The Most Bullish Backdrop (EP.380)

24:11All right, I want to get back into the rich versus wealthy thing we talked about a few weeks ago. Here's another Torsen Slott one. Are you still using Stitch Fix? I do. So I get it once every other month. Where'd you get that shirt? It's interesting. That doesn't sound very complimentary. No. I don't dislike it. How do you say it, like the Madras or whatever? I have no idea. What's a Madras? I don't know. By the way. Probably like a J.Crew shirt. I don't know. Speaking of, what do you mean? You know exactly what that is. That's a J.Crew shirt. It's probably J.Crew. What, you didn't buy it at J.Crew?

24:43Did the store say probably J.Crew when you walked in? Yeah. You know, I never really understood. Hey, J.Crew, middle class. That's true. Is that middle class? That's upper middle class. J.Crew is upper middle. It's upper middle. I never appreciated how ridiculous the English language was. And apparently how poor I am at speaking it until this podcast. Last week when I got confused at the term thumb your nose, I was like, is that a thing? Because when you're just talking, you don't think about what you're saying. But when you're talking to a mic, you got to speak. There's pressure. Thumb your nose.

25:13What the f*** does that mean? Thumb your nose? Grain of salt? Did you look it up? Exactly. Why should you have to look up a phrase? We should have phrases that make sense. Blame Shakespeare. 80 % of those phrases came from Shakespeare. like every every phrase like that is traced back to shakespeare all right u.s income and expenditure by quintile and he shows the spending and the income percentages broken up by each 20 right and the highest income quintile the highest 20 um what is this looking at i don't get that so it's how percentage of income so they break people out into these groups how much how much should they have an income and how much should they have of spending?

25:56So the highest 20 % of people spend 40 % of the money on expenditures. This is my, this is our rich versus wealthy talk from a few weeks ago. Oh, the blue, the blue and the green each separately add up to a hundred. I got it. I got it. This is a pie chart. This is a pie chart in bar form. Okay. Weird. Yes. There you go. Okay. As a connoisseur of pie charts, that's why you didn't get it. Yeah. But my whole point is that higher income people spend a lot more money and that's where the feeling of rich comes from and the feeling of being left out if you're not in that group. We can't stop spending money.

26:33You know what I saw on Instagram the other day? A thing that opens eggs, a thing that cracks eggs. And I got to be honest, I'm probably going to buy it as somebody that breaks, and you probably break a ton of eggs. Do your kids eat hard-boiled eggs? My kids love hard-boiled eggs. And for the life of me, I throw them in the tub of freezing cold water when they're done. I was told that's the way to peel them cleanly. I can't peel a clean egg. And then cracking the egg, I cracked it the other day. I tried cracking it with a knife. It splattered everywhere. So there's a little plastic thing on Instagram where you put the egg in.

27:07It's an individual. It just cracks it right open. But my point is we're a nation of spenders. We can't stop. There's something for everything. My daughter likes over easy eggs lately. There's not an easy way to make over easy eggs. It's very hard to do. Okay. I can make an over easy egg. Like I've become quite the chef, let me tell you. What's the secret? Do you put like butter down first or oil? Because you got to get it very, very slippery. Well, you got to use a low flame. Low flame, okay. Slow burn, kind of like a marshmallow if you want that golden brown, right? So speaking of spending, I was going to talk about this later.

27:43We had a little, we have a screened in porch and we got it redone because it was just screened. And so every spring it would be full of pollen. Is this at your primary residence? Yes. And so it's full of pollen and I wanted, I'm like, I want this still to be a screen in porch room, but I want to be able to close off the screens a little bit. So we got this new - Back of your house. Back of the house. Yep. So we got a lot of like woods in the back and, and so again, everything is just covered in pollen and it was - Oh, we got a lot of woods. Big woods guy. Yeah. Big woods guy. So I'm constantly wiping it down.

28:13So we got this new thing where it's kind of like half screen, but it also has these like window things that open. Okay. Makes sense. Kind of like plastic. Yeah. And so we got that done and we got it all new couch in there. And we put a nice rug down and then big rainstorm and there's a leak in the roof. How is this possible? This house isn't that old. So I had a roofing company come yesterday. Yeah, it's just a something joint. Like I know what he's talking about. And he's like, listen, you could spend thousands of dollars getting in there and really figuring out the problem is. Or we can replace this joint.

28:47We can hammer a few nails and 500 bucks. He goes, 500 bucks is basically free these days, right? He said that? Yes. And I'm like, yeah, let's do it. That mentality though is like, yeah, 500 bucks. He's like, that's basically free. Wow. Yes. And this is in Michigan. Yes. No offense. Right. I mean, whatever. They're getting up on the ladder. They're getting up on the roof. They're taking a little risk, but I bet it'll take them 15 minutes to do it. But yeah, that whole thing got me thinking that when we do have the renovation boom, if rates get back to 5 % or whatever, and people start borrowing their equity, I think there's going to be still some sticker shock of people going, whoa, I can't believe it costs that much to redo this kitchen or bathroom or bedroom or whatever.

29:34And then they're going to do it anyway. Yes, then they're going to say, eh, you know what, fine. From Vanguard, they did a study. I like how Vanguard, they do this every time there's a huge spike in volatility. They show what their investors actually did. Panicked. So volatility in the U.S. stock market hit a four-year high on August 5th when the Standard & Poor's 500-X dropped by nearly 3%. I feel like when you call it Standard & Poor's instead of S &P, that's like the announcers that say National Football League instead of NFL, right? The National Football League. Anyway. Speaking of, thank you to the Lions because I bet on Jameer Gibbs, Mr.

