The Cash-Returning Machine (EP.343)

24:45We've both said dumb stuff before. We got an email recently that I responded to. I said, yeah, listen, that was a dumb comment. The minute I heard it, I said, yeah, I wish I didn't say that. Hey, sometimes people, just take it easy on people. The$400 one, though, I refuted that$400 emergency expense thing with fax and data and all this stuff to back it up, but you could refute that by anecdotes. go to a restaurant, go to the mall, go, go, go to the airport. Yeah. That's right. Go to the mall. None of the, all, how many, what percentage, what was that bullshit number? Was it 40 % of, no, it couldn't be that high.

25:19How high was it? It was, yeah, it was like 40%, but so the way I equate this is. Wait, hang on, hang on, Ben, I'm sorry. The stat was 40 % of Americans. Are we sure? So it was 63 % can come up with the cash. 37 % cannot. What horseshit. Exactly. So I had a, I had a guy in college who was always short on money and he had to borrow a hundred dollars from another guy. Right. So we borrowed a hundred dollars and didn't pay him back for months. And he kept saying, I can't afford to pay back. But every night this guy was out at the bar or he's going to a party and he's buying a case of beer or whatever.

25:54And, and we wanted to say, man, you can't afford it. You just don't want to. And that's the, that's the thing with a lot of these. So anyway, by the way, it sounds like, I understand. It sounds like a weird flex that I'm good at listening to people say things I disagree with and not writing them off forever and not killing them. But seriously, I feel like, I feel like so many people do that. Oh, I heard what this guy said. What an idiot. It's like, come on. Okay. I, I, I usually do that. I'm not like you. I'm not as, I write people off. This was really interesting from the, wait, you do. I don't know.

26:24Some people know if, if it's a really smart person who keeps saying dumb stuff over and over and over again. That's different. That's different. That's different. Okay. That's different. Fair. This is interesting. So the BLS has this report of in March, 2023, 35 % of U.S. private sector business establishments that were born in March, 2013 were still in operations. In other words, one third of businesses created in March of 2013 survived for a decade. Two thirds did not. I think this is another reason that you have to be long-term bullish. Two-thirds of all, and I think for most time periods, it's probably even higher than this, two-thirds of all businesses over the past decade and change completely failed.

27:08And people still keep coming back and creating new business. Look at this next one. This is from Joey Politano. America's new business boom. Business applications are so much higher than they were before the pandemic. People continue, and they're probably delusional in many cases, to start a business, and the majority of them fail, yet people keep trying. Well, this is one of the reasons why our market will, for the foreseeable future, trade at a premium to the rest of the world. And not to brag, but we are a nation of entrepreneurs. That's what we do. We start shit. Some of it doesn't always work, but that's what we do.

27:46If you think about the stuff you have to go through to start a business and the risk you have to take, it's immense. And people just – and I think a lot of it is like you have to have the right personality to do that. You turn off the risks in your brain or whatever it is to think like I can do this. And thousands and thousands of people think this all the time. Oh, we're collectively delusional. I'm sure you see this all the time in your town where you'll see a new store open. like we got a bread shop and bakeries. And Rob and I laugh at just like, well, who thought this was a good idea? This is so obviously not going to be here in 12 months.

28:22We're delusional. Somebody took real financial risk to do these things. Right. Even when the odds seem infinitesimally small. And that collective delusion is actually a positive for the economy overall. Because yes, a certain percent of those hit and they work and they go better than expected. and then the people who failed think like, I can do it again. I can do that. And yeah, it is kind of amazing. We got a new, we got numbers, the New York State Empire Manufacturing Index, I think that's what it is, plummeted in January. And listen, I'm not gonna pretend to understand what goes into this, but like really, really low, going back to like 2020 levels low.

29:05I don't know if this is the canary in the coal mine or if this is just noise or if there's, I don't know. But Renaissance Macro tweeted, the empire manufacturing current conditions imploded to negative 43.7 in January, the lowest since the initial stages of the pandemic. However, the six-month outlook improved to a three-month high. So really, really weird. If you look at this chart, the current reading does not look like any of the others. It's very odd. So like the current reading crashed. Like, oh, things are getting worse or bad. Like last month crashed, but the look ahead is breaking out.

