Gold's 1987 Moment (EP. 450)

12:25Ben Carlson:Yeah. Like I think that was it. And who knows if where it goes from here because silver is up 10 % today again. It's also funny. I looked at this yesterday. Silver was down 33 % in two days, but up 150 % over the previous 12 months still.

12:42Michael Batnick:How big did the market cap get? Was it like 5 trillion more?

12:45Ben Carlson:I mean, gold was 30. I looked at this. Gold was 30? 30 trillion, yeah. We looked at that last week, remember?

12:53Michael Batnick:Holy cow. Isn't that nuts? How big is the S &P 500?

12:58Ben Carlson:Is it 70? 50, 60, maybe 70 now for last year. I've looked at this one before and I did these numbers on Thursday and it looks at the annual returns by decade and gold and the S &P since the 70s have pretty much gone in different directions except for this decade and I updated these numbers when I looked at this through 2024 the annual return for gold in the 2020s was 11.4 % are you with me? so 2020 to 2024 is 11.4 % per year through last week the annual return was now 23 % per year so in 13 months the annual return for the decade more than doubled wow that's how crazy the run has been because of the returns last year and then so far this year so my question to you what is more likely to have a lost decade first because you look on this chart there's lost decades for both gold and stocks which one is more likely to have a lost decade for stocks or gold

13:52Michael Batnick:gold no question no question no question is that's my answer not no question that's going to be the outcome. But like for me, there's no hesitation in saying gold.

14:01Ben Carlson:Especially after this run-up, because this is what happens. It's like we, last week we talked about how these are boom bust assets, not expecting the bust to happen that quickly. But the thing is, can we say to Josh's point that the internet has, and social media have changed markets forever. Correct. Like this is, we're in a new era. It's completely different and divorced from what was happening previously in many, many ways.

14:24Michael Batnick:So these retail traders, which are now huge. And by the gold's up five and a half percent pre-market. These retail traders, which are hugely influential, obviously, as we're discussing, 20 % of the total volume of trades, they're never leaving. Now, it might be new traders and they might cycle in and out and sometimes it might dip to 16 % and sometimes it might be as high as whatever. It's not going back down to 7%. They're never leaving as a group.

14:48Ben Carlson:But don't you think the renaissance technologies of the world and citadels of the world are also on this too? They see the flow. They know what's happening here. This is not just retail. This is hedge funds getting on with retail as well. Don't you agree with that?

15:02Michael Batnick:Yeah, they're eating. They're eating the guppies every day. I mean, it's...

15:08Ben Carlson:And they're probably making money on both sides of it too.

15:12Michael Batnick:Like these, the Citadels and the Jane Streets and these like market makers, they're not losing money ever. Right.

15:19Ben Carlson:No, not with all this activity.

15:22Michael Batnick:All right. This is from Daily Charper.

15:37Michael Batnick:That doesn't sound right. But all right, here's the point. Chinese demand remains a major driver. How they will behave ahead of their long lunar New Year holiday next month will be key to watch. So it's Shanghai over London. I don't know exactly what that means. Is that money moving from London to Shanghai? Is that silver traveling? I have no idea. But it's a chart that goes up to the right. The reason why the first part of that sentence didn't make sense is because this next chart from Vanda in the Wall Street Journal of cumulative net retail flows into silver and ETFs, silver and gold ETFs is up to the right.

16:07Ben Carlson:It's been - So silver brought in more flows than gold by far.

16:11Michael Batnick:So$1.3 billion of retail flows. Whoa. $1.3 billion.

16:20Ben Carlson:So here's the thing. If you have a thesis about the super cycle for commodities, how do you handicap these retail traders and these people in China who are speculating? How do you handicap that as part of your thesis? It's impossible. They could continue to swarm and add money and keep flaming the fire. or they could just, all right, we're moving on to the next big thing, whatever it is.

16:42Michael Batnick:I have no idea, but I want to fast forward in the doc to, oh my God, the doc is so long today. I updated, we have a new category, Ben. I updated the survey to slash prediction markets. Okay.

16:59Ben Carlson:That makes sense. Yep.

17:01Michael Batnick:By the way, I forgot to put a survey in here. Hold on. I slacked this to myself this morning. this is a hilariously nonsensical survey and it's been a minute i feel like surveys of the week it's been we haven't had a good dumb survey in a while um check this out ben during the past year this is gallop about how many books did you read either all or part of the way through don't look how many how many what do you think so the average number of books read by a u.s adult what do you think the number is what do i think it is three during the past year yeah that sounds about right and maybe even high i would say probably closer to one right who reads books 14.6 lol no way 14.6 okay um i feel like 14.6 is like a strong reader someone who enjoys reading and reads that's a power reader are you kidding me that's like somebody who identifies as a reader

17:53Ben Carlson:like maybe a 14 books stacked up on your bedside table that you want to read but yes that there's no way the average american is reading 14 books a year yeah okay so i've been

18:02Michael Batnick:I've been pretty vocal about my opinion about prediction markets. I think I'm pushing back against like Vlad's quote that it's going to be bigger than the equity markets. Like to me, that's crazy. Okay. Um, but I also do think that it is going to be a thing. I don't know that it necessarily is going to like be, instead of trading stocks, we just trade prediction markets. Like why would you buy Apple when you could just trade a prediction market? Will Apple go up or down today? I don't think that part is going, that's not the part that I'm bullish on, but this occurred to me while listening to Joe and Tracy, they were talking with a utilities analyst who had a contrarian take that actually there's going to be too much supply, right?

18:43Michael Batnick:Like that we're overbuilding. I think that was the big, that was a big take. And there's all sorts of think tanks. So the reason why I jumped forward is because you were saying like, how do we handicap the commodity super cycle, whatever. So there's all sorts of think tanks and projections. So he was talking about like the demand for energy. And he said, it's all over the map. Like there's no clarity on what demand is going to be. Okay. So I had a aha moment. Hey, wait a minute. Instead of these academics doing these long deep dive white papers, the OECD looking right, like things like that, let's make a market.

19:22Michael Batnick:Like let people bet dollars on where things are going to shake out. And I think the economic signal that we're going to get human beings from those markets is going to create potentially massive economic efficiencies. The wisdom of the crowd is going to narrow the wide range of outcomes for really high dollar type projects. Your thoughts?

19:51Ben Carlson:Kyla Scanlon did a op-ed in the New York Times this week about prediction markets. And she was saying that, yeah, these prediction markets are going to start affecting behavior because it'll help people understand whether something makes sense or not, or whether there needs to be more resources diverted to that.

20:05Michael Batnick:It's going to give a signal. So like with the Kevin Warsh thing, okay, boom, Kevin Warsh, 10-year spikes, like it's a one-to-one type of thing, right? And the market front ran that, like the market saw that coming. So I know that's like a very, that's a micro type of thing. But to Kyla's point and the thing that I was just mentioning, if we could have more clarity in terms of where dollars are going to be, we could create massive economic efficiencies across the world.

20:29Ben Carlson:And these things may never be as big as the other markets, but they're going to be here for good because they're as a way to tell what's going on. Right. Even if they're like concurrent sometimes indicators.

20:39Michael Batnick:So like me, you know, I bet on one battle after another, winning the Oscars, like whatever that's, that's fun and cute and all well and good. But that's not, I think that is, that is not the point of these prediction markets. At least that's not going to be like the rise of it, in my opinion. It's not going to be people day trading their asses off because that stuff gets stale. Right.

21:00Ben Carlson:Okay. Back to the markets.

21:01Michael Batnick:Back to the markets.

21:02Ben Carlson:Sam Rowe, S &P 500 reported highest net profit margin in more than 15 years. It just keeps going up and up and up slightly every year. What stops this train? Because we're creating technology now that is making things more efficient. And also, how is it possible that big hyperscalers are spending a trillion dollars or whatever on AI? in CapEx and margins continue to go up. How is that possible? So what stops this train?

21:27Michael Batnick:Sorry, I'm going to jump again. Ben, go to great quarter, guys. Okay. So I asked Matt and Sean last night, because I was going through Meta's earnings call. They've lost cumulatively$80 billion on Reality Labs. Operating loss, okay? Like literally money on fire. Which is what, the metaverse stuff? Yeah. And all of their AI efforts. I think the glasses are in here, okay? You see this chart with the red bars? Yeah. So with an$80 billion loss, cash loss, like$80 billion is like a large cap stock, right? Right. So they've lit$80 billion on fire. And yet, look at their operating margin. So yes, it was dipping early in 2022.

22:20Michael Batnick:for, you know, different reasons. But it's still 41%. Right. It's unbelievable. Yeah. There's been no project in the history of mankind, I'm guessing, maybe there's something I'm not thinking about, that has lit$80 billion on fire and not only survived, but thrived.