30:09Williams, and Mr. Montgomery to each have touchdowns. And so that, I've been in a hole. We're going to get to that later. Who would have bet that gold is at all-time highs, the S &P is at all-time highs, and the Lions have the most fun team in the NFL right now? Yeah. Right? Do they have the best offense in the NFL? Yes, they do. They do. So more than 97 % of Vanguard retail investors held steady, placing no trade. This is the day of the Japan blow-up. Of the 2.5 % of investors who traded on August 5th, net buyers of equities outnumbered net sellers by more than 4 to 1. So the people that did, no one traded basically, but the people that did trade got in there to buy.

30:44I don't see what stops this, this type of behavior lean. This has been learned over 15 years. And the dumbasses will say, just wait, just wait one day. Okay. Everyone's going to rush for the exits. Yeah, no, no, stop. Nobody's rushing for the exits, okay? Now, I'm not an idiot. Bear markets happen. I'm not saying just because people won't rush for the exits that we can't get a 40 % drawdown or 40 % crash for that matter. 40 % is not a drawdown. It's a big one. We can and we probably will. We just had a bear market not long ago. Of course they can slap. But there's not going to be this day where all of the sudden people stop contributing to their 401ks.

31:32Where all of the sudden everybody dumps their index funds. If it takes 15 years to learn this behavior, how long does it take to unlearn it? I don't know. We just had a two-year bear market. Did that stop it? Would it take 10 years? I really don't know. But there's not going to be this day of reckoning where everybody rushes for the exits. If that's your fantasy, well, A, you're an asshole. But B, just stop. Well said. Yeah, I don't see what stops it. All right. I'm a big proponent of asset allocation quilts, right? The colors. It tells a good story. Eric Soda tweeted this out. he did S &P 500 sector performance in this asset quilt style by presidential term.

32:11So he did all the way back to Bush Sr. Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden. And he breaks it out by sector. And there is no rhyme or reason here in terms – the funniest thing is that the best performer for Biden is energy. Because typically you think – Of course. And guess what the worst performer was for Trump? Energy. energy. You would assume energy is going to do better under Republicans. And the whole point is there's really no rhyme or reason here in terms of the best performing sector for each president. And then he also looks at asset class returns by president. Again, same thing all over the map.

32:49There's no rhyme or reason here. There's no this president, because they're in this party, is going to help this sector more than any other. No rhyme or reason. I think that our audience is well aware of the fact that this is not any way to invest. But I do think the people that are not listening to the show, a lot of people still believe that politics, who is in the White House, I won't say matters because it does matter, that it's actionable, that you can like – Right. You know, have a better outcome based on who you think might win. And of course, that's nonsense. Ben, you don't like politics?

33:24I just want to talk for a minute how much I hate it. So I thought this was one of my, this passage from the book Tribe by Sebastian Younger. I don't know if you read it. It's only like a 150-page book. It was really, really good. And this passage stuck out to me. The United States is so powerful that the only country capable of destroying her might be the United States herself, which means that the ultimate terrorist strategy would just be to leave the country alone. That way, America's ugliest partisan tendencies could emerge unimpeded by the unifying effects of war. I don't think that there's any way to unify the fractions anymore.

33:57The, my team's over here, your team's over here. And I just hate it. I hate it. I hate it too. Unfortunately, tragedy brings us together. But the thing is, the pandemic should have brought us together. And all it did was, and it didn't. I don't know what could happen these days that would cause the country to come together. Not that I want to have that kind of situation. But I think his whole thing about, again, you can always look for the, the bad side of things and say that this is bad and that's bad, but things right now are as bad as, as good as they've ever been in history. There's never been a better time to be alive than right now, this instance, but because things are so good, it's never been easier to complain about the things that are bad.

34:38Oh yeah. Um, Jonathan hate wrote a book. Uh, hold on a sec. That, that, the whole base, basically the whole, the whole book was about this. I believe I'm getting the book, right? Oh, Oh, the coddling of the American mind. Was that it? Yeah, yeah. The coddling of the American mind. That was part of the message of the book. But yes, things are so good that we have so much time to complain. Yes, unfortunately. There was an article of the – speaking about politics, which is obviously ramping up. Netflix cancellation spiked after Reed Hastings donated to Kamala Harris. Can you imagine? That'll show up.

35:18We're not political people. but can you imagine canceling Netflix based on who the former CEO is endorsing he's another especially with season 2 of Squid Game coming out soon I have no interest in that by the way even as much as I loved the first one I'm gonna wait you think it's a one and done I don't know I mean if it's good I'll watch it I'm just gonna wait I'm not gonna I'm not a day one viewer that's all alright if you if you watch what I said dude just as good alright I'm in I'm just I'm just I'm waiting and seeing. Somebody tweeted last night. There was a video of an older guy who bought a Taylor Swift guitar for$4 ,000 at a live auction.

36:00And when he won, he went up there with a hammer and destroyed the guitar. Because she's not voting for Trump. As a political statement? Yeah. Oh. And that's a guy who probably complains about the price of eggs. Yes. That was the tweet. That'll show him. Yeah. Unbelievable. So Mark Zuckerberg says that wearables and the AI glasses are going to replace the iPhone. And when he says replace, he says, listen, the mobile phone did not replace the desktop. We still have desktop computers and laptops. But the mobile phone takes precedent now, right? You can sit at your desktop and still do stuff on your phone.

36:35He says that's what these glasses are going to do. You saw a picture of them, right? Like the Drew Carey glasses. I'm all in on this idea. I got to get one. I'm shorting this. This is my highest conviction short. There's no way that these wearables and glasses are going to be bigger than phones. I'm sorry. There's no way. I think this is a terrible call by him. I'm shorting this on leverage. I'd be careful. Be careful with the short. Remember Vision Pro? But this is not the Vision Pro. How did the Vision Pro go? People don't want to wear clunky stuff on their face. This is not clunky. These are glasses.

