Enjoy the Bull Market While it Lasts (EP.355)

25:23I'm not stating an opinion. This isn't something on which reasonable people can disagree. Facts. But these respondents are not dumb people. people without an economics degree, normal people, which influence the - Some of them are dumb people. Come on. Some people just really don't, some people really don't understand the economy. That's a fact. Everyone, how, dude, how would you? If you're a normal person, how would you understand the economy? Why, if you do not think about this stuff every day and somebody asks you about inflation, you're going to say prices. People are taught, when people are asked about inflation, they're talking about prices, not the rate of change.

26:04Right. Yes, that's true. And so this, this shapes everything. So while the facts are what they are, this is a case of feelings over facts. So Derek Thompson. Wait, this is another reason why all the information of the world that we have on a computer and an iPad and a smartphone in our pocket almost means nothing without context or filtering understanding. You can have, because people have access to that information if they want it, but they don't access it for whatever reason or they can't or they can't find it or they don't care to. That's why information is – that's why I like the AI thing with information is not going to change as much as people think in terms of how people feel and think and react.

26:44It's going to probably make things worse. Let's say that an economist or Greg Ip or whoever was asking a regular person, what do you think about price change, the inflation? Is it up or down from where it was last year? And they say up. and this person says, no, actually, inflation was 6 % a year ago. It's 3.5 % today. The regular person would say, well, who f***ing, how is that relevant? Why are you asking me about that statistic? All I care about is prices are a lot higher than they were a year ago. Don't ask me about the rate of change. That's nonsense. I know, but my point is, look back through history.

27:19How often have we ever had deflation and prices go down? It never happens, basically. It's a non sequitur. No, it's not. Yeah, it is. What does it have to do with anything? Higher prices are literally always going higher. I know they've been going higher more in recent years than we've had. That's like it's a shock to the system. That's why people have been so concerned about it because we haven't had this high in 40 years. But like we're going to have inflation for the rest of your life. There's going to be like minor, minor bouts of deflation in a financial crisis. Other than that, prices will continue to rise as long as economic growth goes higher.

27:50That's the thing that people don't realize. Wages go higher. Economic growth goes higher. Prices go higher. That's the relationship. Derek Thompson says where I've landed, grocery inflation sucks. Yep. Interest rates are high. Yep. Telling people the economy is better than your experience of it is a waste of time. Double yep. Unemployment is low. Real wages are growing. And the national economy really is better than people think. Yeah, I'd agree with all that. Fair. We're at a stalemate. Who? You and I? No, everyone. The economy and everyone's opinion. So Heather Long. This is why we almost – We honestly, I think people need a recession just to be like, I told you I was right.

28:31And then they can move on, right? We can get a recession, get it out of our system. And people can finally go, I told you the economy was bad. And now the economy agrees with me. That's what people need. Last week, we got really good job numbers. Heather Long tweeted, good news. There was a big jump in the labor force in March. That means more people are looking for work again. This is a great sign of confidence in the economy. and the replies on Twitter were almost uniformly negative. Like, yeah, but, and a lot of political shit and... As usual. As usual. So I have this thing, go down to the labor market section here.

29:07We're skipping on the dock a little bit. I want to like, I went through and found some charts and data that kind of goes, like shows how strong the labor market really is. So Ben Castleman puts monthly job growth since 2021. Look at how steady this is in the like 250 to 300 ,000 range for well over a year now. And it's only increased lately. And a lot of people say, well, it's part-time workers. But look at this. Part-time workers as a share of total employment is higher than it was pre-pandemic, basically right on average since 2000. So it's not like you can say, well, it's all part-time workers.

29:44A lot of people say, well, labor force participation ratio is falling. And it's true if you look at the whole thing. Jed Kolko tweeted this though, and he said - You don't see a lot of Judds anymore. That's true. Yeah, add that name to the list. Labor force participation rate, he's showing, is only down for people 65 and older. But actually, like, even 60 to 64 is up, 55 to 59. So all these other ages are up. But it's the fact that people retired early. And that's why the labor force is lower for older people and overall because there's so many people retiring. And the immigrants thing, it is true.

