Dunking on Doomers (EP.338)

23:30What was the name of it? Leave the World Behind. Oh, my God. I'm just making up titles now. I'm turning into my dad. Leave the World Behind. We'll talk about that later in the show. But it's hard to watch stuff like that. And that was basically like – There's a lot of good societal stuff in that movie that really – Yeah, it's hard to watch that and not be like petrified, you know? Yes. Like what if we turned off all the internet and all the electricity or whatever, and you didn't have access to information, how quickly would people freak out? And I think they kind of nailed that part of it. I really like that movie.

24:09Yeah, so did I. All right. Another Carl Cantone tweet. Larry Fink said, BlackRock was mentioned by some candidates in last night's debate more than inflation or the national debt. That's a sad commentary of the state of American politics. Now I call this, now I know why they call this the political silly season. You saw, I know this is later in the doc. I just want to, while we're on this topic, you saw the, there's like a fight, an MMA fighter who has over 500 ,000 followers on Twitter. He tweeted a report that's obviously bullshit. But 44 % of all single family home purchases were private equity firms in 2023.

24:50Are you saying I shouldn't be getting my financial advice from an MMA fighter? All right. This is the Howard Lindzen thing has always said, there's no such thing as information overload. It's filter failure. If you're getting your information from people who are obviously sharing faulty stuff or they don't know they are, or they're just trying to stoke the fires, then that's on you at this point. But is it though? The problem is like most people, a lot of people just don't know. and you see this person and it's going viral. And this guy, you know, he's, I don't know, he seems credible. He's 500 ,000 followers.

25:20So he tweeted like, this is extremely concerning and explains why the housing market didn't drop as interest rates doubled. It's becoming nearly impossible for middle-class family to buy a home. And this will make the issue much worse. Like these are, these are structural, uh, headwinds for the vibes. And it just, it just stinks. It like breaks my heart a little bit that this is not a little bit, a lot that this is, this is our reality. This is it. There's no, there is no going back. This is the world up. There's going to be a line of demarcation before social media, after social media. I'm saying after social media came, there's going to be this like humanity's thoughts about the world or whatever happiness sentiment is going to be completely changed after social media.

26:05Do we like, is there a post social media world? I'm just hoping something better comes along to take our attention. That's the only thing we can hope for. All right. I need to be addicted to something more. Take up smoking. All right. A bunch of people sent us this story from Bloomer. You're better off going all in on stocks than bonds. New research finds. Researchers find all in stock investing provides better value. And I actually looked at this piece, too. I read the actual paper. We challenge two central tenets of like cycle investing. investors should diversify across stocks and bonds, and the young should hold more stocks than the old.

26:40An even mix of 50 % domestic stocks and 50 % international stocks held throughout one's lifetime vastly outperformed age-based stock bond strategies in building wealth. I mean, a lot of people ask for our thoughts on this. And this is like the idea of academic versus real world. Of course, it's 100 % stock portfolio is going to outperform a stock versus bond portfolio. This didn't need to be said. I've seen in the past people say, Like if you do a 60-40 portfolio and you never rebalance, that will outperform a 60-40 portfolio that does rebalance. Of course. Holy shit. Mind blown. Wow. Stocks outperform bonds.

27:15Yeah, stocks outperform bonds. What is this? People own bonds as an emotional hedge or a volatility hedge or because sometimes stocks crash and they don't want to sell them when they're down. That's the whole. Of course, if everyone was rational, you could have 100 % all stock portfolio. But everyone is not rational. People are emotional. and my nine-year-old the other day, she's like mature beyond her years. She's more mature at nine than I probably was at 18, but she like voices her opinions and she had a little mini tantrum and we asked like, why did you do that? And she said, sometimes I just can't handle my emotions, okay?

27:50Which was like a total human response and I was like, oh, you kind of got me there, but that's the idea here with any type of hedge is because people can't handle their emotions or their responses. at times. So yeah, this is a breach report that really didn't need to be stated. Didn't need to be said, you know, but it's funny you mentioned the hedge. In watching that movie, leave the world behind. I was thinking about different types of hedges, like teller strategies. How would you hedge that situation of the internet going down? Financial assets don't hedge you in that sort of scenario. So like there's like a spectrum of hedges, right?

28:29Yes. I feel like the doomsday preppers on a lot of these shows and movies have been shown to be the best volatility hedgers though, like being prepared for the end of the world. Kevin Bacon. Haven't seen him in a while. Yeah, that was pretty good. All right. Nate Garassi tweeted$850 billion swing from bond mutual funds to ETFs since the Fed began raising rates in March 2022. Mutual funds lost 500 billion ETFs, gained$348 billion. On this topic, I saw CityWire report on a Morningstar report that mutual fund outflows in November bled$64 billion, which was their 24th consecutive month of outflows.

29:15And then every bear market, when you have an excuse to sell, there's going to be even bigger. And the same thing from active funds to index funds. Every bear market is going to get worse. More ETF money and more index money. This is a melting ice cube, right? 401k, if you could do ETFs and 401ks, if they just snapped their fingers and made it easy to do ETFs and 401ks, mutual funds would be in huge trouble. I think that's the only thing holding them together is huge gains that baby boomers are sitting on and then 401k plans. Totally. Mal Chudas tweeted, this is wonderful. Someone is launching a 4X S &P 500 ETM with a ticker XXXX, which would be a leveraged amount record in the US.

