It Feels Like 1999 (EP. 433)

24:49I don't remember a lot of people saying, see, the bubble is over. The bubble just popped. my point is what would have to happen for us to say you see it was a bubble because it's not these stocks falling 40 % and getting back to where they were in 2023 that's proof of nothing that's proof alright yeah these stocks were overvalued a bubble bursting means Nvidia's got to go to a trillion or lower the S &P would have to fall 40 % and the Nasdaq 100 would have to fall 50 % I think that's, to me, that's, okay, it was a bubble. So if the NASDAQ doesn't fall 50, get out of here. The NASDAQ could fall 35%.

25:29It means nothing. It fell 35 % in the first quarter, didn't it? And in 2020. And in 2022. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. I don't know. I don't know what the number is. 50 % at a minimum, or don't say the word bubble. I think that's a fair definition. At a minimum. If Handy, put your gambling hat on. What will the odds of a 50 % crash be in the NASDAQ 100? In the next 24 months. 24 to 36 months. What kind of odds do you have to get? If you said 24, what would make me bet on a 50 % crash over the next 24 months? I don't know, man. You need a really high plus odds. Plus 700? How about this? I would need way higher odds than that.

26:15All right. For you to put, I don't know, 10 grand. 10 to 1? Yeah, at least. Actually, you know what? If anyone's willing to give me 10 to 1 odds, I would take it. That's a good payout. Okay. If you extend it to like 48 months, then I would say 7 to 1. 50 % is a lot. And now it could. That's what I'm saying. Obviously, it could happen. Of course it could. Yeah. But what is the level we're going from, to your point? And what does it bring you back to? Well, that's the other part of it. It's like, listen, where's the S &P? Is it 60? Ooh, is it 60? What is it? 6 ,700. Okay. So if the S &P goes to 8 ,500 and then goes back down to 6 ,000, who cares?

26:59Sam Rowe had a great point the other day on Twitter that the Dow bottomed at like 6 ,700 in the great financial crisis. Now it's at 46 ,000, almost 47 ,000. And now the S &P is at 6 ,700. Round numbers. All right. This is a good thing. It goes to the retail stuff that we're talking about, but you'd love to see this. The value of equities held by the bottom 50%. And this is all Robinhood, so credit to them. This started to go vertical in 2020. So in 2000, it was 175. This is also the pandemic, though. This is the pandemic. People had disposable income for the first time. A lot of people for the first time in a long time.

27:34But the bottom 50%, the value of equities had gone nowhere from 2000 to 2020. So 20 years. Not inflation adjusted, I don't think. And now it's$600 billion. Now there's a denominator thing in here. I don't know how many people this is, but nevertheless, this is still a good thing. No, the jump here was so high. You can't say that this is just, but here's the thing. To me, 9 % inflation was worth this. We don't get this without 9 % inflation. All right, that's terrible. Was it worth it? I don't know. I'd have to think more about that. Because it was all the money we sent to people, but that's why this happened.

28:09Yeah, I don't know. That's a big question. I think that's a reasonable trade-off as far as I'm concerned. Okay, let's add one more thing to your bubble thing. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Yield premiums, corporates over treasuries at a 27-year low, the spread. Wow. And the quote from the article was, it's kind of the old spreads are tight, but yields are all right. So yields are high, so people don't care. They're buying corporate bonds hand over fist. They're not requiring much of a spread. So same with junk too. So there was another journal article talking about this. And Howard Marks said, and this is definitely true.

28:47It just is. the worst loans are made at the best of times. Yeah, that makes sense. Right. Okay. So I feel like to me, they're starting to get a groundswell of inequality stuff. I feel like the inequality chatter is… Starting to. Well, it's growing. So here's a question for you. So because I looked at the Atlanta Fed now, and again, it's like 4 % for this quarter. They're not all seeing, all knowing, whatever. But let's say we get a slowing labor market, right? and it doesn't really impact the economy. People start losing their jobs, but the top 10 % controls 50 % of consumption. I think the top 40 % controls 60-70 % of consumption.

29:26AI makes businesses more efficient, okay? So parts of the economy are slowing, but the economy or the labor market are slowing, but the economy still does fine. Mainly because of the top. You mean like what's happening literally right now? Yes. Let's say this continues. Is your strategy to buy torches and pitchforks? Because look at this one. I don't want to go there. Listen, I'm living in the world as it is, not as I would love it to be. Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Look at this next chart. Okay. Look at this next chart. This is from Charter today. America's top 1 % holds almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

30:04The bottom 90 % holds 33 % of wealth. The top 1 % owns 31%. And it was 10 % and 40 % in the 1990s. Forget about the top 1%. And this is, it's Elon and Larry Ellison and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and Jeff Bezos. This idea that it's only the billionaires and everybody else is screwed. I'm sorry. I just, I reject that idea. Listen to what the companies are saying about their consumer. They have no reason to not tell the truth. I feel like we're beating this dead horse. No, I agree. But listen, if you are boxed out of buying a house right now, and you live in a very expensive city, and inflation feels higher, and I don't know what percentage of the population, let's say 33 % of the population, because 62 % of people own stocks, the homeownership rate in this country is 65%.

