The Dollar Dump (EP.408)

23:43No, we leave people. We're probably not. That's the problem. Like capitalism leaves people and industries behind. It just does. It lifts people out of poverty on the whole, but there are certainly people that get left behind. I mean, there's no denying that. I mean, if this thing that happened over the course of a few decades gets people this mad, how mad are people going to get at AI? Right. Just imagine. One of the things that we don't really capture, though, is services. And if you look at services exports, we're over a trillion dollars. China is, I don't know, 400 million, 400 billion, excuse me.

24:10Yeah. That's what we're good at, right? So I see a lot of people who are putting out posts. It's economists and pundits and analysts putting out posts of, here's what the impact of tariffs are going to be on the economy, on GDP, on spending. And while I appreciate the people that are putting in that time and effort, and it's kind of funny because you can throw it out the window two days later when the tariffs change, but I don't see how you can possibly try to quantify what's going to happen here. Because there are going to be so many unintended consequences and behavioral changes that it's almost useless to try to say, like, if the world remains exactly the same in a vacuum, this will be the impact.

24:46Because the world is not going to remain the same. Companies are going to change. Consumer behavior is going to change. And one of them we've seen so far is that already Europeans are canceling their travel plans to the U.S. Huge. It's cratering. And this is just one segment, right? Yep. Visitors from Western Europe who stayed at least one night and the U.S. fell by 17%. Last year, international visitors spent more than$253 billion on US travel and tourism-related goods and services. So yeah, some of these charts are wild. The FT did this post, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and it's crashing. Not surprisingly, travel and leisure stocks are getting hit really hard.

25:29Las Vegas Sands is down 18 % just since Liberation Day, down 38 % year-to-date. A lot of that is China. So, um, but the airlines are getting murdered, the hotels. But you wonder if, if the dollar keeps dropping though, travel, because for years now, it's been cheaper to go to Europe for Americans. Eventually it's going to be, if the dollar keeps dropping, it's going to be cheaper for Europeans to come to America. Yeah. We got an email from a listener who has friends in Europe and they've traveled the world together and they got an email. These people from Germany, um, they want us to share. Hey, we've taken the decision not to travel to the U.S.

26:07this summer. The latest developments by the U.S. government worry us and disappoint us too much. The tariffs will seriously endanger the world's wealth. We all know that production of neither bikes, nor phones, nor toasters, nor anything else will move back from Asia to the States. The hourly rate of the average American simply makes it too expensive. Instead, the tariffs will hurt the world tremendously. The U.S. inflation will grow very strong. As many companies need to raise prices to cope with tariffs. Like us, if we don't do that, we will go out of business. Additionally, we read about situations in the German press where German tourists and visitors are being detained in the U.S.

26:35despite having a valid reason of being in the country and holding ESTA. All that together does not make us feel welcome as Germans, as Europeans, or basically as not Americans. I'm truly sorry. I wish we were not in this situation. I hope something happens in the U.S. Anyway, it goes on, but they're not coming, and this is not an outlier. It's in the data. No, I think there's a lot of people outside of the U.S. who are looking at us and not happy. So here's my question, though. So Torsten Slok posted this chart of total foreign holdings by instruments. So he says foreigners own 20 percent of our stock market, 30 percent of treasuries and 30 percent of corporate bonds.

27:09Could the big outflow, a decent outflow, just sort of cause this cause a further sell off in these things? Could this be a structural thing going forward where we've had a huge growth in foreign investors? Does it doesn't matter? I don't know. Sure. That's one of the unintended consequences questions, I guess. Hard to dismiss it. I think also would be impossible to say like, yes, this will happen. Right. But one of the reasons that international stocks have been doing so poorly is because people in their own countries have been selling them. So I do think this is the perfect encapsulation of why you diversify internationally.

27:44Right? This is all people were asking for the past five years. Why would I ever own international stocks? A situation like this, this is why. This data point just hit the tape. Tell me if this inspires confidence or not. happen. Weisenthal tweeted, the outlook for new orders from the New York Fed regional manufacturers literally hit the lowest level in the history of the survey. So it's hard to... Again, we'll see if actions match sentiment. That's the thing. It's hard to imagine this not impacting earnings. I just don't see any way around it. Now, the degree and the magnitude is up for debate, obviously.

28:18Yeah. I keep saying companies are going to protect margins over workers. So I think the next thing down is corporations and companies are going to be protecting costs. And that probably means layoffs are coming. Here's another thing. Ryan Peterson tweeted this. Met another U.S. manufacturer who's decided to produce their product overseas where they won't have to pay duties on component imports. We're going to see stuff like this where you're going to see stories of companies just completely making everything overseas, and it's going to be the opposite. Again, these corporations, the plans are so haphazard that corporations are going to be able to figure out loopholes, they're going to figure out, they're going to be able to figure this out, even if it's going to be a painful transition period.

