Depressed Day Traders (EP. 477)

12:52Ben Carlson:No, 20 % this year. But they outperformed both of the past two years. And obviously the reason this is happening is because Taiwan and South Korea are now such a big part of it. So you look at this. Taiwan and South Korea now make up 45, 46 % of the emerging markets index. China is another 20%. India is 12%. So those are the biggest ones. Technology now makes up 41%. So obviously you're getting a big part of this. If you think the US stock market is concentrated, emerging markets are more concentrated. But it's interesting to think about this as a thought exercise. guys, what would you rather own for the next five years?

13:29Ben Carlson:Let's say the AI trade continues. Would you rather own emerging markets trading at a 10 times forward earnings, forward PE, or the S &P trading at 20 times forward earnings? When I think emerging markets at 40 % technology and a lot of that in South Korea and Taiwan and then China, it's more of a pure AI play. Would you rather own the NASDAQ or the emerging markets right now, I think is a fair question.

13:52Michael Batnick:Well, it is. So the valuation aspect of it is interesting, but I'm glad you said that because it's basically saying, would you rather own Samsung and SK Hynix or the hyperscalers? In time on semi and yeah. Dang it, I did say semi. You said it in the ad read too. You're a semi guy, it's okay.

14:12Ben Carlson:All right. But I think this is another thing that five years ago, you go, what? You're nuts. If I want to take pure play technology, I'm owning the United States. Now, this is a legitimate question. If you want, and obviously one of the reasons that the earnings are cheaper is because these are semi-stacks that are powering.

14:29Michael Batnick:And the earnings are semi-permanent. But I'm sure. Well, guess what? How about this? How about this? Both.

14:37Ben Carlson:You know, it doesn't need to be all to nothing. But it's just, it's crazy how quickly this kind of stuff can change. Where emerging markets for years were seen as this, it's energy and banks. It was all China. industrials and materials. Yeah. And now it's an AI play, essentially.

14:54Michael Batnick:Yeah, it's wild. It really is unbelievable. All right.

14:58Ben Carlson:Meb Faber for the Idea Farm always shares these really long pieces of research. I always pull good stuff out of them. This is interesting. Speaking of South Korea, this is from Barings. They did this thing showing retail participation in the equity market for South Korea. It went from sub-10 % through all the 2010s into 2020, and now has more than doubled to 28%. So retail is getting into, and this is happening very fast. I feel like this probably

15:25Michael Batnick:looks similar. I think this might look similar to our markets.

15:29Ben Carlson:Here's what doesn't look similar, though. South Korean household asset breakdown, 77 % is in real estate, 9 % is in cash, 3.6 % is in equities and bonds. I don't think people are ready for the wave of money coming into stocks from younger people in other countries. I think there's a huge, huge runway for other people in these countries to get interested in the stock market. Like this is, for South Korea, this is the dot-com bubble for them in terms of the dot-com bubble took ownership in the stock market from like 30 % to 60 % for the US. This same thing is going to happen in places like Taiwan and South Korea and maybe China.

16:14Ben Carlson:That kind of thing is going to happen. Look at this. This is the emerging market thing. Why the four PEs at a record discount. Forecast earnings growth expectations for 2026. The all country world index is, you kind of have to squint, but it's pretty high. It's like 25%. For Korea, it's 250%. 250 % expected earnings growth this year in 2026.

16:39Michael Batnick:Probably not sustainable.

16:41Ben Carlson:Probably not. That's why it trades so cheaply. All right. I debated putting this in here, but Michael Burry made another crash call. And I want to look at this from a couple different angles. Not the usual, like, Michael Burry's wrong again, because he's, whatever. If you try to predict the crash all the time, you're going to be wrong. So this is from CNBC. Michael Burry bets against Raleigh. We are near a major top and a possible 1987 type fall. So he wrote this in his subsec, I guess, that he thinks it's possible for 1987 type fall, which I think is essentially impossible to predict. And I think Paul Tudor Jones predicted the original 1987 or said something like this could happen.

17:21Ben Carlson:I don't think he said it's going to be 22 % in a day. But he said we could be setting up a major top. What did he do?

17:27Michael Batnick:This is a true story. Have you read about this in your book? I don't remember if I put this in my book or not, but I'm 98 % sure that I'm not making this up. I read this somewhere. He used a chart from 1929 and overlaid it with what was happening in 1987.

17:42Ben Carlson:which is kind of hilarious because people are doing that for the last 15 years.

17:46Michael Batnick:Which is the type of thing that we literally laugh at. Yes. I suppose it worked for him that one time. Right. Okay.

17:54Ben Carlson:So here's where I'm going to say I kind of agree with Michael Burry in some ways. I don't think we're going to see a 1987 crash, and I think trying to predict one of those is just absolutely ridiculous. But I do think that the way the market is structured now and with the speed at which things move, an air pocket situation is way, a much higher probability than it was in the past. And that, to me, that's like a down seven, down eight, down 10 or down 12 % day if something really bad happens. We had that a million times in the pandemic.

18:30Michael Batnick:And also during Liberation Day. Didn't we have, we had 10 % down days, I believe.

18:35Ben Carlson:We had back-to-back 5 % down days. But I'm just saying that type of, like that's the that's where i actually agree with him is that when this thing does top out it i'm guessing it will be swift and it will be fast and that's the part of that i agree with him not that it's going to be a 1987 route i don't know that i agree with you it could that could

18:53Michael Batnick:happen but why would you say that's going to happen because i think there needs to be an event

18:57Ben Carlson:i'm not saying it's going i'm saying it's a higher probability event now than it was in the past because of the speed at which the market replaces and the speed at which information moves today. Could be. I mean, listen, this guy, he keeps trying to predict crashes over and over again. And this is interesting. He says, shorting is not for everyone. I must short. Most should not. His personality is obviously I'm a glass-staff full guy. He's obviously a glass-staff empty guy. Right? But he just, I think it's in his bones that he has to do this. I looked, I had I took a chart of the S &P. It said, when did Michael Burry say sell?

19:38Ben Carlson:Remember, all he did was tweet it out, sell. And I guess it was in the beginning of 2023, January 2023. The market has doubled since he said that. I think we've talked about this. Some people just don't have the personality or the emotional makeup to be long-term equity holders. And he's obviously one of them. Correct. Guess what? He's still going to be fine.

19:59Michael Batnick:In 2019, he said there was a bubble in passive investing and it was going to pop.

20:04Ben Carlson:Yes. I wrote a long blog post about how people saying that passive investing is the bubble. It's silly. Did I write this or did you? What's two to three years away? So I was thinking about this.

20:16Michael Batnick:Are we going to look back on the unwind of situational awareness similar to the way that we look on long-term capital management? Now, long-term capital management, for those of you who don't know, was a hedge fund run by quantitative mathematical geniuses, and they were doing fixed income arbitrage. So they were trying to pick up pennies. And they used a lot of leverage, and the smartest people in investing blew up. So not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but that happened two years before the ultimate top in the stock market. Is this like the precursor before the ultimate unwind eventually in the future?

21:05Ben Carlson:I know that sounds too perfect. The funny thing is people don't realize in 1998, the S &P dropped like 19%. That was a real correction. It was, and it, you know, there was a currency crisis and Russia defaulted on its debt. And that's why that strategy blew up. It almost is a little too perfect, but sure. I'll give you that one.

21:25Michael Batnick:All right. What's, uh...

21:28Ben Carlson:Okay, did you watch this Adam Carolla, Rich Man, Poor Man? Okay. I did. It was clever. I saw this thing from Seinfeld, and he said, speaking of situational awareness, good lead-in. I saw this thing from Seinfeld, and he said, this is one of my top five favorite pieces of comedy material I've ever heard. And it's Rich Man, Poor Man from Adam Carolla. And he talks about how, he said, I'm not middle class. He said, there are very, there are similarities that rich people and poor people, like very wealthy and very poor people have in common. and he said, outdoor showers. Either you have one by your pool in the cabana or you use a garden hose.