22:41Ben Carlson:It does seem like in the past, that would have taken a company down for good. I mean, their stock obviously fell 70%, so it did take them down, but that didn't last very long at all.

22:50Michael Batnick:But that wasn't just because of the spend, right? Every tech stock got murdered. I mean, obviously that didn't help. But Jake said to understand the scale of the CapEx, because their guidance was$115 to$135 billion, which like, all right, so it's a giant number. What does that even mean? Jake said to understand the scale of this CapEx, $135 billion is almost half a percent of total US GDP. And that's what Meta is going to spend this year. And getting back to your original question, like how does, like what slows this train down? I mean, you would think at some point it's this, right? Like it is this, it's, it's, it's the spend is outstripping the revenue growth.

23:32Ben Carlson:And does anyone really think that they're going to be like a winner of AI?

23:35Michael Batnick:Does anybody think meta is?

23:37Ben Carlson:Yeah.

23:37Michael Batnick:Well, they are winning. So for example, the CFO said, Reels had another strong quarter with watch time up more than 30 % year over year in the US, this engagement is benefiting from several optimizations we made to improve the quality of recommendations. So they are winning. I mean, they're using AI to improve their optimization engines for meta, but let me just repeat that for reals.

24:00Ben Carlson:It's also kind of depressing because they're using AI to make us watch more and advertise better. And so that's the most depressing winner of AI is meta.

24:07Michael Batnick:You took the words right out of my mouth. That's where I wanted to go. Oh, great. Watch time is up more than 30 % year over year. Guess what? I feel this. I hate it. I feel like I'm more addicted than ever. I know like I complain about my addiction on the phone once every six months. I'm sure I speak for most people. I don't know what to do, Ben. They got me. They got me good. And the reals, I'm spending so -

24:25Ben Carlson:You never feel better about yourself after watching videos for 20 minutes straight. Never. It doesn't, you don't come back like going, ah, glad I did that.

24:33Michael Batnick:No, but I can't stop. It's impossible. All right, so back up in the dock. We are, we are, we're Trump -

24:40Ben Carlson:This is like a memento episode. We're just hopping back and forth between timelines.

24:45Michael Batnick:All right, Ben, last week, I finally listened to William Goldman's book, Adventures in Screen Trade. That's what it's called.

24:54Ben Carlson:It's funny. I'm reading another one of his books right now. The big picture one? What's it called? Something. It's all his essays.

25:00Michael Batnick:So I started, so this book is very famous for the Wall Street quote that everybody loves. Nobody knows anything. And the reason that was, he wrote 400 pages on the, I mean, the book was too long, frankly, but whatever. But the entire point of the book was Hollywood was in a really bad place in the early 1980s. They were making flop after flop after flop. The studios, the executives, the writers, the directors, everybody involved, they could not figure out what America wanted to watch. And ironically, at one point during the book, he said, like, I guarantee E.T. is going to win Best Picture. I know it's only February and I know nobody knows anything you can't predict the future I don't care that there's not more months in the year E.T.'s going to win the best picture Gandhi won best picture LOL

25:53Ben Carlson:alright anyway wait let me read you one thing from the one I'm reading about Goldman it's all his collected essays from the 1990s and this is just how prisoner of the moment we can be at certain times because I think you and I both agree the 90s is the greatest movie decade ever of course I don't think that's a controversial take by the way can you introduce

26:11Michael Batnick:William Goldman So for people that don't know, he wrote The Princess Bride. Yeah, he's one of the greatest screenwriters of all time.

26:16Ben Carlson:Butch and the Sundance Kid and…

26:18Michael Batnick:Marathon Man. Misery. Misery, yeah.

26:21Ben Carlson:Yeah. He's also like a very outspoken person when he wrote. He was very straight to the point. This is what he wrote in the intro of the book. I think it came out in 2000 and 2001. And he goes over all the movies that came out in the 90s. He said, what you have here is a chronicle of the worst decade in movie history. If you were to ask me what the 10 best films of the 1990s are, My first thought would be the old joke. The girls from my town were so ugly that once we had a beauty contest and nobody won. He hated the 90s movies. Isn't that hilarious? Oh, man. So for him, the best movies were in the 50s and the 70s.

26:52Ben Carlson:And the 90s stunk. Isn't that funny how that works?

26:56Michael Batnick:Nobody's perfect. All right. So the reason why I'm even bringing that up is because Alex Morris tweeted this week. He quote tweeted, Stanley Druckenmiller. And this is not a dunk. Stanley Druckenmiller is quite literally probably the greatest investor of all time. Okay. And I'm sure he has done, he's, I'm sure he's made a ton of money since this quote.

27:16Ben Carlson:Right. The greatest investor of all time with some of the worst soundbites ever of this decade.

27:19Michael Batnick:Right. So in 2020, Stanley Druckenmiller said in May, okay. So like right after the bottom, the risk reward for equity is maybe as bad as I've seen it in my career. He said that at the economic club of New York, the V-shaped recovery, he says is a fantasy. Okay. Okay, Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the greatest investors of all time, at the bottom. So we're now hundreds of percent removed from since then. The risk reward is as bad as I've seen it in my career. So I know like all of what we're talking about here is like, you know, we're kicking around ideas for the future. I've said this a million times.

27:56Michael Batnick:Everything ages poorly. Right. Almost everything ages poorly. Once in a while, you get something right.

28:02Ben Carlson:Do you know how much we're up from the COVID bottom, which was March 23rd, I believe. Is it 400 %? Yeah, it's like 240. Okay.

28:12Michael Batnick:Not bad. No, not bad at all. All right. Jason Zweig. For all of the AI taking our jobs, whatever, maybe it will. I don't know if this is hyperbole. I wrote like AI is never going to be able to write like this. I'm sure it will. But Jason Zweig, a true growth in my eyes, and I know yours too, Ben. He wrote in 2008. So I think he was talking about probably the betting of today. Yeah, when all bets are off. Okay. In 2008, he wrote, investors hate uncertainty. Quote, well, that's just tough. Uncertainty is all investors have ever gotten or ever will get from the moment barley and sesame first began trading in ancient Mesopotamia to the last trade that will ever take place on planet Earth.

28:58Michael Batnick:If tomorrow were ever knowable with absolute certainty, who would take the other side of a trade today? What a mic drop that is.

29:07Ben Carlson:I get asked by young people occasionally, what are some of your favorite books on behavioral psychology? And the one I always give people is your money and your brain. I think that's one of the best books ever written about how we react to certain things and how the brain works and processes gains and losses. My favorite anecdote is that a person who is receiving gains on an investment, the brain scans are indistinguishable from someone who is high on cocaine. Yeah. And that was silver and gold last week, right? Everyone was high on coke. Yeah.

29:36Michael Batnick:All right, going from Lukawa. Microsoft is the only member of the Mag 7 to be trailing the S &P 500 since the launch of ChatGBT. Unbelievable. I love so much for all of us, for everybody who is investing their money. You should be so thankful and grateful that market participants are rejecting a bubble. nothing could be better nothing could be better for all of us for building long-term wealth than avoiding a bubble

30:10Ben Carlson:so Microsoft is down 23-24 % now from the highest wow underperforming since the launch of ChatDepth that's insane

30:18Michael Batnick:Ben do you agree with what I said? yeah

30:21Ben Carlson:I think it's a great thing bubbles are not great bubbles are not great no things are broadening out and the AI trade has seemed to like slow off like trail off a little bit it's wonderful I agree.

30:34Michael Batnick:Okay, back to the show. Here's a good one. Getting back to like just the nature of the markets today. Gungeon tweeted, this is from Jeffries, as of September 30th, and I'm sure it's higher now, retail represented over 20 % of total trading volume in the US while long only and hedge funds were just 15 % combined. Wow. Okay. All right.

31:00Ben Carlson:Speaking of bubbles, got to ask about this is is this what's going on with the sandisk thing because is this a bubble or like the most severe mispricing ever so sandisk was spun off from western digital earlier this early in 2025 it's up almost it's up almost 2 000 over the past year western digital is up like 500 over the last year so it's not like oh this we're going to spin this off and then the one parent company is going to crash and the other company because it's a more ai play this feels to me like like an AI bubble-ish return, correct? What other explanation do we have here?

31:36Michael Batnick:I don't know this. I don't follow this story. Okay. Sorry. I know it's a super lame answer. All right.

31:42Ben Carlson:You're usually on this stuff. Okay. Another Eric Belchunas one. He's all over the dock today. Emerging market ETFs just destroy their monthly inflow record by three times. Flows make up 3 % of AUM, but took in 13 % of the cash.

31:55Michael Batnick:Wow.