37:14I'm sure in a mistake I think the glasses are going to be enormous I don't know if it's going to be in like 10 years but I think that the glasses it's going to be like the Iron Man shit How many people want that? I do You bought a Vision Pro I was so worried about the Vision Pro that people are going to become hermits and it sounds like no one bought it I know this stuff is going to get better It's apples and oranges It's not the Vision Pro These are glasses The Vision Pro are goggles that turns the world off. Nobody wants that. All right. I don't want to live in a video game all day on my face.

37:48Yeah, you're old. I'm shorting this. Okay. Sorry, I'm shorting this. There's no way these would be bigger, bigger than the phones, bigger than a smartphone. I'm not saying that. That sounds like a lot. I don't know. I guess I would take Mark Zuckerberg's take on technology over you, again, with all due respect. He stole it from the Winklevoss twins. All right, the average monthly mortgage payment for a new buyer of$500 ,000 a house is the funding court. This guy literally changed the name of his company to Meta and plowed money into the Metaverse in 2021. Yeah, we're an idiot. And you're going to trust him?

38:23It's not a matter of trusting him. I just think he's, all right, listen. You know, credit to him though. I do call the company Meta now. He's not bad. No, I will never call it Meta. It's always Facebook to me. Okay, you're going to be the one. I'm not a narc, so I don't call Twitter X either. If you call Twitter X, you're a narc. Yeah, that is, yeah. Right? So anyway, the average home payment is declining. That's good news. Based on median home price and mortgage. I think it's probably more a function of mortgage rates. You saw mortgage rates ticked up a little in the last week, though? Did they?

38:53Son of a bitch. Yeah, it's going to take some time. I put out a piece the other day saying, I think the Fed should try to narrow that spread. But what narrows that spread? What would cause bond buyers to step in and narrow that spread? Well, the Fed buying mortgage bonds. That's it. Do you think it would narrow substantially, though, if Powell just said, if it doesn't narrow, we will step in? Do you think that would be enough to do it? Yes. All he has to do is say, listen, if this spread doesn't get back to historical norms, which is like, I don't know, 50 or 75 basis points, it would come down.

39:25Well, yeah, because he would be telling the market, hey, buy these bonds before we do. Yes. I think that's what he should do. And then the Fed doesn't have to do anything. And the spread comes in and mortgage rates fall. All right. More good news on the housing market. redfin reports asking rents for new apartments dropped six percent to the lowest level since 2022 take it and they talk about because so many buildings have been finished so but this kind of makes me think in two or three years we're going to be seeing the opposite of this because they built so many apartments but now all that construction has slowed to a halt because rates went higher yeah so there's going to be a low period now until rates get lower again Good news, though.

40:07I'll take it. All right. Eric Finnegan, we talked about him last week on last week's show, and he said, hey, guys, appreciate the shout-out. Here is our new demographic book. I thought it was really well done. A whole presentation on demographics. We've talked a little bit about this. I know you're going into your Simon and Garfunkel right now because you hate demographics.

40:30it is funny how that that like classic song is just now thought of as someone going off to la la land you know i saw paul simon with my dad i think my dad uh his last concert at forest hill stadium what a grump that guy is it's like his hometown he didn't say a word i always do find that weird when artists just play the show and don't interact with the audience at all Don't say anything. It's very bizarre. That's how he was. He's a grouch. Yeah. Okay. Also, one other thing. Do you think, so Third Eye Blind, going back to concerts. I don't know what year Semi-Trum Kind of Life came out. And then we're going to sing, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

41:11Do you think the band members are like, that's dumb? No, but do you think that, so they haven't had a new hit in 20 years or something. Do you think they go, we got to play this again? or do you think they're like, yeah, this is our cash cow. We gotta play it. Do you think they get sick of it? Yes. And yes to both. Yeah. They have to, right? Because they came out and played a couple of songs that we had never heard before and they looked like they were having fun playing them but no one knew what they were. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Remember earlier, I was like, I'm about to start boeing if they don't play their hits.

41:43Like, the whole concept of a one-hit wonder fascinates me because if I had a one-hit wonder, I would just make another song that sounded just like it. just a little different, right? Like how Vanilla Ice stole David Bowie's. It's different. That would at least have a two-hit wonder. All right. Largest population group turns 32 to 36 in 2024. So this is a cool chart showing the breakout by population. This is interesting. The population of typical entry-level and first move-up buyers will grow in size by 6 million through 2040. So this is household formation. I think this is even more interesting.

42:16This is going from middle-class to upper-class, Michael. The second move up in luxury buyer population will grow even more by 8 million through 2040. So I think this is the next wave of, if it's not people who are renovating, it's, all right, it's time for us to move from that starter home that we bought pre-pandemic to now a McMansion or whatever it is. That wave of millennials as they hit their 40s and 50s, I think is going to be huge. And they're going to have very high tastes. And that's the next wave, I think, after the young people. Housing is in a secular bull market. It is. All right. U.S.

42:54housing is underbuilding based on today's population growth. He said U.S. housing undersupply will grow by 200 ,000 homes per year if we continue building at the current level. That's not good, right? Not good? Not good. We need to build more homes. All right. Story time. So I went to Boulder, Colorado last week to talk to a group of financial advisors. Beautiful, beautiful city. The only thought I had was, why didn't I go to college here? Absolutely amazing. The Rockies, I tried to jog the trails at the Rocky Mountains, and it was like a street to get to the trails was like a whole hill up, like I'm rising in the altitude, and it feels like there's a vice grip on my lungs.

