Has the World Gone Crazy? (EP.362)

25:53Now look at the flows here. This is flows to US mutual fund and exchange traded funds. And we had a huge, huge uptick in flows in 2021. Then we have the bear market in 2022, nearly$500 billion goes out. We had a little bit of less money come out last year, and then now money's pouring back in this year. This is the, it's the people on the edges and the fringes, because there's trillions of dollars in these funds, right? So Ben, in 2021, almost$850 billion flowed into US mutual and exchange traded funds. That's more than the difference in market cap between Amazon and NVIDIA. Does that make sense to you?

26:29I'm just kidding. All right. The Vanguard S &P 500 ETF is on pace for potentially a record year,$37 billion net in less than five months. The annual record for any ETF inflow is$50 billion. And if you look at the list of the biggest inflows, it's the Vanguard S &P and then SPY is next, which is interesting. The Vanguard S &P 500 is like taking over the throne, it looks like. But the next one, third biggest inflow is Bitcoin for my shares at$15 billion. Two things on this. I'm a bit surprised that VOO, which is the S &P, Vanguard's S &P fund, has taken in more money than VTI. Triple the amount.

27:05That is kind of interesting. I wonder, I feel like historically, VTI has been more popular, but I could be wrong on that. The other thing is that for this to potentially set a record in a year where cash is still yielding a very healthy 5%, I would not have predicted that. And they showed in this article that we're still well over $6 trillion in money market funds. So that has not abated at all. So people are putting money on their credit cards to buy VLO. Interesting. I guess this is just a thing where the pie keeps getting bigger, so we should expect these things to... I mean, if you think about it, the savings rate thing, if your savings rate stayed the same, and we never look at anything in the stock market on an inflation-adjusted basis, right?

27:55Someone asked me last week, why do we look at GDP on a real basis, but things like the stock market and earnings are never on an inflation-adjusted basis? I don't know because we've always done it like that. But if people are making 20 % to 25 % more in terms of wages because inflation has raised those wages, that means more savings. You should expect these numbers to go up is what I'm saying. It makes sense. Let me ask you a question about the credit card thing. So I don't know if you saw my post yesterday, but I pulled a chart from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showing the percentage of people with delinquent credit card debt continues to rise.

28:31this is, I can't hand wave this away. This is not great. So whether it's people that are going into delinquency, where it's turning into 30 days or 30 days plus or 90 days plus, they all look the same and they're all not good. So for the US, it looks like just over 10 % of people have delinquent credit card debt, which is the highest it's been since, what does it look like? Like 06, 07, and something like that. And if you look at the poorest 10 % of zip codes, it's way higher. It's like 17 % or 18%. I guess my only way to square this is that, yes, it's whatever, 2 % higher than it was a year ago, going from 8 % to 10%.

29:17But that number is being dwarfed by the people who are still spending more than those people. If that makes sense. Yeah, I agree. That's not a great trend. Yeah, no, it's going the wrong direction. But I think the reason that it hasn't impacted the economy is because, again, the people on the higher end that aren't going into credit card debt are still spending. Do you think that in six months, I don't want to use the word reckoning, are we going to hear more from this chart in six months? Is there going to be a... So when I see this chart, rightly or wrongly, I look at the stock market. I say, okay, what are some of the biggest lenders that are exposed to the consumer doing?

29:51What's Ally doing, right? And they're big in the auto, and the auto space, auto credit's not doing great. I don't have the number of people who pay the minimum payment on their credit card. If credit card rates run from 20 % to 25 % or whatever they've done, and you're making the minimum payment, that doesn't seem like that much. That's a lot. The compounding against you, so I can see how those delinquencies add up in a hurry. I'm literally never getting out of this. Capital One stock is doing fine. Now, you could say, hey, dumbass, what were the charts of the banks doing in 2006, 2007? I'm sure they looked fine then too.