30:18So Pew did this research saying they show like going forward without future immigrants, working age population in the U.S. would decrease by 2035. So it's showing that it would fall by like 18 million. But with immigrants, it's going to continue to rise. And so it's saying the largest – but it's also saying the largest group joining the nation's working age population in that time will be 60 million people who were born in the country to U.S.-born parents and turn 25 between 2015 and 2035. but they will be outnumbered by U.S. born adults with U.S. born parents who turn 65 or die, meaning the people who are older are going to be retiring faster than new people are entering the labor force, right?

30:56So this is just, and every developed country is dealing with this. So the point is, we're going to need immigrants if we want to have growth. Let me ask you this, and maybe this is a bit of a third rail. So perhaps I shouldn't go there, but I'm going to go there. If Trump wins the White House and he inherits this economy as things currently exist, he will be social truthing. He's on Twitter. He will be talking to the nation every day about record high on your 401k, record stock prices, a booming economy. He will be banging that drum every day, how quickly would national polls respond to that messaging?

31:40Well, we know this is politically based. So Republicans would immediately say the economy is better and Democrats would immediately say the economy is worse. Even if it's the exact same economy. Unfortunate state of affairs. True. In America, half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them. While middlemen like PBMs and 340B hospitals drive up costs, Biopharma is investing$500 billion in new infrastructure and manufacturing here at home and helping patients buy medicines directly at lower prices. Tell Washington to end middlemen markups and put American patients first.

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33:01Bloomberg has this headline, a million simulations, one verdict ahead for the U.S. economy, debt danger ahead. Bloomberg economics ran a million forecast simulations on U.S. debt outlook. 88 % of them show borrowing on an unsustainable path. Now, I really wish they would have gone to 100 % like they did with the recession call, just to stay in line with that call. but they so i feel like they said in 88 of the simulations results show debt to gdp ratio on an unsustainable path defined as an increase over the next decade wait you're not worried about this at all just listen okay in the end it may take a crisis perhaps a disorderly route in treasury markets triggered by a sovereign u.s credit rating downgrade or a panic over the delete depletion of medicare social security trust funds to force action that's playing with fire here's my thinking here this this is something people have we talked about have always worried about but what is the alternative to the treasury market for people so if you're looking for a high quality bond that's the thing people don't realize is that the u.s debt is an asset to someone else retirees pension plans insurance companies are they all of a sudden going to say eh you know what we don't need treasuries anymore let's go buy emerging market debt or corporate debt or something.

34:16Is that really going to happen? When you put it that way. So here's, here's Colin Roche's take. I often say the U S government isn't in financial trouble and some accuse me of being a government agent, but my optimism about U S government debt extends from optimism about corporate America and the fact that U S firms are hugely innovative income generating entities that give the USD credibility. Here's the thing we have going for us. If people are worried about this, and again, I'm not saying debt going higher, isn't a problem if it's, if it's crowding out other forms of spending for the government, right?

34:43Cause interest expense is so high. Sure, that's a problem. But I think there are ways to fix it if our politicians ever decided to do so. My whole point is we can literally print our own currency, right? That's number one. Number two, you don't think that if there really was some sort of treasury strike that the treasury and the Fed wouldn't figure out a way around it. Japan had their debt to GDP go to 300 % or something. and they didn't have a crazy 10 % spike in interest rates or whatever. My whole point is that, yes, we have some stuff to figure out politically and the politicians will probably wait until they're forced to do something, but this is the kind of thing that has solutions when you can print your own currency.

35:28That's my point, that the whole crisis situation of there's going to be this day of reckoning. I just don't see it. Yeah, what would a day of reckoning look like? Like, that's what people, they're saying it's the treasury market blow up somehow. I'm less worried about a treasury market blow up, but, well, gold seems to be worried about this. Well, but every time something, every time an asset goes up, people say, well, it's worried about debt. Because remember when rates were rising in October? People said, why are rates rising? Do you think gold is going vertical for no reason? The Fed was printing money all throughout the 2010s.

36:06Why didn't gold go up then? I don't think it's a money issue. I feel like this is a narrative violation. People are just giving that narrative to gold because it's going up. No, this is not a money printing issue. This is an interest rate, debt unsustainable issue. I think this is correlation causation. I think people are just giving that narrative because gold is rising. You really think so? If that's the case, why didn't gold go up 50 % in 2020 then? Because we printed all that money back then. But you keep saying the same thing, and I keep saying it's not a money printing issue. No, no, I'm saying the government spent trillions of dollars in 2020.

