Buying a House at the Top of the Market (EP.368)

24:47Imagine like there's a store called Ralph's here. It's ISIS. And these are small businesses. And now all of a sudden you're paying these kids 15 % more than you were a year ago. That really sucks. That's great for the kids, but that's, you know, not fun. I also did the unemployment rate for 16 to 24. And it was way higher for most of the 2010s. It's spiking a little bit now, but it's much lower than it was following the great financial crisis. So anyway, I guess kids do have money these days. And as you know, when you're younger and you make money. Now, listen, I saved. I used to save money, but no other teenager does that.

25:24You saved money as a teenager? Of course I did. What do you think? Come on. You know me. All right. So there are some signs that the economy is cooling. All right, we got some data last week. Unemployment claims, initial claims, continuing claims. It's a trend in animal spirits content lately. ISM. Now, the U.S. economy. This is from David Ingalls. He tweeted, looks like the U.S. economy is cooling quicker than most analysts think. The Bloomberg U.S. economic surprise index has dropped to a nine-year low. Definitely some - No idea what these surprise indexes, like what it's measuring. I think it's the difference between - Expectation and reality?

26:04Economist estimates and what actually happens. Okay. So signs of the economy is calling for sure. Atlanta Fed, the live GDP tracker is down to, I think, 1.7%, something like that. Yep. So. Just in time for the Fed to cut rates. Yeah. You think these TSA numbers that we're talking about, is this as good as it gets? Oh, it's possible. I'm of the opinion that in 10 years people are going to look back at the economy in these past few years and the sentiment and go, what was wrong with them? Why was everyone so nuts? That was a booming economy. And when it goes away, people are going to go, no, no, bring it back.

26:47I feel like that's going to be a thing. Perhaps. Last week I was at the bar that I go to on my jet ski that I took you to on the water. Beautiful place. So having lunch and overheard some older people in the corner joking, laughing, complaining that a family of four, McDonald's is$80. Did some channel checking, a six-piece Happy Meal. I think it's$6, four pieces, five bucks. We talked about the$5 meal last week. Yeah. So what I think, I think a lot of this is like, people just love to complain. It's sort of like a hobby. It's like a, it's like a national pastime of ours. It brings people together.

27:34It really does. It's really shared hatred. Shared hatred is a really strong tribal concept that we just love to do. And I don't think it's like, I don't think they're doing it like, um, like not even seriously. Like he's joking, you know, like obviously it's not$80. I don't think he actually believes that, but. Embellishment, another American pastime. Yeah. Yeah. It's just one of those things. I've been known to embellish a story or two here and there to make it seem a little more lively. Speaking of like me seeing a field of dreams at four years old, which I stand by. It sounded good at the time.

28:09Speaking of McDonald's, we had an email last week. We had been talking about why food in America is so cheap. Thanks to our glorious lobbying machines, our essentially allowed, we're essentially allowed to sell many things in America with cheaper ingredients than they are in Europe. For example, I was on vacation in St. Lucia, which grows lots of bananas. Half the banana trees are covered in giant plastic bags. The other half are not. I asked our driver why some of the trees were covered. And he said, the bananas in bags are for export to Europe. The ones without bags are for America. Because Europe limits the pesticides they use on the bananas.

28:42And the bags shield them from those pesticides were in America. They can use whatever they want for export and nobody cares. Wait, isn't the banana already shielded? Why do you have to put the bag over it? The banana's got the case. That's a good point. Spread as many pesticides as you want. That's a good point. I bought 10 bananas yesterday and it was like$2.96. Still one of the, that book, The Fish They Ate the Whale is amazing. It should have been just called The Banana Book. But this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, smart move. Being financially savvy, smart move.

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30:00So mark your calendar and shop Wayday starting October 26th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. All right, there was an article in the journal. JP Morgan warns customers, prepare to pay for checking accounts. All right. But they're saying that new rules that would cap overdraft and late fees will make everyday banking significantly more expensive for all Americans. I was like, listen, if we can't rip off poor people, you're all going to have to pony us. So yeah, I read the story and they said the people who will be most impacted are the ones who can least afford to be and access to credit will get harder.