29:42The forward one is rising. I think our ability to forecast has been just disintegrated by so many people trying to forecast all the time. And you're like threading a needle. Like, well, right now it's this. And in three months, it's going to be this. And six months, I just think, I don't know. Has the internet broken? Ben, you're right. I bet on the Eagles last night. What was I thinking? What was I thinking? That was a Long Island hedge because you were hedging the fact that if the Eagles would have won, you would have been pissed. So you wanted to get some money. No, I have to admit, I was smiling ear to ear.

30:16Best money I've ever spent. But yeah, forecasting is difficult. Forecasting is difficult. Did COVID just drive the nail into the coffin of forecasting? Because I feel like forecasting has gotten worse since the pandemic for everyone. Did it just screw? Or are we just in a really tough period to wrap our hands around? I've said this before. I'll say it again. There is life before the pandemic. We shook up the snow globe, and then there's life after. And we're just still on the other side of chaos. That should be a movie. You remember the Sliding Doors movie with Gwyneth Paltrow? Pretty good movie.

30:52I never saw Sliding Doors. Pretty good 90s movie. I don't know. Based on the stuff that you like versus what I like, you probably wouldn't like it. It's a romantic comedy. That felt like an insult. That was a front-handed... Is it a front-handed insult? I don't know. You know, we got an email. We got an email with the headline was, I hope I'm not too late. And it was somebody like, Michael, whatever you do, do not watch The Holdovers. It's a film. Ben likes it. You're going to hate it. And thank you to that person. I wasn't going to watch it. I already came to my senses. I take umbrage. It is not a film.

31:26I don't like films. This is a movie. I think you should actually watch it. It's a good movie. I do love Paul Giamatti. Especially if you're really excited. Okay. obviously one of the hardest things to predict is inflation. So the new CPI for December came out last week. We've talked about this before. CPI, less shelter, is at 1.9 % through December. Remember, because the rent component is so much higher, it's like 6 % still and coming down. This is an interesting one. Food at home, which is groceries, now growing at 1.3%, below the overall rate of inflation. This stuff is going to matter eventually.

32:04Right? I know it's cumulative. Does that count as talking to the commenters if we're talking about inflation being cumulative? Or can we assume, listen, we have educated - Every time you say, I know, we're talking to the commenters. Okay. All right. But I think you underestimate the fact that some people need clarification occasionally. I agree. But I'm not talking to those people, Ben. I'm talking to you. And I don't want to waste our audience's time who knows damn well what time it is. Okay. Okay. The current drawdown, here's more good news on the inflation reading. The current drawdown from Lizanne Sanders, she tweeted this, for Mannheim, used vehicles.

32:46Who is this Mannheim? Is it a company? It sounds like one of the bad guys in Die Hard 6. First name Mann, last name Heim? Yeah. record uh it's in a 21 percent decline by far the worst record this is great news it is for everybody uh well not everybody it's not good news for me i'm i am stuck i am so far underwater on my wife's car it's not even funny i thought you're gonna talk about your jeep because this is where the comments were actually good there must have been 25 comments last week saying you know what the problem is is michael's jeep there's literally something called the jeep death wobble.

33:23Like, did you get this taken care of yet? No. How is there a problem with a car called a death wobble and it's not like a crisis? I'll just drive around with my death wobble. No biggie. No, it's only a problem if you're going over like 50 miles an hour. So guess what? I'm avoiding highways. So you're going to avoid the highways and just put your emergency flashers on? I'm just avoiding the highways. I just can't believe there's something, there's literally something called a death wobble that can go wrong with a car. That sounds bad to me. It's probably crazy. Unbelievable. Okay, but the Mannheim one, this was easy to predict.

33:55The used car prices crashed, and we were saying, this is not something that can last. Where used car prices were more than new car prices, and they were going through the roof. That was an easy one to predict. Like, okay, this is not going to last. Here's another good one, though. Here's the way - Wait, what's a website that gives you a good estimate of your car? Oh, does Carvana do it? There's a couple of them. Track your car's value online. So let's just see how screwed I am. But wait, don't you always expect your car to be relatively underwater? Isn't that just always the case? You drive it off a lot and it's down to 30 % or something.