30:59So let's say a third of people are boxed out. And some of them do that by choice. So let's say it's really 20 % of people are boxed out of the stock market and the housing market. Who do you think they're going to blame for their plight? Listen, I'm not denying that there are people struggling. Obviously, there are. And I'm not insensitive to that. I just feel like we're spending too much time on that topic as a society. It's like we're only focusing. There's so much good happening in the world. And it's very easy to feel like there's just a lot of bad things happening because there are. And we're more aware of it.

31:32But there's a lot of good things happening. I was in the airport today at JFK, one of the busiest airports in the world. And guess what? It's not all billionaires in there. But here's the thing. It's never been easier to look around you and see wealth extravagantly on social media and in news stories. Yeah, well, I agree. Well, guess what? But we don't need to contribute to that on this podcast. All right, I told you. I'm living in the world as it is. No, no, no. No, you're living on social media world as it is. Because listen, AI is going to make wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is going to be supercharged in the next decade.

32:05You watch. Short of nasty market crash. outside of social media. This is not a topic of conversation. Wealth inequality? I don't know, man. It's going to be. You wait. This is going to be a big thing. In the coming decade, this is going to be a huge issue. You watch. All right. You sound like you're rooting for it. Dude, what do you mean? Wait, hold on. What do you mean it's going to be an issue? It is an issue. It is an issue. I'm not saying that it's not. Okay. It is an issue. but do we ever focus on the positives or we only get to focus on the negatives hey listen i you're right i am i try to be a positive guy i will uh listen i think the fact it's dude i'm just it's so easy it's so easy to focus on the negatives and it's i'm over it sorry all right i've got i got something for you that and later in the show i'll say it now how was this?

33:02This is me trying to contribute positively. I think a personality trait, and this is true probably of people on social media or more middle-aged people, is my personality is I don't like popular things, right? So they hate on anything that's popular. And my daughter was telling me she hates this because she's a Swifty. She's a big Taylor Swift fan. And a lot of, I feel like middle-aged people are saying, oh, Taylor Swift doesn't have an album. Oh, great. It's awful. Have you heard the lyrics? And I'll tell you what, I was in the car with my daughter for an hour on the way to a soccer tournament this weekend.

33:32And we had to listen to it the whole time because that's what we do. And I nodded my head a few times. It's not bad. I feel like if your whole thing is like things that are popular are not good, that's not a personality trait. That's just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. How's that? I'm saying neutral or swift album, not bad. That's my contribution to positive thinking for this week. How's that? Let's go positive. Okay. So a lot of people have wondered why is it that the stock market hasn't cared about tariffs at all. There are no tariffs on the stock market. How's that? This is Joey Politano from Apricitas.

34:04He has this cool substack. He said, the single largest exemption for tariffs covering an astonishing$34 billion of imports per month is for computers and parts, an exemption that AI companies are now completely relying on for the record-breaking investment push. So he shows the largest tariff exemptions. It's like there's Mexico, Canada, pharmaceuticals, energy, precious metals, smartphones and computers and parts are way at the top. And he says that's a big part of the growth. So he said large parts of the U.S. economy are totally dependent on this tariff exception for computer imports. And so his point is, if free trade is delivering such amazing results for the one sector still able to enjoy it, why are we subjecting farmers, manufacturing, and families to this protectionism?

34:48In other words, if data centers get to be exempt from tariffs, shouldn't we all be? Which I think is a fair point. If we're going to like let, And it's a good news that they decided to exempt all the AI stuff because it's helped the economy. It's helped the stock market. But maybe we should just not have them at all. How's that? Sure. Right? Works for me. Ben, I saw that Apple, I think, I didn't read the story. So it was something about the Vision Pro. And then like maybe scaling back their efforts to making a smaller, lighter, better version of it. How long did you have it for? Like a week before you get rid of it?

35:23Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that thing just bombed, right? There's like one guy who wore it to his wedding, and does anyone still use it, do you think? Ooh, to your wedding. Tough scene. Anyway, Zuckerberg is really making a push for the glasses, not like the goggles, the glasses. And G. Munster had a piece. He said they're investing$100 billion into these technologies. God, I hope these things bomb. So he said, I believe glasses will take about five years to gain traction. And once there, this technology should become central to consumer spending. and there's a picture of Zerker with the glass. I just, I don't think, I don't think so.

36:01I think society will reject this. I hope so. I really hope so. I don't have a lot of faith in society in the short run, but the ability to just video cameras, videotape someone with your glasses and not have them know it, I think is so creepy. I don't think the upside outweighs the downside on these things at all. I agree. There's way too many creeps that are going to use these things. But here's the thing. So if you want to have a cynical view of AI, So OpenAI and Facebook both said they're going to roll out these AI social media video platforms. So the Sora is the new one. And I think that these companies are just better off the dumber we all get.