30:33Those people are the ones paying the overdraft fees and the late fees. If they have to pay whatever,$29.99 for a checking account every year, it'll be cheaper for them than the late fees they were paying. The late fees you pay are so egregious. Even if people have to pay for a checking account, it'll actually impact the wealthier people. And that's a good thing. They can pay for it. So how much is spent or charged in overdraft fees? It's billions, right? It's some sort of ludicrous number. It's a ridiculous. Michael Lewis had it in one of his podcasts a couple of years ago. It's a very high number.

31:02So how much of this is posturing? Who knows? But the journal said this isn't the first time banks have said that they would pass on higher costs. In 2010, after the post-financial crisis overall bank regulations, lenders warned that they would levy fees on debit cards. Anyway, they didn't do it because people are like, no, we're not. We're just going to move banks. But we'll see. That would suck. That wouldn't be great. It would be good for certainly people that are being railroaded. Well, the thing is, it's going to turn into tiers of banks then, won't? Like the banking tier. Like you have a certain amount of money with this you don't pay.

31:33There's going to be more inequality in the banking. All right. Did you read this Goldman piece about AI being overrated? Did you and Josh talk about this? I was completely off the podcast scene last week. I had nothing to do with podcasts or anything. I didn't consume much content. I was out in the sun all day. Can you see? I got a nice little tan. You notice that? You're looking good. Sequoia wrote a piece about this. That's a, it might to, to read list, but. Okay. So I looked at, I, I perused this and then, uh, this, uh, Ed Zitron guy wrote a followup to this. And I guess he's, he's very bearish on AI.

32:07So I, I don't know him. I just read the piece. It seems like he's, he's been bearish on AI for a while. And the gist of the piece is that he's saying the productivity benefits are likely to be limited, the power demands are significant, the generative AI stuff is unprofitable, and it's really just like it's taking probabilities and the answers you get and all this stuff. And he's saying it's not going to be as great as everyone thinks. And I almost give this guy credit for doing the Zag because not many people are doing the Zag on AI right now. And so I just wanted to game theory this. Let's say this guy is right.

32:44AI is not as big as people are setting it up to be. What would that mean if just like, eh, nothing? Or not nothing, but it's not as big as everyone says it's going to be. It would mean that, I don't know,$4 trillion in market cap gets wiped out from the Magnificent 7, maybe more. S &P 500 is 25 % to 30 % lower than it is today. That's kind of what I was thinking. It's those big stocks that get hammered the most. The funny thing is, everyone who had bearish takes on the crypto industry, like, there's no killer apps. That's the one people think people are like, there's no killer apps, there's no use case.

33:22Those people were right, and they were still wrong about the price of crypto. True. Anyway, speaking of crypto, Bitcoin is in a, what, 20 % to 30 % drawdown at the moment? Depending on where you take the high from?

33:42it's high of 70 something and it's down to in the 50s okay uh i think bitcoin etfs are kind of like 401k plans because you'd think listen there's constant buying you've made the supply and demand thing before like listen bitcoin etfs have already bought how many tens of thousands of bitcoin or whatever there are and there's not enough to and you think the supply and demand thing is like why would bitcoin price ever fall it's the same thing with 401ks like that it's going to be a constant long-term bid underneath the asset, but that doesn't take away the, again, that inherent volatility in human nature.

34:17What do you think? Totally. And how much of it is actually priced in and all that sort of stuff. What's interesting about Bitcoin and the argument that I made is simply the supply and demand thing. How many tens of billions of dollars has come into Bitcoin ETFs? You would think now, when did this announcement? So it ran from 40 up to 70. Now it's down to 57. I don't know. I guess probably have to be a little bit disappointed with how the price has performed. Yeah, or the price already had its performance and then this is the other side of that and expectations, all these stuff. So you made the point a couple of weeks ago that isn't Bitcoin just like high beta tech because it was moving down with NVIDIA?