22:02Ben Carlson:You're on a first-name basis with a judge. Either you see him at the golf course or you've seen him five times in five weeks or something. What are you doing? Refrigerator in the yard? The other one was like you drive a car brand that is no longer available anymore. And for rich people, it's like a rare, unique car. And for poor people, it's like a car brand that went out of business.

22:25Michael Batnick:I like the toilet one. I forget what it was.

22:28Ben Carlson:Yeah, he's got a refrigerator in the yard. You have like a high-end kitchen or like you have an appliance dumped in your phone lawn. Oh, the other one I liked was you get escorted out of the stadium by police, right? If you're a rich person, escort you out of the stadium. Anyway, my finance brain always does this. This made me think of, listening to that bit, made me think of situational awareness. okay i'm gonna tell you why so spencer jacob at the wall street journal wrote this and i love this is kind of line i wish i would have written you probably aren't rich or well connected enough to have a 24 year old incinerate your savings i love it and you think about it this the rich man poor man is the same with billionaire investors or degenerates that we make fun of right because if a person with five thousand dollars in a robin hood account hit turned up the dial to five times leverage and they blew up all their stock trading and they got margin called, you'd say, oh, that person is a degenerate.

23:28Ben Carlson:But if you do it with billionaire money, guess what? They're a risk taker. No, that's where wealthy people, wealthy investors and degenerates are kind of the same. And this is one of the reasons, like the wealthy person though, the difference is they get a second chance. A lot of the degenerate gamblers might, if they get wiped out, they might I get a second chance. So this is from Bloomberg. Did you like my comparison there? Did that make sense? I'm with you. Yeah, not bad. Kind of landed, right? Investors clamored to bet on AI WizKids fund after situational awareness turnover, turmoil. Hey, they use Wunderkind in here again.

24:02Ben Carlson:A week after the hedge fund nearly blew up, he's already getting requests from investors looking to place more money with the artificial intelligence Wunderkind. Apparently he says he's not taking new money yet. And then this guy from Sequoia says, our suspicion is that he's going to be a fixture in Silicon Valley for a long time to come. And that's why people are backing this guy and trying to give him more money.

24:23Michael Batnick:Or maybe he's the Ben Simmons of finance.

24:30Ben Carlson:What, never reaches his potential?

24:32Michael Batnick:Yeah, just never to return.

24:34Ben Carlson:I mean, I don't want to get too cute here, but isn't the whole thing, this guy used to work at OpenAI and he's married to someone who's a very high-up at Anthropik and people are hoping that they just get connections through him. like hey if he if he if he loses this money fine but we get the we get the spouse of someone who was very high up in Anthropic and that's all that matters

24:56Michael Batnick:we're all we're speculating here why would somebody invest in him because he's married to Dario's chief of is it chief of staff I think so but why would somebody invest with him because of that alone I don't know

25:09Ben Carlson:because VC people they care about connections and networking and such

25:15Ben Carlson:but this was, this was really easy to, you and I talked about last week, of course, people are going to give him more money. Yeah. Give him a second chance. That was obvious. Again, the poor person though, who blows up the Robinhood account, they're not getting a second chance. All right, we got it. We got it.

25:36All right.

25:37Michael Batnick:It was good. It was good. You do the next one. All right. There was a headline in Bloomberg, young men who trade stocks daily feel like failures. You don't say. You don't say. One quarter of men. The anti-serving podcast,

25:54Ben Carlson:this is one we actually can get behind probably.

25:57Michael Batnick:Yes. One quarter of men aged 18 to 29 said they trade stocks daily. All right, let's just think about that for a second. One out of four men said they trade stocks daily. No.

26:09Ben Carlson:18 to 29. Yeah, that seems on the high side. Yeah.

26:13Michael Batnick:What would you guess? 10? 20? Yeah. 5 % maybe. Come on. Whatever. Two-thirds of them report feeling like failures. That part of it, I believe. Alright. They look at the shares of The funny thing is, though, that

26:33Ben Carlson:two-thirds probably changes. At any one point, one-third of them feel good because they're lucky and they're winning. Two-thirds of them are losing. But then it shifts. Anyway, keep going.

26:44Michael Batnick:So they compare stock trading and gambling. And if you're doing it daily, yeah, you're going to lose, obviously. And if you do it less than daily, you feel a little bit like less of a loser.

26:57Michael Batnick:Gambling and investing. So sports betting and stock market gambling are the same thing. The stock market is a place to build wealth over the long term. But you could treat it like a casino, obviously. With sports betting, you can't treat it like investing. It is a negative sum outcome. The more you gamble on sports, take it from me, the more money you lose. Matter of fact, this was actually great timing.

27:33Ben Carlson:Yeah, but this is why people like trading options. Because it's not that the house wins. it's that there is a big payoff or a big loss. It's the best. Are you kidding me?

27:44Michael Batnick:It's so much fun. Yeah. So I was wondering about this after I saw the study from, I saw Balchunas tweet this. How much money do people lose gambling? I literally, I asked Claude that. And then later that afternoon, Ben, chef's kiss. Mike Mobison and Dan Callahan wrote a, published a report called The Wisdom of Crowds in Markets, Crowds Behavior in Prediction, Betting, and Stock Markets. Great timing.

28:19Ben Carlson:Very good.

28:20Michael Batnick:So it turns out that gamblers in the US, and I don't know how they calculated this, but whatever. Gamblers in the US cumulatively lost$3.9 trillion nominally. So$5.8 trillion. in today's dollars from 1929 to 2025. Sounds like a pretty big number. Now -

28:45Ben Carlson:Is that higher or lower than you would have thought it'd be? I've never thought about that number, really.

28:48Michael Batnick:I don't know. I have to like, how much is that a year? How much is that of overall GDP? How much of that is disposable income? Is it less than 1 % of people's disposable income on average? Yeah, probably. It's a giant number, but you have to adjust for it. Anyway, some of the things that I thought were particularly interesting is, I am a huge, as I think you are, Ben, wisdom of the crowds type of person. Don't tell me what you think, or don't tell me what you think other people think. Put some money on the line. And when you do that, you get a much different outcome, a much more accurate outcome, which is why the prediction markets do a lot better for politics than some of the survey exit polls do.

29:26Michael Batnick:So I think there will be all sorts of interesting economic benefits from prediction markets that might make the economy more efficient. but I am also sympathetic to the fact that it's just straight up gambling and 80 % of the activity is still sports betting, whatever. Anyway, I thought this chart was super duper interesting. They show the actual win rate versus a contract price on Calci. And it is almost one-to-one accurate.

29:55Ben Carlson:So it means that they're setting the right odds. The market is setting the right odds.

30:00Michael Batnick:The market gets it right. Now, there's like a long shot bias where bets that are like 90 cents actually win more than they should because who wants to bet on a 90 cent outcome? Right. You're more likely to bet on the 10 cent because it's the asymmetric payoff.

30:17Ben Carlson:So that's where a lot of the losses are happening. The people who are betting on a 10 and 20 percent.

30:21Michael Batnick:So the long shots actually lose a little bit less than implied by the rates. So anyway, they said that the average VIG is like four and a half percent, which makes sense. So me. For prediction markets or for all gambling? I think for, I think they said this is for like, for Vegas type odds. Okay. Anyway, so if that's, if that's the rake and you know that that's your baseline. So me, my FanDuel account, and I've spoken about this before, I lose seven cents on the dollar. Now it fluctuates. Sometimes I have, I have a good streak and I get down to like five cents. Sometimes I'm bad and I'm down to nine cents.

30:59Michael Batnick:So I guess I'm worse than average.

31:01Ben Carlson:So will we see a fee war from the gamblers where the VIG goes down? Or is that just always going to be the case? No, I don't think so. I think that's just like baked in. So they also said 39. I think gamblers are okay with it for the most part.

31:20Michael Batnick:Yeah, everybody knows what's up. Yeah. This is interesting. So the survey found, so they asked people how do they deal with betting. Are they good? Are they bad? 39 % of bettors claim that they win more than they lose. And 28 % said they break even. Hilarious. That self-assessment contrasts sharply with estimates that 95 % or more of sports bettors are unprofitable over the long run. Yeah, of course you're unprofitable over the long run because you're four cents in the hole when you start. Of course.