36:42Why didn't gold go up 50 % that year? That was a one-time or three-time thing. But that was a government – that got us into this issue. I don't think you could hand wave away everything. I'm not saying that this is the end of the world, but – That's all my point. I'm not worried about it as much as other people. I'm saying there are legitimate areas to worry that, again, it could crowd out other forms of spending. Well, how about this? I think, no offense, I think the market's smarter than you. And you might think that gold is moving up because it's just going up. I think, and I could be wrong, that one of the fundamental drivers of this gold move is that people are worried about the debt.

37:17Now, it might turn out to be worried for a reason. So if the Fed lowers interest rates, then gold should fall in that scenario. In that scenario. Might not happen. I just think it's easy to, remember when rates were screaming higher to 5%, everyone said, well, the reason rates are going higher is because government debt is out of control. And then rates fell again. And guess what? It was just positioning. Here's where people are just positioning for gold right now. Yeah. Here's where I do agree with you. The things that people obsessively worry about tend to be a gigantic distraction in the long run.

37:54That's my point. That's all I'm trying to get at. Most of these giant worries do not come to fruition. I agree. I completely were on the same page there. All right. Here's something that maybe we can worry about. This is interesting. Email from a listener. I know you guys love bearish charts. Wink emoji. I don't use those for real. This is under layoffs. We haven't had anything there for a while. But curious what you guys think about this. You and Michael always have good, rational, optimist, big picture, grand scheme of things. Here's some data from this listener. California unemployment rate today, 5.3%.

38:25August 2022, the trough was 3.8%. Pre-COVID, 4.3%. This is what the emailer says. I was actually kind of shocked. I guess on the one hand, not good. On the other hand, the rest of the country must be doing great. And so I looked into this and California does have the highest rate of unemployment in the whole country at 5.3%. Isn't it the tech layoffs or is it not? Yeah. So I looked into this and the AP had a story on it and it's basically the tech lab. But I mean, again, California is what did we say? The sixth biggest economy in the world or something ridiculous like that. That's a pretty substantial increase in unemployment there.

39:03Yeah. Yeah, you're right. But if you look at, so if you just Google unemployment rate by state, most of the other, most of the, that's the whole thing. He said this must be great for the rest of the country. The lowest one is, the two lowest ones are North and South Dakota, like 2%. But. That's because 74 people live there. They're all employed. Well, in the energy. But the only ones that are over 5 % are Washington, D.C., Nevada, and California. And, you know, 80 % of the countries are below 4 % still. So California actually is the outlier. So we talk about this being like a tech recession. It really kind of has been.

39:45Ben, did you literally not go outside yesterday to look at the eclipse? Did you refuse to even tilt your chin higher? I looked up at it a couple times. With glasses on? I didn't have glasses. They're all sold out. Did you have regular sunglasses on? Yeah, I just glanced at it really quick. Thoughts? I mean, it is... Have you ever read any of the Bill Bryson books about the universe? Whatever his universe... He gives these whole calculations for how everything lines up in the universe. And it almost doesn't seem real. But the fact that this stuff can happen is amazing. um i i may have poo-pooed the eclipse a little bit yesterday on slack and all i didn't say it's overrated i just said it's a little overvalued and i feel like wow i feel like we just listen there's this is the problem with the internet because you have to either love every love something or hate things there's degrees of liking and hating and i think the eclipse is cool but i feel like every every office or every family or every friend group has that one person who went way overboard on the eclipse and was totally into everything about it totally and i was i was further down on that those degrees of like wow this is pretty cool listen own it you poo-pooed the eclipse own it i feel like we just had one like three years ago but it wasn't wasn't full yeah i'm just saying it it wasn't like top of the top of mind for me but it was it was it was it's it's pretty cool all right a bunch of we talked about florida last week a bunch of people sent us this NBC news story.

41:27They came for Florida sun and sand. They got soaring costs in a culture war. And tell me your thoughts about this first, and I'm going to give you mine because I feel like the headline of this story and the individual stories in it don't match the overall numbers. And I feel like this is a good microcosm of the economy right now. Yeah, let's read the intro just to set the stage. One of the first signs Barb Carter's move to Florida wasn't the postcard life she envisioned was the armadillo. In fact, infestation in her home that caused$9 ,000 in damages. Yeah, an armadillo infestation, that would send me running as well.