36:35And that's how they make money. Like, do you really trust Mark Zuckerberg to bring goodness from AI into the world? Or is he going to use it to make us watch slop videos and get mad about stuff that didn't actually happen to keep eyeballs in his social media platform? Like, I have zero faith that he's going to use AI as a positive for humanity. I think he's going to extract every last bit out of us and try to make us dumber so he can make more money. Yeah. Let's put a pin in this. There's some, there's some social media stuff later on in the show. But yes, I agree with you. All right. So Josh had the privilege of interviewing Peter Lynch last week in Boston, which was quite a treat.

37:15And one of the things that, so Josh did this thing where he read a lot of his greatest quotes and had him react to them. And I had forgot, I had forgotten how many amazing quotes were attributed to him. My favorite bit of all time, that's his, is selling your winners, which guilty. I've done this way too many times. Selling your winners and buying, adding to losers is like pulling out your flowers and watering the weeds. How good is that? I was always pretty partial to the refrigerator one too. What's that one? Oh, yeah. Just that people do more research on buying a refrigerator than they do on the stocks that they buy.

37:51You know, he did that bit for me in the green room. It was pretty cool to say. He's playing the greatest hits. Anyway, so during the conversation, Costco came up. And he was saying that he can't really make sense of the valuation. So I did some research. Me and Peter Lynch were the same. I did some research over the weekend. And the PE of Costco, going back to the start of the 21st century, was around 20. it's been around 20 between 2000 and 2020 and then it just exploded higher got as high as 60 earlier in the year and i i went on wide charts like what's going on here is we getting margin expansion is that the deal so the top is gross profit margin nope about 10 12 been that way forever look at operating operating margin bottom line profit margin nope 3%.

38:48So it's like, all right, well, let's look at the membership revenue. And yeah, this is going higher. And this pretty much falls to the bottom line. It was$2 billion in 2016. It's now up to $5 billion, but so what? I mean, it's a giant company. So I went on all of the different LMs. I went on Anthropic and ChatGPT and Gemini, and they all said the same thing. And it was ChatGPT. Yes, the PE multiple for Costco has expanded materially, but it's not solely or even primarily because Costco is suddenly massively more profitable. Rather, it's a combination of modest margin tailwinds, emphasis on modest, growth in e-commerce, international on scale, the strength and stability of the membership model, a premium multiple for perceived defensive qualities, investor re-rating dynamics.

39:33And they all said the same thing. There was nothing there that was like, oh, I get it. Okay, this makes sense. It just has been levitating for reasons that are, I'm sure somebody knows why. I don't know why. Okay, that's good. So no one can answer the question either then. All right. I think it's just sometimes there's a re-rating where people just all of a sudden investors realize it. Remember, Apple had this re-rating their PE ratio. Yeah. But 50? For Costco? It does seem a little high. Have you been there on a Saturday or Sunday before? Well, it's the worst place on earth. How about this? I'm still open door is up.

40:07How much is it up from the lows? Is it 1 ,000 % or something? It was 85 cents when he first tweeted about it, give or take. Okay. So now it's almost$10. Okay. Wow. So it's a 10-bagger more so. The Wall Street Journal had this piece on it. They said, for all the recent excitement, a crucial problem remains. The economics of home-flipping business don't scale. Expecting open-door to figure them out now represents a triumph of hope over experience. Oh, yeah? Guess what, asshole? It's up 15 % today. Shove it. I tend to, unless they completely change their line of business, if they're going to stick with house-flipping as their strategy, because it says that for the first half of 2025, it at$227 million of gross profit on$2.7 billion of revenue.

40:48This is a low margin business. And to me, it's a prove it thing. If you're going to prove that technology can fix the real estate market, I got to see it first. And again, unless they totally pivot their business to doing something else, I don't see how this house flipping thing ever works at scale. It's up 1 ,500 % in the last three months. Holy cow. I just, I don't understand. Well, yeah, they've got new people coming in, but I don't see how the business itself, I don't see how it works. It's never worked to come in, right? I don't know anything about this business. My default would be this is tricky, but I just don't know.

41:27Housing is the one place technology has not been able to supplant. Right? It hasn't been able to work at all. I'm going to have to see it to believe it. Maybe it'll happen someday, but it has not happened yet. All right. Speaking of the housing market, it is normalizing. This is from Lance Lambert at Resi Club. What do we mean? All right. 21 of the nation's 50 largest metro area housing markets in September 2025 had more active housing inventory for sale than in September 2019, up from just 13 of 50 in September 2024. So in 40 % of the largest metro areas, there's more houses for sale now than there were in 2019 pre-pandemic.

42:06So it's actually kind of happening a little bit. Bloomberg had this chart. where they show the inventory for sale plus or minus August 2019. And it's pretty much just the Northeast and the Midwest that we've been talking about. Everywhere else is normalizing and there's more houses for sale. So listen to this. There are now more completed new homes on the market than at any time in the past 16 years for sale. The problem is part of this remains kind of a buyer's strike. And I wonder if this is just rates have been so high for so long and so are prices that this normalization is gone the minute mortgage rates hits 5%.

