spending at least into Q4.

30:49I don't know, man. I don't know if our session's coming. I think we're spending that savings down to the bone. There's no way people are hanging on to that excess savings. Right? It's going away. Here's another one. The ISM spring 2023 semi-annual economic forecast finds that amid continuing uncertainties, purchasing and supply executives in the U.S., manufacturing and services sector still expect growth in production capacity, revenues, and employment. Okay. However - I'm telling you, 2025 recession is still on the table. However, the small business index, U.S. small business optimism fell to the lowest since April 2013.

31:32Okay. I don't see how this - Now, okay. Counterpoint to my previous points. I don't see how this doesn't show up in the data eventually. Now, this is like the vibes thing. Like, don't worry about how people feel. Worry about like the hard data versus the soft data. But if small businesses are so pessimistic on the economy, this is going to change their habits and impact the economy. No, how does it not? Haven't we been saying that for over a year, though? Didn't we say last year, like we could talk ourselves into recession last year and it didn't happen? Yes. So I don't know. the thing everyone else the the thing the really gloomy people would say is listen the fed operates on their monetary policy operates on a lag just wait that's a fact that's a fact it's going to happen and also every time there's not a recession today there could be one in the future that's also a fact like duh something could happen in the future it's not happening today things are still pretty good that that's where i stand things are still pretty darn good in the economy as they stand today could they get worse in the future yes they could always get worse uh we also talk about a recession like yes no right in in black or white as if there's not 50 shades of gray see what i did there never saw that movie i read the book remember that yeah i read the first book i'm not i'm not proud of it i i kind of wanted to see what the all the hubbub was about and uh it was a mistake how about this will there ever be a bubble in a book again by the way i'm just I'm picturing what Duncan and John are going to do to Fifty Shades of Grey here for the Photoshop.

33:08Will there ever be another Da Vinci Code? Oh, yeah. What do you mean? Yeah, of course there will. Yeah. That takes the nation, the globe, by storm? People don't read books anymore. I think it's easier for books to do that than movies these days even. I don't think. You don't think there's going to be some sort of Hunger Games sort of thing? I don't know. I don't know. Do people read anymore? I got a book recommendation for today. I've been watching many movies because movies stink. All the movies stink these days. So I've been reading more. Okay. All right. So getting back to the shades of gray, Nick Gurley tweeted, looks like a recession is starting in the South.

33:49Southern states lost jobs for the third straight month in April, according to ADP. Meanwhile, Pacific Northeast had huge job gains. Big implications for real estate. Okay. So this is a great chart. Listen, there's not one economy, right? Yes, it's a very big dynamic. It's interesting that the West Coast is seeing gains because they probably saw losses forever. So now it's shifting. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of like, if you look at this, this is kind of like the housing market. Like there are spots where the housing market is still on fire and spots where the housing market is falling off. We're going to talk about that in a minute, but yeah.

34:20Dan Greenhouse tweeted, Truly amazing how many consumer packaged good companies are able to still pass through significant price increases. Kraft is the latest here in the U.S. prices were up 13%, but volumes were down 6.5%. I think we spoke about this with Chipotle, even though they're not nearly that bad of an offender, but like McDonald's, Pepsi, and the like. I don't know. Didn't Pepsi say they're done? I think so. I can still feed a family of five at McDonald's for like$25. I still think McDonald's is pretty darn cheap relative to everything else. I saw Burger King has like$7 meals or$6. Have it your way, the commercial.

34:58By the way, speaking of commercial, Verizon. You texted me that you saw that Verizon commercial? The not to brag? I mean, that was egregious. Cease and desist, Seth Meyers. Stay away. 95 times out of 100, I'm like, you know, if people do something similar, I'm like, yeah, it's a coincidence. We're not the, you know. But that was a bit much. I think the greedflation thing just shows. The thing is, it's not like corporations ever get more or less greedy. I think they just take advantage of being greedy when they can. And right this period, they've been able to take advantage of being greedy because people hear about supply chain stuff and rising costs and rising wages.