30:04We are so back, maybe two back. and then he also tweeted a picture It's a classic onion. Oh, this is the onion? It's funny. F*** everything. We're doing five blades. Which came true. This is what? This is a razor? A shaver? A razor blade. Duncan is looking at his brokerage account to see when he can buy this thing already. And Don Shude has tweeted that it said same energy. I love it. All right. Economic stuff. You want some more good news? Yes. Justin Wolfers. Good news, please. So this is the indicators that the National Bureau of Economic Research looks at to see if we're in a recession. Nonfarm payrolls, real consumption, household employment, real GDP, personal income transfers, industrial production, real manufacturing, trade and sales.

30:48They're all going in the right direction for the most part, right? Most of these things are going up. That looks like a pretty good chart to me. Yeah, yeah. Right? You asked me three months ago and I would have said 2024, there has to be a recession, right? I think I'm leaning towards planting my flag on there's no recession again this year. I think it's not going to happen. You mean next year? Yeah, it's in 2024. I'm thinking the crazy thing, we went on a limb in January of 2023 that there's no recession and that felt weird. I think 2024, I don't think there's going to be a recession. I don't think that a recession is going to come in 2024 as a result of all the interest rate hikes.

31:22I think to your point, the plan landed. We had a soft landing. It would have to be some other external shock to make it happen. Well, I wouldn't say it would have to be, but that's where I would lean. I would be not surprised, but I would, if I had to bet, I would say that if there was a recession, it would be more likely to be from something that we're not thinking about than just, well, interest rates finally, they filter their way through the economy. Right. Oh, it's been 19 months. I guess it matters now. Yeah. Right? I think that's what some people are waiting for, like the lag thing. All right.

31:53It's 18 months and they don't matter. But at 19 months, then they're going to matter. I don't like that I got too gloomy back there. I want to bring myself back to the center. Because as we're looking at, like all these indicators are going in the right direction. Do you think that people who are not online are experiencing the same sort of gap in sentiment? When you say not online, you mean like not on Twitter? Or not on Facebook? How many people do you know that every once in a while, I'll hear like a dad at one of the basketball or soccer games for my kids brag about how like, I'm not on social media at all.

32:22But that is the minority these days. There are very few people that are like that. I think a lot of the bullshit exists on Facebook, too. I mean, I don't know. I don't even know what the Facebook feed is. I haven't been on it in years. But I imagine that the same stuff bubbles up on Facebook. Same articles, same sharing, same idiots. Probably. I mean, the hope is, though, the more— At least the economy is legitimately good. Not for everyone. Don't get mad at me if you're listening. You're not in a good position. Obviously, I'm sorry for those people. That's always the case. The economy is pretty good.

32:49Two good takes on this. Conor Sen, maybe some piece of this will break in 2024, but the fact that the unemployment rate may have stabilized in the high threes, worker income growth around 5 % and core PCE trending around two to two and a half with the Fed in position to cut is so perfect. Nobody would have believed it. Here's another one from this other guy, Matt, who I don't know, but good take. The COVID economy could have never recovered. Inflation could have spiraled. The Fed could have responded to inflation too harshly and sent the country into recession. None of this happened. It's incredible.

33:15This is my take as well. I can't, I almost can't believe how well things have worked out. The Fed said they wanted to crash the economy and they did or they couldn't. When we were on with Derek Thompson saying that there would be no recession in 2024, in 2023, it felt like we were almost being contrarian for contrarian sake, right? It felt like it took a little bit of courage. I'm using that word very loosely to say that there would be no recession in 2023. Thank you for your service. Yeah, no, it's a joke, but it was really consensus. It really was like the overwhelming consensus. Of course, we're going to have a recession.

33:55You idiot. There was no other, there was no other path to get there. Yeah. It, so the fact that we're where we are, I'm sure if you ask Powell after six whiskeys, he would say, no way in hell that I think we'd get to like this. There's no way. I think you're right. I think you're right. Uh, here's another email. Guys, you mentioned a Washington Journal article of how workers are so unhappy with their jobs. Wanted to read it, but note we were happy in May, but not now? So, uh, there's a, he took a screenshot of an article from May of 2023. Workers are happier than they've been in decades. Well, this is why the sentiment stuff is just broke.

34:32This is from Axios yesterday. Americans haven't been this happy at work since the 1980s. Oh, that, this is it. Oh no, this is it. That's, this is from me. So this is the one. Uh, yeah. Job satisfaction at 35-year high. Yeah, it's, who knows? I know. I think we do just have to, the sentiment stuff, unless it's at the bubbling extremes of a massive bubble or a huge crash, I don't think the sentiment stuff is useful in any way because there's so many sentiment indicators now, too. You can't, they all offset each other. Yeah, we're talking about how the vibes are in the toilet. I don't know. What?