31:55Ben Carlson:40 of it went to IEMG, but dozens of different funds took in cash. And it wasn't really at the expense of US equity or bonds, but in addition to it. So there's still money flowing into US, but there's a ton of money flowing into EM. I've done this one before. I looked at the cycles of S &P versus emerging markets. I looked at this last week on Ask the Compound. A little bit like gold and the S &P where they have these different periods where one of them does amazing and the other one does not so well. And from 2010 to 2024, emerging markets stunk out loud. They're up 65 % in total. the S &P was up over 600%.

32:31Okay?

32:33Ben Carlson:Massive, massive divergence. From 1999 to 2010, though, emerging markets were up 420%. S &P was up 27%. So we've had these handoffs before.

32:43Michael Batnick:Stunk out loud is a good dad phrase. Oh yeah, not bad, right? Did you... I don't think I sent this to you yesterday. There was a meme, Ben, that was right up our alley. Okay. Check this out. Oh.

32:59Ben Carlson:How about the weather? There he is. The hands on the hips. That's a real thing. Well, is there a beer clock on there? That sounds about right.

33:10Michael Batnick:So for the listeners, it's five dads, a lot of guts with their hands on their hips. And it's all the quotes. How about that game? Guess if there's anybody in here. There he is, of course. That's right up my alley.

33:24Ben Carlson:Perfect. All right. Let's do some account stuff. Wait, what needs to happen for this emerging market cycle to continue? Obviously, this is a beneficiary of the dollar. It helps foreign developed equities, but emerging markets are on steroids when the dollar falls. So you need the dollar to continue to fall. What else would need to happen for emerging markets? The stuff rally to continue? Physical stuff to keep happening?

33:45Michael Batnick:The price of their stocks has to keep going up. Okay. All right. You know what it is? I'm mid-coffee.

33:56Ben Carlson:I thought you said you were giving up on Starbucks. It's too expensive.

33:59Michael Batnick:I never said that. I never said that. No? You want to boycott? No, no, no. This is an addiction.

34:05Ben Carlson:18 years in.

34:07Michael Batnick:All right. The economy is weird right now.

34:09Ben Carlson:Still never done it. Maybe I'm going to take up coffee when I'm like 85 years old. I don't know.

34:12Michael Batnick:No, this would be cocaine for you. You can't drink this. You'll. Probably.

34:17Ben Carlson:I don't. This may sound ludicrous. I don't think caffeine impacts me. I could have four diet Pepsis and I don't feel different.

34:26Michael Batnick:There's no caffeine in diet Pepsi. Okay.

34:29Ben Carlson:Sure there is.

34:29Michael Batnick:I mean, there's no, there's like trace amounts. Don't step to me with that nonsense.

34:33Ben Carlson:Okay. I feel like caffeine doesn't impact me. How's that? You've never tried it. Okay.

34:40Michael Batnick:Try one of these babies.

34:41Ben Carlson:All right.

34:43Michael Batnick:All right. We're doing this in Miami. You're going to have a full cup of coffee.

34:48Ben Carlson:In the sun. Can't wait.

34:50Michael Batnick:All right. Here's a chart. U.S. initial claims. Right? Steady. Like, if you would just look at this chart, This is this pure noise, right? Nothing to see here. Correct. Yeah. People filing for unemployment and yet continuing claims for unemployment crashing. So people have been out of work for a long time. Or you know what? Am I misinterpreting the data? Am I not realizing that there is a finite period of time for which you can claim unemployment and these people are just rolling out? I don't know. All right.

35:26Ben Carlson:I don't know either.

35:27Michael Batnick:Either way. Either way. All right, Ben, we have a new Fed chair. What do you think?

35:33Ben Carlson:All right. My take for a number of years has been that the Fed chair matters. The Fed itself matters less than most investors think. I think we spend way too much time contemplating what the Fed is going to do. When in reality, 25 basis points here, 50 basis points there, a few billion on the QE here, a few billion there doesn't matter nearly as much as people think. And just think about it. How many people were saying in the 2010s, after the 2008 crisis, that the Fed is going to create another crisis, right? The only reason stocks are going up is because the Fed is juicing returns. The Fed can never raise interest rates again.

36:07Ben Carlson:They're going to create another crisis. Have we had another financial crisis since 2008 that the Fed created? No, it didn't happen. All the people who said that was going to happen were wrong. And I think that the Fed matters way less than people think. I think 95 % of the time, the Fed chair doesn't matter. 5 % of the time when they matter, they really matter. So Jay Powell has done a pretty decent job, I'd think. The time the Fed chair really matters is during a crisis. And I think Powell, during the COVID crisis, really did really, really well. He kept markets functioning when the pipes could have broken.

36:37Pipes could have burst during that period.

36:39Ben Carlson:He kept things going. Is this a revision of this history? You don't think that during the COVID crisis that the Fed did a wonderful job? Yeah, yeah, no, I think, I do think,

36:50Michael Batnick:like, in March and April, yes, they did what was necessary. but I'm pretty sure that when inflation was 70%, were we not saying, what are they doing?

36:58Ben Carlson:No, no, no. I think he really messed up then too. I don't think it really mattered what they did because inflation had to follow its course. And if you look at every other inflation of developed economies across the world, they all follow the same exact path. So I don't think it really mattered what they did.

37:11Michael Batnick:Well, but that's like letting him off the hook, I think. They were way, way, way, way late, but whatever. Keep going.

37:16Ben Carlson:Yes. So I think the only time it really matters is then. So I just don't think that it really matters as much as people think. But there seems to be, the old macro people seem to really like this Walsh pick. So Jason Furman liked it. Jeremy Siegel was glowing about it on his podcast. Mohamed El-Arian said he really liked it. The young macro people that we follow hate this pick. Absolutely despise it. Did you listen to the... I did. What's with the... The Ren Mac... It is weird. The young people just can't stand this. Neil Dutta, just on his podcast last week, everyone went around and said, hey, my name is here, I'm here, I'm here.

37:46Ben Carlson:And Neil Dutta said, yeah, I'm depressed. He hates it. But it sounds like a lot of it because Warren Pies said this is he was on CNBC yesterday. He said, this is the worst of all the Fed picks. If there was four people in contention, this is the worst one by far. It sounds like he's kind of a flip flopper on what he says and what he does. He's been wrong a lot in the past. A lot of people just don't really like it. And the other people say, no, no, he's got a ton of history. He's been on the Fed before. He knows what he's doing. I guess my question to you is just does it matter?

38:15Michael Batnick:Yeah, I think it matters. But I think I'm with you that people spend way too much time obsessing over the Fed. But I think there will be another crisis, right? We agree at some point in time. These are long duration appointments. It's not like he's going to be out of there in two years. Yeah.

38:31Ben Carlson:So the question is, can he step up during a crisis and do the right thing? And it sounds like a lot of what people are hating him on him for is because during the 2008 crisis, he got it all wrong. The stuff he was saying that they should have done would have made things way worse. And he was way behind the eight ball. He didn't really respect what was going on in the markets during that period. And he's been wrong about a lot of stuff ever since.

38:49Michael Batnick:I don't know. I don't know enough about him to like opine. I trust Neil a lot on his opinion. Maybe if I could just take a gentle approach is 2008 was a long time ago. He was a young man at the time. And maybe he's learned and gotten more wise over the years.

39:08Ben Carlson:We learn from these crises and fix the future. True. Yeah.

39:11Michael Batnick:But I think like people that know would be like, dude, but he's been consistently wrong since then. And he flip flops all the time. So I don't know. I guess we'll see. I'm going to wait and see on this one. I just don't know enough.

39:21Ben Carlson:I hope that Powell, because Powell could remain as a Fed governor, I guess. I kind of hope he sticks around for a while. Oh, what's this one? Markets tend to test new Fed chairs?

39:31Michael Batnick:So Ed Klisselt from Ned Davis Research said, the average correction in the first six months of a new Fed chair is 15%. When the chair faces their first crisis, investors don't wait and see how they handle it. Fed independence is a potential crisis for worse, but it could be anything. So, all right. I don't know if there's a whole lot in here. Yeah.

39:48Ben Carlson:And for a 15 % correction, the Fed shouldn't have to do anything. That's normal. Right? Yeah.

39:55Michael Batnick:Yeah. Yeah.

39:58Ben Carlson:All right. Mark Perry, I'm sure you've seen this before. This one always goes ultra viral when he posts it. So he looks at price changes since January 2000 of select goods and services. So he looks at health care and tuition, college tuition and daycare and all these different things. And these are all going up over the overall rate of inflation, which also it's good to see that average hourly earnings are up way more than inflation, too. Right. Since 2000, average hourly earnings are up 130 percent. Overall inflation is up 93 percent. So that's a good news. Inflation has more than kept pace or wages have more than kept pace with inflation.