34:57Well, what do you say now? Because the market's at all-time highs. Tech is at all-time highs. That's fair. It's diverged. So maybe Bitcoin is a non-correlated asset. It is non-correlated. the meme coins, maybe all that nonsense is over now. Like, I know you don't pay attention to this stuff, but all of them are just getting annihilated. Oh, good. Yeah. Should be, right? And the market, so, but even still. I'd love to see them all go away. Yeah, I don't see the utility in these things. I mean, LOL, I don't think anybody does, but maybe that's the whole point. Dogecoin is still a$16 billion market cap.

35:33Shiba is still 9.6. Pepe is still 3.8. Bonk is still 1.8. And listen, I know these market caps are a bit baloney because it's not like if all of them were liquidated, you could actually get that out. But nevertheless, these are still pretty serious numbers. But people are still buying the ETF, I assume? Yeah, yeah. It's going away? No, so there was some outflows in June and just saw Bloomberg had a post on this highest two-day inflow in a month. So I do think that the concept buying is not a terrible analogy with a 401k. Yeah, it's more like an intermediate, longer-term trend. But the shorter term, this thing is still going to get crushed occasionally.

36:10All right, Greg Ip at the Wall Street Journal had a, here's the headline. You might be buying your house at the top of the market. You don't really even need to go into the meat of the bones of this argument. No offense to Greg, but everyone kind of knows why he's saying it. High rates, high prices. And it kind of makes sense. Check out this chart I had Matt make for me this morning, chart guy. I did nominal and real housing returns by decade. Excuse me. It's ChartKid. ChartKid. Sorry. There we go. Nice chart. Okay. How old does he have to be to graduate a chart guy? TBD. Okay. So I did nominal and real because nominal returns in the 70s were insane.

36:52If you look at it on a real basis, it's basically right now. So we've essentially pulled forward a decade's worth of housing market returns in the first, not even half of the decade. There's still, what, five and a half, six years of the decade remaining on a nominal and real basis. We've pulled that forward. So his thing about buying at the top of the market or whatever, you know, could be housing prices, housing price returns have to be relatively muted from here. You'd think that's a fairly simple argument to make. Aren't people usually buying at the top of the market? X, obviously, like 2010 and 11 and all that sort of stuff.

37:29Well, top of the market makes it sound like a peak more than, you know, doesn't that make like things are going to, you're not, he's, his whole point is you're probably not going to make good financial gains from your house in the years. Yeah, yeah. Which I think is a fair argument. I don't think he's, I don't know if he's gonna be right, but it's, it's a fair argument to make. But here's the thing I was thinking. Let's say, take out the economic impact of it. You wake up tomorrow and it's not like a big calamity, but your house is down 50 % in value. Now, this is in a vacuum. So assume if that actually happened, there's a huge financial calamity and things are really bad.

37:59But assuming it happens in a vacuum, the value of your house is down 50%, but you still have the same job, the same income, the economy is not falling apart. Does your life change in a meaningful way at all if the price of your house is down? Can we use like a more reasonable number, like 15 %? Okay, 15%. Does your life change at all? You can still afford your mortgage. Yeah, let's say that a lot of the excess goes away from the past couple of years. Do most homeowners' lives change? No, of course not. I mean, maybe the only thing is you can't borrow as much against it. Okay. Right? But yeah, let's say housing prices fall 15%.

38:35Is it really going to change your life in a meaningful way? And my point is, if you buy a house now, and you can afford the house, you can afford the property taxes, you can afford the insurance, you can afford the upkeep, and it goes nowhere for the rest of the decade. But you get to live in that house. You get to create experiences. You get to have the neighborhood, the school system, the whatever you want to, the reason you buy a house. is your life really worse off if you don't make any financial gain on that? But for new buyers, there could be. So just psychologically, it would be a huge bummer.

