Hi-Yo Silver! (EP. 449)

25:23Somebody sent us a chart then, um, with margin debt overlaid with the S &P 500. And we've spoken to a lot about this over the years. They're concurrent indicators. The S &P is at all time highs. You better believe that margin debts can be at all time high. This was a one back in like, I'd say 2012, 2013, where people really hung their hat on like, oh no, margin debts at new all time highs. Watch out. This was a big one. This definitely was, you know we were so you did it as a percentage of market cap and it's obviously much lower all right so if you if you divide it by the russle 3000 market cap it kind of shockingly hit a multi-decade low last year which is really weird that is surprising i wonder if it's because you know what i have a hypothesis who needs margin debt when you could just use levered etfs oh that's true yeah people are using different types of leverage these days counterpoint futures all that yeah counterpoint to what I said 10 seconds ago this is a massive increase over the last 5 months or over the last 12 months I suppose so it went so for people that are listening it went it's been going down for the past since 2018 until 2025 but isn't isn't this just people not wanting to sell and they're finally debarring against their shares I don't know I don't know that'd be my guess not sure alright funny enough I wanted to grab this chart for Grantham because part of his recent for index funds back in the day was not a market efficiency argument.

26:57It was just investing is a zero-sum game. And remove frictions and you'll do better than people. because his analogy was like, if you're at a poker game and you've got some suckers and they just run out and they just stop playing and you're only competing with the pros, it's harder to beat the pros eventually if that's all that's left. And look at this. So anyway, actively managed mutual funds. This is the trial I was looking for. It's updated by Michael Mopasone. He just put out a new piece. Actively managed mutual funds down to the right. Is there a bottom here? like when does this even dry up?

27:34Because it looks like it's almost accelerating. Although it's cumulative. Never mind. Don't you think it's going to accelerate even more? Because the baby boomers in years ahead will be also selling out of their 401ks finally. I mean, they're already doing this. But no, I don't, there is no bottom for this. Yeah. Again, there's a cumulative chart. So I don't know if it's accelerating or not, but. There's still plenty of money in actively managed mutual funds because the market continues to go up. They're not bringing in new money, but the money that they already had is growing because the market is doing so well.

28:02All right, so on the one hand, you have less pros, right? Like less dollars being managed by professional money managers. But you have a lot more retail to pick off now. So this chart, he's got U.S. equity trading volume, institutional versus retail. The problem is retail has been outperforming. That's true. Right? That's got to be the even harder part for actively managed funds. Well, we don't know that for sure. We know that - I'm generalizing. But I would guess retailers are performing more this decade than they have before because of the names that are winning. Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

28:41And so now there are more individuals that own stocks than institutional investors. Yeah, this is kind of an interesting chart, how it totally flipped and now it flips back again. I would love to break out the individuals. How many of these are just CEOs? and people in the C-suites that own these shares. Yeah. I don't know what percentage that is. It's got to be a high percentage, but you're right. The fact that it flips back, that means more individuals are buying and selling stocks now. Well, the chart that I opened the show with where we're talking about like debt as a percentage of household net worth, how much of the household net worth is owned by the top 5 %?

29:24Yeah, well, that's true. A decent amount. So it doesn't invalidate. Two-thirds of the net worth is owned by the top 10%. 67%, 70%, something like that, yeah. All right, speaking of top X percent, I wanted to play this video. This is just wild. Let me share my screen. We are going to give guidance at some point to see what is a mom and pop that someone, maybe your parents for their retirement have bought 5, 10, 12 homes. So we don't want to push the mom and pops out. So they're talking about the new proposal. law about blocking institutional investors from. So you never watched Arrested Development, right?

30:03I never would. No. Okay. I think it's one of the greatest sitcoms ever. This is Lucille Booth. It's a banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10? That's that quote, obviously. Yeah. I mean, could you imagine being so out of touch? I don't know. When you've been rich for decades and decades, like you have to be out of touch. You have to. There's no other way, you know, flying on private jets. And of course. Why do you think so many celebrities go nuts? No one ever tells them no. They can get anything they want anytime they want. They fly on private jets, of course. Could you, I just had a thought.

30:42Bear with me.

30:46Duncan, hold my beer. I'll be right back. Give me like two minutes. Okay. Okay. So I, yesterday during our snow day, I was cleaning out. I've got like a chest on wheels that we need to like get rid of. So I opened the chest and I saw all of these like stacks of photos, like family photos. And I don't even know how I ended up with them. I have never seen most of these. So we've spoken in the past about the houses that we grew up in and not just us specifically, but our generation, what everything looked like. We're speaking today about how much money people have. Kitchens today look very different than they used to.

31:27So look at the kitchen that I grew up in. Here's a picture of my mother, who I miss very much, in Merrick. This is what kitchens used to look like. Man, that's actually not bad for some 80s kitchens, though. Like just, I mean, the microwave was, you know what? You know what? I don't think this microwave ever worked. In fact, I'm pretty, I'm almost positive. I never turned this microwave on. God only knows what the dishwasher was, but it was just like, do you remember how much wallpaper there used to be in, uh, in houses? Just walls everywhere, right? Like everything was walled off. I don't know what that countertop is.