28:57I worry more about the workers than I do about the corporations at this point. Same. The news is, the news flow is dizzy. It's really, really hard to predict or make sense. You know, it's a, you know, it's a weird phenomenon that we're going to see. The, the data by definition, backward looking doesn't matter. Like Bank of America reported, I think consumer spending was up 2 % year over year in March, something like that. It's like, oh, great. The consumer is still spending, but it doesn't matter what they did in March. Right. So the next earnings season is not going to matter. The forward stuff's going to matter more than the past stuff.

29:29I would imagine that company, that stocks will not move on what they did in the previous quarter. No, earnings won't matter. It's almost always forward looking data or forward guidance, but now more than ever. So Conorstant tweeted, no way of really knowing when we're on the outside. Oh, I forgot to mention this. I'm like, there was, there was a report that the Fed would step in into the treasury market if they had to. No way of really knowing when we're on the outside, but I think it's hard to disentangle. Quote, Besant seems to have a little more influence and the VIX is around 40 and the bond market was disorderly last week.

29:58Then he said, since April 2nd, there's been a shock to consumer business confidence. 10-year yields and mortgage rates are up about 30 basis points. Investment grade and high yield credit spreads are wider. The aggregate tariff burden is up a lot. All rollbacks pauses are welcome, but getting back to 42 conditions would be hard. So Nick Timoreos responded, the question about who has influence is misframed. Trump is acting off of his instincts and his instincts may be guided or reinforced by different advisors at different times. When his instincts are hawkish, it's said that his hawkish advisors are influential, Navarro.

30:28When market concerns override, then Besson will appear to be influential. And so it's difficult to predict what he's going to do because he acts off of instinct. I was reading Mark Rubenstein's Substack, Net Interest, which is easily one of my favorites. And the post was about the bond market and the James Carville quote that went around, Right? Right. From Bill Clinton. And yeah. So it's a really, really good post. So he grabbed a quote from The Art of the Deal, where Trump said about the way that he behaves. Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. I don't carry a briefcase.

31:00I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you've got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops. And it's difficult to run the country that way. Well, especially a trade policy where businesses are literally hanging on all the, yeah. So Ben, you mentioned earlier, like there's not, all right. So there's obviously parts of conversations that are political. How could it not be? But there's a big difference between conversations where the politics bleed in versus like a partisan conversation.

31:34And I think what you were talking about is there's not really a pro-tariff economist or a legitimate pro-tariff economist. This has nothing to do with red or blue. Ronald Reagan was against tariffs. George W. Bush was against tariffs. Milton Friedman is like the father of Republican economics. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing. This is a Donald Trump thing. There's a big difference there. Right, right. Yeah. So Nassim Taleb tweeted, give credit where credit is due. True, economists know little about tail risk and finance, but they understand trade. And I've been studying it for the past 400 years.

32:11So Matt Darling retweeted and said, you know it's bad when Taleb starts saying economists have a point. It is kind of funny that during the election, people said economists are part of the problem. And now economists are part of the solution. It all comes full circle, I guess. Another part of this is like, what does the Fed do? because we got an inflation print that went negative last month. No? So here's the thing. I was going to talk about this later. If you look at the inflation data coming down, if they would have just not done any of this other tariff stuff, the Fed would be cutting and interest rates would be falling right now.

32:45So they say that I totally believe that because, and no one cared about the inflation print because, again, it's past. People don't remember the future. But inflation data keeps coming in much, much softer than expected. That would have been very good for the Fed to say, all right, we're going to keep cutting. And I'm guessing bond deals and mortgage rates would be much lower than they are now. Yeah. Problem is though, we've got the consumers expect to change in inflation rates. The highest reading since 1981, it's, it's ups. They expect 6.7%. Now, again, I, you know, I don't know if this is going to be accurate, but people certainly believe it is.

33:23And it's funny, like what, what are the, what are the, some of the orders going to look like from the month of April and March. People are front running the tariffs. The data is going to be very... Well, they already said retail sales were higher because people are... The data is going to look very weird. All right, so a lot of consumer sentiment stuff. Tim Moreos tweeted, consumer sentiment amongst self-identified independents is now lower than it was at the low point of Biden's presidency when gas prices and inflation were soaring. Tories and Slack had a bunch of sentiment data. Consumer sentiment, families with income greater than 100 ,000 or less, both dropping like a stone.