39:03Let's say you buy a house for$600 ,000 this year. And then two years later, new people moving into the neighborhood are buying the same house at$475 ,000,$500 ,000. Doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel good to have a mortgage on a house that's higher than, right? Right? That's fair. If you're going to, yeah. Because I was thinking, well. Guess what? I top-ticked the jet ski market. I still owe more on my jet ski than I can get for a new one. Probably not anymore, but it doesn't feel great. Now, that's. Motorized vehicles are not your forte, obviously. True. And that's a who gives a crap. That's a very, that's a small monthly payment.

39:43For your house, psychologically, that's got to sting. I guess I was thinking if houses fall 15 % and you have to sell your house for a loss, that stings, but you can also buy another house that's lower in price as well. I think what your point is, you're agreeing that real returns on a go-forward basis for new purchases are going to be lower. But also, if you do top-tick the market, it's not really the end of the world. With a caveat that we could still turn into Canada. And who knows? And we look back in five years and go, ah, housing prices still kept going up. I don't know. But it would make sense.

40:20People are still transacting too. This is from The Truth About Mortgage. I think I got this one from a guy, Bill Sweet. So he breaks down the distribution of mortgage rates by 2022, 2023, and 2024. He says in 2024, now almost a quarter of all mortgages are 5 % or higher. And this was only 10 % in 2022. And so there has been a lot of people who have continued to transact in the housing market. So existing home sales went from, I don't know, 6 million usually in an average to 4 million, which is a big drop. but people are still... Yeah, but barely. I mean, yes, there's still activity, but it's...

40:56But look at this. There's a lot more high-rated mortgages now because people are still buying houses. It's happening. They're moving. It's going to continue to happen. All right. There was an article in Investment News. The headline was, Retirees spend twice as much when they have guaranteed income, research finds. The amount of extra discretionary spending is significant as those with assets in those categories spend about twice as much as those whose savings are in investments. The reason is that people think about guaranteed income sources differently than savings. I would agree with that. A survey that was part of the research found that nearly 60 % of respondents said they would feel more comfortable spending on non-essentials if the money came from an extra$10 ,000 of income rather than a lump sum of$140 ,000, which is the equivalent cost of an income annuity.

41:50Now, caveat, this paper, Guaranteed Income and Licensed Spent, was published by an annuity industry group, okay? So consider the source. However, I still agree with it. I totally agree with this. I can't prove this. I didn't read the paper, but people view income and savings very differently, which is why, as we said at the top of the show, it's a big part of the reason why income strategies are so attractive, why annuities, even though maybe perhaps mathematically, in some cases, they're not like, quote, optimal. People love guaranteed income. And I am of the belief that if this improves your spending behavior, improves your peace of mind, even if it's not mathematically optimal, who gives a shit?

42:34This is like the best portfolio is the one that you could stick with. It's the same type of argument. Right. I've heard the argument over the years, and I've probably made it too, that why do you need to own high dividend paying funds when you could, or stocks, when you could just sell the shares of appreciated assets and create your own dividend? That argument never landed with me because I'm very in tune with my fellow American. We love income. We don't want to manufacture our own income. People hate spending principles. So if I could go, remember a number of years ago, you and I became very bullish on defined outcome, that class of funds, and we're proven right.

43:10If I could be bullish on one area of the fund universe, it would be funds that are going to provide a regular stream of income to people. Like baby boomers, the boomer candy thing will eat that up. So I think that is something that is going to continue in the years ahead of the funds, creating ways of massaging income or giving them a regular income stream. And guess what? The asset managers, they're giving people what they want. Yes. And potentially need to your point. It's, it's a psychological herder for a lot of people to actually spend the money. If it's paid out in a certain way, they're going to spend it more.

43:39All right. It's been a while since we've talked about this one, title insurance. A lot of people know us. So they, they tagged us on this one. Did you get, did you read this article? No, it's huge paper. It's called bits about money about title insurance. And here's the main takeaway. way. So they looked at loss ratio by insurance industry. So fire insurance, 65%, workers comp, 48%, medical professional liability, 56%, auto liability, 76%, homeowner insurance, 82%, title insurance, 5%. So they're saying on a$4 ,000,$4 ,000 or so that this person paid in tele insurance, they're using an example, the underwriter expects to pay out$200 in losses.