35:10Because of some dumb survey that we, or a few lines on a chart that we saw. That can be refuted by another dumb survey. But you tweeted, top economist, here's an article from CNBC in October 27th, October 17th, excuse me, 2023. Top economist unanimous on higher for longer rates as inflation threats linger. And you tweeted, this is basically the top in rates, unanimous economist lose again. And then You also tweet, one year to the day from this gem, October 17th, 2022. Forecast for US recession within year hits 100 % in blow to Biden. I mean, 100%. This is why economists should stick with a 40 % lane.

35:52Nobody has any idea what's going on. Right. Rates hit 5%. We're all just pretending. Charlie Munger, in the interview with John Collison, was talking about, I can't remember the exact quotes, but about like experts on TV or something. And did I write this down? Charlie said like, oh, here it is. I did write it down. He said they're experts in saying something that's mildly plausible. Right. Which is like such a great way to put everything that we're talking about. Good to happen. Yeah. All right. How about this? So the higher for longer people, they're probably going to take a victory regardless if the Fed keeps above 4%.

36:33See, I told you. But look at this. this is the average effective Fed funds rate going back to like the 1950s. The average is 4.6 % over the past 70 years. So is it really higher for longer if they keep it at 4 or 5 % or 4 %? Or is it just average for longer? I think you're being too cute. Well, I mean, we're saying higher compared to the 0%, I guess. But this literally is, we're a little bit more than average right now. Do interest rates in the 1960s have any bearing on today? What if you did the average interest rate for the last 30 years? That's lower. So I looked at this for mortgage rates the other day.

37:13Because some people are saying, if you go back to the 70s, mortgage rates average 7.5%. So we're right at average, which is ridiculous because they got to 80 % in the 80s. But if you look at just this century alone, average mortgage rates are 5%. That's another thing for sentiment. I think the spreads on mortgage rates, bonds, I think that's what's going to help mortgage rates in 2024. I want to see that spread go down. All right, let's talk about crypto for a second. Who tweeted this? Ryan Rasmussen. He's from Bitwise. This was, I think, on Sunday night. $71 million of Bitcoin longs were liquidated in the past hour.

37:57This is the best part about crypto to me is that... How is this still a thing? Like, how are people still going full tilt in crypto? I think it's just never going to change. Where you have these nights where crypto will jump 10 % or all of a sudden in three minutes, you'll have a huge sale and it'll drop 10%. Maybe that's just never going to change in something like Bitcoin. I don't know. Last week when we were talking about Bitcoin, we were saying how, at least I was saying how, both of us were. We bought it as an emotional hedge. Like, maybe this sounds irrational and petty to you, but sorry, this is, I'm just being honest.

38:30If Bitcoin went to$100 ,000 and I didn't own it, I would explode. Yes. Like my brain would just melt into my body because - It's an asset that stokes the emotions unlike any other one, I think. Yeah, yeah. And I certainly did not, would not want to be somebody whose identity was tied. Even my internal identity was tied to watch, to hoping something - Either way though, you wouldn't want your identity tied completely into it or completely out of it. Well, of course, of course. Yeah, we're not big fans of some of the crypto thinking. And this is a great example of it. So Buko Capital retweeted a commercial that Coinbase did.

39:12And Coinbase tweeted, single family homes didn't always require four roommates. It's time to break the cycle. It's a commercial that I'm guessing airs on TV. So Buko Capital tweeted. Wait, so the idea is you can only afford a house if you buy crypto? Well, so Buko Capital retweeted and said, these ads are deeply malicious. They attempt to establish a sense of insurmountable hopelessness to trigger people into YOLOing lottery ticket shit coins and cum tokens. And perfectly said, this shit is gross. I'm cooling it with the F-bombs, excuse me. I hate this. I really, really, really hate this. I hate everything about it.

39:50Yes. There's other ways to push your line of thinking than playing on people's fears. All right, so I've got an AI take here. Josh on his website, so Josh changed his website from Reform Broker to, what is it now? Downtownjoshbrown.com. And he posted this thing from Google Gemini that shows how the AI works. And Josh has been all over this AI thing way more than I have or you have, I think. And he's saying, watch this video, it's mind-blowing. And I think movies have ruined AI for me because my mind was not blown at all. I was kind of like, I feel like I've been watching AI on movies and sci-fi for so long that it doesn't do anything for me.

40:30I feel like I should be - iRobot is your high water mark. Until you see something like that, you're not impressed. AI doesn't impress me because I've seen, so we started this show last night called A Murder at the End of the World or something. It's actually pretty good. Clive Owen's in it. It's on Hulu, FX1. First episode. Yeah, I saw the first episode. I liked it, but they had the AI. I miss Clive Owen. That's what I said. I thought he should have been bigger always. I liked him. You know, I feel like we did this bit on Clive Owen like a couple of years ago. That's possible. So you watched the first episode?

40:58So they have the hologram AI guy to help you as your assistant. And I watched that and I go, I'm not gonna be impressed till I get that. Or the Sir Garlick Johansson on my ear that I talk about. So that's why like any of the new AI stuff that comes on, it's fascinating. In a year, we've had such great breakthroughs, but it doesn't impress me at all because I've seen it in movies. I feel like that's way better. I don't know. That's fair take. Movie industry. All right. I got to take on real estate here. So the house I told you, I haven't been able to run outside much lately because if it's below 42 degrees, I'm not running outside.