30:24So you're building a basket of consumer shorts here. Well, so the stock market isn't always right. But I don't know. I feel like if this was really a stress, I would not be the first one to point it out. And the lenders would probably be doing less good than they are. So anyway, something to keep an eye on. Definitely not something you want to say. All right. Something else people were dunking out on social media, but I think is actually a fair point. Felix Salmon at Axios wrote this piece called Inflation Doesn't Mean What It Used To. And he wrote, the meaning of the word inflation has changed.

30:53It used to mean rising prices. Now it means high prices. And everyone on Twitter was like, no. And some of their community noted and all this stuff. I sort of agree with that. And I kind of, I don't necessarily agree with it because it's like semantics a little bit. Rising prices, higher prices. But I think this is the kind of thing that the way a lot of people think about it. Because I had a conversation with a friend this weekend. We were talking about like home renovations. And he was like, I looked into stuff and he said just everything is so much more expensive. And people, when they think about inflation, they do think of just high prices being higher.

31:23relative to the past, which again, seems like splitting hairs because of course, prices are almost always going up. Inflation is always going to be higher than it was in the past, but it's just the leap forward that we've made. Well, here's why he's right. If prices didn't go up from today through next Memorial Day, do you think that people would say, oh, wow, everything's so cheap because inflation is zero? No. They would say things are still really expensive. Things still feel expensive. After the 1970s and the early 80s, we obviously never circled back. It's interesting that people eventually just get used to it.

32:00If inflation did slow and it just was at 2 % or 3 % for the next five years or so, some people would still complain, but eventually everyone would just move on and get used to it. This is the new level that people are used to. Yeah, but I think the eventually is longer than you might think. I think the eventually is like three, four years. Yeah, that makes sense to me, actually. And I wonder when it was for the, after the 70s, because the 70s inflation was 7 % a year for like 12 years. It was way, way longer than we've experienced it. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, I wonder how long it took people to get, but think about it though.

32:31In the 80s, it's looked at back as this like greedy decade and people were making money and spending money. It's like the new cycle happened and people kind of, that it was always in the back of people's minds, but people did move on. This decade is nothing like that decade. I mean, needless to say, think about, well, first of all, the stock market's at an all time high. The economy is booming. If you want a job, you can have a job. Not only was it a deep bear market, the worst recession since the Great Depression, and double-digit inflation for years. So do not even utter the 1970s. Come on. Unemployment rate was way higher for much of that decade.

33:09Yeah, you're right. This is not that. And they had no Netflix on top of it all. What did they even do? No skip intro button. You have like three stations on TV. All right. Here's something that doesn't happen in anything outside of a booming economy. On Thursday, May 23rd, TSA officers screened exactly 111 ,000 passengers, employees, and crew through security checkpoints yesterday. So the Atlanta airport is the busiest airport in the United States, and it shattered the previous record. Travel boom is still here. Atlanta is one of the best big airports that there is. I've never been there. Okay, I fly through there all the time because I do Delta.

33:48So anytime we would go south anywhere, we'd fly through Atlanta. My brother used to live there. We're taking a flight next week. Ben and I are going to Charleston. That's right. Live Animal Spirits, talk your book. There we go. Black Friday savings are here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to add new cordless power to your collection. Right now, when you buy a select battery kit from one of our top brands like Ryobi or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tool from that same brand for free. Click into one of our best deals of the season and stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Get Black Friday savings happening now at the Home Depot.

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34:59Okay, what's going on in crypto now? Okay, so there's something strange happening in the crypto universe, which I guess is more or less always the case. Par for the course. Caitlyn Jenner appears to be shilling crypto coins, which I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like that's not legal. I feel like you couldn't really, if you put a name of any sort of BC-less celebrity and said they're shilling a crypto coin, like it wouldn't surprise me anymore. So there's videos of her saying like, get involved. And people are asking like, this can't, this really can't actually be real. And there's speculation of, is she hacked?