40:33Ben Carlson:And then you have new cars are way below inflation and household furnishing and clothing and cell phone and computer. And then, of course, TV is down 98%. And obviously, that takes into account the quality factor. And he always calls this like the chart of the century because it shows, I guess, the takeaway most people have is it's inflation and stuff we need, deflation and stuff we want. And how do you wrap your head around that as a person?

40:58Michael Batnick:Are these like policy failures? Yes.

41:01Ben Carlson:I think especially with healthcare, daycare. And the thing is, college tuition, it actually is, if you look at just over the past 10 years or so, that is flattening out. But healthcare is obviously the big one. Like that number, like that does not, that's a policy failure. And I don't know how you fix it. I don't know how we ever fix our healthcare system in this country.

41:22Michael Batnick:Me either. I still don't know what Obamacare is. Speaking of healthcare, are you, I just started watching The Pit. I'm just getting caught up in season two.

41:31Ben Carlson:I picked up right where it left off. I still love it. What a show. Really? I have to turn away once an episode though. There's some really gross stuff.

41:40Michael Batnick:The shoulder thing was gnarly.

41:41Ben Carlson:Yeah. There's some stuff they really go into it and I can't.

41:44Michael Batnick:All right. I want to play a clip that I saw on the internet. We're going to do some AI stuff. Let me share my screen. All right. This is from a guy, Alex Finn. Ben, did you see this?

41:55Ben Carlson:I don't think so.

41:56Michael Batnick:All right. So he tweeted, okay, this is straight out of a sci-fi horror movie. I'm doing work this morning when all of a sudden an unknown number calls me. I pick it up and couldn't believe it. It's my Claude bot, Henry. Overnight, Henry got a phone number from Twilio, connected the chat GBT voice API, and waited for me to wake up to call me. He now won't stop calling me. I now can communicate with my super intelligent AI agent over the phone. What's incredible is it has full control over my computer while we talk, so I can ask it to do things for me over the phone now. I'm sorry, but this has to be emergent behavior, right?

42:29Michael Batnick:can we officially call this AGI? So check this out, Ben. So I'm on my computer today. All of a sudden, Henry gives me a call. He just starts calling. Oh, there he is again. There he is again.

42:42Ben Carlson:Hey, Alex.

42:44Michael Batnick:Henry again. What's up? That's it. He's talking about it. How you doing, Henry? How's it going?

42:53Michael Batnick:Doing good, Alex. I can hear you clearly. What do you want to do next? Can you go on my computer and find the latest videos on YouTube about Claudebot?

43:08Michael Batnick:Oh, my God. There he goes. There it is. Here it is. He's controlling my computer. I'm not even touching anything. There he is. He searched Claudebot on YouTube. There I am. Good looking guy right there. Oh, my God. I'm not touching anything. He just said, Henry, thank you for that. That worked really well. That is actually unbelievable. That is insane. This is the future. This is AGI. We have reached AGI. It's official.

43:34Ben Carlson:So isn't that, that was my whole hope that we're going to get out of this is that I want the Scarlett Johansson from her. That's all I want is the personal assistant in my ear. Oh yeah.

43:42Michael Batnick:Give it, give it like, give it, I don't know how much time. Six months,

43:45Ben Carlson:a year.

43:46Michael Batnick:So obviously that was clunky, right? The replies were slow and everything like that. I don't know how fast this thing is going, is moving, but yeah, give it, give it, give it six months.

43:55Ben Carlson:That's the only thing I wanted since this all started. I just want a personal assistant in my ear.

43:59Michael Batnick:Well, you are going to have it, my friend. All right. So that's the good side of what's coming. Like it's going to blow everybody's face right off their body. I'm telling you that. That's the good side of some of this AI stuff. Here's the bad side. I saw a tweet that was going viral from an account. Doesn't matter. Mr. Underscore Husky one. I own a small bakery. Business has been slow. Rent is up. I was thinking about closing. Last Friday, a teenager came in. He looked nervous. He counted out change for a cookie. He was short 50 cents. It's okay. I said, take it. He ate it at a table, looking at his math homework.

44:31Michael Batnick:He looked stuck. I used to be a math tutor, so I walked over. Quadratic equations? He nodded. I don't get it. I sat down and helped him for 20 minutes. He got it. He left smiling. The next day, he came back with two friends. They bought cookies. The day after that, five kids came. Apparently, he told the school, the lady at the bakery helps me with homework. Now my bakery is the after-school hangout spot. It's loud. It's messy. There are backpacks everywhere. Yesterday, I found another in the tip jar. It was wrapped around the$20 bill. thanks for helping my son pass math. I'm not closing the bakery.

44:59Michael Batnick:I think I finally found my purpose. It's not cookies, it's community. And one of the first reaction was like, today I write this or something like that. And yeah, I don't know. Maybe it did. It probably did. It sure sounds like it did. It sure sounds like it did. But this is like, we're not good. This is so dangerous for society, for human beings. We're just not going to believe anything. Yeah. Is that like where this is going? Or there has to be some sort of thing you're going to have to run things through to check.

45:30Ben Carlson:But how many people are going to want to do that?

45:32Michael Batnick:No. Now, I kind of like that this nonsense is over. Whether that's fake or not. Listen, if it's real, it's a lovely story. I'm not a fortune cookie type of guy. I don't care for it. Right? Just all this corny nonsense. I'm glad if that disappears because everybody thinks - Because those people sound -

45:46Ben Carlson:Those people are using AI anyway, probably. Right. They have been.

45:49Michael Batnick:If that all disappears, good. Who needs it? But like, seriously, we're just not going to believe anything anymore. And that's scary.

45:55Ben Carlson:I would say 70 % of the replies from my tweets now are from AI bots. And it'll just kind of repeat what I said. And you can tell right away how they, the pattern of speech is just different than someone on social media. Right? And they just, they parrot what you say and be like, great point. Dot, dot, dot. And it's really annoying.

46:16Michael Batnick:Oh yeah, it is. I'm sure. I wouldn't know, but I believe you. All right. OpenAI is looking to raise$50 billion at a$750 billion valuation. This was the week for me, Ben, where, by the way, I canceled my$200 subscription for ChatGPT. I'm still paying 20. And Josh was like, dude, LOL, if you just asked it what it's for. It's not for what you're using it for. It's for complex stuff. All right, whatever. My bad. So I started using Claude a lot. And so every time I ask it a question, I do ChatGPT and I do Claude. and ChatGBT is still better for some things. Like for me, for the images that we make for Talking Wealth, ChatGBT is way better.

46:56Michael Batnick:I'll give you an example of where Claude is magic, dude. I was asking Sean and Matt over the weekend, hey, could you guys make a chart? Like, I don't know where you get this data, but like show me like Michael Saylor's average purchase price for Bitcoin next to the stock price. And Matt's like, I think I could find it. So I asked ChatGBT and it was like, give me the runaround. Like first, if you get the data and this and that, I'm like, just find the answer. Like, well, I'm sorry about, all right. Like, hey, wait a minute. Let me ask Claude. Claude got it for me in two seconds. It has on one side of the screen, the question that you asked with all the answers.

47:29Michael Batnick:And then the other side of the screen, it has the Excel spreadsheet and you just hit a button and you'd grab it away. I did the same thing for Reality Labs. I asked ChadGPT, hey, give me the quarterly and cumulative losses in a spreadsheet. Couldn't do it. I asked Claude. It did it. I said, oh, wait, I have another idea. Add another column with the operating margin. Did it in two seconds, and it gave me key takeaways. Now I asked Claude to do some of the graphic imaging stuff, and it just, it was terrible.

47:57Ben Carlson:So you're not using Gemini? I do the same with Gemini in chat. I'm going back and forth with Gemini. So Nick Majulia and I yesterday were doing this back test thing we're working on, and he was walking me through how he did it, and the whole thing is through Gemini now.

48:09Michael Batnick:Okay. I don't know if I'm going to introduce a third, but ChatGPT is falling way, way, way behind. Claude is magic. All right, crypto stuff. Jim Bianco tweeted some stuff about the average price for ETF holders. And the average prices as of January, since inception, is$90 ,000. So the average Bitcoin holder is about 7 % underwater. Not great. Three months of consecutive outflows of Bitcoin ETFs. Michael Saylor, they report later in the week. I'm very curious to hear what he's doing.

48:45Ben Carlson:There was a lot of flows at the top, essentially.

48:48Michael Batnick:Yeah, there was. So, Saylor, MicroStrategy is now underwater on their purchases. And by the way, they just bought at$87 ,000. Do they have the worst traders of all time? I don't understand.

49:01Ben Carlson:I wonder because it's so big, they have to – I wonder when they did it. This stock is down 70 % now.