33:5712-month economic expectations in terms of what are they expecting for unemployment is spiking. Hey, listen, people usually don't admit when they're wrong. I think my one prediction after the election was consumer sentiment would fly. I think that's wrong. Okay, hand up. Well, it was right at the time. I know. People were very excited. Record high share of consumers think business conditions are worsening. Significant decline in household income expectations. So months and months ago, we were like, what could change consumer behavior? Because ultimately, we drive the economy. 70 % of GDP is consumers.

34:32And I said, it has to be a loss of jobs. So I still think that this stuff is super concerning because people's expectations can change their habits. But I think if they don't lose their job, they're going to continue to spend, albeit at a lower level. I did not witness people reigning in their spending on my spring break last week. There was places were full, people were spending, but you're right. If we start to see a bunch of layoff announcements and I don't, if the tariffs remain this high, I don't see how we don't see that where companies just say, no, no, no, we're not going to take a hit to margins.

35:12We're going to cut costs mercilessly to survive this new reality. But the question is how, all right, How much margin impact are they going to take? How much are they going to pass on to consumers? And how many people are they going to lay off? A lot of unknowns. Known unknowns. I'm guessing the latter two are the things that are going to be the most impacted. They're not going to want to take much of a hit the margin. But there's going to be certain companies, obviously, who say, I can't increase costs as much to my product. People stop buying. Everybody's preference in the real world should be, let's let the companies eat it.

35:46But unfortunately, we know that's not how it goes. That won't happen. margins increased during 9 % inflation in 2022. Let's talk about the stock market. Let's do it. I looked at the best days ever. I have a list where I keep up the best days and the worst days in a folder. And yeah, I do this. You collect bad days and good days. I've been having a lot of bad days lately. So the best days ever. This was the 10th best day since 1928, as far as I could see. That was April 9th, 2025. Yeah, up 9.5%. By the way, for the NASDAQ, the NASDAQ was the second best day ever. Okay, that makes sense, which goes back to, what, 1970?

36:25So the other days in this list, though, are 1929, 1930. It's all 1930s and 2008, which I thought we had one of them in 2020, but I guess it was just 9 % or so. So take it for what it's worth. These weren't, I guess the 1933 ones were close to a bottom. Obviously, the other ones weren't. We've talked about this before, volatility clusters during a down market. So that update didn't signal, like, this is it, it's over. but this other one is crazy too so um sherwood i think this is luke cabo looked at the range of sessions from like the low to the high like where did it what was the lowest point of the day and was the highest point of the day and this one is up there and most of them are now and on this list i think this goes back to the 80s 2008 ish and that was a crazy so we're actually down 70 basis points at one point to start the day and finished up 10 percent um these ranges are crazy And to your point about the panic, we're not going to see, I would assume, unless the bond market completely eats it, this kind of panic again.

37:26We should have mentioned this chart earlier. This is from Bank of America, Global Fund Manager Survey. It's a record number of global investors intending to cut U.S. equities. Record. So. Will we see it, though? Yeah, that's a great question. This is, again, this is saying what they think they're going to do, not what they are going to do. Well, because what if stocks staged a great rally and they just missed their opportunity? Because look at how far people stayed underweight in 2022 through 2023. Yeah, honestly, this chart, not poo-pooing it, but it looks very noisy. That's my, yes. Again, I think this is people telling, you have to watch what they say now, or what they do now what they say.

38:07All right, so let's do some data. Now, when you're looking at like technical damage, there's a million different stats that you could cite to defend whatever point you're trying to make. Okay. So I don't want to say like, take this as gospel, the end all be all, but because it's just one data point, but I think it's important. So chart kids showed that on Trump tariff pause day, 98.2 % of the S &P 500 stocks advanced on the day. He looked back since 1990. It's only happened 15 other times. If you go out six months, the win rate is 100%. And what that means is basically, you can only get a day like that after a washout.

38:52So intuitively, it makes sense. The word everyone likes to use is capitulation. I'm looking for capitulation, and maybe we had it before then, right? You know, the movie industry was survive till 25. That was the mantra during the writer's strike. My new mantra for the stock market this year is get fixed by 26. Okay. Because there is probably going to be a lot more volatility in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Ryan Dietrich tweeted a chart, a table, excuse me, that shows that big gains tend to lead to much higher prices. So he's looking at days where the S &P 500 gains 5 % and what happens next?