32:03What do you call that? Like formica? Formica. Yeah. It would start peeling and the edges would fall off a little. Yeah. And it was, and it was just, it was just peeled forever. You never fixed anything. We never got a new couch. You cleaned the carpet. Some people came to steam the carpet once every other year or whatever. And I know my neighborhood is not any wealthier than it was when I grew up. It's the same people that live here. All right. Put a pin in this one. I got something for you for this for later too. Okay. Last week you asked, why isn't the dollar falling? Because everything going on in the world right now.

32:41And then the dollar fell. The dollar rolled over. Yeah. And it's rolling over. It's kind of back to the lows now, even below the Liberation Day stuff. So this is another reason why international stocks are doing well, obviously. The funny thing is, if you do a zoom out here, you know I'm a big zoom out guy. This is the dollar going back to the early 1970s. You can see there are huge moves in the 80s. The dollar was going nuts in the 80s. Way higher, way lower. It's all over the place. It's essentially unchanged since 1975. The dollar has gone nowhere. So you get these cycles. And, you know, it's been up ever since the GFC, basically, with some snapbacks.

33:19But over the very long haul, these currencies don't move all that much against each other. A few questions slash comments, thoughts about precious metals. And I'm not saying this because I'm bitter about selling silver 90 % ago. So it's up another 6 % this morning or this afternoon, I suppose. It was up even higher. Look at this chart. This thing looks like a meme stock. It's unbelievable. So my two, you know, I get first question first. Is this, I don't know anything about like precious metals and inputs and stuff, but like, are there things that are going to break as a result of this? Just like manufacturing jewelry, for example, obviously.

33:55I don't know anything. I guess my question would be anything big enough to matter, like macro wise, probably not. I mean, it's up 55 % this month, this, this year silver's up 55%. But silver is an input. it. Like it is an industrial metal. It's not just for watches or necklaces. We don't fight with swords anymore. So I think we're okay there. Uh, and maybe this is a chart crime. You know, the, the chart crimes that really get me on the people on, on social media love to do the thing where they compress the chart really close together. So anytime a line goes up, it looks just going nuts. Even if it could be going from like 80 to 82, it looks like the guy's going straight up that's that's criminal yeah um but this looks like that over the long horizon and so i have to imagine we're on we're in like meme stock territory here where people like the reddit people have to be in on this and like the all right so that's my that's my question they have to be in on this so who's buying it today it has to be all these other people that are just i don't get i mean my whole thing has always been because we've had a few people try to dunk on us like hey you guys totally missed the precious metal move and my thing has always been i wrote about this like 10 years ago.

35:07You don't buy and hold commodities. It's trend following. That's it. So when a trend starts, you follow it, right? And I'm sure that a lot of trend followers have hopped on this, but this is also reached now. It's not just trend following. This is fad investment territory, right? Someone this morning, I posted this chart on Twitter and they said, I think you're nuts if you're long or short this right now. Oh, that's good. And that's actually a pretty good way to think about this. Well, actually, Todd Sohn has a chart showing the volume in one of the inverse silver ETFs, which was dead for a while.

35:42Like, nobody put any money in there. The volume is going nuts. Oh, people are playing against it now? Okay. There's plenty of people that are shorting it. Now, I don't even know. I don't know. Are there a lot of vehicles that you can leverage up to go long this too? Is that happening as well? It has to, right? I don't know. I don't know. But it is wild. It is wild to see. not being a silver person it's a five it's a five trillion dollar asset class now and it's going literally vertical so i pulled up the drawdown chart for price of silver going back to like the 60s there's been some massive drawdowns obviously the 1980s thing gold and silver just because they went so crazy in the 70s it was down like 90 from i don't know 1980 to 2000 or something well coming off the gold standard might have yeah that that totally but it also had a 66 correction correction in the 2010s.

36:29So not that long ago, like this thing is extremely volatile. Well, how about this? I'm asking who's buying it now. That was me. I bought the top in 2011 at 50 bucks. Yeah. I guess if you're a trader though, you just have, this is trend following rules. If you're not, but listen, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not mad that people are making money. Like I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a positive, I'm a positive, some thinker. So I'm not bitter. I'm happy for people that are making money. I think the story is fascinating that the real stuff is winning. I would have been, if you would have asked me a few years ago, hey, the dollar is going to be falling and people are worried about like the system or whatever, what's the play?

37:03I would have said crypto, definitely. And look at this. That is the interesting dichotomy is that like Bitcoin is digital gold. Nobody wants digital gold. I would have been totally wrong about this. So Mike Zaccardi posted the gold and Bitcoin market caps. Gold market cap is now over$30 trillion. and Bitcoin is essentially, I mean, this is kind of hard on this chart to see, but hasn't moved very much in the last two to three years. Right? If you look, this is since the start of 2025. Okay? Gold is up. Look at the next chart I put in. Okay. Oh, I did this. Look at mine. I went back further than you.