34:30Oh, it's CarMax. 20%. It's CarMax. Hold on, 2019. CarMax lowballs you, by the way. Throwing it out there. CarMax lowballs you. They don't want to pay very much. They lowball you. Oh, this is brutal. All right, so. A car is not an asset. It's a depreciating hunk of metal. Okay, so I could probably get$25 ,000 for it, and I owed like$34 ,000. So you got to hold on to it. That's it. I'm stuck. How long is the lease? I own it. Oh, you bought it. Okay, well, no Tahoe for you, I guess. Trade it in for a minivan. All right, here's another piece of good news on inflation. Wage growth tracker from the Atlanta Fed, 5.2 % as of December 2023.

35:13So we're talking over 2 % real wage growth this year? that's a really high number that's very i mean obviously we're making up for lost time that's a very this is tailwind kind of stuff for the economy to continue to be not really really strong but pretty good pretty good all right crypto etf i would say the overall state of the economy it's it's pretty good it's fine it's not we're not we're not booming but it's it's healthy All right. From Yahoo Finance, spot Bitcoin ETFs, which launched last Thursday, have already attracted a significant amount of investor interest in the first two days. So in the first two days, inflows were$1.4 billion, according to our friend Eric Belchunas at Bloomberg, who was, I think, 24-7 on the crypto ETF stuff.

36:02Belchunas was trading 24-7. So volumes were$3.6 billion. However, Beltunas noted that these numbers may be adjusted due to transactions awaiting settlement. Grayscale had outflows of$819 million. So maybe it was a little lower than that. I know it's two days in. Does that... That doesn't sound like that much money to me. Am I missing something here? Maybe it'll be higher. I don't know. It sounds like a lot to me after two days. You predicted$100 billion in Bitcoin ETFs in the first year. There's no way we're getting to that. No, we're close. Hang on, hang on. We're not even gonna hit 10. Sir, I walked that back.

36:39Okay, so what was your final prediction? 50. The 50s, no way. Which is still, that's still very aggressive. 10 might be aggressive. No. I mean, it's probably gonna settle in at five, maybe seven. Probably based on what? Based on the first couple of days of flows, right? You could extrapolate out a year based on two days. Yeah. Come on now. What are the odds here? All right. No, you know what? You're right. By the end of 2024, we're not going to be at$10 billion in crypto unless Bitcoin goes - All right,$50 billion by the end of 2024 is plus$350. Oh, it's like plus$1 ,000. There's no way it's going to hit$50 billion.

37:23No, it's not. All right, we're going to have to have some ETF people chime in here. $50 billion? It brought in$1 billion in the first two days of trading. That's nothing. Okay. times 250 trading days a year, that's$125 billion. Do the math. The money was waiting in that first day. There's more money waiting. All right, listen, I don't know. I'm guessing. $50 billion plus$350. You think it's plus$1 ,000? Oh, yeah. There's no way it's going to get to$50. If you're the bookie, I'll take... You're going to give me 10 to 1? If it gets$50 billion, yeah. What's my payout then when it doesn't happen? One.

38:01Okay, fine. All right, so how does the, is there any impact at all from the 24-7 trading of crypto on the ETFs? Is it just the open and close are really like a really, really wide range? Is it just more trading in the open? Like what do we get here? Yeah, interesting. Will there be a flurry of activity at 930 and as we approach four? I don't know. Yeah, I just, I don't, because obviously there are ETFs elsewhere. and europe has had bitcoin etfs in canada and places but is the 24 7 trading nature of these things does it make it any different or or i don't know i would guess that because it trades 24 7 there's not going to be an unusual amount of order of buying and selling at 9 30 as the percentage of the overall transaction pie but i don't know i don't know i don't know okay this is from barons A lot of crypto people were mad at Vanguard because Vanguard said, first of all, they're not going to offer crypto ETFs.

39:03And then I think they also said, we're not even going to allow the trading of crypto ETFs on our exchange. So it says, spot Bitcoin ETFs will not be available for purchase on the Vanguard platform. We also have no plans to offer Vanguard Bitcoin ETFs or other crypto-related products. And people were really mad at Vanguard, to which I say, I don't know, they can do what they want. Wait, hold on. Which people are you referring to? Crypto people. The people that were not talking. Okay, not commentators, crypto people. Okay. No, there was a lot of people who were saying that were complaining about – these are actual stories in Bloomberg and Barron's, and people were complaining about this.