39:35One month, three months, six months, 12 months. And 12 months later, it's higher 91 % of the time. Problem is between now and then, at least historically, and this is mostly 2008. So again, take it with a grain of salt, but there can be a lot of red between now and 12 months. So you got to survive. All right, let's look a little further out. I did this yesterday with ChartKid, and I said, so I looked at this, and there's, for some reason, there's been a lot of historical 19 % drawdowns. Oh, yeah, I went to ask you this. Near bear markets. I meant to, and I was mildly annoyed because I was saving this for the show, and then Michael Santoli said it on TV.

40:1419 % drawdown. So was my call for avoiding a bear market, right? I'm joking. This was a bear market. Yeah. And the funny thing, so the one in 2018 was 19.8%. And you and I at the time said, no, no, no, this is a bear market. Of course it was. And so was this. And so there's other ones in 2011. There was one in 1988, 1990, and then 1976 to 1978. So this has happened a lot of times. And I don't know why. Yeah, does a 21 % downturn feel worse than a 19? Of course not. Give me a break. It's a bear market. So I looked at, okay. And I wanted to keep this simple. Let's say at the end of a month, you go back.

40:51I went back to 1950. 50, you look and you're down 15%, which is kind of in the range we're at. You know, we were down, we were down 19 at the worst. Now we're down 12 or something. Um, so I said, if you look at the end of the month since 1915, you were down 15%. What happens if you buy? Okay. I wanted to use the end of the end of the month because I wanted to use total returns. I'm not a price return guy. So I looked at the average returns, uh, one year later, you're up on average 15 % and you're positive 83 % of the time. Three years later, you're up over 40 % and you're positive 96 % of the time.

41:24Five years, it's a 66 % of the game and you're positive 92 % of the time. Over a 10-year period, if you bought one, the stocks were down 15%. A lot of times, they went down way worse than that. Of course. Right? 100 % of the time, they were positive and you were up almost 200 % in total on average. Ben, I see this data and I'm role... This is... We're role-playing, okay? I'm a nervous investor. Mm-hmm. Ben, don't show me this. do you not see it's different this time do you not see what's happening do you not see that the global order is the guts are being ripped out we're hurting our friends and making deals with our enemies or whatever whatever a nervous person would say what would you say to the person that says it it is really and truly i know i know you can't say this but it is different this time hey listen i got a lot of comments from people saying people felt betrayed by me because i actually put out some negative sentiment in the past couple of weeks.

42:18People saying, wait, when did Ben turn into a perma bear? And the thing is, I think - Wait, somebody called you a perma bear or did you just make that up? No, they're, yes, I'm sure they were being tongue in cheek, but there was people who were saying, when did Ben turn so bearish? I think we've been trying to be realistic about this whole thing and tell it like it is. And if you look at the history of all markets, hubris has often brought down markets before. There's been many instances of this where hubris and overconfidence in people's positioning. I've studied this. My whole Don't Fall For a Book was about the people who have brought down industry because they took their ideas too far.

42:57So this kind of thing can and will happen, but that doesn't mean that you give up on the stock market for the long term. That's two different ideas in your head competing with one another. And cognitive dissonance says you get rid of one of those ideas, but I still can hold on to both of them. All right, that didn't inspire confidence. Ben, the stock market has fallen. and risk off assets aren't working. Stocks are falling. Interest rates are going up. It's different this time. It's going to get much worse. What are you talking about? How is it not different this time? I don't think about all the stuff that the stock market has been through over the past 100 years.

43:30World wars, high inflation, low inflation, stagflation, disgraced presidents. It's still up 10 % a year. How's that? Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. I mean, this is why it's called the risk premium. Yeah. Right. Stocks, stocks return more than bonds and cash because they're risky. You have to eat it sometimes. And again, I have more faith in corporations than I do in any other institution in this country right now that they'll, they'll figure out eventually, even if there's some pain in the meantime, and guess what you're to your point, it, there's been a lot of really nice returns and sometimes you have to eat it on the other side of it.

44:09How about this? If you were to, if somebody were to ask you this question, all right, you want to get out of the market. I understand. You're scared. I'm scared. We're all scared. What would be your plan for getting back in? Okay, well, let's - Wait, hold on. Hold on. I'm not done. Okay. So the person would answer something nonsensical. No offense to anyone, myself included, because what would be your plan for getting back in? I'm going to get back in when the dust settles. That's not how it works. I'm going to get back in when we fall 10%. What if we don't?