35:31And there's going to be a time when they're not going to be able to take advantage. I feel like corporations don't get more or less greedy. They pick their spots depending on the environment. And they've been greedy now, but it's not like they've been the cause of inflation. You've probably seen this chart before. Andrew Lokanath tweeted this. We were just talking about Pepsi and consumer staples. 11 companies that own everything. So it's Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Pepsi, Kellogg's. I didn't realize that Kellogg's was in this vein. Mars, General Mills, Mondelez, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Heinz, and Nestle.

36:04And these 11 companies own more or less everything that you see at like Stop & Shop or ShopRite. This is our don't short junk food, right? Yeah. By the way, do those names mean anything to you? Are those national chains, Stop & Shop and ShopRite? No. Or are they regional? Nope. I don't know. Are there national grocery stores other than like Whole Foods or is everything regional? I think most things are regional, right? Yeah. We have Publix in Florida. We have Meyer here, which is like a Midwest thing. What do you have? We used to have Walbams back in the day. That place was great. What do we have?

36:43We have local stuff. Like, yeah, regional stuff. All right. So speaking of the real estate thing. So this is a tweet from Connor Hughes. It shows a bunch of people in a line, lying out the door, trying to find a house in 2023, lying out the door for an open house. I think I'm just going to take my wife and baby and move back with my mom. Sadly, I hear there's already five similar offers. I think he said this is in New Jersey. Those are dad shorts. Yeah, those are definitely dad shorts. Respect. I think this is... Guy needs a pair of bird dogs. Yeah, not the starch khakis. I think this is why it's so hard to do a national housing thing right now.

37:20Because there are certainly markets like this where there's going to be multiple bids still because supply is so low. But there's going to be other markets where prices are falling and people say, no, no, no, real estate is dead. And it's all crashing. And I think that's why, like, you jumble it all up and we're kind of in, like, this going nowhere, steady state, sideways kind of real estate market. But if you happen to be in the wrong market, you're going to think – You saw that someone sent us that Instagram or TikTok video of the guy rapping about like, where's this big crash in housing prices?

37:48And it was actually pretty good for as far as those kind of videos go. I laughed a little bit. I just think the 2008 system resetting that people wanted is just not going to happen. There's too many people that want to get a house. All right. Here's a good pie chart. you should be this is like a legitimate pie chart what do you mean a legitimate pie chart when do you think I made that pie chart what year do you think I made that 2015, 2016, 2017 what did we do for the 10th anniversary I don't know I'm just saying it was kind of an illegitimate pie chart this is from the FI couple on Twitter 67 % of homeowners in the United States that's bullshit I'm sorry that pie chart is properly labeled and it shows exactly what it says it shows with no intent to mislead.

38:44Just because some people have reading comprehension issues, I will not apologize for that. I think you should read How to Lie with Statistics. I did. Good book. Good book. All right. 67 % of homeowners in the United States have, by the way, hard word to say, statistics. Hard to say fast. 67 % of homeowners in the United States have a paid off home or at least 50 % equity in their home. So almost 39 % own their home free and clear. Hello, boomers. And then nearly 29 % have greater than 50 % equity in their home. So this is the reason why I think people, we've talked forever about low mortgage rates are going to be trapped in that low rate.

39:21This is the reason why low mortgage rates won't last forever though, in terms of trapping people. I mean, you and I say we're trapped in these, like I have a 3 % mortgage and mortgage rates, even if they go to 5%, you're going to say, why would I trade out of the 3 % mortgage? As you build equity, you mean? Eventually, if you have 50 % equity in your home, you're going to go, if you need to move, and we've heard from a lot of people who say, listen, my family is growing. This is what happened to us. My wife and I said for our first house, we were there for 10 years. We had conversations like this could be our forever home.

39:49And then we had twins unexpectedly, and we moved because we needed more room. That's going to happen to people. And eventually, you'll look at your 50 % equity in your home, and you'll go, I'm going from 3 % to 5.5%, but you know what? The payment is not that much different because of the equity I have in the home if I roll it over into the new place. And I think that's what's going to, eventually, it's going to be a slow thaw of this, but eventually that's going to happen. Very slow. But it's going to happen eventually where life gets in the way and people are going to want to move and they're going to say, you know what?