37:44We did this. Wow. So since the start of last year, Bitcoin is essentially unchanged. It's down 4%. Silver is up 250 % and gold is up 90. Again, I never would have imagined this. Bitcoin is like Zima. And investors are like, just give me the f***ing booze. Get out of here with that nonsense. But I guess this is, is this still like a central bank story? Because I thought Michael Sembla said, that's not just that, right? That it's not just central banks buying this. There's obviously, so where is the buying pressure coming from? Well, I think they're the biggest buyer. Okay. But that was the hope for Bitcoin.

38:16Like, listen, corporations are going to buy this stuff. And then maybe someday governments will buy it. But you're right. Who's buying it today to send it up 7 % after this run-up? It can't just be Reddit, people. That's my only guess. I don't know. That's my best guess. It's nuts. It's a crazy move. Wild. Credit to the gold bugs. The 2020s were not a kind environment. Is it silver bugs, too? Is it a different name for silver bugs? I don't know. But credit to them. But I mean, historically, this asset class, precious metals, has been huge booms and huge busts. That's the history of it. These massive gains and then these massive losses.

38:58That's like what it does. All right, let's do some economic stuff. Taurus and Slack at Apollo is like a, what does he call this thing? Let's see. Daily and weekly economic indicators. All right, so daily data, restaurant bookings are solid. TSA air travel, solid. Daily debit card data, solid. on the weekly data. All solid. Is there anything that's like not? All right. Mostly good. Mostly good stuff here. I picked out a few. Daily data for U.S. air travel. I can't believe this. 2025, despite a big decrease in foreign travel, like still record numbers, close to record numbers. And during COVID, we thought business travel was dead.

39:41At least I definitely did. Forever. I did too. And dead wrong. Are you ever on a flight that's not almost all full these days, every flight I've taken is almost always full. Nope. Right? You're almost surprised when it's not full now. I can't tell you the last time that the seat has been open next to me. Right? That's a great feeling, though, isn't it? Especially on the morning flight. When no one sits next to you. So good. All right. Weekly job openings. This is a bit concerning. Just down to the right. If you're out of work, this is not an easy time. Counterpoint. We're back at 2019 levels. No.

40:19Not a counterpoint? That doesn't count? I thought we said a lot of these job openings were fake. I thought that was the story we went with. Yeah. So 4 ,000 down, whatever. Normalizing seemed appropriate, but this is way past normalizing. Also, no layoffs. So if you have a job, you're okay. And if you don't, tough nuggies. That's the weird part about it, though, right? Openings are closing, but people aren't getting fired. Not good. All right. According to Moody's, the share of total outlays going to those in the top 20 % of the income distribution, making over$175 ,000 per year nationwide, increased to nearly 60%.

40:59There's another new high in the data we've constructed back to 1989. So the title of this chart says it all. The economy is increasingly K-shaped. Bottom 80 % taking less of the pie, top 20 % taking more. This is spending, personal outlays? Yeah. Holy smokes. Yeah. But good news to counter that increasing inequality. Jeff Weniger tweeted, everyone thinks credit card trouble is compounding, but the data shows the opposite. My guess, if you send this chart to a friend, they will have no idea that delinquencies have been falling since 2024. So remember when credit card debt hit a trillion dollars and it was like a big thing just because it's, hey, round numbers, everyone likes round numbers.

41:40I think it's at 1.2 trillion now, 1.3 or something. I mean, yeah, it still hasn't led to the end of the world. Credit card data is not going to be the tail, I don't think. I think that's like a concurrent indicator. When things go bad, credit card data will go bad. It's not going to like front run things. How's that? This is not going to be a macroeconomic indicator. You don't think it's going to be a leading indicator? No. Fair?

42:08there's a whole rich data set of this i feel like we don't need to speculate either credit card credit card either is or is not a leading indicator you need to learn how to you need to learn how to vibe code all right i hate that term i'm sorry i don't love it that's okay i don't love it either um it's just not gonna be me yeah i'm gonna survive life without probably ever vibe coding. It's going to be okay. I'm going to make it. I looked at, I googled the Claude Code thing. I clicked it. Eh, not for me. No. If I get left behind by the robots, so be it. All right. Here is a study from the Kiel Institute.

42:50American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost of tariffs. Foreign exporters absorb only 4 % of the tariff burden. And the remaining 96 % is passed through to U.S. buyers. So that's the companies and the consumers. So I guess the way you think about it, so it says they did all these studies. So U.S. customer revenue surged by$200 billion in 2025, a tax paid almost entirely by Americans. Now that sounds like a big number, right? $200 billion. I guess this is probably the reason, though, that it hasn't had an economy-wide impact yet. Because in a$33 trillion economy,$200 billion is just not a lot of money.

43:24right so this has been a like minor tax on probably small businesses and consumers but not enough to warrant like a macroeconomic calamity right yeah all right so you talked about housing before uh someone sent me this i thought this was a really cool inflation calculator what should i spend uh click on the link there so it looks at you can pick a year every five years or something go back to 1970. And basically it shows you what the price was in 1970, right? So this is a gallon of gas, a gallon of milk in 1970. If it just followed the price of inflation till today, what would it cost? Well, a gallon of milk would cost$11 if it just followed inflation, but it's actually only like$4.