44:39So if we can accept that getting back in is probably a fool's errand, that you're probably not going to be able to time the market, getting out and getting back in at the right time, what is a better strategy? Or what is more realistic? That you can survive and endure some of the pain? Well, how about this? Or that you're going to nail the reentry. And when you frame it that way, it's like, come on. How about this? Like to people that want to do something, how about a change in allocation? So Christine Benz did this thing, and she said, like, maybe you should sell some of your stocks. And her point was, especially if you are either nervous or you're just older and don't have as much time, she's saying, put aside the young people.

45:17You should be on your hands and knees praying for this because you can buy at lower prices. But she says, if you haven't built up enough short-term reserves because you've been focusing on your risk tolerance inside of your risk capacity, your retirement plan is that much more vulnerable to sequence of return risk. That means if you encounter a lousy equity market early on in retirement and need to spend from that declining equity portfolio, that much less of your investments will be left to recover when stocks finally do. So she's saying, listen, even with this current downturn, the stock market in the U.S.

45:44is still up 15 % per year for the last five years. If you don't have enough liquid reserves, like, take your allocation down if you're that nervous. Go from a 90-10 to a 70-30 or a 60-40 or a 50-50. I'm 1 million percent on board with that. If this is really and truly too much for you, that means that if we do roll over, you're probably going to panic. And so if you have to get yourself right, then do what you got to do. Absolutely. Yeah. But yeah, you're talking, we're having different conversations. You're talking about going from all stocks to all cash and then trying to get back in. Correct.

46:17If you don't have rules in place to guide your actions there, you're toast. Correct. It's never going to work. Okay. I love this tweet from Balchunas. He said, market timing will never die because humans, but man, it took one on the chin today. And he was talking about the day when the market rallied 10%. I have to imagine a lot more people just joined Vanguard's not changing course, regardless of what I see or hear camp. COVID rallied to the same thing, which could be why the inflows seem to get stronger with each new crisis. I think we would honestly - Going on your intuition, I'm scared, I'm out.

46:46I'm, oh my God, I'm missing a back. It doesn't work. I think we would need like a seriously a five-year bear market to get people to change their behavior. And even then, it would only be on the fringes. I don't think people are going to change their behavior because so much of it is automated today. I just don't see this big shift where everyone just decides to get out and, you know, I'm done. I don't see that happening. I mean, here's how it happens. We have like a five-year 60%. Yeah, it would have to be really, because that's what happened after 2008. That was a, whatever, two and a half, three year thing.

47:22And there was a lot, there was a decent amount of people who gave up on stocks for a long time and regretted it, obviously. Let's move on to crypto. Okay. We haven't talked about crypto much. So one of the soccer dads, I've heard him, he was a late comer to being a crypto evangelist. And he went down the podcast hole and now he's all in. I hear him talking to the other dads all the time. about Bitcoin. He's a big Bitcoin guy. And I kind of stay in the shadows on that. I don't want to get into these conversations. My only thing I wanted to say was, aren't you a little late to be, I feel like the evangelists, like you either were one and have stayed or you, it's a little late for that.

48:00But crypto people would say you're never too late. So one of the other dads said, listen, this guy's been talking to me forever about Bitcoin. Like, I think he kind of talked me into it. And he says, I think I'm more on your line, Ben, of being more reasonable, boring, long-term investor. What do you think? What would you tell a friend in that situation who just now is getting into Bitcoin and crypto? In terms of buying it? Yeah. I would say it's super volatile. I still think that it has the potential for asymmetric risk reward. I don't think that the stock market is going to gain 3x over the next 36 months.

48:39I'm not saying that crypto is or will, but it can. And so if somebody wanted to have exposure to crypto today and they're starting from zero, I would explain to them that it is super volatile, make you puke assets, or probably dollar cost average if you want to get in. That makes sense. The one thing I wanted to say is that the life-changing money is probably already made for most people. Yeah, it's not going to go from zero to$85 ,000 again, or wherever it is. Even if crypto does 10 % a year over the next five years, that takes it to 220 ,000 or something. I think if, I know the expectations are way, way higher than people think, but even if the crypto industry did the stock market over the next five or 10 years, I think that's a win.

49:22I know people in crypto would not think so, but I would think so. So I think Hogan tweeted this, that crypto has outperformed the S &P for the last like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Anyway. But it's been a brutally volatile asset. So if you are just coming into it, like you got to expect some pain. Thinking about the volatility, I think after watching the crazy back and forth in the stock market, I would never do this, but I understand real estate investing more and more each year. Just the fact that the volatility is completely laundered out of the system.