43:36And slow and steady wins the race. I couldn't do it. Couldn't jog. Anyway. So I'm going home, and I go to Clear, which Clear is a joke. Clear is never faster. Clear is always slower than the TSA pre-check, right? There's always a problem. So I use Clear. Something, we need to take a picture of your license again, blah, blah, blah. I give the lady my license, and I'm at the Denver airport. And she says, oh, you live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We have relatives there. I would love to move there. I'm like, oh, why? Denver is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. The weather's here great.

44:08It's sunny. I like it here. And she says, no, ever since the pandemic, there are so many people that have come here and everything is more expensive and it's too expensive to live here. And there's too many people in the, we lost the soul of this city. I want out. I feel like this is a common theme we're hearing in cool places. Remember when we went to Charleston, same exact line of thinking. It's just funny to me that, so the combination of remote work in the pandemic, if you live in a cool area, guess what? lots of people are going to flock there. And you can't be mad that people want to live in a cool place like you.

44:42So the whole charm of those really nice places is probably lost forever on a lot of them. Well, but it's also starting to unwind a little bit. Like Miami and Austin peaked a while back and people are starting to normalize population levels, I think. True. Not like Miami was a quaint place. But Austin is the kind of place that is, like places I guess like Austin and Nashville are way bigger than people probably ever could have imagined one or two decades ago. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. All right. Poll from Duncan on the compound. 3.3 million, no, million votes. 3.3 thousand votes. Which is, that's a pretty good sample size.

45:16Do you live below, within, or above your means? Below is 52%. Way to go. Within 36 % and above 12%. Are people lying? What do you think? Do you think there should be more above? I think we have a pretty, I think we have a pretty good finance-based audience, though. Yeah, I would say that's probably right. I'd say that's probably right. But sticking to the theme of people lying on surveys. So Bob Elliott did a long thread on the Consumer Confidence Index and some shenanigans that are going on. So I want to read something that Jim Bianca wrote about this particular thread that was so obvious to me once I read it.

46:00I'm sort of embarrassed that like a light bulb went off. So Jim says, so it's markets want to move on these reports, a quick TLDR about them. The conference board released its consumer confidence results yesterday. The University of Michigan consumer confidence surveys that Friday. So these are two reports that should track each other, right? It's the same thing. Right. The University of Michigan conducts a phone survey of 600 respondents. Michigan does not disclose its disconnect rate or the number of people who hang up. Political pollsters say their disconnect rate is about 95%. So to get to 600 answers, you have to call about 12 ,000 people.

46:38Wow. As noted on the chart, the conference board and the University of Michigan tracked each other with a nearly 100 % correlation between 1992 and 2020. But like so many things in the past COVID era, in the post-COVID era, excuse me, they have diverged. The conference board has been much more optimistic since 2020. It is not clear why this is the case. The conference board does not break down its results by political affiliation, which we know is the driving force behind these surveys. Bottom line, in 2012, I dubbed confidence surveys the world's most useless economic statistics. And he did. Jim was in the Washington Post because he linked to it.

47:13And the Washington Post talked about how surveys are bullshit. 13 years later, I have not found reasons to change this view. Confidence surveys tell you really nothing. We spent all of 2022 or 2023 wondering why there's such a disconnect from the vibes and the hard data because it's bullshit. People just lie on surveys. True. And the people that do answer surveys are probably not representative of the economy because who the f*** answers a survey? Why? Dumb question. Why don't, instead of calling these people, why don't they email people? Click three boxes. Wouldn't you get a better response on email?

47:49I don't know. But Bob Elliott summed it up. He said, just the reality is that the surveys look like they have degraded in quality. Yeah, no shit. I agree. All right, Ben, somebody sent us an article on credit card laws. And we were talking about how they're able to charge high rates and what happens if there's a cap on rates, then they're going to stop extending credit. So somebody sent us an article. And I thought, you know what? I don't really feel like reading this article. Thank you for sending it. I just don't feel like reading it. I dropped it in the chat, GBT, summarize it. Boom, four sentences.

48:20Everything I need to know. So my daughter's soccer coach, like if the girls aren't hustling, he's this British guy, thick, you know, British accent. He goes, you're being lazy. That's what I think Abedias did. You're being lazy. I was like, can't read everything. So what's the TLDR then? Jet GPT summed up for you, summed up for me. That I won't do. Okay. There was a ruling in 1978, a Supreme Court ruling that effectively allowed cities or states to do what they decided to do. All right. The Atlantic wrote an article on the threat of online gambling, which you and I spoke about. Yeah, I saw this article.

49:04We spoke about the source data. Legalized sports gambling was a huge mistake is what the title of the article is. I've had a rough start to the NFL season. The Lions pulled me out of a hole. So I'm still back to trend. My trend is I lose five cents of every dollar that I bet. The problem is, which sounds pretty good, oh, okay, I bet$100, I only lose five. That's a pretty decent entertainment tax. The problem is I'm approaching$100 ,000 in bets.

49:36So you're just constantly betting and re-betting and betting and betting. Yeah, I'm betting and betting and betting. So the problem is eventually, I'm going to have to cut myself off at some point. Careless 5 % forever, the number is going to get absurd. And some people would be like, wait, I lost how much money? All right, but most people - You're paying the VIG basically. Yeah, but - It's like expense ratio. Yeah. But the good news is most people are responsible bettors. So I do wonder if, so they say the rise of sports gambling has caused a wave of financial and family misery, familial misery, one that falls disproportionately on the most economically precarious household.