35:40It's just like AI and a fake AI thing, which would be, you know, kind of wild and also kind of not too surprising. So I don't know exactly what's happening, but if this is real, what in the world is going on? Somebody tweeted, wait, Caitlyn Jenner is related to the Kardashians, right? Aren't they like ultra rich? why shilling dog shits token on the timeline? Somebody replied, because Chris and the kids are the ones with all the money. And Caitlyn Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner's account, I should say, replied, exactly, LOL. What? The funny thing is, is that getting back to the nostalgia, in the 90s, like no one could sell out to do anything.

36:16And now it's not only can people sell, we've gone past that people can sell out, but it's like people can just shill, and that's okay too. It's not just selling out anymore. It's, I don't care. I'll take money from anyone, anywhere, anyhow. That's where we are. I mean, I don't know. You can't like paint broad brush over crypto, but it would be nice if they could, if somehow this stuff could get shut down a little quicker if it was possible. Yeah, if this is real, I feel like we're going to hear from the authorities, but we'll see. All right. I still have a subscription to the Detroit Free Press from when I lived there.

36:53I like to keep up with - Is that physical? No, this is one of those ones where every six months when my subscription comes up, they're going to raise a price on me. They call me and say, hey, time to re-up. And I say, no. And they say, okay, we'll give you a lower price. Who's your newspaper broker? Myself. I don't need a broker. All right, so this is just a story about the Detroit property market. And they're talking about there's still multiple offer sales going up. and they talk about prices are way lower there than just about anywhere else. They've doubled. They're still low. So they said, for example, the three-bedroom ranch in Garden City hit the market for$130 ,000, quickly sold for$180 ,000 after multiple offers.

37:35There was a$500 ,000 one in Dearborn Heights that was sold in February 2023 and sold again last month for$700 ,000. And they're interviewing all these realtors. Just same thing. Like, you know, anytime a house hits the market and they're going up and down the scale here of prices, that they're getting multiple offers still. And this has to be the worst part about being a person who's trying to buy a house now is that not only did we not get lower mortgage rates, like that was a thing is like, okay, just wait a little bit. We're going to get lower mortgage rates. That'll make things easier. But you're still, there's not any supply and prices are only going up when you bid.

38:12So, and obviously this isn't the same thing everywhere. I'm just using this anecdotally. But there's still places like this where if it's in a relatively desirable area, you're still getting multiple bids and you're having to pay the higher mortgage rates with it. it's just like a double whammy against you that we never got any relief here for anyone buying a house. Yeah.

38:32Assume that rates don't come down. Let's just make believe that rates stay flat for five years and people don't get the opportunity to refi. Are there going to be ramifications from this? Is it going to lead to lower spending from this cohort? Here's the alternative though. Young people are making more money. If they're not buying a house, they're going to be spending it on something else. So what if they're boxed out of the housing market? Let's say you're making more money than you never thought was possible at a young age, but you can't compete with people who already have equity or who have a low mortgage rate locked in or who have a higher income than you or a boomer who has a house paid off.

39:10Then you can spend on other stuff. Maybe this is part of the reason there's a travel boom. It's like, geez, I can't pay for it. I'm never going to be able to afford a down payment on this house. I'm never going to be able to afford the monthly cost. I make some decent money. I'm going to spend it on something else. Has homeownership peaked? No. You think so? Like you think the homeownership rate is going to go down? If mortgage rates stay in the 7 % range is homeownership going to go from 65 % down to 60 %? I guess that's possible. I think that's reasonable. It's too expensive. What kind of economic scenario?

39:48See, this is the thing in terms of like economic surprises is that we just get used to stuff. If you would have told me this two years ago, mortgage rates are still going to be at 7 % in two years, I would have said, you're nuts. There's no way. We can't have that. It would be impossible. And everything is still fine. I think the biggest ramification would be we're not going to build enough housing because homeowners are going to pull back. People are going to pull back on building. It's going to make the supply situation worse. But what economic environment would we have to be in for rates to stay at 7 %?

