State of the American Investor (EP. 427)

25:23No, you're capping your upside. Yeah, you're capping your upside. And it's, you know, for people who won't need help with experiencing volatility, I guess it makes sense. But typically for a younger person, you'd think you'd want to be more aggressive. And that's not an aggressive strategy. No. Anything else in your job? What do you call it a chicken equity? Chicken, yeah. Chicken equity.

25:44Older people, no interest in crypto assets, just 23%, compared to 56 % for younger investors. Okay, so we had this conversation on Slack last week about how a lot of traditional finance people still just absolutely hate crypto. right and they see anything about crypto and they can't stand it and i part of that is having just missed out i think and like don't understand it never going to be involved also the also the behavior of the have fun staying poor people yes i think that's part of it too and ftx and uh the ideological beliefs of a lot of these people turn people off which you know same Yes.

26:29So in that vein, they say, how are Americans currently invest? And of course, it's cash and individual stocks, mutual funds, CDs. CDs, interesting. Cryptocurrency are behind CDs. So it's kind of funny that these retirement reports like this, in the past, it would be a couple on a sailboat or a couple on a beach, right? Not retirement, for the record. Well, okay. But these kind of finance things. but all the pictures in this show people on their phone or on their laptop. You never would have seen these kind of pictures in the past. Every one of them is someone who's looking at their screen. But here's the, all right, but why are options only 5 %?

27:09I wonder how this is worded. Yeah, because it's so much bigger now. But when we talk about different platforms, whether there's Fidelity or Shrub or Robinhood. Yeah, maybe it's just not used as much there. This also jumped out to me. only 7 % are in alts. That makes sense to me though, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just affirming the opportunity that we, that we talk about for these larger companies. So there you have it. What's your grand takeaway here? Uh, my big takeaway are that I think this group, this cohort of younger investors genuinely looks very different than previous generations. Even though I just said that there's a lot of things that stay the same.

27:52I think that this generation is far more sophisticated, like orders of orders of magnitude than previous young people, myself, myself included. Like the stuff that I was doing when I first started trading is hilarious compared to what these kids are doing today. I remember I wanted to invest in some Vanguard funds when I first started and the minimums were like$3 ,000. I didn't have$3 ,000. Like you, there's no fractional share. I talked to Carl Richards last week. It was on our Talking Wealth channel. And I asked him, do you think, because he wrote the book, The Behavior Gap, and he had the picture, the illustration that showed the behavior gap, like, right?

28:31Investment returns, investor returns. And I said, do you think the behavior gap is shrinking? Because I think it is. And he said, you know what? I talked to a bunch of high school and college students. They're my kids' friends a couple weeks ago. And all of these kids were talking about their Fidelity and Charles Schwab accounts and how they own index funds and ETFs at like 18 years old. because it's so easy for them to do now. Yeah. I also think that if we were, so the behavior gap is the difference in returns of a fund or any instrument versus what the average investor earns in that fund over the same period of time.

29:05And there's usually a gap because of bad behavior and other things that could be path dependent. But I think that there is a positive behavior gap. Maybe behavior gap is the wrong word. I think a lot of younger investors are absolutely trouncing the market, just destroying it. Oh yeah. Cause they have it all just a handful of tech stocks or Bitcoin or yeah. Um, so, and, and then the other takeaway for, from, for me is that not only are younger investors much more sophisticated, but they are much more brazen and embrace risk like wild, uh, for people to think that like, they're just going to disappear after the next bear market.

29:43I would remind you, we keep saying this, did you not see 2022? Were you not around? during the massacre of the first quarter of 2025. And yes, granted, they all were relatively short in duration, but these kids are not going anywhere. All right. Well, one of the reasons is because the way that we invest is totally changed. So this Onveston Substack had a piece about how people invested before the internet. What Substack is this? I'm not familiar with this. I'd never heard of it before either. Tadis linked to this on abnormal returns. Onveston. Yes. Onveston? Okay. Yeah. So they talk about how in the 90s, commissions were like$50 a trade.