50:12Now that's a fairly dramatic comment, right? That paints sports gambling in a really negative light. That's like people saying, the phrase is always that the lottery is a tax on the poor. So that's essentially what they're saying here. Yeah. However, since they say way later in the article, because this is what the media is, since the US Supreme Court struck down federal restrictions on sports betting in 2018, the market has grown. I'm sorry, my bad. This is just a stat. So since 2018, Americans have wagered almost$400 billion online, which is, you know, that's a lot of money. Okay, this is what was buried deep in the article after they talk about how it's killing families.

50:53And again, they did use source data. So here's what they say later in the article. The good news is that online sports betting appears to be relatively harmless for most customers. Well, maybe that should be the headline, but no, of course not. The median gambler in the study deposited$136 over five years. There's a quote in here. A lot of people are getting entertained for very little cost. So are there people whose lives are being ruined by gambling? No doubt. No doubt. And I feel obviously for those families that are affected by loved ones that have an illness or can't control their behavior, which is a real thing.

51:31And I hate – I really – I kind of want to punch myself in the face. I don't know. I have mixed feelings of what I'm about to say. Like hand-waving it away. Like, well, because I don't like the whataboutism. alcohol is 4 ,000 times more dangerous for the population. Right. So to your point, it's kind of like the lottery where are some people spending too much on the lottery? Yes. But are 95 % of the people just having fun and doing it as a dream? That's also true. Yeah. But most people, so, okay. So I don't think those things are in conflict with each other. But what, let me ask you this. In 20 years, are we more likely to say, why was sports betting ever illegal?

52:09Sort of like alcohol? Or is it going to be a bigger problem than I'm anticipating? And we're going to say, I can't believe we ever allowed sports gambling. Well, the problems will be amplified more than the—this is something that shocked me. It says, tax revenue has been anemic, with all 38 legal states combined making only$500 million from it a quarter, less than alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. So I thought the whole reason was all the states are doing this because they'll make a ton of money. So here's my question. Besides DraftKings and FanDuel and stuff, do you think the people making the most money on sports gambling are the podcast hosts?

52:46Oh, yeah. They're the ones who are making the most money on this, right? The podcast hosts who are reading the ads for these places? Yeah. They're making bank. They're the only ones making money on this stuff. Anyway, FanDuel, hit us up.

53:01Michael's awful bet of the week. Okay, Americans are racked up mountains of credit card points. Inflation is eroding their value. That's from the Wall Street Journal. That's what I've been telling people. use your credit card points right away. Do not hoard them. Do not hoard them. Look at this chart. The spending power of 50 ,000 card points adjusted for inflation. It looks like a dollar, right? Like everything else. Do not sit on your dollars or your points. And I don't even, I used to use them for trips and stuff. Sometimes that's okay. I just get the cash back. I use it for my travel. Okay.

53:30I just, I get the cash back. It's easy. I don't mind. All right. All right, Ben. They keep doing it. that the entertainment is now for people our age. There's another reboot, RoboCop. RoboCop TV series is officially in the works of Prime Video. Gotta be honest. I don't know why I just said gotta be honest. I saw RoboCop recently. I don't know if it was on a streamer. Holds up. Really good movie. The funniest part about it is that the guy who played RoboCop wasn't even like a big actor. I don't even know who he was. you couldn't name the guy who played RoboCop, right? Yeah, unfamiliar with his work.

54:10I mean, it was an okay movie. RoboCop, it was pretty good. Ben, you ever notice that you order something on Amazon and it's at your door a few hours later? Has that happened to you yet? Yeah, same day delivery. It's wild. Somebody tweeted, click to door speed of US digital purchases in days. Amazon versus other retailers. So other retailers are at 5.2 days Amazon is at one and a half days. It's really incredible how quickly they're getting stuff out. That is pretty great. Another data point. Things are getting better. Think about how much easier your life is getting stuff delivered to your door from Amazon.

54:43We get stuff delivered every single day and not having to go to the store. You know, going to the store with kids is such a pain in the ass because I want this and I want that. Now, it's so much easier to not bring kids to the store. Is it not? Ben, somebody emailed us. I need to hear the full Ben's dad wardrobe story. Michael cut you off. Can't believe it. Oh. Oh, there wasn't really a full story. It's just my dad literally never spent on his wardrobe. He had the same pair of Nike warm-up pants for like 20 years. He just, my dad could not have cared less about material possessions. He had like one suit.

55:12He had like, he never got new clothes. I would have to buy, we'd have to buy him new clothes for Christmas. And usually he wouldn't want them. So my dad is like the most lack of material possession person I've ever met in my life. But he's happy with it. So more power to him. Okay. My parents, hang on. Yeah. Travel story here. My parents did a trip to Ireland a couple weeks ago. And they went with a bunch of other people. And it was like a bus tour of Ireland. And I think they got to go see all the cool towns and go to a couple different pubs in each city, right? My mom's family, my mom's maiden name is Kennedy.

55:47So she's big on the Irish thing, right? And I asked my dad, you know, how was it? Oh, it was, you know, a bus full of boomers. And my whole thinking is just that I'm bullish on boomer travel expenditures for the next 20 years. And I went, I pulled up Royal Caribbean. Have you seen Royal Caribbean stock lately? Because those cruise ships are going to be full for the next two decades. Look at Royal Caribbean stock. Obviously, people got to this one before I did. What do you call that? That's like a massive breakout, correct? Is that an all-time high? Looks like it. It is an all-time high, which is crazy.