40:14The economy would have to continue to grow very strong, right? In that scenario? I don't know. Never say never, I guess. By the way, I'm seeing lately too, I just read an article today saying like, listen, the pre-pandemic interest rate period is over forever. And I just wish people would hit the brakes a little bit before they say forever. Because people said interest rates are never gonna rise this high again forever. So anyway, I just caution people to tap the brakes a little bit when we're doing the forever thing. There are certainly scenarios where we could get back to 3 % mortgage rates.

40:53It wouldn't shock me. No, I think that, but the zero era, you think we'll ever see that again? Zero for 10 years? You don't think we're going to, well, 10 years. You don't think we're going to have a financial crisis someday? At some point where, and rates are going to, I don't know. That wouldn't surprise me. Ron Lieber at the New York Times had a good piece about home equity. And in talking about how it's like a first world problem. Oh, no, I have too much home equity, and my house is up, but I can't do anything with it. And he kind of goes through the different ways that you can tap your equity.

41:27You can sell it, but then you have the age-old problem of you have to live somewhere. So what are you going to do now? Buy a higher-priced house? You can cash out refi, which was a way better-looking proposition a few years ago when rates were lower. HELOC also. My HELOC, I checked the rate the other day, is at 8.3%. Those are variable. reverse mortgage, which he said sounds great in theory for people who are, I think it's like 62 and older can do it, but they don't allow many of them and not many people do it. And then he said, there's the, you know, those other kinds of companies that are looking to sell the upside.

41:59We talked to a couple of those companies back in the day that I just, as a business model, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. So my question is like, are we going to see some in your situation, you know, if rates stay higher and make this harder to get people to pull that trillions of dollars they have in equity, will we see some creativity here finally in like making it easier to tap that equity and understanding that people have so much money in their house and it's just like pent up spending just sitting there? Why haven't we seen more creativity here? Or will we? I don't even know enough about this to like say anything.

42:33I just don't know. I'm sure there's regulation and interested parties. There's just so much wealth sitting there in houses that people would spend if they may and maybe back to your first savings at the beginning maybe it's a good thing that people can't tap it because they would just spend it and go to hawaii all the time or i don't know i went to home depot last week to uh do some gardening and i bought a tiller i'm not ben you're probably not a farmer so you might not know what that is it's the machine that rips up the dirt wait you bought a tiller for like your five by five garden I rented one.

43:08Okay. I rented one. 50 bucks. They said - Did you know how to use it? Oh, yeah. I tell. No offense to you. I tell. I would know how to use it. Yeah, no. I know how to use it. Not my first rodeo. So they asked me if I want insurance for 10 bucks. Nah. How many? No. I broke the wheel.

43:28How? Honestly, I don't know. I didn't even wheel it. That's the thing. I carried it to my trunk, and I carried it from my trunk to my backyard. it so i didn't even wheel it so i don't know but the wheel i don't know if the wheel broke when i picked it up or put it down but how much do you have to pay i think they let me go i think they were like just get out of here i'm like you can't just bang it bang it back in anyway my point was that this home depot and obviously this is seasonal but holy cow is it busy busy oh my goodness i can see that i i was never a fan of that place because i feel like i'm just constantly chasing around people in orange aprons and waiting in line while someone else talks to them because I could never find, I know there's an app you can use now, but it was never good for me.

44:07All right. Wall Street Journal, the Home Alone house is back on the market after 12 years. This is just, Home Alone is, is it the most economically dissected movie in history? Ooh. I would have to think about that. Why do you say that? Because of the house and the pizza? Every year, people talk about the cost of the pizza, how much did Mr. McAllister actually earn, what kind of job did he have? So the couple bought it for 1.6 million in Chicago area in 2012. They're selling it for$5.25 million. Listen to this. So originally built in the 1920s, five-bedroom house is 5 ,700 square feet. I looked at this thing.

44:43This is even bigger than it looked in the movie. They have an indoor basketball court in this house. What? A movie theater. This thing is massive. Let me check this out. Scroll down a little bit on the story. There's literally an indoor half-basketball court. This house was massive. So I'm, ooh. I mostly am of the mindset that a bigger house is more of a liability than an asset. The upkeep, right? Yeah. And like all the stuff that we're oohing and aahing eventually loses its cool and, you know, how luxuries turn into, uh, not necessities, but, but norm. Luxuries become the norm. I don't know, man, having a movie theater in your house and a basketball hoop, that sounds pretty awesome.