44:05So it's cheaper than you would expect based on inflation. And I did this for things like eggs and a gallon of gas and movie tickets. Surprising movie tickets actually have not kept up with inflation. What do you pay? Cause you go all the time. $10 is probably about what I pay for a matinee with my kids. What do you pay for a movie ticket in New York? $15? $20? It depends if I'm going to a Regal or an IMAX. Those are obviously more expensive. But the local one is probably, I don't know,$14. Okay. So the one that is the biggest difference, obviously, of all these, and college tuition is one of them, but a median home.

44:37So a median home in 1970 was$17 ,000. If it followed inflation, that would be up to$140 ,000. The actual median price today is like$400. So it's saying housing is way more expensive, has been way higher than inflation over time. So I wrote back, so I wrote back and I said, here's the hard part to calculate. I wrote the guy who created this little tool that emailed me. I said, housing today is so much nicer. So how do you account for that in inflation? Right? There's more bathrooms. There's more bedrooms. The kitchens are nicer. The appliances are nicer. Does that account for all the inflation?

45:15Of course not. Housing has just gotten more expensive. And it really was the 1970s that made housing take off as an asset. Everything else did so much worse in the 1970s. Sneak preview from my new book. I'm right about this a little bit. Everything else did so much worse. The only asset class that did well in the 1970s, besides gold and precious metals, was housing. That was the thing that got people interested in housing to begin with as an investment. What's your new book called? Risk and Reward. How long have you been writing it for? I turned in my last edits last week. Comes out in May, I think, hopefully.

45:46So, yes. I've really been writing. This is a 10-year project for me. I've kind of been writing this since I started my blog. How's that? Love it. Speaking of prices, I went to, I did one, I needed to get bananas. So I got a bushel. Unbelievable value. It was like$3. I've been saying this, remember? It's crazy. Yeah, you've been on this corner. My wife is like, why do you always buy so many bananas? And I'm like, because you're bound to get one or two bad ones. And they caught it for 10 of them or something. It costs$3 and 50 cents. Why not buy more than you need? Great point. On the other side of value, Starbucks.

46:24Listen, I'm addicted. They won't lose my business, unfortunately. But I went this morning and I got a little like carton of one of their like chocolate protein drinks. I forget what it's called. It doesn't matter. And two egg bites. Like little round eggs that they put in the oven. And this isn't egregious, I suppose, but it feels insane. And it was$11.50. Yeah, but they know they have everyone hooked. It doesn't matter. My wife loves to go to Starbucks and my kids have the breakfast sandwiches or the cake pops or the banana bread or whatever. Isn't that nuts? It was like$12 for a little carton of milk and two things of eggs.

47:09As a non-Starbucks user my entire life, I have no frame of reference here. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Ben. I chat GBT'd something the other day and it was just not such a profound realization. But you should never say, I don't know. Now you could say it out loud, but like there should never be an excuse for not knowing something. Because back in the day, or even like with Google, you would like Google something, you're like, they would like send you to an article. You're like, that's a lot of work. Now you literally just say, hey, what is this? And I can't remember what I asked it, but it was something that like, you know, it's something that I probably should know.

47:44And I didn't know because I don't know most things. My kids ask all the time because my son loves to ask questions, just inane questions. And he'll go, look it up on chat. Hey, what year was this college formed or whatever? We went to a college basketball game this weekend. What year did the college start? And then it has the whole history of it too. So he's like always constantly reading me and asking these things. Yeah, but like, yeah, it's great. Like it all, hey, but you know what's annoying about ChatGPT? They have like your search history, but like they don't have every search. It's like, I don't know, it seems like random.

48:13They have like every fourth search. I think they drop off eventually. I have my list right, oh, is that what it is? Or sometimes your searches just go on to other ones and you can't see it. But I ask it everything. Like I, I'd be very embarrassed if you saw what I asked it. So please don't look, but there are some very basic things that I, that I just, you know, just got by me. All right. Um, all right. Another one, Torsten Slott, he shows that the, all the profit margin expansion in the S and P 500 has come from tech stocks, right? The green bars are everything else. Orange bars tech. You can see the orange getting much bigger and that's leading the charge higher.

48:47Couldn't you say that the way you measure success in AI is if it makes the green bar go higher? and not just the tech stock margin expand. Absolutely. When you say that's like, if AI really is a success, it's going to make all these other companies more efficient. I mean, some people might say that's not a success because who knows what that means for jobs. But that would be a test for me to see, does it really help all these other companies or not? I agree. All right. A bunch of people sent us this New York Times story about prediction markets. Betting on prediction markets is their job. They make millions.