44:18and they did this whole huge piece about the scam that is title insurance. Counterpoint, if title insurance goes away, does all other insurance go up in price similar to the banks with the overdraft fees? Is title insurance subsidizing the entire insurance industry? And can I invest? Is there a title insurance company? Well, that's what I wanted to know. That's a company trader that I can invest in? Are all the big insurance, who is the purveyor of title insurance? Is it the same insurers that we would know or are they like specific title? because I don't even know. I really don't know. Okay. All right.

44:51Back to middle-age stuff. So someone sent this to us, and it's a user's guide to midlife, how to navigate aches and pains, weight gain, low libido, memory loss, chronic disease, and stress from the New York Times. And someone sent this on our Discord channel. It was addressed to you, not me. Just wanted to point that out, which I thought was funny. But I had a midlife moment last week. This never, I'm a night owl usually. I'm not a morning person. It takes me a long time to get moving in the morning, but at night I can stay up late and I'm fine. I was watching TV, movies, playing on my computer or whatever, had a couple beers, not an excessive amount, and I had the TV on.

45:31Next thing I know, I wake up, it's 2.30 in the morning, TV's still on, all the lights in the kitchen are on, and I'm just passed out on the couch. Like one of those where am I kind of moments. That never happens to me. I attribute this to middle age. yeah you're falling asleep on couches yes i told you last week i'm falling asleep everywhere uh if i'm lying down i'm falling asleep i took my kids to see despicable me four over the weekend guess what i did fell asleep again fell asleep i'm telling you those reclining chairs in movie theaters now it's a perfect nap environment kobe's poking me he's like dad watch this part okay i'm really the one middle-aged moment that i do have that i've been having more and more lately is aside from just falling asleep.

46:13When I get out of bed, my left foot, when I put that down and I stand up, my left foot, it's hurting a little bit. I'm not sure what that's about. It's just as soon as it's going to get worse. There are aches and pains when you get older that they kind of come and then they go. But they could be around for a couple months. Like, God, my arm is sore. I don't know why it's sore. And then it just goes away. Here's my one midlife PSA as a midlife person. go get your calcium heart screen. I did this because I had some high cholesterol and don't want to get into the nitty gritty of it, but they found some calcium in my heart and I had to make some changes, medicine, whatever, which is just boring middle-aged guy stuff.

46:51But the insurance doesn't cover it. Some states it does, some it doesn't. It's like$150. And I caught it early because my doctor said, why don't you get this? It can't hurt. That's Ben's PSA for the day. You know what? I'm going to do that. It's like$150. It's a 10-minute scan, and it's like getting ahead of potential heart problems down the line. Good PSA. Downside, I'm a purely plant-based diet now, and it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I'm going to live forever.

47:28All right. So remember the Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke movie where technology just completely goes away, and everyone just flips out? What was it called? End of the World? Yeah. Is that what it's called? I feel like I'm going to have a dad moment. I do feel like that's the kind of thing, if you really wanted to screw with our society, that's what you'd do. So last week, we were out on the lake fishing with the kids, and my daughter's holding the phone for my wife. I'm sorry. Let's leave the world behind. There you go. And my daughter's holding the phone to take a picture of the fish she just caught.

47:58My wife's holding the fish up, and the fish jumps, and my daughter loses the phone in the lake. My wife's phone is gone for the day. Huge pain in the neck to get it fixed. You didn't dive in? My wife tried to dive in after it and very murky didn't. And we also had like our smart thermostat, our Nest thing go out and it totally screwed with our air conditioning. And I just, I feel like we're so locked in on these technologies that if that stuff goes out on us, like there are going to be people that will legitimately freak out, even though it doesn't, it shouldn't impact your life. It will. And it does because they're so intertwined with everything we do.