45:28Yes. Right? But you wouldn't be able to give up going to the movie theater by yourself, though. If I had that movie theater in my house, I'd go to the movie theater every night. Would you take the Home Alone house with people constantly coming to take a picture in front of the house, though? That's the part that would annoy me. I wonder if there's like a... Is there a Home Alone premium or a discount? Because to your point, it must be kind of annoying. Yeah, kind of like somehow people say if you have a pool at your house, it actually detracts the value of the home. Yeah, I wouldn't want people constantly screaming.

45:53But I feel like this house is so... Oh, wow, there are a lot of people in front of it. Never mind. You know, I wouldn't want to live there. Constantly. All right, back to the consumer. I was listening to both Walmart and Target's earnings call to hear what they were saying about the consumer. And they were saying the same thing.

46:15Resilient, consistent. Yeah, consistent, I think was the word that they used. All right, here's Walmart talking about inflation. These are not inflation-driven results. In the US, like-for-like sales inflation was about 40 basis points for the quarter. including mid to single digit deflation in general merchandise and low single digit inflation in food and consumables. Together with our suppliers, we're making progress lowering prices. Our rollback count is up and customers are responding to our price leadership. So they're saying you can't just say that our results of higher sales are because of higher inflation.

46:49The prices are going down, but the results are still going up. Is that what they're saying? Yes. And I think there was a quote about inflation being half of what it was last quarter or this time last year. at my beach club, noodles for the boys, like a kid's meal, I think it was$7. And it definitely wasn't$7 last year. So prices are coming down big time there. That's New York inflation because for us, it's still like three for kids stuff. Three? Three bucks. We're talking, they give them Kraft mac and cheese. Yeah. But what else do the kids expect? Here's another quote. Just, this is a great read through to the overall economy.

47:27I think the analyst question was like, is this as good as it gets? Something like that. And they said, while it might be a little much to expect every quarter to be this good, we feel really good about the performance and it demonstrates how this business can perform when we're firing on all cylinders. Consumer economic conditions have been relatively consistent since the start of the year. Many of the value seeking behaviors we witnessed last year have continued to particularly around seasonal events. Okay, whatever. You don't say that outside of a booming economy. Boomy might be strong. Whatever.

47:57Call it what you want. A very healthy and strong economy. Everyone thought we were going into recession in 2022. What if we really don't get one until 2027, 2028? Then rates will stay higher for longer. Could be. Yeah, but what if we get back into a situation where inflation is back at 2.5%, 3 % and the Fed lowers rates to 4 % or something? That's like, that's a pretty good place if it could happen. Yep. All right. One more survey that I think is actually useful. This is from the Federal Reserve, the economic well-being of US households. So they show the assessment of your own financial well-being versus the local economy and the national economy.

48:47And this is pretty remarkably consistent and is always the case. So everybody says, I mean, not everybody, 73 quarters of the respondents say that their own finances are doing okay. If you look out to the local economy, it goes from 72 down to 42 % in terms of people saying that things are okay. And then the national economy down to 22%. So that's always what it is. Morgan's running on this a lot. I think Derek Thompson's running on this. I'm doing good. My community is doing okay. not as good as I am. And the rest of the country is going to hell. I had a conversation with a person about this this week and an old friend who said, they were talking to a coworker who was saying like the economy is crap right now.

49:28And he told her, you are literally making the most money you've ever made in your life. Your business is booming. Do you really think that it's not like that for other people and it's just you? But I think that is the way people look at it these days. And this is another internet has broken our brains thing. Yeah. You know what? When, when, if you were to say that to somebody, I think I don't think they would say, yes, that's how I feel. I think they would sort of like, they would like hand wave it away. You know what I mean? Because it breaks their brain a little bit because they know it's just, it's a ridiculous premise that I'm doing okay, everyone else is doing terrible.

