New All-Time Highs! (EP.344)

25:08Stable prices and fall employment. That's their dual mandate. I don't know. I guess the thing is, if the labor market does slow, because it's been ridiculously strong, and it sounds like things are coming in a little bit. That's the one thing that, like, what if that means the Fed cuts more than people even assume? But don't they want the labor market to slow? A little bit. Listen to this. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. companies are offering new hires less generous pay and flexibility than they did a year ago. They're also holding the line on negotiations over perks, such as additional vacation time.

25:41On LinkedIn, one job opening is available for every two applicants. A year ago, jobs outnumbered applicants two to one. So it's totally switched. This vice president from LinkedIn, Catherine Fisher says the pendulum has swung back and the power is in the hands of hiring managers. I mean, it seems like workers had the upper hand for what, 24 months? like there was like two years there where workers had the upper hand for once and now it may be gone again the cleveland fed traxes um job switchers versus job stayers wage growth yes and the best way to get a weight raise in 2021 was there's no way it's a cleveland fed but why not the kansas city fed maybe no i think it's like the atlanta fed but No, I really think it might be the Cleveland Fed.

26:27No way. It's not the Cleveland Fed. Is there a Cleveland Fed? I don't know. The Lake Erie Fed? Yeah, it's Atlanta. But yeah, you're right. So if you look at Job Stair and Job Switcher, and they're... Of course there's a Cleveland Fed. Come on. Dude, Cleveland Fed wage tracker. It's Atlanta? Okay. So job switcher, the wage growth is still 5.7%. This is as of December 2023. Job stay is 4.9%. Still pretty high wage growth, but it's obviously coming way down from the peaks. At the peak, the job switcher was getting 8.5 % wage growth in July 2022. Wow. I just think it is kind of sad, though, if workers had the upper hand and now lost it, and it just goes back to the way things were, which kind of might be happening.

27:15Like, you might have missed your opportunity to have really good negotiation power. Obviously, it depends on the industry and stuff. Okay, good piece at the net interest by Mark Rubenstein. He did a piece on the inside of business of air miles. Some really interesting stuff here. The largest programs have over 100 members each. The three big ones, American, Delta, and United, generated$15.6 billion of revenue in 2022, equivalent to 11 % of their parent company's total revenue. So this is just from these air mile credit cards. which is crazy to me how high that is. And obviously people love this stuff, but it feels to me like the inflation here is kind of getting out of hand.

27:58No, no, no, but it's a good thing. It's bad for the companies. It's good for consumers. No, but don't you think that you're not getting as much for your points anymore? No, no, no. Uh-uh. So American Express, over the past 12 months, paid out$15.2 billion of rewards, which is pretty wild. um he so mark says the only problem is that competition has been driving up the rate at which card companies pay rewards over the last 12 months american express has paid out 1.07 percent of purchase volume of rewards up from 0.8 percent 10 years ago oh so it's getting better that surprises me it's the opposite there is inflation for the companies because they're because it's so competitive because people like us love our points.

28:46Okay. So maybe it is just the airline because I feel like the other cards, the Chase Sapphires and Capital Adventure, you're not getting as much on those reward cards anymore. So for the flight cards, though, it actually is still pretty good. The airlines are still pretty good. This is wild. So Amex, the Delta SkyMiles, they have 7.5 million people holding the card. According to Delta CEO, I remember this from the conference call last year. Co-brand spend on the Amex card is approaching 1 % of total US GDP. Holy shit. Isn't that wild? Yeah, that is nuts. So Fortune just had a piece of this on this new Wells Fargo card that is 0 % APR for 21 months.

29:33And someone emailed us about this a while ago and said, hey, you can use these 0 % cards. So I haven't been finding as good rewards. So I started doing this like four months ago. What do you do? I got a 0 % credit card and they gave me, I don't know, a$15 ,000 limit. I put all of our purchases on there. I took that money and I put it into T-bills. And that's, so I'm getting 5 % and that's way better than any rewards I could get for cash back anywhere. And there's a lot of these cards out there. I get, I get mail stuff for this stuff, these things all the time for like 21 months. It's a 0 % loan for 21 months.