56:19It came all the way back. So, I mean, this stock was down how many? What? 70? 70 % during the pandemic? Huh. Kind of surprising. All right, gentlemen, you both have car leases. Why? Legit question. The minute I could write a check for my lovely depreciating asset, I did, and I've had three cars over the past 20 years. No car payment. It saved 10 % to 15 % off the purchase. And every personal finance book I read in my 20s equated leases with something akin to Devil Spawn. Again, legit question. You were smarter than your average bear, so what am I missing? I wrote a blog post about this before.

56:50Go ahead. I wrote a blog post about this before. I like having a newish vehicle every three to four years. I have kids who destroy it and the payments lower. And I did the thing in the past where I paid off a car and drove a car into the ground. I just don't want to do it anymore because the amount of money you pay for repairs and the hassle that it costs to me is not worth it. Okay. I would mostly agree with everything you just said. I don't, this is something I don't care about. This is not, to me, this is not a finance. This is not a spreadsheet decision. I'm willing to pay more money for the luxury of having a new car every three years.

57:27It's fun. It's exciting. I enjoy it, even though I pretend to complain about it. I like getting new cars, and I don't care if I'm spending more on a lease versus owning. In fact, I know I am, but there are certain areas of my life where I just don't care about the money, and this is one of them. New car smell is worth it, too. Yeah. Yeah, love it. Okay. Okay, what's the worst place for small talk, Ben? All right, I had a dentist. Can I guess? Yeah. It's an elevator. Elevator would be bad. Here's the, no, here's the. You know who talks in the elevator? Yeah, the Barry. Barry. I can't. Yes. He'll talk to strangers.

58:08The rule of thumb usually is if you're having a conversation in the elevator and someone else gets on, that conversation ceases to exist. If you're in an elevator, here's what you do. You put your head down. Head down, yes. So I had a dentist appointment today. The worst place for small talk is the dentist. because you're laying in a chair, so they have high ground on you. Oh, how are the kids? How was your summer? Yeah, you can't talk when, stop talking to me. Just do your thing. That's the worst place for small talk. You ever meet a young dentist? Yeah. It's kind of funny, right? When you've, you're like, oh, because your whole life you view them as being older dentists?

58:40My dad was a dentist, periodontist. Not a braces dentist, but yeah. What's a periodontist? I don't know. Sounds like a dinosaur. Like implants. Okay. Dental implants. Okay. So you got veneers then? All natural. You know how they do that? So I heard this story from a hedge friend who works at a hedge fund. And she told me, whenever the portfolio managers or analysts get their very first big bonus, the first thing they all do is get brand new veneers. That's like the thing. My dad did do veneers, but what are they? Are they literally teeth on top of your teeth? It's like porcelain teeth. But she explained how they do it.

59:15And I never knew this. They literally grind your teeth down to the gum. And then I don't say glue. Yes. And then they put, Oh my God. Just thinking about that doesn't make you want to do it, right? Ugh. Ben, I got an MRI. I've had a headache, a persistent headache for a couple of weeks. And I think it's like, I think it's a blood pressure thing. It turns out. My blood pressure is slightly high. I went totally over 90, which is like not that bad. But I've been taking blood pressure medication and I've been feeling better. So I want to get an MRI just to make sure that there wasn't anything bad up there.

59:52And so he puts me in the machine and didn't tell me that it's loud, really loud. So I'm in there and it went, and I almost jumped. It was super loud. But I got the results a day later. And you know what the results of the scan said? It called my brain unremarkable.

1:00:14Wow. It matches the title of your blog pretty good. You're a relevant investor. Pretty good, but also a little bit insulting. So I think we need a new way to gauge blood pressure. Because you say the numbers. I know you can look them up, but I just need it on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 100. Right? Where 100 is good and 1 is bad. Yeah. Like, I got my physical last week. And they're like, oh, your blood pressure is 120 over 70 or whatever it was. And I'm like, oh, great. That means less to me than the dipstick at the oil change place. I don't know what that means. Is that good or is it bad? So, Ben, I started – I got a trainer.

1:00:47What? Probably like two years ago. And the reason why I got a trainer was because I hurt my back. We have new listeners since this story happened. It's probably two years ago. I hurt my back sneezing like bad, like it hurt. I couldn't, I went straight to the ground, my lower back. I couldn't like get up. And I said, so I found, I said, I got to start working out, strengthen up my core. And so I've been with this trainer for two years. And every day is a week. Are we talking here? Monday and Friday for 50 minutes. I gotta be honest. I hate it. I hate it. Still hate it. You don't get any satisfaction from it.

1:01:20I hate it. I really don't enjoy working out. But I paid him for a few reasons. By the way, my back has been much better. So credit for that. Well, that's why getting to the, this is like the Carly's versus bi thing. Some people would tell you, Michael, suck it up and go to the gym yourself. But if you hate it, you need to pay someone to help you do it. So I paid this person because if I don't pay him, I'm not going to work out. But hopefully I'm turning the corner because I'm here to tell you that two years later, I just stopped paying him. and I'm sharing this for a few reasons. One, because I want to help Matthew.

1:01:52So if anybody's been curious about working out, but you don't want to go to the gym, so Matt, it's on Zoom. So he helps me on Zoom. So I thought this would be a short-term thing, right? The only reason why I stuck with him for two years is because I like the guy so much. I talked to him like I talked to him. My wife's like, who are you? You don't talk to anyone. So we talk about movies. We shoot the show. We talk about our lives, our kids and stuff. So I love this guy. I feel bad that I'm canceling. You cheated on me. So wait, so do you feel like you know the work exercises now? You're going to do them on your own or not?