31:56Ben Carlson:Yeah. That's a huge hurdle, right?

31:57Michael Batnick:Yeah. So 39 % - You're essentially paying

32:00Ben Carlson:like hedge fund fees. Yeah.

32:03Michael Batnick:You're paying two and 20. So 40 % of people said they win more than they lose.

32:08Ben Carlson:Yeah, sure. I guess the thoughts on gambling changes when you realize that for 80 % of the people, it's probably entertainment, right?

32:15Michael Batnick:No, more than that. You think it's higher than that? I think it's, I think, uh, let's say, I think night I'm going to make this up. 96 % of people are entered or entertaining themselves.

32:25Ben Carlson:The problem though, I wrote, I did a whole chapter on risk and reward about day trading. And there's all these studies about again, why it's so unprofitable, but it's just the loss aversion thing. The fact that losses sting twice as bad as gains feel good. The more you do these kinds of things, the more you're going to lose the more painful it's going to be.

32:43Michael Batnick:Yeah, so most people stop. Right. So I was going to say 96 % of people are like me. I love it. I will never stop because I entertain myself. And this is discretionary money that I am happy to hand over to FanDuel in exchange for entertainment. Although I do think this might be my year. We'll see. 2 % of professionals and 2 % are people that get, unfortunately, they ruin their lives because they're addicted. Having said all that, I think I'm going to be a trader now because I was in New York last week.

33:16Ben Carlson:Yeah, get in the game, Ben.

33:17Michael Batnick:Let's go. And I retired from individual stock trading like 12 times.

33:24Ben Carlson:And I heard Sean and Matt are just back and forth all day. Sean's our research analyst. Matt from Exhibit A, Chart Kid. They're talking about which stocks to buy and all this stuff. And they're talking about SpaceX. And the whole consensus is everyone is waiting for SpaceX to get to 100. And this is on Wednesday. I said, you know what? It's never going to get there. People are, I'm going to do the beauty contest thing. And I'm just going to buy a little SpaceX. And I bought it and it immediately went up 20%. Did you sell it? In like three days. And I sold it. Good for you. Atta boy. And I almost nailed the bottom Microsoft.

33:55Ben Carlson:I bought Microsoft about three weeks ago. Like right before it was up 15 % a day. I'm up like 40 % in two weeks. So I'm going to become a day trader.

34:02Michael Batnick:You got into the itch? No, no.

34:04Ben Carlson:Because then, then. You either have the gene or you don't.

34:08Michael Batnick:You're not a gambler. No.

34:10Ben Carlson:Well, I am a gambler, though. I love playing blackjack. Blackjack is one of my favorite things to do. That is true. Yeah. I don't, but I'm not, the whole other, like options, betting, and day trading, that stuff doesn't do anything for me. Because I know it. I have too much knowledge there. You know too much. You're too wise.

34:29Michael Batnick:Ben, you know what else you were right on? What other stock you were right on? Early, but right. You see Airbnb.

34:35Ben Carlson:What's it doing now? It's going crazy? Is it? Yeah. Yeah, I bought it at the IPO. It was way, way early.

34:45Michael Batnick:Way, way early.

34:47Ben Carlson:Speaking of how quickly Starks moved, I just want to look at at the beginning of July, Microsoft was in a 35 % drawdown. Now it's 5 % or 6 % from all-time highs. Unbelievable. These things happen so fast today.

35:02Michael Batnick:All right, so in conclusion, young men that are day trading, yeah, don't do it. Or do it, get out of your system. It's a loser's game. It's not fun. I mean, it's fun for a little, but.

35:13Ben Carlson:Some people just have to pay the tuition of the market gods.

35:16Michael Batnick:Yeah, you know what? I feel like most people go through this. Most, I don't know if that's, maybe that's a stretch, whatever. I certainly did. I got it out of my system. This is like, this is what it is. You discover the market. Holy shit, I'm going to get rich. And eventually, hopefully most people are like, all right, man. It's harder than I thought.

35:34Ben Carlson:I talked to a financial advisor once who told me like, he had a client come in who he could tell just wasn't. He goes, you're not a prospect. He said, you're not ready for me yet. Go back out for like five more years and do your own thing. You get out of your system, then come back to me. Some people aren't ready for just like the boring stuff right away. They need to have the excitement and then they get the boring stuff later.

35:51Michael Batnick:You truly are a one of one. You literally opened a brokerage account and bought a retirement date fund. Did you not?

35:59Ben Carlson:That's right. My very first purchase was a target date fund. You are really, this is like, that was like 2005 maybe. And how much are you up on that? Do you still hold it? I traded it for something else a long time ago.

36:11Michael Batnick:That would have been something. All right, we have to talk about SpaceX. So we spoke about the SPVs over in the lead up to the IPO. An SPV is called a special purpose vehicle, or it stands for a special purpose vehicle. And there were all of these people that wanted to get into SpaceX, but you couldn't get primary shares from the company. So maybe an existing investor wanted to sell a piece of their shares. And so you were able to basically free ride, not free ride, it was a transaction. You were able to get some of their shares into this different fund. And you would raise money from people and you would buy a piece of their fund.

36:45And then it became like a Russian, is it a Russian egg doll?

36:48Michael Batnick:Right? A Russian. Russian doll. Why did I say egg doll?

36:52Ben Carlson:I don't know where the egg thing came from. It's kind of shaped like eggs maybe.

36:55Michael Batnick:I don't know. A Russian doll where people were then selling pieces of their SPV. And it became this whole convoluted thing where it was scary because like the investors, couldn't even prove that they held underlying shares, that they actually had exposure. And so one of the horror stories came to light in the Wall Street Journal. They said that, so they highlighted some poor guy who put$17 ,000 into one of these SPVs in 2020. He thought it would be worth$300 ,000 at the IPO, a life-changing amount of money. Thought it was going to be able to send his kids to college. turns out that the investment company sold it in 2024.

37:39Michael Batnick:His stake was worth$45 ,000. Now, a good return, but that's not the point. If you thought that you were going to get$300 ,000 and you got 45, it's a catastrophe. Was the guy who ran the investment company

37:52Ben Carlson:your friend who sold your Knicks tickets before the finals? Because it sounds like the same guy.

37:56Michael Batnick:Brutal.

38:00a private offshore investment firm based in the Bahamas called Capital Truth acquired a portion

38:13Michael Batnick:of an SPV that owned pre-IPO SpaceX shares. It then appears to have repackaged the interest and sold them on to late stage, according to court documents and lawyers. So late stage was the company based in New Jersey, huge red flag. No offense to New Jersey.

38:30Ben Carlson:If you can't trust a company based in New Jersey or the Bahamas called Capital Truth, who can you trust?

38:34Michael Batnick:But the horrible thing is like, obviously these are unsuspecting investors. How did they know? They're getting swindled. So this person that they profiled fielded dozens of congratulatory text messages, according to the journal, from friends who knew about a space listing investment.

38:50Ben Carlson:Oh, so he was bragging to everyone.

38:51Michael Batnick:Yeah, dude, of course. I mean, yeah, duh. That's what you do. This is, right? Like, you can't, I wouldn't be able to keep that to myself.

38:59Ben Carlson:Oof. Brutal.

39:01Michael Batnick:He went out to dinner to celebrate. Just absolutely f***ing horrible. I hope these people go to jail. And speaking of this, they did a real Wolf of Wall Street documentary on Amazon, a three-parter. And it was great, I thought. Did you watch it?

39:19Ben Carlson:I did not. I just... I hate Jordan Belfort. I hate that guy. I think he's such a scumbag that I don't want to give him any of my attention.

39:30Michael Batnick:Fair. What a piece of garbage. I mean, obviously, The Wolf of Wall Street, the movie, I don't know that it glamorized him per se. I mean, I don't think it made him look like a good guy, but they did nothing to talk about the crimes that he committed and all of the victims. And in this one... That was why I didn't care for it as much as most people.

