The Never-Ending Travel Boom (EP.354)

23:56Even then, the amount of people could contribute was quite low for income. So a decade ago, the government launched a new savings account to encourage people to spend more. And the goal is to have 34 million Japanese investors before the end of the decade. And he's saying it's going to require Japanese government to expand their capital markets. And the hope is that we're going to have way more people investing. And it's like these other countries, I mentioned Italy last week, catching up. These other countries are catching on and they're going to say, why don't we make the stock market hold it up like a shrine like they do in the United States and have it be part of everything we do.

24:30And it's part of the savings program. That sounds like an easier said than, I mean, that's like a, we've been doing this for a long time. It's a total cultural change. Here's another one that he, I just pulled this out. By mid-century mark, one in six people globally will be over the age of 65, up from one in 11 in 2019. To support them, governments are going to have to prioritize building out robust capital markets like the U.S. has. Here's the other thing, though. With people living so much longer, think about how much more time to compound the baby boomers' wealth has than any other generation ever.

25:01So they're the richest generation ever. They're going to live longer than any generation of the biggest generation ever to live that long. Their money is going to compound for longer. so that spread between how much wealth they have and how much everyone else has is going to just continue to get worse, right? The compounding effects for that wealth is going to last longer than anyone has ever had before because they've been saving since the early 80s when 401ks and IRAs hit the market. All right. A listener of the show sent this in to me. Mark Hodala sent this in. He said, hey, I made it into the Wall Street Journal as a commenter like you like, so I'm going to give him some credit here.

25:37Wait, did he give fake comments? Was he like, he gave him a comment? Okay. No. So he said he answered a little thing saying, if you have invested in the video. So he says he's a 58 professor in Kirksville, Missouri. See the MO? That's Missouri, not Kansas. He first bought NVIDIA more than two decades ago after a student introduced him to the company. Now, given this monster rally, he's planning to retire early next year. The stock returns have made it ridiculous to keep working. so you mentioned a couple weeks ago like i i i'm up 50 67 percent of the stock i'm out i made i couldn't hold a 10 bagger depends on which stock but generally speaking correct i think i'm i'm in a similar boat as you just i will you're right i will never ever have a 10 bagger my entire life like what's my ceiling for how big a gain i could take i don't know but it ain't for us for it's going to be index funds for us, right?

26:29Those are going to be our 10 baggers someday. True. Hopefully. But, but what percentage of investors do you think have that ability? Because I think it is, it's something your, your risk appetite or whatever in your brain is you're just born with that. How many people have that? Because the people who held Bitcoin from like 10 cents to now at$70 ,000, like those people are legitimately insane to me that they have the ability to do that. I think, I think, and I'm generalizing, I suspect that for most people with monster gains, they're like afraid to sell in a good way or bad way. I guess depending on how you look at it.

27:02They're like, why would I sell NVIDIA or my Apple? Look how good it's done. I don't want to leave gains on the table. Like, why would I sell? What else am I going to buy? And I think that they have that mentality, whereas we don't for reasons that I already described. What was the company you mentioned before? Your uncle, your cousin held for years, right? So you have this DNA in your family somewhere. So I've told this story, but for newer listeners that never heard this, I write a lot, or not so much anymore, but I used to write a lot about the dangers of picking individual stocks. Just all the statistics are against you, right?

27:38Like for every NVIDIA, there's a million other stocks that are not, that just crash and burn. Right, the stocks that crash and just never come back, never hit those highs again. So my uncle in 1996 bought a little small biotech company called Celgene. I don't know what the market cap was at the time. I'm sure it was under a billion dollars. And he bought, I don't know, $25 ,000 for my mom,$50 ,000, whatever it was. And that stock changed our life. Because my mom, when my parents got divorced, my mom went back to work. She didn't graduate college. So she was a secretary or something, you know, didn't make any money.

28:19But that stock like legitimately turned into a million dollars. So my mother was the, oh, if you put$10 ,000 into. But I remember vividly like when Selju went down, like it was a big deal. Like that was everything that she had. How has that stock performed in recent years? Have you looked at it lately? It was bought by Bristol Myers. Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. Okay. Probably eight years ago or so. So your uncle went out on top. He didn't have to like potentially hold it and it stagnates or goes down or whatever. But he's a great example of why would I sell a stock that has treated me so well?