41:28Okay? It's too cold. But it got up to 45 this week, so I ran outside, and I saw sale pending for the house that I mentioned three weeks ago. Remember, it sold for$5.75 brand new in 2021, listed for$6.99. Okay? Sale pending three weeks later, sold for$6.99. so pretty good jump in two years basically i think so you're still getting that kind of activity i think if you're in the house we always say never time the housing market like if you want to buy a house you can afford it you buy it remember how many people in 2020 and 2021 wrote into us saying housing prices are crazy the demand is surging i can't pull my you know i can't do it and we'd say no, if you want to buy a house, buy a house.

42:11Because then if you didn't, you missed out on 3 % mortgage rates and you're kicking yourself so much harder now. Remember all those people in 2020 and 2021 asking us that? Oh, I forgot about that. So many people were asking us about time. And we always said, do not try to time the housing market. If you can afford it, you do it. So I think - Right, no, that's such a good point because prices were up, whatever, 20 % in a year, in a year and a half. And people were saying, I'm just going to wait until prices drop 10%. And that was a way better time to buy. In hindsight, at least you had 3 % interest rates.

42:40Now you have the same prices and 7 % interest rates. Yeah, that's a good point. Or higher price. So I think, again, not trying to time it, but if you're in the market and you can afford a house, buying now with rates at 7 and then hoping to refinance and there's not as much activity, I think you're better off doing that now than buying when rates get to 6 and things are more affordable because then you're going to have lines out the door again, I think. Oh, yeah. So if you want to have more negotiating power, I think you buy now and refinance. Just a thought. I was talking about this last night with friends.

43:10I don't really have a strong feeling on this. I think at one point I said that housing prices are going to explode higher if rates come down. And maybe they do, maybe they don't. I think what will definitely happen is activity will skyrocket. What that does to prices, we'll see. Yes, that's where I fall. I have a thought exercise for you. What percentage of current homeowners, if they were forced to buy their house right now at current rates and current prices could afford it. So let's say you can afford a 20 % down payment on your current house and at the current level and the current mortgage rate.

43:45Cause I looked at mine now, to be fair, my payment is lower now because I had equity from 10 years of owning a home before and rolled that into this house. But I looked, my payment would be almost three times higher. If I were to buy my house right now at current at 7 % mortgage with 20 % down at the current price, three times higher than I'm currently paying. I pay$3 ,500 a month for my mortgage, give or take. I think my mortgage would be like, what, is 10 grand? Probably. Eight to 10, probably. So what percentage of people could actually afford their own house right now is what I'm asking. How does the math work on that?

44:23And when I say the math, I mean like the personal finance math. How do people make that work? You stretch and you stretch and you stretch and you put a little down payment down and you hope to refinance. or you put a big down payment down to, I don't know. Well, hang on, hang on. There's two realities. One is that you can do an adjustable rate mortgage, which I'm surprised that's still a relatively small percentage of overall. Is it even 15 %? What do you mean? Like the percentage of - It's like five to 7%. It's really small. Yeah. All right. But don't you also think that people are maybe putting down not 20%, they're putting down less, but that makes your mortgage even more expensive.

45:02And again, this is first-time homebuyers. If you're someone who owns a house, it stinks to have to buy a new house at a higher price and higher rates, but you've got a lot of equity that you can use to lower that new price. So this is really a first-time homebuyer thing, which, again, they got totally screwed. All right, remember in the 2010s, in the big short, people were worried about all these ninja loans with people having low income, how bad that was because they took out subprime loans and it destroyed the housing market, all that thing? So look at this. New homebuyers have higher household income than first-time homebuyers.

45:29So look at the income of new homebuyers and first-time homebuyers from the NAR. It's been going up a lot. Now, some people would look at this and go, a lot of people look at this and go, this is unfair because it's only people who make a lot more money that can buy houses. And that's true. But isn't this a better situation than people with no income on their loan applications buying a house that they can't afford? I think this is actually a better situation even if it seems like it's not fair. What happened between 2013 and 2015 for that big jump to occur? It seems weird, no? Well, I think part of it is they got more stringent on the requirements for a loan.

46:07You had to make more money to get a loan. It's regulations, right? I don't know. I don't know. So Logan Motoshami debunked the nonsense. No Wall Street investors haven't bought 44 % of homes this year. As we were saying that stupid report earlier. So not that data changes people's minds, but these are the facts, Jack. We do get asked about this a lot. And it's not always like Doomer's asking. It's people like I'm legitimately asking what is the actual number? Yeah. No, that's fair. You're absolutely right. Institutional buyers make up 2.5 % of all purchases. It's a small number. The overall, there's a great chart.

46:49The overall market share of investors is currently around 30%. And that's sort of, it's up a little bit from early 2000, but it's gone sideways for the last 20 years. It's around, it hovers between 25 and 30%, call it. And the majority of those investors are mom and pop people. It's not. It's mom. Yeah, when we say investors, it's mom and pop. It's regular people. It's not Vanguard and BlackRock. The thousand plus block buyer. So like the bad guys that are just hoovering up all of the houses, that was 0.4 % of market share in Q2. Now, I will say - Oh, that's a good chart. It's 0.4%. It's not the same everywhere, right?