42:02I saw an armadillo at some Florida, I think went to the zoo in Naples. They're cute. They're pretty cute. Yeah, they're cute, but not in the home. My kids would love an armadillo infestation. Then came a hurricane, ever-present feuding over politics and an inability to find a doctor to remove a tumor from her liver. After a year in the Sunshine State, Carter packed her car with whatever belongings she could fit and headed back to her home state of Kansas. Selling her Florida home at a$40 ,000 loss and leave it behind the children and grandchildren she moved to be closer to. So many people ask, why would you move back to Kansas?

42:34And I tell them all the same thing. You've got to take your vacation goggles off, Carter said. For me, it was very falsely promoted. Once living there, I thought, you know, this isn't all you guys have cracked this up to be at all. And my read on this is this is so much bigger than Florida. This is a life lesson. And I will repeat this again. Take your vacation goggles off. This isn't all you guys have cracked this up to be at all. This is bigger than retiring in Florida. This is life. The grass is always greener on the other side. I can't wait until I have this. I wish I had that. And then when you finally get what you wish you wanted, it's not all it's cracked up to be.

43:14One of the things that I love about living in New York is the weather's not great. Although we have a beautiful day today, which affects the shit out of your mood. I am feeling. It really does. I'm feeling okay, Ben. Leaving New York and going to a place like California or a nice weather place, you're like, oh my God, why do I live in New York? But that's the point is that people adjust very quickly to a better situation in life, whether it's financial, house, weather, whatever. You adjust and you get used to it. And what was special eventually becomes routine. And so you don't appreciate it as much anymore.

43:55Well, exactly. You actually mentioned to me when you were in Mark Ryan, you're like, you know, I think I could retire down here. I spent more time down here. My wife and I talk about this. I asked you, I said, do you, and my question to you was going to be, do you think that millennials will retire in places like Florida? Like, because my baseline assumption is you're going to end up like your parents or your grandparents. Listen, I'm eating cottage cheese with fruit in it. Okay. So I'm already my dad. I'm a Jewish guy from New York. I will retire in Florida. That's just, that's, that's what we do.

44:21It's been preordained. Uh, I don't know. But you said to me, you said to me, dude, you're going to get bored. And I thought that too. Like it is so awesome down here, but I feel like I would, cause I'm going to have to go somewhere for at least six months out of the year to get out of them. I'm going to need to get out of the winter when I'm older. That's just, that's, that's going to be a fact. Another side tangent. Here's the, why is it that people from the East coast of New York go to the Atlantic side of Florida and people from the Midwest go to the Gulf side? Cause it was all Midwest people's.

44:47like if you judging by t-shirts and accents and yeah, I don't know what to tell you. That's just what it is. It's just a thing, isn't it? It's just a thing. Do you remember back in the day pretending to be sick in elementary school? By the way, I'm having deja vu. What was this? I had a something, there was music or something that happened to me yesterday. They did before where I was like, holy cow, it reminded me of being eight years old and I can't remember what it was. All right. Sorry, podcast listener. That That could actually be a movie plot. You hear a song from your youth and it transports you back to that year.

45:22Oh my God, what was it? I can't remember. But anyhow, what I was trying to say is spending the first day home watching Jerry Springer all day. You're like, man, I can get used to this. Judge Judy, was it Sally Jesse Raphael? Yep. And then on day two, it's not as great. By day three, you're like, all right, I'm ready to go back to school. That's the thing with vacation, right? Is that you think, oh my God, I could do this every day. You can't do it every day. Because if you do it every day, it's not vacation. Then it's just life. Yes. That's why I actually think when I retire, I'm going to have to go different places all the time.

45:56You're going to be an Airbnb retiree. You're going to be an Airbnb retiree. I think so. But back to the original article that people sent us saying, actually, people are leaving Florida. But the data in this shows Florida has the second fastest growing state as of July, 2023. 700 ,000 people moved there in 2022. too. And so the data is showing a huge migration, but there's also people leaving. So that doesn't really tell us anything though. Like people, people are people, some people do love Florida. That's, that's all point. Even though this article makes it out to be that there are individuals, this is why this is such, this article is a microcosm of the economy.