42:43Oh, yeah. So to me, this seems like, yay, things are getting back to normal. But the reason they're getting back to normal is because no one wants to pay up right now for 6.5 % mortgages and higher housing prices. Besides you. Ex-Michael Batnick. But don't you think that this is a case where, yay, we get normalization? It feels like a stalemate to me. Where once rates fall... Everyone back in the pool and see you later. Yeah, I agree with that. Right? I don't think this is like the housing market has been fixed. And I guess the thing about it is, what was I going to say? I lost my train of thought.

43:24That's okay. All right. This is a cool chart. I can't remember where I found this one. Maybe someone had this on Reddit. Might have been Nick Majuli's blog. The portion of housing units built before 1960, percentage by state. You know the state with the highest percentage built before 1960 is? Wow. New York. 53 % of houses were built before 1960 in New York. 35 % for Michigan. There's going to be a lot of renovation needed in the years ahead. I think this is especially true when baby boomers start dying out of their homes. There's going to be a ton of renovations that are needed for people coming into these houses.

44:03On a nationwide, it's like 26%. DC and New York are both over 50%. Those are the two highest. Kind of crazy, right? Michigan's 36%. Yeah, that's a good chart. Ben, switching gears to the private markets. One of the executives at, I believe, KKR was doing an interview, and she said, there are 19 ,000 private equity funds in the US. There are 14 ,000 McDonald's. How are there more private equity funds than McDonald's? That's actually crazy, right? That seems, that doesn't seem right. You know, they did this for the hedge funds too back in the day. Remember people used to say there's 7 ,000 Taco Bells and 10 ,000 hedge funds.

44:49Where's more hedge funds than Taco Bells? Can I just, can I call BS? Who said there's 19 ,000 private equity funds? That sounds made up. 19 ,000. No, that's honestly, that probably is. because every one of these funds has fund one, fund two, like they're funds that are still in existence, right? So that actually kind of makes sense to me. 19 ,000? You're just going on vibes here alone? You don't just don't... I'm making... Sources I made it up. I'm just saying it sounds crazy. All right. According to Gemini, there are over 18 ,000 to over 39 ,000. There's 10 ,000 private equity firms as of 2020, so it's more now.

45:3310 ,000? Yeah. Private equity by the numbers. All right. So a lot of funds. There's all that dry powder and you're bearish.

45:45All right. There is, there is, there is a story brewing in the, in the private markets. There's two bankruptcies in the auto space. One of them is called first brands. I believe is the name of the company. And the other is, is it a, Tri-color? Or is that a salad? I don't know. Two auto companies that went kablooey, a lot of off-balance sheet stuff, a lot of private credit things. And is this the canary in the coal mine? I will admit that I am a tourist at best here. With all the dry powder there is, these businesses must have been really, really bad that they would just let them fail. Because you could think they would just take money from somewhere else to prop them up.

46:32So Man Group had a post over the spring dispelling five myths about private credit. So they're saying, yeah, the market grew at a compound annual growth rate of 17 % from 2016 to 2022. It's forecast to grow at 11 % from 24 to 28. So it's huge. It's$3 trillion. But they have a great chart showing fixing the denominator blindness. If you look at non-investment grade compared to investment grade, you would say, what's the story here? I don't see anything. See this chart? Okay. As a percentage of the overall market, non-investment grade is pretty steady at, what is that, 30 % or so, give or take. Anyway, there's definitely seen some cracks in the market.

47:13So some of the companies are getting hit pretty hard, the equity. Blue Owl, for example, which other ones are not doing well. KKR is hanging in there. Some of them are doing worse than others. But anyway, a lot of the BDCs are getting destroyed. So Blondes and Money tweeted, I don't own any BDCs, but the BDC squad is flashing a warning sign. All names in the toilet this year and a lot of the sponsored BDCs like HSBD are absolutely tanking. So again, I am ignorant here. I'm a tourist at best, but I am in the camp right now that nothing bad happens. Now, I know it sounds toppy. I know it sounds complacent.

47:56Some of the bad is that two companies went out of business and these firms are hitting. Something bad kind of is happening. so i bought aries capital corporation arcc that is definitely definitely definitely definitely not investment advice again i know you're nothing you're trying to catch a falling knife here i am i don't know i think i'm just i i still i i think that uh i think that uh nothing bad ever happens throw this in my face with this at the top and we have an 80 crash here i'll apologize but that's where that's that's the mood that's the current mood i'm in the i don't i don't believe the camp.

48:30And there's a lot of people that are like dying, dying, dying, dying, dying for the private credit story to fall apart. I'm taking the other side. Are you blinded by your long-term bull thesis that the RIA money has to come in here? Maybe. Okay. I don't think this is the epicenter of the next credit crisis, which I am stipulating that it might be. I don't know how to handicap this. I have no idea. This is another one of those things where I would love to fast forward five to seven years to see how this stuff does in an actual downturn. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how it goes up.