47:39Like there are some geographies where there are way more institutional buyers. And it's a fact that in certain markets, institutional buyers are driving up prices and making homes more affordable. Charlotte and Phoenix and some areas, but that's a minority. Yeah, so if you've lived that existence, then it's your reality. But again, 0.4%. So thank you, Logan, for doing that. All right. What's this thing on divorce and housing? Okay. I saw this. I found MarketWatch on Twitter and I just saw like three tweets in a row. It's interesting to the housing. So it's like my wife and I are separating. I provided the down payment and paid the mortgage on our home.

48:19Will I be allowed to keep it if we divorce? Next one. My husband wants me to sign over 20 % of my home. If not, he threatens to take half of the divorce. What should I do? I would divorce him. I inherited$246 ,000 from my late mother and used$142 ,000 to pay off our mortgage. If we divorce, can I claim this money back for my husband? If you're like a real estate attorney, you've got to be rolling in it right now because These questions have to be coming up. Housing is such an important vehicle right now in figuring out the mechanics of it. Is the housing market going to keep people married longer?

48:48Will the divorce rate fall? You know, it actually fell during the Great Depression. The divorce rate fell because people couldn't afford to get divorced. Yeah. Just a thought. Fellas, great show this week. Stay together for the house, not the kids. I haven't written it in a while, but with the news of Mint going the way of the dinosaur, or I thought it might be nice if you'll discuss different alternatives during an upcoming personal finance segment on the pod. You've come to the right place. I know Ben still tracks all of his expenses in Excel, but I'm sure many listeners would appreciate your insight on other available options.

49:19They've been a sponsor of the show, but I use Rocket Money. I love it. It's a great service. Matter of fact, one of the things that I like about it so much is that I get email alerts when there's a large purchase. That's the part I like about it too. I started using it. So I I still have my Excel spreadsheet, but I use rocket money as like a supplement to it. And it tells me, you know, unusual activity. Did you make this purchase? And that, that stuff has happened. And it breaks down your, it breaks down your spending by category. So I'm, I'm a big fan. I walked into the, the, I don't know what room in the house I was in bedroom, maybe.

49:52And I said to my wife, I was like, what the hell is blah, blah, blah. And she's like, and, uh, she's like, what are you talking about? And I said, rocket money. I, I, I found a, I found a purchase. and she's like, oh, that, okay. So anyway, that's what I use. I found a lot of those purchases are usually like makeup. Way more expensive than you'd assume. I'm pretty sure it was clothes. I can't remember the name of the brand, but she was surprised I never heard of the brand. Considering 70 % of your wardrobe is Instagram t-shirts and Giants gear, I'm not surprised you didn't know the brand. So this new Giant hoodie that I got, now everything I get is from Fanatics.

50:31I guess that's the brand that found me and they're doing quite well. I think they're valued at like$4 billion. I mean, crazy. We've got a bunch of jerseys and t-shirts done for my kids for Christmas. I think it's 30 billion. It's like a huge number. Anywho, they do something that I really don't like. It's really shitty.

50:51There's like coupons for every purchase, but if you don't click the apply button to the coupon, then you pay full freight. It's really kind of, it's not right. Do you use the Honey extension? No, I don't. It looks for coupons for everything you buy on the internet, and it applies them. My point is, with Fanatic specifically, so if you want to buy a hoodie that's$60, and there's a sale that gets it down to$45, if you forget to click the apply coupon button, which I guess should be on you, but it's not intuitive until you don't click on it. Because they know most people won't do it. They know a lot of people won't click on it.

51:31So it's kind of shitty. Anyhow, this hoodie, the sticker was like Darius Rucker. It's a Darius Rucker collection. Hoodie and the Blowfish? Okay. Literally. All right. He designs sports gear now. Okay. Looks nice. All right. Interesting article in Business Insider. Boomers seem to have traded in the child-raising village for traveling. Now millennial parents said they have no one to support them. Oh, they want grandma and grandpa as the babysitter and the grandma and grandpa aren't there. Yeah. So I pulled a few quotes. Looking back in her childhood, Christiana Hilberg said that it was never a question whether her grandmother would watch her and her brother when their parents went on a trip.

52:16If mom and dad ran out of town, we were at grandma's. The 33-year-old told Business Insider, grandma wasn't going anywhere and we always knew that. But Hilberg, a mom of three, said there's no guarantee that her parents or in-laws would do the same for their grandkids, certainly not at the snap of a finger. Quote, we have to make sure that we are asking months in advance, she said, and that, quote, their own travel plans often have to be factored in. Okay, I'm going to take the boomer side of this. It's not that big of a deal to ask someone in advance, right? I think so too. So here's from the boomer's point of view, somebody named Dobson.

52:48So the elder Dobson said that even if he's off boating and playing pickleball in Mexico, he's still done plenty to help his children out, including supporting them financially through much of their lives. At this point, he said he deserves to spend some of his money on himself. Quote, they've all got nannies. He said, we didn't have a nanny. They drive expensive SUVs. I drove a fricking minivan. I'm team boomer on this. Yeah, score one for the boomers here. I'm team boomer on this. Listen, I just like, yeah, you want your parents around, but what? They have their old life to live. Yeah, if we do something like that, we check with my parents in advance.