39:47Ben Carlson:I couldn't... I understand. I just felt gross watching it.

39:50Michael Batnick:Yeah. Well, even still, Jordan is talking about how he's a redemption story and the comeback and no remorse. So one of his best friends, I think the guy that was who Jonah Hill played, I can't remember exactly. Daughter died of leukemia and Jordan didn't send like didn't no text message. No, nothing. Just a world class scumbag. Yeah. I'm sure it's entertaining, though. All right. Bars are giving up on young people, Ben. On a recent Friday night, this is also from the Wall Street Journal. On a recent Friday night, Philadelphia's Trestle Inn welcomed the crowd for a Prince-themed dance party. Revelers rocking purple eyeshadow and love symbols slurped down the whiskey sours and lit up the dance floor while a go-go dancer gyrated to hits like Let's Go Crazy.

40:41Michael Batnick:In 1999, almost everyone was over 50. Well, obviously. So the bar owner said, we realized that the younger generation weren't drinking as much and these early parties were a way to get older folks in the door. The bars have a new favorite customer, the Gen Xer.

40:56Ben Carlson:It makes sense. So Derek Thompson on Plain English last week had a story about how marijuana use on a daily basis is now more than alcohol use. Probably for the first time in history.

41:08Michael Batnick:It's pretty crazy. To me, this is a catastrophe. So I was a huge, huge pothead growing up. And it literally, and I know I'm an extreme example of this, but it literally ruined my life. Now I have an addictive personality. I am like Richard Lewis, who is an alcoholic drinking champagne. You're like, how do you even get to that point? So I smoked way, way, way, way too much. And I once heard Elon Musk describe marijuana as coffee in reverse. And that's what it is. At least that's what it is for me.

41:44Ben Carlson:When you're a young guy, you just sit there and play video games all day, right?

41:48Michael Batnick:Yeah. It is a demotivator. So there's some people that are functioning potheads. I get it, right? But let's assume that most people are not that. The fact that there's 21 million people... Oh, wait, hold on. Is this young people? It's a lot of people regardless, but every day.

42:10Ben Carlson:Yeah, this is everyone. And Derek's point was, yeah, marijuana actually makes sense for this moment because people are more anxious and they're using it as an anxiety sort of medication, if you call it that. But it's also for people who want to stay in and don't want to be social. And that's the point. It is the antisocial drug. And you mentioned the demotivator. And obviously there's people who just do gummies and they use it to help them sleep or whatever.

42:35Michael Batnick:Well, I was about to say that. In fairness, it's not like when we were potted and we were just taking bonkets all day, like complete morons. People are much more responsible today. They're taking tiny doses. They're taking it to fall asleep. It's not like everybody's walking around stoned all day, but that is a wild number.

42:55Ben Carlson:Yeah, but it seems like a lot of people have traded the negative physical effects of alcohol for the negative. They're giving up on that. They're trading it for mental health negative effects. That's where we've that's where we've gotten. Alcohol just does make you more social. It just does. I am a very introverted person. I probably took it way too far. And like when I went to college, but it helps me like be more extroverted.

43:19Michael Batnick:Of course it does. So when Ben and I are pounding the table for young people to get out there and drink. Like, I'm not saying like, hey, listen, young people.

43:27Ben Carlson:Yeah, we're not saying that.

43:29Michael Batnick:Stay at home and drink a bottle of vodka. Obviously, we're not saying that. Get out there. Be social. Get a life. Go have a drink. Meet somebody. Talk to a human being.

43:40Ben Carlson:I do think whenever I go to a big city, it seems like young people are doing this still. I know that the bars are saying it's, I don't know where, but when you go to New York and Chicago and places, there's still young people out at the bars, right?

43:52Michael Batnick:um yeah we were out of we were out of the bars last week we saw young people

43:59Ben Carlson:yeah all right this is a good one from bank of america it's funny uh if you talk about the unemployment rate today people will say yeah but what about the labor force participation ratio right if you look at it like for older people it's it's falling and they use that as a sign of this is a bad thing but so the labor force participation rate for 55 plus is dropping at a massive rate. Like it's down a lot in the last year and a half or so. And Bank of America says, no, no, no, no. This is not a bad thing. This is not a sign of people who are giving up on the workforce. This is a sign of people who have a lot more money than they thought they would, and they're retiring early.

44:33Ben Carlson:My house is worth way more. My stock portfolio is worth way more. My business is worth way more. I'm out. There's a lot of people who are retiring early right now. That's a massive drop. It's fantastic.

44:44Michael Batnick:Here's a companion chart also from Bank of America. their average 401k balance is now 160 something thousand dollars it was a hundred thousand dollars in 2023 god knows what it was in 2017 the stock market is fundamentally changing our country and

45:00Ben Carlson:hallelujah it is now the the thing that people would tell you is just wait what happens on this and i i do think whenever the next recession hits and let's say we get a 30 bear market and it lasts for 15 months instead of three. I'm fascinated to see what the reaction is going to be. Like, will we get -

45:25Michael Batnick:Which reaction, the narrative or the spending?

45:27Ben Carlson:The sentiment, like will, everything. Will we get the next recession? Will it kind of be like inflation where the sentiment turns so, so sour because we haven't experienced it in so long?

45:41Ben Carlson:Like, I think the sentiment is -

45:43Michael Batnick:What are we talking about? We just did that. Did what?

45:47Ben Carlson:We just had a bear market that lasted 15 months. Yeah, we didn't have a recession. I think the recession piece and people losing their jobs is what's going to really tip me out. True, true, true.

45:58Michael Batnick:Yeah. Well, you know what? Just wait. I reject that. You know why? If somebody has enough money to retire because the stock market outkicked its coverage for what their expectations were, You think they're 100 % in stocks? No, dummy.

46:15Ben Carlson:Right, exactly. They shouldn't be, that's for sure. All right, opinion piece from Bloomberg. We would be in a recession without AI. Obviously, this is not even controversial. Virtually nothing matters more to markets at present than the AI build-out. It's such a sudden and massive stimulus for the US that it has shifted macroeconomic data. This professor from Columbia School of Business argues that without it, US would be in a recession. He estimates AI infrastructure investment at roughly 2.8 % of GDP, larger than the railroad boom, and it's projected to keep rising. Here's the problem with this, though.

46:50Ben Carlson:When you think about it this way, like if we just took AI out, the economy, like this money would have been used for something else. It goes to other places. Yes.

47:00Michael Batnick:This is like, okay, the Knicks, maybe this is a bad example, but just go with me. Jalen Brunson is not playing. if the Knicks score 110 points a game and Jalen scores 27 points a game, now they're going to score 87 or whatever the number is, right? Like, all right, no, the points go somewhere else. So yes, the Knicks are worse off without Jalen and the economy would be worse off without AI, but it's not a linear decline. Come on.

47:29Ben Carlson:It wouldn't be a hole. Like take that hole out and then there's nothing there. Okay, and also in fairness,

47:35Michael Batnick:I do think that there's a decent, probably, I would say better than 50-50 chance that the economy would be in a recession without AI. I do think that if it weren't for this, given higher interest rates and everything else we have, I don't think we would have been able to absorb all of that without the magic of this cycle.

47:52Ben Carlson:And if you listed what will the reason be for the next recession, I would put AI as like 80 % favorites. The odds on it would be you wouldn't want to take those because AI has to be the reason for the next. All right. I think the PR people are out in full force and they're realizing it. So Mark Zuckerberg, who he's another one that I read the book that the social network was based on. Ben Mesrick wrote this book. I think it's called The Young Millionaires or something like that. It was the book that was, and I read it before, like he really was huge in the zeitgeist in popular. So I read this back in, I don't know when it came out, the mid, early 2000, like 2007 probably I read this, 2008.

48:34Ben Carlson:and he was another one i'm just like god he's such a slime ball and i feel like i've kind of underestimated him ever since because of what i read about him in that book and how he acted in college you know but one thing that he let's not judge people's let's not judge people's character based on how they behave in college that's fair uh well he did screw over red water pretty bad but i think one thing that he's done over time is he is just a chameleon to whatever is going on at the moment, he knows how to shapeshift and do what he has to do. So he wrote this whole piece about how the future is for everyone, the path to a positive AI future.