30:09Interesting. So you take that$15 ,000 and you put it in T-bills. And then at the end of the period, take the money out and pay off the credit card. And it's a 0 % loan. That's a 5 % spread for doing nothing. That is pretty good. That's not bad, right? I can't believe that these credit cards do. Obviously, the hope is you take out a 0%, you run up a huge bill, you don't set the money aside, and then the interest kicks in and they make it on the back end. I'm guessing that's the hope. They'll make money. Yeah. Or obviously they make from the merchants. But for me, that's better than any rewards cards I can find right now.

30:46Yeah. Somebody emailed us because I was talking about how Uber won. This is a great deal. I think it was the Capital One card. I think it was a Capital One card. Gives you that for free. But yeah, you're right. It seems like JP Morgan Chase won that game with the Sapphire Reserve and whatever else they've got going on. They just flooded the market and they won. And now they're taking rates down. Is that basically what happened? Yeah. So I downgraded from the Sapphire to the, what is it? Preferred? Preferred to the regular. Yeah. I don't know. I have both and I don't know why. Yeah. I probably have way too many credit cards.

31:23I kind of gain. But I look at like once a year, I try to gain these things. You wrote a piece about how big Bitcoin can get. And you talked about the crypto ETF launch. You said looking at the volume has been really high in these things. It brought in billions of dollars. So the launch of these ETFs was a resounding success. Hard stop. The price of the underlying is more of a mixed bag. I don't agree that it was a resounding success. Okay. Let me tell you why. Maybe I'm splitting hairs here. This is from Jim Bianco. The spot Bitcoin ETF started on January 11th when the price was$49 ,000, 10 minutes after ETF trading began.

31:57Two weeks later, it's down more than 20%. What was it? 38, below$39 ,000 today. Eric Belchunas says, we now have a rolling net flows at a healthy$1 billion. That's flows that have come into the ETFs, but out of GBTC. And I don't know how to wrap my head around the fact that, whatever, $3 or$4 billion has come out of Grayscale, but then$3 billion or so has come into the other ones, something like that. So it's hard to say, like, did some of that money from Grayscale go into these new ones or not? I would tend to think a lot of that money came out of Grayscale that was getting the ARB and the money is completely out.

32:31So a lot of the money in the ETFs is new. Balthoudis estimates that 10 % of the money that came out of GBTC, which is what,$4 billion at this point? He estimates that only 10 % of it went into the ETFs. Yeah, I think a lot of it was arbitrage, people waiting to get their money out. So the reason I say it was not a resounding success is just – the volume is huge, and they're saying it's like setting records for volume and assets gathered. The reason I think it was not a resounding success is because the expectations were so high. For what, assets? Yeah, so I think, because I heard from numerous people who said, I'm buying a Bitcoin ETF the first day because I think so much money is going to flood into this thing that the price is going to skyrocket.

33:11And I'm not saying the price is the only reason it's not a success. I think people assumed, and I think this is one of the reasons the price is falling, people assume more money would come in than has. And I think this was the biggest ETF launch in history from a PR perspective. And so I don't think you compare it to other ETF launches and say this thing was a resounding success. because the expectations for itself were so high. I think it came short of its own expectations. Well, I don't know. I don't know what the expectations were. But what we do know - Do you think they were higher with the fact that Bitcoin is down 20 % since ETFs launched?

33:46What we do know is that digital asset investment products from Daily Tropic saw a near record $1.18 billion in flows last week. Balchunas tweeted, the fastest ETFs to get to$1 billion in assets. BIDA, which is a Bitcoin futures, was two days. GLD was three days. And then IBIT and FBTC, which is iShares and Affiliate Leverage, were number three and four at four days and five days. And I still think that these things could be a success over the long term, but I think the launch was more tepid than most people assumed it would be, at least me personally. You've got two of them already at over a billion dollars in assets.

34:24I'm looking at one of them, and it's down 16.5 % if you bought it at the open. So yeah, obviously the price has been disappointing if you are somebody that bought it on the first day, but I'm just talking about, and listen, I don't know what BlackRock or Fidelity, what their internal expectations were, but$1 billion in, what did we say, four days for IBIT and five days for FBTC. Now they're both over, I mean, well over a billion. I think it's pretty good. So the group as a whole, it's been seven days and the nine outside of GBTC is$4.5 billion. I don't know, man. That sounds like a lot of money.

35:04$4.5 billion in a week. Yeah. I don't know. Again, I think it, with the fact that the price is crashing, that means that this is worse than expected. And I think that over the longterm, it still could be fine. And maybe the people who are legging into a position, this is a good thing for them because prices have fallen. They can - I bought, I was telling you this. I bought Bitcoin this morning for the first time in a long time. Let me just check. I bought the last time I bought was. Is this right? Okay. Okay. Okay. June, 2022. It's been a while. Okay. You're buying the dip. We bought the dip. We'll say.