49:19Welcome to the era of the poly market sharp. They talk about this guy who quit his job as a CPA. He made his first$100 ,000 betting these markets. And he's talking about how he's betting on Trump speeches, whether he's going to say hottest or big or radical or rigged or all these different words that you can bet on now. He says he's got like 500 bets going on at once. This one kind of was tough. I'm so terminally online. I don't think I even recognize my own neighborhood. I spend maybe 16 hours a day on the computer. I should get out more. This is the guy that he does this. And they profile all these people who this is their job now.

49:55Like they figured out a loophole or whatever. They're good at it. They'd make a bunch of money. This is the interesting part about these markets. And they interviewed this one guy who said he preferred to be anonymous because he didn't want any attention from the IRS. But he said, if I made$2.5 million last year, someone else lost that. And I think that's the hard part. These companies are going to have a hard time getting really big scale like they want, is in the stock market, it's not a zero-sum game, right? Just because you make a bad bet on a company and underperforms doesn't mean, like, if you could have just been in actively managed mutual funds for the past 15 years and underperformed the S &P, you still did pretty well, even if you underperformed by a couple hundred basis points.

50:37In these markets, you constantly need new people in them because there's going to be a lot of people who are just going to lose and give up. I'm not putting more money on this. I just lost five bets. I guess now is a good time for me to raise my hand. You're into it? No, I'm one of these idiots. I'm on the other side. No, that's what I mean. I'm saying you're playing these now, prediction markets? Do you listen to the podcast? Well, just Seattle Seahawks. Are you the only person not dunking on me? Thank you, Ben. You're taking it easy on me. There was a lot of people in my inbox last night after the game.

51:10Oh, well, of course. Seahawks are never going to win this overall. Let's be honest. Come on. That was an awesome game. and did that fourth and four. So you're forced to root for the Patriots now. I'm forced to root for the Patriots. So yeah, not a great feeling, not a great place to be. I mean, objectively, the Seahawks clearly look like the best team in the league. But wait, are you making a bunch of other bets on these prediction markets now, or is that the only one? No, but this is what I've been saying. The stock market is positive some. You stick around long enough, generally speaking, you don't act like a complete maniac and you will make money so somebody emailed me this morning something about like how does it feel or whatever i can't it wasn't that nasty but like you risked 100 to make 14 yeah i did that was the calculus i said like yeah i could lose if they win i'm gonna lose all my money that's how it works and if they don't win the super bowl i'll make 14 but this is like it's not fun to lose 100 of your of your money another thing with the stock market is generally speaking, bets don't go to zero overnight.

52:16I mean, if you're trading options, they do, but you could be wrong and lose 20 % and still walk away with 80 cents. So what I think is happening is I do think that the prediction market is here to stay. I think it's going to be bigger. I think it's going to be much bigger and more liquid than it is today. I also think that a lot of the early success is sending a wrong signal to some of these companies that are going all in. Robin is an example. They've never seen this sort of adoption. Yeah, but I think that they're extrapolating too far. I think that the hardcore people that we're going to predict are already doing it.

52:57I don't think they're going to expand the pie. I don't think you can annualize the growth. I think what it is is there. But I don't think it's all nonsense. I think just in terms of like wisdom of the crowds and information and seeing what's implied in this decision or in that decision, I think it's cool. Like, I think there's a lot of good things about it. Like, we're going to obviously rely on prediction markets for elections going forward as a better source of truth than whatever it's done previously. But yes, this idea of betting on everything, I don't know, you know, I'm not super into that.

53:33But the one way that we'd be kind of wrong here, I guess, would be if these companies just supplant all the online gamblers. If FanDuel and DraftKings are hurt because these just take over sports gambling, they'd be bigger than we think. That'd be the one thing that would make us - Yeah, I guess my point is, like, is it going to, are other areas of the betting markets going to grow? Like, I, yes, but no. And also, listen, if the Patriots win, I know we're two weeks away. I'm sorry, if the Seahawks win, I promise I'll be okay. and if you want to check in and give me a little a little ribbing which I've received several of those that's fair game where you know it's fair game I would be I would be hey you put it out there you could have you could have kept it yourself if you wanted yeah this is you know this is part of the fun it's okay right um all right uh oh here's this is not a great chart um weekly data for home sales uh hey speak for yourself this is great for some people good for buyers yeah yeah But no, it's not even.

54:35Why? If houses are staying on the market longer, this is great for buyers. Wrong. Why? Because buyers are not finding value. It means the prices are still too high. Yeah, and they have to come down. They're going to come down. Otherwise, you're not going to sell. You just move the goalposts. It's not good for buyers. They're not buying because they're not finding value. These homes are still way too expensive. And that's why the days are going up. This is becoming a buyer's market. That's why this is a good thing for buyers. Fine. Maybe trend in that direction, but it's, it's at the highest level since like COVID.

55:08If your house starts sitting on the market for one month, three months, six months, like you start, you're going to take eventually, okay, I'll take a lower offer. I'm going to cut the price. I would hope so. Yeah. Otherwise it's not going to happen. Anyway, housing market is still frozen. All right. You've talked about this before, how the financial media hates private credit. Maybe they don't hate it, but they want to see its downfall. There's two big headlines this week. BlackRock cuts the value of private debt fund by 19%, waives fees. And then another one, private credit investors are cashing out in droves.