49:07Ben Carlson:So he's trying to say, like, hey, all right, let's take a step back and look at the positives of AI, because obviously the negativity is growing. He says, it is surprising that the discourse for many developing AI is so filled with doom. I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs in much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future. Like he's saying the He's saying the right things that should have been said from the beginning. And then he says, all right, let's talk about what AI will do for you in the future that will be positive and not focus on the negatives.

49:38Ben Carlson:And this isn't like groundbreaking stuff, but I think this is probably the stuff that he wants to do with Meta. So he says, everyone have a personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. 24-7, work on your behalf. Everyone have a personalized tutor and coach with a PhD in every subject. I think that's like a positive thing we could say for our children, hopefully. Right? And he says everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. Now, this is the part where it probably gets kind of tricky for these companies. If everyone has access to free or affordable access, is it just going to be the top 5 % of people paying for all the tokens?

50:14Is that like the hope that it's going to be the people who are so overly reliant

50:19Ben Carlson:and that's going to subsidize everyone else? Why? Because there are people who just won't. Because he's saying everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. he's saying, listen, if we want this to work and help people, this has got to be cheap for the masses. There has to be a free option available for people to use this.

50:35Michael Batnick:It is cheap for the masses. First of all, there's a free version. And how much is chat? 20 bucks a month? For the paid version? That's Netflix.

50:43Ben Carlson:But don't you think there's some people who just won't pay for it? So? Don't you think? There's a free version. All right. He's saying like we need to have a free, anyway, worth a read. But the PR departments have obviously figured out, like, guys, we have to spin this more positively. And guess what? I think it's probably too late for that positive spin.

51:02Michael Batnick:I agree. Ben, Duncan tells us it's a Russian nesting doll. So I don't know where egg came from, but it's not egg. It's nesting.

51:14Ben Carlson:You gave it your best shot. All right. So I think for probably once or twice a year when I come to New York, you do a good job of getting us comedy tickets and going to the comedy cellar. and that's my favorite neighborhood the west village is my favorite neighborhood in new york i love going there i love the bars and restaurants and walking around and the vibe and the energy and so we went to the comedy cellar we had you and chris and i we had great seats perfect location up on the level ledge a little bit and as most comics do they they they rip on the people in the front row like i don't know if i'd want to sit in the front row at a lot of because you know you're going to get rid of it and a lot of people that's their shtick is hey hey, where are you from?

51:53Ben Carlson:What do you do? Hey, are you two dating? What's your story? And so there was a guy who was enjoying himself in the front row, mid-20s probably, and one of the comics said, what do you do? You know, he said, I work for NVIDIA. And the comic goes, without missing a beat, goes, what is that, TVs? And you and I are the only ones in the whole audience who started laughing because we, and no one else got, you and I are the only ones who thought this was funny, that the guy who works for NVIDIA, who was putting a fair number of drinks back and enjoying himself to the point where the comedians really couldn't understand what he was saying.

52:23Ben Carlson:I think he was probably celebrating his stock options. And the comedian didn't. And then he said, well, she said, wait, what is that again? And he said, oh, like AI. She said, oh, data centers. And then people started booing, kind of. Oh, really? She was like, oh, yeah, you didn't catch that? She was kind of like, oh, she kind of gave it a negative. But that just got me thinking that, okay, this still has a long way to go. People still don't know the biggest company in the world, $5 trillion company who's helping build AI. We got a long way to go. Is that a fair anecdote?

52:55Michael Batnick:Perhaps. I don't know. Maybe. I know. Maybe I'm getting too cute. We're gauging the market by the comedy seller. You know, maybe should you and I step outside our comfort zone one time and sit in the front? I don't think I would enjoy it. I have too much anxiety for that.

53:08Ben Carlson:It's a lot, right? Someone did call you a JV wrestling coach once. A gym teacher. Oh, gym teacher. Okay. That was a... Hey, uh...

53:20Michael Batnick:Um... Last week, I made a comment about our audience being more tuned into the market than the average citizen. And we got a bunch of people saying, I actually don't really check the market, my portfolio all that much. I listen to you guys. And I'm sure it's a mixed bag of people that listen. Some people are watching more closely than others.

53:42Ben Carlson:We've heard from people that say, listen, I outsource my news to you. And if it's in the news, you guys are going to cover it.

53:47Michael Batnick:Great. I love it. Love to hear it. So it got me to thinking. how often do you check your portfolio, the balance of your portfolio? And I will set the over under at, I will set the over under at every two weeks. And I would probably say, I would probably say the over as meaning like less frequently than that. So every three weeks, every month.

54:19Ben Carlson:every six months i update a spreadsheet that has all of our accounts on it right you are such a boomer retirement accounts i still know we have you know we have technology for that right you

54:29Michael Batnick:know we're we run a rea we could we could we could take care of you for that i do i still update it

54:37Ben Carlson:manually every six months but i don't do it if it's a bear i only update it if it's a bull market i do not look at my accounts if it's a bear market because i don't want to know i know what they're they are but i don't so i i'd say like our porterhouse strategy i check that occasion but i feel like for me that's more thinking that's different because that's for clients okay so then once every three months holy shit because i know in the back of my i can do the math on the back of the envelope i know what it is i don't need to constantly see the number and see it moving i practice what i preach here man you know the more often you look the more pain you're gonna have and you are better off for it how often do you do it once a once a week once a day once a day that's it

55:27Michael Batnick:come on those are rookie numbers uh yeah no all the time way way way way more often than i should i mean well because also i'm picking i'm picking stocks i'm having a good time I'm doing what you're not supposed to be doing.

55:39Ben Carlson:Yeah, now that I do. But yeah, you only pay attention to that one part of your portfolio when you're picking stocks.

55:44Michael Batnick:You know what I am? You know the story about the husband and wife are at a blackjack table. They're playing cards and they go off on their own separate way. And he said, how'd you do? And she goes, I lost 200 bucks. He goes,$200? How did you lose$200? And she said, well, how did you do? I lost$1 ,000. You lost$1 ,000 and you're yelling at me that I lost 200? And he said, yeah, but I know how to gamble. Right. That's me.

56:08Ben Carlson:I like it.

56:09Michael Batnick:Thank you. One more thing on the gambling stuff, Ben. There was an article, again, in the Wall Street Journal, with the headline, the live shopping app where some people bid until they're broke. You know about these things? No. This is some real predatory shit. All right, here's the lead. Sean Harding downloaded Whatnot, a live shopping app, after rekindling his childhood baseball card collecting hobby. Within four months, the 45-year-old accountant had spent almost$1.4 million from his savings, his personal loans, money borrowed from a friend, and finally from his employer company's credit card.

56:46Michael Batnick:Holy shit. When his wife discovered the full tally, she filed for divorce. He said, I just kept telling myself one more time that I'd sell it all and make all my money back, but it was so easy to just swipe right. Oh, this poor bastard.

57:00Ben Carlson:I don't know what this is.

57:01Michael Batnick:So this is a shopping app where you could buy, it's like an auction. So it's possible that you buy an iMac computer for$11 because you just so happen to like, whatever, the auction runs out. And like, there's all these anomalies that they highlight, that they advertise. You can buy this for this. And they hook people in. I mean, this, there's nobody winning here. This should just be illegal. So what did he spend all his money on then? What did he get? clicks, nothing. Nothing. He's gambling that he's going to be able to buy an item for 80 % less than it's worth and then resell it. And if you don't get it, you don't get anything.

57:43Michael Batnick:Nothing. Wow. Gross, right? I mean - Listen, I'm a capitalist. I love companies, people making money. This is not that. This is disgusting.

57:58Ben Carlson:But I mean, if this guy did all this and he borrowed money for a friend and he put it on his employer credit card, he was going to do something like this eventually.