30:22And they were saying most people paid something like$500 in commissions alone. And for a smaller account, you have$10 ,000. We're talking like decent-sized percentage of the portfolio. This was an interesting piece too, though. The 90s retail investor operated in an environment of severe informational disadvantage. Professional research was largely the domain of institutional investors and wealthy individuals who could afford premium services. Most retail investors relied on newspaper financial sections, monthly magazines like Money or Forbes, and basic broker reports that often arrived days or weeks after institutional investors had already acted on the same information.

30:54Real-time market data was expensive and difficult to access. Basically saying that these retail investors were investing blind, making decisions on past information, and now there's so much more at your fingertips today. Models and research and daily, up-to-the-minute data that they just didn't have in the past. And it's funny, that's, I think, one of the big reasons that institutions are having such a harder time outperforming. Did you read the Michael Steinhardt book before? Yeah. Like one of the ways he made a ton of money was just like using these brokers. And he just had an advantage over everyone else because he was like the first one and he was bullying these brokers.

31:28Like the way that he made money, he couldn't do that today. Correct. And it just, it's a totally level playing field. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, that's such a big advantage for individual investors today to just be able to open your phone, link your bank account. put money in and trade. And not have to write a check at a brick and mortar building and then have them buy it for you and pay a fee to buy it. It's so much easier. All right, it appears that the sell US trade was really a one month thing. Torsten Slott did a chart of this and he looked at treasuries and equities and corporate bonds.

32:05And there was definitely some sales in April from foreigners. And then it just reversed and went back because he looked at this by month, April, May, June. and there was a decent outflow. And then the money came rushing right back in. So not the end of American exceptionalism, turns out. For a month it was. Yeah. That's it. All right, this is interesting. Some good news. And I said the big American exceptionalism thing is, and I've said this before, that we buy the dip. Yeah. That's like the optimistic part. Like we rush in when that's the American exceptionalism thing that, right? So good news on the inflation front.

32:47McDonald's is lowering their prices. So this is from the journal. After pitching operators on the plan, McDonald's and its US franchisees agreed to keep the cost of eight popular combo meals 15 % below the sum of the individual's items prices, according to the company. The chain will also run$5 breakfast and$8 Big Mac and McNugget combo meal specials latest here. So we spoke about quick service, aka fast food last week versus sit down places. And I thought like maybe when the prices of those things converge, when you could buy a Chipotle bowl for$14 or sit down at a proper Mexican place and get a$17 meal, like you'll just sit down.

33:29But I think, I don't think that's true. I think these are just different customers. Like you're not, you're not replacing one with the other. Maybe when fast food gets too expensive, you just, you know, bring a, bring your own food or something like that. But either way, I was on quarter and I said, show me a chart of McDonald's same store sales growth in the US. So it did that. And then it gave me a quote inside the transcript. So I clicked on the quote and these tools are just magical. We'll talk about about this later in a second. So the CEO of McDonald's said, overall, QSR traffic in the US remain challenging as visits across the industry.

34:13So anyway, I'm sorry. I forgot one major part. Same store sales growth for McDonald's was negative for four quarters. Like they were getting smoked because people are like, this doesn't make sense anymore. I can't shop at McDonald's. All right. Not us. We're still going to McDonald's. My son loves that place. Overall, QSR traffic in the US remain challenging as visits across the industry by low-income consumers, once again, declined by double digits versus the prior year period. So that's it. Low-income consumers declined by double digits. So they're getting hit really hard by these price increases.

34:46They said re-engaging the low-income consumers is critical as they typically visit our restaurants more frequently than the middle and high-income consumers. Yeah, that's the story. I already said the solution is you have the app on your phone, 20 % off of anything over$10. Yeah. All right. A good take on what AI is going to do to the job market. Seth Godin. Since I was born, humans have created 6 billion jobs, all while technology relentlessly disrupts existing industries. The pin-making machine replaced the handcrafted pin. The ox-pulled plow replaced millions of hours of backbreaking work. The amplification and electronic distribution of music upended the work of the live musician, and the camera replaced countless portrait artists.