55:46And I think anytime something like this happens, the media is going to pounce on it. Because I think they want to be first to any potential sign of a crisis in this space. Is that fair? Yes. Even if, and I think you pointed out, both of these stories were kind of, I don't know, nothing burgers. They didn't, there wasn't much substance there. Well, also the media loves just this idea that like, it's bullshit. The marks are fake. Investors being lied. It's juicy. It's a juicy story. Right. So Matt Levine had a really good take on the marks. He said, broadly speaking, the point of private credit is that you don't have to worry about the marks very much.

56:22That's the, that's the whole point. So he says you make the loans. These are loans. I'm not trading them. I'm lending money and the company's paying me back. What are the marks? So he says the loan, you make the loan 100 cents in the dollar, eventually it either gets paid back or it isn't. If it's paid back, then it was worth 100 cents in the dollar. If not, it's not. Eventually, you find out the answer. He says your fund's estimates along the way are some of the second order interest. But if you are a buy and hold investor, it just don't matter that much. Now, here's where it does matter. Because the fact that more retail and more advisor clients are in this space, they're not buy and hold investors.

56:55They're going to want to get out. And that's when there's a problem is when you try to add more liquidity to the space. That's where the problems happen. And that's where the headlines are going to happen. Yes. So it's a time horizon mismatch. You're right. If there's a company that defaults, then of course, that's, you're not going to get paid back or not a hundred cents on the dollar. So that's the thing. Right. So my take on, on tricolor and first brands when it happened, when was that even? Was that, was that September? Yeah, that was, I guess it was a story and then it, then it kind of went away.

57:24Right. All right. So my take at the time was like everything else, unless this was the big one. And Jamie was right that there were more cockroaches. I guess there were two cockroaches or three. So my, my, you know, I, when you were out, when you were in the suit with Shonali, I said, I think this is going to fade away. Maybe I'm wrong, but, uh, I don't know. So far I feel like I'm right, but. How about this? There's only more cockroaches when there's a recession. Like all this stuff people worry about. Just wait till the recession. All right. The wall street journal had this article. The Americans who are going a whole month without buying anything, just like dry January, people are doing dry, no buy January.

58:01Okay, so they profile all these people who decide if the whole month of January, like besides necessities, we're not buying anything. This one dad said he's got three kids. He's locking up his credit card. Unless you need it, like we're going to talk about this before you spend something. Not to be a personal finance scold. These kind of things don't work. Right? The crash diet, my favorite book on this, one of my favorite behavioral books is called Mindless Eating. And the stat they give that stuck with me forever is 95 % of diets, people end up gaining all the weight back. And I think if you go into it like this, instead of developing good habits like that, it's just not going to help.

58:41Well, yeah, but I hear you. But if you don't spend the money in January, that's good. It doesn't mean that you're going to like – Maybe you learn stuff. Like maybe I don't need this to buy this much stuff anymore. I can pick and choose. You're right. But I just think these crash courses just don't, they don't work very well. Yeah. I guess the only thing that I would say is if you, if you spend$600 a month on things you don't need, and then one of those months you don't spend that 600 bucks. All right. That's 600 bucks in your pocket. By the way, everyone has a friend who does dry January and you're like, oh, he's doing because he's an alcoholic, right?

59:17You have that friend at the kids' games who's like, oh, I'm just counting down the days until dry January is over. It's like, you're not really helping yourself that much here, right? Anyway. I thought this was interesting. This is from J.P. Morgan did this guide to retirement thing, right? Just look at the guide to the markets. And they show percentage of people with 401k loans are credit card debt. It peaks at midlife, which makes sense because that's when spending peaks, right? I took this data from the BLS. You're spending peaks at age 45 to 54. It goes up until then, then it goes down, right?

59:48And you spend less as you age, which is probably surprising for some people and why people end up with more money in retirement than they think. But look at the percentage of households who still hold credit card, like a revolving credit card debt in retirement. That is interesting. It's almost 40 % at age 65. That's a really high number, right? Yeah, wow. Higher than I would have thought. Okay, what do we got on movie theaters? All right, somebody sent this to us. here's the headline. Are movie theaters cool again? Gen Z's hottest club might just be the multiplex. Here we go. Last year, there was a 25 % increase in the theater attendance for members of Gen Z, according to the annual Strength of Theatrical Exhibition Report from Cinema United, the world's largest exhibition trade association.

1:00:32Likewise, the number of Gen Z moviegoers who visit theaters at least six times a year rose from 31 % in 2024 to 41 % last year. Gen Alpha is even reporting higher levels of interest in going to the multiplex. or that's a survey, whatever. While 45 % of millennials and 48 % of Zoomers said they enjoy watching films on the big screen versus at home, a solid majority of Gen Alpha, 59%, said they favor the theatrical experience. Did a movie theater rate this survey? There's no way these numbers are correct. 25 % more Gen Z went to movies last year? No way. You believe this? um I have not seen the methodology come on man think about it I'm telling you I have noticed a material uptick in attendance at theaters lately that's possible okay so the big worry about Netflix which it sounds like the Netflix Warner Brothers thing is just done like their Lucas Shaw wrote about he's like listen this unless Paramount substantially increases that like this is it.