28:56I think that's the prevailing feeling for people that have giant gains. This is going to sound like a put down and it's not. I feel like in some ways you have to like have a little, you have to be a little naive. Like we're not - To do that. This is not a diss. It's just that we know the data, right? We know base rates. We know all that stuff. And so we're incapable of holding a 10-bagger, which is fine. Yes, the base rates have like ruined us. Yeah. And this is actually, this is one of like the big dynamics in the market over the last decade is Joes over pros. How many retail investors have beat the shit out of professionals over the last decade thanks to the Apples and NVIDIAs of the world?

29:40A lot. And also, how many base rates have been destroyed by these tech stocks? They took the base rates and dragged them out and beat them to death or whatever. Smashed them against the ground. That's exactly right. You know the scene in Office Space where they're smashing the fax machine? Yes. That's the Magnificent Seven to base rates. All right. I'm going to be interested to see what Duncan and John Daniel come up with for the video for this one. Right? If you're just a listener, we have very good production value on the YouTube videos as well. Black Friday savings are here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to add new cordless power to your collection.

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30:55Toys and jewelry to new beauty brands and styles, these gifts go seamlessly from our stores to under your tree. Seriously, with these savings, why shop anywhere else? Burlington Deals Brands Wow All right. I, a couple weeks ago, said inflation is over, and a bunch of people said I'm an idiot. That's fair. They can think that. I looked at all the inflation rates for the G7 countries, US, UK, France, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy. All of those rates are 3.4 % or lower now for inflation rates across the globe. They all followed a very similar path. Japan is the only one that didn't really keep up on the upside.

31:30Isn't this the case for inflation kind of being over however you want to define that. I mean, like the scary, like inflation is a huge, I'm not takeaway, like, yes, I know the baseline is set higher and all that stuff. But like high rates of inflation, like 4%, 5%, 6%. I think that's - Just to be very clear what you're talking about, you're talking about the 5%, 6 % inflation is over. The scary high inflation. Those rates, I think, are done. Yeah, fine. I guess my point was, and obviously you would agree with this, is like that doesn't really matter. and not, of course, it matters. It doesn't make anybody feel better about the price that they're paying today, right?

32:07And you would agree with that. The other part is that - My$26 Miami Vice the other day? Yeah. The other part is the 10-year is breaking out. Big floater, though. Big floater. The 10-year is at the highest level since November 2023. It spiked yesterday when the ISM prices paid component came out. and WTI is breaking out. Crude oil is breaking out. Yeah, that probably is the big risk is commodities. Interestingly, though, so the S &P is down 1 % today. Maybe we'll finally have that 2 % pullback that we've been waiting for. But it is kind of remarkable that stocks are sort of kind of barely responding to higher rates.

32:51Right. The S &P is down 1 % today, big deal after this run. You would expect that could give a little bit more back. Yeah, it happens. Okay. So I think my easiest call for the year was consumer sentiment is going to break out. It just broke out to a new high for the first, like high since early 2021. It's almost lapped those. But if you look at this, wasn't COVID just the big reset? And I know we've talked forever about like the reason sentiment is so bad. But I mean, if you just look at how bad it fell during COVID, isn't is that a simple explanation for sentiment that that that whole period just reset sentiment?

33:30lower? No, it was inflation. Look at how big the consumer sentiment dropped in 2020, though. You know, of course. Yes, there was a gigantic drop in consumer sentiment, as you would expect when the economy shuts down. And then there was a hell of a rebound. And then once inflation kicked in, the bottom fell out. Interestingly, though, we're having this uptick while gasoline prices are coming back. A lot of people were saying, like, the consumer sentiment is just gas prices. We'll see. If gas prices continue to rise, I'll be interested to see what happens to consumer sentiment. All right. This is a great chart from Bank of America.