46:32They, they go through these individual experiences of people who hated their experience in Florida, but there are still way more people who love Florida who are going there. Of course. Most people don't have the, uh, most people aren't running away from the armadillo infestations. Yes. I didn't realize that was a thing. Okay. From the NAR, they have their statistics on the homebuyers and sellers. Like who's buying and selling homes? This is interesting. Millennials, 25 to 43 now compromised 38 % of the homebuying market up from 28 % a year ago. Boomers are down to 31 % of transactions. So that flip-flop last year, it was boomers that were buying the most homes.

47:07This year is millennials. And I feel like that flip-flop is going to happen for a long time. Gen X was 4 % of buyers. I feel like Gen X is the 3 % mortgage people. They're like, mm-mm, we're not moving, we're not doing anything. 4 % of buyers. 44 % of older millennials are first-time homebuyers. This is interesting, the first-time stuff. So first-time homebuyers made up 32 % of all buyers, up from 26 % a year ago. So it seems like houses are so unaffordable and mortgage rates are so high that no one could possibly afford their first home. but that's a third of people buying homes are first-time homebuyers.

47:41Historical norm is 40%, so it's still below that, but it's not bad. And among younger millennials, so 25 to 33, 75 % of those younger millennials are first-time homebuyers. That's pretty good, right? No, there's nothing good about millennials buying houses right now. It's a debacle. Well, not good, but I guess the life goes on is my point. People are going to buy a house, whether it's affordable or not. And, and the other thing is, and, but they also said, they said 24 % of those younger millennials receive down payment help from a friend or relative. So that it's a bloodbath for young people in the housing market.

48:18It is completely and absolutely effed. Now, now some people would say, listen, they're locking themselves into way higher payments than the otherwise would have. But if you can scrape together and afford to payment now while rates are high and housing prices are high and your wages are going to rise in the future and you could refinance in the future to lower that payment, I think you're going to be okay. Fair? I'm just saying these numbers surprised me for a high. The first time homebuyer numbers were that a third of people buying homes in the last year were first time homebuyers. That's surprising.

48:52I think this is one of the biggest stories in the country that probably doesn't get enough attention because young people don't have microphones is the struggle that young people are having with new homes. Here's an email that we got, not to just use like an anecdote, but one item that is not spoken about enough is how much unwanted stress and awkwardness this has put on our friendships. Meaning our friends have become our competitors with so little inventory, everyone in your social circle is competing for the same homes and almost has to keep secrets from each other. It's really bad, dude. Like, again, not to just use like my town as America, but there's not a lot.

49:30And there's a lot of young people that want to move back home. And there's just nothing there. And what is there? The prices are outrageous. Completely unaffordable. I'm sorry. I don't mean to make light of this, but this could also be a movie plot right now. Friends competing for lack of housing supply. That could be a – that would have been a Seth Rogen movie in the 2010s. the situation is really, really, really bad. Well, I agree. And it's going to make wealth inequality way, way, way worse because the people who can afford a home now are the people who are doing or more well off. And the people who can't are going to, it is, it's, it's a problem.

50:07And the funny thing is, is there hasn't been one politician who's made this their, their platform, like of we need to build more houses. I don't know how it - Which is weird because I think the median age is 38 in the United States. there's so many young aspirational homebuyers that are just getting absolutely railroaded right now. Yes, I agree. Someone also emailed us and said, how are so many houses being purchased in cash? It's either a line of credit from a portfolio or it's a HELOC on a paid off home to purchase the next home. Then you pay off the HELOC once the previous one is. So it's not like people have $500 ,000 sitting in a bank to buy a house.

50:48A lot of times it's some other shenanigans, a bridge loan, borrowing into your portfolio. I think those two things are like, I'm not saying that that's not a thing that happens. If I had to guess, I would say that's a 5 % slice of the pie. All right. I would love to see the breakout of this. I honestly don't know. So like where are the all cash buyers coming from? Right. Now, maybe you said this, what percentage of first time home buyers are paying with cash? it didn't say that's got to be very low though I'm sure it's anyway the situation is just really not great there was an article about the tax ramifications of grandparents making loans to their grandchildren we got a few emails like this like an enhanced inheritance type of thing the amazing Jill Schlesinger has a video with the compound media talking about exactly this topic should you help your children by a house.