35:35The internet destroyed the travel agent industry, and Grammarly and Photoshop turned fine editing jobs into low-paid gig work. Then he goes on to say, when the web arrived, many of the projects I had built as a book packager, some at great cost, became obsolete. It didn't seem to me that I could do much about this, though, arguing that I was entitled to have people buy the information, please, business almanac, instead of looking stuff up online, wasn't going to work. It's entirely possible that a magical AI will replace every single human job and then destroy the earth. But it's far more likely that the pattern of the last 500 years will continue.

36:12I hope so. Totally agree. All right. You want to talk about this Cracker Barrel thing? I do for a second. Wait, can I zag and just say I like the new logo? I don't really say that, but I feel like no one's on that corner. So I just want to put my flag there. I like that. It's a good zag. So we don't have Cracker Barrels here. Oh, really? Yeah, I looked it up. Where's the closest one? They have ones like in Bigamton, upstate New York. But there's none by me. So I am entirely unfamiliar with this restaurant slash convenience store. Okay. I've been to one like five or six times, I guess. Good breakfast food.

36:47I would like to know how many people are upset about the logo have actually gone to a Cracker Barrel in their life. So the story was they changed their logo. and the stock just got pummeled down 15%. It's hilarious, right? Is it really going to change things? But it's funny how the investor base has become so important to the fundamentals of these stocks. Like look no further than what Eric Jackson is doing with Open. Investors can genuinely change the trajectory of a company's fundamentals if there's more liquidity, If they could do secondaries, it gives them more optionality. I hate that word.

37:32This is an obvious structural change in the market. This did not exist prior to 2020. It changes the fundraising structure of a company. Yeah, not going away. So is Cracker Barrel going to change the logo back? They have to, right? It is funny to see how open arms people get about logos. I guess it doesn't really bother me one way or the other, but people get really mad about this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And other news that people are still mad about. I think FTX really just nuked the average investor appetite for crypto. Because I saw this chart going around and we spoke about this with Tom. Keep saying like, really nobody cares about crypto outside the crypto people.

38:13So DTAPCAP tweeted, which of the following cryptocurrencies do you hold? This is from Morgan Stanley. And I don't know exactly who is serving here, but whatever. It doesn't really matter. 82 % do not hold any cryptocurrencies. Huh. Okay. You're right. It does feel like much of the cheerleading is still coming from inside the industry. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if like they're gaslighting us into thinking that everybody owns it or that it's, you better own it before it's too late. But I, I listened to, uh, I listened to strategies earnings call over the weekend. Do you think a lot of people just getting beyond the, okay, I don't understand it.

38:48I'm never going to get it. I'm not going to invest. I'm too old to get this. Are there a lot of people who go, I missed it. Like the huge runoff happened. I missed it. I can't buy now. I'm a schmuck. Yeah. So as we said, I think it's a combination of obviously that sour grapes and people think it's a scam. And if you missed it and you're mad, then you definitely think it's a scam. Right. Right. Just like human nature. So I listened to Michael Saylor and this was the first time I believe, cause I've listened to one before and they didn't do it. I believe this is the first time they opened it up to questions.

39:19Usually it's just a presentation. So it was two hours. And I got to say, it's impressive. He knows exactly what he's doing. And I think strategy is one of the most fascinating areas of the market. What he's doing, collateralizing crypto, is interesting. So here's a quote from Fang Li, who is our president and CEO. He said, our objective is to be the largest treasury company in the world, not just the largest Bitcoin treasury company in the world. If you take our Bitcoin holdings and compare it to cash and short-term investments of companies in the S &P 500, we are currently number five today. I could see us being in a place by the end of the year or in the next year or so where we're number two and we pass the MAG-7.

40:05And I'd like to see us being in a place in three to five years where we could surpass Berkshire Hathaway's$348 billion of capital and thus having the largest capital base in the world based on Bitcoin. So how are we going to do that? We're going to do that primarily through tapping the preferred market. So a lot of the call was about their strategy shifting. They used to do these convertible notes. Now they're doing preferred equity. And I understand most people are like, this is nonsense. This is so dumb. This is financial engineering. It's a house of cards. And I understand where people are coming from, but I don't know.