35:42Again, I think these things, these things will probably still be very successful in the longterm. It's a little, I think most people were expecting like fireworks and this thing to just knock it out of the park with money coming in and that that didn't happen yeah i would say that is it shocking that the news was sold no if you had asked me like the odds thing i would have said i would have said more likely that it runs to 50 than back down to 40 or runs to 55 then back down to 40 i think one of us predicted to sell the news moment what's that 2024 predictions one of us predicted to sell the news moment it had to be one of them it had to be it's either going to run up No, I think it had to be, there was not going to be a middle ground where it just sort of stayed put.

36:21It was either going to take off or it was going to crash. I don't think there was any in between. And 20 % can't even really be considered a crash in Bitcoin with how quickly it moves. Also, I mean, so it's still up 15 % over the last three months. Granted, it did, you know, it's, what is it, 20 % off the size you said? Yeah, so it pulled forward a lot of, it pulled forward a lot of gains, obviously. So Ben, actually, actually, the Bitcoin that I bought today, that came out of money market funds. I took money out of money market funds to buy Bitcoin. I did. Okay. So you just, you went against your own argument.

36:55I did. Yeah. How about that? How about that? Okay. All right. See, that's what happens. So if just, if just 2 trillion, if only 2 trillion comes out of money market funds and goes directly into Bitcoin, what would that do to the price? Okay. That's kind of funny. There's some weird, not weird shit. some NFTs are on fire again. Pudgy penguins are going vertical. I'm not exactly sure. In fact, I'm not at all sure what's going on. But I see the stream is more active with that. Punks are going again. I don't know what to make of it. Speculation is in the air or was in the air. I guess when crypto prices rise, it lifts all boats, that kind of thing.

37:40Everything else goes up too. Don't know. Let's talk about real estate. Oh, you know what? Before we get into this real estate stuff, I got, it's funny because last week, one of the comments that I made was talking is hard. We talk a lot and we say stupid shit all the time. And then in that episode, I said something stupid, which the comment that I made was if you can't afford the insurance, don't buy the house. And understandably so. I heard it from the listeners. Listen, hand up. That was dumb. Happens. somebody in Florida was sharing with us that, and the dumb part specifically is you can't, well, a few things in there that were dumb.

38:18You can't get a mortgage without homeowner's insurance. The bank won't give you a mortgage. And in addition, there's people that have lived in Florida for a long time who might not have a mortgage or might have a mortgage and their homeowner's insurance is just going through the roof. So somebody emailed us saying that over the past few years, their homeowner's insurance went from$4 ,200 to$6 ,200 to$8 ,400 to$11 ,000. And it's easy for us to say, like, listen, if you can't afford the insurance, don't buy the house. But it's hard for people like this. What are they supposed to do? Just pick up and move their entire life because insurance costs are getting out of hand?

38:58I heard from a few people too. And I heard from some people say, listen, the part of Florida I live in is not this bad. It's not as bad ever. But other people I heard, like, listen, if you live close to the water, which is a lot of people in Florida, yes, it is really bad. And I don't know how it gets fixed without government intervention. I was about to say can't. But you're right. That's the kind of thing I could change. Can't the government subsidize this? Shouldn't they? They may have to. Government is not the answer for everything. But in the case like this where private insurers just don't want to bear the tremendous risk, what do we – I mean, is that not one of the primary functions of the government?

39:35And Florida is having one of the biggest migrations of any state in the country right now in terms of population growth. So people are coming in willing to pay it. So it's not like you're seeing an exodus from Florida of people saying, all right, I'm out. I can't pay this anymore. People are coming into the state in droves. You ever been to the Panhandle? No. What a great Panhandle City. Does Panhandle City count? You know what? I'm not even sure exactly what's considered the Panhandle. I just wanted to say that. What a great name. That's a good name. Yeah, I guess if Panama City counts, I was there for spring break one year in college for a day or so.