40:20I'm not staying here any longer just because I have this 3 % mortgage. I'd be more comfortable taking 5%, rolling the dice that I'll be able to refinance lower and I'm going to move. It's going to happen. Eventually. Maybe.

40:37People get married. People get divorced. People die. People have kids. This stuff happens and life will go on. Let's do some quarter stuff. By the way, guys, I've been listening to tons of earnings calls the last week. Performing your channel checks? No big deal. the quarter desktop app, although I do these on the go, but I use the desktop app for the transcript stuff. It's really incredible. The search function is great. That's my favorite part, for sure. All right, so what was that data point we had about the earnings? Earnings coming in pretty well, huh? Earnings season, earnings season, looking for it.

41:16Here we go. Sam Rowe tweeted, this is from Bank of America, revision to consensus first quarter earnings since the start of April. Heck of a chart. S &P 500 earnings revisions since Q1 are up 5%. Isn't this always the case, though, where, like, earnings come in better than expected because they just sandbag and lowball? Do you ever see, like, 70 % of companies missed expectations? It's always... Uh-uh, uh-uh. No, no, no. This is versus, like, analyst estimates, I think. Okay. But are the companies getting the analysts to sandbag so they can beat expectations? Isn't that always what happens? No.

41:56I mean, maybe in normal times, but Josh and I spoke about this a lot in 2021 or two, that analysts estimates are still way too high. And they came in pretty aggressively. So S &P 500 revisions up 5%, materials up 16%, discretionary up 15%, 14%. All right, this is interesting. And this also looks like it's from Bank of America. Goodbye, cost-cutting, hello, productivity. Margin expansion from globalization and cheap financing is behind us, but productivity gains could be the next multi-year bulk case for margins and multiples. This quarter is rife with evidence. Efficiency mentions jump 27 % year over year.

42:33It is dangerous to underestimate corporate America's margin preservation skills. Let me repeat that for emphasis. It is dangerous to underestimate corporate America's margin preservation skills. These companies are really freaking good at making money this is the this is like the one thing jeremy grantham taught us that seems to be disproven that like uh mean reversion and margins is like the gravity no it's not ethos of capitalism and it hasn't been and i think i think he made sense wrong it made sense i i i don't i'm not i don't fault him for being wrong there just something changed technology technology we You spoke about this.

43:14I spoke with Josh talking about like AWS and the ability for companies to quickly dial up or down how much they need versus like – think about what it went into like ramping up and slowing down factories, for example. You know what I mean? Like you could have just turned on a dime. Now you literally could say, you know what? I'm going to take less data. We need less storage, less software. The simple thing for me that I've been telling my kids lately is I used to go buy a CD, a full compact disc for one song that I liked on the radio and like roll the dice that I was going to like the other songs.

43:45And most of the time you didn't. My kids can listen to any song they want on demand right now on like any device. And it's like just just think about something simple like that, how much easier it is to get access to to things these days than you could in the past because of technology. All right. So Ben, before we talk about some of these companies, I had a self-realization in terms of the type of stocks that I'm attracted to, not just like trades, but like stocks that I actually plan on holding. I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm going to hold any of these stocks for years, right? If I have a 100 % gain, I'm out.

44:22But anyway, the stocks in my portfolio all have something in common. So let me read you these stocks. Zillow, Spotify, Schwab is not a good example of this, Netflix, and I just recently added Airbnb and Disney. We have some overlap there. So what these have in common, I buy great brands. And if they are founder-led, all the better. Now, these are not cheap companies by any stretch of the imagination. That sounded like a really good CNBC pitch there. Thank you. Like talking about your ethos. But those are the companies that - I buy great brands. Like I believe in Rich Barton. So let's get into like Zillow, for example.