49:10But hold on. These BDCs have been around forever. These are not new. I'm saying how it impacts the private credit. So if private credit returns go from 11 % to 9 % because there's some defaults, is anyone really going to care about that? No. No, well, I'll tell you who's going to care. The Financial Times, they're going to dance on the grave and act like they called it. All right, but if the returns went from 11 % to 2%, then people can say, whoa, right? Correct. Then, okay, game on. Game on. All right, sports gambling. Survey of the week. This is from Pew Research. A growing share of Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society.

49:51Oh, you think? 43 % up to 34 % in July 2022. This is way lower than I would have thought. They say only one in 10 U.S. adults now say they have placed an online sports bet in the past year. One in 10? That is way lower than I would have thought. One in 10. These names, which DraftKings, Flutter, which is FanDuel, got destroyed last week on news that Calci is allowing parlays, I think. Wait, so you can parlay who's going to win the Oscar with... I don't know. That sounds very funny. Who's going to be president of Ecuador? Only one in 10. But the growing shares of Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society and sports.

50:40Yeah, you think? Listen, I love gambling. I love it. I have a lot of fun with it. It's not up to me. But if I could wave a magic wand and end it, I would. Sorry, I don't know. What? No, you're willing to let wealth inequality flourish, but you want to end sports gambling. I see how it is. That's capitalism. I like capitalism. No, I, but here's the thing. No, because the thing is sports betting is just, it's negative. Some there's nobody really is. And don't email me if you're, if you want, I'm happy for you on balance. It is a drain on society. And there are people, there are lots of people whose lives are getting absolutely ruined.

51:16I'm, And unfortunately, I know people whose lives are being ruined by this. Way more people than their lives are being helped by this. And no, we had an email this morning from someone who said that his sports gambling picks beat the S &P for the last year. Great. He wanted to come to the podcast. It's still not legal in California or Texas. Not yet. But some politician is going to make this an issue. And if this really was an issue that they said at the federal level, we're going to ban sports gambling. You know where there would be a big short? The sports podcasting industry. because they are so intertwined.

51:49Everyone's advertisements of the FanDuel or DraftKings or their pick your sports book. Every sports podcast right now is powered by sports gambling. That's first level thinking. Somebody would step in to fill the void. Okay. By the way, that is weird. I'm in Texas right now. Can't place any wagers. That's shocking to me. I want to lose some money tonight on the Jaguar Chiefs. It's shocking to me that it's not legal in Texas with all their whole thing about being deregulated and such. All right. Our friend Gunjan interviewed... Hey, credit to you for not giving us your latest parlays of the week there that I don't know what to hear about.

52:22Nobody cares. I'm well aware. Gunjan at the Wall Street Journal interviewed Ken Rickey. He is the chairman of FlexJet. He's a billionaire. And he was very candid about how he spends money. Very open. How he talks with his family about spending money. I loved it. I thought it was fascinating. and I think she's, hopefully she does more of it because it was really good. One of the things that he said during the interview was he tips$1 ,000 at a restaurant when he goes to there for the first time. At a hotel, when he gets to a hotel for the first time, he tips$10 ,000. Now, remember we spoke about this a couple of months ago?

53:00It was April and I thought it was really cool to see a guy at the hotel take out$100 or$200 or whatever it was and tip the person. I was like, wow, that's awesome. I want to do that one day. And now, I mean, I could do that$100. I think I could swing that. But Robin had a good take on this. She said, wait, he's not just being generous. He wants something for that$100. And I was like, of course. So this guy said, and this is fair. He tips$10 ,000 when he gets there. And he said, if you tip at the beginning, they know what your expectations are. And I love that. He wants to get, like, he's doing something very, very, very nice.

53:42not to show off per se, but he wants good service. And what's wrong with that? And it's phenomenal. Now, I'm a low-maintenance guy. I don't need somebody like waiting on me like that as a former waiter myself. I don't need that. But I love generosity. If you're a billionaire, that's money well spent, right? Hell yeah. I like it. What is a better purpose of money than making people's month? year. I love it. Convenience, right? Okay. On the other side of the billionaires, let's talk about the buy now, pay later stuff. So there was an article in Fortune with the headline, a quarter of US consumers are now financing groceries with buy now, pay later, as Economic Precious Mount Survey says.

54:28I wonder if you would replace that buy now, pay later with credit cards. Yeah, that seems like a nothing burger to me. I think young people are using these as credit cards, are they not? Is that the story? So from the article, more Americans are taking advantage of financing options for essential purchases. The latest sign of mounting concern. Is it really? One quarter of shoppers have used Buy Now, Pay Later for groceries, up from 40 % who uses the service a year ago. Guess what? Buy Now, Pay Later is still pretty early. What if people are just opting for that over grocery, over credit cards?