40:10That was Panama City. I mean, that was like the 1980s spot for – apparently people still went there. Remember spring break on MTV? Oh, yeah. Dan Cortez? I don't remember Dan Cortez. Okay. Yeah. That was a thing. They'd get a house. All right. We've talked a little bit about this, but I think boomers are holding a lot of the cards in the housing market right now. So this is another one from Taurus and Slack. like home buyers are getting older. This is first time home buyers versus repeat buyers. We've talked about this before, how the age just keeps going up. And I think a lot of this stuff is just going to keep happening with boomers getting older.

40:41When you have 70 million people continuing to get older, like a lot of these charts are just going to keep moving up to the right in terms of average age. This is from Redfin. Empty nest baby boomers own 28 % of the nation's largest homes, while millennials with kids own just 14%. An additional 7.5 % of the country's large homes are owned by baby boomers with households of three adults or more. So basically saying like Like all the large homes, and I think they define large homes as like three bedroom plus. And they're saying almost a third of them are owned by baby boomers who are empty nesters and don't really need these large houses.

41:12Whereas only 14 % are owned by millennials who have kids. Wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Hold on. Three bedrooms is considered a large home? Three bedrooms plus. Okay. Yes. So they're saying that more of them are owned by empty nest baby boomers who need to like Downsize? Millennials are waiting for them to downsize. And maybe it's not going to happen. because if you think about it, if you're an empty nest baby boomer and you have kids and grandkids, you want those bedrooms still. My parents are still in their four-bedroom house. They're not going to downsize, because they have grandkids and us coming to visit and stuff.

41:48It's probably not going to happen, is my point, in large quantity. Here's another one from Redfin, though. And they put the whole... Because I feel like people have been saying Young people just cannot buy a house these days. It's impossible. 26 % of adult Gen Zers owned a home in 2023. Little change from 2022. Meanwhile, millennials' home ownership rate rose to 55 % from 52%. Gen X rose to 72 % from 70%. And if you look at these, we've looked at these charts before. Gen Z is right on track. Look at millennials coming up the rear. Millennials coming up the rear. Just going vertical. Right? So millennials are basically where Gen X was.

42:30Gen X and millennials are just a tiny bit below boomers. And I think a lot of that you can count for getting an education for longer too. I don't even think that's a home ownership affordability thing. Gen Z is right there with millennials in terms of home ownership rate at the same age. So this is wild. It hasn't impacted things yet. Gen Zers, 26 % of them own a home and they're 19 to 26. What are they all buying pudgy penguins? How are they affording a house? it's a good question that in their early to mid-20s people are affording a home and i mean obviously some people say well it's rich parents and buying another place i don't know but i was talking with somebody still i was talking with somebody this week um they're trying to buy a home and they really they're scrambling because they don't want to wait for interest rates to come down because they're afraid of missing it again.

43:24There's going to be such an explosion of activity if rates really move down. Well, listen to this. Pending home sales rose 4.1 % month per month in December, the biggest increase in September 2021 to the highest level in more than a year. So activity just from that decrease going from 8 % to 7 % or 6.5 % already saw a huge explosion in activity. And you're right. If more agreeists go to 5%, it's going to explode, isn't it? Is there any way that prices come down because there will unlock more demand than there is demand? No way, right? There's just so much demand. I think the demand is too... I think it's going to be well for that to happen.

44:03So home prices, according to Redfin, year over year were up 4 % in 2023. Wow. Yeah. Mortgage rates went to 8 % and home prices were still up 4 % on the year. House prices are not coming down. Who's kidding who? It could be until, honestly, the 2030s when boomers finally start dying off and passing on their homes and the millennials don't want them. They want to sell them. I think that's it. I think that's going to be the next time housing prices fall. Unless something weird happens. This will make people happy. Blackstone doubles down on the US housing market with acquisition of Tricon and it's nearly 40 ,000 homes.

44:45What's Tricon? obviously a very small percentage. This is from Lance Lambert, by the way. How many homes are there in the United States, actually? How many single-family homes? I don't know. I think there's like 120 million households or homeowners, but then you have to consider rentals and multifamily and that sort of thing. But yeah, this is a drop in the bucket. 140 million? It's a drop in the bucket, but nevertheless, you know what happens with headlines like this. people wrong with them. How often do you think people assume Blackstone is BlackRock when these kind of headlines hit? 80 % of people?

45:24A lot of confusion. Understandable confusion. All right. Survey of the week from Axios. This is the vibes getting better again. 63 % of Americans rate their current financial situation as being good, including 19 % who say it's very good. 77%. This is interesting from the homeowner thing. Can we do something with these surveys? instead of saying good or very good, could we make it strong to quite strong? That's true. A la, what was that? Meet the Parents. Ben Stiller? Yeah. Was that about his portfolio? I think it was about his portfolio. Yeah. Owen Wilson's the rich ex-boyfriend and he asked how his portfolio is doing.