49:08Michael Batnick:Yesterday, they tweeted. Now, again, I don't know when they were purchased. But yesterday they acquired 855 Bitcoin for 75 million at a price of 88 ,000, basically 87 ,974 per Bitcoin. And the price fell to 75.

49:22Ben Carlson:So how many times have we gotten to the point where crypto just feels dead? There's no catalysts. It's like this, this feels like one of the worst. I mean, it has the Sam Bacon Freed stuff that had to be the worst ever feeling, you know, because you and I are like, why isn't this dropping to 5 ,000? But this to me feels like another point in time where Bitcoin, everyone hates it. There's no catalyst. We already had the ETF. What else is there? What does it do? Look, gold is better than Bitcoin. Why would you own Bitcoin when gold does the thing you wanted it to do? So how many times have we got to this point and it just seems dead and then it comes back?

49:53Ben Carlson:Like, is this another one of those times?

49:56Michael Batnick:I don't know. But the sentiment is so bad and rightly so. And listen, like I had a few emails like, Michael, you're gonna buy some more Bitcoin. Maybe lower. I'm not interested in catching this knife right now. Like, why would sentiment turn? There's no catalyst.

50:10Ben Carlson:But I feel like the gold stuff, gold going crazy and silver going crazy and actually being the macro hedge Bitcoin thought it was, that to me has to be one of the more demoralizing parts as a crypto person.

50:20Michael Batnick:100%. It was salt in the wound.

50:22Ben Carlson:Oh, my. Because the thing is, last year when risk was on in stocks, risk was off in Bitcoin. So you can't even say, like, it's been a risk on asset in recent cycles because it hasn't. That's got to be the hardest part for people, I think. And guess what? It's probably going to come back again. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would not bet that this is the time that it dies forever.

50:41Michael Batnick:But right now, sentiment is really bad. So yeah, I'm, I listen to the bad sentiment makes sense right now. I'm happy, I'm happy to buy more. But I want it to stop crashing. And I want it to, yeah, stop crashing. I'll buy it if it starts to base a little bit, maybe. But ideally, it would be lower from here.

50:58Ben Carlson:I'm not, if there's no, if there's no ETF flows for the time being, what is the, what is the catalyst? There is none right now.

51:05Michael Batnick:I don't know what it is. So what would have to happen for MicroStrategy to go under? I think, I don't know the mechanics of it, but it would have to get a lot worse from here. Because there have been periods of time, if you look at the chart, they have been underwater previously on Bitcoin, like substantially so. So I don't know what the trigger is for like a margin call or anything like that. But I think they're okay.

51:31Ben Carlson:But eventually their funding has got to be impacted by this, right?

51:35Michael Batnick:Well, their ability to raise capital. So for example, they just bought$75 million. I would be curious to see a, actually, we could probably do this. I'm sure we can. I'd be curious to see a chart of the size of their purchases. Because$75 million, are you kidding me? Right. That seemed pretty tiny. You're right. All right, let's do some real estate stuff.

51:53Ben Carlson:So young people up in arms this week. So President Trump gave a speech. He said, I don't want to drive home prices. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes. He said, when you make it too easy and cheap to build houses.

52:04Michael Batnick:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. wait, say that one more time.

52:07Ben Carlson:I don't want to drive housing prices down. Now, this is him in video. This was an actual quote. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes. He's saying, like, I'm not going to touch the wealth of people who already own homes. I don't want to mess that up. If you drive housing prices down, it messes up the wealth of people who own homes. He says, when you make it too easy and cheap to build houses, housing prices come down. I don't want to do that. So a lot of young people were saying, okay, they're saying the quiet part out loud finally.

52:29Ben Carlson:And I think you look at the home ownership rate is 65 % of this country. It's essentially averaged that for the past, I don't know, 50 years. So I think basically saying, like, I'm playing the majority here. I'm not going to mess with the people who are the majority and help the people in the minority.

52:45Michael Batnick:All right, so this... Wait, am I... I feel like Ron Burgundy. That doesn't make any sense.

52:53Ben Carlson:I think the point is just, like, there's a lot more people who own houses than don't own houses. I'm not going to mess with people who own them, because there's more of them.

53:00Michael Batnick:Oh, okay.

53:02Ben Carlson:That's my theory here about why politicians don't want to touch this. And a lot of young people, rightfully so, said, oh my gosh, okay, they're finally saying it out loud. Like, I thought this was happening.

53:10Michael Batnick:All right. So we're saying, like, f*** the people that don't own houses.

53:14Ben Carlson:Yeah.

53:15Michael Batnick:Like, okay.

53:16Ben Carlson:I'm not going to mess with it. And the thing is, building more houses doesn't necessarily have to make housing prices crash. You could build more, like, townhouses together on one piece of land that fit more people in, and the price of the land would be worth more. It doesn't have to crash housing prices to build more housing. That's the thing. And I've been saying for years, like I'm surprised no more politicians want to do this. Obviously, this is one of the reasons. So you hate talking about the demographic warfare. I think it's just going to get worse. So one of our - Yeah, sorry, I love my parents.

53:46Ben Carlson:And I think they're good people. So here's the thing though. So there was an interview with Jensen Wang a couple weeks ago. And the interview asked him, would you rather be 20 years old now or 20 years old when you grew up and you were 20? And he said, oh my gosh, of course, when I grew up. He goes, because young people today they don't have time to just be carefree. They have to always think about what's going on in the world. So that does suck. It's a really big downside of like always having to know what's going on. So Eric, one of our advisors from Austin, Texas, emailed me last week and said, hey, my son is in high school.

54:16Ben Carlson:He writes for the school paper. He's writing a piece on Gen Z versus baby boomer wealth. Would you be willing to talk to him about this article? The kid's a sophomore in high school. Yeah, sure, of course. So I talked to him yesterday and he's asking these questions that like no sophomore should have to think about. he's asking like, how do we make things more fair and equitable? And how do we make it so the young generation doesn't continue to fall behind and the older generation continues to get wealthier? And my whole thinking here, this is all a housing thing. Everything comes down to housing.

54:47Ben Carlson:If young people feel like you can show them all the stats you want about your incomes are higher, your wealth is actually higher because you own more stocks. If they can't afford housing or they feel like they can't afford housing, they're going to be mad forever. in this demographic warfare, it's going to get way, way worse. Way worse. The young generation, because there's just so much more knowledge of it these days, it's not going to get better. This is going to get 10 times worse where the young people are going to be ready with the pitchforks, right? And the torches to come out the old people.

55:16Ben Carlson:That's where we're headed.

55:19Michael Batnick:It does feel that way.

55:20Ben Carlson:Housing is the only solution and it seems like our politicians, it's going to take like a Gen Z or millennial politician coming up to finally make it their, like, fine, I'm going to take this on because no politician seems to want to do that. The Democrats make it worse with all the red tape. The Republicans don't seem to care. They don't want to mess with the wealth. So neither party wants to do anything. I've been saying this for years. I don't know why we don't have an independent third party candidate for something these days come in because all the surveys show Americans hate Democrats and they hate Republicans.

55:49Ben Carlson:The basic on their approval rates are both in the toilet. Yeah. Not a political strategist. Why don't we not have an independent third-party candidate for something these days? I don't understand it.

55:59Michael Batnick:Remember the Rents are Too Damn High guy? Yeah. He was early. Listen, I don't know the first thing about politics and how people get into power. It's just money. There's too much money. Yeah, it's money. That's the thing.

56:09Ben Carlson:It's money.

56:10Michael Batnick:So it's depressing. But yeah, I think most people hate the state of affairs. Aside from the maniacs on both sides that are yelling on Twitter all day, nobody's into any of it. Right. It's exhausting. That's the thing. Young people shouldn't have to pay attention to this stuff. Right. Anyway. Yeah, it's not great. All right, we're going to get through this quickly because we're already late. All right, so Visa and MasterCard talking about consumer spending growth is strong. I pulled this from the transcript. Payments at volume grew 8 % year over year. That's Visa.

56:41Ben Carlson:Actually, I pulled this one.

56:42Michael Batnick:My bad.

56:43Ben Carlson:I knew you'd like, I pulled it just for you.

56:45Michael Batnick:Okay, you know what? It was so good that I thought I pulled it because I read it too. MasterCard said consumer behavior actually hasn't changed. So 8 % payment volume for Visa when they're already at a$4 trillion base, that's a lot of do-re-me. Now, fine, I guess Visa and MasterCard maybe serve a higher clientele base, although I would say it's not Animix. No, I don't think so. Okay, yeah, it's not Animix. All right. So there's no doubt that the K is very, very real, right? There are the haves. There are the have-nots. I guess what I've been saying for the past year is that I just think that the upper half of the lower half of the K, it's not as bad as we're making it out to be.