49:54And there's obviously other risks there. And I'm speaking mostly of residential real estate investing, not commercial, because obviously there's parts of that that get hit. You can't overstate how brutal it is seeing prices on the screen every day, like for your mental health. And I know you can see the Zestimates and stuff, but I understand that side. It's just not for me, but I understand it more. And there's obviously other risks. Yeah, but wait, hold on. Who's checking the Zestimate every day? Well, true. But, and there's other risks. I had a friend who said, listen, I was trying to build out a portfolio of rental properties.

50:23And I bought one in 2021. And the plan was to then refinance it and then buy another one and then refinance that and buy another one. And then when rates shot up, my whole plan got, now what? I can't do that anymore. And so there's other risks to investing in that space. But I do get it. So mortgage rates are back above 7 % now, which is crazy. So that—is housing just going to be stuck for a very long time? I don't know. I mean, if the economy softens, you would expect interest rates to come down. I don't know. I do think—so I was—we were in Marco Island for spring break, and there was houses for sale everywhere, for sale signs all over the place.

51:03Listen, I looked up on Zillow and tons of price cuts. I do think in certain areas, it's going to be kind of a buyer's market. And if you could stomach the 7 % mortgage rates for now and say, listen, they're going to come down. If you really think the economy is going to crash, guess what? Mortgages are coming down. I do think you could probably be in a very good negotiating position with people this spring. I think it's probably not a bad time. Are your wheels turning? No. I did see myself more retiring in Florida, though. The older I get, the more times I go there. It's also funny because you see the— it makes sense why the houses are more expensive there.

51:42They're building a bunch of houses around there because they're knocking down these old houses and building new ones. And they're building them with cinder blocks as opposed to framing them because of the tornadoes, you know? So, of course, the houses are more expensive. All right. This is kind of nonsensical. The University of Michigan respondents making unsolicited comments on government economic policy news. the percent of respondents making negative comments is... We've never seen a chart like this. We've never seen a spike in this data set, I should say. I think it's funny that they actually track this for this long.

52:13Right? Unsolicited negative comments on government economic policy news. I guess they track everything. But it goes back to 1995. All right. This one was floating around. I thought it was interesting. So this is from Unusual Wales. 60 % of general admission ticket buyers at Coachella use buy now, pay later to finance for tickets per billboard. And people love to dunk on the buy now, pay later stuff. It's a better financing option. It's better than a credit card. I get it. But let's say, yeah, let's say if you change this to 60 % of people used credit cards to buy their tickets. I use my credit card for everything.

52:42What if young people are just using these as credit cards? They probably are, right? Yeah. So this is kind of a non-issue to me. I know people love to dunk on it and say, oh my gosh, people are borrowing money. No, they're using the system to not pay it right away, right? I think so. are you still a Howard Stern listener? I can't remember. I know you've always been a big fan. Do you have time to listen to him anymore? So yeah. So Howard Stern is, it was a very, very important person to me. Like I grew up watching on E back when my mother told me to turn him off in the early nineties. That's how I got to know Howard Stern.

53:21I would watch the replays on E at night. And I was a daily listener. Well, I listened when he was on the fan, not a fan on K-Rock but I got serious when he when he went over what year was that 07 I don't remember exactly that was huge news and I listened every day until probably 2019 and I let my subscription lapse which I have very mixed feelings about I feel bad that I don't listen anymore but like I listened for almost 20 years he's out of stories Yeah. But I do love Howard. I asked that because there was, he had Mike White, the creator of White Lotus on and White went to town on a lot of people and the Hollywood Reporter did this piece that kind of pulled out the best quotes.

54:08And it was funny because he was mad at people for nitpicking the show, season three, which I get why people nitpicked. There was a lot of stuff to nitpick. I've never been a big fan of nitpicking TV shows and movies. Like I understand that these things aren't real and I'm okay to suspend reality. Hang on. Didn't you nitpick last week? Or was I thinking about somebody else? I'm sure I did. What did I nitpick? Weren't you nitpicking how unrealistic it was? The ending? White Lotus? No, I never did that. You didn't? No. I'm going to check the tape. I enjoyed it. Okay. I think I said there's stuff you could nitpick, but I liked it.

54:42I still enjoyed season three, even though it wasn't as good as the others. I'm so tired of complainers. You're so right. I think that White Lotus became so big that people are like, eh, it wasn't as good. Well, there's a lot of people these days who their whole personality is I hate the thing that's popular. So I get that. That's an in-house personality. I would agree with the overall sentiment that this was easily the weakest of the three seasons. I enjoyed the hell out of it, even if there are plenty of nits to pick. But I was thinking about this because... It was just great characters. That's the thing I like about it.