46:02I'd say strong to quite strong. Yeah. Very, very - What a great movie. Quotable movie. It really is. This is surprising. 77 % of Americans are happy with where they're living, including renters who've seen housing costs surge over the last few years, a substantial majority of renters are happy renting with 63 % of them saying they're not interested in owning a home and having a mortgage. So a lot of people are saying, oh, the renters are being left behind. A lot of them are just fine being renters. Maybe it's because costs have run up so high, but that surprised me. All right, we've got some charts from Mike Zaccardi, actually from Bank of America, via Mike Zaccardi.

46:40Survey, responses to, how would you read the overall health of your business as of Q4 2023. And to me, the big takeaway is, and there's - And this is small businesses, right? Small businesses. So, you know, America, not Apple. Very good, somewhat good, about average, somewhat poor, very poor. And very poor is gone. That was about almost 5 % in 2020. That's gone. Nobody reads it as very poor. uh somewhat poor is unchanged year over year about average is mostly unchanged uh but somewhat good somewhat good took a took a pretty big jump that's good remember how and if people say if people say somewhat good they're just they're hedging that really means very good remember last week we talked about how you need to be delusional to own a business and two-thirds of all small businesses in the United States go out, like go under over a decade.

47:39How delusional are these people that everyone says their business is great? Some of them have to be delusional, right? That's a great point. Like no one says their business is being, of course. Yeah. Maybe they're just all delusional. So very good and somewhat good is like 60%. And if you include average, yeah. So only 10 % say it's poor. Yeah. And that's obviously not the case. Love it. Gotta love America. All right, this is a shitty chart from another one from Jake at Economic Pick. There's, he looks at the Michigan consumer sentiment, Democrats less Republicans. The Democrat slash Republican gap in the view of the current economy is the widest in its history.

48:22And then he showed another chart. Republicans view current economic conditions as 28 points worse than their worst view during COVID and roughly the same as March 2009 GFC low. All right, Ben, so when I asked you earlier, can feelings be wrong? Yeah, I guess feelings can be wrong. The partisanship, obviously on every side. Holy moly is it broken. It is just demented. It's not... This is why you watch what people do and not what they say especially when it comes to this kind of stuff. Oh my God. Yeah, that's too bad. All right. Wall Street Journal had this piece. Your new$3 ,000 couch might be garbage in three years.

49:08This is why. And this one stood out to me because we just bought a new couch. How much did you pay for it? I guess ours lasted more than$3 ,000, which felt like way too much. We got a huge L thing, but we got one when my twins were born. They're going to be seven this year. And so our other one made it seven years, which is, but the leather is just completely going. Like this year, all this like flaking off. And whatever, the kids put it through a lot, I'm sure. Instead of once in a decade purchases, furniture makers and restorers say couches are becoming more like fast fashion, produced with cheaper materials, prone to trends, and headed to the landfill in just a few years.

49:44High quality sofas still exist, they say, but are harder to find. Mass market options, even though it's costing over$3 ,000, are increasingly made with less dirty materials and construction methods. So they just want you to buy a new couch like every three or four years like a TV now. That's a lot. Right? That's what I thought. Yeah, I don't know. Then they had some stuff in there about what you should look for in terms of a higher quality couch. I mean, how do you buy a couch? You sit on it once and you go, yeah, this looks good. Right? You do this, right? Yeah, right. My couch stinks. I hate my couch.

50:23It's not comfortable at all. I think you have to make sure the cushions don't come off. You want the cushions attached, right? Especially with kids. The back cushions at least. You know, it's such a great point. Like, how come every couch is comfortable in the store? In the same way, I was thinking, this is not a great analogy, but I was in the airport. How great do books look in the airport? Is there any better sight than books in the airport? That's true. You walk by a bookstore and it's very inviting. I literally walked by and I came back. There's just something about a book in an airport that is very seductive.