53:19Yeah, hey, we're going away for this weekend. Can you watch the kids? But we give them - It shouldn't be a foregone conclusion that you could foist your kids on your in-laws or your parents every single time you want to go out to dinner. Come on. Yeah. You have to ask. All right. Streaming cancellations hit a new high. This is from Bloomberg. U.S. customers are canceling their streaming services in record numbers according to Antenna. Cancellations at 5.7 % in October, up more than a full point from April and the highest on record. And the biggest jumps occurred in Stars, what is it, Stars, Paramount +, and Discovery+.

53:55They need to start offering rewards for people who stick around long enough. Yes. Right? Hey, if you've paid your bill for 24 straight months, we're going to decrease it by 10%. They need to do something to get people to stay longer. So look at this next chart. This is from Lucas Shaw Bloomberg. There's Netflix and everyone else. I mean, nobody cancels Netflix. So I think that this is less commentary on the state of the economy. Like, uh-oh, people are starting to – then it's too much. Well, it's also talking about the quality of the shows and movies. There's nothing coming out right now because of the strike.

54:27So it makes sense people are canceling. There's nothing. So streaming services have argued that the strike didn't impact their output of new shows in a big way. The data suggests otherwise. Take a look at the top 10 streaming titles in the US the week of October 30th, per Nielsen. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse. So that's a new one, obviously. Grey's Anatomy, Suits, Friends, Bluey, All the Light We Cannot See. That's a new one. Gilmore Girls, NCIS, Cocomelon and Family Business. There's only one original series in the top 10. Otherwise, it's all reruns and some kid shows. I am so glad Coco Mellon is out of my life for good.

55:00What do you mean? Like your kids have moved on? Oh, yeah. I mean, a few years ago, but that. Even Coco Mellon, even Coco Mellon, which is one of the most successful media businesses, even their cutting employees. Just constant stream of loop of those songs in my head over and over from when my kids were little. So sticking with this, New York Times had an article, zombie TV has come for cable. in 2015 the USA cable network was a force in original programming dramas like Suits Mr. Robot and Royal Pains either won awards or attracted big audiences what a difference does a few years make viewership is way down and USA standalone original programming when's the last time you went to USA people don't click it used to be you were clicking through channels and you'd stop on USA right or TBS but you don't click channels anymore like that because you have USA was was streaming before streaming existed.

55:53You'd go to USA, TNT, or TBS to find an old movie playing. Now you can do it on streaming. So what's the point of USA? Well, there is none. So to that point, viewership is way down. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC's Law & Order Special Victims Unit for all but two hours when it showed reruns of CBS's NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles. Why does USA need to exist? Why do any of these channels need to exist? In 2015, there was at least 214 original scripted programs on premium and basic cable channel. That fell 39%. In 2015, TBS and TNT aired 17 scripted shows. This year, that's a total of three series.

56:35It's crazy. I mean, all this is, you don't, to watch CSI or whatever, you don't need, you go on Peacock or whatever has it. Yeah, streaming killed a lot of these channels. Ben, do you remember back in the day, when Dish Network and DirecTV came out. DirecTV coming out was a big deal, I remember. What was the service that used to be able to record things? Tivo. Before DVR. Tivo. Tivo. Tivo was DVR. That's all it was, but it was a brand, and it was like a box. Do you remember back in the day when this – I don't know what year it was, 2003, I don't remember. When you had 7 ,000 channels and it was almost a joke, like, oh my God, there's so many channels.

57:23Now there's too many, and it's all the same shit. Interestingly, Disney announced yesterday that they're going to play nice with Netflix. Well, do you notice all the HBO shows are on Netflix now, Disney shows? They've all just succumbed to Netflix 1, basically. So Netflix 1. Netflix absolutely demolished this. You know what really pains me? because he watched The Meg and The Meg 2, based on your recommendation, my son. My kids call HBO Max. Yeah, that is painful. I did not tell George to watch The Meg 2. No, you said you watched it with your son, so I got, and he loved it. I watched The Meg 1 with my son.

58:00He loved both Megs. Okay, he watched The Meg 2 as well. It seems like a lot of movies just came and went this year. Like, remember the creator? Denzel's son was in it. It was like AI that came away. Killers of the Flower Moon, did that do any business? In fact, I don't think it... No, it didn't. I had Sean make this chart for us. I'm waiting for it to come out on Apple before I watch it. It's like a four-hour movie. I had Sean make a chart of Leo's domestic box office performance. Killers of the Flower Moon was the lowest grossing since... Now, these aren't adjusted for inflation, but... Since J.

58:38Edgar. and this is a bomb and this is a this is a Scorsese movie nobody has time for three and a half hour drama anymore oh Scorsese should just make all the movies into four part series you know what you were so right you were so right with your take on all shows should be six episodes because the most recent episode of Godzilla just was a filler just a filler it was fluff did not need to exist I mean there should be six episodes yeah they shouldn't have they shouldn't have filler episodes anymore. All right. Last thing on this article from Lucas Shaw. Did you know, Ben, that the anime business, because they were talking about Japanese culture and Godzilla and all that sort of stuff, the anime business generates more than$20 billion globally?