45:06All right, over 80%, and I especially like to buy those stocks after they got killed. I should mention that. Over 80 % of people who go to Zillow go there direct. Isn't that kind of nuts? They do have the brand in real estate as far as the United States goes. they said housing is a growth industry with$300 billion in transaction fees. $300 billion in transaction fees. 67 % of US home buyers use Zillow today. I'm not even in the market for a house and I'm on Zillow all the time still. So yeah, of course. All right, so some charts. Number one, US online residential real estate app by wide margin, daily active app users.

45:53So here's a pie chart. In terms of people that use an app for home searching, 63 % use Zillow, 20 % use Realtor.com, 13 % use Redfin, and then the rest is Crumbs. All right, housing is a growth industry. I showed you that. Look, but look at this. The average industry commission, this blew my face, 4 % average annual growth. In commissions? The average industry commission. Now, why? This is not rocket science. Existing home transactions value. So the dollar amounts goes up because home prices go up. It's not like the percentage. So they show significant long-term growth opportunity. I wonder if it's a Redfin still down 90%.

46:40Why doesn't Zillow just buy them? Or would that be taking too much of the market? Don't know. I don't know how they view them in terms of competition. All right. So they have a chart showing the significant long-term growth opportunity. By 2025, their financial targets are$5 billion in revenue and 45 % adjusted EBITDA. So that would be like, let's see, almost a double-ish from where they are today. So yeah, they're projecting to go from$2 billion to$5 billion by 2025. This reminded me a little bit of that scene in Succession where the CFO, Carl, said to Ken, if you f*** me, I'm going to squeal like a pig.

47:16Right? He said, like, don't throw bullshit numbers on the screen. and I saw this and I said, a little bit optimistic. True. Where are you at in succession? I'm all caught up. I'm weak behind. Okay. I thought the first five episodes were like all A, A pluses, and the last two have been Bs, but I feel like they're setting the stage, and I'm at the point where. Oh, I loved the one two weeks ago. Okay. After the Newark, I thought they just cooled off a little. I mean, they're like great shows in terms of TV, but I'm grading a curve for other Succession episodes. I thought they were, but they were like setting the plate.

47:54But my only conclusion is that like there's zero chance that this show ends like with a smile. Like that is going to end happy. It's going to end so, it's going to be hard to watch. Yes, but I'm fully on board wherever they take me. All right, check this chart out. Moving is offline, complicated, time-consuming, stressful, inexpensive. And for people listening, there's real estate agents, inspector, mortgage lender, appraiser, title co, escrow, mover. They say it's estimated$26 ,000 to$40 ,000 to move. I was talking to Benny Marks about this. He's asking me about buying a house. I'm like, dude, you don't buy a house for the short term.

48:38That's not what this is. I think you're underestimating the cost involved, the headache. I would say seven years minimum should be your starting point, right? I mean, again, life gets in the way it happens, but that should be where you – because it's true. This number might be low in terms of cost to move. Yeah, I don't know what the number is in terms of how many years, but you should buy a house with no intention of moving, right? It's not realistic to think that the first house that you buy, you're going to stay in forever, but you should buy the house with no intention to get out of it anytime soon.

49:08Right. Michael McDonough from Bloomberg tweeted, the AI revolution is unmistakably underway as evidenced by the significant increase in AI-related mentions during earnings calls and company transcripts. I mean, look at this. It was basically, it went from effectively zero to all the way up. Which companies haven't said anything? Like, that'd be interesting to me. Like, Apple probably hasn't said anything yet. I'd love to hear some of the big companies that haven't said it yet. So they asked. Still biding their time. I did listen to Apple. They asked Tim Cook about AI, and he was pretty vague, pretty noncommittal with his comments.

49:40But I had, I don't know if an epiphany is the right word, but a realization, and I could be way out of bounds here. But hearing Tim Cook talk about Apple and how they're bettering the world and all this sort of things that struck me as nonsense, like he's like the bad guy from Jurassic World. Like the bad, you know, the latest Jurassic World. Apple has not made your life better. AirPods, Apple Watch, iPhone. It has totally made your life better. Love it. But no, I'm saying like, do you think that the bad guy in Jurassic World was modeled after Tim Cook? Because he looks exactly like him. They do kind of look.