55:13At Passover, somebody in my family... So there's a couple. So what do you do in this situation? You know when a couple is so united on the show that you disagree with? Obviously, you're not going to fight who gives a shit. You know what I mean? You just have to bite your tongue. My wife and I run to this all the time. Yeah, so the two of them were just piling on White Lotus. It was so predictable. This never could have happened. Right. And I'm just like, what? It's just, it's an awkward situation. I want it to be like, I liked it. Yeah. But I'm not going to like go back and forth. I don't care.

55:44Fine. I didn't like it. So anyway, the reason I put this in here is because Stern asked him like, how much money are you going to make? Because he's renegotiating. And this is interesting. He said, we are renegotiating right now. I'm definitely curious to find out what the amount is because he obviously it's a huge show. He could ask for a lot of money. He said, I feel like I have financial security for sure. At a certain point of money, you wonder, is this going to make me worse? Is having more money just going to make me more dysfunctional? I like it. I feel like if you're thinking that way, you're probably going to be okay.

56:09Yeah, agreed. Right. The people who don't think that way that are going to probably be in for problems. I was listening to the Midnight Boys yesterday talk about the premiere of The Last of Us. And this blew my face. Which show do you think is more popular? White Lotus or Last of Us? Last of Us. Why would you say that? Because I set it up that way? No, because zombie thing. People love zombies. Okay. Well, in your personal life. Oh, yeah. White Lotus is more meaningful in my personal life. But I could see last because it was a big video game phenomenon. So Last of Us has twice as many viewers as White Lotus.

56:48Okay. I wouldn't expect that. Twice as many. Well, it was like not a lot of people watch Succession either. All right. I have some further travel thoughts to get off my chest here. I taught my kids how to play shuffleboard. They had this little park right down the street from us, community center. You could get the shuffleboard stuff. And my kids loved it. Good fun. And there was a bocce ball court next to it. In retirement, that's going to be my thing. I'm going to be a shuffleboard player and bocce ball. Those are my two drinking. A drinking game has to be where you can hold the drink in one hand and still play the game in the other.

57:16I don't know from bocce ball. Is that shuffled ball? No, no, no. Bocce ball is where you throw the little ball, and then you have the other big ones that you throw to try to get closest to it. It's an Italian game. Okay. Great. You never played it before? I don't think so. I'm still on the—I think I've mentioned this before, but having the Airbnb, VRBO thing with kids is so much easier. Because one of the nights, too much ice cream. In the middle of the night, I'm sitting there. I'm about ready to go to bed. I think I'm watching the markets on my phone, and my daughter Kate comes out and says, I threw up.

57:45And I walk into her bedroom, and it's literally chocolate ice cream. And she's in the bed with my other daughter because they had to share a big king bed together. And luckily, you know, our house had extra sheets. I threw in the wash, put the new sheets on, back to bed in 15 minutes, no problem. If that would have happened at a hotel, like how long would the process have taken, right? And the whole room would have stunk forever. Yeah. One other thing. So the new big thing these days, I guess it's not new, new, but it's just very low-calorie bureaus. And Michelob Ultra was the one that really set this in motion.

58:15So I got a 12-pack of Corona Premium, which is their— they have Corona Lite and Corona Premium, which are basically the same thing. But Corona Premium is their Michelob Ultra. And it just got me thinking, like, where did they come up with the name Premium? And I'm sure it was just someone in the marketing team said— like, they put it in a chat GPT, like, what's a word that's kind of similar to Ultra, but not Ultra? Right? They just, Corona Premium is just someone, give us a word that's kind of like ultra, but not really ultra. And that's what gave it. It's an okay beer. One more thing. I think I lost a step.

58:47I'm sure you did. Remember me and you did a race a couple years ago? My daughter - I was faster than you thought. You were, but I think I've lost a step because my daughter plays soccer, and she's kind of like me, where I never had breakaway speed. I was always quick, right? I'd probably do better at the shuttle run than a 40-yard dash. My daughter's the same way in soccer. She's quick, but she's not like breakaway speed fast. So she wanted to go for a jog to stay in shape. And at the end, I always tell her the last block, we got to go all out until we're done, until we get to the mailbox, right?

59:15You sprint until the end. And she took me off the line. I had to like try hard to come get, I was like, ready to go. And she beat me off the line. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm losing a step. I can't believe it. I don't feel like I am, but I obviously am. I mean, you're basically mid-40s. I am mid-40s. I'm going to be 44 this year. so alright you had a good run recommendations what do you got um I am like all in on Apple TV all of a sudden I high quality I binge watched Seference which was a massive massive mistake that show is the least bingeable most meant to be watched week to week show on TV oh that makes sense actually you want to like think about it a little bit and let it set in dude I had no idea what was going on.