48:37When I was driving to camps over the weekend, imagine having a map. Oh my gosh, right? And when Travel Quest, is that what it's called, Map Quest? Map Quest. When Map Quest came out, that was revolutionary. It's like, holy shit, I could print directions? It would tell me where to go? I don't have to physically read a map? Like, that was a big deal. How anybody showed up even remotely on time boggles the mind. Yeah, now it's like 500 or half a mile, 500 feet, 400 feet. Like tells you exactly when to turn. Yes. Okay. There's an article in the journal. No, Bloomberg, excuse me. Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

49:18Are you noticing this in your town? Tons of new car washes. Okay, not here. Yes. Interestingly. Oh, really? Okay, no, we have a local Tommy's place that is popping up everywhere. There's like a little, in Mr. Car Wash versus Tommy's Express. It's like they're popping up everywhere. It really is a thing. So what's the story say? It's private equity. A lot of it is like this subscription-based model where you could pay 20, 50 bucks a month, whatever it is for various packages. Okay, speaking of, so my Tommies, I pay for the monthly package. My wife and I both do. You pay monthly. And I think when we first signed up, it was 1999, unlimited car washes.

49:55That's a great deal. Pretty good deal. They just increased it from, and of course I get the basic, right? They call it super. It's super ultimate and works. Super basic. Yeah. But a single wash now for the basic is$14. Seems high. I think it's like 25 here because I just got mine done over there. Okay. The super unlimited is$29.99 now. It was$19.99 we signed up. So it seems like, but to me, totally worth it. I get my car washed at least once a week. And I probably in the past would have done once a month maybe. And sometimes I'll do it two, three times a week depending on how beat up my car is getting from kids and weather and such.

50:30and it's a great, great perk. And to their point about subscriptions, I can see why private equities would love this model. You might be surprised to learn this about me. My car is an absolute disaster at all times. Like every couple months, Bob, it's like, you need a car wash. Go get a car wash. She has to remind you. If you get the subscription, you'll use it more. It's totally worth it. I just, I don't care. I'd love to hear how much it costs in New York. I don't care. Some towns are imposing bans on too many car washes. Really? I think people are getting fed up. It's a$14 billion industry.

51:03There's 60 ,000 locations. That sounds kind of nuts. Wait, why would they ban car washes? Who gets mad about car wash? I think they're saying they don't really bring anything. They don't bring any commerce. They're not employing a lot of people. Because it's mostly automated now. And yeah. So they have a... Check out this picture. This is a Chicago car wash in 1925. Pretty cool photo. You know what used to be a thing? Looks like a sprinkler. People used to wash their cars manually. Oh my gosh. You don't see that too often anymore. My parents used to make me do that to their cars. But the thing is, you'd get the bucket with soapy water.

51:35With the big sponge. But then you'd miss a spot, and you'd see this clear streak of dirt. And that's such a waste of time. Gigantic waste of time. How long did it take to manually do a car? Way longer than it should. And it's, yeah. Whereas you drive through the car wash, and you're done in 30 seconds. Okay, Ben, recommendations. What do you got? It was a good past couple of weeks for the Carlson household for new releases. So we had the new Zach Bryan album came out on the fourth. That guy doesn't miss. The Bear came out and Godzilla King Kong movie. So I'll start with Godzilla King Kong. Two thumbs up for my son, George.

52:11He said it's the best Godzilla King Kong movie there is. Did you watch it? He's watched it three times. So I watched it with him. We finished this morning. It's pretty bad, right? The funny thing to me is that these Godzilla King Kong movies, it's the same characters in all three or four of the movies there have been. and these monsters just literally destroy half of the earth in these movies. And the next one, it's like, eh, whatever. Like, we don't even talk about the fact that they destroy every city on earth. But my son loved it. Okay, The Bear. I can't remember. Did you ever get into The Bear?