40:39I think, I don't know that, listen, it worked. I don't know if it's going to work forever. I can't see the future, but I think that people are still not giving enough credit to what he's doing. How big would the treasury holdings have to be where this company itself could actually impact the Bitcoin at large and lead to like a downfall at some point? If they, kind of like if NVIDIA messes up, that could bring in all the other AI stocks. Isn't it the same thing with Bitcoin potentially? I don't think they're getting margin called. I don't know that's how this works. Not margin called, but just - They aren't able to raise money anymore or something, or there's enough competitors where it dilutes it and they can't get as big as they want to.

41:16So I think the big risk for them in crypto is they are buying so much of it all of the time that if there is a, not if, when there is a risk-off event for whatever reason, stocks go down, Bitcoin goes down, everything goes down, and investors' appetite for more risk-taking wanes and they're not able to raise more money and just the amount of demand for Bitcoin goes down, then yeah, sure, that's a risk, obviously. But listen to this quote from Michael Saylor himself. Most of the world is unable to access the crypto economy. And so what we're doing is refining and we're harnessing the power of the Bitcoin asset.

41:57And we're able to actually refine it into low volatility, low leverage, less risky financial products, and then higher volatility, higher leverage financial products. So just like you might refine a barrel of crude oil into kerosene, which would be very, very pure in asphalt, which is not so much, we're basically providing a function that say an ETF cannot provide. You can see IBIT, the most famous example here in this chart. It basically wraps Bitcoin and it serves up a security flavor of raw Bitcoin to the investment community. We, on the other hand, are offering step-down elements of convertible bonds, convertible preferred stock, senior fixed stock, junior high yield preferred stock.

42:34And of course, this treasury preferred stock in the form of stretch, which is one of their things, one of their new preferred equities. And those in essence, we're stripping and modifying the duration of the asset. And we're also stepping down the volatility of the asset. And we're actually extracting the yield from the asset, which is Bitcoin. And we're serving it to each of these fixed income investors. But the excess yield, excess volatility, excess performance that does not go into those fixed income instruments goes into the micro strategy common in stock. And then of course that feeds to the micro strategy based ETFs and the options.

43:07So all of these are different instruments. They're all targeted at different types of investors. They're all some, some of them offer yield, some of them offer return. So then they dive into it. And listen, I, I hear myself reading that and I hear the average listener be like, what the, yeah, exactly. Like just stop, stop, stop. I can't take it. This is something that sounds way smarter in a bull market. And when a bear market happens, you go, of course, of course this fell apart. Of course it was a house of cards. All right. So. But to your point, credit where credit is due that they pulled this off.

43:37These are the opposite of dumb people. I'm telling you. Their deck is impressive. Their reasoning might sound cuckoo, but they said what they were going to do. They did it. The market cap is$112 billion. A lot of that is a premium that they were able to generate based on all these different instruments. And I get it. I get why people hate it, but it's working. However - It backs up like 2 ,000 % since 2023. Yeah. So say whatever you want. It's the best performing stock in the world. All right. But that being said, is it running out of steam here? So look at this chart year to date. Bitcoin is up 24.5%.

44:18It's been on a pretty epic run in 2025. Would you agree? Not bad, yeah. And yet, strategy, formerly known as micro strategy, is not keeping pace. Micro strategy hasn't made a new high all year. Hold on, let me just confirm. Micro strategy, yeah, micro strategy made a new high or last made a high in November 2024. So why is strategy only keeping pace with Bitcoin? Why is it not made a new high since 2024? Why is it 20 % off its highs? and then look at Mara, for example, which is the second largest Bitcoin treasury company. It's down 3 % year to date. So it's not working the way that they would want it to in this type of environment.

45:08They pulled forward a lot of returns. How about that? Yeah, maybe. Huge premium. That premium had to come in eventually. Anyway, I won't bore the investors or the listeners every week with this, I promise, but I'm going to be paying close attention to this. And yeah, I'm a listener. The calls are very, very interesting. And the guy is colorful to say the least and not an idiot, the opposite of an idiot.