34:07TSA, seven-day moving average, millions of passengers. And 2024, way higher than pre-pandemic, way higher than even last year at this time. I don't understand. I mean, Ben, I know you're flying. I'm flying in two weeks. I thought that that we were going to get the travel out of our system it's really remarkable I could not have foreseen this coming well the other thing people said was listen business travel is impacted forever because of work for home no one's going to travel for business anymore that was like how wrong we were how wrong we were somehow though I found I want to have this week for spring break every year because we're in like a lull between like spring break was a lot of the spring break just happened and there's more coming Like yours is in a couple of weeks, right?

34:53Mine is in two, three weeks. Ours is, it's not that busy right now. The travel actually wasn't that busy for me, which was kind of nice because I think we're in like a middle ground of spring break. Know what I just earned, Ben? Speaking of travel, silver medallion on Delta, not to brag. Okay. It's the first medallion. Here's, okay. I'm pretty sure I've had that for a while. Do you not have the Delta card? Of course I do. I'm a late bloomer to the Delta card. I only got it like a year or so ago. All right. So here's a question for you. and I'm not judging anyone who does this, but I'm just, I think I could never do it.

35:24So we're taking our flight down and we're in like row 30, whatever, you know, because you have five people. Kids in first class. There was two kids sitting in first class on the way of spring break. What do you think about kids in first class? Because my thought is I could never do it because I do not want to expose my kids to having that once and then taking it away. And then they're going to go like, wait, why? You know, but so what are your thoughts on kids in first class? Because I could see it maybe like, I don't know, you're taking a trip to Europe or something and you want to sit in nicer, but I could never expose my kids to that to give them the taste of it.

35:54Okay. I don't want to judge, but that being said, I'm 100 % with you. Okay. I even feel weird that I'm taking my kids to many places. Yes. So growing up, we were not a plane traveling family. I know a lot of families in my town that went to Aruba. I never went to a tropical place until I was like in my 20s maybe. So we were car trip people, right? We drove to Washington. We drove to Boston and Philly and things like that. So I don't want to expose my kids to first class. Trips are way bigger these days than when we were growing up. That's for sure. People go further. But yes, I agree. I feel like my kids are already spoiled enough as it is.

36:33I can't imagine putting them in first class and how entitled they would feel. Again, not judging. That's just personal. No, we don't judge here. Oh, two more things on the travel. One, if you're flying into New York, LaGuardia. No more JFK. I'm done with JFK. LaGuardia is, it's so much better. I flew back through JFK from Italy and you're right. It was awful, awful experience. Oh, it's really, it's very - And the new LaGuardia is so nice. They did a great job of that. Last week you spoke about, you were disparaging Delta about the movie selection. I was like, what are you talking about? I just flew and there was like 97 movies.

37:10On the way back from Colorado, Ben, I was on a Delta plane with like the smaller movie screen, like the old one. and I was surprised to see there was only like 15 movies. Okay, no, I had a lot, but maybe it's because I've seen everything. There's no new good movies. I want new stuff. Maybe I'm more complaining about the movie industry than Delta. I just think they need to have Netflix. I think they have Paramount Plus or something on there, but just put Netflix and Prime and HBO, put all my streaming stuff on there. I know you can do it on the iPad, but the Wi-Fi never works. All right, Ben, I want to ask you what's going on in the labor market.

37:43Connor Sen tweeted, we've been in a rolling recession for white collar hiring. kind of wonder of this dynamic similar to other bull of credit-sensitive industry downturns that we've seen. And it picks up later this year just because it has to. And he's looking at professional and business service hires rates. So I think what this is showing is hires as a percentage of employees. I believe that's what it is. Interestingly, Vanguard had a similar study. Our Vanguard 401k data indicates that hiring rates for the bottom third of workers who make below$55 ,000 per year are generally higher than those for higher income workers.

38:21And then they say, while hiring rates for high income workers are slowing, we have not seen a material pickup in the unemployment rate for that income group. We've seen layoff announcements for high income workers, most notably the technology sector, but they've often been able to quickly find new employment as their skills are in demand. So I think that the lower end, whether it's middle or bottom third or whatever, of workers having a very strong labor market with real wages increasing pretty rapidly has been a huge boost to the economy because those people spend every dollar they make. Yes.