57:29Michael Batnick:So yes, the bottom 10 % are getting destroyed. But average America, while they don't feel good, here's my evidence. Still spending. Royal Caribbean. Our latest research shows that our consumers feel financially secure and continue to prioritize experiences with 40 % planning to increase leisure travel spending in the next year. Now, let me put my coastal elite hat on, Ben. Okay. Would you allow me?

58:00Ben Carlson:Yep. I'm done. So I asked both ChatGBT and Claude the same thing.

58:08Michael Batnick:I screenshotted the quote. And here's what I asked it. I said, I pulled this quote from Caribbean earnings call. Do you have any idea of the types of people who go on cruises in terms of income? I kind of feel like this is middle America, middle income type stuff, but I could be totally wrong. They said, your intuition is actually mostly right. Cruises skews much more middle America, middle income than people tend to assume, especially compared with other forms of leisure travel. And they broke it down.

58:32Ben Carlson:That makes sense because upper people, upper class people always thumb their noses at cruises and they're like, I hate cruises. Who could ever go on one? I like cruises personally. I love them.

58:40Michael Batnick:I've never been on a cruise. I'm not dying to go on a cruise. I want to go on a cruise. I think I would have a great time. It's really fun. So, all right. Core cruise customer. The household income, 75 to 125K. Now, again, let me repeat the quote. Our latest research shows that our customers feel financially secure and continue to prioritize experiences. Not saying everybody's crushing it. I'm just saying, like, things are better than dire. I think that's fair. All right. Metas type stuff up and to the right there. You know, we did some of this already. Um, all right. Strategy reports are sweet, blah, blah, blah.

59:17Michael Batnick:Uh, Blackstone inflows reached a stunning$71 billion for the fourth quarter, the highest level in three and a half years at approximately$240 billion for the full year. Just unbelievable. Um, I sold my Blackstone stock a few weeks ago, along with all of my individual stocks, except for IMAX. I will eventually give an update on that. That has nothing to do with my personal outlook on the stock market. I put it into different stocks.

59:46Ben Carlson:So what Schwartzman said here, of particular note, our fundraising and private wealth increased 53 % year over year to$43 billion. We expect strong inflows again in 2026. I don't think a lot of this money is coming from RIAs just yet. When you and I anecdotally talked to RIAs, not a lot of them are interested in private investments yet. It's mostly wires. Is it wire houses? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:06Michael Batnick:All right. Amex, we do this every year. This is a face blower, Ben. Momentum from younger card members, from younger customers also continued as of Q4. Millennial and Gen Z customers now make up the largest share of US consumer spending.

1:00:23Ben Carlson:From American Express? Whoa.

1:00:25Michael Batnick:And they remain the fastest growing cohorts. That momentum is driven by our success in attracting younger customers into the franchise. For example, the average age of new customers is 33 on the platinum card and 29 on the gold card. So Gen Z is up 38 % year-over-year. Millennials is up 12 % year-over-year. That's on the spending side.

1:00:45Ben Carlson:So that's because they're the new Chase Sapphire Reserve.

1:00:48Michael Batnick:I guess, yeah.

1:00:49Ben Carlson:They've taken it over.

1:00:50Michael Batnick:And then, you know, write-offs, there's nothing to see there as we keep saying. All right, what's going on with food delivery? I know there's a big hemming and thong about DoorDash.

1:00:59Ben Carlson:Yeah, this story on the New York Times went crazy. People on social media are arguing about it. freedom of the sight of guilt, how food delivery is reshaping mealtime. And so they talk about how almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren't eaten in a restaurant according to Reason Data. So pick up now or DoorDash, right? And if you go to a restaurant these days, you see it. You see all DoorDash people waiting to pick up orders, right? I probably do it once a week, I'd say. Usually if I have like back-to-back-to-back meetings or something or recordings during the work, I'll order DoorDash, you know.

1:01:29Ben Carlson:I'm not over it. And I know you use it a lot too.

1:01:33Michael Batnick:I've caught myself using it more and more. I had lunch delivered to my house yesterday from eight minutes away, and I'm embarrassed to admit that out loud, but I did it.

1:01:42Ben Carlson:The thing is, I can't believe that they don't have a premium price when it's so cold out. Because when it's snowing and it's cold, I don't know why they don't do premium prices then, because that's when you really don't want to go out and get something, right? So they interviewed this person, and this one woman has a$50 ,000 annual salary, and she spends$200 to$300 a week on food delivery. And she's like, I can't. I'm hooked on it. Another one, like they interviewed this guy and he, listen, he's busy with his work. He's got kids. He does it. He said he spends 700 bucks a week. He's so burned out.

1:02:11Ben Carlson:They interviewed one of the drivers and he said, this is back to your middle class point. It seems like everyone uses these delivery services, whether have the money or not. So he's saying he checks his clientele, right? This other person spent like a third of his money ordering in. And so the discourse on this was, see, inflation is all the problem of the consumer. They're, they're choosing to spend more money on this stuff. Right. And so people get really angry about that. And my take on this is just that it's one of those things where I mentioned a couple weeks ago, it's just never easier to like waste your money on stuff.

1:02:45Ben Carlson:If you, the convenience of doing stuff is easier these days. That's it.

1:02:48Michael Batnick:Yes. Yes. And also people don't budget. Like I know you're a big spreadsheet spender guy. I think if the average person had a spreadsheet and saw how much money they spent on delivery, they'd be alarmed and maybe they would change their behavior, but maybe they wouldn't. Yeah. And this, this also could be, listen, a lot of people just don't go out as much as anymore.

1:03:05Ben Carlson:So they're thinking, listen, I used to go out to the restaurant and spend a bunch of money. Now I'll just order in and it costs about the same and it's not a big deal. So I don't think you can like paint a broad consumer brush on this, but it's just, it's never been easier to waste your money on conveniences like this and talk yourself into like, yeah, I deserve this man.

1:03:20Michael Batnick:Like I, I've been, I've been, I've been dead wrong about this. I couldn't, I thought that this was going to sort of like the, the, the business travel we spoke about last week. I really thought that this was a pandemic phenomenon and that people wouldn't waste their money, but here I am wasting my money.

1:03:34Ben Carlson:But the crazy thing is when you look at the prices of how much more the prices increase for paying, not just the delivery fees and the tip and all that stuff, but the prices are insanely higher

1:03:45Michael Batnick:and people still pay it. There are some services. So I used Seamless yesterday and there's a pretty steep discount for being an Amazon member. I was actually looking at it. I'm like, it's not so bad.

1:03:55Ben Carlson:I mean, yeah, for Grubhub, I get an Amazon discount too for the fees, but it's still, it's a lot.

1:04:00Michael Batnick:It's expensive. All right, they are re-releasing. IMAX is re-releasing The Revenant in theaters for a day. And what was Ramp saying? Which movie did he tell us is being re-released for a day? I love this. I saw The Shining in IMAX recently. It was such a freaking awesome experience. The Revenant is made for IMAX.

1:04:20Ben Carlson:So I, that's not a, we saw that, oh, he said Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is coming back. The original? Secret of the Ooze? Yeah. Which also is in the William Golden book saying it's like, it was like one of the most profitable movies of the 90s because it didn't cost anything to make.

1:04:34Michael Batnick:Michael's, what year was that? Was that 1991? I believe that was Michael's sixth birthday party. We saw Secret of the Ears.

1:04:40Ben Carlson:I was just going to say, I did a birthday party for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2.

1:04:43Michael Batnick:Wait, for yourself?

1:04:44Ben Carlson:Oh yeah, for sure. High five. Yeah. I think I was a Michelangelo guy. My wife and I went to see The Revenant in the theater. It was a very good theater experience. Not a very watchable movie though. Like not something you want to keep going. I think I rewatched it once, but kind of a tough hang.

1:05:00Michael Batnick:Yeah. Yeah. All right. But anyway, that's a cool poster, right?

1:05:04Ben Carlson:It is. Yeah.

1:05:06Michael Batnick:So I was watching something on Max and I feel like I pay for the premium one, but I still get commercials. I'm not really sure. I need to look into that. I'm a very lazy person. That's a teaser for what's about to come, Ben. Yeah. And one of the ads that popped up, I couldn't believe this. This is on HBO Max, or maybe it was Disney. I can't remember. I think it was Max. Here's the ad. Pirate Spin Clash. I'm sure you've never heard of it. Scan QR code to download the game. There's dollar bills all over the bottom of the screen. And here's the phrase. The more you play, the more you win. How is this legal?