45:34Man, he sounds like a preacher to me though. Yeah. He sounds more like a preacher than a CEO. Yeah. And Bitcoin crypto itself is kind of, does have religious undertones to it. So it makes sense. All right, real estate. All right, this is good news. Logan Motoshami has a chart showing the spread between the 30-year mortgage rate and the 10-year treasury. And he's got this sweet line chart showing year-to-date in 2025 versus 24 and 23. And we are, there's like a 2.2 % spread, which is lower than it's been at this point in the year, in a couple of years. So the question is, all right, well, yeah, the Fed's going to cut rates, but there is also inflation and expectations of inflation picking up.

46:22So what if the overnight rate goes from four and a quarter down to four? It doesn't mean that long-term rates are going to come down because if inflation expectations keep longer-term rates high, then guess what? Mortgage rates are going to stay high. People keep saying that because last time when the Fed cut 50 basis points, mortgage rates went up. And it was kind of ridiculous how exactly to the date, like, Fed cut rates go up. But don't you think the The slowing labor market might have a say in this as well. We're in a different economic environment than we were then. I know people are worried about inflation picking up, but even the Fed themselves have said, listen, if we get tariff-based inflation, it's going to be a one-time thing.

47:01I'm surprised how easily they're sweeping that aside. Like, ah, it's just a one-time price. Like, I don't know, that still matters. But doesn't it seem like a slowing labor market could have a say here on rates falling in? You would think. Yeah. I had a little back and forth with Logan last night because Zero Hedge tweeted this thing that said, adjustable rate mortgages climbed to 41 % of total mortgages held by US banks for passing the previous all-time high of 38 % during the global financial crisis. So everyone says, oh my gosh, we're doing arms again? It's going to be a housing market crash.

47:30So I said, Logan, there's no way that's that high. And he sent me a chart that shows arms are 8 % of the total or something. So what's driving the delta, as they say? I mean, because so many people got into fixed rate mortgages. No, no, no. I'm saying, how come zero hedge is showing 41 % and Logan is showing 8 %? I'm not exactly sure what – I'm sure it's something to do with the bank balance sheets being different now than they were then. But the point is that the actual arms held by borrowers is still very small. And it was almost like 40 % in the last crash, and now it's below 10%. So I think people wisened up and realized, like, we're not doing this again, especially when fixed-rate mortgages.

48:13It's just – it's the best deal there is. The fixed rate? A lot of other countries, yes, a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is one of the best things that's ever happened to American consumers because a lot of other countries have variable rates. Although someone, one of our listeners, Adam in Canada, sent me the Canadian mortgage rates right now. They're like in the force because they are tied directly because there are variable rates there directly to the, and Canada has been cutting rates. Yeah. All right. The real estate industry is impervious to change. I'm becoming more and more convinced in this fact.

48:41This is one area where technology will never, ever, ever change the industry. Okay, you're fired up. Talk to it. They had this big thing. This is in the Wall Street Journal. Remember, they had this big settlement how realtor fees have got to be, we can't continue to charge people, make the seller pay the commission for the buyer. We can't do that anymore. We're breaking it up. So we're going to have flat fees for realtors and people are going to be able to negotiate and those fees are going to come down. And guess what? average commission rates went up. They said people like, why? They said, it's just a very durable industry.

49:15And people, buyers like are scared to negotiate. They just take whatever deal is given them. And they, they don't want like no one, you have the ability to do this now. No one wants to. People are just staying with status quo. I don't think you can disrupt this industry. If it hasn't happened yet, it's never going to happen. Yeah, I think you're probably right. So you're not buying open door. Um, by the way, holy cow. Uh, but the thing, the thing is, has anyone talked about like open doors, actual home purchasing process in this thing? Or are they just talking meme stocks? I know Eric is, he's talking about the business, but either way, the stock, uh, went from, when did he first tweet about it?