1:00:04Not a f***ing clue. Honestly. Did you like the finale though? Yeah, I love the finale. I listened to podcast recaps and I still didn't know what was going on. Yeah, it was. That is a week-to-week show. I really, I royally bungled that one. The finale where the Innie and the Audi are talking to themselves through video was so. Really good. Yes, very good. All right. Did you watch Your Friends and Neighbors with Jon Hamm? I didn't start it yet, but it's on my list. So the premise of the show is he's a rich guy. hedge fund something something. Jeez, rich guys are having a moment, aren't they? But things go south.

1:00:38He loses his job and he's got to keep up and he starts robbing his neighbors. Okay. All right. I did see the preview. Good premise. I'm a Jon Hamm fan, so I've stuck with him since Mad Men. Dope Thief continues to be great. The main actor is phenomenal, phenomenal. Forget his name, but it's a lot of fun also on Apple. And then lastly, I know you're not as into it as I am. I don't care that it's predictable and it's carbon Hollywood. I mean, what could be better than Curb in Hollywood? I f***ing love the studio. I'm really, really enjoying it. You're all in. I'm surprised you like that one as much as you do, but I guess you can see.

1:01:09Well, I love Hollywood. True. So is it a blatant knockoff of Curb? Yeah, I don't care. I'm in. I don't know if we spoke about The Pit. How phenomenal was The Pit? All right, I was going to talk about this. Two finales. The Pit was great. I thought the finale landed the plane and still left some, like, I want to see season two. It's just, it's such a high quality show and it's not like these new shows where the whole point of it is you're waiting for this big thing to happen at the end. It was not so much the, it was the middle of the show, the meat of it that, like, the stuff with the shooter at the concert was so well done and you think about it from some completely different angle and, like, I never thought about, like, the hospital having to deal with this and it was so good.

1:01:49If Noah Wiley doesn't win an Emmy, then it's rigged. I think he's going to win all, they're going to win all the awards. We mentioned earlier in the show, Survive Till 25. I'm thinking, like, man, I am just loaded with TV shows this is it. It wasn't the movies because the movies have been asses. You're right. They all came out. My friends are like, hey, what are you watching? I'm watching a million things. I don't think I've ever been this busy with TV, but it is because of the writer's strike. It was all... Oh, yeah. We also finished 1923, and I told you I really liked the season. The finale stunk.

1:02:19It was just... Me and my wife were both like, wait, that's how... It was a series finale. Oh, serious. But you know what? Those are like... Those Taylor Shedden shows are like very low stakes. You know what I mean? Like they're not serious. I just couldn't believe the ending. It was kind of like, wait, that's how they ended it. Oh, so I didn't love it. Um, okay. I haven't done any movie recommendations. So I got two with my new scoring system. So I watched a complete unknown on my plane on one of my plane rides. That's a Bob Dylan one of Timothy Chalamet. I thought it was really boring. His performance was good, but not nearly as good as Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Cash.

1:02:52I think that's like the all timer for the, like there's the Johnny Cash movie, the Ray Charles one with Jamie Foxx and then this, and I think this one is easily in third from those movies. Like it was just kind of a boring movie and people said his performance was like transcendent. I thought like he sounded like Bob Dylan. I'm not a huge Bob Dylan fan. I'm kind of a take it or leave it with him. Like, hey, it's got some good songs. I know people love him. So that's like a 5.9 for me. Okay. Okay. My wife and I watched Civil War on Apple or on HBO. I know you watched that a long time ago. We finally watched it.

1:03:20That's like a 6.4 to me. Okay. But wait, that is the, one of like the ultimate examples of meant to be seen in the theater. Because hearing the bullets whizzing and seeing that on the big screen was an experience. If I saw that on the couch, huge step down. I mean, I've heard people complain about the movie. I heard people that liked it and people hated it. Like the fact that they didn't really explain what was going on. They didn't give us any like even breadcrumb of why is this happening? Yeah, it wasn't. I enjoyed the shit out of it. Did you like it? I liked it. It was kind of one of those like, oh, that's pretty good.

1:03:55Not great. Not bad. So 6.4. Okay. That's all I got. All right. What a week. What a week. We're going to make it. It's going to be some bumps and bruises. Economy was softening coming into the Liberation Day. Got to soften further. But we have faith. We have faith in the American people. Do we not? Sometimes to be a long-term investor, you have to survive the short term. That's my talking point. Okay.

1:04:27animalspiritsatthecompoundnews.com. Personal emails, always personal responses. Thank you very much for listening, for sticking with us. We'll see you next time.