50:01I'm thriving despite the economy struggling. Like, no, you're not. I do think that like the social media stuff is a piece of just constantly looking at other people. I saw an old friend from high school this week for the first time in a while. And he's always been one of like the most even keeled people that I know. And some of the traits that this guy has are, I kind of am jealous in a way, but he has the ability to not be envious of other people's stuff or not be impressed by what other people are doing. It just like, it doesn't, it just totally bounces off of him. And I feel like most people don't have that ability to just look at what other people are doing and not be somehow jealous.

50:39Like, cause it's like, yeah, I'm doing great, but this person is doing way better than me. So why am I not like them? Yeah. And I feel like that trade in people is really hard to find. Someone who can just be like, I don't know, I don't really care how much money you're making or what toys you're buying. I feel like way too many people are consumed by that stuff. Yeah. I think it's normal. Like, on the way to the beach yesterday, I saw some guy driving a really nice Porsche. And I thought... Oh, back to your car stuff. I thought, yeah, I would love to have that. Like, it's an awesome looking car.

51:14It looks really cool. Now, I wasn't like, oh my God, that guy's so cool. Like, I wasn't thinking about him at all. But like, yeah, I would love to drive that car. Things are just a little more ostentatious today. So I watched, I rewatched for some reason this weekend. It was on Amazon Prime. I kind of had it in the back when I was doing some stuff. You've seen 16 Candles before? Like one of the all-time great 19th movies. I never heard of it. 16 Candles? One of the all-time what movies? One of the all-time great teen, John Hughes. It's Molly Ringwald and Michael Hall. Yeah, early 80s. Okay, hold on.

51:43Before you get to that, in the survey about what year, what decade had the best movies, they said the 80s. I'm sorry. It's obviously the 90s. They probably pulled mostly Gen Xers because it is definitely the 90s. There's a handle on Instagram called The Greatest Scenes of All Time. And they put on Instagram, in October of 1994, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Shawshank, Lion King, and Jurassic Park were all in the theaters at the same time. Jeez. The 90s were clearly the best decade for movies. Yeah, it's never gonna be topped again. But the funny thing is about things being more over the top these days, the movie is about the jock and the girl who's less popular, you know, that has been done a million times.

52:27But the 80s kind of was the first one to do this stuff. So they had a party at the jock's house, Jake. And his parents just have, you always talk about these normal houses that are around you that are going for so much money. It was just this normal house. but his dad was a rich guy and he drove a Rolls Royce. But it was this regular, normal, like split level house. It is weird when you see that. I see that. You do see that. Yeah. People who drive a Maserati and live in a very, very standard house. It's like, that's so just, it's just weird. Speaking of cars, I made a mistake. And I think I'm, I think I could put this car issue to bed, at least for the next three weeks.

52:59I won't talk about it. The check engine light came on again for my wife's car. after being told that they took care of it. They got to the root of the issue. Guess what? Spoiler, they didn't get to the root of the issue. The light came out again. I said, that's it. We're getting a new car. I can't take with the bullshit anymore. So I still owe$31 ,000 on the car. And rookie mistake, this is a PSA. I went to Kelly Blue Book and maybe CarMax, and I put in my VIN, my this, my that, to get a quote. And now my phone won't stop ringing. Oh, I want to buy it from you. So the bad news is I owe, so I owe, I owe 31 ,000.

53:37No, here's a, here's a, play them off against each other. No, dude, the gap is too big. I owe 31. It's worth 16. So that gap is not getting filled. That gap will, Ooh, good one. That gap will never get filled. I am driving this car straight into the dirt. Uh, but now my phone won't stop bringing it. I'm getting text messages from all sorts of dealerships. Kobe turned 16, uh, in eight years or whatever. And he's getting that, this car. Yeah. So stay away from, uh, car quotes. Okay. Ben, I was explaining to somebody who, well, English as a second language, about I got a traffic violation like a year ago that I never took care of.