39:38This is not without precedent, right? Could you trade triple-levered ETFs at Vanguard? Vanguard can do what they want. And honestly, this is – and let's be honest. They're going to break down it someday probably. Even if they don't off their own for a while, they'll, they'll love trading. They'll probably break down. Maybe they just want to see how things go since this is a relatively new product, but. I don't think they will. They know their audience. Listen, I would. Jack Poggle is smiling, looking down smiling right now at this though. Yes. He's saying, well, well done. Way to, way to hold the line.

40:14Vanguard DIY investors or advisors, they're not trading this stuff. And you can, you can trade everywhere you want. Go trade somewhere else with this stuff. Yeah. I don't think this is a big deal. It's their prerogative. I agree. Yeah. $50 billion, huh? Plus$350. All right. That should have been on your 10 predictions list. So I could come back and put an X through it. Did I say anything? Did I have a break? Oh, yeah, I did. Bitcoin$100 ,000? Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. All right. Global funding by fintech startups sank. This is in the information. Sank over 50 % in 2023. Remember how white-hot fintech startup ecosystem was and this maybe collective delusion that they were going to disrupt banks?

40:59I pulled this from Bank of America's Q4 earnings call. So Bank of America added over 600 ,000 net new checking accounts. They added 4.6 million credit card accounts and a record 3.8 million consumer investment accounts. The banks are not getting disrupted. No. And the Silicon Valley bank hiccup was a three-day banking crisis we had. I don't know how scary that was for three days. Doesn't that kind of ordeal just make you realize that, oh, yeah, one of these little upstarts is never going to be able to take on Bank of America and JP Morgan. at this type of business? No way. Another chart in here that caught my eye was checks versus Zelle.

41:51And you can imagine what this looks like. Zelle is going just - Do you ever have to write checks anymore? I do. What an antiquated process that is. Literally writing out the number in words. And I was a bank teller one day. This is probably one of my worst jobs I've ever had. So if you write the number, a$1 ,000 check, but in the words, you wrote 100, the bank has to take 100. The words supersede the number. Did you know this? I didn't. Did you know? I don't think I ever told this story.

42:27I tried to get a job as a working in a bank, not as a bank teller. It was a JP Morgan in 2010. this is when I was, during my unemployed days, I couldn't get a job working in a bank, which is not that difficult of a job to procure. What were you trying to do? I was trying to get a job in the bank. Like a friend referred me. Maybe to be like a private banker or whatever, like one of those roles. Rejected.

43:00That's a tough, that was a tough labor market though, right? It was a, well, in my defense, I have two things. Listen, it was 2010, so I don't think anybody was hiring. But I also, I think I was like weird looking with my young, balding head of hair. It just, there's probably something about me that people look at and they're like, nah. You're in between. All right, what's your Zelle thing here? Oh, but just look at this chart. So it's checks written, which is going all the way down. It is just secular decline. It's like the newspaper. Oh, checks versus Zelle, okay. And Zelle transactions, it's two to one.

43:30And this is going to be three to one and four to one and ten to one. I sent a Zelle this weekend, matter of fact. Do you know who owns Zelle? Is it JP Morgan? It's a collection of seven of the biggest banks collectively owned. So it's kind of like Hulu. Oh, I think it's called Early Warning or something like that. Hold on. Who owns Zelle? Early Warning Services. Zelle, which launched in 2017, stands out from the peak pack of few days. It's owned and operated by Early Warning Services, which is co-owned by seven of the big banks, and it's not publicly traded. So look at that. Talking about fintech.

44:13They own it. Did not know that. Okay. They literally own it. You're right. So these big fintech breakthroughs are owned by the banks. Yeah. You know, here's another thing, speaking of fintech. Oh, wait. Who owns Venmo, though? Is it PayPal? Yeah. Okay. So Carta, which basically, for those unfamiliar, Carta created like cap table management, and it's a huge company in Silicon Valley. They tried to create a marketplace for secondary shares. And you can imagine it's a little bit odd given all the information they have that they're also trying to – like people were not too thrilled by this. company quote from, from the information companies didn't want to create a market for employees to sell their private shares, whether it was out of fear of volatile prices or of tripping up on regulations that limit how many non-employee shareholders a company can amass before going public.