50:16They have the same mannerisms. I agree. Okay. Apple Q2 revenues. By the way, I was talking, it seems so long ago, on the compounded friends, I was saying that like, the stock market looked really kind of shaky going into Apple's earnings calls. I don't know. I know you're not a stock market guy, Ben, but just take my word for it. It looked kind of shaky. And I think I said something to the effect. You're not a stock market guy. I'm not a chart guy. How's that? I said something to the effect of I don't think – or what I intended to say was I don't think that Apple can necessarily save – I don't think that Apple beanie will like be a boon to the market.

50:53But I think if Apple misses, it could definitely like take the market down 5 % in a hurry. And I was 100 % wrong because on the day after Apple reported, the S &P on Friday was up 2%. So thank you, Apple. Thank you, Tim Apple. All right. So Q2 revenues, not quite at a record, but right there. Who made this chart? I can't remember this from the transcript to somebody else. Category revenue. you. I don't understand, Ben, how they are doing almost$7 billion a quarter with just the iPad alone. That absolutely blows my mind. The iPad is a$7 billion a quarter. Because every parent buys one for their kid now.

51:38So when they go out to eat, they can have a meal in peace. That's how it works. Go on your iPad, scram. It's unbelievable. What else did they say? So I think I saw a tweet like this is two consecutive quarters of Apple revenue being down year over year. I don't know if that's exactly right, but it was something like that. And the implication was, in fact, the president explicitly said that Apple is no longer a growth company. They are kicking butt and taking names in emerging markets. There was a lot of talk on the call about India. If you're the biggest company in the world, isn't it hard to be a growth company just by definition?

52:13Like you're past the growth stage. You're more mature. Yeah, that would stand to reason with the$2.6 trillion market cap. Anyway, Apple is still killing it. All right, Coinbase. It's the most impressive company in history. We might have said this before. At least in our history. I don't have any experience with the East Dutch trading firm or whatever. So South Sea, all that stuff. Ben and I recorded a listener mailbag episode with Fidelity Digital Assets that's coming out on Monday. And in the intro, Ben, you and I were talking about Coinbase and how in the earnings call, Brian Armstrong was talking about people are unhappy with the current financial system and they're making it faster and cheaper.

52:55And then I told you the story about trying to buy USDC with a near 4 % commission. Consumer trading volume was$20 billion. I'm sorry, yeah,$20 billion in the most recent quarter. Institutional trading was$124 billion. So there were six times as much volume from institutional traders as there were from retail. Transaction revenue, Ben, for consumers was$350 million versus$22 million for institutions. So institutions trade six times as much volume, but consumers pay 15 times. Is my math right? I don't know. Between 15 and 20 times what institutions pay. This has always been my bear case for Coinbase is just fees coming down.

53:49That's, I mean, maybe they're the only game in town now and that holds that off, but that's been my, since they became public, I thought that the fees coming down is, is the problem with them. oh wait here here's here's a quote on the consumer side we had an increase we we had increased our spread in the second quarter so i guess they're like i kind of i kind of assumed that a commission was static which i don't know why i assumed that but it sounds like it flexes based on whatever they want to do all right here's a crypto thing for you 48 of u.s adults say they're concerned about their money at banks including 19 were very concerned 29 were mildly concerned.

54:2730 % are not worried at all, or 20 % are not worried at all. 30 % are not too worried. So 50 % or so are worried about banks. This is an interesting one. This is from Apollo. Less than 1 % of bank accounts have a balance higher than 250K. So more people are worried than should be worried. How's that sound? That's exactly right. And I would follow that up with, of those people that are extremely worried or very worried, how many of them have moved their money. Right. Or will. Yeah, exactly. All right. Here's a good one for middle ages in Wall Street Journal. The age when you stop feeling young.

55:00OK. A lot of people have commented lately how it's really funny to see in real time. Michael realize that he's reached middle age. Have you slowly hit that realization? The early 40s, specifically 42, is when the average American starts noticing physical signs of aging, including achy joints and gray hair, according to a September poll conducted on behalf of found a weight management company. I turned 42 in three months and I feel great, but I do occasionally feel like I have like some sort of like tendonitis or something like after lifting weights, I'll have like a sore joint for like a month and then I'll just kind of go away.