1:01:38This is the deal. Paramount stock is getting just Paramount's in a Paramount stock got cut in half, uh, in like four months. Like what are they going to do? It was funny. Cause someone made the point of like Paramount is a, it's, I don't know, 12 or$13 billion company. They were trying to buy a company that's like six times the size of them. That should have been your tell. Like maybe this isn't going to happen. Uh, so Ben Thompson had the Greg Peters is the co-CEO of Netflix on his answer checkery and his podcast. And I listened to it and it's interesting. All the stuff people are talking about the industry are the movie theaters right and when he asked him like he goes why did you do this deal what's you know because you've said in the past you don't want to do he talked a little bit about movie theaters and keeping that and he kind of it was a brush off answer but he really he talked about hbo a lot and i think that netflix knows that they have a quality hole quality void in their programming it's just it's not the same and i think i think the hbo part of it is probably a bigger deal than the movie theaters here like they want higher and they were like, listen, we're going to keep all the HBO people.

1:02:38All right. We're going to let them do what they do and create quality content. And he didn't really say whether he's going to bring them together. I'm sure HBO is going to have its own tile on Netflix or something. It would be amazing if we can have more HBO quality content. So like, for example, I watched his and hers. So six episodes, I'll watch anything that's six episodes. And it was good. It was fun. It was like legitimately good. It was like typical Netflix B minus type of thing, right? Like the ending made no sense, but like someone died. Who is it? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. If we could have like more high quality programming, who says no?

1:03:18Yeah. So I liked that part of it, that like, okay, good. They're not going to like, they're not going to try to mess with HBO, at least as of now, I hope. Sinners led the, led the field. 16 Oscar nominations. That's a lot. horror is very back weapons got a nod but you think Sinners is a horror movie Frankenstein got nine Sinners is not like a traditional horror movie no I guess it has elements of a horror movie it's in the category I rewatched the first like 10 minutes of From Dusk Till Dawn because I think like a lot of people when they saw Sinners I enjoyed it I had a good time overhyped in my opinion I rewatched it I agree it was fun I don't know 16 Augusta nominations sounds like a stretch I think it was a very good movie not a great movie that's where I fall on it I really liked it I didn't think it, I didn't love it.

1:04:04Yeah, I really liked it too. I mean, I liked it. I don't know if I really liked it. So I thought from Dusk Till Dawn, I rewatched the first 10 minutes of From Dusk Till Dawn, amazing. Now, I'm pretty sure, I mean, the first 10 minutes. I remember, I only watched it once. I remember not liking it. Oh, I saw From Dusk Till Dawn a dozen times. I mean, obviously. But I'm pretty sure that the last, it's been a minute, but I'm pretty sure the last 20 minutes from Dusk Till Dawn is an absolute joke. I think I remember a vampire playing the guitar of somebody's body. Like the body guitar. It was eating somebody.

1:04:37Yeah, it got really bad. I'm pretty sure it fell apart at the end. All right, just a random chart as we wrap up. Las Vegas tourism. You would have thought from what we read that it's like in the shitter. It's not. It's sideways. Isn't that surprising? It is funny how people like to pick on Vegas for some reason. as a big economic indicator. Like, yeah, Vegas is dead. No, it's not. All right, Ben, I got a parking ticket for backing in. Wait, what do you mean? There's head-in parking only in the train station. Really? Yeah. So I backed my car and... All right, so... Wait, I love that rule. That's amazing.

1:05:23No, you do. I take the 803 train and the parking lot is full at 803. And I have a big parking lot. Like there's got to be, there's got to, I mean, there's literally got to be a thousand spots. It's expansive. And at 803, it's, it's, it's standing room only on the 803 train now. Like, I don't know, you know, people are back in the city, but anyway, the parking lot is full. So I was driving past, I'm like, oh shit, I literally think I'm going to have to like miss a train. So I saw a spot. I jammed in my brake instead of like backing all the way up. there was cars behind me. Instead of backing all the way up to parking and head in, I just backed it in.

1:05:56Why do you think they have that rule? I'm curious. I guess they're like, no, don't show off, asshole. You want to brag? You want to brag? You'll get a ticket. I hate when people back in. I hate it. It really annoys me. Because you're going and then they have to stop and you have to kind of back up and wait. And people think it's safer for some reason, but you're just making everyone else wait for you. And I know this is your point. Giant trucks need to back in. They think they need to back in, but that's - the I'm look how cool I am. No, no, no. They do. You, you can't, you know, physics, geometry angles.