52:44It was not for you, right? I don't know why. I'm like the only one who didn't really like it. I watched season one and I stopped in season two. It's just, I don't know, didn't resonate with me. I would say it's the show my wife and I have binged the fastest out of any. The first season dropped, we binged it. second season drop fast. This one, we binged it fast. And I would say season one, a revelation 9.5 season to a masterpiece 10. Perfect. No notes. Season three, 7.6. So really good season. Not as good as the first two was a setup season. I think for the finale fourth season, there was a couple episodes that they could have probably done without, but the ending was great.

53:21And it's, it's easily one of the highest quality shows on TV. Like, you know, succession just, you never felt like there was a bad actor on the show and the scenes always looked good. I feel like the bears like that where it's such high. It feels like you're watching a movie. It's such high quality all the way around. So that's why I like it. It's, it wasn't nearly as good, but I'm, I knew it wasn't going to top season two because season two was one of the best seasons I've ever seen of television. So there you go. But I'm ready for season four. Shows are hard. That's my profound thought of the day.

53:50I'm thinking of like presumed innocent, which I'm really enjoying. But the first, I don't know, two or three episodes were great. And there's just a little bit of a lull. And I'm like, just finish it. Just tell me what happens. Okay, I can see that. Are you watching House of the Dragon? The bear has monopolized our TV time, so I've got to catch up on House of the Dragon. It's phenomenal. All right, a couple of emails that came in. In the more recent Candyman movie, which I know, Ben, you didn't see, the main character's girlfriend is an art gallery director in Chicago. Ah, all right. So it really is a thing.

54:22That's now four examples, and that's a lot. Can't believe I missed Candyman. Candyman was good. On the recent pod, Michael stated that he had never heard of any of them. Talking about the Quad Cities. I'm certain that's untrue, and this will jog his memory. This quote has Michael written all over it. Here's a quote. That's a map of Illinois, which we're in, on the border of Iowa, which is where Davenport is, 22 miles away. You're in the wrong state. Get yourself a new map. Tommy boy. Tommy boy. Miles away. um alright I uh I've got I've got a bunch of things um let me close my door Robin just came home and she's yapping they're always on the phone it's true I guess usually my wife is texting I was supposed to talking um okay I saw I went to the theater to see A Quiet Place um the prequel how was it great I loved the first two movies so I'm definitely gonna watch this The second one was one of my favorite movie experiences, dare I say, ever.

55:24I think it was maybe the first or second movie that I saw coming out of the pandemic. And that's a theater type of movie where it's basically 99 % quiet. So this was the first. The first intro of that movie is when the aliens actually show up. That's awesome. So this worked. It was definitely the least great of the three because the first two were so phenomenal. And it's all new characters? New characters. Okay. Some set up characters from previous movies where you see like where they came from. 90 minutes, super tight, and just a lot of fun. Some really, really, really good scenes. All right.

56:01I mentioned Despicable Me before. A few questions, observations. Do you know who does the voices in these movies? Do you care about who's doing the voices? I don't care, but I usually do IMDB and look it up. Like, who is that? I recognize that voice. So the main bad guy was Will Ferrell. He was playing a Frenchman. Will Ferrell's sort of been, hasn't really done much, has he? In the past 10 years? Every comedian eventually, it happens. Yeah, it happens. Flames out, yeah. So speaking of that, I finally saw Anchorman 2. Okay, I literally turned it off 15 minutes in and never went back to it. I couldn't do it.

56:41Yeah, I did that probably 10 years ago. The first time I tried to watch it. It's terrible, but there's a lot. It's worth watching because there's a lot of laughs. So I would say the highs are pretty good. It's not Anchorman. I mean, obviously, but the highs are pretty good. The lows are really bad. To me, the brick character was never funny. Like almost made the movie bad for me. I thought it was seriously unfunny. The first one, even worse than the second. But there was a lot of moments where I actually laughed out loud, which is hard to do. I think Anchorman 1 is the hardest I've ever laughed in a theater.