45:05Just another example of a young fintech company. It's just difficult. These are, these are, I'd be curious to hear if the secondary stuff, if the secondary stuff completely dried up in 2022 and early 2023, or if there was actually more activity because some people needed to sell because their other options were not going to come to light. I'm guessing it mostly stalled, right? The secondary markets for this stuff. You would think that maybe there would be more demand for these shares as prices came down dramatically. Yeah, that'd be interesting to see. Lastly, from the information, remember the creator economy?

45:45Oh, yeah. That was like a, remember the retirement crisis. We're part of the creator economy, right? Isn't that us? Sure. Absolutely. We're creators. I have the creator in my recommendations for this week as well. Speaking of. So funding for global creator economy startups fell 58%. And they showed like how much money has been invested. And the peak was just, the peak was$2.5 billion a quarter. Where is it now? $2 billion? I'm sorry. Can't read this. Ben, what is this? Whatever. It's a fraction, fraction, fraction. And most of the money was spent on marketing. Because what else are you going to spend for creator economy, right?

46:28All right, let's move on to great quarter, guys. Jamie Dimon. And he's not usually upbeat on these calls. I think he tends to have a more cautious tone, which is understandable that he's probably the largest risk manager in the world, or certainly one of them. He said a hurricane in like 2022, right? Yeah. He said a very strong labor market means all is equal, strong consumer credit. So that's how we see the world. That makes sense. Banks have, I feel like banks and credit card companies have been a good tell on the economy here. Obviously that might not always be the case, but if you would have paid attention to a lot of the bank and credit card earnings calls, you wouldn't have thought the economy was freezing up imminently.

47:12I listened to BlackRock as well. Just a shout to the quarter app. It's so, it is so sick. Now they, there's like names and titles of who's talking when. Yeah, it looks really good. It looks freaking incredible. Just the whole look of it. Yeah. It's a joy, a real joy. All right. They, an analyst asked BlackRock a question about money market funds. And this was Robert Capito's answer. I wake up every morning salivating about the$7 trillion that's sitting in money market fund accounts waiting to move. And in order for it to move, we have to have a wide plate of products. And that's what we've been developing in client solutions.

47:53A lot of this is going to come from digital wealth, which is a$17 billion global market, which is growing at 15%. So he's talking about how money market funds are going to, if they move into risk assets, That's probably bonds. Anyway, I just thought that was an interesting take there. So if you have all that money, that's like a target on the back of that money market funds. Like we are looking to – financial services are trying to get that money out of there. Salivating. As quickly as possible and put it into something else. Yeah. Here's one more quote. So I think history shows when the cycle stops, that's when people first start to re-risk.

48:26We saw about$40 billion come out of money market funds to us as people re-risk, and then there's market volatility and it stops. So I think we have to get to what people will feel is the end of the cycle in rates, and then people will look. So it is going to be very interesting to see what happens with money market funds. That's one of the things that I would - When the Fed - So the general consumer economy is so far behind the regular news, like the news on NBC or ABC or whatever, CBS. When the Fed starts cutting rates and people see inflation at 2, 2.5 % or whatever it is, that stuff's going to happen, and gas prices are at 275 or whatever, that stuff's going to have to be on the news.

49:05And that's going to change the way people feel about some stuff. And I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens when the Fed does start cutting rates. And people go, wait a minute, whoa. Yeah, so my - I think it's going to be a sea change. My inclination is that inertia will keep people in money market funds. But I'm not positive. I'm just guessing. Like, I don't know. Yeah. It's going to be very interesting. They're going to be sold big time. All right. Home insurance. All right. So this is getting crazy. So this is from a Beehive newsletter. People are passing this around, and it's called Highest and Best.

49:43And it says, home insurance premiums are rising by double digits nearly everywhere, but they're still the highest in Florida at an annual average of$9 ,200. dollars in jacksonville florida real estate agents said 25 of buyers who signed contracts for sales backed out after receiving insurance estimates 15 to 20 of homeowners in florida are choosing to forego property insurance because it's too expensive it's called going bare if you were in florida and you had the and this was the case or this happened in new york because you're whatever there's a hurricane every year or something on the ocean would you just roll the dice no and not get insurance because that's, you'd still get it.