38:56I had a friend try to make the case to me that upper middle class people have gotten the shaft in the last five to 10 years because they're paying maybe higher taxes and the people who are way better, more money than them are doing a lot better. But the people on the lower end have been brought up because wages have come up. I would not go that far to say that. Well, you could think that. You probably shouldn't say it out loud. Yes. But I think this is maybe something. So it's these blue-collar jobs, I guess, that are booming and higher wages. And like you said, the white-collar middle manager job, I guess.

39:31Is that fair to say that that has been falling off a little bit? That is interesting. I don't have a good explanation for it. Well, think about who the technology companies were cutting. Or just generally. Where do companies cut when they're trying to? They cut the fat. And the fat is middle management. Hey, you're making$140 ,000 a year. Like, what are you doing? We did hear from someone in the YouTube comments last week. I still go in the comments every week. Michael's never looked. I'm just throwing it out there. Listen, listen. Of course I look. There are several reasons why I don't. One is, I don't think it's natural to reach strangers just flinging shit at your face.

40:03I don't want to feel, I don't want to have strangers ruin my day. 90 % of it is positive or jokes and the other 10 % – Listen, I'm sure it is. But more importantly than that, in all seriousness, I don't want what I'm – maybe I'm peeling Bethany Kerr in too much on this. I don't want what I'm saying to be influenced by one person in the back of my head. True. Because I got – for the rest of the audience who's like, who is he even talking to? I don't want to talk to people. I don't want comments in the back of my head as I'm trying to entertain and educate our audience. Is that a sub-suite towards me?

40:37no it says no i'm kidding no but but some anyway someone in the comments was saying that like listen i work in the tech field and it's kind of brutal out there with the layoffs and the they were saying like it's people think the tech is awesome but like a certain subset of people in that industry he's like it's it's pretty tough so i i kind of get that all right so i saw this stat the other day someone posted on twitter one third of all purchases are being done in cash right now And you hear that number and you go, gosh, that just doesn't sound fair. It's boomers, blah, blah, blah. But I clicked through the source data for Redfin and look at the chart here.

41:12This is homes purchased with cash where there's no mortgage loan information on the deed. That's how they define cash. I don't understand. I just don't understand. It's been roughly, it got as low as 20%, but that was briefly in the pandemic. But it's been around one third since 2011. And the median home? It's almost constant. the median home price is what, 400 something thousand? Yes. Where's all this cash coming from? People selling their NVIDIA? So they also put in here, they said, while housing is expensive, affluent Americans who can pay in cash are more likely than lower income Americans to be the ones buying.

41:50All cash home sales rose 3 % year over year in February, where mortgage home sales fell 3%. This is just the housing price, how expensive it's gotten, is going to make wealth inequality worth because the young people who are going to be able to afford to buy in these expensive areas are going to get help from their parents. The wealth transfer is going to happen faster. They're going to say, listen, mom and dad, I don't want my inheritance in 30 years when you pass away. I want it now. Help me buy a house. Wealth inequality, it's a one-way train. It's never going to get better. It really isn't.

42:19And the thing is, people always pointed out that it's bad. It's always been bad. It's never been bad. Unfortunately, it really has. So I also think if and when rates fall, I would have thought mortgage rates would have fallen more by now. I can't believe they've stayed at 7 % this long. Three people I know that I've talked to in the last two or three months are doing massive remodeling projects on their house. Like had to move to a different floor or like grandparents' house to like redo. And they're pulling that equity out. I think when rates fall - Dude, if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars of money that you could tap that didn't exist, you're going to do it.

42:54And don't you think the thinking would be in that scenario, You know, geez, HELOC rates are like 7 % now, 7.5%. But if rates fall and the Fed cuts, those rates are going to fall too. Because those are market rates. But I think when those rates fall, we're going to see, even if it gets like 5%, the cash out refinance boom is going to be massive. We've gone from like$10 trillion in equity 10 years ago to 30 something now. We've added$20 trillion in equity, home equity. People are going to tap that stuff. Bill McBride tweeted this. single family active inventory. It's finally coming up. So 21, 22, 23 were well, well, well.