49:55It was like 80 cents. It's at$5. I mean, it's, yeah, it's going crazy. And I don't know, it was 20 before it crashed. So it it's bouncing off lows, but like it, for a business model perspective, call me a non-believer still that this is going to change the way people buy and sell houses. I don't even know what their business model is. Is it still a straight eye buying? I'm sure there's other parts to it at this point. Either way. All right, let's move on. All right, Jason Zweig wrote an article, the Ivy League keeps failing this basic investing test. On average, in 2024, educational endowments with more than$5 billion in assets held 2 % in cash, 6 % in bonds, 8 % in the U.S.

50:39stocks, and 16 % in international stocks. That's interesting. Twice as much international stocks. Okay. So where's the other 70 %-ish? Private equity, venture capital, hedge funds. That's right, Ben. Jason wrote, the lesson is so simple, even Ivy Leaguers should be able to understand it. In good times, investors give no thought to liquidity because cash is plentiful, and the need for it is impressing. In hard times, liquidity becomes the only thing investors can think about because cash is scarce and the need for it is desperate. Note that this retrenchment is recurring amid one of the biggest bull markets in history.

51:15Just imagine how hard it would be for these institutions to raise cash if public markets were crashing as in 08 or 09, or if interest rates were skyrocketing as in 2022. How did this happen? This is all just Yale, right? I saw it happening in real time when I was heavy into the endowment world. And yes, it was all Yale. You're right. They saw Yale. They saw Harvard doing this. And they said, we have to do this too. This is like the worst example of groupthink ever. Oh yeah, it is. And it's total groupthink. They get together at these conferences and they all talk about, oh shoot, they're doing this too.

51:47We have to do this. And you're right. If these, if they actually have to raise real cash for operations at these, at these universities, like what a joke, they're going to have to like borrow money. Well, they did. So they wrote about it in the article that these companies, a lot of these endowments were borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars, even sitting on top of 10 billion, and in some cases, much higher in downwards. It's mental. It's such a big amount in private. And the whole idea was, well, listen, we don't need liquidity. We're investing for perpetuity. But the colleges and universities need this money at some point.

52:21You have to have some sort of liquidity management. I was banging my head against the wall having conversations with these people back in the day, and I still don't get. And guess what? Not everyone can be David Swenson. Not everyone can be Yale. And now that there's so many of them in there, obviously the returns have come in as well. Yeah. All right. Earlier we spoke about the price pressures hitting lower income consumers harder, obviously. Walmart reported last week, and they said that same store sales grew 4.6%, which is pretty damn impressive. Reflecting ongoing share gains across key categories and all income cohorts with upper income households contributing to the largest gains.

53:05Duh. But as we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we've continued to see our costs increase each week, which we expect will continue into the third and fourth quarter. This is Walmart. This is a big company. That's not great. You don't like to hear that. Not surprisingly, we see more adjustments in middle and lower income households than we do with higher income households. Yeah. So that's going to be a continued story through the rest of the year. So Sam Rowe has this joke where he says, if Walmart's earnings are bad, it's bad for the economy because low-income consumers are doing bad.

53:36But if Walmart's earnings are good, it's bad for the economy because it means people are trading down to Walmart. This is going to sound very inconsiderate of me, but the low-income segment, as far as the economy goes, doesn't really matter anymore. Well, it certainly doesn't matter. No, no, no. It's not inconsiderate because we're not talking about people. And of course, they matter. We're talking about the stock market and how this impacts the stock market. Right, this doesn't matter. The top 20 % are driving almost all the spending. And that's, for the economy, that matters more. You can say, well, it's a canary in a coal mine type of thing, but for the economy, it doesn't.

54:08No, yeah, it matters in real life. But for the stock market, what was that stat from Savita that we mentioned a couple of months ago? The bottom 20 % contribute 20 basis points of earnings to the S &P 500. Oh, I never saw that one. That's pretty good. Okay, good one in the Wall Street Journal today. This is the lead. Lisa and Anthony Dele are saving about$1 ,000 a month for a seven-year-old daughter, Zoe. The money isn't for college tuition or summer camp or medical expenses. It is to support her once she is an otherwise independent adult. About 60 % of parents with children 18 to 34 say they helped their kids financially in the previous year, according to Pew, and they go through a bunch of examples in this piece.