50:18Listen, I don't mean to be insensitive. If you can't afford the insurance, don't buy the house. What literally happens if you have massive home damage? What, you move? Your family's f***ed? But at that high of a price, it's crazy. And the prices are not going to go, the insurance costs are not going to go down unless the government caps them or something and says, we'll pick up the difference. I know it's not easy to just like say, to tell somebody to move. I don't know. It's a tough situation, but you can't, you can't own a home without insurance. Listen, I'm a gambler, but not, not, not like that.

50:59Not where it's like make or break. The number of people who are, who are rolling the dice, it doesn't surprise me. I guess this makes up for no, uh, no state income tax in Florida. All right. Here's a good one for you for being a middle age. I'm thinking about this one. So Lindy man tweeted this. Once you hit your thirties to forties, you start seeing a divide among men. Half of them are in the, I'm writing this out until retirement. I'm shutting it all down. And the other half are constantly working on new projects and still moving. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a ladder guy. I'm way too, I have way too much spilkis to, to shut it down.

51:31But don't you think that there's a middle ground too, where I feel the, the whole hustle culture kind of annoys me where like you always have to be doing this and starting companies and, and optimizing and yeah, chill out, bro. I don't think you have to be full bore like that all the time. So I was listening to the Michael Ovitz, uh, podcast with Patrick O'Shaughnessy last week. And I think you mentioned this last week too. So Michael Ovitz was talking about how he does to start his business and create CAA, which is the agency. And he, he had some amazing stories on that podcast, but he talked about a lot about his work ethic and he did, he started out by doing 250 to 300 calls a day and he worked seven days a week.

52:07And Patrick even asked him like, well, how did you find time for family? And he's, he kind of like, I feel like he kind of felt bad answering because he's like, well, I worked seven days a week and I had one week of the year on Christmas where I stopped worrying. Other than that, I was working all the time and that's how I built the business. And I thought about it. I've speaking of getting old and having a faulty memory. You always talk about this. I keep forgetting stuff too. I forgot. I read the book on Michael Ovitz a couple of years ago. Who was Michael Ovitz? And so the great, yeah, it's a great book.

52:34So the, the great thing about reading on a Kindle, which I do now, is that I highlight stuff that I want to go to later. So I went and I said, oh, I'm going to look at my highlights of that book because I haven't read it in a while and I forgot. And he talked about this in the book and he said in 1979, when I was 33, Ted Ashley at Warner Brothers took me aside and said, I'm going to give you some advice. He grinned ruefully and knowing you, you're not going to take it, but here it is. I could have worked 10 % less and it would have made, and it would, and I wouldn't have made a difference in my professional success, but I would have been a lot happier.

53:00And Ovid says, uh, he was right on both counts and I didn't take the advice. I see now that I could have worked as much as 20 % less and it wouldn't have cost me. And kind of looking back at that and said, he could have been fine if he wasn't working just, you know, balls to the wall. I think that's probably my biggest change. And you talked about how you, if someone says something dumb, it doesn't bother you. My big thing that I'm middle-aged and I think that one of my biggest changes in life is that I don't look at someone like Ovitz and his success and think, man, I want to do that. Because when I was younger, I probably would have.

53:34Like, why didn't I work that hard? Being at the point in my life I'm in now with kids, I can't imagine working seven days a week for 15 hours a day and have it always be on my mind. That's the one thing that I've, I think I've let go in middle age is that looking at the people who are super successful and not thinking what they had to do to get there. But here's the thing about people looking back on their, on their regrets in life. you may have regrets, but if given the opportunity, I don't think he would change. If Michael Ovitz could go back 40 years ago, knowing what he knows now with his regrets, guess what?

54:08I honestly don't think it would change a thing. I think people are who they are, and it's very easy to look back with regrets, but I don't think that they would necessarily change people's behavior if given a time machine. I kind of agree too. The reason they're successful in the first place is because they have to work that hard, regardless of whether they they could cut back and still be fine. I agree. It's a personality thing. Yeah, and guess what? Michael Ovitz wouldn't be Michael Ovitz if he worked five days a week because that is the most competitive industry in the world. There's certainly one of them.