55:01And I will refrain and wait till we hear from these companies on their earnings call, because last quarter we looked at this. I listened to Affirm and their default rate was like nothing. And they were fine, right? Nothing. The thing is, you could take my personal budget and say Michigan man spends and uses credit cards for 98 % of his purchases. And you'd think this guy is doing awful. But no, I do it because it's convenient. It's easy. Exactly. I'm getting floated a month-long loan from JP Morgan and American Express for my payments. And they give me rewards in return. It's a great deal. All right.

55:33There's an article in the Financial Times talking about the decline on time spent on social media. So it peaked in 2022. They break it down by age brackets. 16 to 24, you're seeing a fairly dramatic decline. And the older you get, it's a little bit lesser so. And then they show up by geography. So the global average is rolling over. North America, we're still hitting an all-time high. two and a half hours a day almost on social media. I'm only on Twitter on nights and weekends. And I feel worse than ever about it because during the day, I thank God I don't have time for this anymore. So very little time spent during the day.

56:23But I feel terrible when I'm laying with my kids and I'm on like the 4U tab and I'm doing it at their baseball game. I'm only on the weekends and I feel it's making me not happy. I don't like it. Yeah, see, I stay away from the for you tab for sure. How do I, Ben, how do I unaddict myself? Because I'm really, again, I'm not on it during the week, during the day, at all, ever, ever. But a lot of this brain rot, it's, is there any doubt anymore? Is anybody saying social media is like a net benefit or are we, is that charade over? This is a good thing that it's falling. I still find value in it terms of finding charts and stories and stuff that we use but i'd be lying to myself if i said that's the only reason i'm doing it obviously no you're addicted so am i but guess what you know what if if you just looked at the daily chart book every day and what some of those sub stacks and and sam you'd be well taken care of you don't need to be on social media this is true yeah no i it's been i've been doing it for way too long i can't can't help it uh okay this is interesting this one's got galloway we talked about the slop stuff earlier and he said people don't actually want to create content.

57:30They just want people to feed it for them. And that's where like OpenAI and Facebook is going to step in and do it. So he says 4 % of YouTube videos account for 94 % of the views on the platform. 5 % of videos on TikTok generate 89 % of the views. And Instagram is saying 3 % generate 84%. The top 25 podcasts reach nearly half of US Weekly listeners. You know what's interesting? But I'm on Instagram too. And Instagram doesn't make me feel bad. I get enjoyment out of it. I don't feel like the world is ending after I close my Instagram app. Yeah, see, it's kind of funny. I don't really use Instagram.

58:01But that, yeah, because it's harder to make the world look bad through pictures. Because that's, in a lot of cases, reality. Unless it's AI crap. Is it? Is there a simple reason? I haven't thought about this, but I'm sure a lot of other people have. Because there's just no sharing. There's no retweeting. There's no quote tweeting. And dunking on people. Negativity doesn't go viral. It's just good vibes. I don't know. But anytime a tweet now gets more than a certain amount of likes, call it 500 likes, I can't believe how many trolls there are coming out of the woodwork to tell you how awful things are and how terrible the world is.

58:39I can't believe you can't believe it. Obviously, that's the thing that's gotten way, way worse in the last five years is just the sheer amount of people who think everything is bad at all times or that's the character they're playing. I don't know. So, story time. I said my daughters are Swifties, so my wife took them to see on Sunday morning. Apparently, there's some Taylor Swift music video thing that's tied to a new album in the movie theater. I think it was the number one movie this weekend by box office. My two daughters and my wife went to see it. So my son, what do you want to do? Let's me and you go do something.

59:13And so we went to the zoo. And it was a good reminder about graduating from certain levels in your kid's life that I'd never even thought of that much. when we were when our daughter was younger our first hour was born we got a pass to the zoo and we would go to the zoo i almost said unless we didn't have plans we'd go there every weekend because it was something to do and when your kids are really young and they're still like stroller age right let's go to the zoo she likes it and we'd go there all the time we we use that family pass so much and i went to the zoo and my son and i are walking around and realizing we went there on sunday morning like 10 30 in the morning you know before the crowds got there and before it was too hot.

59:48And I'd say 95 % of the people there were parents with kids in a stroller. And oh, look at the end, you know, and it's just, I forgot that, oh my gosh, we totally graduated from that thing. I never even realized it. Now we're on to the, the weekends are full of sports games and such. And I was talking, I had a physical last week and my doctor was asking, you know, if you go to a doctor or a dentist, they always ask you, Hey, how are the kids doing? Right? Every time. and I don't know if they really care. They just want to ask you. But my doctor said, what do you, what's going on with the kids these days?

1:00:19So I tell him, you know, we're in it with youth athletics and we have soccer, we have football and every day, you know, Monday through Thursday, every day we have a practice and then on the weekends we have three or four games every weekend. And he said, God, I'm so glad to be done with that. And I think the opposite. I absolutely love it. It's fun. I don't know what else we'd be doing with our time. Obviously, I'd maybe be relaxing more or something. But I think it's so much fun to graduate from that old stroller mentality of you're trying to kill time because you don't know what else to do until nap time to now you actually have stuff the kids are involved in and liking.