1:06:26Um, all right, Ben, what did you, uh, what did you get into this week? All right. Uh, so the guy from free solo, did you ever watch that doc? Yeah. Yeah. Very good. So he climbed Taipei one-on-one as you know, my son is a big skyscraper guy. So he, when he saw this, he's like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So when I was in Grand Rapids, George made me watch on YouTube, like the 10 tallest skyscrapers. And it's something tells me, something tells me he's seen that one before he's got them all memorized he knows how many floors they are he knows how tall they are so we watched it and uh that guy is insane like it was it's kind of funny we probably watched the first 20 minutes and we didn't watch it live and then they're like kind of kids kind of get more like can we just fast forward to the end and uh we got through my my daughter's like he didn't die can't believe it but um i don't know how that guy like he should like his level of calm.

1:07:17Like he climbed literally the top of like the spire and there's like a little thing, little circle on top, you know, like that. Yeah. He stands up on it and he, he looks like he's just cool as a cucumber. It's super windy. He's taking a selfie. I'm worried this guy's going to fall from that thing. Uh, so it was, it was very interesting. I just think, so Netflix is obviously getting into way more live content like that. Don't you think he's wasting his talents? Like he should be a day trader. Holy, he could, it does seem like he's taking the limitless drug or something. Um, I listened to, I I'm probably halfway through your CAA book that you told me to listen to the James Andrew Miller one.

1:07:51How great is that? Uh, very good story. Uh, I would never want to be an agent. It's kind of funny. Like they talked about the one agent, uh, shacked up with Allie McGraw for a while. And she's like, why would someone want to do this? Like you get calls from crazy people in the middle of the night. And, but the way that they went up to study about their business is interesting. I thought the interesting part, the most interesting part of the book is that mailrooms don't exist anymore. And you hear all these stories back in the day, like all three of the guys, three of the founders, like started in a mailroom at an agency and work their way up.

1:08:16You hear a lot of stories like of people had Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs who I started in the mailroom and then I worked my way up and now I'm a partner. That never happens today. I'm pretty sure I asked Chad Chabity what exactly happened to the mailroom. And it's exactly what you think it is. Like it's mail. It's mail sorting and dropping it off. But the concept seems so like dated. It's like there was an actual mailroom. Yeah. But the idea that you would have to start there and obviously they kept it for CA to like, it was kind of like a, you have to put in your lumps and then you work you know figure it out from there but that whole starting at the very bottom working right up there running the company that just that can't happen anymore right it doesn't happen nope nope all right uh i told you i finished landman finished the new season i thought it kind of went off the rails a little bit and i still love billy bob i think i i think the third like someone there was a death there was a weird college story i think i i'm probably good at the show.

1:09:12I think that's where I pointed. Wait, who died? Did I miss that part? The son who seems like he's in a different TV show. Someone tried to assault his fiance and he killed him. Anyway, spoiler alert. It was entertaining. I think the show is about ready to completely go off the reel. So that's where I'm good. All right. I hear you and it's totally possible. I actually think that this season was terrible and yet I enjoyed every bit of it. I want to say terrible and nothing happened. It wasn't terrible. That's, that's kind of, but like it was, it was not, it didn't, it didn't move the story forward.

1:09:48So I actually think that season three might bring it back and something might actually happen. Okay. I did think that they didn't use Andy Garcia enough. Like he was there. I thought he was going to be a really good character and he kind of didn't do much. So anyway, it's an entertaining show, but it's the, the amount of cringe moments that they have are, it's, it's a lot of cringe stuff. Like I love it. I'm all in. All right. But yeah, of course, I hear you. All right. This is my type of film, Ben. Mercy. It looks like Minority Report. This is the new Chris Pratt one? Yeah. The critics gave it a 21.

1:10:20The audience gave it an 82. Say no more. I can't wait. Over-the-top action, kind of cheesy, but it's still entertaining. Let's really land in there. Yeah. I have not been to the theater. I'm falling behind. I haven't seen Marty Supreme. I haven't seen Primate, which I'm very excited to see. I don't know what that is. I want to see Mercy. There's one other that I want to see. It's kind of insane how quickly these movies are on demand now. Where like, hey, it's still in the theater. You can rent it here for$24.99 or whatever. Correct. Oh, Send Help is coming out this week. I got to see that. I don't know if I'm going to make it.

1:10:57I got to get back to the theater, Ben. That's what I'm trying to say. So wait, did you see this Mercy movie or not? No, no, no. You're just saying it's in your real house. No, right in my real house. Oh, and Bone Temple I haven't seen yet. Yeah, I got to get out there. All right, Ben. I am taking the kids sledding because it's been a while since we've had some snow here. We went sledding this weekend too. Still fun. I still go occasionally with the kids. I'll sled down the hill a few times. I love it. It's great fun. Yeah, we went and my kids, it was like eight degrees out. We were literally the only three people on the sledding hill.

1:11:33Me and my twins. There was no one else around. It was all like powdery. A big hill we have. And it was way too cold for everyone else. And we went down once. My daughter was like, I'm not going to do this. And we went like a dozen more times. Because once you start doing it, it's so much fun. Yeah. It's good. It's good, clean fun. All right. Thank you for all the emails, even the ones dunking on me. I appreciate those too. AnimalSpirits at TheCompoundNews.com. Hope everybody is staying warm and dry and just generally enjoying themselves. We'll see you next time.

1:12:06Thank you.