55:34But that's happened two or three times to me where I'll just be really sore in certain spots, knees or elbows or stuff. It's funny you mentioned this yesterday. I was tying my sneakers on the couch. And I felt something in my knee. Pop is too strong of a word, but I don't know. What's between nothing and pop? Felt something. And then I was like, what was that? And it doesn't hurt anymore, but it bothered me for the rest of the day. Tying my sneakers. It happens. Did you see this thread from Airbnb? About their new... That's the one I try to listen to, the Airbnb call every quarter. So that's tonight.

56:13I'm going to listen. Brian Chesky tweeted, you told us what you don't like about Airbnb. Here are 50 things we're doing about it. There's a tweet thread of 50 things that are changing. For example, you said checkout instructions can be a surprise when you get to your Airbnb. Now all checkout instructions can be viewed on the listings page before you book. And again, there's 50 of these things. Yeah, I like it. They seem very consumer friendly. Beyond the guy next to us in Florida who yelled at us for being too loud at the pool. He's not an Airbnb fan. Oh, I got something. Okay. Two things from Texas.

56:45On the way to the airport or from the Uber driver had a live rear view mirror, which I feel like I've seen before. I think I want to get that. What do you mean a live rear view? Like on the screen? The rear view mirror is video of behind you. So instead of looking to your rear view mirror to see what's behind you, like with a mirror, there's a camera, I guess, that goes in the back of your car. And I don't know if it's a wireless connection where you can literally see the cars behind you in your rear view mirror. So my new Jeep Wrangler does not have the side alerts where there's a light comes on.

57:22So instead of looking up, you're looking down? What? So instead of looking up in the rearview mirror, you're just looking down at the screen? No, the screen appears on your rearview mirror. Oh, okay. Instead of it being a mirror, somehow it's a camera to the cars behind you. It's a view of the cars behind you. What happens in a speed situation where someone loops in a video of a different background and someone's really coming up behind you. I'm just saying. Ben, I don't know if you saw this speech, and I can't even remember if it was from Alison Levine or Eric Maddox, but I'm thinking it was Alison Levine just given the nature of the quote.

57:58Talking about how a lot of people are, or maybe it was Jason Karp. I don't even know if it was, I don't remember who said this quote, forgive me. But they're talking about why so many people with money are not happy. And the quote was this. I think it was Jason Karp, actually. He said, I got to the top of the mountain and there was nothing to say. Yes. And boom, there it is. For wealthy people. That was very good. For people that are chasing money that thinks that money is going to somehow change how they feel about, I don't know, their happiness situation. It's just. So Jason Karp was a hedge fund manager, investor who became a, who started his own health food company.

58:37And it was interesting because he talked about how he doesn't like all the processed foods, you know, like, see it's naturally. and he's talking about like how much of an endemic it is that we have this obesity in this country and then someone asked him at the end, well, what does your diet look like? Do you eat fully healthy and natural all the time? And he says, well, I have like the 85-15 rule. 85 % of the time I eat clean and 15 % of the time I eat burgers and fries and pizza and stuff because I don't think, he said, I basically think you go crazy if you live at the extremes like that. And I subscribe to that notion as well, where you need to have a little bit of balance in there.

59:13All right. Recommendations. Ben, somebody recommended this to me. It's a show called The Juror on Amazon Prime, and it's got a great premise. Do you know about the show? No. So there's a jury. There are so many shows right now. You've got a judge. You've got the defendant. You've got some prosecutors. And you've got a jury. Everybody on the show is an actor except for one dude who doesn't know that it's rigged. Oh, it's a reality show. It's a great premise and apparently like things go nuts. But here's the problem. It's on Amazon Prime on this service called like Freevi and there's commercials and I can't watch it.