59:25Is that a drop in the bucket though? Or do you think it's a lot? The anime business? $20 billion? I don't know. Do you know what anime is? Yeah. What am I supposed to, what's my takeaway here? 20 billion. That's a lot of money. Am I smoking dust or are you 20? What are you showing up there? You think it's a lot of money? 20 billion? Oh, 20 billion. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's a lot of money. Oh, 20 billion. What? What did you think I said? Million? I was. Yeah. Netflix did 30, Netflix does$8 billion a quarter. Okay. So a lot of teens and adults like watching cartoons. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I guess.

1:00:08Yes, that is what I'm saying. All right. Charlie Munger, again, in the interview with John Collison, said, let the bad people go. Just talking about life. Like, nobody has time for that shit. And I almost completely agree with that thinking. But then I was at Robin's grandmother passed away. I was at her funeral on Friday and she lived an incredible life. 96, sharp as a tack until the very end, didn't have a 10-year-long battle with cancer. She went pretty quickly towards the end, which was a blessing. Obviously, nobody wants to have that drawn out. And at the eulogy, one of her sons said, and this is definitely true of her, that she always saw the best in people.

1:01:00And like she discarded, you know, the normal sort of bad stuff that people have. And what a great way to live. I don't think that I see the worst in people, but like it's hard to see the best in people. That is a rare quality. It is easy to see the bad side of people. I probably do that too much. Right? Like, oh, that person, the way that he sniffles, like, oh, so annoying. People are the worst sometimes. People are the worst. So just a very admirable quality. But I was also thinking at the funeral, I love a good funeral. Now, with the caveat that I don't know where the line is. I don't like if it's a person that was 85, 90, and they lived a wonderful life and it's a celebration.

1:01:41Listen, I don't like going to young people's funerals. I mean, obviously, I didn't like my mom's funeral who died in her 50s. That shit is the worst. but when it's a celebration of life and it's just one of the only things in the world where like all of the nonsense just for a very brief period of time gets put to the side. I told, I actually had a conversation with my family a couple of weeks ago at Thanksgiving, I think. And I said, when I die, whoever's here to be there, I want you wearing Hawaiian shirts. So if you outlast me, please wear a tropical brother shirt to my funeral. So I love a good funeral.

1:02:18I love crying and celebrating somebody's life. It gets me. I'm a big fan. That's a take. I've never heard anyone say I like funerals. Only for old people. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, like they have their time. It's a new take. I celebrate life. Okay. That's what I do. That's fair. All right. Recommendations? All right. So we got a great email on Demolition Man from Tyler. One part of that movie that has lived rent-free in my head for 20 years was the fact that every restaurant in the movie was a Taco Bell, and it morphed into fine dining. That is pretty good. For whatever reason, I always thought that consolidation was bound to happen in real life, and I've been a Yum Brands holder for years.

1:03:00Also, don't even get me started on the Three Seashells. I've spent countless nights racking my brain for having an actually work. We got a lot of emails on the Three Seashells. Yeah. They replaced toilet paper somehow. That was Rob Schneider, right? Was he the Three Seashells kind of movie? I love that. All right, so let's talk about Leave the World Behind since we mentioned it already. I wasn't done, but okay. Okay, all right, what do you got? No, no, no, we can do that. Okay. I thought it was really good, and it was the kind of movie, I knew it was going to be like a good novel where the buildup is better than the ending.

1:03:29I told my wife, like, the ending is not going to leave you satisfied in this movie, so just go in with that thinking. The ending was a little abrupt. It wasn't very satisfying. But it was Julia Roberts playing an admittedly unlikable character. Ethan Hawke, who I love. I think that guy is great. Mahershala Ali I also love. And then Harper from Industry. And then Kevin Bacon made an appearance. Here's my take. Netflix is going to save the movie industry. That's two in a row for Netflix. Leave the World Behind, The Killer. They were good movies. Not great, but they were good. I enjoyed both. This movie really got me thinking.

1:04:03And it wasn't a great movie. It was a good movie. I tried May, December. It was way too creepy for me of a storyline. You heard of this one? I turned it off after the first two minutes. It's too creepy. I don't know. I just, yeah. But Netflix and I think Apple to some extent are going to save movies because we haven't had like good movies. And I thought Netflix was never going to happen. And I think it's going to happen. So. I'm looking forward to Netflix movies now. I want to get back to the movie because I very much enjoyed it as well. But I think that if there are people in the industry, in the movie industry, listening to our podcast, they want to punch you in the nose because aren't, isn't Netflix killing the movie industry?

1:04:40I mean, Netflix killed movies. Streaming killed movies. but they're but they're gonna put movies out on the theater they're gonna have limited releases and I just want good movies again I just want good movies again has there ever been a bigger divide between an industry and and the the consumers of said industry like the industry is reeling right but you understandably in this framing you're not talking about the people who are impacted by the wrecking ball that is the streamers you're talking about just purely from the perspective of the consumer. And I get it. I want good movies again. And I think Netflix is going to get there and it's going to be Netflix is going to have the wide release ones and Apple's going to have the Oscar ones for the most part.