54:47And I think this is actually just a thing now. And we get questions all the time in our inbox from people saying, hey, listen, I'm not talking about 529 or HSA. How do I actually save for my kids for the future? And I opened up, I did a liftoff account, and I put one in each of my kids' names as well. And I thought about this same thing. When they get out of school and they need an apartment or they're paying off student loans or they got their first car payment or maybe a wedding or something, it probably makes sense to save for them. And a lot of people are realizing that because of the rising cost of housing in these things, Like they're probably going to have to help their kids eventually.

55:24Maybe we should plan for it. So I've been doing this since my kids were born, but I, uh, I'm embarrassed. The Lisa and Anthony are saving a thousand dollars a month. That's a lot of money. I'm putting$50 a month. I think I'm doing, I'm doing like$85 a month per kid. And I, but yes, that's, that's a ton of money they're saving, obviously. And you hope, Hey, the kid's going to be fine and we won't have to use this money on them. But obviously the sort of not so good ramification here is that this just makes wealth inequality worse because the people who can help and have the means do. And a lot of people obviously don't have the means.

56:05I transferred$150 out of Kobe's account last week to pay me back for that ridiculous$350 bills that Robin gave him. Did you have him pay you for the movie that you rented for him too? But this is a real thing people are thinking about now to do. good. Safe for your kids. It's great. But yes, of course the, listen, the, the

56:30capitalism exacerbates income inequality while simultaneously lifting all boats, the boats, the yachts get lifted a lot quicker. It just is. And there's no better solution. Speaking of yachts, someone sent me a, uh, someone emailed us under animal spirits account the other day with a picture of a pontoon and it said Midwest yacht. Nice. That's a pretty good one. But one of the things, it's not to throw your hands up in the air and say you can't do anything. The baby, is it baby bonds? What were we calling them? Yeah. That every baby born gets stocks? I love that. Let's do that. Yeah, I agree. But imagine telling it because there's, I'm sure there are some hardline people that say, hey, once the kid is out of the house and they're 18, they're off the payroll.

57:11And I had a friend like this in high school. I remember he worked his whole time through high school. And he said, when I'm 18, I'm totally off of my parents' everything. and it was like very well known. Like I'm done. And he, it was very stressful for him in high school. Did he choose that or his parents did? His parents did. They're like at 18, listen, you're on your own, man. You're out of the house, find your own place to rent. After high school, you're an adult. I respect that. I will not be doing that to my children, but I do respect that. Imagine telling a parent that today, like, sorry, let your kid, and obviously, but no parent.

57:45Parents want to do, will bend over backwards to do whatever they can to help their child succeed, obviously. Yeah. All right. Let's do some recommendations. By the way, Ben, I got bad news for you. The stock market can use a pullback. That's not what happens when stocks break out. They don't just pull back. I guess they could, but anything's possible. But massive breath thrust, as they say. Okay. On Friday. I'm just saying, a healthy correction would probably be nice, but the market doesn't always give you the returns you want or need. Okay. I talked earlier about how much better it is as an investor these days because technology.

58:24I think as a consumer of pop culture, it's just things are just so much better. So The Ringer had this piece on the oral history of the 40-year-old version. And I feel like in the past, we would watch these movies and then not really think of them again. Not do like the deep dives into IMDb. Do you use IMDb very often or not really? Yeah. Like if I see a movie I like, I will go through and look at the trivia on IMDb. And so some of this I'd read before, but it was really good. And just thinking through some of the, I mean, this is just sophomoric humor. Some people would say like how, but they talked about the joke writing process and how Gary Shandling helped with the ending.