1:00:54And anyway, it's just, I've, it was the first time I realized in my life, like, oh my gosh, we graduated this. And then I guess the next step is when they become like social creatures in high school and they start, they leave you alone and never just never want to do anything with you. Yeah. I see both sides. Um, I hear what you're saying, and I think you're probably right, I'm wrong here, but I was so freaking bored at Logan's T-ball game the other day and I actually felt like shit because I was the only asshole. Robin was home. I was by myself and I'm on Twitter on the For You tab and I look up and I'm like, why am I torturing myself?

1:01:28Nobody else is on their phone. Nobody else. The two into the game. Put it in one of your Audible books. uh so i'm reading our friend our friend's book morgan wrote a new book the art of spending money yeah i got behind me somewhere too yeah um and morgan's gonna come on our show and talk about it and he was there was one part about like talking about like what what matters and obviously you know time spent with our family and stuff and he morgan wrote something about like how much freaking time are we on wasting on social media not to i know it's lame to complain about so whatever forgive me but this is my podcast well you are really harping on this this week yeah i am i come to jesus moment i think i'm just like peak i gotta i just i just i just gotta get off this thing it's just so it's just poison um i don't know what else to say it's just you know what it's it's a young man's game young person's game the social media thing it is but we've all aged with it in a lot of ways yeah but i think i think we've aged out of it that's what i'm trying to say um what else was i gonna say ben uh you say you're not you're not feeling the sports stuff listen oh no baseball people baseball is as a parent baseball is really really slow it's it's really tough when my son returned from baseball i did not think twice about asking him again if he wanted are you sure are you sure no now even though i'm bored i am i am not i am never a i can't wait for x person because i'm very cognizant that you know we're gonna die people die early oh yes so i don't i can't wait till this stage i i definitely i never go there i don't think about that um i'm the same way the thing is here here's the thing though i got to my daughter had a game in lansing which was like an hour away soccer game this weekend it was my turn to bring her because my wife had to go to my other daughter's soccer game so i was in the car with her for an hour you know no screens we we listened to the new taylor swift album but i just got to talk to her for two hours straight.

1:03:27And that's the best part, the before and after the games. And I try to have a rule too of don't, unless it's positive, there's no constructive criticism or anything for like 24, 48 hours. And usually at that point you forget about it anyway. So there's no like, hey, next time in the game, you should try this. Like I, my wife and I talk about like none of that. We're not doing that. We're not being those people. Cause that everyone hates that person who like tries to get in and coach their own kid, you know? Yeah. Speaking of aging out of things. So I think we're going to go to Disney in December.

1:03:56This is probably going to be our last year. I don't know about that. I'm going in November. I'm going in November, so I will give you all the tips. But I feel like Kobe's eight. No, we've been to Disney. But there's like a very – The boys become too cool for things pretty – Around what? Like 10? I don't know what the age is. I can see that. My wife and my kids really want to go to Disney again. I got to be honest. This is one of those things that I would like to be graduated out of. You said I don't want to look forward. I love Disney. Disney is just, you do. I do. I love it. Okay. Just not my thing.

1:04:30I hate crowds. I hate waiting in lines. And we're going to probably do the thing where we get the passes and stuff. My wife's going to have that all figured out. I still, it's too much for me. Okay. It's too much. Yeah, I get it. No, it's not for me. But we're going over Thanksgiving weekend. All right. All right. Recommendations. I have one thing. You know, I've been, this has been a lot, a busy part of my life. I've been traveling a lot, moved houses, Jewish holidays, unpacking, all that sort of stuff. So I haven't really – I haven't watched Black Rabbit or Task in a few weeks. I just – we haven't – I just go to sleep every night I get into bed.

1:05:07But I did start to watch one new movie, Ben, because I don't know if you know this, but it's October. You know what that means. Oh, even more horror movies for you? so for my fellow sickos there is a new vhs out on shutter i only watched the first segment ben don't you don't you don't have to worry about this and uh yeah is it a vhs no that's the name of the that's the name of the movie there's like five or six of them it's called vhs and there's like um it's like home video slash found footage and uh just completely demented and VHS Halloween, the most recent one, is no exception. I saw the first segment.

1:05:51Like I said, it's probably, I don't know, a 15-minute bit and I had to turn it off. I said, this is just too much in the best way possible. Just totally demented. Totally, totally, totally sick stuff. Okay. I finally watched F1 this weekend. And I know I should have seen it in theater. It was a very fun movie. It was very stylish. It almost, in some ways, felt like a, I've never gotten into F1 I know people who watch the Netflix show like Duncan loves F1 I know people get up early to watch it and people became big fans I've never been like a racing person so I never got into it so I felt like it did a really good job of bringing me along as someone who knows nothing about F1 it did a great job of explaining it I knew nothing about it I recognized some of the names I guess it did feel a little bit like a commercial for the sport but I guess that's probably what they're going for and it didn't the stakes of the movie never felt that high right it just it was a it was just a very entertaining movie, like a very easy watch.