51:41And the actual like, because there's, there's, there's tax rules behind it, right? You have to, there's a certain interest where you have to charge. Yeah. Okay. Here's a good question. I wanted to pose to you. Someone emailed us this. I took out a heel and this kind of sounds similar to me. I took out a HELOC in 2021 and rates for 3 % planning to borrow against my home slowly over time for renovations and such. Now the rates are seven to 8 % for a HELOC. I realized I should have just done a cash out refinance. If mortgage rates went back to 3 % or even 4 % tomorrow, I would borrow as much as I could.

52:08My house is up probably 7 % since 2020, not to brag. We just discussed this last week. There's going to be a boom. What would you do? So if mortgage rates went back to 3 % or 4 % tomorrow, what would you do? Would you borrow every last bit of equity that you could? Would you take it out? I would seek advice on that. I don't want to say me personally. I'm saying to the emailer. Yeah, I'm asking what you personally do because I would probably do the same thing that they're saying. I would pull equity out. Well, I did do that. Yeah, you did. That's what I did. I wouldn't necessarily have a use for it, but I would pull it out and I would probably pull it out immediately.

52:48I think I would. And I think that's going to be a lot of people. Yeah. All right. Real quick, Lucas Shaw did a post on the streaming services, the most watched things over the last... Good newsletter, by the way, Lucas Shaw. Over the last three years, yes. eight of the 10 shows, eight of the top 10 shows owe most of their viewership to Netflix. Bluey and the Big Bang Theory are the exception. So the chart is time spent streaming shows that were in the top 10. So we're only looking at the top 10. NCIS, number one. Cocomelon, which is for kids, number two. Grey's Anatomy, number three. Talk about being seared into your brain, Cocomelon.

53:32Yeah. Nine of the 10 most watched streaming programs are reruns. If you look at these shows, this says a lot about the taste of the average American. It's just not very good. NCIS and Criminal Minds and the Big Bang Theory. I don't mean to hate on people if they like these shows, but none of these are actually good shows. It's like filler. Is there one really good Stranger Things? Nine of the ten are reruns. The only original there is Stranger Things. the interesting one to me was the most did you see what the most downloaded or streamed movie was in 2023 and it was there wasn't a close second moana moana yeah i think i saw that which is not that surprising to me uh so while reruns dominate the top 10 overall that's not the case so that matters most of the hundred most popular titles the last three years are original series okay that makes sense and uh time spent streaming shows in the top 10 it's netflix and then it's everything else pretty much.

54:38Netflix still rules. Netflix still rules. All right. Let's talk about gambling. What do you got, Ben? All right. So there's been a few scandals in like the NBA about people, not point shaving, but changing their own stat lines. And so there's a lot of talk about like, okay, all the league has been pushing gambling and there's going to be all these gambling crises in the years ahead. And it's showing the sports betting boom from gaming. And it went from like less than a billion dollars in 2019 to$11 billion in 2023. This is revenue from legal sports betting. And this is another extreme thing where some people say, oh, let them gamble.

55:23It's a form of entertainment. And other people say, no, no, no, it's going to ruin people's lives. And the truth is probably usually somewhere in the middle. Where do you fall on this? Because I can, there's going to be stories in the years ahead of people who have just completely ruined their lives betting on sports. All right. I hope this is not like a straw man cop out. The way that I view sports gambling is similar to how I view alcohol. Like there's people that abuse it. There's people whose lives are ruined by it. And most people are able to use it recreationally and not spiral out of control.

55:58And perhaps the downsides of gambling, I don't even want to say are worse because what could be worse than drunk driving, right? So plenty of lives ruined by alcohol. Yes. I just, I don't know what to do about it. There are people for who, now there might be somebody listening whose, whose child is addicted and getting upset. And yeah, there's, there's going to be things in this that are less than desirable. I don't know. I mean, obviously they have their legalese figured out. They have more lawyers than anyone, but is someone going to try to sue a sports league or a podcast network in the coming years for pushing sports gambling all the time?