43:36Jeez, so much below pre-pandemic levels. But it's up 26 % year over year from 2023. It's still down 38 % from 2019 levels, but start to see some inventory come on. So do you think this is more higher mortgage rates finally having an impact? Or do you think it's just people can only hold out for so long until they have to put their house on the market? A little bit of both? A little bit of both. There's a home in my neighborhood that just sold for$1.2 million. And I don't even know what to say. You would not believe what this house looks like. It's a fine house. It's a high ranch, which is the type of house that I grew up in where you walk up the steps, you open the door, there's a downstairs with one bedroom in the living room.

44:27Is this the one you were talking about a few weeks ago, like a month ago? No, it's different. This is the type of house I grew up in. You go upstairs, there's one bathroom, master bedroom, bedroom, bedroom attached, kitchen right there. I don't... It's a normal house. It's a normal house. It's probably, I don't know, 2 ,300 square feet. Like it's a very, it's a fine house, but$1.2 million. dollars. I, I could take, we, you know, this is, it's been two years of this. I feel horrible for new homebuyers. These people could be underwater forever. And I guess it doesn't really matter because I'm not like reselling it, but just the prices that people, where does the money come from?

45:05How are people buying houses? I, I, I, I did the Zillow thing in Marco again, because I just fascinates me. I wanted to like, see what the house, the Airbnb were staying at. It's, I don't know. It's 1700 square feet. It's one floor and it's in a great spot. There's a pool and it's right on the water, but the house is, it's a rental and it's got some age, but it's like millions of dollars. It's like, it's crazy. And I look at some of these and I think, think about if you bought a home here, you know, five years ago, 10, 15 years ago, you won the lottery. Yeah. It's so, so it happened in a lot of cities too.

45:42So if you own a home, you're good, right? Because you've got all this equity. But again, new home buyers just got royally f***ed. And I don't think there's anything that's going to level that playing field. Yeah. So like when I graduated college during the GFC, we got a raw deal because the labor market was just brutal. Yeah. And now this generation is taking it on the chin with real estate. Really, really, really rough. Yeah. So it's like, yes, I have a job. I make more money. the thing I've seen, I think Conor Sen tweeted this, is saying like, what are the spending habits of these young people going to be?

46:16If they have a better job than millennials had back then, maybe this is why you're seeing crazy speculation and stuff, and more travel and all this kind of things, because what else are they going to spend their money on if they can't, if they're priced out of a house? Right, right. Younger people definitely have more disposable income than we do. There's no doubt about that. As a young person, think about who you're competing with to buy houses. Baby boomers who probably are paying all cash, in older millennials who have a ton of home equity built in already. You can't win that game. Yeah, yeah.

46:44All right, Credit Card Junkie, did you get it? Robin Hood, new credit card. I put my name on the list. I got to check it out at least. So they said 3 % cash back on everything, 5 % through Robin Hood Travel, which is like the travel sites on the credit cards are just, they're not good. Any of them, right? I feel like you don't get deals, you get more points, but I feel like booking travel through the credit card companies is rarely a good deal. Unless you really care about those points. You have to be a Robinhood Gold member, so it's$5 a month. I think the money goes right into your brokerage account.

47:19But I think this is actually pretty good timing on their part, because it seems like the deals for credit cards have kind of waned in recent years. I think this is actually pretty good timing on their part. I think it's not a bad time to do it. Did you sign up for it? No. No, I have enough credit cards. I'm good. I do too, but I can't help myself. I got way too much credit. All right. I've got some good news. This is from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The median wealth gap for never married adults, so never married men versus never married women, has shrunk to the narrowest since, I don't know, this data goes back to 1989.

48:02Wow, look at that increase in net worth for women. Holy cow. Yeah, there was a monster spike for single women specifically. Not exactly sure what's driving this, but definitely good news. Okay, I was thinking about this. Is this because women live longer than men, but this is never married? That's a massive spike. That 2019 to 2022 period. Yeah, this is on me. I should have read the article. I put the link in. I forgot to read the article. Sorry about that. No, but no, the chart kind of says it all, though. But this period, this 2020 to 2023, 2022 period is going to stand out on so many levels in the future.