54:40Somebody would have, there would always have been a Michael Ovitz. If it wasn't him, it would have been somebody else. But I don't want to give us a too big of a pat on the back here, but I feel like you and I have struck some middle ground where we are constantly reading and researching and thinking and talking about the markets and all this stuff. but we've also know how to shut it off when we need to. And I think that's a hard thing to do if you really want to be successful in your career. Speak for yourself. No, seriously, I don't shut it off. I'm not good at it. I'm not going to pretend to look back with regrets because I think, thank God, I spend a ton of time with my kids.

55:15So I don't feel like they're getting shortchanged. Yes, listen, do they see me on my phone too much? Yes, but I am who I am. But that's what I mean though, But you're not missing time with your kids because you're working all the time or something. You're still finding a way to do both. Correct. I am very, very, and a lot of this is due to COVID for a lot of families. I would have been in the city five days a week. That's just what it was. Yeah, true. Yeah, I think that probably did save you a lot. Anyway, it's a really good podcast to listen to, but it just got me thinking about this stuff. So people just love the NFL.

55:58It is wild. Oh, I have to take a retraction time. Last week I said, what happens if you're in Kansas City or Miami? So if you were in Kansas City or Miami, the game was aired on your local stations. So Peacock paid$110 million to the NFL for these rights, which is a lot of money. But the Washington Journal wrote that it drew 23 million viewers. it was also the largest event ever for internet usage in the U.S., accounting for 30 % of web traffic, making Saturday the single highest day of U.S. internet usage in history. And now the $110 million question is, how many of the X million signups we don't know are going to stick around?

56:42And that's the bet that Peacock is making. Obviously, NBCUniversal owns Peacock. We don't know. There were a lot of people on Saturday complaining about Peacock and making jokes and saying this is going to be hard for people. Obviously, people figured it out. But for me, as someone who still subscribes to cable and has a subscription to every streaming service available, I just sat back in my chair and thought, this is easy for me. And I don't care which streaming service NFL goes to, I'm going to be ready because I have all of them. This was my time to shine. And yeah, so. Ben, how are you holding up?

57:17I know there was a ton of snow in the Midwest. We had a huge blizzard. We probably got, I don't know, 24 inches or something. We drove up north like an hour and it was really bad driving in the blizzard. And my thought to me was when my daughter was born, she's going to be 10 this year. I remember having conversations with people at the time saying, I wonder if by the time she's 16, if we'll just have self-driving cars and she'll never have to drive a car. Now I don't believe that. But I was driving through the blizzard my wife has she got her new palisade and it has the thing on cruise where you know your cruise automatically keeps like a car distance in between you the new thing it's like a little it's like taking baby steps to self-driving car right um but in the blizzard all the sensors for that cruise stuff went off so she couldn't use cruise control so my question is we do have the technology that improves for self-driving cars we have them someday how do they handle a blizzard i don't i don't know how that how a self-driving car could actually make it into blizzard when all the lines are covered up in there's going to have to be a system override for these kind of things to be manual because i'm a really good blizzard driver not to brag i think i think i can drive better than a blizzard than a self-driving car i'm sure you can that's hilarious uh all right i saw this i saw this great tweet uh the tweet was we've come full circle and the picture is

58:32white claw zero percent alcohol oh you mean seltzer water yeah thanks for that yeah but It's in a cool can. Really incredible. All right, recommendations. Ben, somebody sent us a video of, this is old, this is original YouTube. This is like 2010, this video. It's got almost 4 million views. A guy did a bit where he just holds doors open for people like way longer than is normal. I said that's a pet peeve, but he does a joke. Like, it's just so many people, they're like doing this. The half jog. The half jog. It was very funny. All right. We asked the audience, was 2023 a good year for movies? And 77 % of the audience said no.

59:15I saw a very good movie this weekend. And I'm talking about Killers of the Flower Moon. We started it. I'm not through it yet. Okay. I really enjoyed it. I'm surprised you liked it. Because you didn't like Oppenheimer. So here's the problem. I told you, I ate an edible before I saw Oppenheimer. and that's on me. Which is totally on you. I can't see the reasoning ever to eat an edible before Oppenheimer. Totally. I think by hour 245, I was doing one of these. Yeah. You know, my head was going and I was waking up, jerking my head open. Jerking my head open. It's a weird thing to say. Okay. So if I saw Oppenheimer the way that I watched Killers of the Flower Moon, I probably would have had a much different feeling.