58:58And there was a certain joke that they tried to figure out and Adam McKay helped out with it. Which one? Reading through like, Adam McKay said that he, the light bulb thing where they're breaking light bulbs on each other, that he used to do that at his job. So that was his idea. And just to see where the ideas from these jokes come from the genesis, just the deep dive. when you think this is so dumb, but it had such thought into it. I rewatched this. I think it's on Amazon Prime. It still totally holds up. But it's hard. And they talk in the story about how Seth Rogen was 22 years old helping produce this movie.

59:31He looked like he was 35. Yeah, he looked very old. Must be the goatee. You don't see goatees anymore, right? That is totally a 90s, early 2000s thing that went away. I was watching 25th Hour last night, and Ed Norton was sporting a very healthy goatee and I had the exact same thought. You just don't see this anymore. Ben Stiller was on Mark Maron's podcast just talking about all the comedy movies he did and him as a director and how he does Severance and just seeing the curtain be opened like this is just really interesting to hear how people think about these things. Anyway, it's interesting.

1:00:09Because of the book, I'm just rewatching old stuff because there's nothing good new these days, but you gave me the 1999 book about the best movie ever and there's a whole chapter on the office space. So I rewatched it, of course, because I rewatched that movie like every few years. So let's say you're an in a tech employee in 1999, right? I'm Michael Bolton. But do you think that though, like, are those shares worthless now or did like people become? Oh, yeah. Okay. That company went to zero. I mean, I know they stole some of the money, but I just, I feel like the, this movie was so much deeper than I remembered it.

1:00:41The part about where he asks, like, Lawrence, what would you do with a million dollars? And that's the funniest line in the movie, right? Two chicks at the same time. And he asks, Peter, what would you do? And he says, nothing. I would do nothing. I would sit there and I would do nothing. And he says, take a look at my cousin. He's broke. Don't do shit. You don't need a million dollars to not do anything. I feel like that was a very, like, well thought out personal finance happiness sort of analogy that I missed before. Shout out to Mike Judge. Yes. Okay. That's all I got. All right. You just mentioned a lot of podcasts.

1:01:12I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to take a little bit of a hiatus. Not really, but I'm really leaning into the audio books thing. I love it. It makes me feel like much more productive. Not, I mean, I feel like half the pot, half the listen I do is for entertainment purposes. Like I listened to, I listened to every episode of that Bill Simmons has put out for the last 10 years, literally. I think I'm good. I get it. Right. At what point do people become oversaturated on animal spirits though? Yeah, that's a fair point. Nobody listened to this. cover yours. Uh, so my, my listening habits on the podcast side was Simmons and I listened to Rosilla's podcast and sometimes Zach Lowe and the town and the rewatchables, which I will never not listen to, uh, and the big picture and Joe and Tracy and Patrick.

1:02:00And, uh, I'm a, yeah, I'm a hyper consumer of information in the years, but anyway, I'm leaning to the audio books. I really enjoy it. I feel like I'm like, you sign up. What's the Amazon thing where you sign up for a Kindle Unlimited or something? So I just bought credits. So it's pretty cheap. It's like 75 bucks for 10 credits on Audible and one book per credit. So$8. Uh, yeah, I feel like it's a new me. I'm excited. So what's your latest one you're listening to? Um, this one was on Libby because I told you I was like between, Oh, I finished the jailblazers. That was good. Uh, I think somebody bought me this book.

1:02:34Somebody bought me this physical book called Unstoppable, The Unbelievable True Story, Siggy Wilsig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend. So anyway, this is the book that I'm listening to today. But I just feel good when I'm learning. That's another story that will never happen again today. No. That's probably like a mailroom guy again. He worked up from the mailroom. Yeah. So I'm excited. Okay. Turning over a new leaf, Ben, until last sports betting starts, and then I'll be back to Simmons and Ursula. So I've got three weeks left. Okay, anything we had to plug here?

1:03:09Now's the time. No. All right. Check our talking wealth. We were going to rebrand from the unlock, right? Yeah. All right. I had my Carl Richards one out last week. I think Josh has got one this week, right? You're going on vacation. You're out of here. You work on vacation. Yeah, I'm not going to not work. I have phone calls in the car and et cetera, et cetera. All right. Animal Spirits at the compoundnews.com. We'll see you next time.