54:14It was the babysitter drove past a bus that was pulled over. Now, obviously, for obvious reasons, they want to protect the kids. I want to protect the kids. If a bus, a school bus is pulled over with its stop sign out, you can't go past it. Right. Well, they have, uh, there was a video, right? So you could check it. So I'm looking at the video, the bus is pulled over on the side of a main road, lights off and just traffic is just driving by. So all those people got flagged and I never took care of it. I got a second notice and I called them and I'm like, uh, they're like, uh, sorry, it's been over a year.

54:52We can't do anything. If you want to dispute this, talk to a lawyer. I'm like, I'm not talking to a lawyer about, uh, for 250 bucks. So I'm talking to somebody. I'm surprised you don't just have a lawyer and retainer for this stuff because I'm not a broker for you. I don't, I don't have a lawyer. I do not have a lawyer. I stay far away from the lie. I play within the rules. So I'm talking to somebody about this and she said like, so I'm like, wait, actually maybe I should hire a lawyer because I don't want points. And she's like, wait, points are bad. I don't, I'm not understand that. Why are points, and she made a great point.

55:24Why do we, whose idea was it to call the bad things points? Like the insurance company is like mind gaslighting us into thinking that these are actually a good thing. Like you want more points? No, they should be called like, uh, I don't know what they should be called. The points is a interesting choice of words. Some sort of red flag. Yeah. That's a good point. One random observation for you this week, Ben, why do old men love giant belt buckles? I thought it was just guys in the south. No? Listen, I saw two people over the weekend, but that's two. The big old ones? Just big, like a big silver, like a loop design thing.

56:03I've never been a cowboy, so I wouldn't know this, but wouldn't it be uncomfortable when you sit down? Wouldn't it like dig into your stomach? You would think. You would think. Yeah. Remember the popular belt back in the day? It was like braided. That was a 90s thing, the braided belt. That was a big, big 90s thing. And then the front, you'd get a little long so the front end would hang down a little bit. Yes. The great thing about the braided belt is there was no loop. So you could just - That's true, anywhere you wanted, but it would fray eventually. It was very flexible. You lost weight, you gained weight.

56:33That's true. I think a couple of weeks ago I asked, like, why don't we ever hear about how many people are moving and where they're moving to and all this stuff? Jay Parsons did a piece on this and he looked at the data from people 20 to 34, from 2020 to 2023 in the pandemic. Like, where did people move? And he did a chart on this. And by far the biggest one was Dallas-Fort Worth added 123 ,000 young people, which nearly matches the next place finishers of Houston and Phoenix. So you look at the chart here. So Austin is up there, which makes sense. And then some of these other places. Where's the villages?

57:09Yeah, that's a good question. Is that in Florida somewhere, maybe? Looks like a lot of Florida places. But clearly, it's all people going to the South. And there are young people moving away from Los Angeles and New York, which kind of makes sense. Chicago, San Francisco. But it's young people moving to the South. So there are hundreds of thousands of people who are picking up and moving to the South for weather or jobs or whatever. Makes sense. All right, let's do some recommendations. I have heard it's funny whenever we get emails from people now about movies it'll be like I'm a total Michael person for movies or I'm a total Ben person like there's two camps now which is fine to each their own everyone has their own preferences for the past few months a bunch of people have said you have to watch Snack Shack this is a total Ben movie never heard of it I had never really heard of it either so it's one of those movies there's no really actors one of the kids from the original Jurassic World reboot was in it as a little older kid but But more or less, people even, it's the star of the movie, or the second, it's two bros, and it's an assault.

58:15This hits everything I could want in a movie. This is a total bad movie. Dreaming of striking it rich, inseparable best friends, AJ and Moose seize the opportunity to run the local pool's run-down snack shack. However, things take an unexpected turn when they meet Brooke, an effortlessly cool lifeguard who puts their big summer plans and friendship at risk. Yep, that's got Ben Carlsman all over it. TLDR, I loved this movie. This is one of my favorite movies I've seen in a long time. Here's what it had. It took place in 1991. So first of all, I got the 90s nostalgia. It was a party movie. It was a summer movie.