1:00:07And I think I do need to revisit Oppenheimer because I'm the only asshole that didn't like it. So Killers of the Flower Moon, just classic Marty. De Niro and DiCaprio were just on fire. See, I'm only an hour into it or something. Their characters seem weird to me. I'm still kind of, I'm kind of tepid on the movie. I still have, it's, I got like four hours left, so. So I broke it into, I think, three different sittings. If I saw it, if I sat for three hours and 15 minutes in the theater, I don't know that I would have enjoyed it. I don't know. I probably wouldn't have. I probably would have said, this is ridiculous.

1:00:41How am I still here? You're a movie theater guy. I know, but 315? True. 315? That's too much. Someone needs to place some limits on Marty, I think, though. Someone needs to say, like, no more than two and a half hours for a movie. Yeah, he needed guardrails. He needed guardrails. Oh, and the actress that played DiCaprio's wife, I forget her name, Lily Tompkins, maybe? Gladstone, I think. She was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoy, I'm Lily Gladstone. I'm sorry, Lily Tompkins. Lily Gladstone. And you know what? Obviously, expectations played a part of this because I was not expecting to like it.

1:01:13And I was pleasantly very surprised. See, you do like films. Godzilla finished the Monarch Legacy of Monsters. A little bit of a valley and then boom. Episode six through eight was, but the ending was awesome. Loved it. Loved it. All right, I watched The Creator on Hulu. This is Denzel's son, who in the lead, and it's an AI movie. It's like a two-hour long movie. It's a good action movie, but it left me with a weird taste in my mouth. I think you'd probably like this movie. My son, who's just an action movie junkie now, he watched it like three times. He loves action movies. Violence, he's probably going to be a serial killer someday.

1:01:55But the weird part about it is, so there's these AI robots, and they make them look like humans, obviously, and you can't really tell the difference. They have this little circle thing in the back of their head. What kind of AI robots would you like to see in the future? Would you like, because in the movie, they had robots that looked like robots and the robots that looked like humans. What would you prefer? Because I don't think I can have robots that look like humans. That's too, and I know some people are going to want that for companionship, and I think it's too weird. I can't handle robots that look like humans.

1:02:20Are we going to live in a world where robots look like humans? Or is it going to be like iRobot? Which, by the way, I love that movie. Me too. We watched that one recently too. But here's the thing about the creator. I don't want to completely give the plot away, but let's be honest. It's an action movie. You don't, it doesn't really matter. No, no, don't, don't, don't, don't ruin it. I'm going to watch it. Okay. I'll be curious because the good guys in the movie are not who you think they would be. So it's kind of bizarre. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. Understood. And I rewatched Fargo, one of your favorites.

1:02:51But I think I did it because we had this huge, huge snowstorm in Fargo. And I told my wife, I'm like, I feel like we're driving through Fargo right now. So I watched the movie, and I feel like there's certain movies that, depending on the weather, they hit differently depending on the weather outside. There's some movies that I will only watch in the summer, and some I will only watch in winter, and Fargo is a winter movie for me. Totally. You know what? It might be my favorite movie ever. I know I would really have to think about that, but that's how much I like it. It's in consideration for my favorite movie of all time.

1:03:22I know Frances McDormand won the Oscar, right? But William H. Macy is just— William H. Macy. He's so amazing in that movie. But yes, that was a weather movie for me. That's all I got. All right. All right. One other thing to kill is the fireman. So Brendan Fraser made a cameo. Oh, okay. You just ruined it for me. No, I didn't. So Tom Wamsgans or whatever, however the hell you pronounce his name, he's British Brendan Fraser. I don't know if we ever said that. No, I can see that though. Yeah, but could you see him doing a movie like The Mummy? Yeah, it's Brendan Fraser. No, you can see Tom doing the mummy.

1:04:01Sure, why not? I just pulled close to that theory. Use your imagination. All right, he's 60 % of Brendan Fraser. All right, Animal Spirit. Oh, I forgot to open up the show. We got so many fantastic tax people reaching out to us. So really, really excited about the outreach. Who needs LinkedIn when you have Animal Spirits? What's that? Who needs LinkedIn when you have Animal Spirits? There you go. Animal Spirits at the compoundnews.com. Personal EMAS, personal responses. Keep them coming. We'll see you next time.

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