59:51Also, The Juror was not a bad movie. Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore. Was that a John Grisham? I think so. I never saw that one. Not bad. Okay, I was listening to the Town Podcast with – I don't remember who it was with. I think it might have been – I don't remember who it was with. And I learned that the Meg 2 is coming out. Are you kidding me? So many people tag us on Twitter for this. I also learned that the first one did over$500 million in global box office. See, you're part of the problem. You're the reason we can't have nice movies anymore. I'm not going to see the Meg 2. Yeah, you will. I also think the reason we don't have – if you watch a show like Succession, I think you just realize that people have decided, why would I write one single movie anymore when I can write 10 episodes of a TV show that could be four or five seasons?

1:00:42I think all the good writers that used to write good movies are now writing TV shows. That's the only – it has to be. So I caught a little bit of Ghost. What year did Ghost, the movie, come out? For younger listeners, this is Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg. 89? 80s? 90. Okay. so I don't know when I saw this I was young I was maybe like 6 or 7 or 8 I don't know if I was probably 6 that's probably too young let's say that I was 8 or 9 and I think this movie like taught me about death like in a real way you know what I mean like I don't exactly remember how I felt when I watched it but if you haven't seen this movie what an incredible movie holy moly it really is I mean Whoopi Goldberg is so good at that movie yeah I am very excited for The Confident, the Guy Ritchie movie which doesn't really seem like a Guy Ritchie type of movie it's Jake Gyllenhaal in the Army and I saw a commercial like it said coming to digital access today on May 9th this movie came out in the theaters two weeks ago I actually almost saw it instead of Evil Dead but I saw Evil Dead And I was reminded of bootlegs.

1:01:59Remember bootlegs? I was walking through Times Square in like 2004 maybe and bought a bootleg copy of Gothica. We went and watched it and it was a guy literally videotaped it. Yep, and Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, that was the thing. And a guy literally videotaped it. And it was pretty good camera work, except when you'd see someone walk in front of him in the row. In 2000, what year was it? I'm going to guess like 2000. 2007, 2008, I was working at a restaurant. And I did that for about two years, full time, no big deal. And there was a guy that would come with bootleg DVDs. And I remember very, very vividly seeing No Country for Old Men on bootleg.

1:02:46And there will be blood on bootleg. That's what we had to do before streamers existed. So this is what we had to do back in the day. But it was always like a roulette wheel to figure out – you popped it in and like was it some dude holding a camera? But 50-50, sometimes it was like legit, like just a great copy, which was thrilling. Like that was thrilling to be able to see those movies at home for like five bucks. Yeah. Claudie is always so bad. Never did it. No, I'm saying I got a bunch of good ones. I had a guy. All right. Lastly, I heard – or saw – I don't know, commercial, whatever. There's a movie coming out called Blackberry.

1:03:22which is literally about BlackBerry, like Research in Motion. And I don't know how I feel about this. What's going on? I don't know. I never had one, so I think I'll skip this one. I have no nostalgia here. So there was the run of TV shows about like the WeWork TV show, the Uber TV show. I'm on record at saying it's too much. So now is Air going to kick off a run of these type of movies? I'd rather have to be a movie than a TV show. I've, we've been catching up on TV. I've been out of town and doing stuff. So I've been watching much and all the movies these days stink. No good movies. There's just no good movies anymore.

1:04:01In the theater or what? Yeah. When's the last time a good new release came out? Well, evil dad, scream. I'll watch scream a little bit of Paramount. Barbarian. I've been reading more. So Amazon Kindle finally got me. I have the Kindle where it has the ads on it every time you open it up. And forever, it recommended me this book called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zeben. and I think it's been a really good bestseller. It finally got me, it wore me down. I read it and it's great. It's about three friends who start a video game company and it goes from like when they're young to when they're older and all these things that happen in between and it talks about how they develop these video games and it's not like anything I read usually, but I really liked it.

1:04:38True story? Very good book. No, not a true story. I'm only fiction these days. Send us an email, annalspiritspod at gmail.com. Michael will come back next week with a healed up head. I think Logan's sick Alright Good luck You have the worst luck with that Alright Animal Spirits Pod At the Gmail See you next week