58:46It was a coming-of-age movie. It was also two friends. It kind of reminded me of the friendship. Reminded me a little bit of Seth and Evan in Superbad. It wasn't that funny, but the kid who played Moose, who's like the bro of the tandem, it's just these two kids who are kind of always hustling to make more money, and they make beer in their parents' house. He played young Steven Spielberg in The Fablemans, which I didn't make it very far in. But this kid was so good. And apparently he's going to play Lorne Michael in a movie. But this has the Ben Stamp of approval. This was the most fun I've had watching a movie in a long time.

59:17Okay, can I watch it? I don't know. Give it a try. I think you actually might like this. Because it's kind of raunchy, too. Not raunchy, but vulgar. I do like the premise. And it's just a very simple premise. It's just these two bros who are constantly hustling, trying to make money. All right. My wife and I watched Dune 2. I waited until it hit HBO Max. I'm not going to lie. I was a little disappointed. Now, here's... Let me... That's why... Shame on you. You should have gone to the theater. So here's... It's a visually stunning movie. I'm sure there was a premium by seeing it in the theater.

59:48But here's the problem. I didn't see Dune 1 in the theater either. And I really liked Dune 1. I thought the first one was just better than the second one. No. No. No. So here's what I liked about it. Austin Butler, I thought, was great as the bad guy. I think this is... here's two reasons I didn't, I was a little underwhelmed. I still liked it. I just didn't. Well, reason number one, because your expectations were too high because people like me. Yeah, but I didn't, I liked it. I didn't love it. So I'm just saying, I've seen the first one two or three times. I really liked the first one. I thought it was better.

1:00:17Here's some of the reasons I didn't think I liked it. First of all, the plot is very disjointed. Like a lot of it just. Really? I thought it was very disjointed and kind of like, what's going on here? And just in like a Game of Thrones kind of way. And number two, I think I like Timothee Chalamet more as like the up and coming guy as opposed to the guy because I don't know I'm not going to Lisa and Al-Gaib or whatever you say in Messiah all the time to like some hipster from Brooklyn I just I don't I don't trust him as like being the guy is that fair? well it's your opinion listen again I I perhaps I just thought the movie was you had to see this in the theater I mean that's just what again it was a visually stunning movie.

1:01:01Like when they floated up and down on stuff, like that was amazing. It looked cool. So I saw this on the IMAX screen and when the lights went, when the lights came on, I said that was one of the best experiences I've ever had at the theater. Yeah, I remember you saying that. Now I just, maybe my expectations are true. I just, I liked the first one better. That's all, that's where I land. Okay, I think that's a very, that is a contrarian take. I'm probably in the minority, but I, my wife and I both afterwards, we're both like, wait, what? I was just a little, a little bit of a letdown. Okay. Well, this is why there's Michael people and Ben people.

1:01:32What else? This is true. Oh, Ask the Compound this week. We have Money with Katie on. She's amazing. She's at Morning Brew now. And very refreshing takes from a young person on the money. So I highly recommend. You have her on ATC this Thursday? Yes, this Thursday. Okay. All right. I watched Equalizers 1, 2, and 3 last week. I've seen the first two. Great movies. I didn't feel the need to watch the third. Yeah, I mean, you know, I actually thought the third was the least good of the trio, but I can't wait for the fourth. Like that is a great, that is a couch movie. I'm sure it's fine in theaters too, but you could just watch it at home and just do just fine.

1:02:17Yeah, you don't need to pay attention that much either. No, not at all. A lot of fun. All right, that is it for me. Oh, we had a really good talker book this past Monday talking about venture back dead and all sorts of interesting private credit. I thought that was a really, really fun episode. So check that one out. Animal Spirits at the Compound News. Hope everybody's enjoying the warm weather. Have a great rest of your week and we'll see you next time.

1:02:56Thank you.