57:13It might be a tie between that and Hangover, but Anchorman is probably the most laughs per minute of movie I've ever had. I would encourage you to, to, to power through Anchorman too. All right. I'll give it a try. Like there's, there's a few handful of laughs that make it worth it, even though the movie is overall was, I don't know, a six maybe. I think when the RV started turning over, I was like, all right, I'm out. I laughed at that. Okay. I'm not quite sure why, but it tickled my funny bud. Okay. Did you watch Beverly Hills Cop? No. The funny thing is I watched the original last week. For the first time?

57:45No, I've seen it a million times. I love that movie. I've seen it so many times. But I wanted to re-watch the first one before I watched the new one. All right. So I never saw – I only recently saw Beverly Hills Cop in the last five years. I never saw two and three. I know three is supposed to be awful. But is two worth watching? Two is pretty good too. Yes. But one is – yeah. Anyway, the movie was – it was good. Entirely forgettable. So a total nostalgia thing? Yeah. Like it was fine. It was fun enough. but very forgettable. Anyhow, you know who made an appearance? I'm like, what the hell happened to this guy?

58:18Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I feel like you're a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt guy. I do like him. I rewatched 500 Days of Summer recently, which is one of the best rom-coms ever, probably. You're right. He did a show on Apple that was terrible. I'm a big fan of his. He was good, and then he sort of disappeared. What happened to him? There's got to be a story. He got exiled. Nah, he got into music, and he still does his thing, I think, but just not as many good projects. But he was on track to be the guy. All right, so anyway, in the theater, I noticed that there's some movies coming. There's some movies coming for the rest of the year that I think we're going to do okay.

59:03But I don't know if movies are back per se, but Despicable Me 4, worldwide, these are worldwide numbers, $230 million, movie just opened up. Kids movies still play. Inside Out 2,$1.2 billion. That's a serious number. A Quiet Place, day one,$178 million. Bad Boys, which I have not seen and don't plan on seeing,$360 million. Even Horizon is not terrible, terrible. Wait, how much did it make? I think it's at$23 million. I thought you were going to go see it. It's three hours. Okay, that's a long time. I'm not doing that. but movies are rocking and rolling. So here's what's coming. Did you see the coming attraction for Transformers 1?

59:49It's an origin story of Transformers, and it's a cartoon. It's animated. Okay. It's going to be a monster hit. I'm sure my son would want to see it. Okay. He loves Transformers. There's a Wicked movie coming out, which... My wife took the kids to see Wicked the Play recently, and they loved it, so they can't wait for the movie. Okay. Twisters, I am... jacked up for. I can't wait to see that. I'm in. Long Legs, I cannot wait to see. I don't know that that's going to be done because it's a horror movie, but I cannot freaking wait for that. That sounds like a Michael Bannick movie. Dude, no, that's going to be a hit.

1:00:25At least within the community, which you're not a part of. Sorry. Alien Vomulus, Deadpool Wolverine, and then you and I were just talking about this. The Gladiator trailer just dropped. When does it come out, though? Is it November? I absolutely cannot freaking wait. one of my favorite movies of all time. This is November. Yeah, when Gladiator came out, just a global sensation. It's hard to describe for the younglings how big of a movie this was. That was one of those, you're back in your chair the whole time in the movie theater. I still remember watching that at the theater. Was it 2000 it came out?

1:00:59Just a perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect movie. And the trailer has me excited. So anyway, there's a lot going on, a lot to be excited about. Venom 3, not a big Venom guy, but. We talked about cycles in the stock market. I feel like the movie thing, it's like movies are back. No, they're dead. No, they're back. No, they're dead. I feel like we keep having this conversation. I think we're back. I think we're getting, we're approaching backness. Wait till the fall happens. It's going to be dead again. We're approaching backness. No, I just told you, Gladiator's coming. Romulus, are you not listening?

1:01:28All right. Good emails again. Personal emails, personal responses. Animal Spirits at the compoundnews.com. See you next time. you know you sign off like Ron Burgundy

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