48:42I feel like they're going to be looking back at this period for decades to come and being like, what happened back then? Oh, the world changed. Is COVID the biggest watershed moment of our lives? I'd say 9-11, but COVID is going to be close. I guess you could say COVID. No, no, no. I think COVID changed everything. Yeah. I thought it was 9-11, and I thought it was a great financial crisis. It probably is COVID in terms of like it really – There's a clear line of demarcation. There's a before COVID and after COVID. All right, Ben. I told you that I've been doing some shopping lately. New shirt, not to brag.

49:23Do you spend less than$170 on it, I hope? Don't worry about what I spent. I do worry. I'm going to become your personal shopper and help you not spend so much money. So I don't know any – so I shopped at Bloomingdale's, as I said. My wife's like, you're so weird. Why are you buying clothes at Bloomingdale's? I was like, where else should I be buying clothes? She's like, I don't know. Not here. And I don't know any of the brands that I'm buying. But anyhow. It does seem like such a boomer move to go to the mall and go to Bloomingdale's. I'm sorry to generationally tag you. So what I did was I finally – I cleaned up my closet.

49:59And I'm not quite sure what took me so long. And I learned a few things. 90 % of my clothes that I bought from 2010 to 2020 were Gap. Okay. Everything. T-shirts, jeans, hoodies, everything was Gap. I don't know what I was waiting for. I have socks from 2010 that I don't even wear anymore. I do a – probably once every six months, I clean my clothes. out and take a big garbage bag stuff to Goodwill. Yeah. So I did that. If I don't wear it anymore or whatever. And I had a few like, eh, I kind of like the shirt, but I was like, but here's my will. If I haven't worn it in five years, goodbye. What am I doing?

50:40Why am I, why am I hoarding shirts? Five years? That's a long time. I would say like anything over 12 months, you got to get rid of it. Unless it's like something you're going to wear to a specific event. Oh, 12 months. Oh, that's interesting. So you're, you're, you're, I mean, you probably spend 10 times as much as I do on clothes in a given year. Yes, but I spend like 30 % of what you spend on an individual item though. So I can get more of my money can go further than you. I'm going to guess I definitely spend less than a thousand dollars in clothes a year, like in the last 10 years, for sure.

51:11I'm way over that. I like buying clothes. I got a question for you. Who's the sucker here? Because I, for this Airbnb, I bought, I went to the store, I got my own, I went to Publix here, which is the, you know, every city in Florida, I think, has a Publix, right? My grandfather worked at Publix in the 70s. I come from a line of blue-collar workers. We use our hands, Ben. I do too. You know the Brunswick bowling pins? My grandfather worked for them, making bowling pins. Oh, no way. All right. I got a three-in-one shampoo, conditioner, body wash, like a suave. $2 or something. So who's the sucker?

51:55The people who buy them individually, the body wash, the shampoo and the conditioner separately, or the people who are buying the cheapo one that's all together like me. Who's the sucker? Someone has to be the sucker there. Because it seems to work fine. I'm going to say the individual buyers, but I got to be honest. I miss conditioner. Yeah. I really do. I used to have beautiful long hair, Ben, and it all fell out. I've seen the picture. You have like long flowing kind of curly-ish. I think you should grow the sides I think you should just do it. I really want to see you with a Larry David. Maybe in 30 years, but I do miss conditioner.

52:31Those were good times. A bunch of people emailed us. You asked, how do they shorten shirt sleeves at a tailor? And a bunch of people, I'd say 25 % of the people said they take the cuff off and they cut it there. I mean, there was 75 % said, no, they cut it off at the shoulder and short it that way. So I'm going to take the people who said shoulder. Oh, interesting. Because I saw this first, people that cut like the – what is this thing called? The cuff, right? The cuff. Yeah. Anyway, the more you know. All right, Ben. This is from Jim Bianco. He tweeted, fun chart. By the way, I put that video, the Lake Michigan video on my Instagram.