1:02:21So it's a combination of that, but primarily it's just too disruptive to my schedule. So I do it every Monday and Friday at nine o 'clock and half of the time in between my sets, I'm on my computer. It's really hard to be away at that time. Now, why don't I do it in the afternoon? Shut up. I don't want to. That's why. So, but if you are curious about starting to work out. We're going to have a link in the show notes or email me. I love this guy. It's the only reason why I stuck with him for two years. And I would love for some of you to experience what it's like to work out with him. Now you're an exercise broker.

1:02:58I'm an exercise broker. There we go. But I went to Kava for the first time. I'm not sure how it's my first time. I don't know what Kava is. What is it? Okay. It's a publicly traded company. It's Greek Chipotle. Oh, okay. And I went to one of the – it's phenomenal. And I walked out. The place was packed. There was a policeman inside. That's how busy it was. There was not a policeman getting food, like guarding, I guess, the area where people pick up their order. Is this in New York City or is this in the suburbs? In New York City. It was so packed. I went to – when I got to the desk, I went to the computer and I punched up the chart.

1:03:36I'm like, maybe I should buy this. It's like Chipotle. All-time high. Stock is absolutely on fire. Food, phenomenal. Totally get it. Okay. They don't have it in Michigan. Really good. But City's back. More expensive than Chipotle or similar? Yeah, 13-ish, but really excellent quality. All right. Before, oh, wait. I got one story for you for when you get your new dog. So my mother and father-in-law had a dog back in the day, and they put these little bells on the door, hanging it with a little string, those little circle, like Christmas bells, you know? Yep, yep. They hang it on there, and they taught their dog to hit the bell when she had to go out of the bathroom.

1:04:10So for our first dog, we said, we're going to do this. And so every time she went to the bathroom, we'd bring her out. We'd hit her paw on the bell. And then bring her out, bring her in, give her a treat as we're training her, right? A month later, she kind of perks up and she runs over and she slams into the bell. And after that, she did it. And it works. And she would go over and hit the bell. And so we tried it with our new dog. A week in, she's already using the bell to go to the bathroom. Wow. Isn't it crazy how smart dogs are? All we did is hit her paw. And then the other day, I'm doing laundry.

1:04:40and I'm changing the laundry out because I'm middle class. I don't have someone fold my laundry for me like an upper class person. And all of a sudden I hear the bell ring and I walk out and the dog's sitting there looking at me, ready to go outside. I can't wait to get a dog. My wife sent me a picture of a boxer and she said the store has it. I was ready to go. I called the store up. False advertising. She's like, oh no, we don't have that. We can get you a boxer. I'm like, well then, what? I miss my dog. I really want a dog. Starting out a new puppy with kids is a totally different experience too.

1:05:12Watching them take some responsibility and play with her and bring her to the bathroom. So my dog was like, I'm not saying that I love my dog more than anybody else, but my dog was my baby. I was, because I was unemployed when I got her. She's been a ton of time. I was at home with her for like almost two full years. She was like my only friend. And life is not the same without dogs. All right, Ben. Somebody emailed us. I've started listening in the past six months. What's not clear to me is how you guys have the time to consume so much new content to recommend. Trying to understand for myself as I'm mid-30s with young kids, and I haven't owned or watched a TV since before COVID.

1:05:46Dude. Wow. What? Owned a TV? We get this question probably once. We have to answer this once over two years. It's not complicated. First of all, I might have a little bit of ADHD. And I say that to say that my life is chaotic. If you were looking over my shoulder on a daily basis, You'd say, what in the world is wrong with this person? I'm chaos, but I've learned how to harness it. I am very, very efficient with my content consumption because I consume so much of it. I've got a system in place. And it's, listen, there's a lot of hours in the week. So my kids go, I don't know about you, Ben. My kids are done at 8, 8.15.

1:06:26So there's an hour 45. I go to sleep 10, 10, 15. There's two hours every single night. So that's 10 hours during the week. Not that I'm watching two hours every single night. Maybe I am. And then my wife leaves for work at six in the morning. So I'm up there. If I wanted to, there could be an hour before the kids get up before I get out of bed. So that's 15 hours a week. That's a lot. And then, you know, just, I mean, there's so much time. It's just, you got to prioritize. And when you have kids, you don't have a social life as much. You have a little bit of social life, but not like you did when you were younger.

1:06:57And I'm a night owl. I stay up till midnight every night almost. And so I have, my wife goes to bed at 930 or so. Kids are in bed by eight for the twins, nine for my older daughter, 9.30. And then I have two hours by myself. So it's - I feel like there's nothing but time. Yes. And I'm multitasker too. If it's a show that I don't have to pay attention to, I'll be answering emails or writing a blog post or whatever while I have a TV show or movie on too. So speaking of TVs that you have in the background, Bad Monkey is that for me. I don't know if I'm going to get through the whole season, but it's like background show.

1:07:31Would you agree or do you really enjoy it? I still like it. I love Vince Vaughn and his quips and such. It does kind of feel like it probably could have been a couple episodes shorter, but I hope they make a second season because there's a second book on it. No offense to Vince Vaughn, one of the goats among goats, but I will say the giant forehead Botox does look a little bit weird, and the hair, the whole situation just looks odd. I mean, he definitely got some Hollywood hair, correct? He did something. It looks good work done. I thought he was looking, well, he does look like he got work. I thought he was looking okay.

1:08:06Listen, he looks better than I would look at his age. I'm just saying. It just looks a little weird. Okay. So I was trapped when I was traveling last week. I realized as I got to the airport, oh, no, I forgot my Kindle paperweight. That's what I read on. And I'll have like five or six books going at once. And I'll kind of hop back and forth. You can highlight in there. And so I had to go to the bookstore to get a book like a schmuck. And I got like a paperback book. It's like the house on the lake or the house across the lake or something. It was like, it's okay. It was kind of a page turner, like a beach read basically.