58:06Michael Batnick:Okay, there is obviously the personal responsibility angle, of course. Yeah. But this is just predatory behavior. It's true. That's a, I didn't realize

58:18Ben Carlson:that's how those things work. All right, Connor Sen has a new sub stack called the Housing Frame. So we're writing about housing and how it relates to the economy. He says, his first post is the housing recession is over. I thought this was interesting. He looked back at other lengthy housing recessions. He said, listen, since the first quarter of 2022, we've had a housing recession. That's almost half a decade. He said, we had one from 1979 to 1982 and the Fed nuked the economy with tight money for four years. We had another one from 1988 to 1991, which was a savings and loan crisis in the Gulf War.

58:48Ben Carlson:And then the Great Recession, of course, lasted six years, 2006, 2011. Here's the interesting thing though. So he's saying like four years ago, home builders pulled back, apartment development slumped, number of homes for sale surge in places that boomed the most during the pandemic housing frenzy. And he's saying he thinks it's over, like we're getting some signs of activity. The crazy thing to me is this this has absolutely been a housing. If you worked in the housing industry, this has been brutal for you in a loan department as a realtor. Like this has been rough. The Case-Shiller National Home Price Index is up almost 12 percent since the first quarter of 2022.

59:19So during a housing recession, housing prices still rose almost 12 percent.

59:23Ben Carlson:Now you could say, well, inflation was up even a little more than that. So on a real basis, but still, this is, but I think people assumed that the great recession, housing recession, like that was the baseline to think through. Housing prices just don't fall very often. It just, even those other ones, 1979 to 1982, housing prices were up. Oh, wow. Right. So like in most housing recessions, housing prices still rise.

59:50Michael Batnick:And the supply demand and balance is permanent. there's what, 70 million people between 37 and 39 years old or something like that? Right. And the boomers just aren't selling their houses. Exactly. So this is not going to get fixed. It's awful.

1:00:06Ben Carlson:And obviously, we're not figuring out ways to build more homes either. It just seems like that ship, for whatever reason, has sailed. And even if we did decide it would take so long to do, who knows how long it would take to actually matter for young people. Right.

1:00:19Michael Batnick:Let's do some quarter stuff. So SpaceX reported, and here's a quote from Elon Musk. If you have a mass accelerator on the moon and you have solar and radiator production on the moon, you can, I know this sounds totally nuts, but you can probably scale to a thousand times the economy of the earth in terms of intelligence that launches to space, probably maybe even a million times.

1:00:40Ben Carlson:Okay. You know the problem with the hard part of Elon Musk, like if you listen to a technology person, they'll say, hey, never bet against Elon Musk. Look what he's done. He created this EV company. he can have rockets that take off and land. But he also says so many things that just don't come true. So it's really hard to know. He's made a million promises, right? Remember he was going to have that Hyperloop thing. I'm going to create tunnels underneath cities and we're going to go back and forth and it's going to be so fast. And there's so many things he's promised that haven't happened.

1:01:08Michael Batnick:Okay, I love this. I am not an Elon Musk fanboy, But I love this attitude of, yeah, we can do anything. As crazy as it sounds, this insane entrepreneurial spirit to move the world forward, advance technology that sounds science fiction and sounds totally f***ing insane. I love it. I love that there's people out there like this that are just pushing the boundaries of what sounds like something that you would giggle at, you know?

1:01:41Ben Carlson:It would be cool to have the view of Earth from the moon. Like you've lived on the moon. Every morning you wake up and see the Earth. That's a good view, right?

1:01:50Michael Batnick:Yeah, it's a great view. Beautiful. All right, let's do Disney real quick. So this blew my face off, Ben. Toy Story does$1 billion in annual global retail sales.

1:02:06Ben Carlson:Jeez. My kids really like the new movie. I didn't see it. My kids loved it.

1:02:10Michael Batnick:It was excellent. uh they estimate it's done 16 billion dollars in income for disney the toy story franchise

1:02:20Ben Carlson:um all right so here we go with a bigger monopoly where the stock has stunk more than disney disney has a huge monopoly oh on theme parks theme parks and just brand branding disney has a huge branding monopoly and the stock stinks no they don't they don't have a brand monopoly Well, maybe Monopoly is the wrong way to say it. They're just, the reach of their brand has to be about as strong as any one that there is. Yes. And the stock stinks.

1:02:47Michael Batnick:Total revenue grew 7%, 11 % revenue growth at the parks and experiences, which is kind of nuts considering how expensive it is. And they keep raising prices and people seem to keep going. So, and it's accelerating. So they haven't had growth like this in a long time at the parks. this is confusing. This quarter, we passed an important milestone in app unification, allowing Hulu standalone and bundle subscribers to link profiles. So this is like getting really annoying with my own app. How hard is this? I guess it's harder than you would think. So if you log it through Hulu and Disney, they don't sync with each other.

1:03:26Michael Batnick:So if you're watching, I don't know, what's a Hulu show right now? Let's say you're watching Tires whenever that comes out. Wait, it's Tires Netflix. Let's say you're watching The Bear on Hulu and then you try and watch it on Disney. They don't talk to each other. Crazy. Crazy town.

1:03:40Ben Carlson:Oh, you're right. That's right. He doesn't pick up where you left off on one or the other. By the way, I finished the bear finding. I didn't mind. The last three episodes were actually pretty decent. The last two seasons didn't need to happen, but they finished it okay.

1:03:51Michael Batnick:Did you finish House of the Dragon?

1:03:55Ben Carlson:We got one more episode.

1:03:57Michael Batnick:Finished it last night, then I listened to House of R with the great Chris Ryan, Joanna, and Mallory, and And I had, it's like they're watching a different show. And.

1:04:09Ben Carlson:Because they're so into it or what? No, no, no.

1:04:11Michael Batnick:Because I am such a, I am, because I am such a moron. It's like, I'm watching a different show. How about that? Not they're watching a different show. I'm watching. I have no, I still have no idea what's happening. I might have just the biggest dumbass in the world. I cannot follow this show for the life of me.

1:04:23Ben Carlson:I feel like you need a flow chart for every one of those episodes. Even that.

1:04:29Michael Batnick:But even hearing them discuss, I'm like, yeah, I'm still lost. now that being said I enjoyed the shit out of it it was great TV it's entertaining yeah great TV

1:04:38Ben Carlson:it feels like Game of Thrones kind of

1:04:40Michael Batnick:one last thing on Disney this was the most watched Q3 for ESPN ESPN 2 and ESPN on ABC since 2016 which is kind of insane is that

1:04:53Ben Carlson:is that your Knicks or what

1:04:57Michael Batnick:well the finals were huge it was only five games though is it also did they have the World Cup?

1:05:03Ben Carlson:Oh, that was probably part of it. I thought Fox had the World Cup.

1:05:07Michael Batnick:I don't know. All right, Ben, we got a lot of emails about this. So you were mentioning Spider-Man bemoaning the fact that they just won't stop. A lot of people agreed with me.

1:05:19Ben Carlson:There's a lot of other Spider-Man haters out there.

1:05:21Michael Batnick:I wasn't a huge fan of the last one where they brought in Garfield, Toby, and Holland. I thought that was not for me. But basically, Sony has to keep making these movies. Otherwise, the rights revert back to Marvel. And I don't know what the timeline is, but they're not going to stop. So get used to it.

1:05:42Ben Carlson:By the way, I have a Spider-Man hot take.

1:05:44Michael Batnick:Go ahead.

1:05:46Ben Carlson:Zendaya is like the biggest actress alive right now. She does nothing for me. She, every movie she's in, she doesn't do anything. Like in Dune and in Odyssey, her characters don't do anything. They just stand there. She doesn't move the ball forward at all. In the Odyssey, she didn't need to be a character. Why didn't she play a better role? Okay, counterpoint. Hot take. She's overrated. I'm just saying. No, she's not. Tom Holland is too. Okay. The drama? Did she do nothing in that movie too? Okay, I still don't believe her. You're right. She was good in the drama. I liked her in the drama. One more.

1:06:27Ben Carlson:The tennis one. The tennis one. She was fantastic in that. Get out of here with that garbage taste. She should stop doing Spider-Man and the Odyssey. She does nothing in those movies. She should actually keep doing these smaller movies.