51:00That is true. It's all the colors, I think. And all the books are very edgy with a swear word on the front now, right? I think I peaked. I don't think I saw any curses. I think I peaked. I hope so. All right. Netflix and WWE strike a deal to move Monday Night Raw to the streamer beginning in 2025. $500 million a year. Netflix is going to be basic cable. It's already advertising. NFL and NBA are coming to Netflix or Prime or Apple. And me with owning every streaming service there is. You're perfectly hedged. I'm perfectly hedged. I will be fine. but they have to go into sports. How else are they going to grow their subs?

51:42Yeah, it seems like all of these streamers. This seems like a very big deal because you know that wrestling fans are coming on board if they're not already on board. Raw has been on USA since I think, what was it? 1995? 2005? Back when I used to watch it. I gave up after the Bret the Hitman Hart era and Shawn Michaels. That was the end of it for me pretty much. Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, ladder match. After that, I was kind of over it. Wait, how did you not watch the Attitude Era? Triple H, DX, NWO? I grew up. I wasn't 12 anymore. No, but how old? That was like, that was huge pop culture. The Rock, you didn't watch The Rock?

52:31That was probably way after your time, I guess. Yeah. All I want is, I still want to pay for my AT &T U-verse cable, but I want a channel for Netflix and a channel for Amazon Prime and a channel for all the streamers. Put it all together. Bundle it up. Give me the ultra bundle. That's all I want. So you don't even want to know that you're in Netflix or Prime. You just want to see everything in one place. That's not going to happen. I just want to make it more seamless. Make it easier. I want the toggle back and forth to be easier. Maybe Netflix is going to have to make their own TV to make this happen.

53:03Well, here's where it's not easy, but on my, after my Samsung line TV, which I still have, don't even, don't get me started. I bought a Sony and on the Sony, on the remote, there's a, there's a button. And I think for most TVs, there's a button for prime Netflix. Yeah. I have that Disney and YouTube. So, so that works now. Yeah. That helps. Yeah. That makes it a little easier. By the way, how did you feel? How did you feel about sports illustrated going away? I mean, it's so far in the rear of your mirror because it's been an afterthought for a long time but that was that was everything right every sports sport i remember like you started sports sports illustrator for kids and then you you graduated to uh sports to the real to the real deal i mean but it's so much better as a sports fan now though you'd wait for sports illustrated but now there's blogs and podcasts and it's easy to see what i mean i used to read the sports page every day for my local newspaper, but all of my pop culture from when I was young is gone.

54:02MTV, VH1, Sports Illustrated, all this, you know, all this stuff that - Oh my God, VH1. So yeah, so anyway, we're talking about Sports Illustrated. They're the private equity company that bought them, let everybody go. Wait, VH1, does that channel still exist? I think they just do replays of God knows what. Someone, so Ryan Moulton posted this. It's all employees at a newspaper publisher. And he said, every time a publication folds, the public and employees have some story to tell about its mismanagement and how if they had just would have done this, they would have survived. But the trend is inescapable and they're all doomed.

54:34So it shows the employees from 2010 to now at newspapers and it's just crashed like the Great Depression. And, but this is obvious with podcasts and different blogs and websites and subscription channels and sub stacks. And you know what has not crashed? We were talking about this at dinner last night the chart the stock price of new york times i mean the chart looks great oh really okay yeah people are paying yeah but that's the thing i used to read my local traverse city record eagle paper every day in the sports section and now you can subscribe to the new york times or the washington post or the wall street journal whoever or the athletic or whatever there's so many more options these days and yes it's easy to get nostalgic about it and that was a fun era but But today's era for consuming content is so much better.

55:26I mean, let's be honest. It's pretty enjoyable to watch the Chiefs-Bills game. And oh my god, what a brutal loss for Bills fans. Holy shit. I felt sick to my stomach watching that. But to watch, to be on social media, to be on Twitter at the end of the game and see what people are saying versus waiting for an article a week later. Social media does make. Like, that is one of the best things Twitter is still good at is watching a sporting event together. By the way, the Lions. Are you like? You're in Vegas right now. I'm playing with house money. So whatever happens, if I'm at the blackjack table, I'm increasing my bets fivefold right now.

56:11I'm Lions because I don't even care just for the fact that they're still in it. So, Ben, let me ask you this. I took a flyer, I don't know, two months ago, three months ago. I bet on the Ravens to beat the Lions in the Super Bowl. Oh, wow. What did it pay out? It had to be like 20 to 1? No, no, no, no, no. Way more than that. Okay. I think it's like 50 to 1 maybe. Yeah, 50 to 1, something like that. So hopefully, I mean, listen, I'm moving for the Lions. I would be moving for the Lions anyway. It's, you guys have been through too much. It's America's team. All right, a bunch of people told us this.