1:08:38Yeah. Right? There's like three twists at the end where you're kind of like, okay, that twist was a little too much. Could have just done one of them. Just get rid of one of those twists. But I realized that I can't read physical books anymore. It's way harder. Reading a paperback book, you have to like push it open to see the edges. And like reading on a Kindle is so much of a better experience. I didn't realize how much I would miss that if I didn't have it. Have you tried it yet? The Kindle Paperwhite is amazing. It's such a better reading experience. Especially on the plane, you can turn the brightness up or down.

1:09:07You can highlight stuff. There's a website. I like how books smell. There's a website where you can see all of your highlights in one place. That is very cool. And then one more. I watched Rebel Ridge on Netflix. And I got to say, Netflix movies are getting better. This movie wasn't like - Because they're not making as many. Yeah, they're getting higher quality. I thought this movie was, it should have been 90 minutes. Then it would have been really good. But the first like half hour of the movie is cooking. When the cops first knock him off his bike and you start to realize who this guy is and what he can do.

1:09:37I mean, it's a ripoff of like Rambo and a bunch of other movies, but I thought it was really well done. That's good. For a Netflix movie. Yeah. It was entertaining. Yeah. Okay. Oh, so last night I went to see The Substance, the movie with Demi Moore. It's like a body horror movie. It's a very Cronenberg-esque. Probably not for you. Another movie I've literally never heard of. Probably not for most of you. Demi Moore, like, Like, it is weird that she was, like, such an icon of the 90s and hasn't really done much work that I remember. So I typed this movie in, and it says, the extreme body horror film causing mass cinema walkouts around the world.

1:10:12Is that true? Was there a walkout? Well, there was only four people in my theater, so, you know, we all stuck around. I enjoyed the shit out of it. It was a good movie. Okay. She's in a new TV show. I can't remember which one it is. Anyhow, so if you are… of that persuasion, yeah, you'll like the movie. But I want to - All the headlines say that this is a demented movie. Oh, yeah. Totally. I'm a sick puppy. Yeah, you are. So there was a, one of the trailers was Y2K, 824 hard movie, which I - I think that actually looks pretty good. Can't wait. And there was one scene in the trailer where this guy was using devil sticks.

1:10:52Now, if you're not, if you're younger than Ben and I, you probably have no idea what a devil stick is. Devil sticks are two. I don't know what a devil stick is. Remember they're like drumsticks with a long stick and you would like hit them back and forth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd see the guy outside of Spencer Gifts doing it to like get people in the store. Okay, credit to me and definitely you. Never believed in devil sticks. They were always the dumbest shit ever. And the kids that used devil sticks, there was sort of, you remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy in the mall would be doing it.

1:11:20Yeah, it was like the people that were bigger to yo-yos. Yeah. But even dorkier. I don't know what that's. Probably, I would also probably put a hacky sack in the same category. Oh, yeah. Hacky sack, devil sticks. So dumb. Great moment of time. All right, lastly. By the way, are you watching The Penguin? I haven't got into it yet. Quite good. Okay. Quite good. But there's no Batman in it? Not yet. Okay. I totally understand if you guys can't, but I have a big ask for the scary movie king himself, Michael. Thank you. Michael, I'm wanting to watch one scary Halloween-themed movie every night in October.

1:11:59Can you throw together a list of 31 movies to watch? Jeez, save some for the rest of us, dude. I threw together 46. How about that? So I charted it. And I charted it by year and by audience scoring around the tomatoes. So I've been asked this question multiple times, and I just never put pen to paper, so to speak. So thank you for the nudge. Here it is. I hope you enjoy them. And Alien's your favorite one on here? No, no. This is by year and audience review. But I'm asking, what's your favorite of this list? Oh, I don't have a favorite. Come on. Okay. These are my favorites. I have 46 favorites.

1:12:3446 favorite horror movies. Okay. There's some that I, like there's, as I'm going through the list, because I cross-reference just to make sure I'm not leaving anything yet. Here's what's off my list. No Jason movies except for Freddy vs. Jason, which is obviously, it's a horrible movie, but it was fun to see them collide. Probably should have Friday the 13th on here, but I don't. I don't have any leprechaun movies. Those were silly. Not a big zombie guy. I don't have any zombie movies on here. Although you have Halloween Rob Zombie. I love the Rob Zombie Halloween. I did. Okay. All right. I've probably seen like three of these movies.

1:13:10Great list. I give you credit for putting it together though. Way to go. Even though it's homework. I saw that email come in and I was like, Michael's never going to do this. And credit to you. Oh, one last thing. So I don't know why I thought of this movie. I showed my kids three ninjas. Do you remember that movie from back in the day? Sounds familiar. So my friend texted me, Rocky loves Emily. That was like one of the lines of the movie. So I said, it holds up. And he said, I haven't seen it in like 20 years. LOL. Watch with the kids. Oh, it's like a little kids movie. Yeah. So I said, so he said he hasn't seen it in 20 years.

1:13:42I was like, bro, we're old. If you haven't seen it in 20 years, it means that you saw it when you were in college. And I highly doubt you watched it in college. We're like 30 years. That's how old we are. 92. Yeah, it's like 30 plus years. Yeah, 30 years ago. All right, after your time. All right. Holds up if you want a movie for your kids. All right, Ben. That was a long show. Sorry to Duncan and the crew for keeping them so long. Duncan, Michael had to go long because he did this chart of horror movies. I did like how you segmented it out by year, though. Thank you. That was well done. Ben, give the Dark and the Wicked a try.

1:14:21Just kidding. Don't. All right. Animal Spirits at the Compound News. Thank you for all the questions. We'll see you next time.