56:32yeah probably where we're headed yeah probably i anyway i again i i think it's i i view gambling as a form of entertainment but i can see how the alcohol analogy is a fair one like it's yes there's parallels there definitely yes all right i was in the mall over the weekend i went with you keep going to the mall for what i'll tell you i'll tell you why um my son kobe uh we had a baseball game So it's horrendous, Ben. You know what this is about. He's seven years old, and they just started in Little League kids pitching. So either two things happen. Oh, my gosh. Good luck. Ever contact with a ball?

57:15One, there's kids that can pitch really well. And so if the kid can pitch well, the other kid can't hit them, right? Of course. Or there's kids that can't even come close to getting it over the plate. Right. So just blocks and strikeouts go hard. So the game's an hour and 45 minutes, and they just started on Wednesday at 5.30. So we're not going to be getting home with the kids until 7.45. It's not great. I'm just going to tell the kids pitch that early because my son is – he's in a first and second grade team, and it still coaches pitch. Okay. So maybe next year. So on Sunday, we had our first game, and he was like, I want to pitch.

57:50I want to pitch. And he's never pitched before. And he said to Robin, Mom, don't worry. I got this. and I'm so happy that he is an irrational, overconfident kid. Like that's obviously just a personality, the way you were born type thing. So I'm happy he has that. Anyway, the reason why I went to the mall was because I need a baseball glove. I don't have a baseball glove. So I need a baseball glove to practice with him. Okay. So that's why I went to the mall. Roosevelt Field on Saturday. I couldn't believe it. I can't tell you the last time that I was there on a weekend, I think, like this. It was beyond packed.

58:24I took a picture of the Apple stores I went by. Not sure why I took a picture of the Apple Store instead of the whole mall, but dude, it was slammed. I don't know if this is a reflection. The picture of the Apple Store you took looks like a stock picture that's in like an AP News story. I don't know if this is a reflection of just Roosevelt Field specifically, which is a really big mall around here. The economy or kids' preferences, they hang out here. We went to the mall like a month ago by us and it was the same thing, packed. And I was like, geez, I'm not expecting it. Yeah. So when you go places like this and when you go to the airport and you go on vacation, This is not just anecdotal.

58:57Look at the numbers. The economy is fine. The economy is pretty good. It's a lot better than people feel. People are still spending money. Yeah, people are just spending money. All right, Ben. Watch what I do, not what they say. You know, we've spoken in the past. I've spoken in the past about things, particularly with not just cooking, like things on Instagram that don't come close to matching what you see on Instagram, like the sneaker cleaners that never work, or the recipe, or the this hack or the that hack, like plucking the pineapple piece out individually doesn't work. Right. I tried to poach an egg for the first time.

59:31Look at that picture. What do you think? Not bad. Not terrible. You ever poached an egg before? Is that where you like put it in the boiling water? Yes. It was quite difficult. Okay. That's one of those things that the finished product is not worth all the effort. Fair? Disagree. Okay. I made my wife an avocado toast and it was pretty darn tasty. Now it was a lot of work, but it actually did come out decent. All right, last thing. Last thing. I lost another pair of AirPods. And this time I lost them in my house. I remember specifically putting the AirPods in to do the dishes and I can't find them.

1:00:16So I was walking to the train station the other day. I needed some headphones and I bought a pair of like Alexa AirPods years ago just to try them out. It was like a Black Monday type deal. They're not great, so I don't wear them. But I couldn't get them synced. You have to go into the Alexa app to hook them up with your Bluetooth. Look at this thing. Solve this puzzle to protect your account. Enter the letters and numbers above. Is this completely indecipherable or what? What the hell does that say? The funny thing is you're going to need AI to help you solve these puzzles now. So that didn't work.

1:00:46And then there's an option to say, here are the characters. So I said, okay, wonderful. I didn't know there was an option. G8. I'm okay. Anyway, so I pressed play and it was somebody talking, right? Ostensibly for blind people, except inexplicably, instead of just saying G M H eight, there was like a fishbowl water noise over the person speaking. Why are they making it impossible for you to sign in? What, what are they trying to do here? We just need to face scan for everything. Instead of I'm, I'm ready to get rid of passwords completely. It's unbelievable. Scan my eyeballs. All right, Ben. Recommendations.