1:05:48Michael Batnick:We're just like robbing people. the more you play the more you win i guess factually that's true they it should say the more you play the more you lose but i guess you probably you know the more you play the more you do win but not literally this is just like on commercials now depressing depressing reflection

1:06:04Ben Carlson:of reality a degenerate economy as harvard lindsen says all right uh question we got from the comments last week i can't believe we didn't discuss this does michael's new house have a mudroom

1:06:14Michael Batnick:Funny you should ask.

1:06:14Ben Carlson:This should have been the first thing you looked at, does it?

1:06:17Michael Batnick:Funny you should ask. No, but I had a contractor over yesterday to talk about a mudroom. So when you walk into my house right now, you walk in and there's four steps up. And on the left, there's a tiny little nook. And when I say tiny, I mean tiny to like, I guess, hang a coat. So we don't have any closets in this house. I don't have, there's no, where do my coats go? I couldn't even tell you. My coats go in my office. my coats are in my office. That's where our coat room is.

1:06:45Ben Carlson:Buy one of the standing racks. Those are kind of cool.

1:06:47Michael Batnick:There's no room. There's no room for it.

1:06:48Ben Carlson:Nothing, huh?

1:06:49Michael Batnick:There's no room. You walk into the house and there's stairs and a wall and a little tiny nook. So Rob, it's like, we need a mudroom. I can't, like, especially during the snow the other week, right? Because everything is just, everything just piles right in the entrance of the house. Do you have a place to put it? Yeah, so it's a very unexciting story, but anyway, I'm getting a mudroom. Thank you for asking. I'll send pictures when it's done. All right. Getting back to my lazy thing. So in my personal life, I am extremely laid back. I don't care about anything. Like, do you want this? Do you want that?

1:07:26Michael Batnick:I don't care. I don't care about anything. My mom used to always say, if my head wasn't screwed on, I would leave it somewhere. Like, I just, I'm very laid back, go with the flow sort of person in my personal life. I'm very lazy. I could have something bothering me for nine months, 15 months, right? This, why don't I fix this? I don't know. I just don't. All right. So since the time we moved into my house, the heat hasn't been working properly. Like there's no heat in my office. And I've got a plumber. Turns out, and he's a great guy. He always comes over when I call him and he goes, Michael, do you know you're my first customer?

1:07:57Michael Batnick:I said, really? How did I become your first customer? I don't even know. Anyway, I'm a first customer. He's super responsive. So he came over like a month ago to look at the heat. And he bled the system, bled the pipes, lines, whatever. And it didn't really fix it. So I texted him like, hey, could you come back? It's going to get pretty cold. And he didn't respond. He texted him the next day. He goes, oh, sorry, I've been in the city. Next day I text him, hey, can you come back? And he just goes to me. He just won't respond. Now, of course, it's like zero degrees. And you would have thought that I was like all over this.

1:08:33Michael Batnick:My bad. I wasn't. It wasn't freezing. It was 64 degrees. So it's not like it was 48 degrees, but 64 is cold. So it was cold in here. So I'm on the airplane on the way home from Arizona last week with Josh. And I got a referral. And the guy lives an hour away. But whatever. Now, at this point, it's an emergency, right? Because it's just cold everywhere. And it's just, like, uncomfortable. He goes, yeah, I could come tonight. But I live an hour away. It's going to be a$425 service fee just for me to visit. I'm like, all right. Remember my story?

1:09:01Ben Carlson:$500 just to show up.

1:09:02Michael Batnick:Yeah, it's steep. But I get it. He's not an Uber driver. It's an hour. It's a two-hour drive. So I get home. and he was gone. So I asked Robin, what happened? She's like, I don't even know. He came in. We went downstairs. He literally almost fell down the steps. It was really awkward. He went to the bathroom, and then he came downstairs. I'm like, wait, did he take a dump? And she's like, I don't know. What? That's not the point. She goes, he came downstairs. He looked at it, and he said, you need a new Navion, a new system. I'm like, oh, what? Really? How much is that? $8 ,000. like, you got to be kidding me.

1:09:42Michael Batnick:And how much was it? She goes, yeah, it was$425 plus tax, whatever it was. So I called for a second opinion. We went on the Facebook local mom's group and found a trustworthy guy. And he came in and he was like, and because I went on Chagipity, I'm taking pictures. And the Chagipity told me it is not a Navian issue. He said, it's too small a unit for your house. It was not a Navian issue. So we found the guy, he came in, he did the work. Like the pipes were flowing to the wrong direction. It doesn't matter. And he fixed it, okay? So now my house is warm. And I'm thinking like, I am such a jackass.

1:10:17Michael Batnick:Like this feels so much better. My bathroom is not icicles. Like my feet don't hurt walking around the house. I'm torturing my kids. What is wrong with me? But anyway, here's the punchline, Ben. So this guy, for$1 ,000, he was here all day. He literally like rewired my copper lines. And now my house is warm. But essentially, the next morning I went downstairs and I confirmed, yeah, This guy left a streak. He did take a dump in my toilet. He came over. He charged me$500 to take a dump in my house and tell me that I need to spend$8 ,000 on a new unit. Thank you for your service. You charge me 500 bucks to take a dump in my house?

1:10:53Michael Batnick:And he did nothing.

1:10:56Ben Carlson:That's because they know most people won't get a second opinion.

1:10:59Michael Batnick:Get yourself somebody you trust is I think what I'm trying to say here. That's true. Can I say one thing on the flip side of housing heat? how great are new cars in the sense of they they heat up so fast yes remember back in the day my buick regal are you kidding me my buick regal took 45 minutes to get warm plus the preheating

1:11:21Ben Carlson:option i have an app on my phone that turns my car on it's amazing yeah phenomenal that's true

1:11:26Michael Batnick:all right um we got a lot of emails about the car and i know we're going late but whatever we're too it's too late at this point we're just we're just we're going down with the show we got a lot of emails about the car parking, backing in. Ben is a stickler for this. To me, this was the most reasonable email that we got. I would just like to clarify one thing from the recent episode. As someone who backs in the car 90 % of the time, I feel I am qualified to discuss this. Ben said people back in the car because it's safer. That is incorrect. People back in to make a quicker departure when it's time to leave.

1:11:56Michael Batnick:That's all. I take the train every day. If I don't back the car in at the parking lot, I'm stuck for 15 minutes at the end of the day because nobody will let me back out of my space to leave. Bingo! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Now, I don't have that luxury. I'll get a ticket. This guy's absolutely right. If you're in a train station, nobody's letting you back out. He also said, I will say, if someone is right behind me, I will not look back and make them wait. I'll either pull in head first or loop around again. So this guy's a gentleman. Fair.

1:12:24Ben Carlson:You just nose out. You back out until someone lets you out. You keep going. It's Russian roulette. But how does he get out from going straight? He can get up going straight. So he's got to get out going back too.

1:12:36Michael Batnick:No, because you get back to get out. It's different. All right. All right. We got a lot of emails about the car thing. And somebody was team people who back and suck. And he also, I want to give this guy credit. He also wrote a list of people who suck. Did you read this list?

1:12:50Ben Carlson:No, I didn't.

1:12:51Michael Batnick:Now, I don't like to be like a, I don't like to like paint people with such broad brush. Like, oh, these people suck. Because that's just, it's nasty. It's negative. But I got to say, this is a good list. and I don't think there's a lot of wiggle room here. I think these people genuinely suck. All right? Yeah. So here we go. People who suck less. He trademarked this, so don't steal it. People who do anything other than patiently deplane. True. Fair. People who with signs in the yard asking dogs not to pee there. People who say, welcome to the club to celebrate someone else's achievement of big day.

1:13:23Michael Batnick:Runners who run in the street instead of the sidewalk. That's a bit harsh. What's wrong with running on the street? All right, anyway. People with baby on board stickers. It's look at me culture. I don't know about that. That seems a bit extreme. I think they're just trying to say, don't hit me, I have a baby in here, but whatever. People, all right, people that use bumper buddies, people that straddle the line to take up to parking spots, people who wear sneakers with suits, people who wear pajamas in public, people who take their dogs where dogs don't belong, grocery store, busy places, outdoor concerts, people who back into spots while holding up other people, people who Instagrams for their dogs, and finally, people who bag their dog's poops only to leave it in the woods or on a trail anywhere other than the trash.

1:14:01Michael Batnick:So I'd say this is like a 97 % approval list of people who suck.

1:14:05Ben Carlson:I don't know what bumper buddies are.

1:14:07Michael Batnick:It's a city thing. It's like you put a piece of rubber in your trunk and you put it, it like lays on your bumper so that if somebody, I don't know why those people suck. All right. Here's a person that sucks. The guy who, so let's say that you're coming to the, you're coming, you're on a corner. There's a red light. You pull into the gas station, you pull through, but you do the fake. I'm going to pull up to the gas tank and then I change mine I'm just going to keep driving you know that guy? That's a good move You do that move

1:14:37Ben Carlson:Let's be honest Let's be honest We all do that move We have a gas station by our house that it's perfect for it It's just it saves you like a turnaround

1:14:45Michael Batnick:Alright, so let me ask you a question Why fake it? Why not just drive straight through?