56:47We talked about the Mannheim index for US used car prices last week. Mannheim is a town in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And there's an auto auction there by the same name. It's a huge multi-thousand square foot thing where they auction off 10 ,000 cars or something. The more you know. Yep. All right. A few emails that came in that were great. We spoke about spelling last week. Oh, what did Colby say this week? That was so funny. oh you know what my my favorite one was is uh my son george calls them isa kills my desk calls because they can kill you if they fall oh that's a good one that's clever um all right until about 10 000 years ago there was only spoken no written language until 5 000 years ago there's no alphabet english is a layer cake language its foundation layer is old english then when the french invaded england in 1066 they imposed their language which was a latin-based language then during the renaissance scholars who could read uh and write went back to latin to borrow more words and then the math and science uh went to greek so anyway um it's just a crockpot of words the point is that yeah english didn't just happen it's there's it's a lot of bolt-ons which is why it's so weird yeah but someone should at some point gone you know what let's stop here take a break let's talk over and let's yeah let's start over this is too confusing.

58:06Jack said, Michael, not a big fan of the odds you are placing on your predictions. It actually cheapens the predictions by a significant amount because you aren't really predicting something to happen. You are assigning a probability to it happening, which is different. I don't recall exactly which 2024 prediction it is, but you couched it by saying you'd need plus 800 on it. The implied probability is 11%. So a 2024 prediction ends up being there was an 11 % a chance this thing will happen. Just own the hot take, no Long Island hedges. Listen. That's fair. That's fair, but I feel like I need to, I want to be more precise.

58:40I want to give you more. So next year I will do this. I want to be more precise with how much conviction I have with each prediction. And the funny, actually the funny part about that will be your low conviction ones will probably be the ones that happen and your high conviction ones won't. That'll be the, right? Yeah. It's actually, yeah, that's a way of holding yourself more accountable, which I think is actually interesting. Okay, recommendations. What do you got? You've been, you're giving me recommendations on your flight to Las Vegas. Oh, this is funny. So somebody emailed us and recommended the movie Burning, which I never heard of.

59:10It's a South Korean film. Came out in 2018 and it's got killer reviews on Netflix, like 95 % or something. So I'm watching it. You know what? Let's, let's share with the, let's share with the audience what the conversation was, Ben. So I was watching it on the plane. definitely a U movie. Ever see it? Never heard of it. I like it. No, this is me. I said, yes, South Korean movie on Netflix. I am a sucker for South Korean movies. The guy from Beef is in it. In. So then I said, finished. Confirm you would like that. And then Ben says, does that mean you didn't like it? So I said, no, it was more just of a Ben movie.

59:49It was definitely, definitely a good movie. Okay. It's just not for me. It's a U movie, not for me. you know uh but i think you're going to enjoy it very much not to i don't want to set expectations too high for you ben but you are going to like it um okay uh i watched half of the first episode of the new mandy patinkin movie on a show excuse me on hulu what's it called uh i saw a preview for it any good death and details mike in that right i don't know uh the first turning into your father I am. I don't know if I tell this on the show. My dad said, I saw The End of the World. And I'm like, oh, what is that?

1:00:33He goes, it's this new movie with Julia Roberts. I'm like, it's called Leave the World Behind. You can't literally just make up names. like at the end of the world it's not even close i mean i guess it's close enough uh so yeah i'm cautiously optimistic on that it's sort of got the uh maybe white lotus mixed with knives out oh really okay say no more i'm in yeah uh so i hope that's gonna be fun all right the creator so it's funny because kobe and logan came into my bed at the end of the creator and they were just in. Yeah. Like they watched the last 10 minutes of the ice. They saw robots. Like I don't know what's going on, but I'm in.

1:01:12My son loved it. All right. So here's my take on the creator. It's worth watching because it's interesting and provocative. I don't think it was that good. Unfortunately, I think that you agree. Yeah. It just something about it felt off. It was like, I'll tell you what felt off the writing. The script was horrific. If you, if you watch that movie with the sound off, you would have known it would have been the same experience. That's fair. Yeah. You know, it was just weird. Yeah. There was something a little odd about it. I think it was a script. But that being said, glad I watched it. I had a decently good time and it was interesting.