1:05:23And I think that's how it's going to be in the future. But there's, but none of the, none of the, so many movies just will never get made again, unfortunately. But I think Netflix is going to start making them again though. That's where I'm getting at. They're going to figure out like, they're going to get better at rom-com. I think Netflix is going to do it. Do you think they're going to start doing like indie films as well? I hope so. I have faith. So anyway, yeah, you're right. End of the world movies, are impossible to end in a way that satisfies the audience. It's just, it's really tricky.

1:05:48Although I did like a knock at the woods, a knock in the cabin, a knock at the cabin. Oh my God. One of those. There was an irony in the way that this one ended, which by the way, the movie was thoroughly entertaining. Even though I don't think anybody's going to say the ending was amazing, whatever. The movie was thoroughly entertaining. It was very suspenseful and psychological. I thought it was very good. Very entertaining. But the end was pretty meta. Yes. Right? the streamer. Yes. I liked it. Yeah. It was a pretty good, again, tell against society. It was the Mr. Robot guy who made it. So it made sense.

1:06:22Somebody emailed me. I was speaking about like, why do I enjoy horror? And they emailed an episode of Hardcore History called Painfotainment. It was four hours and I listened to every minute of it. And I missed Dan Carlin. I don't know why I haven't listened to Hardcore History in a while. There's nobody better. There's nobody better at podcast and then Dan Carlin. He's great. Yes. I should go back and listen to some of the old ones too. So the episode is called Painfotainment and it's a four hour history of public executions and what was involved, what happened, why the audience loved it, why it stopped, and why it stopped is not because people wanted it to stop.

1:07:05I highly recommend it. Charles Dickens had a quote. He wrote a lot to the Daily News on capital punishment and stuff. And he said, quote, it is in our secret nature to have a dark and dreadful interest in the subject. Hey, it's just in my nature. Can't help it. Yeah, you're just looking for an excuse to watch these sicko movies. Can't help it. All right, what else? Oh, I was in the car with Logan and he wanted me to play we are the champions. Okay. And Logan is my four-year-old. And he asked what he said, what movie is this in? I want to watch it in a movie. Um, I don't know where he made the connection between the music and it being in a movie.

1:07:43And I said immediately, immediately, you know what I said? And I'm pretty sure this is right. The mighty ducks. Okay. I wouldn't have known the answer to that one. It's gotta be a bunch of them though. So we started watching the Mighty Ducks. We only made it four minutes in. But I was thinking about, I was, so, oh, remember earlier in the show, I said, put a pin in that. We were talking about you being a set, oh, when you were seven years old or whatever, and you found out that wrestling was fake. So I'm taking the pin out and saying that I also had an experience of reminding myself, like being seven-year-old Michael, because that's how old I was when Mighty Ducks came out.

1:08:22and in the movie when Gordon Bombay misses a shot as a child, it's a movie about hockey players for those of you who didn't see it. The coach said to him before the penalty shot, you missed this shot. You're not just letting me down. You're letting your whole team down. What an asshole. Thanks, coach. But the guy who played the coach in Mighty Ducks, I remember when I saw my cousin Vinny and being like, hey, wait a minute, but that guy, he was in Mighty Ducks. How could he be in this movie too? Oh, you realize movies were fake. The concept of that there could be actors have more than one role really blew my mind.

1:08:59My son, every time we watch an action movie or a scary, whatever, dinosaurs, my son always goes, this is fake, right? This is just a movie. Just making sure. Yep. I did two Heath Ledger movies in the past month or so. I rewatched The Dark Knight, of course, like one of the greatest movies of the century. And then 10 Things I Hate About You. And it just made me realize like, man, Heath Ledger kicked ass. That guy, like, obviously the Joker is one of the greatest performances of all time, but 10 Things I Hate About You was probably the first movie I ever saw him in. And I have nostalgia for that period of the 90s because there was all these great high school movies.

1:09:3110 Things I Hate About You and American Pie. While we were in high school. Can't hardly wait. While I was in high school. I was a junior senior when Superbad came out. So that's why I have these, like, nostalgia about that period. But there was just so much more innocent back then. Like, the stuff they make today about kids is like, they're all crazy and doing drugs and depressed and it's like so over the top. And then the show on HBO. Yes. The late nineties, everything was so, even the party stuff, it was so much more innocent. And that's what I love about it. And 10 things I hate about you. You could tell like this guy is going to be a massive star just from, from that role alone.

1:10:01And it was young Heath Ledger, young Julia styles and young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Like I, that movie to me, I love that movie. So Netflix is saving the movies. They'll never be another. Will there ever be another run of like teen high school movies? I'm hopeful. The nineties really is the last decade. After that, there's no more decades. We sound old, but it's true. Yep. All right. Anything else? We had some technical difficulties. We made it through this. We made it through. Anything else? I think we covered everything. All right, Ben. Good potting. Good potting. All right, listen. Personal emails, personal responses.

1:10:34This is what we're all about here. Animal Spirits at thecowpodnews.com. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Duncan. Everyone else who works behind the scenes on making the show possible. We will see you next time.

1:10:51Thank you.

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