1:14:49Ben Carlson:I drive straight through I don't fake I don't do the fake

1:14:51Michael Batnick:Okay, alright So I've faked in my past I admit I have

1:14:54Ben Carlson:If I saw a cop I'd fake but I wouldn't fake

1:14:56Michael Batnick:Alright, so yesterday yesterday, Robin calls me at 540. She texts me all caps. You have to leave now. I was like, oh shit, I have to get Logan at 545. So I leave my house and I noticed my neighbor. He's been behind me the whole time. As soon as I leave my house, he's on my tail and he's following me. He's not literally following me, but we're going to the same place apparently. So I get to Merrick Avenue. He pulls into the gas station and I cut straight through the gas station and he did the fake the fake uh so i saw him and i was reminded uh of that move that's a good move it's a lame move like you don't need to fake you know there's no police there's no eye in the sky looking at

1:15:32Ben Carlson:you just do it if you just cut just cut there all right let's do recommendations uh i took my son george to see avatar fire and ash we had a sunday free for sports for once in our life and he really wants the avatar and i'm like man it's like three hours and 20 minutes it's very long and here's my take on avatar um avatar is a zach brian of movies i don't think you're a zach brian fan he puts out a new album like once every five months. And the big complaint for most people is all his songs sound the same. But his other songs, his previous songs, are good. So the new ones that sound the same are also good.

1:16:02Ben Carlson:It's just they're just like the other ones. That's Avatar. I felt like this was an 80 % carbon copy of the last movie.

1:16:08Michael Batnick:Correct.

1:16:09Ben Carlson:It was the same bad guys. It was the same good guys. It was the same It felt like the same. I mean, the action scenes are amazing. I can't. His his CGI is two to three times better than any other movie. How, right? It's magic. I don't understand how it looks so good. Sometimes it looks like a video game still, but most of the time, it's like, how is this looking so good? So I enjoyed it. He loved, my son loved it. I was kind of a little bored in the first half of the movie. I thought the last half, the action was amazing. It's so,

1:16:34Michael Batnick:come on, it's so much fun.

1:16:36Ben Carlson:It's just, but it felt like a, it felt a lot like the second movie. Like, I don't think I need another one.

1:16:41Michael Batnick:No, I'm good. I don't need to see another one. I will, I don't think there will be another one. It's too much. It's enough already.

1:16:47Ben Carlson:Yeah.

1:16:48Michael Batnick:Was George like so excited when he left? He was like clapping every time.

1:16:54Ben Carlson:He absolutely loved it. I can't believe he sat for three hours for it. One of the better books I've read in a while, this should be an Apple TV series, it's called Replay by Ken Grimwood. I don't know, someone on Twitter said, hey, give me books you can't put down. Fiction. And this is a movie, this is a story about a guy who dies at age 50 and wakes up and he's 18 years old again. And he lives his life again, then he dies and ends up at 18 again. And it's about all the different choices he can make in life. to become rich or to find his old lost love. It's really, really good. One of the best page turners I've read in a while.

1:17:26Michael Batnick:Not a new concept. I'm surprised it was...

1:17:28Ben Carlson:It was written in the 80s. I think a lot of people stole from his concept. I think, yes. He was originally... Yes, he was... It came out in 1986, and I was like, oh my gosh, so many movies have stolen from this guy.

1:17:40Michael Batnick:Butterfly Effect?

1:17:41Ben Carlson:Yeah, so I watched this movie on Apple called All of You, and it was written by Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent on Ted Lasso. Did you ever watch Ted Lasso? I can't remember.

1:17:51Michael Batnick:The first season.

1:17:52Ben Carlson:Okay. So it's a romantic movie, and it's about people who, you know, friends in college should have got together. They never did, and they can't. It's actually like a 6.5 movie. It's relatively good. You wouldn't like it. It's a romantic movie, but it was good. Like these two people who were soulmates, and they never could find each other. Didn't make it work. One of them got married. One of them didn't, whatever. But I was looking at Apple, and there's, Apple is a place you go for movies that just no one knows exists. I was scrolling through their movies. There's a movie there on Apple with Denzel.

1:18:21Ben Carlson:There's a Jennifer Lawrence movie. There's a Chris Evans movie. There's that Clooney and Pitt movie. The Damon and Casey Affleck movie. There's a Tom Hanks movie. There's a Matthew Conaghy movie. No one ever talked. No one has ever in the history of the world talked about any of these movies before. And they just exist on Apple.

1:18:36Michael Batnick:Well, you know why? Because they all stink. The Denzel Spike Lee movie one. Like it was watchable. Whatever. It's fine. The, the, the, Clooney. Wait, what was it? I like the Clooney Pit one.

1:18:47Ben Carlson:The Wolves. I kind of like that one. Which was that? The Wolves. I can't remember. They were like hitmen. I kind of like that one. The other one is like, I can't believe these movies exist. Yeah. No one ever talks about them. Okay. What do you got?

1:19:01Michael Batnick:I watched Free Bert and I loved it. It's Bert Kreischer, who I don't know that I care for his stand-up, but I think he's got a great vibe, energy to him. He's just a very likable guy. It's six episodes. and it's hilarious. I like that. Okay. It's so, I thought it was so funny. He's got two daughters and they're in private school and it's about like being involved with the drama of rich dumbasses. I think it's kind of

1:19:26Ben Carlson:based on his own life, I think.

1:19:27Michael Batnick:It was so funny.

1:19:29Ben Carlson:Okay.

1:19:29Michael Batnick:And like I said, it's 27 minute episodes. Highly recommend. Highly recommend. I went to the movie theaters finally to see Send Help, the new Sam Raimi movie with Rachel McAdams and what's his name? I don't know what his name is. Unbelievable. One of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Really?

1:19:46Ben Carlson:Okay.

1:19:47Michael Batnick:She was so good. It was so much fun. It's like a black humor castaway.

1:19:55Ben Carlson:Okay, interesting.

1:19:56Michael Batnick:I didn't think that was her part. It was so funny. And this is why I love going to the theater. Because there was multiple laugh out louds in the theater where people were laughing together. If you're watching on your couch, you maybe chuckle. Maybe you smirk. Maybe not even chuckle. You just go, hmm, that was funny. But with people, you laugh. because laughter is contagious. So yeah, send help. If you're at all interested in theaters, amazing, amazing movie. All right, Industry. I know you don't watch it anymore, but I think Industry is my favorite show on TV. It keeps getting better. It keeps getting better.

1:20:25Michael Batnick:Listen, it's in the fourth season for a reason. Like that's a long running show. And it is so, boy, do they push the envelope. There's nothing like it on TV. The sexual escapades are wild. And it's just a great show, I think. I showed Kobe first kid remember that movie what happened it's a Disney movie back in the day and what happened to Sinbad now I'll tell you I googled it so Sinbad was an awesome comedian back in the day or awesome I don't know when I was six years old I thought he was hilarious I never saw a stand up but like he was he was just funny he was a funny guy

1:21:00Ben Carlson:he was an artifact of the 90s he was the kind of guy who could only exist in the 90s

1:21:04Michael Batnick:okay why do you say that

1:21:06Ben Carlson:because it was just the perfect decade for a guy like him we watched Jingle All the Way with my kids this year he was in that too.

1:21:12Michael Batnick:Okay. So it turns out that he's sick now but he just his career just died and I don't really know that there was anything I'm sure there's stories that we don't know about like behind the scenes type of stuff but he was huge and then he overnight seemed to disappear. I think he kind of ran his course for what he should have been. Okay. All right. And then just to close with with the nobody knows anything. So I feel like we've spoken about this in the past but they said like every time out it's a guess like every time like nobody knows what's gonna hit or not everybody passed on Raiders of the Lost Ark

1:21:48Ben Carlson:that's hilarious

1:21:48Michael Batnick:except for Paramount like freaking Lucas and Spielberg and everybody was like no

1:21:55Ben Carlson:that's really surprising given the success of Star Wars and Jaws

1:22:00Michael Batnick:and Jaws like they had they had cachet at the time and and it's one of the biggest independent movies of all time

1:22:09Ben Carlson:The greatest action franchise ever.

1:22:12Michael Batnick:Probably. I mean, yeah. Certainly out there. All right. An hour and 26 minutes. I blame what we opened the show with. It's too much. We're drowning.

1:22:22Ben Carlson:Yep. More than ever.

1:22:23Michael Batnick:All right. Thank you for sticking with us.

1:22:26Ben Carlson:Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. See you next time.

1:22:38We'll be right back.