1:01:54Just not that great. Because so many people send, we do these recommendations, so many people send us their own recommendations for books and movies and TV shows. I have a running list of a note in my iPhone. And I was looking for books the other day and I found one called The Slaw House and someone said, read this whole series, Ben. And I said, why does this sound so familiar? And it's actually a book series that was turned into a show on Apple called Slow Horses. And a bunch of people have been telling me, watch Slow Horses. So I said, you know what? Instead of reading the books, I'm going to watch the show.

1:02:20I watched the first episode like three years ago when it first came out and never went back to it. Me too. But now I did. And because the first episode, I'm like, I don't know, I'm kind of tepid. And by episode two, I'm all in. and I watched the whole first season in this last week or so. And what's my favorite thing about British shows? How many episodes? Six. Six episodes. I'm in, I'm in. All right, say no more. And there's three seasons and a lot of people, and it's Gary Oldman is just fantastic in it. It's really good, like MI6 or 5 or whatever they call them in Britain. Killers of a Flower Moon took us like four sittings.

1:02:55It's a high quality movie. I would never watch it again. It's a bottom quartiles Corsese movie. Ooh. Right? I mean, it was well done, but here's the thing. I thought, I didn't think DiCaprio and Robert De Niro were that great in it. I thought they were just okay. And I thought Lily Gladstone. She thought she was better than them. She was great. I would never in a million years watch that movie again. I just, I don't know. It's more of an interesting story than it is a good movie. Okay. I'm definitely not going to watch it again. And you might be right about Bottom Court Toss Scorsese, which says more about him in the movie.

1:03:32Yes. I liked it. But it's not even close to being in the same class as Oppenheimer as far as I'm concerned. One more. Andy Greenwald has a new podcast called Stick the Landing on the Prestige TV. And he goes over the finale of some of the best shows ever. And the very first one was Friday Night Lights, which listening back to the show and then talk about Friday Night Lights, everyone always puts in like Sopranos and The Wire and Breaking Bad as like the top three shows, you know, in some order. Friday Night Lights is in the top five for me. It's probably the most emotionally invested of any show I've ever watched.

1:04:05Wow. I don't think you'd like it. I mean, that is not nice. That's just not nice. We talked about The Burning. No, it's more of a Ben show than a Michael show. My God, I love that show. And boy, would you hate it. I'm going off of past history here this is a back test it's got some of the best characters like it's just there's something about that show and I re-watched the finale again I love characters I love characters okay just watch the first I'm just kidding I have no interest you're right I have no interest in that by the way Curb Your Enthusiast it's one of my favorite shows of all time Friday Night Lights going back to watch it again it's so so good Curb is coming back February 4th I'm in let's do it last season he's had the last season like six times though.

1:04:47It's not the last season. They're all the last season. Did you watch True Detective? I just one episode and I'm in. In, right? I like it, yeah. Weird, but I'm in. I like Tony Foster too. I think that maybe, I mean, it's been often discussed on like the Town Podcast, but maybe there was a pretty big lull. Like the writer's strike really messed shit up. Like there was a real lack of. Yeah, there haven't been any shows in a while. Yeah, but I think we're going to be back. All right. Next week, you can tell us how much money you lost in Vegas. Will do. By the way, you told us a couple weeks ago how much money you've bet in one or whatever on FanDuel, and it was like, I don't know,$50 ,000.

1:05:29You really are a degenerate gambler because I looked at mine, and mine is like, I don't know, I've bet$4 ,000 in total. I didn't make enough big of a deal about how much of a degenerate gambler you really are. Listen, I like to bet. at the end of the NFL season, I will shut it down because I bet on the NBA. Not often. I bet on the Knicks games and I just do player props. But when, actually that's not true because I, all right, once the NFL season is over, I will only bet on Knicks games that I go to and then I will bet on the playoffs. I'll do like futures bets. I'm perfectly hedged for the NFL playoffs because I want the Lions and the Ravens to win because I feel like the Chiefs win all the time.

1:06:12It's enough for the Chiefs. I'm sorry. I did two preseason Super Bowl bets, and I bet on the 49ers and the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. So if those two teams win, I could win money. If the Lions and Ravens win, I'll be happy. So I'm perfectly hedged. I will be rooting for you on Sunday, of course, and I will see you on Monday. Yes, I'm coming to New York. Animal Spirits at thecompoundnews.com. Personal emails, personal replies. Personal responses. Ah, there it is. See you next time.