1:01:27What do you got? All right. Wait, what is this? Oh, Ben, your flying life is about to change when you find out you can download movies on all the streaming apps to watch them offline. A few people said this. Here's the thing. The best part about streaming and being on an airplane is scrolling through the movies and finding that. So I don't want to know what I'm going to watch ahead of time. I want to scroll. Yeah. It's like walking into a blockbuster. You want to be surprised. Yes. I want to. Oh, I didn't know I had this. Yes. That's what I like about it. So I did watch the finale of Curb, Your Enthusiasm, and I talked to my wife about this afterwards.

1:01:58I wouldn't necessarily say it's like the best comedy show ever because you don't get involved in the plot lines or the characters. You don't really care what happens to them. But that show made me belly laugh more than any show ever, and there isn't a second place. Just the amount of belly laughs. Even this season, there was probably like the Bruce Springsteen episode was amazing. I thought the finale was great. The way that they – you didn't finish Seinfeld, so you don't know this, But the way they intertwined the Seinfeld finale was, I thought, just perfect. And it made me, when they showed the clips of the old episodes, I went back and watched last night the doll episode with the bottle in his pants, which I think is one of the best episodes ever.

1:02:35And I watched the ghost, the crazy killer eyes one, crazy eyes killer. Yeah, so good. So I watched some of the old episodes because of it. And yeah, that show made, gave me more hard laughs than any show ever. Yeah, I forgot about some of them. So I'm going to go back and watch. Skilift was my favorite one ever. Okay. So a bunch of people, you mentioned the plot to Shot Caller last week. Could you believe how many emails we got? Yes, a lot of people. I literally never heard of that. I've seen the movie on Netflix before, but I was like, eh, it's the guy from Game of Thrones. Jamie Lannister. Did you watch it?

1:03:04Did you? Oh, yeah, I did. I loved this movie. Oh, my gosh. I like put it on. We had a really early flight in the morning on Saturday, so I was super tired. and I'm like, I'm just going to go to bed, but I want to put on this movie for like 10 minutes while I check my email and stuff. You didn't turn it off. And I got sucked in and I watched the whole movie and it, I couldn't believe how it's a really great. It's now it's one of those movies that the circumstances make you think like, geez, how would I ever like if you had a few bad breaks and you ended up in a crazy situation, what would you do?

1:03:38That's part of the great part of the movie, but the whole mystery of it, like, is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? What is he actually doing? it was an awesome movie. It was so good. It was really good. We got another email from somebody saying, I can't believe how many emails we got about Shot Caller. Unbelievable. Yes. And somebody said, and after you watch Shot Caller, watch Chopper. It's from 2001. It's with Eric Bana. Let's see. America had Al Capone, England, the Cray Brothers, and Australia proving once and for all its antipodian. What is that word? Sense of humor has Mark Chopper read. Chopper is inspired by the books of Mark Brandon.

1:04:18Whatever, it's about a criminal in Australia, and it's supposed to be very good. That's all, the end. Okay, shot call is great. One other one. I feel like the weird thing about streaming these days is you can have a big movie star that's in a show, and you never even hear any publicity about the show even coming out. It just shows up. All right, such as? Well, there was a Nicole Kidman on Amazon early this year, but I turned on Apple TV the other day, and there is a new private detective show with Colin Farrell. And it's like Colin Farrell is a guy who, if you have someone missing and want discretion, he's the guy you bring in.

1:04:47And I'm like, sold. So it's called Sugar on Apple TV+. And I watched the first episode. And it's very stylish. And I'm a huge Colin Farrell fan. Yeah, you are. And one episode, and I'm completely in. Okay. Anything from you this week? Anything from me. Well, I watch Shot Caller. I'm making my way through Tokyo Vice. And that's about it. Okay. I was surprised. I was expecting Shot Caller to be a movie that would be just a stupid plot movie that's kind of entertaining. But it was just, I don't know, something about it. It was just very, very well done. All right. Animal Spirits Pod at the compoundnews.com.

1:05:28Personal emails, of course, personal responses. Don't forget to check out, we had a talking book this week with Schaefer Cullen on Emerging Market Fundamentals. Quite good. Quite a good episode. Shama is like one of the longest running EM portfolio managers. He was super sharp guy. He taught us a lot. But if you're thinking about diversifying away, he had a lot of good stuff in emerging markets. Yep. All right. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week.

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