53:12And I got – on my personal Instagram. And I never put animal spirits on my personal Instagram, at least like videos. and I got so much feedback. Apparently, apparently, HOMES, which is the acronym for the Great Lakes, is the one thing that everybody retained from elementary school. Except you. No, I remember it, but in the heat of the moment. Everybody was like, you don't remember HOMES? I was like, it was on camera. I got flustered. Although, the Eerie River was funny. I did laugh at that. That was good. All right, so anyhow, so Jim Bianca tweeted, fun chart. 50 % of the U.S. population lives in blue counties.

53:4950 % of the U.S. population lives in the orange counties. And there's 100 – Hey, Grand Rapids made it into the blue. I'm on the blue. Which one are you? You're on the West Coast? Yeah, it's Detroit and Grand Rapids, yeah. And there's 148 blue counties and 2 ,998 orange counties. Unbelievable. If you want cheap housing, go to the orange. Actually, somebody sent us an email about the Midwest surge, and we're going to get to that next week. Ben, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that I saw. I was like, huh, you know what? Yeah, that's true. The company that owns Jack Daniels, Brown Foreman, not doing so hot.

54:31And nobody drinks Jack Daniels anymore. Isn't that true? Yeah, because people want the high-end. Whiskey drinking is like a new – that's a new thing for bourbon. Yeah, I'll take the Woodford Reserve. You know, I was always a Jim Beam guy myself. I was an Evan Williams guy. Oh, Evan Williams is the worst. That stuff was awful. I mean, I drank Jim Beam when I wanted to make some bad decisions in college, but Evan Williams was brutal. But Jack and Coke used to be the thing. That used to be the drink. Jack and Coke, it's just an easy, that's true. That was go to the bar, Jack and Coke. But we've all become liquor snobs.

55:12I actually like Jack and Coke. I love Jack and Coke. Oh. All right, whiskey makers, but whiskey also is in trouble. This is from the journal. Whiskey makers' revenue in the U.S. fell 2.2 % in 2023 to$12.3 billion. Oh, everyone drinks tequila now. So here we go. U.S. case volume sales by category. Tequila is so hot right now. Oh, this is an interesting number. Behind tequila is cordials. What would even be in that category? Isn't that like after dinner drinks? Like a Tom Collins? No, that's a cocktail. No, a cordial is like a liqueur, like a frangelico. Isn't Tom Collins like a liqueur? No, Tom Collins is a type of drink.

55:56Honestly, the only thing I know Tom Collins from is meet the parents. Oh, we're all Tom Collins mixed. Got to go to the store. Tom Collins, I don't know if that's sour mix. You know, I don't think I ever told you this story. I went to bartending school. School. I took like a course. Seriously? Told you. Listen, I'm a blue-collar guy. I had all of these jobs. Waiter, busboy, caddy. Hey, I was a busboy. Busboy's the worst. Valet Parker for years. Wait, what was the worst? Busboy. Because the waiters and waitresses screw you out of tips. They're supposed to give you a percentage of their tips. They never give you enough.

56:30I was a busboy at a catering hall. Not a great job. Not a great job. Anyway, I wasn't able to get a job. I got the certification. Never put it to use. Never put it to use. Never put it to use. I did get a job one time on Long Beach, actually. And I did, I poured some beers and the guy never invited me back. Okay. All right. Someone's gonna have to email us on what cordial means because I'm drawing a blank here. Cognac's taking it on the chin. Nobody's drinking cognac anymore or rum. All right. So I have the perfect Miami Vice. I've been thinking about this. I wrote a blog post last week. Like the alternative to a 60-40 could be a 60-30-10.

57:08okay so the perfect miami vice is 60 30 10 60 60 60 60 60 strawberry daiquiri 40 30 pina colada 10 floater i'm with you that's a perfect miami vice yeah i've had a couple i'm having another one today did you ever go to did i ever send you to stilts on the water stilts it's a good remember right on the water okay all right recommendations they had manchester by the see on the rewatchables last week. And this is a movie that I heard from dozens of people saying, do not see this movie. It's way too sad. If you're a parent, never see this movie. And I, all right, you know what? I don't want to be depressed.