1:06:38Michael Batnick:I'm a Zendaya fan. David O. Russell's Madden, this is from Variety, is skipping a nationwide theatrical release. Nicolas Cage stars as the legendary American football coach and sports commentator John Madden, opposite Christian Bale, Catherine Han, John Mulaney, Sienna Miller, and Shane Gillis. Holy shit, what a cast is. but is this movie going to absolutely suck shit? They're not giving it a release? Did you see the preview for it? No. You know I raw dog these things. I mean, whatever. I know the story here, but.

1:07:07Ben Carlson:It looked like a straight to streaming video movie. Nicolas Cage as John Madden. Are we kidding? There's no way that's going to be good.

1:07:17Michael Batnick:No way. He does not have that kind of way. When's the last time David Russell had a good movie? Let's see. Oh, you liked American Hustle. I hated that movie. Oh, I hate it. I thought it was very disappointing. Amsterdam bombed. I didn't see that one Silver Linings Playbook

1:07:30Ben Carlson:what was the Philadelphia Sports one with Bradley Cooper Silver Linings Playbook that was a good one

1:07:38Michael Batnick:alright year to date box office through August 9th Andrew Zuccardi shared this with us highest in highest since post pandemic we had the CEO of Rich Gelfand on yesterday Josh and I did on TCAF for IMAX

1:07:53Ben Carlson:did you ask them why they can't build new theaters

1:07:57Michael Batnick:You know, I didn't press him hard enough on that. I should have. He gave the same answer that we've heard. Listen, the truth, it's expensive, and a lot of people don't want to make the investment, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Things look very good now. It makes no sense to me. Why? Because they're doing so well,

1:08:13Ben Carlson:you'd think they'd want to do more.

1:08:15Michael Batnick:I really don't get it. It's not, it's maybe not repeatable. It's not guaranteed. This is a really hot year for movies. All right. All right, Ben. I've got a few stories. I know, I know it's a long ass episode, so forgive me. Uh, although maybe you're like, maybe you're like, uh, like us and like sticking around for the long ones. You know, the, you know, when, uh, in, uh, I love you, man, when Paul Rudd calls, uh, Jason Segel, Jobin. Of course. And he just like, his brain just breaks. Yeah. By the way, I saw Rush and Paul Rudd and Jason Segel doing the, the slap in the base. at the Rush concert was just dead on.

1:08:58Michael Batnick:Nothing but people playing the air instruments. So air drum, air guitar, air piano.

1:09:03Ben Carlson:That movie just makes me smile.

1:09:05Michael Batnick:The best. All right, so anyway, I was walking to the train station. I had a bag in my hand. It was heavier than I expected. I was sweating, stopped at Starbucks. I was hoping I would see somebody who could give me a ride. Sure enough, guy from the neighborhood that I'm friendly with pulls up, and he said, he pointed to me to ride, I said, yeah, saddle me. And he walks away into Starbucks and I'm like, what the f***? Saddle me? That's like not even close to anything. He said, saddle me. It sounds like an innuendo of some sort. So we get in the car and he goes, hey, did you say saddle me? That's the best part of it.

1:09:54Ben Carlson:I love you, man, as he calls him out on it.

1:09:56Michael Batnick:Yeah, so this guy called me. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know, man. I don't know what to tell you. My brain broke for a second. I got one more for you.

1:10:06Michael Batnick:Remember last week on the show, we were talking about how you are more OCD-brained, where if there's something that needs to be done, you just get it done. All right, I'm the opposite. So I bought a green light for my backyard. A green light is you drop it in the water and it lights up and you see all the fish swim by and the kids like that, right?

1:10:26Ben Carlson:Oh, we had that in Florida. My son loved it because the fish would come up at night. That's when you go fishing at night.

1:10:30Michael Batnick:It's great. Yeah. So I've had this thing in my backyard. It's been in the package for three weeks and Robin keeps by, could you just, what are you, just plug it in and put it in the water. What are you doing? So I finally got around to it. I lubed it up, lathered it in Vaseline because apparently that keeps it brighter and keeps like the seaweed off of it. Oh, okay. So I lubed it up, I plugged it in and I threw it into the water. But what I didn't do, Ben, was I didn't unravel the wires. So I plugged it in and I threw it in and the wire came out and just like right to the bottom and Robin's like, you're the dumbest person I've ever met in my life.

1:11:11Ben Carlson:So you got another one? I think I can get it eventually. Put on your Scooby ear and go get it?

1:11:19Michael Batnick:Can I just say one more thing? This might sound mean-spirited. Sorry, I can't help it. It irks me. Is whistling the most annoying thing ever? People who whistle.

1:11:33Ben Carlson:Amen. There's a guy in my gym who whistles the entire time he's in the locker room. He doesn't stop whistling. Come on. I feel like if you're by yourself, you can whistle. If you're by other people, you can't whistle. You just can't do it. It's very annoying.

1:11:50Michael Batnick:Highly irritating.

1:11:52Ben Carlson:Yes, I agree.

1:11:53Michael Batnick:It's like you can't really tell somebody to stop because it's such a dickhead thing. But you want to.

1:11:59Ben Carlson:You want to tell them to stop.

1:12:00Michael Batnick:Hey, do me a favor. Could you knock it off?

1:12:03Ben Carlson:Yes. Whistling your own head? I agree. Email from a listener. Ben, I had a question for you based on something you said years ago. It was at the height of the pandemic. You said you were never going to wear a tie again. Since work dress code has changed so much in the pandemic, it seemed like a good prediction. I'm curious if you kept your prediction and also have not worn a tie since the pandemic. Great timing. This question just came in yesterday. I wore my first tie since the pandemic this past weekend. But I was forced to see. You're great. Where were you? Okay. So Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island.

1:12:31Ben Carlson:This is the only, my face is not the greatest in that picture. This is the only one I could find with me and sitting next to my brother-in-law on the porch. Grand Hotel has been around since the 1800s in Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island is this little island between the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula. You have to take a ferry to get there. It's very touristy. There's a lot of fudge and ice cream and shops, restaurants. But this hotel has been there since the 1800s, and they kept it up. And it's like a time capsule. Remember in Midnight in Paris when Owen Wilson goes back in time to the 1920s?

1:12:57Ben Carlson:Never saw it. Okay. I love that movie. It feels like you're going back in time at this place. But they have rules still at 630. If you're walking through the lobby and you're staying there, all men have to have a sport coat on. Women have to look. You have to dress. And at dinner, there's one, the main room, they have dinner. you have to if you're a man you have to have a sport coat and a tie-on and women are like that yeah and honestly at night the place was great everyone was dressed up it felt like an actual like event it was it like it's and i thought like we're a nation of slobs now this is one of the worst outcomes of the pandemic is that i get it everyone's more comfortable but we're just in the past people used to dress up and go on planes now everyone is a slob everyone wears pjs everywhere like it felt nice to have everyone dressed up again and i liked it so that was my time wearing a tie first time in a while all right i've got a i've got a bunch in the recommendation

1:13:54Michael Batnick:recommendation section this week let's start with this i tease this to you i'm confused by the concept of westerns as a genre and this hit me i was watching my dad recommended a movie that i didn't really care for i um well i didn't finish it but i think i got far enough i don't really

1:14:09Ben Carlson:understand this take. You don't like Westerns?

1:14:11Michael Batnick:No, no, no. Although I actually don't love Westerns, if I'm being honest. I don't hate them. They're just not in my top 20. What was the name of this movie? Old Henry. Did you see this? No. All right, whatever. It's a Western. My take is this. I'm not hating on Westerns. I'm just confused by Westerns as a concept because a Western really isn't necessarily a genre of movies like horror is because there can be a comedy Western. There could be a drama Western. There could be a horror. Did I say horror already? There could be all sorts of different types of Westerns. It's a setting. It's a setting.

1:14:45Yeah.

1:14:47Michael Batnick:It's a setting as a style of movies. But there's not like ocean movies or desert movies. It's just kind of interesting when you think about it. Right.