1:06:47Good, clean. We're on the edge of your seat. I'm sure being at the theater in the racing parts would have been better, but honestly, on my couch, I, I, it was fine. It was, I liked it. In Boston last weekend, there was an F one bar in, in, uh, in the seaport. And we did some fake racing, by the way, gotta be, gotta say Boston. Great city. Oh, quick story. Um, so you did the Boston to Austin now, since you're in Austin this week. Boston to Austin. So a friend of ours, I went to go meet him for breakfast and he gave me his address. Church Street, I punched it up. Oh, this is great. I've never been to Cambridge.

1:07:24I'm going to go see Harvard and see what's up. So I took a blue bike there, which is their version of the city bike. It's a, it was a seven mile ride. So it probably took me like 40 minutes. It was great. It was lovely, beautiful weather. I had a great time listening to Team Arrivals and it was just a really, really enjoyable moment. So I call him like, hey, I'm here. I come get you. He calls me. Hey, where are you? I'm like, I'm outside. He goes, where? I said, I'm next to the whatever bar. He goes, you in Cambridge? I said, yeah. He goes, dude, I told you I'm in whatever town. And I'm like, oh.

1:08:01So there's six church streets in Boston. I went to the wrong one. So he should have given you the name of the restaurant or the bar, not that address. He gave me the address in the town. I just, I didn't punch in the town. That's hand up alright I got one more thing on F1 you and I talked about when we saw Gavin Rosdale he's 60 years old and man still a great looking guy Brad Pitt he's like 61 isn't he 62 he's still got the fastball man alright I did finish Black Rabbit and I don't know how far you are into it I'm only on episode 4 it's one of those it's one of those shows that makes you very uncomfortable because bad things keep happening and you're like now this is gonna happen oh now that's gonna happen now this like Like, the whole show is…

1:08:43That's my type of show. Okay, it's just things constantly going wrong and nothing ever going right. And to me, I get very uncomfortable with that. But then you want to know, how is it going to end? How are they going to wiggle the way out of this? And I thought, like, the ending was… It was fine. It was a good show. Good, not great. Like a 7, not an 8, I'd say. I enjoyed it. And my wife and I, we binged it pretty quick because we wanted to know what's going to happen. Finally, you mentioned the… I'm saying I'm not going to sports games and doing the for you tab like you sicko. I bring my son an hour early for his football games so we can warm up.

1:09:21And by the way, we're we're listening to Rage Against the Machine on the way to his football games, get him pumped up, which is pretty great. He's like, hey, put that stuff on again. I liked it. So I put some earphones in and I put my audible on and I walk around, you know, the school campus. And so I've been listening to the Hamilton one. I'm almost done with it finally, which is really, really long. Probably wait, just way too long. Listen, Ron Chernow, great author. way too long just cut 40 % of it out but the stuff that people write in all biographies when they describe a person from the olden times it all sounds the same he was a barrel-chested man yes he had a bulbous nose and rosy cheeks a pointed chin and you kind of go who cares I don't care what he they're all kind of anyway that's what you get in biography anyway great stuff in that book it's not it's not our fault but can we try and make a pact to do an AI-free episode next week.

1:10:13Now, listen, we didn't make a deal with OpenAI and AMD. Like, I'd love to talk about something else. We're in the midst of a mania. Why do you want to talk about anything else? I feel like it's a lot. I feel like the audience is bored. Frankly, I'm a little bored. You said this is potentially one of the biggest stories of this century. And you want to just sweep under the rug? No, I don't want to sweep anything under the rug. I just want to, can we just, can we maybe take a week off? Maybe. All right, we won't debate whether it's a bubble or not. How's that? Yeah. Okay. Listen. All right. That's fair.

1:10:44Last thing. Can we just, let's choose a little bit of positivity. I want to put, I want, I want people to finish our episode feeling like this is the not for you tab. I want people to feel good. I know there's a lot of really ugly shit happening in the world. There always has been. Unfortunately, there always will be. The world is a dark and scary and dangerous place. But I feel like people don't come to us for that. And I just want to put out goodness. That's all. I put the good news of the week heading in here. I want you to fill it up for next week. How's that? That's your homework. Hey, these hats at idonshop.com, I believe they're sold out at the moment.

1:11:21The compound hats. They're going to be coming back soon. For those of you who are listening, Ben just put his hat on. They're coming back soon. And these are the trucker hats with the compound. People love them. They're coming back soon. Hopefully, Nicole will let us know and we'll let you know when they're back. but they're sold out right now because people love them. Idonshop.com for all your merchandise needs. I was passing out the Animal Spirits koozies to my friends, the dads at the soccer game the other day. That went over well. Those are fun. All right. Send us your email, animalspiritsatacompoundnews.com.

1:11:55Thanks to the production team, as always. Michael's been filming in different cities every week, it seems like, and they're dealing with his spotty internet and everything else. So thanks, everyone, for listening, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.