57:50I don't like to watch depressing movies. Um, but I finally watched it cause I'm like, you know what? I only give it a try. I know going in, I already knew what, like I already knew what the bad part was that how it's going to be so sad kids dying. That's the worst thing in the world. The movie was way more like lighthearted than I thought for as much death as that was in the movie. It was actually, it was a really good movie. Great movie. I wouldn't, I don't think I'd ever watch it again. It's a very good movie. It's a one undone for me. Casey Affleck is very good. So is Michelle Williams. All right, I already mentioned The Fish, State, the Whale.

58:20I don't got, I got nothing else. All right, I, on the way out to Colorado last week, we took a, we took a 7.30 flight, which is really dumb. I was up at 4.30, it was just horrible. And I say all that to say, maybe I was tired when I fired this up, but I tried to watch Ferrari and I just really didn't care for it. Now, in fairness, I only saw 20 minutes. I was tired, blah, blah, blah. Did you see Ferrari? Is it good? Do I need to try it again? I've decided to, I'm against any Adam Driver movie where he has an Italian accent because the other one was bad too. What was the, the Gucci one? Oh, the House of Gucci.

58:54I didn't see that. Did he have an Italian accent? But you know, Michael Mann. Yeah. Okay. All right. Listeners, if you love that movie, let me know. I took Kobe to see Godzilla and Kong. Okay. My son, George, wants to see it so bad. Okay. He loved it. What did you think? Loved it. How many can they make? Because I feel like everyone was exactly the same. Oh, it was pretty bad. Okay. Yeah, it was pretty bad. But it wasn't for me. And it was, you know, it was entertaining enough, but yeah, it was pretty rotten. But I was reminded of Godzilla minus one. Like, how come they're going to make such great movies and now we're Hollywood big monster.

59:31It was just junk. Okay. Oh, I did try one. I made it through a half hour of the new Roadhouse the other night. Garbage. Just garbage. No, but intentional garbage. But the fight scenes didn't seem real. It's like they used CGI in the fight scenes. It just – I loved it. When I say loved it, I had a great time. Listen, any movie that takes place in the Caribbean, I'm automatically – That's true. It was in Key West. No, it was not the Caribbean. It was Key West. You know what I mean. Same thing. so actually Roadhouse has attracted 50 this is from Sportico 50 million worldwide viewers on Prime Video over its first two weeks it is Amazon MGM Studios most watched produced film debut ever do you know why these streaming numbers are so huge when new movies come out and they say like this is the most streamed movie in history because there's no new movies that come out anymore so everyone watches new stuff everyone wants to watch a new movie because there's no new good movies barely that's why this stuff is streamed so much I think that's mostly accurate it.

1:00:31There are still good movies, but it's such a lower percentage than it used to be. True. All right, last thing. On the rewatchables this week, they have a movie called Shot Caller. Never even heard of it. And they're talking about, I'm like, how have I never heard of this movie? Let me read you this description. Tell me if you're in, or tell me if you think that I would be in. A California stockbroker is arrested and charged for a fatal DUI accident, and on his lawyer's advice, takes a plea deal, which sees him sentenced to 16 months in prison. While incarcerated, he becomes involved with a violent white supremacist gang.

1:01:02Okay. I thought maybe he was going to be giving out stock tips in prison, but okay. That's a, I don't know. I'm in. I'm all in. Sure. I've honestly never heard of it before. Neither. I'm in for that. All right, Ben. Did we go long? It's hard to tell. We had a break in the action during this episode. Listeners can't tell because of our wonderful production team, but we had some internet issues. All right. And it was on my end. It was on my end, not Ben's. That's true. I'm pretty good here. decent internet in Florida. I'm going to go have some lunch on the beach, probably have a Miami Vice. And that's it.

1:01:36Pool later. Thank you. Enjoy yourself. All right. Animal Spirits Pod at the compoundnews.com. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.

1:01:58Thank you.