1:14:56Ben Carlson:It's a time piece. But for some reason it works because it's like there's outlaws and there's no rules and all right. I don't agree with your take, but...

1:15:09Michael Batnick:We don't have any other period or location genres is all. Just, it occurred to me. That's fair. All right, this is another... I saw this, I was like, wait. So I'm scrolling for movies the other night. Robin was out, whatever night it was, I was by myself. And I'm scrolling, and I come across a movie called The Return with Ray Fiennes. I'm guessing you've never heard of this. No. Let me read you the intro, or the description. and tell me if this sounds a bit familiar, Ben. This movie is two years old. After 20 years away, Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king finds much has changed since he left to fight in the Trojan War.

1:15:47Michael Batnick:His beloved wife Penelope is a prisoner in her own home and hounded to choose a new husband. Their son faces death at the hands of suitors who see him as an obstacle in the pursuit of Penelope in the kingdom. Odysseus is no longer the mighty... All right, you get the point. I saw this, I said, Wow. Are you fucking kidding me? Ray Fiennes, one of the best actors ever, did this movie two years ago, and it grossed three and a half million dollars. And it got decent reviews on the tomatoes. And Christopher Nolan comes over the top, billion dollars. Isn't that wild?

1:16:21Ben Carlson:Was it any good? I don't think I'm going to watch it. I thought you were going to watch it. It's pretty hard to watch after the fact now, right?

1:16:28Michael Batnick:Right. But what would be the point? Yeah, true. All right. I do have an actual, a few actual recommendations. She ride shotgun. Ever hear of this? No. There was, there was a, it's not really a U movie. It's like a, it's like, it's a great airplane movie. It's gritty and it's grimy. An ex-convict goes to get his daughter, takes her away. They're on the lam, Ben, as you like to say.

1:16:54Ben Carlson:And I like him.

1:16:55Michael Batnick:You do like that guy, right? You're an Edgerton guy. Not Joel, the other guy. Are they related?

1:17:00Ben Carlson:I don't think so.

1:17:01Michael Batnick:Okay. Uh, good movie. Um, the Kenny G documentary was hilarious. It's on max. It felt similar to the out rock doc because it's made by the same, same, same group. Um, and I never really thought about Kenny G before. He's just always been in my life as I'm sure he's always been in your life as this guy that makes Kenny G on.

1:17:24Ben Carlson:And we had family dinner with my dad. Low open Kenny G on in the background.

1:17:27Michael Batnick:Yeah, it was the 90s. But it's like weird. Cause he's like a global phenomenon and you spend, you probably spend zero time thinking about him other than the fact like he's sort of a joke and people make fun of him and whatever because he's cheesy and corny and i love that guy great vibes in on the joke uh has a beautiful sound it was awesome all the hair and he's a jew of course he's jewish i had no idea his name is like uh whatever he's a jewish guy from seattle i didn't know that either okay i mean he he looks

1:17:56Ben Carlson:a lot of stuff i didn't know from your recommendation he's got the long jew fro

1:18:01Michael Batnick:Anyway, I enjoyed the show of that. And then lastly, actually two more. I'm sorry. The Westies. The Westies is a damn fine show. Again, it's on MGM+. I spoke about this a few weeks ago. J.K. Simmons is ahead of the Irish Mafia and he's going head-to-head with... My God, my brain is breaking.

1:18:22Ben Carlson:Gotti. I have every streaming service on the planet. I'm not going to slum it with MGM+. I appreciate that you like this show. I'm not going to be on plus. Sorry.

1:18:30Michael Batnick:Okay. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. We got a few emails about it when I mentioned it. All right. Lastly, dozens of you. Lastly, Ben, you're going to like this. You're going to like this a lot. I watched. So instead of watching, instead of watching the return with Ray fines, I watched to live and die in LA. And I'm saying, huh? Why have I heard of this movie before? They did it on the rewatchables a few months ago. And I didn't listen. Cause I did a man. I missed it. And, it's a classic classic 80s movie and I thought to myself hey you know what

1:19:06Ben Carlson:I've actually never seen that one either

1:19:08Michael Batnick:you would love it remember a couple of years ago I said the 80s movies don't hold a candle to the 90s in fact 80s movies are trash and I think I was I used Top Gun as a jumping off point for that like what a silly stupid movie right 80s kind of like 80s are like westerns they're their own genre It's a complete time capsule. 80s movies are different. 90s movies are more modern and they hold up. I think a 90s movie in 50 years will still be a – Terminator 2 will still be an awesome movie, whereas Top Gun or any of these other movies, it's like, what the hell was happening?

1:19:43Ben Carlson:Well, Top Gun? Hey, take it easy.

1:19:45Michael Batnick:I'm just saying the 80s movies as a collective, you'd be like, this is weird. What was happening in the 80s? So the 80s movies have grown on me over the years as I've seen more and more of them. I filled in my portfolio.

1:19:58Ben Carlson:I grew up in the 80s, so I love them all.

1:20:00Michael Batnick:But I'm still saying that if you hold them next to the 90s, they still don't hold the candle. And if you were to break it down, not just by the top 100, but genre by genre. The 90s across the board is better, but I have a better appreciation for 80s movies than I did a couple years ago.

1:20:17Ben Carlson:Good. Good for you. All right. I don't have as many as you. Furious on Hulu. My wife and I love it. Very good. It's got a lot of stuff going on. Emmy Rossum is really good in it. I know her from Shameless. which is a show that was on, was it on Showtime? Or was it HBO? It was on for like 11 seasons. William H. Macy was on. Showtime. The guy from The Bear. Yeah. It probably showed on five. If it was a five-season show, it would have been awesome. But it stayed on for way too long. But I loved that show at the beginning. It overstayed its welcome. She's really good in it. And it's about a serial killer, but it's also about human trafficking and domestic abuse and cops and FBI.

1:20:56Ben Carlson:And there's a lot going on. and I'm here for it. I think it's very high quality.

1:21:01Michael Batnick:So I watched the first episode because I heard CR and Andy raving about it and it was okay.

1:21:09Ben Carlson:I like it. It gets better? I'm really into it. I like it. I think it's very well done. And finally, The Talented Mr. Ripley is speaking of 90s movies, one of my favorite, most rewatchable 90s movies. I love rewatching it in the summer. It's like you transport it into this place and I feel like if you were to pick a movie character that you could trade lives with for like a day, You'd pick Jude Law on that. He's living in this little town in Italy, right? And like dresses nice. And anyway, and then I watched Ripley on Netflix. But then I finally read the original book by Patricia Highsmith. I think there's like five of them.

1:21:41Ben Carlson:And I can't believe how well the book aged. The book is still, it felt like it was something that could have been written today, just taking away the technology. It was so good. They made a book out of that? Yeah, weird, huh? Yeah, that's one of my favorite lines ever. Go ahead. I'm sorry. They made a book into that movie? Anyway. Very well done. I liked it. I'm going to read the rest of the books now.

1:22:03Michael Batnick:Is Ripley on Netflix worth watching? Was it a series on Netflix or was it not? I can't remember.

1:22:07Ben Carlson:It's a miniseries. I really liked it. And that series is more closely aligned to the book than the movie is. The movie, they made some different choices, which I liked the choices they made, but they veered away from the book in a lot of ways. Anyway, good stuff.

1:22:21Michael Batnick:All right.

1:22:22Ben Carlson:We did it.

1:22:23Michael Batnick:Oh, wait. One last thing I almost forgot. Lioness. Holy shit, what a show. Unbelievable. He's done it again. Taylor Sheridan. Knocked it out of the park. Okay. I never got it. Episodes one and two are out. So good. Not for you. Do you not like CIA, FBI, well, the type shows?

1:22:42Ben Carlson:I feel like a lot of it's been done. I'm watching Furious, so it's an FBI show. All right. Email us, animalspiritsathecompoundnews.com. Thanks to the production team, as always. Duncan's making sure we know what a Russian nesting doll is.

1:22:55Michael Batnick:I think this is our longest episode ever.

1:22:58Ben Carlson:Possibly. We had 45 pages in the doc. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Appreciate it. See you next time.